High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  I was thinking that perhaps the DPS officer was old school like me and refused to adopt a new holster.

  Thinking perhaps she was not a police officer.

  She pointed the gun at my crotch and said, “Where…?” Where, what? Where were we going? Where was Peralta?

  As the cold sweat stayed with me, another thought came. If I saw her again, it would once more be in darkness and I wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Sharon said, “Do you still get panic attacks, David?”

  I ignored her and held my iPhone against the steering wheel, shakily texting Lindsey one character, an asterisk. I watched the iPhone screen as the message was delivered.

  After a few tense seconds, Lindsey texted back. Another asterisk.

  In our personal code, it meant one thing: leave the house immediately. Go.

  Chapter Three

  The blue and red police lights were visible even before I took the Ash Fork exit off Interstate 40—the vision of Dwight David Eisenhower flowing from Barstow, California, to Wilmington, North Carolina.

  We descended onto a two-lane road, crossed a wash, and I pulled the car into a broad, flat lot surrounding what had once been a gas station. All that was left was a rectangular streamline moderne building, long-abandoned, with an office on one end and two garage doors on the other, with a single yellow streetlight burning above.

  I pulled in behind a Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department cruiser with its light bar flashing. Nobody seemed to notice us. The cops were on the other side of yellow crime-scene tape, milling around a pickup truck illuminated by multiple spotlights.

  It was a new Ford F-150, extended cab.

  Mike Peralta’s truck.

  “David.” Sharon touched my hand. The poor lighting couldn’t conceal the agony in her eyes. “If he’s…”

  She stopped, squeezed my hand hard.

  “It’s going to be fine.” I gently disentangled her hand, took off my gun, slid on my leather jacket, and stepped out into the chill. The wind was coming hard from the west and the air smelled of pines.

  My stomach was tight, but after the encounter with the woman in the DPS uniform, I was focused and calm. Thanks to some fluke of brain chemistry, I usually excel in these situations. Panic only hits me later, when I am safe and alone.

  But I had no confidence that it would be fine, as I had assured Sharon. He might have come up here and blown his brains out. He might have been murdered. His body might be in the truck awaiting me.

  Another black SUV rolled past us down the street, turned around, and came back to a halt at the far end of the lot. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to guess this had been the vehicle tailing us, which had chosen to come down the off-ramp at the right moment to save our lives. The SUV’s lights went out, but no one got out.

  As I drew close, gusts caused the yellow tape to make a snapping sound. A voice ordered me to stop. Two burly deputies and a woman wearing an FBI windbreaker came toward me, hands on their weapons.

  Everybody was gun-happy tonight.

  I said who I was. They told me to wait.

  The woman walked toward the truck and I studied the deputies. Both wore Level 2 holsters. They saw me looking at their guns and both changed their stances as if in a dance move. I looked away.

  You could tell who was from Phoenix. A dozen feds were in dark windbreakers with yellow “FBI” emblazoned front and back, and they all looked uncomfortable and cold, hands in pockets, some stamping their feet like old beat cops. The Yavapai County deputies wore heavier jackets. A DPS officer looked me over and I looked away.

  A man wearing only a suit, crisp white shirt, and burgundy tie approached me. He looked perfectly at ease in the thirty-degree weather and steady wind. He was substantial, not an ounce of flab, all muscles and sinews and teeth. His face was most striking, long and heavy jawed, milk-chocolate skin with a shading of fine gray. It was a face to carve into a monument.

  “You’re David Mapstone?”

  I said that I was, and he thrust his credentials directly in my face, waiting for me to read them. Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were issued to Horace Mann.

  He was the namesake of the nineteenth-century father of universal public education in America. This Mann immediately began to school me.

  “I’m the special agent in charge in Phoenix.”

  My breath came out as white mist. “Eric Pham is the SAC.”

  “Not anymore.” He lifted the crime-scene tape and nodded for me to follow him.

  I wasn’t going to argue. It was two a.m. and I was surrounded by suspicious minds. I wasn’t here to plead Peralta’s case or change anybody’s mind about what should have been the unthinkable.

  Our feet crunched on the old concrete of the gas station pad. Mann stared ahead. “We called over a locksmith from Flagstaff and we used pry bars. We tried to drill into it. Nothing can open it, short of explosives.”

  I took a long breath when I saw that the inside of the F-150 contained no body of my friend, no blood.

  The FBI agent who called had told the truth. The reason they wanted me was for the key to the truck’s weapons locker.

  And perhaps to see if I made any suspicious stops on the way that might lead them to Peralta.

  Behind the front seats, rising from the floor of the cab extension, was the steel case that held Peralta’s armory for the road. I handed Mann the key.

  “Stand here.” He placed me ten feet away from the action, but I could see him reach inside, turn the key, and raise the lid. He spoke quietly to other agents standing nearby but the frustration cutting into his expression was easy to read.

  “Come here.”

  I obeyed. The gun cabinet was completely empty. Closer up, I inspected the cab. It looked showroom new. Peralta always had at least a stainless-steel coffee mug in the console cup holder. That was gone, too.

  “This is Peralta’s truck, correct?”

