Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

“That,” I said, coming up for air, “is the first kiss I ever had on Camelback Mountain. Thanks for fulfilling a fantasy.”

“Take me home, Dave, and we’ll take care of more fantasies,” she whispered.

I slipped the BMW into drive and started down the mountain. It was at the curve into Arcadia Drive that I noticed the white Ford Crown Victoria sitting beside the road with two figures inside. A block farther on, I saw headlights behind us.

Chapter Fourteen

Lindsey left me at the door to my office at the old courthouse. She managed a great kiss despite having a laptop slung over one shoulder and a bag of files over the other. “Anything you want from central records?” she asked. As a matter of fact, there was.

Ten minutes later, I went over to the sheriff’s headquarters building on Madison Street myself. It was Friday, five days since Peralta was shot, and I was damned if I was going to hide. My office was claustrophobic. Sheriff Hayden’s stern face on the wall demanded answers I didn’t have. It felt good to walk, to be out in the warm morning air. The most dangerous thing I encountered was the traffic trying to cross Jefferson Street.

I signed in at headquarters and avoided a covey of civilian employees trying to direct me to meetings. That wasn’t why I was there. Three days before, I had ordered Peralta’s office locked. I didn’t know why Jack Abernathy had been in there the day of the shooting, but I did know I wanted Peralta’s aerie off limits to even the senior commanders. Now I used Peralta’s keys-Sharon had given them to me yesterday-and let myself in.

His Daytimer sat undisturbed on the credenza: “Mapstone-Camelback Falls.” I sat in his big chair, feeling the indentations his body made in the leather through years of staff meetings, phone calls, report reading and late-night brooding. He had settled into that chair the day three years before when I had just returned to Phoenix and accepted his invitation to come downtown to visit. My old partner in the Chief Deputy’s office. The world had turned around quite a few times. As I talked about my life, he sat in this chair, swinging back and forth or shaking his leg nervously. He had always been that way. Antsy. Uncomfortable in an office.

But I realized by contrast how much he had changed since I had left the department in 1980. It was something that hadn’t been fully disclosed by exchanges of Christmas cards and brief visits every year or two. He seemed to have conquered the moody anger that hid just below his preference for silence. I noticed him bark at a young deputy, but send the man away with a smile and a back pat-definitely a skill the old Peralta didn’t have. He had acquired polish and connections, whether from Sharon’s rising affluence or a closer relationship with his father or his own grit. He greeted me in a suit and seemed comfortable in it. He took me to lunch at the Arizona Club. Back at his office, I noticed a photo on the wall of him laughing with an elderly Barry Goldwater.

When I ran out of words that day, he merely reached into a drawer, produced a thick file folder, and tossed it to me. “Look into that, will you?” he said. “I just want to know what you think.” It was a forty-year-old murder case, unsolved. I don’t know if he really expected anything from me. But he had the instincts of a proud man, and he gave his gifts accordingly. At the end he needled me. “Mapstone, I hope all those years chasing young skirts on campus didn’t fry your brains.”

Now I thought, You would know about that, my friend, wouldn’t you?

I shut out my interior voices of doubt and caution, and began a gentle inventory of the room. The bathroom was spotless and empty, save for a can of cheap shaving cream, a safety razor, and a uniform hanging in its cleaning bag. A closet held file cabinets and a safe. But the file cabinets were stuffed with personnel records-I resisted the temptation to check mine-and the safe was empty, its door open. Over at the conference table, I found a well-worn county budget, along with architectural renderings and blueprints for the new Fourth Avenue Jail. They were probably just as he had left them Monday before going to the swearing-in. I lifted seat cushions, looked behind the furled Arizona flag. Various law enforcement magazines sat on a coffee table in front of the leather sofa.

I returned to his desk, sank into the big chair again. Swiveling it, I attacked the credenza, with its geologic strata of files and reports. I didn’t have time to inventory every file, but the labels didn’t draw my attention. Murder, mayhem, and memos. Then I turned to the desk drawers. A Smith amp; Wesson 9mm pistol sat in the top drawer, barrel facing toward the front of the desk. I popped out the magazine-loaded, all right. I replaced it and moved on.

