Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

Larkin was sweating terribly, and I could see a large stain spreading in the crotch of his pants. He forced his eyes closed and said quietly, “I’ll meet you in hell.”

Then Wolfe stuck the.38 back in his belt and tossed me a pair of handcuffs.

“You can have him,” he said. “I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

He stepped across Copeland and then turned on the porch.

“You did okay, Mapstone,” he said. “Give my regards to Chief Peralta.”

Then he walked off into the night.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Susan Knightly greeted me at the door and led me into her condo, an airy, sunlit space of plants and wicker furniture and photographs. On one wall was a moody black-and-white shot of workers in a farm wagon under an ancient oak tree and cloud-scudded sky. “California,” she said as I lingered. Inside another simple black metal frame were the faces of two little girls-a color print this time-with old eyes and haunted looks. “The Amazon,” she said. We sat on a dark wicker sofa under high windows dense with palm fronds.

“You’re a hard man to find,” Susan said.

“She said without irony.”

She laughed. “Well, I figured after what I read in the paper, it was safe to come out of hiding.”

“You hide well.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I know it seems silly to you, but I was so unnerved by what happened to Phaedra, I didn’t know what to do. After that night at the shopping mall, I went to San Francisco for a few days. A friend put me up.”

“You could be charged with withholding information in a homicide.”

“What?” she laughed. “I told you what I knew. I think you had just promised me protection when the gunfight broke out.”

“Okay,” I said. “So much for the tough cop routine. You called me. I’m here.”

“Look,” she said. “Phaedra Riding has caused me more trouble than I would ever have imagined. I was just trying to give her a break.”

I watched the palm trees and didn’t speak.

“She played the cello, you know,” Susan said. “It’s a very mournful instrument, when you think about it. I think Phaedra spent most of her life running away from a lot of sadness.”

“Sadness with men?” I asked.

“She was a very sensual creature. That part of her set her free from her devils, I think. Maybe only temporarily, and maybe it was self-destructive. But it was enough for a while.”

“Love?” I coaxed.

“It wasn’t love. Love hurt too much. She told me, ‘Always be the one to leave; never be the one who’s left.’ Quite a philosophy for a twenty-eight-year-old. Once, she told me she always tried to juggle two or three lovers at once so her heart would never be exposed, as she put it. They never knew about one another, of course.”

“Sounds like Phaedra had a lot of secrets.”

She looked at me with those green eyes. “Haven’t you ever had secrets, David? Cheated on your lover? Had a one-night stand with a friend, or with a stranger? Did something you never thought you’d do, and it was strange and wonderful and exciting? You felt alive like you never imagined possible. The next day, you acted like nothing ever happened. That part of your history belongs only to you.”

“What I’m after is the secret that will catch a murderer.”

We sipped tea and watched a bird fighting to get into the palm tree to nest. She asked, “Why are you here?”

“You called me.”

“No, David. I mean, why are you investigating this case? This isn’t an unsolved murder case from 1959. Why in the world are you involved in this?”

She had turned the tables on me very neatly. So much for my great interview skills. “It started out personal. Phaedra’s sister, Julie, is an old friend of mine from college.”