Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

“You’ll have their families go crazy,” he said, “but we’ve already started. Their badge numbers are in Nixon’s little book. Petty amounts of money. But this cocaine theft is very troubling I’m going back to look through the evidence logs from that time period.”

I just listened. So at least part of what Beth had been saying might be true. I thought about Bobby Hamid’s question: What happened after the shooting?

“Sheriff,” Kimbrough said, “You need to know people are asking about you. The brass. Davidson and Abernathy, IA. The feds. And Sharon.…”

“How…?”

“It’s not good,” he said. “He’s still got brain activity, but he’s in a deep coma. He might wake up tomorrow, and he might never…”

“I’ll be back in Phoenix tomorrow,” I said.

“What’s this witness all about?”

“It’s about Guadalupe,” I said. I didn’t tell him she was a lethal witness, lethal to Peralta, maybe even to me-the “tall Anglo partner” who was there when the big Hispanic deputy took the cocaine. There would be time enough for that.

“You could try trusting me,” he said quickly.

“I do,” I said. “That’s why I risked making this call.”

***

We drove west, scaling the Front Range on US 285. It seemed safer to take secondary roads, and a few inches of snow were nothing for Colorado snowplow crews. The highway was clear. It was also nearly deserted. When I lived in Denver, I had seen summer weekend traffic stacked up for miles heading back into the city from the Rockies. But on this weeknight, we had the two wide lanes nearly to ourselves as the elevation rose and my ears popped, and popped again.

Beth was a talker, especially once she was warm in a coat again. She sat in the front seat beside me, but turned to face Lindsey.

“Why do you have that?” she touched her nostril, to indicate Lindsey’s nose stud.

“Because I want it,” Lindsey said.

“I’m an artist,” Beth said. “I like the idea of art on the human body. It just doesn’t seem like a cop thing to do. I guess you do it so you can work undercover.”

“No,” Lindsey said simply, and looked back out at the black mountainsides and forest flying by. I remembered the first time I saw Lindsey, brainy and leggy and quietly intense, with that tiny gold stud in her nostril. She asked why I didn’t smile. “I’m smiling inside,” I said. She smiled at me and said, “There are no ironic deputies.” It was the start of a fine romance. I could have told the story of the nose stud, how Lindsey had gone out and done it as a teenager the weekend after her father died, how she told me she needed to feel something amid the crushing numbness. But Beth didn’t need to know any of that.

“You two are together,” Beth said.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“It’s the way she looks at you, and the way you look at her. It’s not hard to see.”

I said, “You never told us why you knew Leo was in Phoenix last week. We didn’t tell you that.”

That shut her up, and the miles clicked by. The sky glowed a dull white against the tent poles of pine trees. The speedometer needle stayed steady on 60. No need to take a chance with black ice. I was taking enough chances. On the lam from my own department. Transporting a witness across state lines under a shaky justification. Unable even to arrest the person who shot Peralta. Unwilling to go back to Beth’s recollection of the cocaine and the Hispanic deputy. Who the hell was I? Just the idiot they got to be acting sheriff.

We’d just passed the sign for Como when Beth spoke again.

“I knew Leo was going to Phoenix because he told me he was going to,” she said, “When I told you I hadn’t communicated with him since December, that was a lie. He called me. It was a Sunday night, a week ago.”

Before Peralta was shot, but maybe not before Nixon’s murder.

“He said he was out of prison. He didn’t say he had escaped, and I didn’t want to know, OK? But he said he was going to the Valley.”

“Did he say why?” Lindsey said.

“He said he needed to talk to someone who could help him clear his name. That’s all he said.”

“And the next thing, we show up at your door yesterday asking about him?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I got a call last week. It was Wednesday. From your office. Somebody from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, asking if I knew where Leo was. That’s all he asked. That’s why I said ‘You guys never give up’ when you two showed up. And because I knew who your sheriff was, it scared me.”