Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

“And where has Phaedra gone?” Sharon asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you sure she hasn’t killed herself?”

I shook my head.

“Young women can get into a lot of trouble at that age,” she said.

“Sharon thinks you need somebody in your life,” Peralta said.

“Mike!” she said. Then: “Are you seeing anyone?”

r /> I shook my head. “I’ve only been back in town a couple of months. I’m not really looking.”

“Not carrying a torch for Patty?”

“No,” I said a little too emphatically. “She’s been through several lovers since me. Now she’s with a twenty-two-year-old tennis pro.”

“Well, none of my business,” Sharon said. “You need some time. Everybody does after what you’ve been through. But you’re very different from most people, David. I can’t help my matchmaker impulses.”

“Thanks, Sharon.”

“And we both hope you’ll stay in Phoenix. This is your home. This is where your roots and friends are, and as we get older, those things get more important.”

I believed that, but my relationship with Phoenix was complicated. Being back in town seemed like the most natural thing in the world. There were new freeways and neighborhoods. The water conservation policies had converted many lawns to desert landscaping. But it was still my city. Camelback and Squaw Peak and the South Mountains again became my dramatic compass as I drove the predictable grid of streets. The nights had the old familiar quality of dry, open spaces. I felt safe and centered here-a feeling that surprised me, given how burned-out I’d been when I left Phoenix years ago.

But the city had also become so big and dangerous. There was the heat and lack of rain, which I would always hate. And there was the job situation. Despite being an alumnus, I didn’t receive a warm homecoming from Arizona State University, which said in a curt letter that it had a hiring freeze on, and even if it hadn’t, my published articles as a historian had been “lackluster” and all hiring had to be done under the goal of “greater diversity.” I only hoped I could find a new job before my savings ran out.

“But for now, he needs work,” Peralta said, reading my mind. “So what did the cops forty years ago miss about Rebecca Stokes?”

Sharon started to object to work talk, but she stopped when I said, “They missed a serial killer.”

Peralta sat silently, wreathed in bluish cigar smoke, letting me lay it all out. I told them about Opal Harvey, the Creeper, John Rogers. One by one, I detailed the four other homicides of young women and their similarity to the Stokes case. Sharon’s large coffee-colored eyes never left me.

Finally, after a long silence, Peralta let out a huge sigh and said, “Jesus.”

He refilled our glasses with cognac. “It’s not airtight that these are related, but it’s pretty compelling. Especially for the little town Phoenix was in those days. I’d never heard of any of these other cases.”

“I didn’t find any newspaper accounts of the others,” I said. “But they probably didn’t have Rebecca’s family connections.”

Peralta asked, “How come the cops back then didn’t make this connection?”

“That’s the big question,” I said. “The lead detective on Stokes was a man named Harrison Wolfe, and I can’t find him, can’t even find a record of his death. He might know. Opal Harvey thought the powers that be didn’t want to attract the negative publicity.”

“Never underestimate the amount of ass-covering cops can do,” Peralta said. “Harrison Wolfe. I’ve heard of him. He was very old school. When I went to the Academy, there were still stories about Harrison Wolfe.”

“Such as?” Sharon asked.

“Oh, racist, sexist, politically incorrect stuff, honey.” Peralta smiled.

“So you like him,” Sharon teased.

Peralta went on. “He was a hard-ass. There was a story that was still making the rounds when I was a rookie in the early seventies about how years before this cop came on some bad guys down at the Southern Pacific yards one night, caught them breaking into a boxcar, but they had him surrounded and had their guns on him. The son of a bitch pulled his own gun-drew against the drop-and killed two of them, wounded the two others. His name was Harrison Wolfe.”

“Sounds like a whackadoo to me,” she said. “Clinically speaking, of course.”

“So what else have you found?” Peralta asked.