Camelback Falls

by Jon Talton

  “Leo…”

  “Come now, Mapstone. Your life depends on it.” And the line went dead.

  Lindsey was speaking quietly into the cell phone, incandescently nude. Then she shook her head. “Not enough time. Shit! We should have had this number wired up in advance.”

  I stood up and pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt. The house was quite cold, the way we keep it so my Arizona body heat doesn’t smother Lindsey in bed beside me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going to the Jack in the Box down on McDowell, the pay phone. That’s what he said to do. He’ll call again.”

  “No way.”

  “I’ve got to, darling.” I pulled on socks and laced up running shoes.

  “I’m calling Kimbrough. Phoenix PD.”

  “Not enough time,” I said, pulling on my black leather jacket. “Phoenix PD will fuck it up.”

  She turned off the phone. “Damn it!” she whispered.

  I pulled the black nylon holster off the bedside table, checked to see the Python was loaded, and slid it securely into my belt.

  ***

  Seven minutes later I rounded the corner onto McDowell, leaving behind the dark quiet of Willo. It was a little after three on Thursday morning, and traffic on McDowell was light. The red porch light of Fire Station 4 glowed in the dry, chilly air. Behind the glass doors, all the fire engines were home asleep. Across the street, a two-story inflatable gorilla looked down on me. He went with the pawn shop, which, in one of Phoenix’s more tasteless ahistorical acts, occupied a building that had been a synagogue when I was a kid.

  I walked quickly on McDowell. A Phoenix police cruiser flew by heading west, paying no attention to me. Up ahead, a couple of low-riders sat in the drive-in parking lot, steam coming out of their tailpipes. A large black kid in an Arizona Cardinals parka stood at the drive-through window ordering. As I walked into the cones of light I made out the pay phone at the edge of the lot, nobody around. I thought it was a fool’s errand, but didn’t know what else to do. Maybe Leo O’Keefe had been in prison so long he didn’t realize these inner-city pay phones were rigged so they could only call out, to foil the drug trade.

  But as I walked closer, it was ringing.

  I sprinted the last fifteen feet and picked up a receiver that was chipped and sticky with grime.

  “Mapstone,” I said.

  “Walk to the front of Kenilworth School. Come up the steps into the dark under the columns. Do it now.”

  I didn’t even try to engage him. I hung up the phone, jogged across McDowell and headed west. At Fifth Avenue, I could see a figure in dark sweatshirt, hood up, hanging out at the Mexican shrimp cocktail shop: Lindsey. I keyed the auto-dial on my cell phone, still concealed in my pocket, and told her where I was going. I turned south at Burt Easley’s Fun Shop and disappeared into the darkened neighborhood. I was aware of her behind me, but when I turned to look around me the sidewalk and street were empty.

  Leo O’Keefe, in my neighborhood, on the steps of my grade school. At the press briefing, we had handed out the newest prison photo of him. We had explained our theory that he had come back to get revenge. Why, the press asked? Because he felt railroaded in the Guadalupe shooting, we said. Why now, the press pressed? Because the media coverage of Peralta winning the election had driven him to make a dramatic statement. It was a neat theory. It was the only one we had. But theory was running into reality in the cold desert night.

  I walked down the sidewalks I had walked as a kid, dragging my way to school, flying home. Past the stately trunks of palm trees and the smart little World War I-era bungalows that had survived the coming of the underground freeway. Tonight they were all dark and silent, not even a dog to bark at a tall man in a leather jacket moving along at a half jog, half walk. Half a mile southeast of here the streets degenerated into a nasty mix of crack houses and young hustlers—the cops called it “Boys Town”—but up here I felt only solitude. If O’Keefe was nearby, I could only sense him in the aftertaste of my nightmare.

  At Culver, the old school building loomed ahead. Barry Goldwater went to school there. Many years later, so did I. Now, as the constant low moan of traffic attested, it had an eight-lane freeway running beneath it. It was classic, columned and floodlighted against vandals. But, sure enough, gloom sat securely at the top of the front steps.

