High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

“I might be wrong,” I said.

She put her arm around me and we walked, descending the wrought-iron staircase with its Spanish tile and ending up outside the building, before the Swilling fountain. The water bubbled and sang, rather like the east fork of the Verde in snow.

We stopped and faced each other.

“What should I do?” she asked, eyes exquisite and wounded and her mouth tilted toward mine.

I bent toward her and cupped her face with my hands. “Grow up.”

Epilogue

Lindsey is home now.

She spent more than three weeks in the hospital, fighting like a tiger to walk around the nurses’ station, go through in-patient physical therapy, and address all the difficult and messy stuff that people never think about. The docs and nurses sanitize it with jargon. Lindsey is a lady entitled to her privacy.

It is mid-February now. I always thought this was the sweetest month in Phoenix. Soon we’ll smell the citrus blossoms.

Lindsey sits outside while I work as her surrogate gardener. She’s not quite physically ready to be digging in the dirt. So it is up to me to plant the tomatoes and herbs, go to Whitfill’s for petunias and geraniums that will go in the sun and impatiens to fill the shady beds.

So I dig and plant, the timeless alluvial soil of the ancient river valley precious in my hands. My love watches and instructs.

Lindsey is back to her familiar long pageboy. She had her hair washed and cut the afternoon she was released from Mister Joe’s. Even once she was moved out of the ICU, the showers and haircuts offered by the hospital left much to be desired.

I take her to physical therapy twice a week. She works hard and gets stronger every day. It is amazing seeing the ways the body can heal itself. We are now able to walk to the end of the block and back without her using a cane. She is the bravest person I have ever known.

She can’t sleep on her stomach. Doctor’s orders. That had always been her favorite sleeping position.

The scars on her chest are healing nicely. She is much more conscious of them than I am. To me, she has never looked lovelier.

Her next goal is to get completely off pain meds so she can enjoy a martini. Next week, she promises.

Mike and Sharon visit every few days. Lindsey appreciates their kindness and I…well, for me it’s complicated. I have known and cared about them almost my entire adult life, long before I met Lindsey. But the lies told this time and their consequences ruptured something between us. We are finding our way back.

The office is closed. The private detective trade will have to wait awhile. In the meantime, we have given depositions about what happened in Payson. Amy Russell will be tried in federal court for the murder of Cartwright.

Melton has disappeared from my life. I have read nothing about Diane Whitehouse. For all I know, she will prevail in the fight for the estate, and Melton will keep his donor. At the least he can avoid humiliation by not pressing the case I began, the one he foolishly passed my way.

The one we failed was Tom Frazier. I think of him often and all the years I was allowed to live, years denied to him by what happened in the desert that long-ago night. I feel guilty when I look at the mountains to the west. As a historian, I can provoke memory. Absolution and benediction are beyond my means. So, apparently, is justice. I could try to take the case to the state attorney general, but he’s a friend and political ally of Melton. This is Arizona, at least for now.

I made plenty of promises during those dreadful days, about a different future for us if only Lindsey would survive. There would be time to talk about all this.

In the meantime, she has gone offline. No computer, no news, no Facebook or Twitter. I took over a table for literary magazines and book reviews. In paper. She devours them and calls it the Sanity Table.

I follow the diminishing news enough to know that Phoenix is wracked with insanity. Chris Melton is more popular than ever. The state is a national punch line.

Soon summer, ghastly summer will come. The toffs will be gone to their houses in the San Juan Islands and the California coast. Zephyr Whitehouse will be in Palo Alto. Only the monsoon might bring the rest of us relief. But the storms don’t come into the city anymore.

That’s not quite true. Now, if they do penetrate the heat island of the concrete desert, the result is often violent microbursts. The dust storms come as they always have. They’ve been discovered by the national media and dubbed “haboobs.” Great visuals. But less and less rain. Lindsey and I have given up on television.

She has not spoken again about her out-of-body experience after the shooting. I have not asked.

The day they released her from the hospital, I got on my knees and asked her to marry me again. Then I slipped her rings back on. It’s only a diamond solitaire. But it is enough.

Every day we have, every night I hear her breathing next to me, is enough.

Paying My Debts

Cal Lash has lived a remarkable American adventure. Part of it involves being a Phoenix Police patrolman, sergeant, and detective, as well as a private investigator and diamond courier. I am grateful for his patience in answering my many questions. The same goes for Ellie Strang, R.N., who was most helpful on the medical front.