High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  I walked back to the car, opened the driver’s door, and leaned in.

  “He’s not there, Sharon. But there’s no sign of foul play.”

  Her shoulders drooped. “Thank goodness for that, at least.”

  Then her eyes widened.

  I turned and a shape emerged from the darkness.

  I gave a visible start. That’s me, the cool PI.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He stood about six feet tall and wore a frayed Stetson, sheepskin coat, and blue jeans. His face was not lean or rawboned from sun and wind. This was not the Marlboro Man. Instead, he had fat merry cheeks, a rosy complexion, fleshy broad nose, and a white beard that had never encountered clippers. Santa Claus. He might have been anywhere from sixty to ninety years old.

  “Are you a cop?”

  I said, “Not anymore.”

  “You drive up from Phoenix?”

  I said that I had.

  His fulsome cheeks worked silently before he spoke. “Lot of action for my little town, huh?”

  I nodded, wishing for the second time that night that I had my revolver at the ready.

  “I was watching from down the street. This used to be a hell of a town, ya know. We had a movie house, a good whorehouse.” He spat a long stream of chewing tobacco. “Right on Route 66.”

  He aimed a thumb over his shoulder at a black-and-white sign that read, “Historic Route 66.”

  Get your kicks.

  It had been many years since I had been to Ash Fork. My grandmother and I came through on the train, when Phoenix still had passenger trains, on the way to the Grand Canyon. The canyon was about sixty miles north of here. Otherwise, I had driven through Ash Fork a couple of times since.

  My memory was that the town sat in a gentle bowl of grassland high on the Coconino Plateau between Flagstaff and Kingman, with piñon pines on the ridges and mountains in the distance. Millions of years before, it had been part of the volcanic eruptions and lava flows that created northern Arizona. It lacked the spectacular San Francisco Peaks and ponderosa pine forest of Flagstaff. Somebody had capitalized on Ash Fork’s Route 66 past by putting a vintage car on the roof of a hair salon. I wondered if it was still here.

  “The Interstate killed it?” I made conversation, wanting to get back in the car.

  “Didn’t help.”

  When that was all he said, I turned to leave but his voice stopped me.

  “The world was different when we drove on two lanes, when people actually had to come down the main street of every town. When we traveled by train. Y’see, the Santa Fe Railway built this town and then murdered it. Ash Fork used to be on the main line. We got all the streamliners come through.”

  I named the major passenger trains: the Super Chief, Chief, San Francisco Chief, El Capitan, and the Grand Canyon. This seemed to please him.

  Santa Claus smiled. “You know your railroad history. My God, they were something to behold. We had a beautiful depot and Harvey House. The Escalante. Then the railroad relocated the main line north in 1960 and we were only a spot in the Peavine.”

  “The branch down to Phoenix.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “It killed the town. We lost all the railroad jobs. They tore down the depot in the seventies.”

  He swept his arm.

  “Now look at it. Nothing. This used to be Highway 66. Used to come right down Lewis Avenue and Park, each was a one-way. In seventy-seven, had the big fire in town. Another one happened ten years later. Now this is all that’s left.”

  He stepped out into the middle of the road.

  “C’mon, son. This is the safest place to be. If a car came by in the next three hours, I’d eat this Stetson.”

  I followed him onto the painted line and we stood there like two gunfighters in an old Western, waiting for the outlaws to come riding down the street. A tumbleweed obligingly rolled across, half a block ahead.

  He shrugged in resignation. “Four hundred people now, give or take. Doesn’t stop the break-ins. We got three registered sex offenders, too. Hell, I went to high school with two of ’em.”

  He walked west toward the little collection of one-story buildings. It was hard to imagine this had once been a thriving town center. I had to quickstep to match his long stride.

  “Used to snow up here more often, too.” He looked around, shook his head.

  “It’s a shame,” I said. “Do you work on a ranch?”

  He let loose another shot of brown liquid. “Hell, there ain’t any ranching any more. None to speak of up here. I cowboyed most of my life.”

  “What happened?”

  “All the ranches have been bought up as tax deductions or for subdivisions. You wouldn’t understand. You’re from Phoenix.”

  “I’m a fourth-generation Arizonan.” I felt the need to establish my bona fides in a state where almost everyone was from somewhere else, and most either came to die or came and went.

  He appraised me more closely now. He held out a rough-skinned hand and we shook.

  “Orville Grainer.”

  “David Mapstone.”

  “You related to Philip Mapstone, the dentist?”

  “He was my grandfather.”

  “I went to him a couple of times. Nice man, Doc Mapstone. He didn’t hurt me. Made me hate dentists a little less.”

  This was once a very small state.

  We walked a few more steps. His stride turned into a slight limp.

  I asked him what he had seen tonight but he avoided the question.

  “The West we knew is gone, David. Don’t you know that? They even canceled the cowboy artists’ show at the Phoenix Art Museum. That was the only reason I ever went down to that damned city.”