  I spoke softly into my jacket. “I’m at Kenilworth, I’m going to the steps now.”

  Suddenly the trunk of a palm tree shattered beside me, and then came the deep boom and echo of a large-caliber weapon. I followed the shreds of palm tree down to the cold sidewalk, banging my knees and elbows. Rolling behind the tree trunk, I clung to the ground, my heart hammering against my ribs. I brought the Python up next to my face, resting the coolness of the barrel against my cheek. With my other hand, I pulled out the cell phone.

  “Dave, Dave…”

  “I’m OK. Don’t come up.” I scanned the school, the park, the darkened houses. Everything was still. The shot could have come from anywhere.

  Lindsey said, “What was that noise?”

  “Somebody took a shot at me with something very large.”

  “Can you get under cover?”

  “I’m OK. Behind a palm tree at the northwest corner of Culver and Fifth Avenue.”

  Just then I saw a blur at the far end of the school steps. O’Keefe.

  Instinct took over and I sprang up, crossing the old playground quickly, my magnum held in a combat grip, two-handed. I made it to the side of the building and fell against the wall. No shots came.

  “We’re on the move,” I said into the phone. “Suspect is headed south from the school. Let them know he is being pursued by a plainclothes deputy!” I stuck the phone back in my pocket and sprang forward up the stairs. The gloomy area behind the columns was empty. But beyond, I caught a glimpse of a figure running hard out the other side of the playground.

  He wasn’t that fast. I took the steps down three at a time, my knees crying in protest. Then I dashed past swings and unidentifiable play equipment at a hard run. My lungs ached against the cold air, but I was gaining on him.

  “Sheriff’s deputy!” I yelled. “Stop! I am armed!”

  I could make out a man in dark clothing and some kind of a baseball cap. He ran down the sidewalk, paused, then took off again running west toward Seventh Avenue. I put on the jets and got to within 100 yards of him when a pair of headlights shot up out of the earth and a horn screamed an angry klaxon.

  He disappeared down the freeway onramp.

  I went after him.

  Suddenly we were in the tunnel. Interstate 10, the Papago Freeway, the mainline between Jacksonville, Florida, and Santa Monica, California, running like an underground river of metal and headlights. It smelled like catalytic converters and leaky oil and confined concrete. I made a fool’s calculation and cut across the ramp just as a city garbage truck came through at battle speed. Then I reached the shoulder, hard against the tunnel wall, with nothing but a white line between me and the automotive age, going 80 miles an hour. The roar of engines and wheels was constant and deafening, even at this time of morning. To this white noise was added frantic honking at the fools running down the freeway. But I could see. The tunnel lights cast a strange arctic daylight. Car headlights shot past like comets from hell.

  “We’re in the freeway,” I shouted into the phone. “Moving eastbound in the westbound lanes.” The little digital display glowed happily back: “No service available.”

  I ran gingerly along the oily concrete as cars rocketed past. I lost sight of O’Keefe. Then I had him: bounding across the traffic lanes like a desperate squirrel.

  Screeching tires cut above the noise, and suddenly there was a cascade of snaps and concussions, the odd sounds of metal and composite materials striking substantial objects at high speed. I looked toward the oncoming lanes and saw two cars collide trying to avoid the crazed man running toward them. Car parts abandoned ship and flew wildly into the th
ickening air. Metal scraped on the pavement, releasing showers of orange sparks too close to gas tanks. The two cars were spinning together, not slowly, and they were headed right for me.

  I jammed my feet into place and forced my mental transmission into emergency reverse. It was maybe ten feet in the opposite direction to a little setback in the concrete wall, but it might as well have been 1,000 miles. My stomach filled with panic and bile. There was another sickening screee! booff! kind of sound as a third vehicle smashed into them from the rear. I didn’t turn back to see. There wasn’t time. The wall finally gave up a precious corner. I dived into it and prayed.

  Chapter Ten

  I was forty-three years old and in the principal’s office. We all were. Me, Lindsey, Kimbrough, half a dozen Phoenix cops, and the school security guard who had opened the place so we had somewhere to sit. It was 4:45 A.M. on Thursday.