The bottom drawer was locked. I worked my way through his heavy key ring until one key fit. Inside the drawer were ammunition, mace, handcuffs, cigars, and a file folder. A bolt shot up my spine when I saw the hand-written label: “Leo O’Keefe.”

I set it aside and walked in a wide circle, adding more wear to the institutional carpet. I leaned into the narrow window and stared down to the street. If I went further, I might be interfering with the integrity of the Internal Affairs investigation. Outside, a little boy and an elderly woman were crossing at the light. I thought of me and Grandmother. I didn’t know why that made sad down to my bones. Why did Peralta have a file on Leo O’Keefe? Why had I come here today? The neat historical analogies that would give me some confidence stayed frozen in my head.

I went back to the desk and opened the file.

I’d seen some of this before, the reports on the Guadalupe shooting, the plea bargain with O’Keefe. But some was new. Peralta had highlighted a memo from the county attorney noting that O’Keefe should get prison time because he had been arrested at the scene of the shooting armed with a.38-caliber pistol. That was all wrong. I had searched him myself, and there was no gun. Indeed, the next sheet of paper was the evidence log from Guadalupe, with no mention of a pistol in O’Keefe’s possession. On this sheet, Peralta had highlighted all of the items logged in from O’Keefe: cigarettes, wallet, $4.32 in cash. No gun. I had never seen the memo on the gun before.

The file also held a patrol car inventory log. It was routine for deputies to check out the equipment in a car when coming on duty each shift. They noted all this in a log that was filed with the shift supervisor. This one was for unit 4-L-20, dated May 31, 1979, and signed “V. Bullock.” Otherwise, it looked unremarkable. At the start of their ill-fated shift, Bullock and Matson found a cruiser with a full tank of gas, engine fluids OK, siren and lights OK. The trunk held flares, traffic cones, and inflated spare tire. The deputies brought their 12-gauge shotgun, report case, and first-aid kit, all duly noted for the sergeant. What could have interested Peralta about this inventory after all these years?

Beneath that was the beat sheet from May 31, 1979. I hadn’t seen one of these in years: the assignments, car by car, beat by beat. The 3 P.M. to 11 P.M. shift was commanded by Sergeant Peralta. The watch commander for the station in Mesa was listed as “J.B. Abernathy.” I shook my head hard, trying to restore memory. I had forgotten that Abernathy, then a lieutenant, was filling in that month in the East County.

Peralta also had a copy of the radio log from that awful day. With a yellow magic marker he had noted every movement called in by Matson and Bullock. But not the traffic stop that caused their deaths-they never notified the dispatcher they were out with a stopped vehicle. That was against the rules-any stop was supposed to be called in-and it was the cause of our desperate uncertainty that night about who needed assistance. In the wake of the deputies’ murders, that breach had been forgotten. Still, it seemed to be what had attracted Peralta’s attention. Why hadn’t they called in the traffic stop? Were they stubborn old veterans flouting the rules, or was it something else?

Then a letter on departmental stationary, dated May 6, 1979: “Re: Reserve Deputy Harold Matson.” It looked like something out of a personnel file. Some brass hat on Madison Street was upset that the Sheriff’s Office was getting dunned by Matson’s creditors. Most reserve deputies had day jobs or owned businesses. The reserves were a cheap way for the SO to

augment its forces and reward political friends of the sheriff. I gathered from the letter Matson had some kind of towing business that had gone sour, and now the lenders were in full cry. It put Matson on thirty days’ probation.

The letter was getting brittle. It resisted turning. And behind it was a note. On it, in Peralta’s handwriting: “Jonathan Ledger-Camelback Falls.”

I let out a long breath. For the first time, Camelback Falls was linked to the Guadalupe shooting. But how?

I was jolted by the soft trill of the telephone. Who in the state of Arizona could think Peralta would be here to answer his telephone? But suddenly the room felt close and breathless. The phone kept trilling. I checked the digital readout: an extension in the building.

I picked it up. “Yeah.”

“What’s taking you so long? Did you find it?” a man’s voice came back. I felt a second of disorientation and exposure. But I pulled my wits back together.

“Yeah,” I said. “Where should I meet you?”

There was the briefest pause on the other end of the line. Then, “Who the hell is this? Who is this?”

“This is Sheriff Mapstone. Who are you?”