Camelback Falls

by Jon Talton

  “Dave.”

  A pair of headlights swept across the concrete wall ahead of us, and then the businesslike grillwork of a white car appeared at the head of the ramp. It was a Ford Crown Victoria, like a hundred in the Sheriff’s Office or the Phoenix PD, the kind issued to detective captains like Kimbrough. But there was no handsome black man inside. These were two white guys, beefy-looking in the glare of the garage lights. They quickly pulled directly in front of us.

  “Dave,” Lindsey said.

  “Call 9-1-1,” I said.

  “Trying,” she said, the cell phone in her hand.

  “I don’t want to accidentally shoot some civilian who’s just asking for directions,” I said. But I pulled the Python out of its holster and slid it into the seat between my legs. I scanned the mirrors. The rest of the garage remained lifeless.

  They just sat there, looking us over. Their hands were hidden. I studied them. They looked like cops, maybe. Something in the brow—authority? power?—with eyes accustomed to looking wherever they pleased. Thin lips and heavy jaws, no facial hair. Cheap cop haircuts, one black-haired and the other dishwater blond. But something looked wrong, too. One of them wore a heavy chain under his polo shirt. Old cops—they were my age, at least. Former cops?

  The BMW was still in drive and I kept my foot on the brake while I measured the garage like a cat measuring a mouse hole. There was no way to get around them. No way out behind. The up ramp was the down ramp. Maybe Kimbrough would suddenly step out of the elevator. Maybe pigs would fly.

  “Shit,” Lindsey said, laying aside the phone. “No signal. We’re under too much concrete.”

  I thought, Now what, Mr. Ph.D.? The fumes of the two idling cars made the air heavy with toxins. I said, “We can try to run for the exit stairs. Or we can shoot them.”

  “I like the second suggestion,” Lindsey said, undoing her backpack while staring into the Crown Vic.

  “How about the middle path,” I said. I reached into my coat and produced my star. I held it out the window and shouted at them. “Step out of your car, slowly.”

  They grinned like I had just told the funniest joke in history. I put the star away and fingered the grip of the Python. I shouted again, “We’re sheriff’s deputies. Step out of your vehicle, now. Other officers are on the way.”

  Instantly they flung the big Ford at us. It slammed hard into the front of the BMW, detonating the airbags. The shock of the collision kicked my heart into my throat, and my vision was nothing but white plastic.

  “Lindsey!”

  “I’m OK,” she yelled, off to my side.

  I felt the car being pushed backward. That’s when I forced myself to inhale, and I drove the accelerator into the floor. We lurched forward, pushing the Ford now. The smell of burning tires and belts pierced my lungs. Then my sight came back. The dashboard and seat wells were draped in deflated airbags. Our antagonists looked much the same. They had obviously disconnected the airbags in the Ford.

  They also had the Interceptor engine package and push bar of cop cars, which was more than a match for my fine German engineering. We suddenly lurched backward again. I poured on the power, to no avail. I was glad I couldn’t see the dash, where the tachometer needle would be buried in the red.

  “They’re going to push us out of here!” Lindsey yelled, and we were moving inexorably toward the rear wall, where the flimsy brown picket fence seemed the only thing that would momentarily arrest our fall onto the street below.

  I slammed the stick shift into park, and it bit back hard against my hand. Then the car gave out an awful metal-shearing-off-metal groan. Lindsey pulled the emergency brake. The car jerked sideways and we slammed hard into a concrete pillar.

  I could hear the Ford snap into reverse, prepare to back off for another try at us. I didn’t wait.

  “Go!” I pushed Lindsey out of the passenger door, then I climbed over and followed her, running madly toward a row of cars. I heard the Ford’s driver drop it back into drive, then tires screeching under acceleration, a bull from Motown hell running at my wounded matador. There was a second’s silence, then a sharp struck note, a cascade of rubber, metal, and composites protesting, a ghastly crash against the far wall. I had just enough time to let out a breath before my ex-wife’s BMW landed on Adams Street with a distant explosion of compressing metal and glass.