  “Dave went to school here, and now he’s the sheriff,” Lindsey said to the security guard. “They ought to have a Dave Mapstone Day.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to understand.

  “Sheriff, if I may speak frankly,” Kimbrough said.

  “Yes, yes.” I waved my hand at him. I was sitting bent over in a too-small plastic chair, suddenly wishing I could sleep for about a hundred years.

  “Sir,” Kimbrough said, “with all due respect.”

  Lindsey said, “Just say it. I bet I agree with it.”

  He let loose: “What the fuck”—this last word was shouted—“was that little stunt about!?” He added quietly, “Sheriff.”

  He wheeled on Lindsey. “And you! You were supposed to keep him from doing something pretty much just like this!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “He’s headstrong. I like that, sometimes.”

  “Jesus!” he said. “It’s like you have Peralta’s recklessness without, without…”

  He let it hang, and a grizzled Phoenix captain said, “His balls.”

  Kimbrough raised up and said, “Fuck you. Where were your people when we needed them? Where were those silly-ass bicycle patrols? The suspect just walks down Interstate 10 and gets away, while Phoenix PD is at Krispy Kreme.”

  Kimbrough turned back to me. “How did he even get your number?”

  “It’s listed,” I said, feeling ever more foolish.

  “Who’s going to write this report?” a younger city cop demanded, realistically.

  God, my head and knees hurt. Maybe I’d end up like one of those old people who has total knee replacement with some very expensive composite material, kind of like the stuff flying off those cars in the tunnel, and yet your knees still hurt like hell.

  I looked around the room. A jurisdictional goat-fuck, I heard Peralta’s voice say. Yes, my friend, and you would know just how to take charge. Just the right amount of politicking, and just the right amount of hard-ass. Well, if I knew those things I’d have tenure at a major university history department.

  I said quietly, “It’s not O’Keefe.” Everybody stopped talking and looked at me.

  “O’Keefe didn’t shoot Peralta.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” the Phoenix captain said under his breath.

  “He just tried to shoot you, too!” Kimbrough said. “And from the way you describe the shot, I wouldn’t be surprised if ballistics finds this is the same gun that shot Peralta.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not our guy.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kimbrough said. “Leo O’Keefe was an accessory in the worst assault on Maricopa County deputies in history. Leo O’Keefe is a convicted murderer. Now, he’s an escapee. We have a threatening note, sent by him, found on the body of a former deputy, who was also involved in that Guadalupe incident. And now he’s tried to take a whack at you, Mapstone—you, the deputy who arrested him and signed his booking record. The guy is two decades of trouble. He’s a monster.”

  I had to admit told that way it sounded airtight. Leo O’Keefe, broken out of the big house and come to settle the big score with the sheriff’s office. But I also knew the ways of law enforcement bureaucracies. Leo was our only theory in a high-profile shooting. Without Leo, we were screwed.

  I said, “It wasn’t a threatening note. It was his name on a piece of paper. Tonight, Leo didn’t seem to know who I was, beyond the guy on the television from the press conference yesterday. That doesn’t sound like somebody who’s been carrying a hit list stamped on his heart since 1979. He said he didn’t shoot Peralta.”

  Lindsey said, “Dave, can you really believe what he said on the phone? Did he actually say he didn’t shoot Peralta?”

  “It’s not just that,” I said. “It’s Nixon. He didn’t know about Nixon turning up dead.”

  “What…?” Kimbrough started.

  It was true. We had held back the information of Dean Nixon’s murder from the media. In yesterday’s press briefing on the hunt for Peralta’s killer, we didn’t even mention Nixon.

  For one thing, it was a piece of critical information that would hold down the number of needy nutcases who might come in and confess in O’Keefe’s place. If Nixon’s murder were tied to the shooting of Peralta, then the real killer would know that information. And holding it back would have kept the suspect off balance, if he thought we hadn’t discovered Nixon’s body yet—if the two shootings were connected. Plus, cops just liked to hoard information.

  But O’Keefe didn’t know that Dean Nixon was dead.

