Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

Chapter Forty-one

Saturday the sun returned to a sky scrubbed flawlessly blue by the rain. It would take Phoenix at least a day to dirty up the air again. Downtown was deserted as usual on a non-sports weekend. I was sitting on the old broken curb in front of the Triple A Storage Warehouse when a gleaming new silver Mercedes drove past, parked and disgorged a tall, snowy-haired driver.

James Yarnell walked up. “I could be through nine holes by now, Mapstone. On the other hand, it’s good to know I can be out in the world and nobody’s trying to kill me. What’s this all about?”

“I think you’ll agree it’s worth your time,” I said. “Let’s g

o inside.”

I led him through the side door into the old building. It smelled different after the rain: dust stirred on bricks, ashes tamped into mud, a vague scent of rot and disuse. Our footsteps echoed in outsized sounds. Inside, the big room was once again visible thanks to bare bulbs, far overhead. A strand of temporary lighting followed a heavy orange cord down into the elevator shaft.

“This is where you found them?” Yarnell said, putting his hands on the hips of his tan chinos and looking around. His eyes followed the orange cord to the frame of the freight elevator and to the square hole in the concrete.

“Come down,” I said.

He hesitated.

“It’s not far,” I said, walking to the ladder. I started down, and after a minute James Yarnell followed me.

Then we were down in the passages. It was noticeably colder, the cold of a violated grave. Every six feet, a small fluorescent light attached to a spindly aluminum stand beat back the blackness. We tramped down the main tunnel, made the now-familiar turn, came to where the bricks had fallen away. Yarnell stepped around me and just stared at the opening. The only sound was a slight hum from the lights.

“Is this how you spend your weekends, Mapstone?”

“Actually, I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out this case.”

“I didn’t think that was in doubt. The handyman was tried and convicted.”

“That’s what everybody keeps telling me,” I said. “But the more I looked, the less made sense. Talbott couldn’t have kidnapped the twins. He was in jail that night.”

“He was? How do you know that?”

I told him about the booking and release records. “I’m not saying he wasn’t involved somehow. He just couldn’t have been the initial kidnapper. Then I heard about Bravo Juan, who ran the numbers in the Deuce. It seems your uncle Win was in debt to him.”

“My God, do you think he was the one?” Yarnell was absently scratching his forearm. “Let’s get out of here. You can tell me more upstairs.”

I just let the dusty creepiness of the place be. “Bravo Juan’s real name was Juan Alvarez. I spent a lot of time finding out about him. You see, Mr. Yarnell, there weren’t a lot of records left about this case. So I’ve had to run a lot of stuff down. And I thought I had hit a brick wall.” I said it without irony. “I thought I’d never get the information I needed.”

“So? Did this Juan kidnap my brothers?”

“No. There was a very good Phoenix detective on this case named Joe Fisher. He ran down several suspects, including Juan Alvarez, who had an alibi and was also a good police informer. I didn’t know that.”

“Can we leave now?”

“Just a sec,” I said. “You see, Fisher’s notes had disappeared from the case files. But I learned that detectives in his era dictated their notes to a stenographer, and they were sent to the old I Bureau.” Yarnell sighed impatiently, rested his hand against the bricks and drew it back. He stared into the burial chamber as I continued. “The point is, there was a duplicate set. Fisher was running down other suspects because he never believed Talbott acted alone. He didn’t believe Frances Richie was involved at all.”

Yarnell turned back to me, a stream of sweat dropping down onto his fine temple. He started back out but I barred the way.

“What?”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Mr. Yarnell?”

“What are you talking about?” He pushed around me and walked quickly back to the main passage, where he could stand up straight again.

“Thanksgiving night didn’t happen the way you told me,” I said, following him.

“Joe Fisher didn’t believe you, either. In his notes of your interview, he wrote that you seemed to be covering up something, that you made contradictory statements about your whereabouts that night. That’s because you were here. After the house had turned in, you and Uncle Win took the twins out to the car and drove away and brought them here.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Jack Talbott took those boys! Your dead detective didn’t know anything but that.”