  “Fuck this!” Lindsey said, pulling the H&K submachine gun from her backpack. She made a quick move above the hood of a Saab and squeezed a burst into the Ford. The shots came so fast they merged into a single, high-pitched thunderclap. Then the Saab’s windshield shattered behind a deeper explosion. “They’re out of the car,” Lindsey said, dropping back under cover. Another deep boom, and the metal door of the car seemed to implode by my shoulder.

  “Shit,” I said. “They’ve got some real firepower.” I rolled onto the oily floor, searching for their feet. I saw a pair of boots and lined up the sights of the Python, fighting a panic that was about to swallow me up. Hold breath. Exhale. Pull trigger.

  The big revolver jumped in my hand, and I heard a high-pitched screeching from the other side of the car. I didn’t take the time to check on the guy or his partner. I knew I had bought us only a few seconds. Grabbing Lindsey’s wrist, I sprang up and ran hard for the exit stairs. As we ran, she turned and unleashed another round from the submachine gun. The bullets ricocheted against the walls and cars like the devil’s calliope, and then my hands hit the blessed metal of the exit door, which opened.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  We left the scene of a crime. It didn’t speak well of the acting sheriff of Maricopa County. But right then I didn’t give a damn. Maybe I half-amputated the foot of one of the gorillas who tried to kill us, but I was no closer to understanding who they were, or why they were after us. We went to the hotel because of a call from Captain E.J. Kimbrough, commander of the major crimes unit of the Sheriff’s Office. I couldn’t believe other cops had set us up for an ambush. But I didn’t dare disbelieve it.

  We ran, half fell, down the stairs and burst out onto the street like fugitives. We didn’t stop running. Survival intuition had kicked in. Lindsey could outrun me any day, she was lighter, more agile, long-legged. But she gripped my hand and we sprinted together. It seemed important to be connected. The dirty concrete of the exit stairs pounded its way into the muscles of my calves. Then we were outside on asphalt and sidewalks. Across Adams, past the sprawled wreck of a BMW 325i, around the back of the old Hanny’s building, which had somehow been saved from the demolition crew that made a parking lot of the old central business district. My lungs burned in the cool night air. The streets were empty, but our insides assumed the other goon was right behind us. Sound carries strangely in the Valley, and every distant car engine and closing door echoed with a threatening closeness. Only when we had crossed Jefferson and moved past the halogen glare of the parking garage for Bank One Ballpark did we feel safe enough to walk. A derelict saw us and went the other way. Our guns were concealed but we must have looked wild. At last, we heard sirens and a chopper going the other direction, to the hotel.

  We found sanctuary at Alice Cooperstown, the baseball bar in one of the old produce warehouses on Jackson Street. If the Diamondbacks, Suns, or Coyotes had been playing downtown, the crowd would have been packed out on the sidewalk. Tonight, lucky for us, it was only busy enough for a couple to sit anonymously in the back. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thoughtful-looking. She was dark-haired, fair-skinned, complicated-looking—there was the tiny gold stud in her nostril and the recently fired submachine-gun concealed in her backpack.

  “Those guys looked like cops,” Lindsey said, finally speaking after the waitress brought us beers, a Negra Modelo for me, a Sol for Lindsey.

  I nodded. “You’re OK, right?”

  “I’m OK,” she said. She had a streak of dirt on her fine cheekbone. I reached over and gently rubbed it off. She leaned into my hand, luxuriating in my touch. “Dave, what’s going on?” she said
. “People are trying to kill us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But whoever came after Nixon and Peralta is now after us.”

  “Dirty cops,” she said bitterly.

  “Somebody is giving us credit for knowing more than we do,” I said. “We know there was some kind of scheme involving Dean Nixon and some deputies, twenty years ago. Presumably it was illegal. We know it was related to the shooting in Guadalupe, and the wild life at Camelback Falls. Somehow that ties into Nixon being murdered and Peralta being shot.”

  “How?”

