High Country Nocturne - [47]

I wiped down any surface that I might have touched before putting on the gloves. Then I checked the peephole into the hallway. The corridor was empty. I unlocked the door again, stepped out, and softly closed it. I put on my sunglasses.

One benefit from the building being on hard times was that the security desk downstairs was empty.

Later, I would find one of the few remaining pay phones in the city and call the fire department: I noticed a strange odor on the eighteenth floor. Coming from the office at 1806. You might want to check it out. Maybe it’s a gas leak.

I was glad to be out in the January air.

Chapter Twenty

When I returned to the hospital, a woman in a gray pantsuit with short red hair intercepted me at the elevators. Her face was full of freckles and smiles. So this was not the social worker who would tell me that Lindsey had died while I was gone.

I let loose the breath I had been holding.

Then I noticed the gold shield and gun on her belt.

We shook hands and she introduced herself as Megan Long, a Chandler Police detective. She had an engagement ring with a large clear diamond in the main setting and smaller ones on the band. I had come to notice such things.

“Buy me a cup of coffee,” she said, and we walked to the Starbucks near the main lobby and sat at a table.

“I thought you’d want to know that we found the diamonds.”

“Yes,” I managed, my mind scrambled by what I feared would come next: and Peralta is dead.

But the phrase didn’t come. Out of a dry mouth, I added, “Where?”

“Apparently in the parking lot of the mall.”

She watched my expression. Her eyes were jade. I tilted out my hands in bafflement.

“Yesterday, a woman brought a small wheeled suitcase to the station. She put it beside the front doors and left. We thought it might be a bomb so everything went on lockdown and the bomb squad was called. ‘Shelter in place.’ What a stupid-ass expression.”

“But it wasn’t a bomb…”

“It was the diamonds meant for the jewelry store, packed exactly as they were shipped. We showed them to the jewelry store people at the mall. Then they called the man from Markovitz and Sons who had brought them to Sky Harbor and handed them off to Peralta. He stayed in town after the robbery. Anyway, he came to the station and verified that they were real. He put them under a microscope. Very fancy-looking thing.”

“Nothing was missing?”

She shook her head. “Nope. We captured the woman’s image on the cameras and the license of her car. A SWAT team arrested her last night.”

I asked who she was.

“A housekeeper at the San Marcos.”

It was the oldest hotel in town, established in 1912 by Doctor Alexander Chandler and built in the Mission Revival style. For decades, it had been the centerpiece of a little town on the Southern Pacific Railroad surrounded by farms. That was before the trains went away and Chandler turned into an affluent “boomburb” with almost a quarter million people and Intel semiconductor plants. The Crowne Plaza was now running the San Marcos as a golf resort.

I said, “You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head. “Catalina Ramos. She has a second job at the Johnny Rockets by the Harkins Theatre in the mall. She had parked at the far edge of the lot, as employees are required to do. She claims that after she got off work, she drove home, and discovered the suitcase in the trunk of her Toyota.”

“Why didn’t she call the police?”

“She’s undocumented. Been in the country since 2001. But after SB 1070, she was afraid that if she went to the police, we would deport her. This kind of thing has happened all over, especially since the new sheriff began his ‘immigrant sweeps.’ We had a good relationship with the undocumented community before that.”

SB 1070 was the law that cracked down on illegals, or, as some critics said, merely drove them deeper into the shadows. Nationally, it made Arizona into a place of bigotry and hate. It was good politics. Ask Chris Melton. Peralta opposed it and lost the election.

I said, “And you believe her? She had nothing to do with the robbery?”

“We do. She has a totally clean record and children in school. No brothers in prison. No boyfriend. Her employment checks out and she was at work when the robbery went down. She decided to leave the jewels at the front door of police headquarters.”

I asked if the Toyota had been locked. It had. But it was a twenty-year-old car without an alarm and could have easily been opened with a Slim Jim device.

That would have taken some brass: shoot the second guard, take the diamonds, get in your truck, take the time to stop at an anonymous Toyota, break in and pop the trunk, drop in the suitcase, lock up, and drive away. All this while police were converging from every direction.

It was the kind of brass that Peralta had.

Detective Long said, “What are you thinking?”

“Where this leaves Peralta.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

“He’s still wanted on warrants for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.” She paused. “I know you worked for him and he’s a friend. Everybody in our department is stunned that he did this. But I’m still going to find him and put him in prison. He was caught on the camera. The evidence is definitive.”