The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

“I can understand how you might still feel badge-heavy, Mapstone,” said Jones, who, with his mean little eyes, looked exactly like a badge-heavy cop. “But you’re not a deputy sheriff anymore.”

We went through this small talk, all designed to get a rise out of me, for about ten minutes. None of it worked. Jones gave me the cop stare. I returned it with the amiable look of a concerned civilian. I didn’t even feel the need to bring up their rushed and shoddy investigation into Grace’s death. From their attitude, it seemed clear that Kimbrough had already done that, based on my report that Peralta had emailed to him yesterday.

Sanchez said, “Grace Hunter phoned your office the day she died.”

I looked at her evenly, which probably made her more suspicious. But this was the way I always reacted to shocking news. It took me a moment to deny it, but then she produced a copy of the LUDs—local usage details—from Grace’s phone.

She handed me the sheet. Sure enough, our 602 area code number stood out, call placed at four-ten p.m. on the day she died. The call lasted two minutes. I memorized Grace’s phone number to write down once they had left.

“Care to explain?” Sanchez looked at me sweetly.

I cared a great deal and had no explanation. I turned on my laptop and opened up the office calendar. It showed that Peralta had given a speech that afternoon at a law-enforcement conference. We hadn’t been in the office when the call came in. No one had left a message. Sanchez walked around, looked over my shoulder, and examined the listing.

“How long did you know Grace Hunter?” Jones asked unsweetly.

“I didn’t know her when she was alive. There was no message left here. You can see from the LUD that it was a quick call. It probably rang to the answering machine and the caller hung up.”

Jones leaned forward in his chair. “Want to try again?”

“No.”

We sat for a good five minutes with only the sound of the air conditioner to keep us company. I struggled to maintain my agreeable, relaxed look, but the reality was that it sucked being on the other side of an interrogation. I wasn’t used to it. This would be a good time for Peralta to arrive.

“It seems too coincidental,” Sanchez said, walking in a circle around the office, studying the large, framed maps of Arizona and Phoenix that I had bought at Wide World of Maps to decorate the place. “You go to San Diego and find her husband, Tim Lewis, murdered. His apartment blows up. Now we know that Grace Hunter called you before she died.”

“If she did, we didn’t know that,” I said. So they were married. “And Tim was a client. He asked us to look into her suspicious death…”

“We know all that.” Detective Jones dismissed me with a chop of his hand. “We found your receipt in the blast debris. Hand written on blank paper and signed by you. Real professional operation you have going here, Mapstone. No answering service. Hand-written records.”

It was my turn to lean toward him. “We all have our shortcomings, Jones. Like when Tim filed a missing person’s report on Grace with your department and nobody made the connection that she was already dead and misclassified as a suicide.”

Jones’ ears started turning red.

“Wait for me in the car, Brent,” Sanchez said. He noisily pushed back the chair and slammed the door behind him.

She leaned against Peralta’s desk and watched her partner leave, then turned her head toward me.

“Are you the good cop?” I asked.

“Dream on. So no call from Grace Hunter?”

“We never talked to her.”

“But she called you.”

“Somebody called here with her phone. She was found dead with a new phone that didn’t have any called numbers on it. That was in your report.”

Sanchez persisted. “Why would this somebody call here?”

I told her the truth: I didn’t know. Maybe it was Tim, using her phone. Considering he didn’t know she was dead when I first met him, that seemed unlikely, but no need to tell her that.

I didn’t say how this call to our office indicated that whoever killed Grace, set off the Claymore mine, and took the baby had made that call to frame us, or at least slow us down, knowing the police would track the LUDs. This had been planned well ahead of the moment Felix walked in that door.

The only alternative was that Grace herself had actually tried to call us. But why? She didn’t even know us.

“I can make your life miserable.” Sanchez sat in the chair in front of my desk, crossed her legs, and placed long fingers protectively across her belly. “Losing your license will only be the start of the hurt I can put on you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But Kimbrough and Peralta go back a long way, and you’ve got a bungled investigation on your hands. Let me ask you a question, if you don’t mind: you pulled Grace’s LUDs. Do they match with the phone found in her purse that night?”