by Jon Talton
We waited. Peralta and Russo received refills.
“In the months that followed, Felix would keep an eye on her. He’d check up from time to time. Of course, her husband didn’t know. Grace was very good at keeping secrets and compartmentalizing. About two weeks before her death, she called Felix. She was afraid somebody was stalking her. She didn’t know who, or she didn’t say. She didn’t want to worry Tim, so I’d be surprised if she even told him. Anyway, Felix took a leave of absence, got an apartment in Ocean Beach so he could be close…”
“A guardian angel,” I said.
“Exactly.” Russo looked me over for the first time. A mixed verdict. “I didn’t think it was necessary. Grace was smart and away from that life. But Felix was adamant, and he was a very good employee. He had also served the country. I felt I owed this to him. He gave her a panic button to push if she got in trouble. He was usually about a block away.”
Peralta asked what happened on April twenty-second.
“For the first time, Grace pushed the panic button. It had a tracker and Felix was able to get to her…”
“What do you mean?” I was too impatient.
“He ran the car she was in off the road, onto a side street. But it was three against one. They beat him up pretty bad, which would be no easy feat, and they left him there. I didn’t realize how bad when he called. He held it together, told me some guys had taken Grace and gotten away from him.”
“Why didn’t he call the police?”
“I told him to do it. I also gave him your number. I told him Peralta could get results.”
He didn’t call the cops, but he did phone us, getting the answering machine.
I took a tentative sip. It was very expensive bourbon. “But he called us from Grace’s phone.”
Russo nodded. “In the fight, he was trying to get Grace. Part of her purse spilled on the street. He ended up with her cell, which looked exactly like his.”
Peralta said, “Why wouldn’t he know it wasn’t his phone when he didn’t find you on the favorite calls?”
“My number had to be memorized,” Russo said. “Security. Felix didn’t realize he had the wrong phone until he had called me and was in the middle of calling you.”
But he never made a second call to us. I asked why not.
“He passed out. You’ve got to understand, he wasn’t as physically capable as he once was. He wore a prosthetic leg and was in constant pain. The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital. And Grace was dead. It was two weeks before he could come to Phoenix and see you. He still had her phone.” Russo paused and suddenly slammed his fist into his leg.“And now he’s dead, too.”
I went through the names: Larry and Andrew Zisman, Bob Hunter, and Edward Dowd. They drew no reaction from Russo.
Peralta said, “And Felix?”
Russo set his glass down carefully into the brass cup holder on the teak table. “I helped arrange for his mother to bring his body home for a funeral in Indiana. I promise you, she’ll never want for anything. She’s lost both her children. It’s a hell of a thing.”
He seemed like as decent a master of the universe as there probably was, and he was at loose ends. Still, I couldn’t finish his premium booze. I kept thinking how far ahead we would have been if Peralta’s old war buddy had called us sooner. Tim might still be alive. The baby would be safe. It was all I could do to keep from exploding.
He ran a hand down his face and stared at Peralta. “Shit, Mike. How could this happen? I’ve lost them both. Who would do this? Why?”
I had a pretty good idea who had done it. I didn’t know why.
33
As we drove back and I reported on my lunch meeting, Lindsey texted me that she and Sharon were going shopping—she needed to load up on moisturizers now that she was back in the desert—and she would be home by six. I wanted to go back to Sunnyslope but Peralta vetoed that. So I let him drop me off at home.
With the house to myself, I lay down on the bed and actually started reading the biography of George Frost Kennan that had languished on the table for months. But it did not transport me away from this age of “business casual,” tattoos on pretty women, and dunces saying, “No worries!” The perspective it gave me on geopolitics then and now was quickly forgotten. It was not the author’s fault.
Too many anxieties hammered on my brain. Edward Kevin Dowd, killing machine, was foremost among them. In these insidious little moments, I noticed Lindsey’s suitcases remained in the guest room, only partly unpacked. Was that because of the investigation she had been thrust into, or was her stay here only temporary?