  “Whoever is trying to kill us thinks we have that figured out, and so we’re a threat to them.” I sounded like I was giving a lecture on the presidency of Grover Cleveland. I took a deep swig of Negra Modelo.

  Lindsey said, “Do you think Kimbrough set us up?”

  “No,” I said. Then, “I don’t think so.”

  “Think about it, Dave. He was the only person I called Wednesday night when you went to meet O’Keefe. Then somebody tried to take a shot at you. He was the only other person who knew about the logbook, and suddenly Jack Abernathy knew.” Concentration bunched up the skin above her brow like pulled linen. “You have to consider it.”

  I let out a long breath. She was right. But it made no sense. Kimbrough had no connection to the department of twenty years ago.

  “That may not mean anything,” she said. “He’s former DEA, for God’s sake. And Bobby Hamid talked about the River Hogs being involved in the drug trade…” She paused, dropped her shoulders. “Am I being nuts, here?”

  I took her hand, held it tightly, grateful for skin-on-skin contact with her. “You’re not nuts,” I said. “What about Abernathy? He worked in the East County. He knew about the River Hogs.”

  “His badge number isn’t in Nixon’s book,” she said. “No senior officer is there but Peralta.”

  “I guess. But Abernathy was in Peralta’s office the day he was shot. That phone call I got came from an extension in Abernathy’s custody bureau. He’s been acting strange as hell.”

  “We can’t rule anybody out.”

  “We’ve got to find a way to go on the offensive,” I said. “I’m tired of being a target. I want to find out what these people are so afraid of.”

  “We don’t even know who to trust.”

  “Makes me realize why they wanted me as acting sheriff,” I said. “I’d be a chump who would be easily thrown off the track, and could be killed if he stumbled onto something.”

  Lindsey tightened her grip on my hand. “Well, those assholes guessed wrong.”

  I was finally tasting the beer. It was good to be alive.

  “We’ve got to find the common thread,” I said, feeling my linear brain start to kick back in as my survival brain went back into standby. “Peralta and Nixon.”

  “They can’t help us.”

  I added, “Leo O’Keefe.”

  “Also out of the picture.”

  “What about this Jonathan Ledger?” I asked. “We’re sure he’s dead?”

  “If not, he fooled a lot of obituary writers,” she said. “He didn’t have children. An irony there. We could try to run down ex-wives, that kind of thing.”

  Lindsey read my expression. She said, “Marybeth.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “She was involved with Leo. She got off and he went to prison. Now we know she was involved with orgies at Camelback Falls, and so was Dean Nixon. She’s the key. Can you find her?”

  Lindsey smiled, her sensual lips curling. “I can find anybody, Dave. Certainly somebody who’s been in the system. Just get me a computer.”

  I thought about that. It’s not like we could go back to the office and act like nothing happened. The jukebox started playing. It was a reggae version of “I Shot the Sheriff.” I let out a long sigh.

  “We left the scene of a crime,” I said.

  “Do you want to go back?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  Lindsey said, “I never did like that BMW.”

  ***

  When I was eight years old it was important to know all the secret back routes through the neighborhood. We made a map of holes that cut through hedges, trails that ran behind overgrown gardens. The alleys were our Ho Chi Minh Trail on the way to assorted rock fights, trash picking, and other mischief. We guarded our secrets jealously from adults and outside kids.

  So it was old memory that led us up the alley between Cypress and Encanto Boulevard. It was pitch dark, and the gravel crunched under our feet. With her black turtleneck, black jeans, and dark hair, Lindsey just disappeared into the night. Only the whiteness of her hands beckoned me. And her breathing—the night was just that still. Mercifully, no dogs barked. Over the back hedge, the house looked just as we left it. A light was on in the kitchen. I had forgotten to start the dishwasher before we left. The ornamental lights in the courtyard were out. The timer shut them off at midnight, and it was closing in on 1 A.M. We crept around the side of the house, between the screened sunporch and the oleanders, where we could peer out onto the street. We had our guns drawn.

