At ten minutes before midnight there was banging on the door. We were in bed, and I peeked out the front window to see half a dozen people clustered on the porch. Uniforms. Suits. One was Sharon Peralta. Beneath the porchlight was the unmistakably rigid carriage of Judge
Peralta. I felt a chill creep up my feet.
“Oh my God,” I said. “He must have…”
In a minute, they were arrayed around the living room. Kimbrough was there and made introductions: The woman in the pastel blue dress was Kathleen Markham, the chairwoman of the board of county supervisors. The fifty-something man in the blazer and polo shirt was the county manager, Dan Pickett. Sharon took my hand and looked at me through tears. A younger woman in a black pants suit, Lauren somebody, was with the county recorder. A couple of young deputies stood in the background. The judge, in a suit, moved naturally to the imposing leather chair that had been my grandfather’s and eased himself down. Kimbrough looked like hell in the face, creased and ashen, but he had changed into a tailored navy suit and natty bow tie. I didn’t want anyone to speak. I didn’t want to know.
Finally, Kimbrough said, “We have a situation.”
“What?”
“How is he?” Lindsey said. “How is Peralta?”
“Oh, David,” Sharon said, sighing. “He’s the same. I realize what you must have thought. No, he’s stable.”
I sat cautiously on an ottoman. “What then?”
“David.” It was Judge Peralta. His voice had its usual tone of deep but disengaged gravity. Did I just imagine the layer of exhaustion in it?
“We are here to ask you to be acting sheriff.”
I heard Lindsey inhale sharply. I said, “Are you nuts?” I added, “Sorry, sir.” I looked around. All of them were staring intently at me.
“We have a crisis, Mapstone,” Kimbrough said. “Somebody who is still out there tried to kill the sheriff today. The sheriff may be out for a month. Or he may be…” He looked at Sharon and stopped.
“My point,” he said, “is that the department is at a critical time. We don’t know what brought on this attack. I have guards with the county supervisors. And we have to name an acting sheriff.”
“What about the old sheriff?”
“He has declined,” said Markham “He is already in Washington. He left right after the swearing in. And the timing just isn’t right for him to stay on.”
I was shaking my head. “What about the brass? Any one of them is qualified to be acting sheriff.”
Kimbrough coughed and cleared his throat. “The senior bureau heads are all competing for the chief deputy job, Mapstone. It’s politically delicate.”
I just stared at him, not wanting to understand.
Kathleen Markham said. “The top officials in the sheriff’s department are all ambitious men. Among the county supervisors, Bill Davidson has his supporters and Jack Abernathy has his. Even Mr. Kimbrough here has his backers.” Kimbrough shifted uncomfortably. “We didn’t have to be concerned with that when the obvious leader of the department was Peralta. Now, nobody wants to make a move that could be misinterpreted.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Mapstone,” Markham said, “the brass all recommended you. It was the one thing they could agree on.” My mind rewound the scene in Peralta’s office with Jack Abernathy cursing me under his breath. That was the esteem the brass held me in. And I thought again, What did Peralta mean by the notation “Camelback Falls”?
Lindsey put a hand on my shoulder. I looked into the high ceiling of the living room, scanned the tall bookshelves and the ornate iron railing of the staircase, anything to avoid these faces.
“I am not qualified. And I don’t even see how this is legal. The elected sheriff is alive. He is going to recover.”
“At which point you will return power to him,” said Markham. “But this is not only legal but necessary. Tonight we adopted a resolution.” She waved her hand at the woman from the recorder’s office, who passed me a legal-size page with thick black paragraphs and a seal cut into the paper. “It names you as acting sheriff of Maricopa County.” She looked at Judge Peralta. “And we have a distinguished retired state appeals court judge to handle the swearing in.”
I sat there listening, feeling an ache growing in my neck and back where Peralta had lurched into me and we had fallen to the floor. Pain and numbness and reality. I wanted to run from the room and lock myself away, just like I was ten years old.
“David,” Kimbrough said. “You are the right person for this. You are a sheriff’s academy graduate, the media know who you are, you’re a smart guy, and you’re disinterested. You’re the one person everybody could agree on.”
“Please stand, David.” Judge Peralta lifted himself painfully out of Grandfather’s chair. The effort shifted the knot on his red rep tie off to one side. “You know this is what my son would want.”
Now he wasn’t fighting fair.
The judge looked at Lindsey. “Do you have a Bible, Miss Adams?” She retrieved one from the tall bookshelves by the stairs, and he positioned her to hold it before me.