I couldn’t stop myself from inconspicuously rifling her bags. I fancied myself a good burglar. I persuaded myself that I was guarding my heart by trying to figure if she was going again. But my breathing was also the fast pant of the voyeur. What did I think I would find? Photos and videos of my wife being impaled by another man? Billets-doux?
I found it inside one zippered compartment: an envelope, addressed to me. It had a stamp, too, but had never been mailed. In fact, it had never been sealed and inside were pages of Crane stationery. Now every electron of good judgment in my body was telling me: Stop, put this away, go no further!
Of course I ignored them. Out came the personalized stationery I had bought for her two Christmases ago. I carefully unfolded it. Hers was not a generation that had been forced to learn and stick with cursive handwriting. “Keyboard proficiency” on a computer mattered more. Instead, Lindsey’s block printing was instantly recognizable.
The letter addressed to me was dated May first.
Dear History Shamus,
This is not a “Dear John” letter but it’s going to hurt. But please read all the way through. I’m trying to express things I don’t know how to say when we’re together. You’re so good with words and thinking on your feet. I freeze up. So I’m going to try this way.
I said terrible things to you. I don’t blame you for what happened to Emma. You know this, right?
As Robin probably told you, I had a baby when I was seventeen. It was probably a cry for help, as they say, from the one who always had to be grown up, always had to be the good girl. Linda called me a slut and put the baby up for adoption and I only got to hold him once. I didn’t tell you this when we started dating because I still felt ashamed. And as the years went by, I always wanted to find the way to tell you, but couldn’t. Like I said, I don’t have your gift of words.
After that, I thought I didn’t want to try again. I wouldn’t make a good mother. There’s madness in my bloodline. But when we conceived Emma, I realized I had been lying to myself. I wanted a child so much, a child with you. A child we could raise with the love and sanity I never had growing up, and the mother and father you never had. And everything inside both of us, good and bad, could go into the future. And maybe that child would remember us kindly and carry that memory with her, too, and pass it on to her children.
When the miscarriage happened, I went crazy. They say people have a “fight or flight” instinct. Mine was flight. So when the governor offered me the job at Homeland Security, I grabbed it and flew. There’s no excuse for leaving you. My hope was that Robin would be there as a friend for you and more. I knew she couldn’t help herself and neither could you. Did I make you polyamorous, my professor? I didn’t realize she would fall in love with you. I didn’t know if you would fall in love with her, too. But I figured I deserved it if it happened.
The first time I cheated on you, Emma had been dead exactly one month. I was sitting in a coffee shop near DuPont Circle and saw a man watching me. I smiled at him. He wasn’t especially good looking. But he invited me to walk with him and I did. We went two blocks and he pushed me back against a streetlight and kissed me really hard. Then he asked me a question: he wanted to know if I was a slut. The question insulted and stunned me and I didn’t answer. “I didn’t t
hink so,” he said, and pushed me away. He walked off into the evening crowd. I felt so many things. Angry. Guilty. Hurt. Aroused. I liked that kiss. I had missed a man’s touch, a man inside me. I wanted to kill this numbness in me. And I thought: yes, I was a slut.
I know this makes no sense to you. We had not had sex in a long time and after the miscarriage, even though you were so gentle and patient, I couldn’t be with you. I can’t tell you why. I couldn’t explain anything, couldn’t feel anything but the intensity of my grief. I didn’t want five stages or closure or your love. I wanted my baby. And I knew that I could never have another one. That was it. Somehow that anonymous kiss on the street took me away from the pain.
