High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  IN MEMORY OF

  LIEUT. JACK W. SWILLING

  1831-1878

  WHO BUILT THE

  FIRST MODERN IRRIGATION DITCH

  AND

  TRINIDAD, HIS WIFE

  1850-1929

  WHO ESTABLISHED IN 1868 THE FIRST

  PIONEER HOME IN THE

  SALT RIVER VALLEY.

  ERECTED BY

  MARICOPA CHAPTER

  DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

  1931

  I sat on the fountain’s concrete lip and listened to the water.

  “Swilling’s Ditch” was one of the hundreds of miles of canals built by the Hohokam to divert water of the Salt River in this great alluvial valley. “Those who have gone”—the disappeared civilization, the canal builders. Then the Anglos came, found the ancient waterworks, the most advanced in the New World outside Peru. They cleared out the ancient canals, built new ones and the Phoenix was reborn.

  Old Phoenix kept its secrets. Jack Swilling was one of the town’s founders. He was also a scoundrel who helped betray the Apache leader Mangus Coloradus, leaving him to be tortured and killed by the U.S. Army. It was an act of treachery that helped ensure twenty years of war. But this wasn’t engraved on the fountain.

  And people like Chris Melton didn’t even know or care. They moved into their new subdivisions far from the heart of the city and thought the only history was back home in the Midwest. I would bet he had never read this plaque.

  The water trickled in a melody that should have been comforting. Not tonight. Because I knew. Too much and not enough.

  Maybe even Mike Peralta was a scoundrel who would throw everything away for a case of diamonds. And here I am carrying that damned badge. I never should have come back here. Not to this building. Not to this city.

  Better to be teaching history in Southern California or Denver, Portland, or Seattle, even in a community college if need be. Anywhere but here.

  Yet Peralta never stopped trying to get me back to the Sheriff’s Office and he had finally succeeded. When I didn’t get tenure in San Diego and returned to Phoenix, intending to sell the house and move on, he hired me to clean up some old cases. And I stayed.

  I never should have stayed.

  Phoenix is not my city now.

  It belongs to the millions of newcomers drawn here by sun, a pool in the backyard, and big wide freeways to drive. To the ones that bulldoze its history and throw down gravel and concrete where there once were flowers and oleanders and canopies of cottonwoods, eucalyptus, and Arizona ash over open irrigation ditches.

  I hear the ghosts of the Hohokam and love it when it rains. Newcomers want championship golf and endless sunshine.

  They own this place now, not me.

  They tell me every place changes, but why did my place have to get worse? It’s not as if we traded the Valley of Heart’s Delight to become Silicon Valley.

  What right have I to hate them? They have no memory of my garden city when the air was so clear it seemed as if you could reach out and touch the mountains. They don’t miss the passenger trains at Union Station or the busy stores and movie palaces downtown.

  How could they miss what had been wiped away?

  The problem is me, for loving Phoenix still.

  The blame rests with me, for coming back, for staying.

  I should have sold the house in Willo, where the historic districts carry strands of the old city’s loveliness—sold it and left for good.

  But it had been built by my grandfather, had always been in the family. How could I endure seeing a photo of it on the Web, knowing a stranger owned it, and had probably put rocks in place of Grandmother’s gardens?

  But it is a house, nothing more, and sentimentality disables me.

  What fool would mourn Phoenix? It makes as much sense as pining for Muncie, Indiana, in the nineteenth century.

  My fool’s punishment is that I am from nowhere.

  “David, this is your home, your hometown.”

  I have no hometown.

  I am a fraud.

  I’ll never make it home again.

  Had I not come back, I never would have met Lindsey, the young Sheriff’s Office computer genius with the nose stud and wicked sense of humor. She would have been so much better off without me.

  I should not be here.

  It’s not healthy.

  It’s not sane.

  I am like a mad archeologist trying to conjure ruins back to their past glory.

  Or like a dog that can’t leave his master’s grave, ending up a stray that howls all night in the cemetery, crying, loss…loss…loss…

  So help me, God, I am so lost.

  The water shut off, as if on a timer.

  I made my legs stand and take the steps two at a time up to the grand arched main entrance where I buzzed the night bell.

  “Mapstone! I haven’t seen you in forever. How the hell’s it hanging?”

  The deputy didn’t even realize I had left the department.

  A metal detector and X-ray machine with a belt had been installed inside, but otherwise the lobby and airy atrium looked the same. No, better. The county had actually done a good job restoring the building to its period beauty. The brass elevator doors glimmered beyond.

  Instead, I took the staircase that wound up the atrium, walking on the brown Mexican saltillo tiles, gripping the railing that so many thousands of justice-seeking hands had touched. The decorative tiles on the risers had been polished and replaced where needed. The wrought-iron chandeliers burned through yellow panes set off with colored medallions.

  When Peralta had first put me over here, the building was an afterthought holding a few county agencies. Now, I guessed it was busy on weekdays. Tonight, it was silent enough for my footfall to echo. I reached the fourth floor and walked past the doors of dark wood, pebbled glass, and transoms. Overhead were white globes spaced every few feet.

