High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

“Did you have somebody follow me up here?”

He looked through me. Classic fed move. “You should consider yourself under surveillance. I won’t say more.”

“What about a blond woman in a DPS uniform? Was that part of your game, Horace?”

He stabbed a finger into my chest. “Don’t push me. I don’t know anything about blondes, Dave. You’re going to be lucky if you don’t leave here in handcuffs.”

I tamped down my anger. He could probably rendition my ass to Saudi Arabia for “enhanced interrogation,” if I wasn’t careful.

“Look, I’m as shocked as anybody about what happened. You know everything I do. Probably more. Am I free to go?”

He stared hard at me, that stone face trying to turn me into a pillar of salt. It wasn’t working.

He snapped off the dome light.

“For now.”

I opened the door, stepped out, and turned back to face him.

“Peralta didn’t do this.”

He raised his voice against the wind. “He shot a man.”

“How’s he doing?”

Mann looked surprised by the question. “The hospital sent him home. It was a flesh wound.”

I said, “That proves my point.”

“What point?”

“If Mike Peralta had really intended to do damage, that man would be dead.”

Chapter Four

Horace Mann let me go and the last cruisers and black FBI Suburbans left. Soon, the lot was empty, the old gas station stood yellow and forlorn under the cone of the single streetlight. It had been stripped of everything from its signs to the gas pumps. Plywood covered the windows and doors.

I took a moment to imagine the station in its glory along Route 66 in the fifties. Uniformed attendants, cars with fins, signs advertising clean restrooms and Ethyl gas, the bell-ding of the comings and goings. Now it was a dead zone presided over by the whoosh of passing trucks and cars on Interstate 40 that looped south around the village.

I walked back to the car, opened the driver’s door, and leaned in.

“He’s not there, Sharon. But there’s no sign of foul play.”

Her shoulders drooped. “Thank goodness for that, at least.”

Then her eyes widened.

I turned and a shape emerged from the darkness.

I gave a visible start. That’s me, the cool PI.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He stood about six feet tall and wore a frayed Stetson, sheepskin coat, and blue jeans. His face was not lean or rawboned from sun and wind. This was not the Marlboro Man. Instead, he had fat merry cheeks, a rosy complexion, fleshy broad nose, and a white beard that had never encountered clippers. Santa Claus. He might have been anywhere from sixty to ninety years old.

“Are you a cop?”

I said, “Not anymore.”