  “He asked me if I had talked to Dean Nixon. As in, present tense.”

  Kimbrough pursed his lips, said nothing.

  “Maybe he was just messing with you,” said another city cop. She was sipping on some coffee in Styrofoam cups that had appeared from the security guard. I waved one away.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But why?”

  The captain said, “To lure you out. Make you do pretty much what you did. Only O’Keefe wasn’t a good enough shot. Hell, he didn’t even finish off Peralta.”

  We sat in silence. The room smelled of Lysol and chalk dust. I wished Peralta were here to dispense with this PD bastard. Younger cops began the real work: writing up the incident report.

  Another cop—she looked like a tougher Jennifer Aniston—said, “Your guy, I’ll say this about him. Whether he’s the killer or not, he was willing to run into the busiest freeway in town to get away from talking about it.”

  “This is nuts!” the captain said. “If he didn’t fire that shot, who the hell did?”

  “Somebody,” I said, “who didn’t want him talking to me.”

  ***

  Two hours later, Lindsey and I sat over breakfast at Susan’s, a diner out on Glendale Avenue. It was one of Peralta’s favorite places, and it served terrific comfort food. I also sought comfort in the newspaper. So while Lindsey fiddled with her Palm Pilot, I ate scrambled eggs and read the Republic. Peralta’s shooting had moved off the front page, replaced by a thumbsucker on a huge new development north of the city. Why did they call them “master-planned communities,” these endless tracts of houses without even a park or a neighborhood drugstore? I recalled the line about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Then I moved onto a helping of requisite Valley crime stories: A New York gang boss was found running a drug ring in the Phoenix suburbs. A landscape worker fed himself and his brand-new fiancée into a wood chipper. A woman stopped to help a pair of stranded motorists with a baby, who turned out to be robbers and shot her dead. My hometown.

  “Dave.” Lindsey reached past the ketchup and hot sauce, taking my hand.

  She locked those twilight blue eyes on me intensely. “I really need you to stay safe,” she whispered, and her eyes watered over with tears. “Please, Dave…”

  I squeezed her hand back, feeling guilty and responsible. I was about to say something sappy when Kimbrough appeared at the front window, nodded awkwardly, then came in the door. I waved him over to the table. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, his gun and badge prominently on his belt. He had an evidence envelope
in his hand.

  “We haven’t seen you in ages,” Lindsey said, wiping her face and commencing to rip apart the interior of a grapefruit with her fork. Kimbrough pulled up a chair, exchanged pleasantries with Susan, and ordered coffee.

  He swallowed the lava-like liquid without flinching. Cops and coffee. I would never understand it.

  “David, I was out of line back there,” he said. “I apologize.”

  “You weren’t out of line,” I said. “I was a dumb fuck. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  He shuffled in the chair, ran a hand over the smooth, dark globe of his scalp. I said, “Don’t worry about it, E.J.” I had never called him by his first name before.

  He nodded, sipped more coffee, and relaxed a bit. “We have news,” he said. He slid the evidence container onto the table. Through the clear plastic, I could see a manila envelope, faded with age. On the front, written in a scratchy hand, was: “To be opened in the event of my death.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Nixon’s ex-wife,” Kimbrough said. “A woman named Joyce Bellman, who lives in Tempe. You know her?”

  “Nope,’ I said. “Nixon was single when I knew him.”

  “Well, she’s wife number two out of three,” Kimbrough said. “We tracked her down this morning on a next-of-kin notification. She said he left this envelope with her years ago. When I saw what she had, I figured you’d want to see it.”

  It felt light and unremarkable in my hand. I set it back on the table.

  “Have you opened it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Got any gloves?”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out some latex gloves. I slipped them on and opened the evidence container.

  “Everyone will witness the chain of custody is secure,” I said. “I don’t want to be lectured by some Phoenix PD asshole twice in the same day.”

  I undid the clasp and the flap opened with no resistance. I slid in a finger and dilated the envelope so we could see inside. It was another envelope, slightly smaller. I gently slid it out. On the front, written in a firmer hand, it said: “For the U.S. Attorney Only.”