Arizona Dreams (David Mapstone Mystery 4)

“The only thing Louie Bell owned in the world besides a trailer by the railroad tracks was one thousand acres of land. He inherited it when his older brother died. It’s way the hell west of Tonopah, so it’s not worth that much. But the county has tax liens against it. He was way behind in paying his taxes.”

“How do you know this?”

“There was a notice from the county at his trailer. I took it when I was down there last week.” She started to speak, but I talked over her. “I talked to a neighbor kid. He told me some guy kept coming by and harassing Bell. I don’t know about what. The same guy came back, after Louie Bell was killed, and went through the trailer.”

“Did he have a description?” she demanded.

“Not much,” I said. I told her about the Dodge pickup and the man with the shaved head and tattooed shoulder. I didn’t tell her that he had tried to rearrange my brains in the glass gallery. We were even in the information swap.

She stared at me warily, slowly shaking her head.

“I just don’t trust you,” she said. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t get me anywhere. The casino case belongs to the feds. Dealing with them is even worse than dealing with you.”

25

/> The city kept growing. Slogans and euphemisms played as big a role as “Go West Young Man” did in the nineteenth century. Now it was selling a dream “set within a stunning landscape…As rare as the splendor of the Sonoran Desert…Designed for your active lifestyle…A distinctively styled collection of homes…Draped with lush greens and rolling fairways…Miles of walking paths and hiking trails.” Lowly subdivisions had been upgraded to “master-planned communities.” Add gates to the subdivision and it became even more alluring. The city grew on glowing articles in the newspaper about Phoenix leading the nation in job creation and in attracting Californians who were cashing out the equity in their houses and moving here. Other words were less welcome: the occasional warning of a real-estate bubble or threat to water supplies, the regular reports that showed per-capita income was below the national average, that most of the jobs being created paid badly, and Phoenix lacked the diverse economy needed for a big city to compete. No, this was a story about promise and hope, floated on thirty-year mortgages or ARMs. It was the American Dream. The people who moved in didn’t remember the citrus groves or desert that the houses replaced, and they didn’t miss what they couldn’t recall.

Lindsey came home on the evening of July 3. We are not a couple that meets at curbside. So when I saw her walk past the security checkpoint, in her black jeans and black top and luminous smile, I set aside all my fears and misgivings to just feel her in my arms again. This was the woman I knew. Once again, our talk was easy and comfortable, as if we’d never been apart. Then we went home, to a room lit only by a candle and the cool kiss of the air conditioning on our warm skin. Robin wasn’t around, and she found little space in our happy conversation. The newspaper was full of crisis: one of two pipelines that brought gasoline to the city had broken, and gas lines were already appearing at the pumps. Seven homeless people were dead in one day from the one-hundred-seventeen-degree heat. A shootout between rival immigrant smugglers left two children dead. But for a few hours, my life was nothing but right.

When the phone rang later, it pulled me out of such a deep sleep that at first I had the consciousness of a houseplant. By the time Lindsey handed me the receiver, I was awake enough to hear the voice of a sheriff’s office dispatcher, and she was telling me where to go.

“What is it, Dave?” Lindsey asked, looking sleepy and freshly ravished. It was a nice look for her.

“I’m supposed to meet Patrick Blair,” I said. “All she said was it’s related to a 901-H.” That was the radio code for homicide. In a two-cop household, you use jargon without even realizing it.

Fifteen minutes later, I was waiting in the deserted parking lot of Park Central, the former shopping center turned offices half a mile north of our house. The temperature seemed to have dropped below one hundred, so I lowered the air conditioning off high/max. There was no crime scene, no flashing lights. But this was where the dispatcher said Blair would meet me. I turned off the lights and sat. Leave it to Blair to ruin my romantic evening. I looked around the deserted lot. When I was a kid, this was the biggest retail center in the state besides downtown. Now all the stores had moved out, and Phoenix had all the big city retail ambiance of Fargo. My bicycle had been stolen at Park Central when I was nine, my first encounter with crime. I couldn’t say that put me on a path to become a sheriff’s deputy. But there I was, having historical thoughts—or at least the memories that come from moving back to the neighborhood where you grew up. All these thoughts were helping me avoid wondering why Patrick Blair had called me out in the middle of the night.

Middle-of-the-night anxieties weren’t long in coming. What about Robin’s information that Blair had been in Washington at the same time that Lindsey was there? A man she liked and defended, an old beau perhaps. She had given me no reason to mistrust her. Robin was playing a game. I wanted to think so, but the nervous shaking of my right leg indicated otherwise. Maybe Lindsey’s passionate return to me had been fueled by guilt. Maybe that night with Robin I had been angry enough with Lindsey to earn some guilt myself. I could still feel the distinct contours of Robin’s breasts against me. I shook my head, hard. What the hell would Dr. Sharon say? She’d say I was tired and acting silly.