  My phone vibrated. A message from Lindsey: “You ok?”

  I texted back, “Yes. Home soon.”

  I was anything but okay.

  Then I found the correct door, slipped in the key, and went inside.

  My new office was perhaps ten feet by twelve feet, a comedown from my old digs. But it had a large window looking north. I turned on the lights and there they stood, the antique wooden desk I had scrounged from the county warehouse, swivel chair, and two other straight-back chairs in front. Against one wall was the 1930s courtroom bench I also had appropriated. Another wall held the historic map of Phoenix that was yet another of my finds, one I didn’t take with me when I left the job.

  It was as if Melton had planned it all before we ever talked.

  And I had fallen into the snare.

  Treason, indeed.

  I switched the lights back off, crossed to the desk chair, and slowly lowered myself to sit. The empty desktop received its first employment since I had resigned and cleaned out my old office—the case file Melton had given me. I thought about reading through the case now, thought better of it, and instead spun around to watch the cars moving along Washington Street.

  I wondered where Peralta was, if he was safe, what the hell was going on. I needed to be working on finding him, deciphering the messages on the cards, not rehashing a thirty-year-old case.

  The dread had hold of my throat and chest before I realized it. My heart galloped insistently inside my chest. I was conscious of every chamber of my heart opening and closing, opening and closing. In only seconds, it seemed, the trap door to oblivion would open beneath me. Yes, Sharon, I still get panic attacks.

  The only remedy was to move, to get up and flee the building, get into the night air and see some other human souls. At Central and Washington, I boarded a train so full of them that I had to stand all the way home.

  On the way, I tried to figure out what
to tell Lindsey.

  Chapter Ten

  Our block was awash in white lights and hemmed in by the dark silhouettes of satellite trucks bearing the logos of television stations. As I drew closer, I saw that the lights were from television cameras and pointed at our house. The house looked good. Lindsey looked even better, standing on the front patio and talking into microphones that five reporters held to her very telegenic face.

  Setting aside my initial alarm, I held back on the sidewalk.

  “Sheriff Peralta is a man of the highest integrity,” she said. “I worked for him for a long time and my respect for him grew with every year. I’m sure a logical explanation will come out about what happened.”

  Logical explanations. I was all for that.

  “Why would he shoot a man and steal the diamonds?” A woman’s voice.

  “These are allegations,” Lindsey said. “I only know what you people have reported. The police are investigating.”

  “Have you heard from him since the theft?” A man shouted the question.

  “Of course not.” Not a second’s hesitation, her tone earnest. She turned her head to move the hair out of her eyes.

  “Not a word? Your husband is his partner in their private detective business.”

  “Not a word.”

  She was a good little liar, my wife.

  I walked on to the end of the block as they ran out of questions and packed up. Not one word I could say to them would make things better.

  The neighborhood was as magical as the surprised deputy had found it. The period revival houses had all been restored and were some of the priciest real estate in the city now. It seemed as if only Lindsey and I had not put in a pool.

  Willo had been built slowly, almost one house at a time, a huge contrast to the industrial-scale subdivisions laid down elsewhere, later in the life of the city. A couple of blocks over were bungalows that dated back to before statehood. Most of our block had been built in the twenties. The City Beautiful Movement even infused the sidewalks, which ran between small “parking lawns” on one side and the larger lawns that extended to the houses. Only philistines put in desert landscaping. This had always been the oasis.

  Ten minutes later, the street safely in darkness, I unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

  “You were impressive.”

  “Thank you.”

  She tilted her face up and I kissed her.

  I said, “I wondered how long it would take for them to show up. Better you speaking to the media than me.”

  She looked at the brown file folder. “Is that from the High Sheriff of Maricopa County?”

  I nodded.

  “And?”

  After hesitating, I showed her my star.

  “No, Dave.” She pushed it away and shook her head. “Why would you go back to the Sheriff’s Office? For Sheriff Meltdown. My God, that’s not right. What happened?”

  I sighed. “Oh, Lindsey, talk to me, and I’ll rub your feet.”

  The temper drained from her face. “Deal.”

  We went to the sofa and I pulled off her shoes, running my fingers along the perfect facets of her cheerleader ankles. I avoided her concerned look. I kissed the left foot, sucked her toes for a few moments, and began to massage.

  “Ooooo, History Shamus…”

  “Why is the FBI investigating this case?” The question suddenly entered my crowded mind.

  “I don’t know. It’s not an interstate crime yet. The FBI has really changed since 9/11. It’s very focused on counterterrorism. Now that you mention it…” She shook her head.

  “This should be Chandler P.D.’s case. Not one Chandler detective was in Ash Fork early this morning.”

  “So I’ll give you one, Dave. Why would Mike Peralta need a million dollars?”

  I pressed my fingers into her calves and attempted to study her face. Only one lamp was on and her expression was shadowed. I turned away and meditated on the tall bookshelves on the far wall and the stairway that went up beside them.

  Oh, for time to do nothing but read books and hang around with Lindsey, free from the outside world, free from the burden that had been hung around my neck beside that perfectly still rooftop pool.

