High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

Her eyes narrowed, trying to conceal her emotions.

She held up her index finger. “Would you give me a minute?” Then she stood and walked twenty paces into the high-ceiling lobby, pulled out her cell phone, and engaged in an animated conversation. She closed the phone and paced, not looking in my direction. In five minutes, the phone rang and she hastily answered.

Sitting down with me again, she looked flushed and was shaking both her legs.

“It’s not a stupid question. The case did have a tracker and it was working. I don’t know why the FBI didn’t turn it on. Or, for that matter, why Peralta didn’t cut it out and get rid of it. He had guarded diamonds before. He knew it was there.”

“So maybe he didn’t intend to come back for it.”

“Which means what?” Her response was heated. “And why the hell didn’t Horace Mann activate the tracker?”

“Maybe he did,” I said.

She stared at me a long time before running a pale hand through her hair.

I ran the scenarios through my mind. Maybe Mann saw the tracker indicating the parking lot and assumed Peralta had ditched the device there while keeping the diamonds. Maybe he put the Toyota under surveillance hoping this Pamela Grayson would show up to claim the bag.

She mumbled, “This is fucked up” and looked at the people around us. I understood. Who the hell knew what had gone down? Who was involved and who could be trusted?

“There’s something else.” She bit her lip, wondering whether to tell me more. “The rolling bag had a hidden compartment. Mann found it. Nothing in it. But when I talked to the guy from Markowitz, he said their bags didn’t have hidden compartments. It’s strange.”

“What about the other guard?” I asked.

She turned and faced me. “He’s out of the hospital, wearing a sling. The bullet went through his shoulder but didn’t hit any bones.”

I nodded. Peralta was that good a shot.

I said, “Which shoulder?”

“His left.”

“Which is his gun hand?”

The freckles on her forehead scrunched together. “His right.”

“And he couldn’t get off a shot?”

“No,” she said. “He said Peralta’s shot knocked him down, stunned him. He’s an older gentleman. But my partner checked him out and he came back mostly clean.”

“What do you mean mostly?”

“He lives out in the desert by Wickenburg and there’s some intel on him being suspected of selling guns to felons, but nothing proved. He has a valid PI license. He’s a Native American gentleman.”

My freckle-less face must have shown something.

She asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded, trying to remember what I had seen in the video of the robbery. The second man was wearing a red ballcap, his back to the camera. My attention had been on the image of Peralta, grabbing the bag, turning, and firing. The feds wouldn’t allow me to replay the scene.

In a low voice I asked for the man’s name, even though somewhere inside I knew the answer.

She assessed me. “I shouldn’t, but what the hell. You’re a deputy again. His name is Edward Cartwright.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Ed Cartwright.

FBI Special Agent Ed Cartwright, deep undercover.