High Country Nocturne - [4]
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.”
In this "prequel" to the popular David Mapstone mysteries, author Jon Talton takes us back to 1999, when everything dot-com was making money, the Y2K bug was the greatest danger facing the world, and the good times seemed as if they would never end.It was a time before David and Lindsey were together, before Mike Peralta was sherriff, and before David had rid himself of the sexy and mysterious Gretchen.In Phoenix, it's the sweet season and Christmas and the new millennium are only weeks away. But history professor David Mapstone, just hired by the Sheriff's Office, still finds trouble, chasing a robber into an abandoned warehouse and discovering a gruesome crime from six decades ago.Mapstone begins an investigation into a Depression-era kidnapping that transfixed Arizona and the nation: the disappearance of a cattle baron's grandsons, their bodies never found.
The private-detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix Deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case: A suspicious death investigation involving a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter's death a suicide, but the client doesn't buy it. He's her brother. Or is he? After his murder, police find multiple driver's licenses and his real identity is a mystery.
Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctoras husband, a surgeon, and this makes her a aperson of interesta to the police, if not at outright suspect. But someone other than the cops is watching Cheryl Beth.The killing comes as former homicide detective Will Borders is just hours out of surgery. But as his stretcher is wheeled past the crime scene, he knows this is no random act of violence.
A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. But when he's brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world's most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn't be a case for historian-turned-deputy David Mapstone – except the victim has been dating David's sister-in-law Robin and now she's a target, too. David's wife Lindsey is in Washington with an elite anti-cyber terror unit and she makes one demand of him: protect Robin.This won't be an easy job with the city police suspicious of Robin and trying to pressure her.
Cincinnati homicide Detective Will Borders now walks with a cane and lives alone with constant discomfort. He's lucky to be alive. He's lucky to have a job, as public information officer for the department. But when a star cop is brutally murdered, he's assigned to find her killer. The crime bears a chilling similarity to killings on the peaceful college campus nearby, where his friend Cheryl Beth Wilson is teaching nursing. The two young victims were her students. Most homicides are routine, the suspects readily apparent.
Без аннотации Вашему вниманию предлагается сборник зарубежных детективов.
В новом томе собрания сочинений классика бельгийской литературы Реймона Жана Мари де Кремера, более известного под литературными именами Жан Рэй, Джон Фландерс и Гарри Диксон, вошли девять повестей из его почти неизвестного за пределами Бельгии цикла. Цикл посвящен приключениям потомка одного из эпизодических героев Артура Конан Дойля, упомянутого в рассказах о Шерлоке Холмсе — профессора Джо Белла. Перед нами новый герой, шестнадцатилетний Эдмонд Белл, столь же юный, как Рультабий из «Тайны желтой комнаты» Гастона Леру, столь же проницательный и столь же блистательный.
В причудливый узор сплетаются судьбы героев романа: адвоката-красавицы Тамары, безнадежно влюбленного в нее аналитика Боба, оперативника Вохи и бизнесмена Виктора Новака. Любовь, ненависть, соперничество, случайные встречи и взаимные обиды связывают этих людей, а объединяет единая цель: поиск серийного убийцы. «Несчастный случай» — так называется новый роман, раскрывающий обстоятельства пятого дела из серии «Тройная защита». Прошло несколько лет после смерти мужа Тамары Макса, друга и коллеги Боба и Вохи.
Летними вечерами в дачном поселке собиралась дружная компания хороших знакомых – пока к ним не присоединились новые соседи. Это неприятные, грубые люди – сильно пьющий художник Денис, его вульгарная супруга Иричка и ее тихая, незаметная сестра Зина. Как-то вечером, когда компания сидела во дворе, нарядная Иричка прошла мимо, небрежно помахав присутствующим, а вскоре ее труп нашли в ближайшем овраге…Полиция начала расследование, но соседи решили не оставаться в стороне и попросили Олега Монахова, называющего себя ясновидящим и волхвом, присоединиться к поискам убийцы в частном порядке…
Литературный клуб библиотеки имени Александра Грина славится активной литературно-светской жизнью: яркие презентации, встречи с незаурядными творческими личностями, бурные дискуссии, милейшие дружеские посиделки. На одном из таких вечеров происходит убийство. Личность погибшего, склочника и скандалиста, не вызывает особых симпатий тесного клубного кружка, однако какое несмываемое пятно на безупречной репутации библиотеки! Таня Нестерова, соратница, подруга и заместитель директора Бэллы Мироновой, понимает, что полиции с разгадкой не справиться: убийца не случайный гость «со стороны», а кто-то из ближнего круга, а причина убийства кроется в глубине запутанного клубка тайных любовных связей, ненависти, предательства и уязвленного самолюбия.
Политическая ситуация на Корейском полуострове близка к коллапсу. В высших эшелонах власти в Южной Корее, Японии и США плетется заговор… Бывших разведчиков не бывает — несмотря на миролюбивый характер поездки в Пхеньян, Артем Королев, в прошлом полковник Генштаба, а ныне тренер детской спортивной команды, попадает в самый эпицентр конфликта. Оказывается, что для него в этой игре поставлены на карту не только офицерская честь и судьба Родины, но и весь смысл его жизни.