Dry Heat dmm-3

by Jon Talton

  Lindsey said quietly, “Oh, no.” She checked her ankle holster, which discreetly held her baby Glock semiautomatic. Her blue eyes seemed to have turned an intense black. I felt a deep dread in my middle. Peralta’s face loomed in the window.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded. He was wearing black jeans and a long Guayabera shirt, supernaturally white.

  “We went to the D-Backs,” I said as we emerged from the backseat. “I didn’t know I had to clear my movements with you.” The night was warm and dry. Crime scene tape was festooned along the street. Peralta lasered me with his expression.

  “I got two cops dead here, smart-ass,” he said. “From here on, your movements belong to me.”

  We followed him past a row of parked cars and SUVs, through a cordon of khaki-clad Scottsdale cops. Bright TV lights flooded us from across the street.

  I heard Lindsey’s voice catch in her throat. Beyond the car bumpers, a couple of tarps barely concealed two bodies and a lot of blood, congealed on the hot sidewalk. One of the bodies was wearing cowboy boots, the other sneakers. The feet of the dead were splayed at strange, sudden angles. Lindsey bent down and examined both bodies. They were men in their thirties. One had a flamboyant red beard. The other was clean-cut, bald-headed, and boyish. Both were marred with multiple wounds and blood. Lindsey gave me a stricken look. I was not the cop. I was the husband. I came up behind her, put my hands on her shoulders, and pulled her back to me.

  “What…?” she began.

  She lunged toward Peralta. “Why aren’t the paramedics here!” she demanded, her hands outstretched. “Why aren’t you doing CPR?”

  He shook his head. She looked over the bodies again and then sagged against me. I walked her a little ways down the sidewalk. Peralta followed us.

  “Talk to me, Lindsey,” he said.

  She stared out at the night, the streetlights gleaming in her tears. “The guy with the beard is named Jim Britton. He’s with Treasury. The other one is Gary Reece, Department of Justice.” She looked at me. “They worked with me on the credit card case. They were part of the task force.”

  “What were they doing here?” Peralta demanded, his big head leaning in to face her.

  “They were celebrating,” she said. “They invited me to have a drink tonight. I turned them down because Dave and I had tickets…”

  Peralta muttered profanities and walked to his black Ford Crown Victoria. He popped the trunk, dug around inside, and walked back with something in his hand. He held out a flak vest to Lindsey.

  “Put this on,” he said.

  She hesitated. “You think it’s a hit?” she asked.

  Peralta was silent. Lindsey stared at him. She said, “You think this is the Russian mafia?”

  Peralta stared at the sidewalk. “I don’t know what I think. But I don’t want to take chances. Scottsdale cops have some witnesses inside. They said the victims were at a table inside when another dude comes in and joins them. The conversation gets a little loud. Britton and Reece pay and get up to go. Next thing anybody remembers there’s gunfire like this is a war zone. When somebody gets up the nerve to look outside, these two are dead on the sidewalk and whoever did it is gone.”

  “Do we have a description on the third man?” she asked. Peralta shook his head.

  She slipped the vest over her T-shirt and fastened the Velcro. I glanced uneasily around Scottsdale’s little downtown office district. A crowd of yuppies and beautiful people was being kept at a distance by SPD. They couldn’t see the bodies lying this side of the parked cars.

  I could see bullet holes gouged into the white paint of one Chevy Suburban, the shattered glass of a Toyota parked beside it, and more bullet holes chipped into the wall of the bar. A lot of bullet holes. I had counted to thirty holes when I heard Peralta’s voice again.

  “Where the hell is your firearm?” he growled.

  “I don’t take it to baseball games. Sorry.’

  He just worked his heavy jaw and shook his head slowly. “Mapstone, do you have any idea how much…”

  “Shit!” Lindsey yelled. “What about Rachel?!”

  Peralta just stared at her.

  “Rachel Pearson!” Lindsey said. “Deputy Rachel Pearson. She works for you in Cybercrimes. She was invited tonight. Has anybody seen her?”

  Peralta shrugged. “I guess she didn’t come tonight, like you.”

  “She said she was going to come.”

