by Jon Talton
As the black mountain road unfolded, I pushed into my memories. The dust in my mouth that night. Dust mingled with gunsmoke. It was a strange taste. I had barely avoided death, but that was a thought for later. We were cops. There was the job to do. Four dead men on the ground. Peralta took the weapons from the suspects and handcuffed them, even though they were a long way from life. They lay bleeding into the desert soil. I checked for pulses on Matson and Bullock. They were cool to the touch. It was the first time I had seen dead cops. Their uniforms were the same as mine, only theirs were covered in blood and shredded by bullets. I closed Matson’s eyes, and spread plastic disposable blankets over each body. The plastic blankets were yellow and clung together like Glad wrap.
We found Beth and Leo. I did throw them into the dirt and handcuff them, that was true. They were lucky to be alive. Cops are jumpy when people have been shooting at them, and I wanted these suspects down and quiet for their own safety. Then Nixon got there. As always, a pack of cigarettes formed a distinctive lump in the pocket of his uniform shirt. He wore racy sunglasses, and carried a long-barreled.38 revolver. We stuck Beth and Leo in the back of his cruiser and read them their rights.
Where was Peralta? I couldn’t remember. I stared out the window of the Suburban. Old logging roads came out to meet the asphalt of the highway, then disappeared back in the primeval forest. The yellow line of the road was bright and unbroken, striped on the slick blackness of the asphalt. The road behind us was empty. A brief flurry shot big, phosphorescent flakes against the windshield. I reached out and stroked Lindsey’s hair as she drove. Her hair was glossy and soft, and it brushed luxuriously against her collar.
She said, “It’s going to be OK, History Shamus,” and reached back to hold my hand.
Counterfactual history. What if I hadn’t let Peralta keep talking to me that afternoon at Immaculate Heart Gym-what if he had moved out of the range of the sniper? What if Sharon hadn’t sent me to his office for the insulin-“Mapstone-Camelback Falls”? What if twenty years before, Peralta had not been there with his shotgun when I came face-to-face with Billy McGovern?
The enormous Chevy Suburban hurtled us forward to an unknown historical destiny. But what about May 1979? Where was Peralta while Nixon and I were arresting those kids? I couldn’t remember. I made myself run through the events again. I had all night.
***
By the time I woke up, the sun was grudgingly coming up on our backs. The San Juans vaulted up like ice-cream-topped fantasy mountains out the lefthand side of the truck. The landscape looked eternally cold.
We pulled into Durango, ordered breakfast at a greasy spoon on the main drag, and Beth announced that she wanted to go back to Denver.
“Why didn’t you say that last night?” Lindsey said crossly. “I guess we can put you on a Greyhound.”
“I changed my mind, OK?” She leaned forward on the table, glaring at Lindsey. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“No, you’re not,” I said, downing three aspirin to try to stop all the aches and pains from last night’s fight. “You just had a couple of guys trying to kill you. I expect they won’t stop trying.”
She swirled her scrambled eggs and said nothing. I winked at Lindsey, and we all ate in silence. In thirty minutes we were on the highway again, heading southwest. Beth didn’t ask to be dropped at the bus depot.
The highway shimmied past Four Corners and we were back in Arizona. My jurisdiction was a little more solid, even if my sense of how all this would turn out was getting shakier every mile we got closer to Phoenix. I drove while Beth, in the passenger seat, stared out at the vast red landscape. In the far distance, the mesas of Monument Valley sat like gameboard pieces. I thought about Peralta and my stomach ached.
When Beth finally spoke, I couldn’t make out the words.
“I said,” she repeated, “do you have panic attacks?”
I glanced over at her. She didn’t look hostile, just wondering. I said, “No. Why do you ask?”
“The way you were breathing,” she said. “The expression on your face. I used to have them.”
I felt scrutinized, invaded. I said nothing but was acutely aware of all my bodily imperfections ticking toward the last tick. Shit.