Of course, I never confessed this to you. You wanted me to come back to Phoenix. I couldn’t. The thought of it made me ill. So I stayed in Washington and I was a slut. Not with my husband or people I even really knew. Most of the ones I fucked and sucked were men. One was a woman. None of them knew I was mourning my baby. To them, I was a woman who was desirable and impetuous. They loved it that I was marvelously good in bed. The bizarre thing was, I could not come the way I did with you. I won’t say it didn’t feel good, but my body wouldn’t give me a real orgasm. That was all right. Being a slut suspended the ache, the longing for Emma. These lovers didn’t know much about me, certainly not the job I did. That only added to the sexual tension and the intensity when we fucked. I was a mystery woman.
Then I met a man at work and settled down. Crazy, huh? Settled down into monogamous infidelity. I figured you were fucking Robin and I kept translating my hurt and guilt over Emma into anger at you. So I became the mistress of a man who was the boss of my boss. He was married, of course, with a pretty wife and children in northern Virginia. He understood that I really needed to fuck and suck. Our encounters were incredibly intense. It took me awhile to realize he knew I needed this passion and riskiness like a drug, to help me forget. Did I write “me”? It wasn’t me. None of them knew me. They knew the “not-me” that I became.
It didn’t last. Robin’s death happened. I sat in the cemetery with you. Remember how the rain started? “Not-me” became me for a while and I was so ashamed and I knew you would never understand or forgive me. How could I ask that? Things were different when I got back to Washington, too. I realized he was tunneling into me, getting past my defenses. But I didn’t feel comforted. I felt manipulated. I felt like I was drowning.
Two weeks ago, I broke up with him. I left his apartment in the District and walked back to my place at three a.m. It was raining and I felt as if a very bad cold had suddenly passed. I don’t intend to see him again, even though there will probably be consequences. I’m tired of the slut racket.
Dave, I am writing this letter to give you one big honesty dump, and I can only imagine how much it hurts, how mad you are. I want to come home and be with you, try to find us again. I miss us. I know that’s a tough request after all that has happened. I don’t expect you to agree to it once you read this letter. You will be pissed and jealous. I wouldn’t blame you (don’t think I didn’t feel that way thinking of you with Robin). But I wish you would let me come home and let us find the way to forgive each other and forgive ourselves. You are the love of my life and always will be. When we first got together, you said that I saved your life. But you saved mine, too. I wish we could find a way to save each other one more time. I’ve written this letter ten times. I don’t know if I’ll have the guts to send it.
Lindsey
I carefully returned the letter to its envelope and that to the zippered pocket of the rolling suitcase. I rezipped it to exactly the position it had been before my fool’s adventure. My hands were shaking, my mind seared. Burglary is a crime and I would pay the penalty alone. She would never know that I had read it.
As if on cue, Lindsey called. She and Sharon were at the Nordstrom at Scottsdale Fashion Square and was I doing okay? I gamely said yes. No, I hadn’t heard anything about the situation in Sunnyslope. Did I mind if the two of them had dinner? Of course not. I told her to have fun, hoping my voice didn’t betray my knowledge of the fun she had in Washington. After she hung up, I walked to the study, my mind in a soup of queasiness and arousal, barely feeling the old hardwood floor under my feet.
At loose ends, I turned on the television for the first time in probably more than a year. A handsome man holding a microphone was standing in the parking lot where Peralta had talked to the G-man this morning. The reporter had positioned himself so the “S” made out of whitewashed rocks on the slope of a hill above Sunnyslope showed over his right shoulder. I turned up the volume.
“…still no details about the police situation here in Sunnyslope,” the reporter said. “Officers have sealed off several blocks around a house on Dunlap, as these aerial images show…”
The screen flipped to an overhead shot of the house, with a long roof and several cars parked in its driveway. The nearest police or FBI vehicles appeared to be at least two hundred yards away. I shut it off. This was turning into the goatfuck that I had feared. I had to get out of the house.
34
It didn’t really matter if the bad guys were tracking me now. They had bigger problems. So I didn’t even bother to remove the spy device from the Prelude before I rolled off to catch the freeway system that would take me to Tempe. Fortunately, I saw the disaster of the Papago Freeway before I turned onto the Third Street on-ramp. Rush hour, or hours rather, was not allowing anybody to move at more than a slow crawl, if that. So I settled for the street grid.
