Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

“I’m just a consultant.” I said quietly, all the smart ass drained out of me.

“What’s the matter with you, David?” He stared hard at me. I gave my head a shake and held open my hands, no answer.

“You’re not working this case. It’s like you’re in dreamland.’’

‘Well, let’s see. My wife is targeted for death. My mentor died a terrible death…” I was getting madder and madder, which did no good with Peralta. I knew this. “Not all of us can lose a loved one and just go into the office next day like nothing happened.” Like the way you reacted to your father’s death, I wanted to add.

“Did you know she was going to do this?” he demanded.

Of course I didn’t. I told him about Kate taking herself off the case. He snorted and unleashed a string of profanities, slamming his fist down on my desk as the encore. Then we sat like survivors of a bomb detonation, until the ringing faded and the room was only silence.

In a conversational voice, Peralta said, “There was a laundry mark in the jacket. She traced it to the Salvation Army used clothing program. So the jacket was at least secondhand, and the badge might have been sewn into it for years.”

Nausea washed over me. I sat in one of the straight-backed wooden chairs facing my desk.

I asked, “Did Eric Pham agree to release this information, that we had found the badge?”

“How the hell do I know,” Peralta said. “Maybe she batted her goddamned eyes at him or something…”

More silence. I could hear the bells at St. Mary’s, all the way across downtown, chiming two o’clock. A train whistle blared from the south.

“So,” Peralta said finally. “Tell me again what you found.”

I went through it again. With the information I had now on George Weed, it could lead me to his family, some sense of where he was all those years before he ended up dead in a pool.

“Why do we care, Mapstone?” Peralta said, his voice calm again.

“These guys are all over. All they want is money. You give ’em the money and they go buy booze and drugs. Some of ’em are as able-bodied as you and me, but do they get work? No.”

“I know,” I said.

“How often do you hear about a case where some transient is the suspect? Remember that poor little girl a few years ago, when I was still chief deputy? She’s walking to school when this fucking pervert grabs her, a ‘homeless man,’ the news stories said. Homeless, my ass. He was just a predator vagrant scumbag.”

“Sheriff,” I said. “Weed is all we have. You wanted me to work this case, remember? I wanted to be on the vacation that you told me I am not allowed.”

“The badge, Mapstone. Kate Vare doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your vagrant.”

“I can’t do anything about the badge without the vagrant,” I said. “You heard the TV. The badge is in Washington for extensive testing in the FBI labs. Now, I can go to Washington and wait for a press release, or I can follow the only human thread I have.”

“What if the poor bastard was wandering around for years without even knowing he was carrying it?”

I stared down at the floor. “I don’t believe that,” I said. These guys check the coin return in newspaper racks that haven’t been stocked in years. He’d know if something was sewn into his jacket. A jacket he wore even on hot days.”

Peralta raised his bulk out of the chair and looked me over from the summit of six feet, six inches.

“I want progress within a week,” he said as he stalked out of the room.

Or what? You’ll put my wife in danger, treat me like a tw

enty-year-old rookie and not even allow me vacation time? Oh, my mind was full of arch and devastating comebacks all the way home that evening. I was nearly talking aloud to myself when the elevator came up from the garage to the lobby, the doors opened, and standing there was Bobby Hamid.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and lit up his 50,000-watt smile. He was only getting better looking as he got older, the slightest veins of gray working their way into his luxurious wavy black hair. He was wearing one of his tailored-by-God suits, which probably cost half my year’s salary. A wine bottle was tucked under his arm.

“Dr. Mapstone!” he said.

I nodded to him. Then I realized I hadn’t even stepped out of the garage elevator.

My mind took a quick pop quiz: the godfather of Arizona organized crime was standing in the lobby of the building where Lindsey was secretly stashed. What to do? I stalled with conversation.