“She wanted this job,” he said. “And she’s getting along really well with Patrick Blair. Not my business, Mapstone, but she really likes him. He really likes her.” My stomach manufactured a tidal wave of bile.
He looked at me mildly. “Mapstone, you used to have such a good attitude, when you were a young deputy.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“That was before you got your mind pickled in shit working around all those eggheads,” he said. “Your case doesn’t seem that hard to me.”
Everything I wanted to say would have just made him angry, meaning even more determined to keep me where I was.
“We’ve got the skeletons, right? The DNA test proves they’re twins. How many other twins went missing back then?”
“None that I know of. I could check newspaper clips and missing person’s records.”
“See, you’re already moving ahead. And you’ve got that watch, right? Is that the Yarnell brand on it?” I nodded. “See, it has to be the twins.”
I thought so, too. But I didn’t know how to get the case off dead center if the Yarnells wouldn’t cooperate. And I had been ordered away by Hawkins. None of this made any impression on Peralta.
“Hawkins doesn’t matter.” He was back to swinging his chair back and forth, drinking the Diet Coke. “Chief Wilson and I agreed that you will take this case alone, now. They have plenty to keep them busy, and you have special expertise for this kind of thing.”
“Max Yarnell?”
“Try to be more charming, Mapstone. And go see his brother. Sharon and I met him once, at his art gallery. Seemed like a nice guy.”
“I give up.” I stood to go. “I’ll give you some theater. Distract the media. America’s Toughest Sheriff. Blah, blah, blah.”
“No.” His voice was like a shot. “I want you to investigate this case.” He was standing and his onyx eyes were wide in his immobile face. “I want you to gather evidence. I really want it closed. Those two little boys died an awful deat
h, and this sheriff’s office will never forget the victims.”
If you didn’t know Peralta the way I did, you’d have thought he was just making a speech.
Chapter Nineteen
The Scottsdale night was scented with ease and pleasure, the perfect camouflage for wealth, privilege and grasping madness. Across the vast ballroom, I saw the straw-colored hair of the war-hero senator’s younger wife. She was in an animated dialogue with a squadron of forty-something Republican women while her husband trolled out of state for presidential IOUs. Her mouth smiled but her eyes didn’t. There in the tailored Hugo Boss suit was the chief executive of the Mayo Clinic, out checking on the highly profitable desert outpost of his empire. Beside the ice-sculpture of a saguaro cactus, the famous Indian artist, in polished silver bola tie and black jeans, nestled in a soul-talk with the skeletal Newport Beach socialite who now kept a modest, million-dollar casita on Camelback Mountain. Laughing by the bar, the owner of this season’s hottest gallery in town, recently separated from wife No. Four—yes, the department store heiress—but apparently finding solace with a teenage-looking redhead in a paper-thin black minidress.
They all knew their roles in the whirl of resort-life that was just beginning a new season: the older men with their square jaws and squash-court athleticism; the newly affluent younger women on their arms, who practiced a kind of prostitution we might all do if given the chance and the beauty; the pleasant older couples with complicated lives back East, being slowly mummified by the desert sun; the aging ingénues hoping for a new meal ticket. There was the occasional oddball, like that pot-bellied Anglo with the loud voice and the greasy, gray ponytail, nursing a cause or a fading reputation. The elite from Silicon Valley and Hollywood sprinkled the crowd with celebrity. Someone said Spielberg was here tonight.
James Yarnell made his way toward me, shaking hands here and there, homing in like a handsome, benign torpedo. We’d never met, but I obviously looked out of place enough to be the deputy who called him. He owned one of the top art galleries in Scottsdale, and was the oldest of the four Yarnell brothers. It was Monday night, and he had to attend a charity event at the Hyatt Regency at Gainey Ranch, one of the new megabucks resorts off Doubletree Road.
Finally across the sea of wealthy humanity, he steered me outside, where we sat by a bonfire pit. Past the railing, Camelback Mountain brooded darkly in the perfect Arizona sunset, competing for our attention with the thousands of city lights starting to shimmer to the horizon. Yarnell wore a charcoal suit and open-collared shirt, quality but not ostentation. He looked fifteen years younger than I knew he was, and his smile was effortless, inviting you to join in the good life taking place all around. It was a game I could play, to a point.
“I’m glad to meet you, David Mapstone,” he said. “I’m sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances. Are you related to Philip Mapstone?”
“He was my grandfather.”
“Well, it’s a small world.” He sighed and clapped me warmly on the arm. “Doc Mapstone was our dentist back when I was a kid. I assume he’s gone?”
“He died in 1974.”
“A good man,” James Yarnell said. “So how can I help Doc Mapstone’s grandson?”
“I assume your brother told you about the DNA test.”
“Yes, and he also told me about you. You must have made quite an impression.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, Max is a prick, he always has been.” James Yarnell laughed from deep inside his fine suit.