Cactus Heart - [4]

“I was thinking about hockey as a complex adaptive system for controlled violence, but then I stepped out on the street with the Mod Squad.” She turned to Lindsey. “That’s a baby boomer pop-culture reference.” Lindsey ignored her.

“It’s Mapstone,” Peralta groaned, waving his hand at me. “He spent fifteen years teaching college and now he just can’t get enough action.”

“Stop,” I said. It hurt to smile.

“He’s right, Dave.” Lindsey stroked my un-bruised hand. “You seem to be a magnet for this kind of thing.”

“I’ve never seen you draw down before.”

“I’ve never had to before,” she said quietly.

We were right across from Union Station, a charming Spanish mission-style building from the 1920s that sat dark and closed. The last passenger train had been canceled a few years ago. The building’s old stucco front glowed yellow-white in the reflected light of the street lamps. Off behind it, a freight train slowly trundled along, steel wheels clanking across steel rails. Several police cars and a fire truck were arrayed on the street in front of us. The cops were all in the building and the firemen, tall and bulked up, milled awkwardly around their truck, not sure whether to go or stay. A figure slumped in the back seat of one of the PPD cars, safely behind locked doors and Plexiglas prisoner screen: my antagonist from the elevator shaft.

Peralta and Lindsey filled me in on what had happened. They saw the bad guy too late, as he jumped out of the darkness and landed on me. It hurt all over again to hear them describe our roll into the wooden gate of the elevator shaft, and then through it. About that time, the guy’s partner took a shot at Peralta and got the hell out of the building before Peralta canceled his ticket for good.

Somewhere in the melee Peralta tore a nasty gash in his arm. Then there was nothing to do but try to get me out of the elevator shaft, a task that had to wait for the fire department. It was a good fifteen feet down there. Somehow I got out with just a twisted ankle, some bruises, and a black eye.

“At least we got two of the dirtbags,” Peralta said. “With any luck, PPD can find out who their friend is. They say there’s been a smash-and-grab gang of carjackers working downtown for a month. This is probably them.”

Peralta sniffed. “So much for their little bicycle patrols. You want a job done, call a deputy sheriff.”

“What about the women in the Benz?” I asked.

“The one on the passenger side went to the hospital unconscious,” Sharon said. “The only place you can beat somebody that badly and she ends up fine is in the cartoons.”

“Two doctors’ wives out on the town,” Lindsey said. “Just stopped at a traffic light. Wrong place, wrong time, adios.”

Mike and Sharon were bickering over whether he should get a tetanus shot when a young, crew-cut PPD sergeant stepped out.

“Chief.” He approached Peralta tentatively. “Don’t mean to bother you, but there’s something in here you’d better take a look at.”

If Lindsey and I had gotten into this mess alone, the city cops might have treated us with annoyance. Our escapade would have caused much report writing by our colleagues in blue and they wouldn’t have appreciated the county mounties butting into their jurisdiction. But Peralta was chief deputy of Maricopa County and a presence that could impress, intimidate, and manipulate just by walking in a room. He looked at the sergeant, rose stiffly from the squad car bumper, and suddenly his stride was all business. I followed them back toward the building. Just standing up caused my face to start throbbing painfully.

“This building has been abandoned for years,” the sergeant was telling Peralta. “Looks like the last use was as some kind of warehouse.”

“It was once a hotel, back in the twenties, when the railroad station opened,” I said.

Peralta flashed me a look of annoyance. “I hurt too much for history lessons, Mapstone.”

We stepped around old packing cartons and rotting wooden pallets. The fire department had set up some emergency lighting; it cast a harsh halogen glare and stark shadows around the big room. At the mouth of the elevator shaft, a ladder provided easier access than I had found an hour before. The sergeant climbed down, followed by Peralta. I went next, then Lindsey. Sharon, I noticed, stayed outside.

It was still gloomy and close at the bottom. Cops’ flashlights played off piles of trash and ancient, greasy cables and pulley wheels. It was maybe ten feet by ten feet. Big enough for two men to find each other in the dark. The sergeant led us through a wooden barrier on one of the shaft walls. We stepped through, crossed down maybe half a dozen small steps. That led into a narrow hallway of rough red brick and what looked like a dirt floor. I stooped to fit. Peralta filled the hallway, scraping the walls like an aircraft carrier transiting locks made for pleasure boats. Lindsey, at five-seven, could just stand up.

“We found this when we came down,” the sergeant said. “There’s several passages down here. Looks like they might have been sealed off from the rest of the warehouse. If there’s another way up, we haven’t found it. One of my guys leaned against part of the brick and it gave way. That’s when we called the detectives.”