South Phoenix Rules (David Mapstone Mystery 6)

“Is that for her, too?”

“This is for you.”

Now my dread was complete. He was arming me up. I mumbled a quiet protest about the Colt Python. I was not a semi-auto man. That wasn’t really where my brain was: We were on our own. Kate Vare and PPD were not going out of their way to help Robin. And all I had in the house was my .357 magnum.

I took the new pistol as if in a trance.

It was unfamiliar: a black semi-automatic, sleek grip, futuristic frame that tapered into the barrel, no visible hammer, gray polymer controls including the safety on the side. It had a small cylinder attached to the accessory rail: a laser sight. This was the business, nasty looking. And that was before I saw the ammunition. The rounds looked like small rifle cartridges, with blue on their missile-sharp tips.

“This is an FN Five-Seven, from Belgium. This can inspire you to study Belgium history.”

“You don’t strike me as a Walloonophile.”

“Fuck you, too.” He had no idea what I was talking about.

The pistol was amazingly light, half the weight of the .357. I popped the magazine and racked the slide mechanism to make sure it was empty. I studied the small bullets.

“The rounds are half the size of a nine, but they’re better,” he said. “This holds twenty rounds and one in the chamber. Here’s another two magazines.” I stuffed them in my pants pockets. Back his head and shoulders went into the trunk. He handed me a small slide-belt holster. Then a silver-plated .38 Chief’s Special.

“Teach Robin about this one. It’s a good gun for a girl. That’s all I’ve got in the car that doesn’t belong to the county,” he went on.

“I can’t believe you. I’m not a deputy now! Can’t you call the chief? Get Vare to give some protection?”

He shrugged. “I can try. There are limits to friendship, especially when you’re a lame-duck Mexican.”

I kept the guns, my hands full of weaponry as if visited by a violent Santa, but I didn’t like the semi-auto’s small bullets. Stopping power was everything. Peralta had taught me that. He obsessed about it. A .22 will eventually kill a suspect, but it won’t stop him if he’s determined to keep coming. The Python will knock a man down and kill him instantly.

He said, “Those five-seven rounds will penetrate ballistic Kevlar vests. Don’t worry. Anyway, you might need both guns and more.”

He slammed the trunk lid down and prepared to get in the car.

“I can’t believe you’re cutting out.” That didn’t faze him. He sat heavily in the driver’s seat. I desperately talked ammo to keep him there. “If these rounds will penetrate a vest, what if the bad guys use one on Robin?”

“Don’t let that happen.”

I didn’t wait to watch him drive away. I went inside and stashed the gear in my bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I felt a momentary paralysis set in, starting in my feet and moving quickly to the brain. We lacked the money to move to a motel for any l

ength of time. I didn’t want to be stuck out at Peralta’s big house overlooking Dreamy Draw. I needed some time away from him, his moods, and demands. This house represented almost everything of financial value we had, and a value much greater to me. Just leave it? Let them fire bomb it? I would lose the last thing my family had passed on to me. I would lose grandfather’s desk, Lindsey’s gardens. I would lose the library.

I closed the door. Lindsey answered on the fifth ring.

“Am I calling at a bad time?”

That stranger’s voice came back at me, the one that had emerged since September, the one that kept sticking a baseball bat into my stomach every time I heard it. I loved Lindsey’s voice, at one time thinking I knew every mood and desire firing it. Of course I was wrong. The personal calamity that overtook us was like an earthquake in a place with strong building codes, only the buildings didn’t stand. I had always thought such an event would cause us to cleave closer, but I was wrong.

Things, indeed, fell apart, the magical golden light of fall providing no balm. My love became unreachable. The holidays were especially grim, that day between Thanksgiving and Christmas when Lindsey lay on her stomach on the bed, her right leg bent up, twitching like a metronome, and she told me she had taken a job with Homeland Security. It was an announcement, not an invitation to discussion. She would move to Washington, D.C.—alone. She couldn’t be in the house. She needed time away from me. This was how much our personal disaster had shifted the axis on what I once thought was the most stable terra firma.

I tried talking about us but she cut me off.

“You always want to talk things out, Dave. Some things can’t be fixed by talking.”

Still. I brought her up to date and told her Robin needed to come to Washington, to stay with her. To hell with Kate Vare if she didn’t like it.

“No,” the stranger’s voice said. “David…” A deep exhaustion shaded her intonations. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just can’t.”

“I need your help, Lindsey.”

“You’re badgering me!”