Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

“I’m not trying to be a selfish bitch,” Julie said. “I just need help. Phaedra is the only family I have really. Dad died five years ago, and Mom is more and more out of it. I just feel so scared about Phaedra.”

“I understand,” I said, and realized I had stepped into something that could have a really bad ending. I pushed the thought away.

We hugged out in the ovenlike heat, and for just a moment, stroking her hair, I felt like I had twenty years ago. Then she kissed me on the mouth, a nice kiss, and she drove away.

Back inside, Charlie Parker had finished and the house felt as if it hadn’t been lived in for a hundred years. I looked around, freshly aware of how odd or brilliant Grandfather’s floor plan was. The high-ceiling living room with bookcases behind a stairway that went nowhere-well, it went to the garage apartment in back, via an open-air passage. The illusion of space, when the house only had two small bedrooms. The quirky charm of a garden courtyard off the little study that connected to the living room. I suddenly missed my grandparents so much. Wished I could walk into the dining room and find Grandmother watching her soap operas. Wished I could get a whiff of Grandfather’s pipe as he paced in his study. Even Patty had loved this house-she’d encouraged me to rent it out after my grandparents died, rather than sell. At times like this, I didn’t know if I could bear to part with it, or if I could bear another night in it.

It was not a good mind-set in which to receive a full-mouth French kiss from an old girlfriend. I poured another scotch, wished it wasn’t too hot to sit in the garden, ended up on the staircase, absently perusing the books that Grandfather, and then I, had stacked onto the old shelves.

Julie Riding was not the great love of my life. But she was my first real girlfriend. “Real” in the sense that I lost my virginity to her, at the shameful old age of nineteen. “Real” in that we stayed together, more or less, for two years and sometimes I felt like I loved her.

We built the kinds of traditions that twenty-year-olds build. I was very proud to have her on my arm. I think she thought I was “smart,” but what did that mean to a young woman like Julie? I remember she never liked books. And I wasn’t at all like the rockstar clones she seemed to moon over.

Did we love each other? Who knows? Who knows anything at that age. Who knows anything now? The heart is such a mystery.

I do remember the first time I saw her, walking away from me on the mall at ASU, all blond straight hair and long legs and youth. We would never know less sadness in our lives than that first time we stayed out all night talking, then spent the morning in each other’s arms in the safe chill of the air-conditioned darkness. Every possibility that life held was open to us. And every mistake.

I dreamed about Julie that night, dreaming in the heavy sleep that comes after a day spent in the desert heat. But whatever we said and did was forgotten in the sudden smashing of bumpers and

screeching of tires out on the street. I was immediately awake. The clock read 3:30.

My bedroom fronts the street. I could hear shouts and cursing in English and Spanish. Then threats. Then a gunshot, sharp and deep. Then another two-higher-pitched, maybe a.22.

I dropped painfully to the floor, grabbed up the cordless phone, and dialed 911. Talking to the dispatcher, I crawled over to the window and cautiously lifted one blind. They were gone, not a body left behind, not a trace. Just the vivid white circle of the streetlight. Four minutes had passed. I explained three times to the 911 operator that I hadn’t seen the incident, only heard it. I told her it wasn’t necessary for an officer to make contact.

When I was growing up in this neighborhood, even in the turmoil of the 1960s, it had seemed the safest place in the world. The biggest worry for parents was the traffic on Seventh Avenue. Now there were no safe places. I pulled on some shorts, went into the garage, and pulled a dusty, slender box out of a carton I had brought back from San Diego, along with my books and lecture notes. Inside was a Colt Python.357 with a four-inch barrel and ammunition. When I was a deputy, this had been my pride and joy-“one of the finest handguns in the world,” Peralta had pronounced-and had cost about a month’s worth of paychecks. It had less usefulness for a college professor. I hadn’t seen the revolver for a month, since I qualified at the range to get my deputy credentials and keep Peralta off my back. I took the box back inside, turned out the light, and listened a long time in the darkness until sleep came again.

Chapter Six

Phaedra Riding’s apartment sat fifty feet back from Hayden Road in south Scottsdale, on the second floor of one of the cookie-cutter stucco complexes that popped up around the city back in the 1970s. The front door faced a courtyard, with its pool, landscaping, and ornamental lights, while a rear balcony looked out on a parking lot and, beyond a stand of olive trees, the street. This part of Scottsdale lacked the moneyed glitz of the resorts and walled-off neighborhoods a few miles farther north, but it was still comfortable and pleasant. I used the key Julie had given me to let myself in.

The place was gently disheveled, clothes and books strewn about, and it had that expectant smell of pricey perfumes and broken-in denim that you find in the apartments of some young women. A pile of old mail was on the desk-nothing but some bills and advertisements. The room was dominated by a watercolor from a Santa Fe artist. Several gorgeous pieces of Acoma and Santa Clara pottery sat under a light sheen of dust on a shelf. In one corner was a music stand, chair and a cello case. Monochromatic Scandinavian furniture: tasteful, minimalist, and expensive. Not exactly like my apartment when I was twenty-eight-or now.

Back in the bedroom, a queen-sized bed was neatly made. More clothes were piled onto a wicker basket. She had photos of Julie and her parents on the bedside table, as well as a paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged. I whispered the book’s first line in my head: “Who is John Galt?” I picked carefully through drawers, looked under her bed, pulled up the mattress. The closet was full of clothes and two pieces of luggage, both empty. The bathroom was spotless, but if she was off with a new lover, as Peralta was so sure, she’d left her diaphragm and a partly used tube of spermacide in the medicine chest.

I closed the cabinet gently enough to hear a movement on the carpet behind me, then to see a shadow against the wall. I’d like to say I didn’t jump.

“No, you get back,” she yelled, holding out a small can of Mace.

“Wait, I’m a cop,” I said, the words sounding so strange to me. She stepped back to the bedroom door. “I’m going to reach in my pocket for an ID.” I opened up the wallet with my star and identification. She read it, compared my face with the one on the ID card, and reluctantly put the Mace down.

She was not Phaedra, but she looked the way I might imagine Phaedra in, say, fifteen years. She was slim and fairly tall, wore a tailored charcoal gray suit, its skirt cut above the knees. Her strawberry blond hair fell to just above her shoulders, and her fine, high cheekbones had a heavy dusting of freckles. She stood, wary, watching me with green eyes.

“Mapstone,” she said. “What kind of name is that?”

“Welsh.”

“Ah. You look more like a college professor than a deputy,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” I said. “And I will. But I’d like to know who you are.”

“I’m Phaedra’s boss,” she said. “Susan Knightly. I run the photo studio where Phaedra was working. She’s my assistant.”

She dug into her shoulder bag and handed me a business card:

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Susan Knightly asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Phaedra’s sister filed a missing person’s report.”