  Looking back, I could see Sharon’s car under the streetlamp. I didn’t want to get farther away. From where we stood, the broad starry sky demanded attention. I could pick out the Little Dipper. As a Boy Scout, I had won a merit badge in astronomy, but now I couldn’t identify most of the other constellations.

  Santa spoke again. “I sit at home and when I can’t sleep…my wife died ten years ago and lot of nights I can’t fall asleep…I walk around and watch. Watch the stars. Watch this dying little town.”

  “Like this evening.”

  “That’s right. Haven’t seen so many police in a long time and FBI, too. Knew it couldn’t have been a burglary. Must be something mighty important. That Texaco belonged to Shorty Hayes, you know. Shorty ran it forty-six years before he died. Hell of a poker player.”

  “Want to tell me what happened at Shorty’s tonight?”

  He stopped and looked back at the ruin of a gas station. We had gone about a block.

  “Cops, cops, and cops. My boy wanted to be one, ya know? But he went off to Vietnam and didn’t come back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Anyway, they were really interested in that Ford pickup that got towed off.”

  “Did you see how it got there?”

  “Oh, yeah. Man parked it there. A big man, broad shoulders, black hair. Taller than you. He was smoking a cigar.”

  “Anglo?”

  Grainer shook his head. “Could have been. Probably Mexican. I wasn’t close enough to be sure and he stayed in the shadows.”

  Grainer was describing Mike Peralta.

  I asked how far away he was when he saw the man?

  “About a block away, standing behind a tree.”

  He contemplated as his jaw worked the chewing tobacco, then continued.

  “It was too far away to make out his face. But the fella didn’t act lost. He was careful to pull into the dark instead of sitting under the light. Got out of the truck. Lit his cigar. Walked around. I told all this to that big black G-man.”

  “Did the man at the truck seem nervous?”


  He squinted, exposing dozens of little ravines on his face. “You sure you ain’t the law?”

  “Not anymore.”

  I had to wait for the conversation to work at its own speed. Grainer pulled a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket and stuffed another piece of chaw inside his rosy cheek. A sudden gale of cold, dry wind failed to make any impression on his wide hat.

  “He didn’t seem nervous. He walked my way a bit, so I was getting worried he’d find me watching him. Then he yawned and stretched and turned around. Went back and leaned against that truck, and enjoyed his smoke. He waited maybe twenty minutes and a car pulled up. White four-door, California plates. I couldn’t read the numbers. Eyes are going. He climbed inside and they went back on the Interstate.”

  “Heading?” I hoped he knew their direction.

  “Couldn’t be sure.”

  “Do you know about what time he got here?”

  “Little after ten.”

  That was several hours unaccounted for after the robbery.

  I asked if he had unloaded anything from the truck.

  Grainer shook his head.

  “Nothing?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Diamond couriers used a small suitcase on wheels. The FBI had played the tape for me, showing Peralta and the second guard going through a back corridor of the mall. They walked side-by-side—the hallway was made for deliveries, so it was plenty wide. The other guard had the wheelie bag.

  Then Peralta suddenly spun the man off balance and snatched the case with his left hand. When the man reached for his gun, Peralta already had his Glock in his right hand and fired. One shot. The other guard fell back. Peralta took the bag and walked calmly out of the camera’s view.

  This was all the feds would show me. I asked about other cameras, other angles, and they went into the we-ask-the-questions attitude. But the reality was that they had lost him.

  Then he got to Ash Fork.

  But the weapons locker in his truck was empty. That was unusual. The man always drove around with multiple guns. I would have to do an inventory of the room-sized armory back at the office, which Lindsey’s sister Robin had christened “The Danger Room.” Now we had plenty of danger.

  I thought about what Grainer had told me. The diamonds could theoretically be stuffed in his pockets, depending on the size of the settings. So he had decided to dump the suitcase.

  “Did he do anything while he waited?”

  He puffed out his cheeks and smiled at the miracle of a returned memory.

  “Yep, yep. Now that you mention it, he did. Got on his haunches and fiddled with the back bumper of the truck.”

  I thought about that. Arizona only required one tag on a vehicle, not two. Peralta must have put on a different tag to get out of town. His real one would have been on all the police broadcasts. Otherwise, it was one of thousands of Ford pickups. Then he changed back to his real tag. He intended for the truck to be found and identified.

  And he left the business card with the message for me on the dash.

  “When the car pulled up, did anybody get out? Did it seem like he was being forced inside?”

  “No, sir,” he said. “The man got right on in and they was gone.”

  “What did the FBI tell you?”

  He shook his head, the wind stirring the tendrils of his beard. “Not a damned thing. The Yavapai deputies think I’m a pest, calling about the burglaries, the crime around here. They have a trailer shack down the street here, but you hardly ever see a deputy. Budget cuts and all. I come to think, screw ’em. I can handle things if I need to.”

  He opened a button on the coat and patted the butt of a pistol.

  Of course.

  I handed him my card and asked him to give me a call if anything else came to him, or if he saw that four-door car again.

  He mumbled something unintelligible about private eyes, shook my hand, and limped back into his forlorn village.

