Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

A monstrous wind came down the alley, but it was at my back. I crossed Seventieth Street, saw the oleanders sway as if a small hurricane was coming through. Palm tree husks flew crazily through the air. Dust clouds swirled in orange and purple phantoms high above. Ahead of me, the man jogged west, toward Goldwater Boulevard. Then I put on another burst. My shoes pounded on the asphalt, but the wind absorbed all sound. Back walls and dumpsters became my markers in the race. Deeper spaces opened in my lungs, and my heart settled into its long forgotten runner’s rhythm.

There was no time. He got to Goldwater and started to look back. I closed to maybe fifteen feet. There was no cover. Not too damned smart. But maybe this wasn’t the Russian at all. Maybe it was just a citizen. I drew the Python and dropped into a combat stance.

“Stop!” I yelled through a mouth thick with dust and suppressed panic.

The man stood on the sidewalk, his back to me. He was a big man, about my size. Even in the oppressive heat he wore a dark sweatshirt. He didn’t move.

I swallowed and called up a tiny bit of saliva. “Deputy sheriff! Drop your weapon!”

I danced a little to the side, keeping his torso in the aligned twin sights of the Python. The gun’s stainless steel body glittered weirdly in the dusty light. Everything around us was brown. Streetlights came on in the murk, even though beyond the storm the sun was up. I tried to see what he had in his hands. He wouldn’t face me.

“Drop it now!” I yelled, starting to put pressure on the trigger.

Something black and metallic clattered to the ground. He was not just a citizen.

“Get on the ground, hands out from your body!” Where the fuck is the cavalry?!

He slowly lowered himself to his knees. He was still facing away. But I moved to the curb and could see the side of his face. No sensitive eyes or goatee from my dreams. He was clean-shaven. I couldn’t make out much more. I eased up closer.

“On your belly!” I commanded. “Lie down! Face down, hands out!”

The thought seeped in: What if he can’t understand enough English to know what I want? My heart was hammering now, the worry point just below my sternum turned into a hot poker.

I only realized I had come too close when he lunged at me. It was a stupid rookie mistake. Somebody his size shouldn’t have been able to spring up and close the distance between us so fast. But he did. Somebody on his knees should have been vulnerable to the standing officer pushing him to the pavement. But he wasn’t.

We crashed together to the ground. He was momentarily on top, but I clubbed him in the forehead with the Python. He fell backwards and we faced each other, both sitting on the ground. But I had the gun.

“You’re her husband,” he said, his eyes widening. There was barely an accent. Blood trickled out of his forehead like a stigmata. He was handsome in a hard-featured way.

“Husband.” He said the word like “open sewer.” He shook his head. “Her husband, David.”

He smiled at me predatorily. His teeth were yellow. “This Lindsey.” He said her name again, stretching it out obscenely. “Lindsey. She is what I want. Her little helper, Rachel, was just the start. But when I get this Lindsey, I will do things to her that will cut you up inside. You’ll never be safe. This will never be over…”

Just then the wind died, and something dark and fast cracked against his temple. His eyes went back in his head and he collapsed.

Peralta stood over us, cradling the shotgun. He kicked Yuri over and handcuffed him. He held his head up by the hair and the Russian came to, gurgling in pain. Peralta spoke in his ear in a low voice.

“It’s over, scumbag.”

Chapter Thirty

A summer afternoon in Phoenix. Outside, the temperature is 114, and if I walk over to the large windows of my office I can check the horizon beyond the mountains, to see if the billowing monsoon clouds have arrived from the Sea of Cortez. But I sit in my old wooden swivel chair. Lindsey sits facing me, on the desk, wearing a short black skirt. Lindsey is blessed with fine knees. I am blessed with Lindsey’s fine knees. I am thinking about this but I am stroking her long, slender wrist. Wrists can be such sensual places, given the right circumstances. As I run a light finger along her skin, Lindsey smiles and sighs. Up on the wall, Sheriff Hayden’s expression doesn’t change. Or do I catch just a twinkle in his eyes? I am sleeping without nightmares now.

Back when I was a patrol deputy-now I sound like a geezer-crime scenes were fairly simple affairs. Nowadays, they were major productions. So for hours after Yuri Sergiovich Popov had been shackled, stuffed into an armored FBI van, and whisked away to the terrorist resort at Guantanamo, I idled inside a corral of yellow tape in Old Scottsdale. Entire blocks were cordoned off, for reasons I didn’t understand. It must have killed a few struggling businesses, of which Arizona always has an abundance. Peralta did most of the talking to cops and agents, about our wild ride down Scottsdale Road.

I was left to sit on the curb and contemplate the sunset. With the dust storm gone, sundown was a big-sky show of lurid pinks, crimsons, oranges, colors with no names. A coppery borealis emerged for five minutes directly overhead. Even the cops paused to look up and marvel. And just as the color retreated into the deep blue of twilight, a sheriff’s cruiser pulled up and a door opened. Lindsey stepped out, waved to the driver, and came my way. After everything of the past few weeks, she still walked with that subtle strut that only I appreciated. Her skin was pale fire. She is the kind of woman who doesn’t know how beautiful she is, which, of course, only adds to her appeal.

Repressed, hell.

In seconds, we fell into each other’s arms-lightly at first, as if our hands wanted to make sure it was real, and then a tight, life-affirming embrace. Then we both were talking at once, stopping at once, laughing, starting again, and each still hearing every word from the other. I wasn’t doing a lot of thinking right then. But I felt another presence, crazy as it sounds in the telling. For just a moment, bathed in the Arizona twilight and sheltered by my lover’s arms, I sensed a lost friend. But the cycle of life seemed benign.

Dan Milton had lived a full life of good fights and passionate loves. He embodied Oscar Wilde’s tenet that anybody can make history, but only a great man can write it. He was and he did. Dan Milton knew that the losses and dangers of mortality were burrowing tunnels under each of us, silently, year by year, and someday the ground would give way. He lived deep and wide, to have no regrets. I think he found grace that was joyous and not just awful. He was never afraid. Rest in peace, my friend. Twilight was gone. Lindsey took my hand, and I took her home.

Now, in the courthouse, my contemplation had gone from her wrist back to her knees. My darling had been born in the Summer of Love. She had been blessed with fine knees. Something against county regulations would undoubtedly have transpired on that blotter-it had before-if the door hadn’t swung open to reveal Peralta.

“Hear those hammers, Mapstone?”

Actually, I had been distracted.