Beth went on. “I’m going back to Phoenix because of you, Mapstone. You’re human. You’re not a real cop, and I mean it as a compliment. You probably even read books. So I’ll make a leap of faith on you.”
I felt like I should say something, so I asked her how she got into art.
“I’ve always been creative. My parents didn’t see it. Leo did.”
“How did you meet Leo?”
“We met at band camp. We were both sixteen. Can you believe that?” She kicked off her shoes and put her stockinged feet on the dashboard, stretching into the seat. Her legs seemed very long and slender in the black leather pants. “I played clarinet and he played trumpet. He came from this little crossroads in southeast Oklahoma called Calera. Dirt poor. His dad ran off after he was born, and his mom died young. He was brought up by his older brother, and then he died, too. Leo had that kind of luck. The weirdest thing, he loved jazz: Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Mingus. A funny-looking little guy. I was taller than he was.”
“Doesn’t sound like a good catch for a Tulsa deb,” I said.
“That’s why I had to seduce him,” she said, running an agitated hand through her wheat-colored hair. “I hated my life. I hated the preppy assholes my age with all their money. All my dad’s friends who were secretly trying to get me into bed. Leo was just this sweet, gentle, goofy… poet. He wanted to save a damsel in distress, so I let him save me.”
“How did you get to Phoenix?”
“We drove,” she said. “We drove in this piece of shit orange Opel he bought down on Red River. We escaped from Tulsa and my family. It was very romantic and dramatic. We were going to L.A. But the alternator went out between Tucson and Phoenix, and there we were.”
“No money?”
“I took some savings, but I didn’t want Daddy’s money. Not then, anyway.”
“So you were just going to get married, have babies, live a conventional life?” I asked.
“You don’t think when you’re seventeen,” she said. “Hell, sometimes you don’t think when you’re thirty-nine. I knew I was using Leo to get the hell out of Tulsa, and having this kind of gritty, working-class adventure. Sometimes I was very romantic and dreamy. I took a job at a mall. He had this dream of opening a coffeehouse where he could play jazz. Can you believe that, in 1978?” She gave an unhappy laugh. “He was ahead of his time.”
“You make him sound pretty nice,” I said. “Yet he’s been in prison for almost twenty years. We have child murderers who get out sooner than that.”
“That’s your so-called system of justice, Mapstone. Don’t ask me. The families of the dead deputies opposed his parole every year. I’m sure the corrupt cops didn’t want to take a chance of him getting out and talking to the media.”
“But Leo killed a man in prison,” I said. “He couldn’t have been that gentle.”
She was silent for a long time, and when I looked over, her face was red and turbulent.
“Beth, you’re going to have to talk about these things. That’s the only way to help me stop these people who are trying to kill you.” Yes, me the grandiose hero with panic attacks. I added, “It’s the only way to help Leo.”
“This is hard, OK?” she said. “I have a lot of guilt, OK? I guess Leo killed a man. I tried not to think about it. We tried to correspond for a couple of years, but it just got too hard.” She stared over at me. “Do you understand, he was small and young, and they just threw him in with the worst criminals?”
I asked quietly, “He was attacked?”
She nodded. “I’m sure things were even worse than he told me in his letters.”
The Navajo Reservation enfolded us. We skimmed noiselessly through Monument Valley, the mesas and buttes seen in a hundred movies and TV comm
ercials so much more stunning in reality. Patches of snow congregated on the ledges of the big rocks. The sky was a heavy, endless blue. The miles passed quickly at 85.
Beth said, “So you saw pictures of me at Camelback Falls?”
I nodded.
“I was a cute kid, huh?”
“Yeah, Beth. No question.”
“Did the pictures make you hot, Mapstone?”
I didn’t respond or look at her. The road vibrated up through the Chevy’s suspension.
Beth said, “Do you want me to suck your cock?”
The words hung in the air between us. I unconsciously glanced in the rearview mirror. Lindsey was asleep, zipped up in her jacket, sprawled out in the backseat.