  “Didn’t you run the tag and VIN?”

  He threw me an acid look.

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s Peralta’s truck. Who reported that it was here?”

  He ignored my question. “What did he usually have in this thing?” He tapped the heavy edge of the gun compartment with a boxy finger.

  It depended on the case we were working—and on Peralta’s mood. I ran down a few of the essentials: a Remington pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, at least one assault rifle, usually an M4, and a Kel-Tec RFB Bullpup rifle—short, homely and highly effective. Plenty of ammunition. One of the FBI minions took notes.

  “Why would a private citizen carry that much firepower?”

  “This is Arizona.”

  “Are you trying to be clever?”

  Behind me, someone muttered, “Can’t fuckin’ believe it. We’ve been all over it and not a goddamned thing…”

  I tucked that information away.

  Mann nodded at an agent. “Put him in my unit.”

  That wasn’t good. At least I wasn’t in handcuffs…yet.

  This agent was wearing a parka, same FBI emblems. Somebody from the Flagstaff field office, prepared for the cold. He walked me over to a black SUV and I climbed in the passenger side. The engine was running and it was warm inside. The door closed and I resisted the temptation to examine Mann’s paperwork. That was another thing missing from the cab of Peralta’s truck: the files and other job-related documents he always toted around.

  Peralta was a techno-Luddite and proud of it. I could barely get him to use a laptop. He did use a dictaphone. Without a secretary, I was left to transcribe his words to the computer and print them out for him.

  The driver’s door opened, Mann slid in with surprising grace for his size, shut the door, and faced me.

  “I’ll share a little dirty laundry,” he said. “Since your friend did his thing, Eric Pham is on his way to a new posting in Anchorage
. You ask me? He should have been fired.”

  That was fast retribution. Very fast.

  Eric Pham and Peralta went back a number of years. Each respected the other and they had collaborated without the friction common between local law enforcement and the feds. After we opened our private detective business, Pham had tossed some cases our way. Who was I kidding? Tossed them Peralta’s way. As I had spent hours on Friday being interviewed by the FBI, I kept wondering if Peralta was working a new case. If he had gone undercover without even telling me.

  On the other hand, the bureau was very conscious of its image. If Peralta had really gone rogue, of course Pham would be shipped out as punishment.

  “Dave.” Mann rubbed his heavy hands together and rested them on the steering wheel. “We know all about you. Ph.D. in history. You were a professor at Miami University and San Diego State. Then you came back to Phoenix and went to work for the Sheriff’s Office, clearing cold cases.”

  That was the shorthand, yes.

  “We know you are Mike Peralta’s partner as a private investigator and his best friend.”

  He stared out at a tow truck that had arrived and was loudly snagging the F-150. I let the words settle on me. Peralta was so self-contained, controlled, formidable, and often so maddening that he didn’t make friends. He didn’t need friends. He had been my training officer and then my boss. Even now, I hesitated to use the word “partner” to describe our business arrangement.

  But, yes, aside from Sharon, I supposed that I was his best friend.

  I watched a strand of crime-scene tape break loose and fly off toward Williams. A deputy watched it, too, wondering whether to chase the debris, and deciding to let it go.

  “I wasn’t always a fed.” Mann’s voice was low and friendly. “I started out at Chicago PD. My brother-in-law got me in. We were really close.”

  He paused and I nodded, turning in my seat to face him. His eyes now appraised me as companionable orbs.

  “Trouble was, he was a drunk. A mean drunk. He beat his wife, a saintly woman. And you know what I did? Nothing. Not a damned thing. I let him off once when I stopped him for DUI. The guys and me didn’t arrest him when we were called to their apartment and he was being abusive. It was the code. So I understand where you’re coming from.”

  “Peralta isn’t a drunk and doesn’t beat his wife.”

  He watched me attentively, gave a few sympathetic nods of the head.

  “You want to have your friend’s back, Dave. I totally get it. I respect that. But Oscar, that was my brother-in-law, he never had my back. See where I’m going?”

  Having been on the other side of countless interrogations, I did.

  “You seem kind of nervous, Dave.”

  I realized that I had unzipped my jacket, then I had rezipped it. It wasn’t much, but this was how it worked. If I seemed nervous, it was because a woman had come close to killing me forty-five minutes before, but he didn’t know that and I wasn’t saying anything about it. If I seemed nervous, it was also irritation. I was not a “Dave.” Only Lindsey got to call me that. Otherwise, I suspected my body language was neutral and he was fishing.

  “Things aren’t too far out of hand yet,” Mann said. “You can help yourself. All you have to do is tell the truth. What really went down?”

  I ran my fingers through my hair and picked at some imaginary lint on my jacket. I turned away and shook my right leg. Now I had his attention, although he did a good job of concealing it. Then I smiled at him.

  “The Reid technique has been debunked as junk psychology, Horace. It produces false confessions. It won’t produce a confession here because I have nothing to confess. I got to our office after Peralta had left for the diamond run. It was routine. He’s been on six or seven of them since we became PIs. I didn’t know anything else until your people showed up with a search warrant.”

