Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

Julie excused herself for a long trip to the rest room. I sipped the martini and looked out at the palm trees swaying. A storm was coming into town. Maybe we would get an hour’s break from the monotonous heat.

When she returned, I asked, “Julie, I need to know if there’s more to this than you’ve told me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, have you told me everything?” Like when you slept with Jim Ellis after that party when we were juniors but never told me. “We don’t know yet for sure, but it seems obvious that Phaedra was alive until very recently. So where was she? Had she been in danger all this time? Had she disappeared voluntarily, or was she kidnapped? What about those men who were watching you? Is there anything you haven’t told me?”

She shook her head, then said, “Sometimes Phaedra would just go away for a while, but never like this. It was her way of just shutting down when relationships or whatever got too intense. She might not let Mom and Dad know, but she’d always let me know.”

“Should you notify your mom?”

Julie’s eyes darkened and she shook her head vehemently. “You know, in a weird way, you’re lucky you never knew your parents, David. And I know how alone you must feel now that your grandparents are gone. But they did love you. I can’t say my folks ever loved any of us.”

She swirled the golden liquid in her glass. “We were the perfect family.” She laughed unhappily. “Once, when I was about fifteen, I was out with some friends and we ran into Dad with his girlfriend. He’d screwed around for years, I guess. But that’s kind of hard to handle when you’re fifteen. Finally, he just left and never came back. Moved to Florida. Married a bimbo. Not that it really mattered, because when I was growing up, he never had anything to offer but slaps and criticism. Nothing I ever did was enough to earn his love.”

I let the waitress refill our glasses. It had been years since I’d heard Julie talk about her father, but the bitterness was undimmed. Hers was a ghost-ridden family drowning in what Sharon Peralta would call “unresolved sorrows.” A brother killed himself when he was seventeen.

“Mom was useless,” Julie said. “Pills and booze. She was worse after the divorce. And”-she choked a bit-“Phaedra got the worst of it. Phaedra always felt that abandonment, so she was determined never to trust, always to be the first to leave.”

Outside, a sparse rain was starting to fall, hitting the palm trees with big dusty drops. It made me feel a little better. Even a little change from the constant oppression of the heat was welcome.

“I’m so tired, David,” she said, and she looked it. “I don’t know what else to tell you right now.”

We drank in silence. Then we walked through the dust and lightning back to the Blazer and I started to drive her to her car. Instead, we ended up at my place, where we drank too much. She cried a long time, then finally came to my bed, where we made love with the peculiar frenzy of the lost and the grief-stricken.

Chapter Eleven

I am running through my neighborhood in the eternal twilight of dreams. All the houses are familiar but darkened, and I can’t run fast enough to catch up with Phaedra. She has always just been there before I arrive. And she is in danger. I know this. And I run into my house, thinking I will find Mother and Dad and Grandma and Grandfather, and there is so much I need to tell them now, now that I’m a forty-year-old man.

But the house is empty except for the twilight, the loneliest part of the day, the lonely Sunday night of the clock. But then I know I’m not alone, and I see someone, and I know we are in danger. And I fire the Python and watch as the bullet moves too slowly, too slowly, and falls to the floor.

And then I am in bed, my legs entangled in Phaedra’s legs, exhausted from lovemaking. She laughs when she makes love. She runs that red hair across my chest. The neighbors keep pounding, pounding on the wall, but we laugh and don’t care.

The door. I sat up and pulled away from Julie, who was still out. I looked back again. Julie Riding in my bed. Last night had really happened. I pulled on a robe and walked to the front of the house. Peralta was at the door. The clock on the wall said 2:15-in the afternoon.

“Goddamn it, I’ve been banging on the door for fifteen minutes,” Peralta said, walking past me. “You never used to be a heavy sleeper.”

“Good morning to you, too.” God, my head hurt.

“It was a shitty morning, and now it’s a shitty afternoon. You have any coffee? Oh, shit, do you still not drink coffee?”

He was wearing a dark blue suit and a crisp white shirt, a grim expre

ssion on his face. I offered to make some coffee.

“I will.” It was Julie. She appeared in the hallway, wearing my ASU T-shirt.

“Julie.” Peralta waved a little wave. He seemed uncharacteristically awkward.

“Hello, Mike. Just like old times, isn’t it?” She ran a hand through her tangled brown-blond hair and padded into the kitchen. Peralta arched an eyebrow at me and nodded toward the living room.

“Where were you yesterday morning when I called you on the cell phone?” Peralta sat heavily into the sofa.

“I went up to Sedona to see Phaedra’s old boyfriend. I thought he might have a clue as to where she was.”

“And what made you do that?”

“What’s going on, Mike?” I began, but his look caught me short. “He called me the night before.”