Beth said, “Your little friend back there doesn’t have to know. It would be hotter to do it with her asleep just a few inches away”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, come on Mapstone,” her voice trilled. “What were you doing in the seventies when I was partying at Camelback Falls? I bet you wish you were there.” She reached her hand across the bench, brushed her fingers against my crotch. I swatted them away.
“You’re just a coward,” she said.
“You wouldn’t even understand,” I said. Suddenly, my dreamy recollection of last night came into focus, clean, whole. And I felt an anger surging through all my aches and pains.
Beth licked her lips and said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Chapter Thirty-one
I swerved the big truck off the highway and we landed loudly onto the gravel of the shoulder. I slammed the gearshift into park.
“What’s your problem?” Beth demanded.
“You,” I said, jerking open the driver’s door. A cold blast flooded the cab. “Get out.” I reached across and grabbed her arm. I pulled her roughly across the console and out my door. She was light and surprised, otherwise I might not have been able to get her. Every muscle in my body screamed in pain. I slammed the door shut and pushed her against the side of the Suburban.
“You’re nuts!” she shrieked, trying to back away from me. I hemmed her in with both my arms.
“You’ve been lying to me since the first time I saw you,” I shouted above the wind.
“No!” she shouted back, trying to duck under my arms. I slammed my fist into the side of the truck, just beside her head. It got her attention.
“You lied about not talking to Leo. You lied about Camelback Falls. You lied about that night in Guadalupe.”
“I lied to save my life!”
“Dave…” It was Lindsey. She came around the back of the truck, having climbed out the other side.
Beth glanced at Lindsey. “He’s just putting on a show for you because I offered to suck his cock,” she said. Then, back to me: “Calm down, big fella.”
“No more bullshit, Beth,” I said, leaning in to her face. She turned away.
I said, “You told us you watched a deputy take cocaine out of a patrol car.”
“I did,” she yelled. The wind pushed her hair straight back from her forehead. I could see intricate canals of worry wrinkles running horizontally in her pale skin.
“The car that was driven by Matson and Bullock.”
“Yes!”
“Where were you sitting?” I demanded.
“In the squad car! They put me there.”
“Where was the car?”
She hesitated. Two patches of dark crescents emerged under her eyes. Finally, “It was parked right there, where I could see…”
“That’s bullshit, Beth! You were in Nixon’s patrol car, and that was parked out on the street, not in the alley where you could see Matson and Bullock’s car. You didn’t see Peralta take the coke.”
Beth shouted, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m telling the truth. I saw it. I was there.”
“I was there, too, Beth.”
She stared at me, a wild look on her face. The wind was so cold, my eyes felt like they were drying out. An ancient car full of Indians slowed to see if we needed help. Lindsey waved them on.
“No!” Beth shouted.
“Yes. I was a young deputy. Before I left to teach. I’m the one who handcuffed you. I stuck you in a patrol car where you couldn’t have seen anything.”
She thumped me hard on the chest, and crumpled backward onto the side of the truck. “You bastard,” she sobbed. “You tricked me, you son of a bitch.”
“You didn’t see any of that, did you, Beth.” I persisted. I grabbed her and shook her. She felt like a rag doll in my arms. “Tell me the damned truth!”
I pushed her away. She bent over, hands on her knees, breathing heavily and sobbing. I signaled to Lindsey, and opened the driver’s door.
“What are you doing?” Beth screamed.
“Leaving you,” I said. “You’re no good to me as a witness. I’ll tell the tribal police you need a ride.”
I closed the door. Lindsey climbed in the passenger side. I slid the Suburban into drive. Lindsey said quietly, “Cocksuck your way back to Denver, baby.”
Beth pounded on the driver’s window. “Don’t leave me!”
I started rolling forward slowly.
“Bastard!” She hit the window hard. “They told me to tell that story!”
I stepped on the brake and lowered the window two inches.
