Robin’s scream woke me.
It was not a sexy scream. It was sharp, primal, terror-ridden. High voltage shot up my spine. I yanked open the bedside table drawer, grabbed the Colt Python, and rushed out the door and into the dark living room. She screamed again, called for help. I ran up the stairs with both hands on the grips of the pistol, arms crooked, barrel in the air. When the door swung open I almost brought the barrel down and shot her.
She slammed the door and smashed her body into mine. She was shivering uncontrollably. As we stood on the interior landing, I held her tightly with my left arm, keeping the gun ready and staring at the door. I tried to push her away.
“No, no, don’t go back there. Please, no, don’t go…”
She said this as a cascade of hysteric words strung together, as I tried to disentangle myself from her and go to the garage apartment.
“No, don’t!”
I pushed her back on the landing and got as far as my hand on the doorknob.
“No! Please, David! Don’t go back there!”
She decisively locked the door, flew back into my arms crying, and I held her tightly until she calmed down.
Robin is slightly taller than Lindsey. We were both completely naked.
2
We were dressed and the revolver was back in the bedside table drawer by the time the first cops arrived, one a compact young Latino and the other an Anglo woman with her yellow hair in a bun. They regularly worked the beat in the neighborhood. I felt as if I’d been on ten thousand crime scenes, far more than the college classrooms I had taught in, a map of the twin forks my life has taken that I didn’t want to think about too much that winter. Too many crime scenes, and this one happened to be at my house, the house I was raised in. And I was just one of the “subjects,” as the police would say, at best a “complainant.”
They strode up the staircase two steps at a time with their Glocks drawn. More cops than you realized accidentally shot themselves with their Glocks. It lacks an external safety. The internal safeties, meant to keep the semi-automatic from discharging if it’s dropped, can be disengaged by a slight or accidental pull of the trigger. These two managed fine. They left the door open and crossed to the garage apartment, ordering me to remain in the living room. That was as it should be, but I wasn’t used to being on the other side of the yellow tape. For years now, my deputy’s badge had been the best backstage pass in town.
I already knew enough. Robin had responded to my initial questions before the first units got there, so I knew the basic information. Now she sat sullenly on the sofa next to me, having regained some of her toughness. But her eyes were still wide and she sniffled every few minutes. Robin was not a crier, much less a “hysterical female,” as the dispatchers might have termed her if I had allowed her to make the 911 call. She was wearing a pair of Lindsey’s sweat pants and one of Lindsey’s T-shirts. I didn’t like that. Now I had more questions for her, somewhere shy of a hundred, but I didn’t ask. My hands shook slightly and I felt gin and tamales at the back of my throat. I realized I was in a little shock, too.
My cell was still in my hand and I had scrolled to a familiar number. Robin shook her head.
“Don’t bother Lindsey Faith,” she said. “It’s midnight in D.C.”
I put the phone away.
The Anglo cop strode back through the living room, her black shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor, and then outside. In a few minutes she was wrapping the yard with crime-scene tape. To me, it was an overreaction, but the policing business had changed since I had been a young uniformed deputy. Through the picture window, I saw a few neighbors standing on the sidewalk. It’s not as if they had never seen law enforcement vehicles at our house, with both Lindsey and me working for the Sheriff’s Office. A couple of years ago, a new neighbor asked around if we were having marital fights, she had seen so many cop cars stop by. We had laughed at the time. But the three hundred block of Cypress hadn’t seen this. I counted the people I knew, lingered over some that I didn’t. Three couples, one woman alone. Unlike most of Phoenix, Willo was a real neighborhood with plenty of walkers and it was still fairly early, not even ten o’clock.
Then we were getting the initial interview for the incident report. The female officer wrote in a tight hand. Robin did most of the talking. But this was just preliminary: names, addresses, the basic scenario—before the homicide detectives showed up.
They weren’t long in arriving. My stomach gave a distinct kick when the first one walked through the door.
“Mapstone. God, I live for the day when I show up and you’re in handcuffs. It might happen tonight.”
“Happy New Year, Kate.” I said it with just enough snark that it hit her but didn’t damage any innocent bystanders.
Phoenix Police Detective Sgt. Kate Vare glared at us, hands on her hips. Underneath a PPD windbreaker, she was still compact, pinched, venomous. We had a history.
“Did you get kicked off the cold-case unit?” I smiled.
“No such luck, Mapstone. Budget cuts mean everybody’s having to do more. So I have the pleasure of coming to your pile of rocks in the ghetto tonight.” She ran a hand through her hair, which she had fried into a red color not found in nature. She was enjoying being taller than me for a change. “You just sit there.”
“I want to go have a look.”
“No way, sir,” she said. “You’re involved in this.” She smiled widely. I had never seen Kate Vare smile before. “Anyway, you’re not even a deputy any more.”
I let out a long breath.
“News travels fast around the cop shop,” she said, and mounted the stairs.
After she was gone, her partner, a big young guy who might have been nicknamed Moose by my parents’ generation, gave me a sympathetic look. His badge was hung around his neck—one of the new ones, made to imitate the LAPD shields. It had a number in the 9000s. It made me feel old: I remembered when PPD badges were numbered in the 4000s.