The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

“We believe,” he said, “that we have disrupted what could have been a catastrophic domestic terrorism attack.”

“Agent Pham!” A female reporter with perfect red hair shouted the question. “We have information that these men were members of the White Citizens Brigade, a domestic terror group. Is that true?”

“This was an organized, anti-government group. Beyond that, I’m not prepared to comment, Megan.” He was cool and unruffled as a cascade of further questions followed. What were the names of the suspects? Who was the man who was shot by SWAT? What were the specific targets the terrorists intended to strike? He gave up nothing.

My stomach was an acid bin. No mention of the baby. Why had I expected anything different?

“Is this connected to the explosion in San Diego last week?”

“It’s too early for us to draw conclusions, Brahm.”

“What is former Sheriff Peralta doing here?” a reporter wanted to know.

Pham nodded knowingly. “Retired Sheriff Peralta is acting as a consultant for the bureau.”

When the press conference wrapped up, Peralta worked his way toward me like a slow-moving bulldozer, ignoring the journalists’ questions as only he could do. As I had watched countless times over the years, he didn’t answer but he worked the crowd. It was showtime all over again. It made me wonder if he intended to run for sheriff again someday, maybe when sanity returned to Arizona.

“Where were you?” He wrapped me in his big arm and steered me toward his truck. I thought: I was rifling my wife’s luggage, learning about her fuckathon in the nation’s capital while I was sleeping with her younger sister in our marriage bed. A normal family. Any other questions? I said, “I wanted to talk to Larry Zisman.”

“How’d it go?”

“He’s been dead inside his house for some time. I called Tempe PD anonymously.”

“Balls. Get in.”

We closed out the noise with a swoosh of the doors and drove slowly out of the lot, turning east on Dunlap. The lights of the cars, streetlights, and houses rocketed by in streams of white and yellow, and ahead was the police roadblock of red and blue. As the road rose, the city lights spread out to my right in an endless jewel.

We are the night detectives. We would never be private investigators peeping on unfaithful husbands. That was not the trouble that we would chase, the trouble that would run us down. I would not write grand history in thrillingly reviewed best-sellers. I am with Gibbon, history being “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” I am with Peralta, where we track it down armed. This is the job.

I gingerly fed my curiosity, afraid of what I might learn. “Are you a consultant for the FBI?”

“I guess we are now.”

“Are you holding out on me? Have you been playing a side game all along with Pham?”

“Jeez, Mapstone. No.”

I asked him what Pham was holding back from the press.

Peralta ticked off points with fingers on the hand that wasn’t guiding the steering wheel. “The house was rented three months ago by Edward Dowd, using his own name. He wrote a check for a year’s rent on a New York bank and it cleared without any problem. In this economy, the owner was glad to have a tenant who paid ahead. The suspects arrested are all confirmed members of the White Citizens Brigade, all former military. The Brigade is suspected of committing seven bank robberies in Arizona and Southern California over the past two years. It appears they used the money to fund their ordnance purchases, among other things…”

A Phoenix uni who looked about fifteen years old waved us through and we climbed up Dunlap as it narrowed and technically ended, turning into a dirt trail petering out against a metal barrier. Beyond it was the darkness of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve.

One sharp left turn put us at the house I had seen from television. It was built of gray cinder blocks with a wide overhanging roof. The trail made another turn to reach a two-car garage. Black-clad cops from various agencies were milling about, many with nothing to do but try to look busy and officious. The SWAT guys wore helmets, boots, body armor, and, beneath that, T-shirts that were two sizes too small. Dazzling floodlights, running on loud generators, illuminated the scene. A police chopper was hovering overhead, vainly playing its spotlight over the mountain preserve.

I slid to the dirt and walked with him as he laid it out.

The electricity and air conditioning had been shut off early. FBI and ATF negotiators had tried for hours over the landline to persuade the people inside to come out. They had refused. Meanwhile, a SWAT member had been able to snake a tiny night-vision-capable camera into the ventilation system so they could see inside some of the rooms. A robot had scouted the perimeter of the house to make sure it wasn’t mined.

They had pumped tear gas into the vents at four-forty-five and then had broken down the front door, tossing in a flash-bang grenade. Only one suspect had returned fire and a tactical officer had put him down instantly with one shot. He had been airlifted to Mister Joe’s but was dead when he hit the floor. The others had put down their weapons without a fight.

“It could have been really hairy,” Peralta said. It was interesting that he had walked onto so many crime scenes over the years that nobody thought to challenge him now.

Outside the front door, a tarp was spread. Most of it was covered with weapons: AR-15s, pump-action shotguns, assorted varieties of pistols, two shoulder-fired missiles, and enough crates of ammunition to make Ed Cartwright happy. The Claymores were probably safely in the custody of ATF. I barely paid attention.

“Where’s the baby?”

“They didn’t find him, Mapstone.”