“They told me, if anybody ever asked, to say a deputy named Peralta stole that cocaine,” she said, breathless. “They told me again last week to say the same thing. They said he was the sheriff now. They said they’d kill me if I didn’t.”
I lowered the window halfway, my finger on the remote-control button like it was a torture device.
“Who is they?”
“The detective! I don’t know.” Her fingers were red and raw from the cold, clutching the top of the window.
“Who is they, damn it!” I let the truck start to roll.
She screamed a name. I felt a new chill.
“I want to know what those goons were after,” I pushed.
“You were there,” she said. “You heard. They wanted to know where Leo was.”
“That’s right,” I said into the wind. “I was there. I heard them say ‘Give it up.’ Not ‘Give him up,’ but ‘Give it up.’ What is it, Beth?”
“How would I know? This is insane!”
I let up the brake and the truck rolled. The highway was empty to the horizon in both directions. “No!” she yelled and sobbed. “Don’t leave me!”
“The truth, Beth.”
“They wanted the letter.”
I put the truck into park.
“Dean Nixon wrote me a letter six weeks ago. How he found me after all these years, I don’t know. He and Leo had been in contact, and he said he wanted to make things right for Leo. I guess he wanted to do one good thing before his life was over. He said he was going to tell what really happened in Gaudalupe, what really happened with the cocaine. He was going to go to the new sheriff, Peralta. But he was afraid. And he was afraid for what might happen to Leo. The River Hogs had gang contacts inside the prison, and they could kill him if he seemed like he was going to talk.”
“Where’s the letter, Beth?”
She looked at me, red-eyed, and more tears came down her cheeks. She reached into her pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me carefully, and I handed it to Lindsey. I stepped out to open the back door for her. She fell back against the side of the truck and said, “I’m so tired of this.”
“Get in, Beth.”
“You may as well know, things that night didn’t go down the way I said.”
I faced her. She looked wrung out, her skin bloodless.
“We were going to rob those old cops. Me and Billy and Troyce. We were going to double-cross Dean. We had Jonathan’s money, and the cops had the stolen drugs, and we were going to take both. Jonathan wouldn’t miss it, and Billy and Troyce wanted to go to Mexico. Poor Leo was just along because he loved me.”
&
nbsp; “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, when those deputies, Matson and Bullock, pulled in behind us that night, they thought they were just going to get cash for the drugs they took from the evidence room. I got out of the car…”
Her words sunk in. I suddenly said, “Beth, anything you say-” She held out a hand in a violent “stop” gesture. “Don’t read me my fucking rights. I got out of the car and walked back and smiled, and they were just stupid fucking men.”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“I know that,” she said. “I also know I have a right to counsel. Just like Leo did.” She sobbed and rubbed her nose. “I waive my rights. Don’t you get it, Mapstone? While I distracted those old guys, Billy and Troyce got out of the car and came up and shot them. Right there. It happened so fast. Then, they started going through their pants to get the car keys, to get the coke out of the trunk. But it was too late. You guys charged in. I guess Nixon finally got the coke. Maybe the detective did. I don’t know.” She shook her head against the implacable wind. Then she shouted, “So, you see, I’ve had a lot to try to run away from all these years.”
“You didn’t know they were going to kill those cops,” I blurted suddenly, inappropriately chivalrous.
She looked at me, a look like the young girl Marybeth had in that vivid photo from Camelback Falls.
She said, “Yes, I did.”
Chapter Thirty-two
We delivered Beth to the huge, glassy Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Building in downtown Phoenix. To me, it still looked like a call center in the suburbs. Inside, we sat through hours of interviews with the U.S. Attorney’s staff, through a magnificent Arizona sunset out the big windows, and then Beth went off into protective custody with two marshals. What I really wanted was a shower, a drink, and a long sleep with Lindsey curled up against me.
“Sheriff!”
It was Kimbrough, waiting at the foot of the escalator as we descended into the enormous glass shell of the atrium. He shook my hand, then gave Lindsey an awkward hug.
