High Country Nocturne - [62]

I should have been frightened. I was elated.

I was edgy enough, though, to jerk when my phone rang. It had a Sheriff’s Office prefix.

“David, it’s Chris. How is Lindsey?”

We were so damned casual and friendly. I told him.

“I read your report. It’s exactly the kind of excellent work I expected. And I appreciate you doing this at a time of tragedy.”

I mumbled a single-syllable response, wondering if he always spoke as if he were on television.

“Let’s talk about it. I know this is a tough time, but maybe you could come down to headquarters. Better yet, I can meet you at your office in the courthouse.”

I wanted to protest but didn’t, mindful of Cartwright’s admonition. I sure didn’t want to go to the new headquarters building at Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street, in what was once the downtown warehouse district. The ninety-three million-dollar building looked like an alien battlecruiser was mating with a 1970s shopping strip. But ugly as it was, it was Peralta’s baby: he conceived it and fought for the funding and now it was Chris Melton’s temple. The idea of going inside made me sick.

“How about the courthouse?” I said.

“Does twenty minutes give you enough time?”

I told him that it did.

On the way downtown, I called Kate Vare and told her what I had found.

Her voice was icy. “Are you working my case, Mapstone?”

“No, this is why I’m calling you. I stopped by our office and checked the surveillance tapes.”

“Why?”

“Because I was the victim of a crime. Because I wanted to make sure our office was secure. Because I wanted to. Why does that have anything to do with what I’m telling you?”

“I’ve seen your act, Mapstone.”

What the hell did that mean? I started to speak but she cut me off.

“I want to see these tapes.”

“Sure, fine.”

“And why were you there?”

I went through it again. To me, the point was easy: The woman was not only in town, she was still stalking me, trying to burglarize our office. Not only that, she had almost been caught and the police would have the car, the license. Hell, they might have even picked her up a few blocks away, or at least done a field interview until Strawberry Death sweetly talked her way out of it.

I said, “She was here early this morning, trying to break in. If you check the logs and find the suspected four-five-nine call, where a vehicle was towed from our address on Grand, you might find the identity of this woman.”

“Quit telling me how to do my job,” Vare said. “You have bigger issues. You have something she wants.”

“I don’t know what,” I said, trying to keep any “tells” out of the timbre or rhythm of my speech. “Any thoughts?”

She chuckled joylessly. “I know you’re into history, so I’ll tell you a story. When I was starting out, they told stories about the old police headquarters. It had an elevator up to the city jail. It was a really, really slow elevator. And when they had a suspect who was holding back, the detective might ride up with him and carry a rolled-up phone book in his hand. By the time that really slow elevator reached the jail floor, the suspect would be talking like his life depended on it. I always liked that story.”

She would love for me to be the guy handcuffed in the slow elevator and her with the phone book. Properly used, it could inflict terrible pain and never leave a bruise. Or so the old-timers had told me. I didn’t take the bait.

I said, “The Chandler detective told me they recovered the diamonds.”

“I know. Too bad for your buddy. He did the crime and he didn’t even get to keep the diamonds.” Another chuckle. “I read the report you sent to Meltdown on your old case. You fucked up.”

“The detective fucked up.”

“You were the first officer on the scene, Mapstone. The Sheriff’s Office was pretty shoddy back then. They let you be a deputy, right? Now they’ve brought you back, so that tells you a lot about Sheriff Meltdown.”

“Kate, what are you doing to find the woman who shot my wife?”

“I’ll let you know when we have something concrete. I’ve picked up three homicides since Saturday night, okay? So you’re not the only family member asking for help from the police.”

I struggled to keep my voice even and professional.

“Any luck with fingerprints from the gun she lost? Or the burglar bag?”

“No prints,” Vare said. “She probably wore tactical gloves and you didn’t notice. Not even one hair from the bag.”

I suppressed a sigh.

“Look at it this way, Mapstone. You disarmed her of the big gun. What shot Lindsey was smaller caliber. We recovered a.32 shell casing. So things could have been way worse if the woman had fired her primary weapon.”

“Yes.”

“If she’s a pro, the Beretta Bobcat or Tomcat is fashionable now. Small, concealable and it can carry a silencer. So we are working this case.”

I thanked her and asked again if she would check into the impounded Chevy from Grand Avenue.

But I was only speaking to myself. She was gone.

I wondered how long it would take her to make a connection to the late Matt Pennington. “Suicided.”

But by that time, the FBI would already be involved and Kate Vare’s life would be a jurisdictional goat fuck, as Peralta would say. Peralta, who had answered the phone that went with the number on the inside of Pennington’s matches. The number his killer had been seeking.