Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

All I had wanted was a summer at home to get my bearings and some easy work from Mike Peralta. Instead, I was in the middle of-what? Three unsolved murders. Two warnings to quit looking into something. Thoughts of Lindsey-too many thoughts. Too many questions. You wouldn’t think anxiety and paranoia would grow so much in a city of endless sunny days, tanned goddesses, and opulent resorts. You would be wrong. It was a concrete desert and this was high summer.

I went to a gun shop and bought two sets of speed loaders for the Python and three boxes of rounds heavy enough to drop a gorilla. I wore extra-extra-large shirts, attempting, with little success, to conceal the bulk of the gun on my hip. So I just started clipping my star on my belt all the time and carrying openly.

I finished cleaning up the mess at home. After work, Lindsey came over and we drank Bloody Marys and listened to Billy Strayhorn and Charlie Parker CDs. It would have seemed reassuring if I hadn’t felt the constant heavy tug of the Colt Python on my belt. Lindsey carried a baby Glock 9-mm automatic in her purse, nine rounds compactly held in the magazine, “ready to rock ’n’ roll,” as she put it.

That night, we sat out in the garden and defied the heat, listening to the cicadas and the city noise. We swapped life stories. I learned that she was a another Virgo, born twenty-seven years before-“on Labor Day,” she deadpanned.

She was an Air Force brat. She came to the Valley when she was three, when her dad was stationed at Williams Air Force Base. Her middle name was Faith. “Hey, it was the seventies,” she said.

After high school, she tried college but was bored. “No offense,” she said. Hell, I’d been bored with it, too. So she enlisted and went into the Air Police. After four years, she knew she hated being told what to do, so she came home and tried college again. “Still boring.” She went to work for the Sheriff’s Office. That was five years ago. She’d been fooling with computers since she was fourteen. No training, but, she said, “I know how computers think.” There was an unhappy love affair with a lawyer named John. She lived in Sunnyslope with a cat.

She stretched her legs out onto my lap and I massaged her feet, nice feet with long, athletic ankles and delicate toes. I told her more about my life.

I gave her the short version: I am a Phoenix native born at Good Samaritan Hospital. An only child. My parents were killed in a plane crash. Little kids play that “orphan game” when they get mad at their folks. But it was real for me. My mom’s parents raised me. Grandfather was a dentist, named Philip-I carried that as my middle name. Grandmother sold real estate; her name was Ella. It was a good childhood. In college, I thought I’d be a lawyer and save the world. But I didn’t like the idea of defending bad guys, and I didn’t want to stay in school forever. So I got my B.A. and went to the Sheriff’s Academy. When I knew I didn’t want to be a cop, I went back to college part-time, studied history, and grew to love it. So I got my Ph.D. and, in those ironies life springs on us, stayed in school, teaching in Ohio and California. Got married. Got divorced. No kids. It all sounded neater than it was.

When I was done, she asked, “Why are you attracted to emotionally unavailable women?”

“I didn’t see it that way at the time. I saw brilliant, creative women who had suffered and wanted so desperately to be loved.”

“Maybe I’m emotionally unavailable,” Lindsey said.

I said, “Maybe I am, too.”

I got back from class a little after 2:00 P.M. Thursday and the phone was ringing. I expected it might be the Realtor I had called about listing the house, but it was a woman’s voice.

“We’ve met,” she said. “We met in an apartment a couple of weeks ago. But please don’t say my name.”

“Okay.”

“I need very much to talk to you. There are some important things you don’t know.”

“Are you-”

“Be careful, Dr. Mapstone. If you know what I mean.”

I did. “How should we proceed?” I asked.

“Go to the place where you get your messages when you’re working,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

I had to think about it for a minute, but then I remembered that I had a mailbox in the Social Sciences Department at Phoenix College. I drove back up Nineteenth Avenue and got there between classes. In the box, aside from two weeks’ worth of mindless administrative drivel, I found an envelope with my name on it, and inside that a folded sheet of stationery with the message: “Metrocenter. Ruby Tuesday, 8:30 tonight.”

I tucked it in my pocket and wondered why Susan Knightly wanted to talk to me.

Back at home, the answering machine was empty. I picked up the phone and called Lorie Pope at the Republic. It had only been about two years since we’d spoken.

“Lorie, it’s David Mapstone.”

“David,” she said. “My God, what a surprise. I read about you and was going to call.”

“I guess I should ask if you’re on deadline?”

“No,” she said. “But thanks for asking.”

“Remember when I helped you with that Latin American history paper senior year?”

“You saved my life, David. Of course I remember.”

“Well, I’m callin’ in favors. How about lunch tomorrow?”