South Phoenix Rules (David Mapstone Mystery 6)

She put her arms around me. “You care too easily.” That weightless laugh again, then a sob. “Robin built a lot of walls to protect herself. But I can tell you…”

She swallowed hard. “I can tell you, she cared for you right back.”

The broken shards sitting against my vital organs again shifted painfully. When I could speak again, I said, “I’m in love with you. With you, Lindsey. I think I was from the first moment I saw you.”

“I know.”

Draw me a map of the human heart. I am lost.

“I’ve failed you so much, David. I lost our child. I failed Robin.”

“No. Never.”

“It’s true. My life is a failure.”

I stopped for a moment. A light rain baptized my forehead. “Turn off your Linda Unit, Lindsey Faith.”

Now she laughed fully, my old Lindsey, if only for a moment.

Five minutes later I gathered the courage to ask, “Do you love him?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. No hesitation. After a long pause: “I just wanted to feel something again.”

The shrapnel sliced against my heart. How long before I would just bleed to death?

I said, “You left me once before.”

“I know.”

And that was all she said. We were both damaged.

The rain was falling hard and straight now, seeping through our clothes. It felt fine. We watched as Robin’s ashes vanished into the grass and the timeless soil.

“Oh, God.” Lindsey choked it out.

We held each other and cried a long time in the precious spring rain. I prayed that we would all be together again in the morning. Then I helped her up and she kept her index finger in my hand as we walked together through the darkness, tryin

g to find our way out again.

***

Peralta was tapping slowly on a laptop computer when I walked into his office the next afternoon. He looked up, unsurprised.

“You think you’re real clever, don’t you.”

I shrugged.

“You could have gone to jail.”

“I know.”

“You could have been killed.”

“That would have been fine.”

“Have you ever considered…” He stopped, for he probably knew I had considered everything. My dirty hands were at my side, my academic detachment lost like luggage thrown out on a distant highway. I almost said: maybe I’ve become more like you. But I didn’t say it because I didn’t know what I was becoming. Whatever it was had no regrets over the rough justice meted out to Sal Moretti or Tom Holden. The detached part of me that remained knew it wasn’t quite right. But if I looked too long in the rearview mirror this would be the least of the demons chasing me. Peralta leaned back, straining his luxurious executive chair.

I looked around the place. It was as homely as it was austere. But this was where he had decided to make his stand. And it occurred to me, amid all the madness, that he was my oldest friend. Lindsey didn’t know what she wanted. Robin was gone. My hometown wasn’t home any longer. But my oldest friend was here, making his stand. So I would make the stand, too. I desperately needed to make this stand. So I said I was ready to go to work.