By the time I got to Larry Zisman’s house at The Lakes, the sun was down and it looked as if most everybody who lived on the cul-de-sac had made it home, closed their garage doors, and were watching television back in their Arizona rooms. Not a single other car was parked at the curb. The lights were still off at Zisman’s place, but you never knew. Unlike houses in the historic districts, most of these homes focused activity away from the front and the street. Zisman could well be in his Arizona room watching the “police situation in Sunnyslope” unfold. If so, I could finally ask some questions.
At the moment I didn’t give a damn if he was a reserve police officer. I wanted to sit across from him and watch his face and body language as he told me about the night Grace Hunter was pushed off the balcony of his condominium. He wasn’t on her client list, so why did he claim she was his girlfriend? Former football star or no, Larry Zisman seemed an unlikely man to attract Grace. I had seen recent photos of Zisman: he had lost his athletic body to a gut and his face was puffy. It wasn’t as if Grace needed more chances to, as my once semi-prudish wife puts it, fuck and suck.
I wanted to know who he was covering for: his son, Andrew? Edward Dowd? And where was he when Grace died? Was he really already at his boat? If so, why did he leave her with her murderer at the condo? This was only the beginning of the questions I intended to ask.
But when I set the tip of my toe on the step of the arched entranceway, I knew that he would not be giving me any answers.
The big answer popped me in the nose: that unique, fiendish sulfurous smell I had first encountered as a young deputy, the scent of a body that had been dead for a while. In an un-air-conditioned building in the Arizona heat, it would become noticeable within a day. Air conditioning gave you a little longer. Often mail carriers or neighbors would be knocked down by the odor halfway across the yard.
We called them “stinkers.”
A quick scan of the front door showed a mail slot. So no mail was piling up obtrusively outside. Maybe the mailman had a bad sense of smell. No newspapers were accumulating on the doorstep, either, but fewer people subscribed now, a sad thing for democracy.
It was tempting to walk around the house and look through a window. But that would definitely attract a neighborhood watch hotdog. So I walked back down the wide driveway toward the street, looking as if I belonged there in the warm suburban air, stealthily scanning to see if an
yone was watching from the neighboring houses. Nobody seemed to be.
Out of the cul-se-sac, I drove north to Baseline Road and found a rare pay phone. There, I called 911 and reported a strange odor coming from the Zisman address. Larry Zip had thrown his last pass. Now I wondered if he had killed himself or become one more loose end for Dowd to tie up.
My phone rang. Peralta.
He was brief. “Get up here as fast as you can.”
35
He didn’t have to say where “here” was. I drove as fast as I could to the parking lot on Seventh Street and Dunlap. Peralta’s truck was moored beside a dozen marked and unmarked law-enforcement units, plus two giant command vans. All of the television stations had positioned satellite trucks there as well. Bright TV lights were focused ahead of me. I parked the Prelude and pushed my way through a crowd of civilians and cops.
Eric Pham, wearing a vest with “FBI” emblazoned on it, was reading a statement for the cameras. Peralta was standing beside him. He couldn’t resist the cameras. He never could.
“….at five p.m., a SWAT team made entry into the home. A brief exchange of fire resulted in one man dead. Our preliminary information indicates he was armed with a semi-automatic rifle and fired on the officers. Five other men were taken into custody. A large cache of weapons was seized, including Claymore anti-personnel mines. We believe these mines were stolen from Fort Huachuca. We also took possession of computers and maps that indicate these individuals were planning to use the mines in attacks on shopping malls and federal facilities in the Phoenix area. We also believe they intended to use shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down an airliner landing or taking off from Sky Harbor Airport…”
His statement contained all the caveats about the early nature of the investigation and how he couldn’t disclose further information that might compromise an ongoing probe.
