I knew she was the best. She had been the star of Peralta’s cybercrimes unit and then she had spent a year in Washington working for Homeland Security. It still concerned me. The FBI would be all over us and in ways we couldn’t tell.
She distracted me by suggesting fajitas for dinner. We sliced onions and peppers together in the kitchen. I made guacamole. Then I grilled the veggies, steak, and chicken inside the old chimneria in the backyard while she warmed the tortillas in the oven and assembled the salsa, shredded cheese, and sour cream.
I was way too full and loving it when Lindsey said, “I found Matt Pennington.”
Before I could learn more, the front door registered a knock. Three loud thumps. Whoever it was didn’t bother to use the wrought-iron knocker.
Maybe it was a neighbor. Maybe it was the tamale women selling door-to-door or a television crew wanting to know about the “gem heist.” Whoever it was, I moved quickly to the front bedroom and peeked outside.
The porch light showed a black Ford Crown Victoria was sitting in the driveway.
Crown Vics with their wonderful Interceptor engines were on their way out as the standard police vehicle in North America. They were becoming rare. Ford had stopped making them. This one had an eight-inch scratch on the right edge of the push-bar that was attached to the front bumper. It was one of the vehicles of the sheriff’s personal security detail.
The three thuds came again. That was the way cops knocked.
I opened the door to see one man. His partner had stepped into the flowerbed to peer in the picture window. One of Lindsey’s impatiens was under his boot.
“May I help you?”
Peralta’s old detail had been reassigned, of course. Still, I knew one of this pair, a sergeant named Gordon who had been in the patrol division under Peralta and was on the edge of being fired for what appeared to be a righteous brutality complaint. The other one, two decades younger than Gordon, came back to the step and showed his star.
As if I didn’t know.
They could have been brothers. Both were about five eleven, wearing cheap Dockers and polo shirts to show off their biceps. Both had thinning-hair crew cuts. They looked like personal trainers at a second-rate health club. Gordon’s partner was giving me the cop squint.
Gordon said, “The sheriff wants to see you.”
Chapter Eight
I did not walk out to the Crown Vic without consideration.
They wouldn’t say what “the sheriff” wanted of me—and it felt like a metal file being dragged across my teeth even to hear the title connected with anybody but Mike Peralta, certainly not this pretender.
Don’t think I didn’t consider that they might not really be deputies. Too much was in flux: Peralta on the run, his messages to me, and the mysterious traffic stop early this morning. But I recognized the car and I knew Gordon from my days with the department.
I decided to take the chance, but not before I excused myself. In the bedroom, I slipped my easily concealed BUG—backup gun—into a holster in the small of my back and covered it with a blue blazer. The Smith & Wesson 442 Airweight revolver held five potent .38 special hollowpoint bullets. If the worst came about, it would be my last resort.
Back in the living room, I looked at Lindsey. She smiled and winked at me, See what they want.
I paused in the long twilight to admire the cool breeze, and then I climbed inside. The personal trainers even let me ride in the front passenger seat, with Gordon driving.
“I didn’t even know this neighborhood existed, Mapstone.” Gordon took in the elegant period-revival houses as we went west on Cypress and then turned south on the one-way that was Fifth Avenue. On the other side of McDowell Road were bungalows more than a century old and beautifully restored.
“Thought everything downtown was a slum, but this is something. Reminds me of back home in Minnesota, the old houses and front porches.”
“It’s not downtown.” My voice was friendly. “It’s Midtown. Downtown only goes as far as Fillmore.”
My pedantry shut Gordon up. We were passing Kenilworth School, where I had passed kindergarten through eighth grade, when I heard Gordon’s partner behind me.
“So how is Miss Cheerleader Legs?”
In the history department, his query would have led to a disciplinary action for using sexist language and objectifying a woman, followed by sensitivity classes and perhaps therapy.
In the cop shop, the proper response would have been, “Your wife looked fine after I fucked her this morning, kid. Thanks for asking.”
But I wasn’t a cop any more.
I didn’t answer.