High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

Another possibility chilled me. What if Pham was perfectly acquainted with her because Amy Morris was a government agent? She didn’t even have to be FBI. We had so many agencies guarding the so-called homeland now.

Like Cartwright, Pham had dismissed me but in his case with an odd mix of formality and fake-casual management jargon. “So don’t come back to this location, Doctor Mapstone. Don’t try to contact me. You don’t have the bandwidth to help in this space. So stay away.”

Stay away, my ass.

I retrieved my briefcase from the ICU nurses and went to the waiting room. I should have written up my interview with Diane Whitehouse to add to the murder book. As far as Eric Pham was concerned, I was done.

The phone call back had seemed to go well but the technicians weren’t able to get a fix on the man’s location. We agreed to meet at six tonight by the fountain in Scottsdale Fashion Square. Except I wouldn’t be there. I described one of Pham’s FBI agents as me, as Matt Pennington.

But I wasn’t done.

I thought about the white board at Johnnie’s, the boxes drawn in blue marker and labeled PERALTA, RUSSIANS, SUSPECT AGENT, PENNINGTON, OTHER?

It looked as if it had been drawn up and abandoned like some corporate initiative that went nowhere. And what was “other” ?

I pulled out a pad and made some drawings of my own.

One was a starburst with Peralta at the center. I sketched lines out to boxes for me, Ed Cartwright, Eric Pham, Matt Pennington, and the unknown people Peralta had joined in Ash Fork after abandoning his truck at the derelict gas station on Route 66. These represented direct relationships to Mike Peralta.

I added a perpendicular line from the Russians to Cartwright. They had contacted him.

Next I added a box for Strawberry Death with lines to Pennington and me. I made dashes between her and Peralta. I had no physical proof they had made contact or knew each other, but she had told me she had made him a promise.

To be complete, I drew a connection between Horace Mann and me. He had interrogated me on Friday afternoon, summoned me to Ash Fork that night to unlock the gun compartment of the truck, and then didn’t order FBI surveillance of our house. That last had proved very useful to Strawberry Death.

What if she were working with him? If so, why was he so interested in having me dead? It had to be something more than what Kate Vare considered my ability to get in the way.

But the diagram wasn’t quite right.

The only immediate connection to Pennington was Peralta. I pulled out the business card and studied his printing: FIND MATT PENNINGTON.

The dead man wasn’t on the FBI’s radar. But he sure as hell was on somebody’s or Strawberry Death wouldn’t have “suicided” him only a few hours or even minutes before I found him. Who gained from his death? Nobody I could see. But he had information and either gave it up before he died, or…

Or he was that tough and committed. Why not? He was a Naval Academy grad who apparently worked on dangerous assignments.

Or he didn’t know and she killed him anyway.

I looked at the drawing, came up empty, and set it aside.

On the next sheet, I tried different thinking. If the crooks think of themselves as businessmen and some businessmen are crooks, why not look at the supply chain?

This produced boxes along a line. Inside the first was a question mark. After all, Pham wouldn’t tell me where those diamonds in evidence came from. From there, the line went to the FBI evidence control facility to Markovitz in New York to Chandler.

Going only that far raised questions. Why wouldn’t the rogue agent keep the diamonds himself? One obvious answer was to avoid being caught up if a search warrant was served on him. Maybe he didn’t have the contacts and distribution network—I was still thinking supply chain—to turn the rough into cash. That’s where the Russians came in.

And why did I know this much about the journey of these diamonds? One of their advantages was how they could disappear. They were small, easy to conceal, and carry across borders. Were we such great detectives in having this much information? Or was something else going on?

Perhaps I was being paranoid. Being shot at will do that.

After Chandler, I sketched the supply chain diagram in greater detail. Cartwright is shot and Peralta steals the suitcase. He pulls the switch in the parking lot, leaving the suitcase with the tracker in the trunk of Catalina Ramos’ Toyota and taking the hidden rough. He travels the freeway system to Rio Salado College where he goes in the parking garage for more than twenty minutes.

I drew a box for Ash Fork but only added a line of slashes. Too many unknowns.

My hand was about to draw more lines and boxes but it lingered on the Rio Salado box. Twenty minutes. A very long time to change a license plate, especially for a guy as mechanically skilled as Peralta.

I pulled out my iPhone and called Rio Salado College security.

Chapter Thirty-four