The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

“How was the Apple Store?”

“I got a new laptop,” she said. “And other stuff.”

I had never seen Lindsey travel without a computer. “What happened to yours?”

She blew a smoke ring, then a second.

“They confiscated it after they took away my security clearance and fired me.”

23

Lindsey dropped me at the office the next morning. Even though it was ten, I had beaten Peralta there again. I was so sore from the various explosions in my life that my first few steps were like an old man’s. I wasn’t complaining about the ones that involved Lindsey but I was out of practice. The night before, I went to bed while Lindsey worked on her new computer. She had claimed a space on the landing above the living room and sat cross-legged with her back against the wall. When I was a child, the stairs and landing had seemed exceptionally high. Now, having grown to six-feet-two, I could touch the landing with my hand. Such was perspective and context.

Sleep hadn’t come easily, so I was still awake when Lindsey had slipped in bed and curled up against me. It was so much like what Robin had done that first night that it kept me awake even longer. At first I thought my dreams had turned into a hallucination. But, no, it was Lindsey. Robin was taller and bustier. We fit together beautifully. Robin was dead.

Lindsey woke me from two nightmares, but when she wanted to know what I was dreaming, I said I couldn’t remember. Hearing about other people’s dreams was as tedious as watching their vacation videos and Lindsey sure didn’t want to know about my dreams lately.

Around five, we had sex again, this time without the anger, but she was as loud as her half-sister, something new about my wife.

We used to play a game over cocktails. Lindsey had been endlessly entertained about my adventures before we got together, but she had drawn the line at knowing about my former girlfriends. It was better for her mental health not to know, or so she had said. As we had enjoyed martinis, I would tease her: “I’ll tell you anything, all you have to do is ask.”

“No thanks,” she would say.

When I had asked about her life, she would say, “I lived a boring life before you, Dave. There’s nothing to tell.” I had never believed that, even though I was older than she and had lived perhaps more adventures, but she didn’t talk easily about herself. I knew she had grown up in chaos, run away to join the Air Force where she had learned computers, and had claimed one boyfriend before me. Perhaps this was even the truth.

Now I wondered how much I wanted to know about the past months of her life. I imagined her boyfriend in D.C. as wealthy, handsome, and definitely better endowed than me. Maybe he was a black guy. Maybe her lover was a woman. And now I knew this person had mined a deeper lode of sexual passion from her than I had ever been able to reach. For that to happen, a woman had to be willing to really let her lover in, really open herself. She had not done that for me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the past twenty-four hours had shown me different. Did I really want to know about those past months?

After we lost the baby, Lindsey could barely endure being touched. That changed yesterday as we bounced the historic floorboards in the garage apartment. My wife, who had never even used the word “ass” before, was now talking dirty during sex.

I supposed I should thank the son of a bitch.

Now I was slipping my report on Grace Hunter into a file folder when the office phone rang and the readout was a San Diego area code.

“This is Detective Sanchez with the San Diego Police,” came a pleasant voice on the other end. So Isabel Sanchez was going to talk to me after all.

“How may I help you?”

“How about opening your gate so I can come in.”

This was not good. I wished Peralta were here but pressed the button to open the gate.

The night detective was about five-four with a size two figure, dark eyes with long lashes, and long, black hair that looked as if it had caught a gust off the Pacific at that exact second. Her pregnancy was also beginning to show. The man with her was a few inches shorter than me but very buff

with yellow surfer-boy hair. San Diego had the best-looking cops in the country.

“This is my partner, Detective Jones,” she said. I invited them to sit down, thinking: sure, Jones—he probably had multiple IDs and aliases, too.

“Deputy Chief Kimbrough speaks highly of you,” she said.

“That’s nice. He’s a great cop.”

“That’s why we’re not filing a charge to ask our friends in Phoenix to arrest you on,” said the pleasant voice.

So it was going to be like this.

Several charges came to mind, but she wouldn’t know about those.

I said quietly, “I was a victim of a crime in your city.”