High Country Nocturne - [5]
That wasn’t good. At least I wasn’t in handcuffs…yet.
This agent was wearing a parka, same FBI emblems. Somebody from the Flagstaff field office, prepared for the cold. He walked me over to a black SUV and I climbed in the passenger side. The engine was running and it was warm inside. The door closed and I resisted the temptation to examine Mann’s paperwork. That was another thing missing from the cab of Peralta’s truck: the files and other job-related documents he always toted around.
Peralta was a techno-Luddite and proud of it. I could barely get him to use a laptop. He did use a dictaphone. Without a secretary, I was left to transcribe his words to the computer and print them out for him.
The driver’s door opened, Mann slid in with surprising grace for his size, shut the door, and faced me.
“I’ll share a little dirty laundry,” he said. “Since your friend did his thing, Eric Pham is on his way to a new posting in Anchorage. You ask me? He should have been fired.”
That was fast retribution. Very fast.
Eric Pham and Peralta went back a number of years. Each respected the other and they had collaborated without the friction common between local law enforcement and the feds. After we opened our private detective business, Pham had tossed some cases our way. Who was I kidding? Tossed them Peralta’s way. As I had spent hours on Friday being interviewed by the FBI, I kept wondering if Peralta was working a new case. If he had gone undercover without even telling me.
On the other hand, the bureau was very conscious of its image. If Peralta had really gone rogue, of course Pham would be shipped out as punishment.
“Dave.” Mann rubbed his heavy hands together and rested them on the steering wheel. “We know all about you. Ph.D. in history. You were a professor at Miami University and San Diego State. Then you came back to Phoenix and went to work for the Sheriff’s Office, clearing cold cases.”
That was the shorthand, yes.
“We know you are Mike Peralta’s partner as a private investigator and his best friend.”
He stared out at a tow truck that had arrived and was loudly snagging the F-150. I let the words settle on me. Peralta was so self-contained, controlled, formidable, and often so maddening that he didn’t make friends. He didn’t need friends. He had been my training officer and then my boss. Even now, I hesitated to use the word “partner” to describe our business arrangement.
But, yes, aside from Sharon, I supposed that I was his best friend.
I watched a strand of crime-scene tape break loose and fly off toward Williams. A deputy watched it, too, wondering whether to chase the debris, and deciding to let it go.
“I wasn’t always a fed.” Mann’s voice was low and friendly. “I started out at Chicago PD. My brother-in-law got me in. We were really close.”
He paused and I nodded, turning in my seat to face him. His eyes now appraised me as companionable orbs.
“Trouble was, he was a drunk. A mean drunk. He beat his wife, a saintly woman. And you know what I did? Nothing. Not a damned thing. I let him off once when I stopped him for DUI. The guys and me didn’t arrest him when we were called to their apartment and he was being abusive. It was the code. So I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Peralta isn’t a drunk and doesn’t beat his wife.”
He watched me attentively, gave a few sympathetic nods of the head.
“You want to have your friend’s back, Dave. I totally get it. I respect that. But Oscar, that was my brother-in-law, he never had my back. See where I’m going?”
Having been on the other side of countless interrogations, I did.
“You seem kind of nervous, Dave.”
I realized that I had unzipped my jacket, then I had rezipped it. It wasn’t much, but this was how it worked. If I seemed nervous, it was because a woman had come close to killing me forty-five minutes before, but he didn’t know that and I wasn’t saying anything about it. If I seemed nervous, it was also irritation. I was not a “Dave.” Only Lindsey got to call me that. Otherwise, I suspected my body language was neutral and he was fishing.
“Things aren’t too far out of hand yet,” Mann said. “You can help yourself. All you have to do is tell the truth. What really went down?”
I ran my fingers through my hair and picked at some imaginary lint on my jacket. I turned away and shook my right leg. Now I had his attention, although he did a good job of concealing it. Then I smiled at him.
“The Reid technique has been debunked as junk psychology, Horace. It produces false confessions. It won’t produce a confession here because I have nothing to confess. I got to our office after Peralta had left for the diamond run. It was routine. He’s been on six or seven of them since we became PIs. I didn’t know anything else until your people showed up with a search warrant.”
His hands came off the steering wheel. “You think you’re smart. Doctorate in history, all that. You’re playing it really stupid. But that’s the way you want it. I can’t help you.” He let the quiet fill in, and then, “This truck being dumped up here, that surprises you?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Жанр романа «Город изгнанников» можно определить как «романтический детектив для любознательных». Действие происходит в стенах Женевского отделения ООН, что позволяет автору не только увлечь читателя захватывающей интригой, но и перенести в закрытый для простых смертных мир международных чиновников, так уютно разместившихся в самом сердце благополучной Швейцарии.Арина Родионова – героиня романа – вовлечена в расследование серии не поддающихся логике загадочных насильственных смертей. Она не только расследует убийства, но параллельно готовит тур для своей подруги – владелицы небольшого турагентства.
Брак Йона Эверманна превратился в унылую формальность. Зато в гамбургской гимназии, где он преподает, его высоко ценят все — и ученики и коллеги. Да и необременительные любовные интрижки с лихвой восполняют то, чего этому импозантному пятидесятилетнему мужчине недостает в семейной жизни. Но однажды в гимназии появляется новая учительница — молодая, красивая, загадочная Юлия, и Йон вдруг впервые понимает, что такое настоящая любовь. Ради нее он готов на все, даже на преступление.
Илья Енисеев, герой нового остросюжетного и драматичного романа известного писателя Андрея Воронцова, наделен даром видеть будущее. Поначалу способности его не находят признания. Но стоило молве разнести весть о его успехах, как люди, особенно богатые и влиятельные, понимают, что пророк ― это капитал, вложенный в будущее. И вот, доселе гонимый, Енисеев становится великим искушением для поверивших в него, потому что нет в мире соблазна большего, чем тайна. Между сильными мира сего начинается борьба за пророка.
Каждый думает, что где-то его жизнь могла бы сложиться удачнее. Такова человеческая натура! Все мы считаем, что достойны лучшего. А какова реальность? Всегда ли наши мечты соответствуют действительности? Не стоит винить свою Родину во всех бедах, свалившихся на вашу голову. В конечном счете, ваша судьба находится исключительно в ваших руках. В этом остросюжетном детективе перед читателем открывается противоречивая Америка, такая соблазнительная и жестокая. Практичные американцы не только говорят на другом языке, но они и думают по-другому! Как приспособиться к новой жизни, не наляпав ошибок? Да и нужно ли? Данный детектив входит в серию «Злополучные приключения», в которых остросюжетная линия тесно переплетена с записками путешественника и отменно приправлена искромётным юмором автора.
На этот раз следователь по особо важным делам Клавдия Дежкина расследует дело проститутки, обвиненной в краже у иностранцев крупной суммы в долларах. К тому же девушка оказалась причастна ко всему, что происходило в притоне, организованном в квартире одного известного актера, убийство которого считалось уже раскрытым. Именно в этой квартире находился тайник со свинцовыми стенками, содержащий видеокассеты с компроматом. Следы ведут в саму городскую прокуратуру.
«Прокуратура против мэрии!» — под таким заголовком московские газеты опубликовали запись телефонного разговора прокурора города с крупным чиновником из мэрии. Каким образом этот материал попал в прессу? Следователь по особо важным делам Клавдия Дежкина выходит на главного организатора целого ряда преступлений, следы которых ведут в городскую прокуратуру.