  Alarm flickered briefly across Peralta’s face. He stabbed a thick finger into my chest. “Stay here.” He disappeared into the bar.

  Lindsey looked at me, and we followed him inside. The room was dark and comforting, with an old Bonnie Raitt song on the sound system. “‘Push comes to shove’,” Bonnie sang. In this old watering hole I had salved a hundred bad days, lubricated a hundred entertaining evenings. But I had no appetite for a drink. We stood on the threshold. Nearby, Peralta conferred with a Scottsdale police captain, then turned to a pair of civilians, clad in the expensive Euro-trash outfits of Scottsdale’s trendy needy wealthy. The conversation grew more animated. Two young Scottsdale cops ran past us out the door. Peralta noticed us, and walked heavily to the top of the stairs.

  “It’s a new scenario,” he said grimly. “The female officer may be missing. Those witnesses remember a woman who went out to the street with the men. Nobody’s seen her since the shots were fired.”

  Chapter Seven

  “We need to talk.”

  Peralta turned to face us. We were sitting in the backseat of Chief Deputy Kimbrough’s ford Expedition. Kimbrough was driving and Peralta was talking. It was a lot of departmental brass to be shoved into one SUV.

  Peralta said again, “We need to talk. Lindsey, did you hear of any threats, anything at all?”

  “No,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Around,” Peralta said.

  “He doesn’t want to have to deal with Scottsdale PD and the feds,” Kimbrough said, gently grinning, making a half turn to look at us. The chief deputy was wearing a khaki summer suit already, a bad omen for a gentle spring. But, as usual, he carried it off beautifully. The suit was set off with a starched white shirt and abstract pattern blue bow tie that somehow all complemented the rich dark chocolate color of his skin. We were driving north on Scottsdale Road doing the speed limit. Cars and trucks howled impatiently past us.

  “I don’t want to be screwing around in public if somebody’s trying to kill Lindsey,” Peralta said. “Better to be mobile.”

  “You think that’s what this is?” I asked, a worry pain stabbing me at the bottom of my breastbone.

  “How the hell would I know, Mapstone? It’s a damned strange coincidence if this wasn’t a hit. We shut down the Russian mob’s big profit engine. So they retaliate. Why else would somebody take out two feds, working for two separate agencies?”

  “And,” Kimbrough said, “do it with that kind of firepower. I thought we won the Cold War? How the hell did the Russian mafia get to Phoenix?”

  “It’s a global economy,’ I said. “More people on the move around the world than anytime in history. It’s all because we won the Cold War.”

  “Thank you, professor,” Peralta grumbled. “But you’d think these Reds would stand out like a sore thumb here. I can even spot the people who just rolled in from Iowa.”

  “You guys should get out more,” I said. “I hear Russian spoken by customers at Safeway.”

  “That’s ’cause you live in the ’hood,” Kimbrough said, grinning broadly. “I’m sorry, the historic districts.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Lindsey said.

  To break the tension, I decided to needle Peralta a little. “To continue the lesson,” I said. He let out a groan. “There are some school districts in Phoenix where more than one hundred languages are spoken.”

  “I can’t even get most deputies to learn Espanol,” Peralta sighed.

  “And,” I added, “the Russians have been in the Salt River Valley a lo
ng time. I think the first big group came around 1911, to work in the sugar beet fields in Glendale.”

  “What about Rachel?” Lindsey said, drumming her long, slender fingers on the tops of her thighs. Kimbrough said officers had checked Rachel’s apartment in Chandler, called her mother in Prescott, tracked down her boyfriend, who was on a business trip to Las Vegas. Scottsdale PD had done a search on foot over a ten-square-block area around the Martini Ranch. Nobody knew where she was.

  “They’ve got her…” Lindsey said, her voice flat.

  Peralta faced front and everyone fell into silence. Resorts and restaurants flashed past, the pleasure provinces of movie stars, corporate titans and the anonymous extremely wealthy. The lights of mountainside mansions twinkled at us from a safe distance. The police radio kept up a steady conversation about mayhem around the county. I half listened to it, and remembered the only time I met Rachel Pearson.

