Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

The Pla-Mor Tap Room was just a block from the old federal building, where Pilgrim would have worked. It was easy to see why it was a hangout. Why did the place fascinate me? This old city would have heard the constant sound of train whistles. Union Station was the center of activity, of comings and goings. It now sat empty, fenced and always in danger of thoughtless demolition. But in 1948, it was a Soviet agent’s portal to mischief. What had Dimitri and Pilgrim talked about, the last time they met? Who was armed, and what happened next? I watched the dates stamped in the sidewalks: 1928…1936…1947.

It was May now, and every day broiled above a hundred degrees. I surrendered to casual clothes-even then the fabric stuck to my sweat-soaked skin. Palo verde blossoms covered the sidewalks in a yellow-green dust. Overhead misters spewed their smoky-looking balm at restaurant patios. The glare off the cars made it appear that they were firing futuristic pulse weapons at each other. The newspaper and TV broadcasts settled into their summer staples of forest fires, children drowned in swimming pools, and migrants suffocated in the locked tractor-trailer rigs of smugglers. In the Republic, Lorie Pope wrote a story about a subdivision of 80,000 houses planned for west of the White Tank Mountains. “Master planned community” they called it. I wondered if their master plan included water. A brush fire closed Interstate 17 to the north, trapping well-off Phoenicians from their weekend escape to cabins in the High Country. The fire made its contribution to the soup that obscured the mountains.

I was in danger of spending too much time between my ears, as a friend once put it. But every day I was reminded of George Weed’s world, whether by the transient sweeping through Starbucks trying to grab somebody else’s coffee from the bar, or by the sight of trash-filled shopping carts lined up outside the central library like cars at a drive-in. Homeless children wandered Van Buren. Some homeless adults burned a Victorian house awaiting restoration. A woman attending a convention was attacked-a homeless man was blamed. Bedraggled men with skin corrugated by the sun huddled in little shade spots. Everybody had a theory. Nobody knew what to do. It’s a shame. It’s an alternative lifestyle, and who are we to judge? One day I went to the carwash on Van Buren and Grand, where a tall young guy was bumming change. He wore a filthy do-rag and looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a month. When he came to me, I just shook my head. Then he approached a dark-skinned Latino man who wore a sweat-stained shirt emblazoned with a landscaping company logo. The Latino rebuffed the transient, too. As the guy walked away, the landscaper looked at me and shrugged. It was a look that said, there will always be two kinds of people, those who work and those who don’t.

I found no comfort in my usual hangouts. They seemed to conjure strange signs and premonitions, if even in absurdities. Drinking in a dark corner of Durant’s, I overheard a conversation. It was typical guy talk. But the phrases gradually drew my attention: “You know that’s got to be so damned sweet,” “Yeah, my son had the hots for her,” and “cheerleader legs,” a familiar name, and “What a waste she married that professor guy. Maybe she’s repressed…” I eased my head around to see who was talking, and it was a couple of old career guys from the sheriff’s office. Talking about Lindsey. They couldn’t see me, and I resisted any Frank Sinatra-like impulses to walk over and defend my wife’s honor.

I felt more of a melancholy detachment than a jealous zeal. My only contact from Lindsey that week came one day when I was on the Internet. A console suddenly popped up on the screen of my Mac, and there in the console was a high-resolution color photo of Lindsey smiling, blowing me a kiss. Then the console disappeared, with no trail left on the history directory of my browser. The horny old deputies would never know how beautiful Lindsey looked when she was hot and sweaty, working in her garden, her brown-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Or her native kindness, whether in caring for the old tomcat or in reading every article I wrote in my history professor days and pronouncing them brilliant. And as for their observation about being repressed, Lindsey would say, “Repressed is the word people use when they mean ‘not like me.’” I would say the reality of Lindsey is beyond any old man’s fantasy. Ah, I was spending too much time in my own head, not a good thing.

On a Thursday, I came back to my office to find the door open and Kate Vare sitting primly at my desk. I was hot, sweating, feet aching, and shouting at her as I crossed the threshold into the room.

“What the hell are you doing in here? Who the hell do you think you are?”

She came up out of my chair as if she was launching herself as a missile with overdone shoulder pads.

“Mapstone, you son of a bitch! You arrogant, lying bastard!”

“You ought to know about lying, Kate. Breaking into somebody’s office.”

“Break in, you asshole, you’re lucky I’m not here with an arrest warrant!”

“What the fuck are you screaming about?” I demanded. We were nose to nose across the desk, both armed. She opened her black leather City of Phoenix portfolio, pulled out a jail mugshot, and slammed it on the desktop.

“This is what I’m screaming about, bastard! As if you didn’t know!”

The photo was of the homeless woman from the parking lot, what seemed like months gone by. Her name was Karen, or so she said. She claimed she knew George Weed. She said she wanted help with visitation rights to her daughter.

Kate studied my face. “Don’t you play dumb, you bastard. You know who this is.”

“Of course I do. She came up to me one night, and asked about George Weed.”

“What are you talking about? Who is George Weed?”

“The guy in the pool, the guy with John Pilgrim’s FBI badge sewn into his coat.”

“Lying bastard!” she shouted, exhaling so exuberantly I could feel her breath tousling my hair.

I started to say something but she grabbed the photo and waved it in my face.

“Heather Heffelberg!”

“That’s her name? She said it was Karen.”

“You stupid bastard, that’s the fourteen-year-old girl who was kidnapped out of her own bedroom in Paradise Valley six weeks ago. It’s only been the biggest case to hit this city in years. The media are on it. The brass are on our asses every day about it. The FBI has entered the case. This woman, whose name is Karen Barshevsky, was seen in that neighborhood the night before Heather disappeared. Karen is the common-law wife of Jake Roberts, aka Jake English, aka Randy English. Five years ago they kidnapped a teenage girl and raped her and held her captive for a month. Both of them walked on a technicality. Tell me this is really all news to you, bastard!”

I sat in one of the straight-backed wooden courtroom chairs that faced my desk. I said, “It is news. And my name is not ‘bastard.’”

Kate’s tense body looked as if it was ready to leap over the desk. She sputtered, “I can’t fucking believe this! This…You…The fucking sheriff’s office is more incompetent than I ever believed. You…you’re not even a real police officer!”

“Kate, I’ve had nothing to do with your disappeared girl case.”

She started to speak. But she just glared and fell into my desk chair with a heaviness that belied her slender frame.

“So you were in here rummaging around with Peralta last week because you thought I was holding out on you?”

“I’m still not sure you’re not holding out,” she said, although in a calmer voice. “You’re always trying to claim credit. You write a book report, and Peralta goes ‘ooh, ahhh’ and you’re on TV as this big crime buster.”

“I never sought that out-”