Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

“What were they doing here?” Peralta demanded, his big head leaning in to face her.

“They were celebrating,” she said. “They invited me to have a drink tonight. I turned them down because Dave and I had tickets…”

Peralta muttered profanities and walked to his black Ford Crown Victoria. He popped the trunk, dug around inside, and walked back with something in his hand. He held out a flak vest to Lindsey.

“Put this on,” he said.

She hesitated. “You think it’s a hit?” she asked.

Peralta was silent. Lindsey stared at him. She said, “You think this is the Russian mafia?”

Peralta stared at the sidewalk. “I don’t know what I think. But I don’t want to take chances. Scottsdale cops have some witnesses inside. They said the victims were at a table inside when another dude comes in and joins them. The conversation gets a little loud. Britton and Reece pay and get up to go. Next thing anybody remembers there’s gunfire like this is a war zone. When somebody gets up the nerve to look outside, these two are dead on the sidewalk and whoever did it is gone.”

“Do we have a description on the third man?” she asked. Peralta shook his head.

She slipped the vest over her T-shirt and fastened the Velcro. I glanced uneasily around Scottsdale’s little downtown office district. A crowd of yuppies and beautiful people was being kept at a distance by SPD. They couldn’t see the bodies lying this side of the parked cars.

I could see bullet holes gouged into the white paint of one Chevy Suburban, the shattered glass of a Toyota parked beside it, and more bullet holes chipped into the wall of the bar. A lot of bullet holes. I had counted to thirty holes when I heard Peralta’s voice again.

“Where the hell is your firearm?” he growled.

“I don’t take it to baseball games. Sorry.’

He just worked his heavy jaw and shook his head slowly. “Mapstone, do you have any idea how much…”

“Shit!” Lindsey yelled. “What about Rachel?!”

Peralta just stared at her.

“Rachel Pearson!” Lindsey said. “Deputy Rachel Pearson. She works for you in Cybercrimes. She was invited tonight. Has anybody seen her?”

Peralta shrugged. “I guess she didn’t come tonight, like you.”

“She said she was going to come.”

Alarm flickered briefly across Peralta’s face. He stabbed a thick finger into my chest. “Stay here.” He disappeared into the bar.

Lindsey looked at me, and we followed him inside. The room was dark and comforting, with an old Bonnie Raitt song on the sound system. “‘Push comes to shove’,” Bonnie sang. In this old watering hole I had salved a hundred bad days, lubricated a hundred entertaining evenings. But I had no appetite for a drink. We stood on the threshold. Nearby, Peralta conferred with a Scottsdale police captain, then turned to a pair of civilians, clad in the expensive Euro-trash outfits of Scottsdale’s trendy needy wealthy. The conversation grew more animated. Two young Scottsdale cops ran past us out the door. Peralta noticed us, and walked heavily to the top of the stairs.

“It’s a new scenario,” he said grimly. “The female officer may be missing. Those witnesses remember a woman who went out to the street with the men. Nobody’s seen her since the shots were fired.”

Chapter Seven

“We need to talk.”

Peralta turned to face us. We were sitting in the backseat of Chief Deputy Kimbrough’s ford Expedition. Kimbrough was driving and Peralta was talking. It was a lot of departmental brass to be shoved into one SUV.

Peralta said again, “We need to talk. Lindsey, did you hear of any threats, anything at all?”

“No,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“Around,” Peralta said.

“He doesn’t want to have to deal with Scottsdale PD and the feds,” Kimbrough said, gently grinning, making a half turn to look at us. The chief deputy was wearing a khaki summer suit already, a bad omen for a gentle spring. But, as usual, he carried it off beautifully. The suit was set off with a starched white shirt and abstract pattern blue bow tie that somehow all complemented the rich dark chocolate color of his skin. We were driving north on Scottsdale Road doing the speed limit. Cars and trucks howled impatiently past us.

“I don’t want to be screwing around in public if somebody’s trying to kill Lindsey,” Peralta said. “Better to be mobile.”

“You think that’s what this is?” I asked, a worry pain stabbing me at the bottom of my breastbone.