  It was an after-work party at Portland’s restaurant, and Lindsey brought some of her colleagues from the Sheriff’s Office Cybercrimes Bureau. One was a young woman with a pleasant smile, golden brown hair, and a long hippie-retro dress. Rachel talked about her favorite restaurants in Cincinnati, where her family lived and she was raised. I would have imagined her as a schoolteacher or social worker, not a cop. Rachel said Phoenix had no soul.

  Like Lindsey, Rachel was a sworn deputy who specialized in computer crime-in Rachel’s case, she had an aptitude for spotting the security weaknesses of large, corporate and governmental computer systems. So if Yuri’s mobsters had kidnapped her, they had a valuable asset. Here was a woman who could tell them how the task force had defeated their credit card scheme. She could tell them how the joint task force worked, maybe allow them into law enforcement computer systems. I didn’t imagine they would ask her politely. And that was only the start of the horrors one could imagine. Car lights flashed across the dark streets. She was out there somewhere. And we were blind and powerless to help her.

  “We should have anticipated this,” Peralta said. He swung sideways in his seat, facing Kimbrough and then turning his big head in our direction to make the point. “I’ve talked to the FBI and other agencies. There were thirty members of the task force around the country, including the four in Phoenix. The others are safe. We’re going to arrange for protective custody.’

  I looked at Lindsey. She said, “I don’t look good in pink jail jumpsuits, Sheriff.”

  He didn’t smile.

  “We have safe houses,” Kimbrough said. “We’re arranging for one now.”

  Something on the back of my neck tightened. “Slow down,” I said. “We can’t just go into hiding. You”-I nodded toward Peralta-“never ran away from anybody who threatened you.”

  “This is different,” Peralta said, staring out at the traffic, shaking his head slowly. His eyes looked like polished black stones. “Can you remember the last time a cop was kidnapped? Kidnapped! Christ! And she’s more a technician than a cop, just sitting in front of a computer screen. No offense, Lindsey. I know you’ve been a real deputy…”

  Lindsey faced away, her dark pin-straight hair brushing her collar.

  “Bad guys don’t play by the rules,” Peralta said, his deep voice seeming to make the windows hum with a tuning fork echo. “But when the bad guys start snatching cops out of public places, we’ve got a new ballgame. The old Sicilian Mafia wouldn’t have dared kidnap a cop. Even that dirtball Bobby Hamid wouldn’t do this…”

  As Peralta spoke, I watched the upscale shopping strips and the gated housing developments slide by the window, all seeming so look-alike safe. But one of the September 11th hijackers had lived briefly in Scottsdale. It was a good place for people with money who wanted to be left alone, who didn’t want to know their neighbors or to be known. Hell, Yuri could be right behind that ornate faux-Spanish gate.

  Peralta continued, “These Russians are on the offensive. They don’t follow any of the old rules. We can’t take the chance of Lindsey getting killed. Or captured. Everybody who worked on the task force is being moved to safety right now.”

  “You guys can’t go home,” Kimbrough said. “Not even for a change of clothes.”

  “How long?” Lindsey asked.

  “Two weeks, maybe longer,” Kimbrough said. “Depends on how quickly we can find Yuri and take him out.”

  “I have an old cat,” she said. Her voice seemed suddenly tired. “He can’t be left alone.”

  “We’ll send deputies for him,” Kimbrough said.

  “My garden,” she said quietly.

  “Where is this safe house?” I asked.

  “We have several,” Kimbrough said.

  “Do the taxpayers of Maricopa County know this?”

  He just smiled.

  “One is up on the highway north of Wickenburg,” Peralta said. “We’ve stashed a few witnesses there before. But it’s too far away from the cavalry if there’s trouble. I have someplace else in mind.”

  “Well, this FBI badge thing can certainly wait,” I said. “Nothing’s happening anyway. We don’t even know if it’s a homicide.”

  “No,” Peralta said, facing me. “You’re going to stay on that case. It’s important.”

  “Working from a safe house? OK, you’re the boss.”

  “No,” Peralta said again. “You need to get out in the field and find out what the hell happened to that badge and how it ended up with some homeless guy.”