  Mapstone had nothing to do with this. Tell him not to try to find me.

  Whatever Peralta really intended by the message, whether he meant it or somebody was leaning on him, he had worked with me long enough to know that sometimes I didn’t follow orders. Even his orders.

  Chapter Five

  Back in the car, I slid on my holster. Sharon had brushed out her hair and, with the visor mirror down, was nervously freshening her lipstick. She had been agitated on the entire drive up. Who could blame her?

  I asked her about Ash Fork and why Mike might have come up here.

  She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “You still have the cabin in Heber?”

  “Yes. The FBI was very interested in that. They’re probably at the place now, hoping he’ll show up. They spent hours at our house today—well, yesterday, now—with a search warrant.”

  I drove west on the one-way street, turned a block, then came back on the eastbound one-way that returned us to the Interstate. Grainer was gone and it was difficult to imagine the thriving town he had described.

  “Did you expect to find him dead here?” I asked Sharon.

  “No.”

  My body tensed even before she spoke the next sentence.

  “He called me tonight.”

  Two obscenities came out of my mouth before I stopped myself.

  “I’m sorry, David.”

  I asked her what time he called. Around eight-thirty.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  She flipped up the mirror and the light went off. Her large brown eyes watched me.

  “He said not to tell you anything.”

  “Sharon…” I stared at the highway, a stream of semis passing us as I stuck to the speed limit. “I can’t believe it. You know the FBI has your phones tapped. You’ll be implicated in this.”

  “They don’t even know about this phone. Years ago, the county installed a second landline at the house as a backup in case of an emergency. Then they forgot about it. After he left the sheriff’s office, I called twice to have them take it out. They never did.”

  “What did he say?”

  She laughed, a surprising sound in this cockpit of tension.

  “When I first met him, before I even knew you, I was this girl from the barrio. A nobody. He was a deputy sheriff, the son of a judge. He had grown up in a fancy house in Arcadia. My family had a four-room, tarpaper shack in Golden Gate, before they bulldozed it for the airport. He’d been to Harvard, for God’s sake, and I barely got out of high school. But I was very vain. I knew men liked me. And he liked me. I didn’t always look like an old lady.”

  “You’re very attractive, Sharon. And you’re the most accomplished person I know.”

  She waved it away. “I wasn’t digging for a compliment, David. There is a point to the story.”

  I shut up and ten miles later she continued.

  “He liked me, and we started dating. He was only one generation out of the barrio, but he would tease me. He enjoyed making me mad. One of his things was to impersonate a guy named Paco Sanchez. He made up this character that was a gardener who spoke terrible English but was going to take me away from that cop Peralta I was dating. It made me angry, that he was making fun of me. And it made me laugh.”

  “That’s a playfulness I never saw in him.”

  “Well, you weren’t a sweet young thing he wanted to get in the sack.”

  “Thank God for that. I’m still worried about the FBI listening in on your call tonight.”

  “All they would have heard is a call from my old beau Paco.”

  “What?”

  She laughed again. “He used the same voice as back then. ‘Hey, pretty one. You still with that cop?’”

  Her voice switched into a high-pitched, heavily accented Spanglish.

  “Don’t think
I wasn’t worried about a tap, even though this phone number is lost somewhere in the Maricopa County bureaucracy. So I played along. I asked him how he was. He says, ‘So-so, pretty one. I run with a bad crowd. You know that. Things are kind of siniestro. You be okay?’”

  “Scary.”

  “Right. I told him I was home and safe and he’d better not let my husband catch him calling me. It was the same game we used to play back in the day when he was being Paco. He told me I might not hear from him for a while but it was going to be okay. In between, he did the old flirting in Spanglish.”

  “Smart man,” I said. “But he didn’t give you details?”

  “None. I was afraid to be too specific in what I asked.”

  The big trucks left us behind and the road was black with specters of tall trees on either side.

  “David,” she said, “he said another thing. He asked me about my gabacho profesor friend. That would be you.”

  “I figured.”

  “He said the profesor needed to watch his gabacho ass.” She slipped back into her impersonation of an impersonation. “‘But don’t tell him that Paco said it. Don’t tell him about me at all.’”

  I tried to shuffle the deck into order.

  Peralta had shot the diamond courier at noon on Friday at Chandler Fashion Center, and then escaped before the police could arrive. By ten p.m., he was abandoning his truck in Ash Fork, where Orville Grainer saw him. Before that, at eight-thirty, he called Sharon on the forgotten landline. He used a play-act that only the two of them would know, yet he conveyed important information. Did he assume she was being tapped? Or was he under duress or otherwise compromised?

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know what to do, David. Things were happening so fast. The FBI didn’t let me go home until after six. I was going to tell you, and then I got the call that his truck had been found and we raced up here.”

  I let out a long breath and my anger fell away. I told her about Horace Mann and the business card, about Orville Grainer watching Peralta climb into a sedan. Then I shut up and watched the road for deer. Lack of sleep was starting to slow me down, make me jumpy.