  His hands came off the steering wheel. “You think you’re smart. Doctorate in history, all that. You’re playing it really stupid. But that’s the way you want it. I can’t help you.” He let the quiet fill in, and then, “This truck being dumped up here, that surprises you?”

  I nodded.

  “How do I know you didn’t drive the truck up here yourself and then slip back to Phoenix.”

  “I was at home all night.”

  “With your wife, Lindsey?”

  I didn’t like him bringing her name into the conversation. I nodded.

  “Let’s say you’re telling the truth. Why would Peralta abandon his truck up here? What does he have going here?”

  Nothing, as far as I knew. We had never worked a case in or near Ash Fork. I told Mann that.

  “Dave, you know Mike Peralta better than anyone.”

  “That’s why I know that he’s innocent. He’s the most by-the-book cop I ever knew. He may be under duress. Or he’s working a case that is above your pay grade and your bosses haven’t clued you in.”

  “Dave…” he started again.

  “David.”

  “Dave, we have witnesses and video footage showing Mike Peralta shoot a guard at Chandler Fashion Center, then carry away a million dollars in diamonds.”

  I shrugged.

  “He was on duty, Horace. He was one of the two guards protecting the diamond shipment.”

  “He told you he was going to do this?” Ask the same question, again and again, try to find an inconsistency in the answer.

  “Guard the shipment, yes. It was routine.”

  “The diamonds are gone,” Mann said. “Peralta took them.”

  “Your people keep telling me that.”

  “It’s all on the video. You’ve seen it.”

  I shrugged.

  He looked over at the Lexus convertible. “Who’s that with you?”

  “My girlfriend.” The last thing Sharon needed was more harassment from the FBI.

  He snorted. “Does Lindsey know about that?”

  “She’s open-minded.”

  “Considering that vehicle is registered to Sharon Peralta, I’d guess that’s who is in the car. Is she your girlfriend?”

  “Why don’t you give her a break? She was interrogated for hours. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “But she came up here with you.”

  “That’s because she was afraid her husband was dead in that truck.”

  He slipped a hand into his suit jacket and held out an evidence envelope. It contained a small rectangular piece of paper.

  “Recognize this?”

  He flipped on the dome light. Inside the plastic wrapper was my business card:

  Peralta & Mapstone P.C.

  David Mapstone

  Private Investigator

  I asked him where he got it.

  “That was sitting on the dashboard of the truck, Dave, right in front of the steering wheel.”

  I reached for the bag and he pulled it back. Let’s play keepaway. I didn’t want to play.

  “Why would that card be in the truck?”

  “Why would I know that, Horace?”

  His mouth tightened. He didn’t like the familiarity, either.

  “What about this?” He turned the bag so I could read handwriting on the back of the card.

  MAPSTONE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.

  TELL HIM NOT TO TRY TO FIND ME.

  “Is that your buddy’s handwriting?”

  It was. Peralta wrote in an old-school draftsman’s capital letters. I had received countless notes and memos in that same script, when he was Maricopa County Sheriff and later, when he lost the election and we set up our private detective business.

  Mann folded the evidence envelope, slipped it back in his coat, and breathed out a sigh. “We are going to find him. He’s only been on the run for less than twenty-four hours. And sooner than you think, you are going to be charged
as an accessory. Don’t think that writing on the card lets you off. If I were you, I’d get a lawyer.”

  Peralta’s pickup left the lot hooked to the tow truck, headed back to the Interstate. A deputy took down the yellow tape.

  I faced Mann.

  “Did you have somebody follow me up here?”

  He looked through me. Classic fed move. “You should consider yourself under surveillance. I won’t say more.”

  “What about a blond woman in a DPS uniform? Was that part of your game, Horace?”

  He stabbed a finger into my chest. “Don’t push me. I don’t know anything about blondes, Dave. You’re going to be lucky if you don’t leave here in handcuffs.”

  I tamped down my anger. He could probably rendition my ass to Saudi Arabia for “enhanced interrogation,” if I wasn’t careful.

  “Look, I’m as shocked as anybody about what happened. You know everything I do. Probably more. Am I free to go?”

  He stared hard at me, that stone face trying to turn me into a pillar of salt. It wasn’t working.

  He snapped off the dome light.

  “For now.”

  I opened the door, stepped out, and turned back to face him.

  “Peralta didn’t do this.”

  He raised his voice against the wind. “He shot a man.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Mann looked surprised by the question. “The hospital sent him home. It was a flesh wound.”

  I said, “That proves my point.”

  “What point?”

  “If Mike Peralta had really intended to do damage, that man would be dead.”

  Chapter Four

  Horace Mann let me go and the last cruisers and black FBI Suburbans left. Soon, the lot was empty, the old gas station stood yellow and forlorn under the cone of the single streetlight. It had been stripped of everything from its signs to the gas pumps. Plywood covered the windows and doors.

  I took a moment to imagine the station in its glory along Route 66 in the fifties. Uniformed attendants, cars with fins, signs advertising clean restrooms and Ethyl gas, the bell-ding of the comings and goings. Now it was a dead zone presided over by the whoosh of passing trucks and cars on Interstate 40 that looped south around the village.