  The inside of the SUV was instantly claustrophobic. Peralta said, “I can’t have you coming and going from the safe house. The Russkies might follow you. If they can find these guys out for a drink in Scottsdale, they can sure as hell track that gigantic Oldsmobile you drive. Kimbrough can give you a voucher for a motel or whatever.”

  “I’m not leaving Lindsey,” I said.

  Peralta ignored me and started giving Kimbrough instructions on securing the departmental computer systems. I looked over at my lover, encased in her flak vest. An intense chill ran around my neck.

  “Hey,” I said, louder. “I’m not leaving Lindsey alone.”

  Everyone went silent. She held my hand. Her hand was warm and seemed small.

  “David,” Kimbrough said, “this is just for a couple of weeks.”

  “This is bullshit. You guys worked on this case for months and you never found Yuri. What are two weeks going to change? There is no way I am going two weeks or two hours without knowing she’s safe.”

  “Results, Mapstone,” Peralta said. “I want results on your case.”

  “My case has been open for more than half a century!” I argued. “It can wait a few more weeks.”

  “It’s the murder of a federal agent,” Peralta said, “in my jurisdiction.”

  Lindsey said, “I want my husband with me. If they came after me, they might come after him.”

  Peralta said quietly, “It’s an order, Mapstone.”

  “Then I want to take vacation,” I said. “Now.”

  “You don’t get vacation,” Peralta said. “You’re a consultant.”

  “I just got back from taking vacation time!”

  “Then why do you want another vacation?”

  I was getting angrier, rowing into a dangerous estuary with Peralta. It was too late to turn back, and I damned well didn’t want to. I said, “I quit.”

  Kimbrough snorted, then fell silent. I saw his eyes in the rearview mirror, looking intently at me, telegraphing caution.

  Finally, Peralta said, “You can’t quit.”

  “What, and miss all this fun?” I said. “Not to mention the big salary and benefits. The generous vacation time. I quit.”

  “You can’t quit, Mapstone,” Peralta said. “That’s an order, too.”

  Kimbrough said, “You’re a former sheriff, Mapstone. You have to set an example.”

  “I was acting sheriff for a month,” I said. “I’m not leaving Lindsey.”

  Peralta turned to face me full on. The pores of his face seemed blackened with rage. Then swiveled
and faced forward, I imagined the anger rippling the muscles of his thick neck. Kimbrough drove around the landscaped perimeter of the Scottsdale Princess. Inside the hotel, rich people were fucking, drinking, snorting coke, bragging to their mistresses and minions, sweating out the latest SEC investigation. Fifteen miles away, around downtown, the homeless camps were settling down for the night. Inside the black cabin of the Expedition, the radio once again broadcast a BOLO for Rachel Pearson. I was being sensible, I told myself. No way was I going to be away from Lindsey if she was in danger. And I was being bratty-I had already been away from her two weeks, time when my friend was dying and I could only think of being in the shelter of her arms.

  “How about this,” Kimbrough said suddenly. “David goes to the safe house with Lindsey. But he continues to work the FBI badge case, too. We can get him a second car, and a transfer point. The transfer point is a garage that’s secluded, maybe attached to an apartment. So it makes sense for him to be going there. When he leaves the safe house, he makes sure nobody is following him, then drives to the transfer point and gets in his car to drive to the office. When he quits at the end of the day, he drives his car back to the transfer point-again, making sure nobody’s on his tail-changes to the second car, and drives back to Lindsey.”

  It sounded OK to me. Peralta didn’t make a sound. The thick roll of flesh at the back of his neck tensed and rippled.

  “Xray Two, Xray Two.” We all responded to the dispatcher’s voice. Xray Two was Kimbrough’s call sign.

  “Xray Two,” Kimbrough said into the microphone.

  “Xray Two,” said a cool female voice, “Chandler PD is responding to the Price Freeway at Ray Road, southbound lanes. A report of a female subject being thrown from a car or jumping from a car.”

  Lindsey squeezed my hand until it started to ache.

  The dispatcher continued, “Witness on a cell phone says the female subject has MCSO identification. PD and paramedics are en route now.”