Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

As I pondered my story, I realized again why it’s nearly impossible to write a credible history of events you have lived. Unless you’re Churchill, and I am definitely not. Assessing and interpreting the past is not like a martini, best drunk just after it’s made, with the little ice crystals still floating amid the gin, just like they make them at Durant’s. No, real history needs time and distance. And I had neither.

Beth said she sat in a patrol car and watched Peralta remove a sack of cocaine from Matson and Bullock’s trunk. I had been there, too, and I saw no such thing. But, as any street cop can tell you, a dozen people can witness the same event and come away with a dozen different recollections. Bobby had asked what happened after the shooting as if the answer held important keys to everything that had happened over the past week.

As the black mountain road unfolded, I pushed into my memories. The dust in my mouth that night. Dust mingled with gunsmoke. It was a strange taste. I had barely avoided death, but that was a thought for later. We were cops. There was the job to do. Four dead men on the ground. Peralta took the weapons from the suspects and handcuffed them, even though they were a long way from life. They lay bleeding into the desert soil. I checked for pulses on Matson and Bullock. They were cool to the touch. It was the first time I had seen dead cops. Their uniforms were the same as mine, only theirs were covered in blood and shredded by bullets. I closed Matson’s eyes, and spread plastic disposable blankets over each body. The plastic blankets were yellow and clung together like Glad wrap.

We found Beth and Leo. I did throw them into the dirt and handcuff them, that was true. They were lucky to be alive. Cops are jumpy when people have been shooting at them, and I wanted these suspects down and quiet for their own safety. Then Nixon got there. As always, a pack of cigarettes formed a distinctive lump in the pocket of his uniform shirt. He wore racy sunglasses, and carried a long-barreled.38 revolver. We stuck Beth and Leo in the back of his cruiser and read them their rights.

Where was Peralta? I couldn’t remember. I stared out the window of the Suburban. Old logging roads came out to meet the asphalt of the highway, then disappeared back in the primeval forest. The yellow line of the road was bright and unbroken, striped on the slick blackness of the asphalt. The road behind us was empty. A brief flurry shot big, phosphorescent flakes against the windshield. I reached out and stroked Lindsey’s hair as she drove. Her hair was glossy and soft, and it brushed luxuriously against her collar.

She said, “It’s going to be OK, History Shamus,” and reached back to hold my hand.

Counterfactual history. What if I hadn’t let Peralta keep talking to me that afternoon at Immaculate Heart Gym-what if he had moved out of the range of the sniper? What if Sharon hadn’t sent me to his office for the insulin-“Mapstone-Camelback Falls”? What if twenty years before, Peralta had not been there with his shotgun when I came face-to-face with Billy McGovern?

The enormous Chevy Suburban hurtled us forward to an unknown historical destiny. But what about May 1979? Where was Peralta while Nixon and I were arresting those kids? I couldn’t remember. I made myself run through the events again. I had all night.

***

By the time I woke up, the sun was grudgingly coming up on our backs. The San Juans vaulted up like ice-cream-topped fantasy mountains out the lefthand side of the truck. The landscape looked eternally cold.

We pulled into Durango, ordered breakfast at a greasy spoon on the main drag, and Beth announced that she wanted to go back to Denver.

“Why didn’t you say that last night?” Lindsey said crossly. “I guess we can put you on a Greyhound.”

“I changed my mind, OK?” She leaned forward on the table, glaring at Lindsey. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” I said, downing three aspirin to try to stop all the aches and pains from last night’s fight. “You just had a couple of guys trying to kill you. I expect they won’t stop trying.”

She swirled her scrambled eggs and said nothing. I winked at Lindsey, and we all ate in silence. In thirty minutes we were on the highway again, heading southwest. Beth didn’t ask to be dropped at the bus depot.

The highway shimmied past Four Corners and we were back in Arizona. My jurisdiction was a little more solid, even if my sense of how all this would turn out was getting shakier every mile we got closer to Phoenix. I drove while Beth, in the passenger seat, stared out at the vast red landscape. In the far distance, the mesas of Monument Valley sat like gameboard pieces. I thought about Peralta and my stomach ached.

When Beth finally spoke, I couldn’t make out the words.

“I said,” she repeated, “do you have panic attacks?”

I glanced over at her. She didn’t look hostile, just wondering. I said, “No. Why do you ask?”

“The way you were breathing,” she said. “The expression on your face. I used to have them.”

I felt scrutinized, invaded. I said nothing but was acutely aware of all my bodily imperfections ticking toward the last tick. Shit.

Beth went on. “I’m going back to Phoenix because of you, Mapstone. You’re human. You’re not a real cop, and I mean it as a compliment. You probably even read books. So I’ll make a leap of faith on you.”

I felt like I should say something, so I asked her how she got into art.

“I’ve always been creative. My parents didn’t see it. Leo did.”

“How did you meet Leo?”

“We met at band camp. We were both sixteen. Can you believe that?” She kicked off her shoes and put her stockinged feet on the dashboard, stretching into the seat. Her legs seemed very long and slender in the black leather pants. “I played clarinet and he played trumpet. He came from this little crossroads in southeast Oklahoma called Calera. Dirt poor. His dad ran off after he was born, and his mom died young. He was brought up by his older brother, and then he died, too. Leo had that kind of luck. The weirdest thing, he loved jazz: Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Mingus. A funny-looking little guy. I was taller than he was.”

“Doesn’t sound like a good catch for a Tulsa deb,” I said.

“That’s why I had to seduce him,” she said, running an agitated hand through her wheat-colored hair. “I hated my life. I hated the preppy assholes my age with all their money. All my dad’s friends who were secretly trying to get me into bed. Leo was just this sweet, gentle, goofy… poet. He wanted to save a damsel in distress, so I let him save me.”

“How did you get to Phoenix?”

“We drove,” she said. “We drove in this piece of shit orange Opel he bought down on Red River. We escaped from Tulsa and my family. It was very romantic and dramatic. We were going to L.A. But the alternator went out between Tucson and Phoenix, and there we were.”