Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

“Yes.”

“He was a good man,” the judge said. “He took patients from the barrio when Anglo Phoenix still treated us like dogs. He respected Mexican Americans, understood the dilemma, assimilation versus identity. He always struck me as the epitome of cultivated manliness.”

He sighed. “Cultivated manliness, our age doesn’t even know what that means.” The fireplace glowed yellow-blue, suddenly orange. I half expected to hear a log fall and crackle, but the room was dark silent. “I see some of him in you. David. So I think the best and only help for my son is you.”

I retreated. “Thank you, Judge Peralta.”

He said, “Do you have the courage to face the truth you find, David?” But he didn’t want an answer. In the dimness, I could see he had picked up a book and started reading, his breathing a steady squeezebox wheeze. I quietly let myself out.

Chapter Nineteen

I had begun to tell Lindsey about my talk with Judge Peralta when the cell phone rang and the communications center sent us twenty miles away to a hostage situation near Queen Creek. A former boyfriend was holed up in a double-wide trailer with a woman and her two children. Did I just imagine that the deputies on the scene looked at me differently, with fear and suspicion in their eyes? Did I count too many TV camera crews for just another crime story in the Valley? Bill Davidson was there, too, with a flak vest and a tall cup of Circle K coffee. But if he knew about Nixon’s logbook, he didn’t let on. He told me it was good to see the sheriff out with the deputies on a Saturday. For a moment, I felt better.

I was milling around the back of the SWAT command post, trying not to get in the way, when the cell phone rang again with another blast from the past.

“David Mapstone?” It was a man’s voice, baritone, brisk and impatient. “This is Hector Gutierrez, with Briscoe, Hayne and Douglas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m making this call as an officer of the court,” the voice wobbled over the wireless stations.

“Why is that, Mr. Gutierrez?”

“You’re the acting sheriff,” he said. “I don’t know anything about you.” The verdict was final. “You probably don’t realize that I used to be in the public defender’s office. Years ago, I defended a man named Leo O’Keefe.”

“What about O’Keefe?” I cut him off.

“I saw the news. This is the man you think shot Sheriff Peralta.”

“What about O’Keefe?”

“He contacted me this afternoon,” Gutierrez said.

“How?”

“In the parking garage at my office,” he said. “I stopped in for some files, and he was there. He looked like hell. Of course, I told him I couldn’t help him, that as an officer of the court I was required to contact the police.”

“Did you offer to help him turn himself in?”

There was a long empty buzz on the phone. Finally, “I don’t really do pro bono work now, Mapstone.”

I couldn’t resist, “Is this the same ‘Red Hector’ who was fighting for the oppressed?”

“To hell with you, Mapstone. I’m doing you a favor. O’Keefe is on the run. I told him to go to the police. But he’s afraid. He’s convinced they’re out to kill him. He’s convinced they did everything they could to get him from the day he was found with two dead deputies and that girl in Guadalupe.”

“That true?”

“That was a long time ago,” Gutierrez said. “You do what you can when you’re defending some guy who has every deck stacked against him.”

A blast of radio traffic came through the command post. I stepped outside onto the road, facing an alfalfa field and San Tan Mountain, faded in a yellow haze.

“Did he get a fair trial?”

“In my opinion, no. But with two dead cops, nobody was in a hurry to help this kid. Jesus, even his name, Leo-O. Sounds funny.”

“What does that mean? Was the case prosecuted kosher?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I did the best I could. See, people get lost in the system. It’s like this giant threshing machine, and when it gets hold of you everything just kind of goes along automatically.”