High Country Nocturne - [8]
I asked him what he had seen tonight but he avoided the question.
“The West we knew is gone, David. Don’t you know that? They even canceled the cowboy artists’ show at the Phoenix Art Museum. That was the only reason I ever went down to that damned city.”
Looking back, I could see Sharon’s car under the streetlamp. I didn’t want to get farther away. From where we stood, the broad starry sky demanded attention. I could pick out the Little Dipper. As a Boy Scout, I had won a merit badge in astronomy, but now I couldn’t identify most of the other constellations.
Santa spoke again. “I sit at home and when I can’t sleep…my wife died ten years ago and lot of nights I can’t fall asleep…I walk around and watch. Watch the stars. Watch this dying little town.”
“Like this evening.”
“That’s right. Haven’t seen so many police in a long time and FBI, too. Knew it couldn’t have been a burglary. Must be something mighty important. That Texaco belonged to Shorty Hayes, you know. Shorty ran it forty-six years before he died. Hell of a poker player.”
“Want to tell me what happened at Shorty’s tonight?”
He stopped and looked back at the ruin of a gas station. We had gone about a block.
“Cops, cops, and cops. My boy wanted to be one, ya know? But he went off to Vietnam and didn’t come back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too. Anyway, they were really interested in that Ford pickup that got towed off.”
“Did you see how it got there?”
“Oh, yeah. Man parked it there. A big man, broad shoulders, black hair. Taller than you. He was smoking a cigar.”
“Anglo?”
Grainer shook his head. “Could have been. Probably Mexican. I wasn’t close enough to be sure and he stayed in the shadows.”
Grainer was describing Mike Peralta.
I asked how far away he was when he saw the man?
“About a block away, standing behind a tree.”
He contemplated as his jaw worked the chewing tobacco, then continued.
“It was too far away to make out his face. But the fella didn’t act lost. He was careful to pull into the dark instead of sitting under the light. Got out of the truck. Lit his cigar. Walked around. I told all this to that big black G-man.”
“Did the man at the truck seem nervous?”
He squinted, exposing dozens of little ravines on his face. “You sure you ain’t the law?”
“Not anymore.”
I had to wait for the conversation to work at its own speed. Grainer pulled a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket and stuffed another piece of chaw inside his rosy cheek. A sudden gale of cold, dry wind failed to make any impression on his wide hat.
“He didn’t seem nervous. He walked my way a bit, so I was getting worried he’d find me watching him. Then he yawned and stretched and turned around. Went back and leaned against that truck, and enjoyed his smoke. He waited maybe twenty minutes and a car pulled up. White four-door, California plates. I couldn’t read the numbers. Eyes are going. He climbed inside and they went back on the Interstate.”
“Heading?” I hoped he knew their direction.
“Couldn’t be sure.”
“Do you know about what time he got here?”
“Little after ten.”
That was several hours unaccounted for after the robbery.
I asked if he had unloaded anything from the truck.
Grainer shook his head.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Diamond couriers used a small suitcase on wheels. The FBI had played the tape for me, showing Peralta and the second guard going through a back corridor of the mall. They walked side-by-side-the hallway was made for deliveries, so it was plenty wide. The other guard had the wheelie bag.
Then Peralta suddenly spun the man off balance and snatched the case with his left hand. When the man reached for his gun, Peralta already had his Glock in his right hand and fired. One shot. The other guard fell back. Peralta took the bag and walked calmly out of the camera’s view.
This was all the feds would show me. I asked about other cameras, other angles, and they went into the we-ask-the-questions attitude. But the reality was that they had lost him.
Then he got to Ash Fork.
But the weapons locker in his truck was empty. That was unusual. The man always drove around with multiple guns. I would have to do an inventory of the room-sized armory back at the office, which Lindsey’s sister Robin had christened “The Danger Room.” Now we had plenty of danger.
I thought about what Grainer had told me. The diamonds could theoretically be stuffed in his pockets, depending on the size of the settings. So he had decided to dump the suitcase.
“Did he do anything while he waited?”
He puffed out his cheeks and smiled at the miracle of a returned memory.
“Yep, yep. Now that you mention it, he did. Got on his haunches and fiddled with the back bumper of the truck.”
I thought about that. Arizona only required one tag on a vehicle, not two. Peralta must have put on a different tag to get out of town. His real one would have been on all the police broadcasts. Otherwise, it was one of thousands of Ford pickups. Then he changed back to his real tag. He intended for the truck to be found and identified.
And he left the business card with the message for me on the dash.
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.
Писательница Агата Кристи принимает предложение Секретной разведывательной службы и отправляется на остров Тенерифе, чтобы расследовать обстоятельства гибели специального агента, – есть основания полагать, что он стал жертвой магического ритуала. Во время морского путешествия происходит до странности театральное самоубийство одной из пассажирок, а вскоре после прибытия на остров убивают другого попутчика писательницы, причем оставляют улику, бьющую на эффект. Саму же Агату Кристи арестовывают по ложному обвинению.
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