Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly sullen. She turned and walked away.

“Karen,” I called. “What if we need to talk to you again?”

“You don’t need me,” she said. “When I came to find you, I thought maybe if I told you about Weed, you might help me, too. Maybe you could talk to the caseworker and let me see my daughter.”

“Maybe I can,” I said, feeling uncomfortable, like a cop in the middle of a family dispute.

“Bullshit,” she said. “Weed is dead. Life is fucked up. I can’t get off the streets. You don’t care.”

I let her go. Whatever had impelled her to seek me out was now evaporated.

I called to her as she walked: “How can I talk to social services if I don’t know your last name, or your daughter’s name?”

No answer.

I watched her become a shadow against the streetlights. But then I heard her voice.

“The Reverend knew Weed,” she called. “You should talk to the Reverend.”

“Who is the Reverend?” I yelled. “Where can I find him?” She yelled back an address. It wasn’t in the nice part of town.

Chapter Ten

The next day, Wednesday, I locked the car and walked across an empty lot strewn with glass. The angle of the sun made the ground appear covered with diamonds or something precious. The glass crunched softly and dust stirred by my step covered the toes of my shoes. As I got closer to the bleached, one-story block building, I could see less an entrance than a void. In the middle of the white wall was a dark square where double doors might close. But there were no doors. I could only see the darkness of whatever lay beyond the bright sunshine of the outside. I pulled off my sunglasses and stepped inside. Under my feet, the dirt was replaced by concrete.

I stopped maybe five feet inside and let my eyes adjust. The space around me felt large and smelled of dust and sweat. A persistent breeze came from a large fan built into a far wall. The fan went to another room, or to the outside, and provided the only light source, a far moon with fan blades turning slowly. It created a foul-smelling breeze. As my vision extended, I realized the room was very large and people were all around me.

They lined the walls, and sat in clusters out on the floor of what was once some kind of warehouse. My cop side kicked in and I counted: five, ten, at least twenty people I could see, probably more. They stared at me with faces ruined by the sun and streets. Or they paid no attention. The room was very quiet. I spoke to the person nearest to me, an old woman sitting in a muddy wheelchair, her fat encased like sausage in a Phoenix Suns T-shirt.

“I’m looking for the Reverend,” I said.

She ignored me.

I looked around for anyone in charge. Any structure to the room. I only felt eyes. On me.

I remembered from my patrol deputy days how to roust someone. I remembered from my professor days how to reach a bored class of students. Neither seemed worth a damn in this place. I walked deeper into the room, asking again. Nobody answered me. They didn’t seem to acknowledge I was there. The people were Anglos, Hispanic, Indian, black, mostly older, mostly dressed in dirty thrift store castoffs.

Then I felt a rough bump from behind. When I turned I was facing an anachronism.

Phoenix is a magnet for rough-hewn faces. Misfits, losers, con artists, ex-cons, desperate Okies and Oaxacans, second-chance Johnnies-they all end up here, as if the city is the last fence line catching the unattached debris of a windy world. I often imagine faces from the streets of Phoenix transported into primitive black-and-white photography of the Old West. You couldn’t tell the difference. Only the clothes give away their place in time.

The man who stepped out of the gloom was about my height, but he wore a tall, sweat-stained cowboy hat. He had a lean, lined face harnessed in a waxed, black handlebar moustache. To complete the daguerreotype effect, his shirt, jeans, and even skin were all lighter and darker tones of sepia. Turn back the calendar a century and a half and he just stepped out of a cattle drive. The pleasing little historical anomaly was spoiled by his eyes. They were unnaturally blue, unsettlingly bright, wide spaced. The kind of eyes you imagined in nightmares, the last pair of eyes you saw before a violent death, O pioneers. Turn back the calendar and he just stepped out of a gunfight.

“You don’t belong here,” he intoned in an accentless voice.

My heart started hammering against my ribcage, but I lowered my voice and asked again for the Reverend.

He started to advance on me. I noticed his knuckles were bloody and deformed. Suddenly this errand seemed like a lousy idea. I took a step back and then another. I dropped back into a T position, my left foot pointed toward him, my right foot behind me turned at a right angle, my weight well balanced against any attempt to push me down. I felt the reassuring weight of the Python on my belt, and hoped I wouldn’t have to start my day with a shooting.

“That’s enough, Bill.”

The big man halted and stared at me. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him, but I glanced quickly in the direction of this new voice. It was coming from the darkened far end of the room.

“I’m looking for the Reverend,” I called in that direction.

“Who the hell are you?” the voice demanded.

“I’m David Mapstone. I was hoping the Reverend could help me.”