To the west, I saw the landing lights of a helicopter, bringing some poor soul into the trauma center at St. Joseph’s Hospital. I glanced over at the hospital’s rooftop helipad, which already held two choppers. Soon the rotor noise and lights were insistently in my face. Then the Prelude’s windows were vibrating and the car was being rocked by rotor wash. I had just enough time to imagine a medical helicopter crashing on the asphalt in front of me, when the chopper descended to a level where I could see the sheriff’s star and insignia on the side. Then it was on the ground, a compact steel insect with some kind of jet stabilizer that eliminated the need for a tail rotor. It sent out a wave of gritty dust, and when the rotors stopped a man stepped out and motioned me over.

“What’s up, Blair?”

“Sorry to get you out,” he said, with just the solicitous manner of someone who had cuckolded me. I tried to put that aside. He asked, “You know a kid who lives in a school bus, out near Hyder?”

“Yeah, he calls himself Davey Crockett. He was near Louie Bell’s trailer, gave me the description of the guy in the Dodge truck who might have been…”

Blair’s look stopped me. He said, “The kid’s dead. Homicide. Tony’s already out there. It’s apparently pretty bad. The sheriff wants us both out there as soon as possible.”

We were already walking to the helicopter. The air took on the scent of aviation fuel.

I had not been a passenger in what was called “Peralta’s air force,” and given my unease even in an airliner, I had no desire to go. But damned if I would let Patrick Blair know it. So I gamely boarded, and took a seat in the back, pulling the harnesses tight. Blair retook his seat beside the pilot, the engines loudly engaged, and we quickly lifted off. It was too loud to talk. We went straight up, shimmied a little and turned southwest. I held onto the seat, feeling vaguely dizzy as every air pocket and wind gust seemed magnified by the small airframe. I was steady, though. As had been true since I was young, real crisis calmed me. It was only in silence, in repose, what most people called “peace,” that I was vulnerable.

I recalled Davey Crockett’s small, fragile face and imagined what we might find. Out the window, the world was sharply divided between dark and light. A dense galaxy of city lights flowed out beyond the horizon. But we were low enough to make out the details on skyscrapers—the window-washing rig sat on the top of the Viad Tower—and the red and green of traffic lights. Low-riders chased their headlight beams along McDowell Road. In the distance came the telltale talisman flash of red TV tower lights on the South Mountains. After a few minutes, we left the center of the galaxy and what remained were a few arms of stars that were subdivisions, and finally the wayward outlying solar systems of the few remaining farmers’ lights. Then we were in darkness. It was a moonless night and the earth was void. I could only imagine the empty desert below as we felt the updrafts from the mountains. Now light came from real stars above. It was a shame we couldn’t just ride in the night and enjoy the view.

We touched down on the road a ways from the Bell trailer, and walked toward the old school bus that had been Davey’s home. It was lit up like a movie location set at night, and the characters moving about were all wearing the tan uniforms of the MCSO. I walked beside Blair, hooking my star over my belt like a real cop.

“How was your trip to Washington?” I asked him.

“What are you talking about?” he said. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness. He continued, “The only trip I’ve had in the past year was one to bring back a murderer from Yuma.”

By that time, we had reached a perimeter of yellow tape and uniformed deputies. Tony Snyder, Blair’s male model Bobbsey Twin partner, met us with latex gloves on his hands. He was drinking out of a liter-sized bottle of Arrowhead water. I was instantly feeling dehydrated.

>

“His brains are beaten out all over the inside of that school bus,” Snyder said. “Roof, windows, floor. It’s a hell of a fucking mess. My wife wanted me to look at new houses later today, and I’m on brain cleanup detail.” We stood looking at the bus. Its long side faced the road, but was set back maybe fifty feet. It had been decades since it had been painted, but you could make out casa grande schools on the side. Snyder was still talking: “Whoever did it was interrupted. There’s all these old hippies who live out here. Guy drives by and hears screaming coming from the bus. So he stops and yells, ‘Hey, you all right in there?’ Somebody from inside takes a shot at him, so he high-tails it to Hyder and gets some buddies. They call us and come back with guns. But by then, it’s too late. What a mess. We’re looking for a pipe or something like that, whatever was used to beat him.”

“You won’t find it,” I said. “And it wasn’t a pipe. It was a sap.”