Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

“So you planted the story in the paper profiling the detectives. And, wow, one of them is Lindsey, looking just the way he wants his victims. Why didn’t you just give him her address, too?”

Peralta just stared at me.

“Any luck?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“You could have told me.” Too many ten-ton rocks had fallen on me for one day.

“I did tell you.”

“You ought to run for sheriff,” I snarled. “You’re starting to lie like a politician.”

He just sipped his Gibson calmly. “Mapstone, are you one of these knuckle-draggers who doesn’t believe in women deputies? Anyway, you told me she’s not yours. So what right do you have to interfere in her life?”

Trumped by the notorious liberal, Mike Peralta. I went to make myself another drink. When I came back I told him about my encounter with the man in the white van.

Chapter Twenty-nine

I drove east on Camelback in the heavy clots of traffic, vaguely going to Scottsdale. It was Thursday and I had Ellington’s tribute to Strayhorn in the CD player with the volume up and the top of the car down.

I imagined a stroke of luck that might let me slip into Scottsdale Fashion Square, find a parking place and do a little Christmas shopping. I didn’t want Christmas coming so soon. Time was moving too fast. It was 1999 and the decade, the century, the millennium were slipping away. The change was too big for me to get my mind around. I couldn’t even get my mind around the Yarnell mess. I was feeling stymied, feeling every insecurity about being a make-believe cop in over his head. Peralta had even dismissed my information about a possible encounter with the Harquahala Strangler.

“How would he know you had anything to do with Lindsey?” Peralta had asked.

I tried to parse that out. The newspaper article with Lindsey’s photo had come out before Thanksgiving. I saw the man in the Econoline several days later. So he could have followed Lindsey and seen us together.

“So how did he know your name?”

This piece of detail that chilled me simply deflated my case to Peralta.

I did my best. “I’ve been in the paper. The guy pays attention. He wants to know about his victims, her boyfriends, where she works. He asked for directions to the Sheriff’s Office, and he asked if I was David Mapstone.” But in the end, even I couldn’t be sure. I let it drop.

“Maybe he was one of your old students, Mapstone. He recognized you. Anyway, if I arrested every weirdo asking for directions, we’d have to build a hundred Tent Jails.”

Now I was behind on my shopping list, especially for friends back east. Patty always gave gifts that were elaborate in their imagination and the attention they paid to the recipient’s tastes and enthusiasms. I gave too many books and CDs; it was a failing. Peralta, I could buy some cigars. Sharon, she was a book reader, thank goodness. Lorie liked jazz and I knew just what to get her. I needed something for Gretchen, something not too intimate, but intimate enough. Lindsey, well, Lindsey was out of my life.

When I got back to the old courthouse and climbed the four flights of stairs to my corner nook, I found the door open and Sharon Peralta sitting in one of the old straightback wooden chairs.

“The security guard said it would be okay if I waited for you,” she said, standing. I gave her a hug and we both sat down. “I also brought that in, it was in front of your door.” I opened the FedEx box and loose files cascaded out across my increasingly messy desk. It was from a graduate school friend who now taught environmental law at the University of Arizona, and he had promised to send me copies of his files on the battle over the Yarnell mine in Superior.

“Sorry this place is kind of a mess,” I said. “I’m behind.”

“It has real charm,” she smiled. “I do love the big windows.”

“I bought you a Christmas present,” I said. “But I have to wrap it.”

We sat enveloped in the long silence of high-ceilinged rooms. I hadn’t seen Sharon since Thanksgiving. Today, she was turned out smartly in a charcoal pinstripe pant suit, set off with a simple, crew-neck white blouse. Phoenicians don’t know how to dress. Sharon is an exception.

“So how is he?”

I leaned back in my chair and told her he was all right. How could you tell with Peralta?

“I assumed he’d come to you,” she said, clasping her hands over a slender knee.

That silence again. I started to say something about not wanting to be caught in the middle of a battle between my two oldest friends in the world. But she beat me to the verbal draw.

“So how’s your mystery?”