Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kimbrough said. “Leo O’Keefe was an accessory in the worst assault on Maricopa County deputies in history. Leo O’Keefe is a convicted murderer. Now, he’s an escapee. We have a threatening note, sent by him, found on the body of a former deputy, who was also involved in that Guadalupe incident. And now he’s tried to take a whack at you, Mapstone-you, the deputy who arrested him and signed his booking record. The guy is two decades of trouble. He’s a monster.”

I had to admit told that way it sounded airtight. Leo O’Keefe, broken out of the big house and come to settle the big score with the sheriff’s office. But I also knew the ways of law enforcement bureaucracies. Leo was our only theory in a high-profile shooting. Without Leo, we were screwed.

I said, “It wasn’t a threatening note. It was his name on a piece of paper. Tonight, Leo didn’t seem to know who I was, beyond the guy on the television from the press conference yesterday. That doesn’t sound like somebody who’s been carrying a hit list stamped on his heart since 1979. He said he didn’t shoot Peralta.”

Lindsey said, “Dave, can you really believe what he said on the phone? Did he actually say he didn’t shoot Peralta?”

“It’s not just that,” I said. “It’s Nixon. He didn’t know about Nixon turning up dead.”

“What…?” Kimbrough started.

It was true. We had held back the information of Dean Nixon’s murder from the media. In yesterday’s press briefing on the hunt for Peralta’s killer, we didn’t even mention Nixon.

For one thing, it was a piece of critical information that would hold down the number of needy nutcases who might come in and confess in O’Keefe’s place. If Nixon’s murder were tied to the shooting of Peralta, then the real killer would know that information. And holding it back would have kept the suspect off balance, if he thought we hadn’t discovered Nixon’s body yet-if the two shootings were connected. Plus, cops just liked to hoard information.

But O’Keefe didn’t know that Dean Nixon was dead.

“He asked me if I had talked to Dean Nixon. As in, present tense.”

Kimbrough pursed his lips, said nothing.

“Maybe he was just messing with you,” said another city cop. She was sipping on some coffee in Styrofoam cups that had appeared from the security guard. I waved one away.

“Maybe,” I said. “But why?”

The captain said, “To lure you out. Make you do pretty much what you did. Only O’Keefe wasn’t a good enough shot. Hell, he didn’t even finish off Peralta.”

We sat in silence. The room smelled of Lysol and chalk dust. I wished Peralta were here to dispense with this PD bastard. Younger cops began the real work: writing up the incident report.

Another cop-she looked like a tougher Jennifer Aniston-said, “Your guy, I’ll say this about him. Whether he’s the killer or not, he was willing to run into the busiest freeway in town to get away from talking about it.”

“This is nuts!” the captain said. “If he didn’t fire that shot, who the hell did?”

“Somebody,” I said, “who didn’t want him talking to me.”

Two hours later, Lindsey and I sat over breakfast at Susan’s, a diner out on Glendale Avenue. It was one of Peralta’s favorite places, and it served terrific comfort food. I also sought comfort in the newspaper. So while Lindsey fiddled with her Palm Pilot, I ate scrambled eggs and read the Republic. Peralta’s shooting had moved off the front page, replaced by a thumbsucker on a huge new development north of the city. Why did they call them “master-planned communities,” these endless tracts of houses without even a park or a neighborhood drugstore? I recalled the line about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Then I moved onto a helping of requisite Valley crime stories: A New York gang boss was found running a drug ring in the Phoenix suburbs. A landscape worker fed himself and his brand-new fiancee into a wood chipper. A woman stopped to help a pair of stranded motorists with a baby, who turned out to be robbers and shot her dead. My hometown.

“Dave.” Lindsey reached past the ketchup and hot sauce, taking my hand.

She locked those twilight blue eyes on me intensely. “I really need you to stay safe,” she whispered, and her eyes watered over with tears. “Please, Dave…”

I squeezed her hand back, feeling guilty and responsible. I was about to say something sappy when Kimbrough appeared at the front window, nodded awkwardly, then came in the door. I waved him over to the table. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, his gun and badge prominently on his belt. He had an evidence envelope in his hand.

“We haven’t seen you in ages,” Lindsey said, wiping her face and commencing to rip apart the interior of a grapefruit with her fork. Kimbrough pulled up a chair, exchanged pleasantries with Susan, and ordered coffee.

He swallowed the lava-like liquid without flinching. Cops and coffee. I would never understand it.

“David, I was out of line back there,” he said. “I apologize.”

“You weren’t out of line,” I said. “I was a dumb fuck. I just didn’t know what to do.”

He shuffled in the chair, ran a hand over the smooth, dark globe of his scalp. I said, “Don’t worry about it, E.J.” I had never called him by his first name before.

He nodded, sipped more coffee, and relaxed a bit. “We have news,” he said. He slid the evidence container onto the table. Through the clear plastic, I could see a manila envelope, faded with age. On the front, written in a scratchy hand, was: “To be opened in the event of my death.”

“Where did you get this?”

“Nixon’s ex-wife,” Kimbrough said. “A woman named Joyce Bellman, who lives in Tempe. You know her?”