  It was just early Sunday morning on Cypress Street. Lights were out. Neighbors were asleep, having spent their evenings in activities other than gunfights in downtown parking garages. Lindsey pointed down the street to a darkened van. I hadn’t seen it on the street before. The moonless night and the distance made it impossible to see if anyone was inside. We retreated back into the bushes, then went in the courtyard door into the sunporch.

  Inside the house, we kept the lights off and didn’t speak. We made a quick sweep of the rooms—safe, for now. Lindsey closed herself in Grandfather’s office while I sat in a chair and looked out the picture window, the reloaded Python sitting heavily on my lap. A sheen of frost was marching up the windshield of the van. A distant streetlight made it glimmer silver-white. Otherwise, nothing moved.

  Around me, the house breathed and creaked in all its familiar old sounds. I could even hear Lindsey’s hands doing their warp-speed typing on her laptop. If I thought hard enough, I knew I could have heard Peralta’s respirator. The darkness of the living room suddenly reminded me of the night Grandfather died, and how Grandmother and I sat up talking in the dark until the sun finally refilled the room with light. That had been a night in 1976, when I was a rookie deputy and the word of a death in the family had been passed down by the watch commander to my partner. Peralta came back from the phone, gave me the news simply, and drove us back to the station so I could go to the hospital.

  I felt a stab of guilt, for leaving the scene of a crime, for endangering Lindsey, for leaving this house, the only material touchstone of my life, so vulnerable. We couldn’t stay here long. The BMW’s license tag would be run through DMV, and my name and address would scoot across the computer screen that sat on the console of a patrol car. And our only hope seemed to be finding a woman who had watched the carnage at Guadalupe twenty years ago.

  The door to the office opened. Lindsey said, “Got her.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Kimbrough answered his phone on the third ring. A child was crying in the background, plates were banging, Sunday morning chaos. But after he recognized my voice, I heard a door close and the background noise went away.

  “Where the hell are you, Sheriff? Are you OK?”

  I just listened for a minute, trying to get a reading on his voice. What did he know? What was he hiding? I was no good at that kind of thing. What I did know was something about Sunday morning chaos. This Sunday morning, I hadn’t slept in twenty-seven hours. I knew—I’d counted them. My body ached with cold exhaustion, that peculiar feeling of being disconnected from real life, floating in a sea of disembodied pains and fatigue. I was just tired enough that every fear seemed magnified, and every certainty seemed at risk.

  “I’m OK,” I said.

  “PD found your car downtown,” he said. “It looked like it fell out of a parking garage, fifty feet to the street. Tell me you weren’t there, and that this was some
car theft gone wrong.”

  “Actually, we were there. I got a call to meet you there.”

  “What?” His voice jacked up a half octave. “I never…”

  “I got a call on my cell phone from the communications center. They said you left a message to meet you on the fourth floor of the Crown Plaza parking garage, at nine P.M. last night. The message said it was urgent that we meet.”

  “Who told you this?” he demanded. “I never left any message like that.”

  “Somebody named Deputy Stevens. It sounded authentic. The caller-ID on my cell phone showed a prefix at sheriff’s headquarters, just like it was the communications center.”

  I heard him exhale a long, apprehensive blast of air.

  I went on. “When we got there, the garage was deserted. But it was only a minute before two guys drove up in a white Crown Vic. They tried to ram us, and we would have been in the car when it hit the street if we hadn’t jumped out and run for our lives.”

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed, sounding surprised as hell. “Why would you go up there alone?”

  “I had Lindsey.”

  “Did she kill anybody with that H&K she checked out from the armory?”

  “No,” I said. “But I got one of the guys in the foot. Check the ERs for reports of ‘accidental’ gunshots involving white males last night. Anyway, why would I need backup? The message supposedly came from you. I couldn’t reach you on your cell phone or home phone to check it out in advance.”

  “Yeah, well, we had a sick kid last night. I had it turned off,” he said. He sounded sheepish. It sounded genuine. “So where are you now? Why didn’t you wait around for backup?”