  “A million isn’t what it once was,” she went on. “Like when you were young, my older man. Not only that, but it’s a million in stolen, traceable, hot-as-hell diamonds. You can’t exactly take that to the pawnshop. So I did some digging around.”

  The bottom fell out of my stomach.

  “Keep rubbing.”

  I did as I was told.

  “The Peraltas have a net worth of 2.4 million,” she said. “Part of that is in their home, which is paid off. Sharon still gets more than a hundred thousand a year from the sales of her self-help books, DVDs, and speeches. Mike’s pension is ninety-two thousand a year. In the past six months, the private detective work has brought in a net sixty-seven thousand, twice what it did when you guys were starting out.”

  I moved to worshipping her right foot. I would never get used to the tattoo on the top. “Emma.” She got it in D.C., after the miscarriage, after she nearly bled to death and saving her meant we could never have children, after she fled from me. But there was that ink, in one of the places where it was most painful to get a tattoo. And on her perfect fair skin. To me, tattoos were trashy or belonged on sailors, especially in Moby Dick. I was a dinosaur from the twentieth century. I also wouldn’t have chosen Emma. But there it was. I had never mentioned it.

  She said, “If you dig deeper—oh, right there, that feels so good—the Peraltas have 1.25 million dollars in what you would call ‘investable assets,’ money that can be put in stocks and bonds and mutual funds. And all this is as of the latest account statements. Nothing has been pilfered. No evidence of accounts being drained for, say, a gambling habit or to pay off a blackmailer. They have no debt. Imagine that in today’s America.”

  I said, “So why would he need a million bucks in diamonds? It’s more evidence he didn’t turn rogue.” Or, as Lindsey had suggested earlier, that he had committed the crime to prove something, to stick it to the voters that had betrayed him. But I didn’t say that.

  She smiled. “Are you proud of me? Wait until I tell you about Matt Pennington.”

  I nodded and rubbed her feet. Maybe that would be enough, we could wind down and go to bed, and none of this would be real in the morning.

  Part of that might even have happened if I hadn’t said another word.

  Instead, I said, and I said it very carefully, lightly, trying to avoid a vowel of accusation in my voice, “Please tell me you weren’t hacking the Peraltas’ financial data, Lindsey.”

  After a pause, her voice was smaller but had an edge. “I talked on the phone with Sharon. Want to tell me what’s wrong, Dave?”

  And so I did.

  All the way home, I had rehearsed a way to discuss our mess in a conversation that would be careful, nuanced, calm, and fluent. All that preparation deserted me the more I began to speak.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get it out and by the end I was talking too fast and too loud.

  Her perfect ankles and feet withdrew and she sat at the other end of the sofa, her arms wrapped around her legs.

  “You don’t buy any of this, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What else did he tell you I did in Washington?”

  That was the leading question from the depths of hell.

  I hadn’t told her that he had mentioned her affairs. I didn’t now, looking straight at her and lying convincingly, or so I thought. Her blue eyes darkened, never a good sign.

  After a searing pause, Lindsey finally spoke, her voice as hard as, well, a diamond.

  “He’s using you, Dave. He’s trying to scare you and he’s trying to use me to get what he wants.”

&
nbsp; She walked off to the kitchen and began cleaning up, loudly banging pans.

  Of course, he was using me. I was a fool on a hundred fronts but I knew this much. I walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.

  “What should I have done?” I said. “I can look at the file. It can’t do any harm.”

  She stared into the sink and scrubbed harder. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Dave.”

  That came out of nowhere and I started feeling the same anger that was motivating her manic kitchen cleaning.

  She dried her hands with a striped dishcloth and turned. “You should have called me. We should have made this decision together.”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “Why not?” Her tone was sharp. “Did he have an arrest warrant?”

  I struggled to find a response. She was right, of course.

  I said, “I couldn’t let him throw you to the wolves.”

  She smiled with cutting false sweetness. “Aren’t you the white knight?”

  Everybody has an interior jerk. Mine was about to lash back but I stopped it. For a long time the house enclosed us in a tense quiet.

  She made a lithe move across the room and I stepped aside. When I followed, I found her sitting on the wide starting step. The staircase led to a door, then a walkway that spanned the interior courtyard to the garage apartment. She put her head in her hands. I touched her shoulder.

  “And you’re a deputy sheriff again. Working for this racist pig.”

  “It won’t last,” I said. “I wanted to buy time.”

  She turned her shoulder to avoid my hand. I sat in the leather chair and pressed ahead.

  “We need to talk to a lawyer. This is serious stuff, Lindsey. I’m worried.”

  When she spoke again, the sarcasm was gone. “I was loaned out to an interagency unit, CIA, NSC, DIA, that’s the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

  She looked up. “Did you think I was in D.C. dealing with Nigerian email scams? My God, you’re naïve.”

  “I guess so. You told me it was a temporary job at Homeland Security.”

  “Look, Chinese hackers got a bunch of information on the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, by penetrating a British contractor. That’s not news. You can find stories about this on the Web, at least the defense press.”