High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gordon give his partner a “back-off” glance and the voice behind me fell silent.

The kid was too stupid to stay on an elite detail. Soon enough he would find himself alone on a dark road with a guy less forgiving than me. One who would cause him much pain and require years of facial reconstruction and he would squint because it hurt to open his eyes.

Dark road—I thought again of Strawberry Death. I was still not persuaded by Lindsey’s explanation.

At Van Buren Street, we jigged east to First Avenue. I dreaded seeing the new occupant in Peralta’s former office suite, where I had spent many sessions hearing his demands for progress on a case. That seemed like another person’s life now.

But the car turned left on Jefferson Street and pulled in to valet parking for the Hotel Palomar.

Nobody said anything. We merely got out and I followed them inside.

The Palomar was the crown jewel of CityScape, the latest attempt to revive a downtown that the city had nearly killed in the sixties.

The development had been presented in the newspaper with renderings of audacious skyscrapers. The reality was vapid and suburban, turned in on itself instead of recreating a walkable downtown commercial district. Still, it was better than the brutal empty plaza it had replaced, and Lindsey and I spent as much as we could at the limited selection of shops. We tried to be civic stewards, supporting downtown rather than driving to Scottsdale or the Biltmore.

Inside the hotel was another matter. The Blue Hound restaurant and bar had a flashy LA feel, with dark wood, swag lamps, large mirrors hung at menacing angles over the tables, leather sofas in front of a fireplace that was lit even in the summertime, textured walls, and a big crowd.

I followed the plainclothes deputies past the fun to the elevators. We rode up in silence.

The car opened onto a rooftop bar called Lustre. With the temperature still above seventy, it was a beautiful night to be here. But the place was empty. A sign said, “Reserved for Private Party.”

That would be the casually dressed man at the bar with a messenger bag on the floor beside his feet. He stood up and smiled at me. Then he extended his hand.

And I shook it.

He saved me the impossibility of speaking his title by saying, “Call me Chris.”

Then he dismissed the detail with a “thanks,

guys” and led me to a table.

Christopher Andrew Melton was completing his first year as Maricopa County sheriff. Not being a big television watcher, especially what passed for local news, this was my first opportunity to really see him.

He was my size and my height. I had so hoped he was a short little guy. I had dreamed most of his hair had fallen out, leaving only dust bunny tufts. But, no, it was still there, golden and expensively cut. His voice was measured and harmonized with education, not the redneck twang I expected. He was further helped by the kind of limpid blue eyes that were ubiquitous in British costume dramas.

He had moved to Sun City West after finishing twenty-five years with the FBI. He invested in some houses and made top dollar before the real-estate crash. With his federal law-enforcement pedigree, he won consulting work for the homebuilders and the rock products association—the trade group that lobbied for the asphalt, concrete, and aggregate producers—doing what, I didn’t know. I did know they were two of the most politically powerful entities in the state.

Then he ran for sheriff. An “impossible bid,” the pundits had said. “Mike Peralta will be sheriff as long as he wants the job and then he can be governor.” That was what they had said.

But Melton found his issue and his timing with illegal immigration, something Peralta was supposedly “soft” on, even though the Sheriff’s Office had no authority over federal enforcement of immigration laws.

It was a dirty campaign, with Melton’s surrogates playing to Anglo fears and emphasizing that the sheriff was “soft” because he was “a Mexican himself.” “What part of illegal doesn’t he understand?” one bumper sticker read, with Peralta’s face on it.

Melton beat Peralta by ten thousand votes in the Republican primary where the turnout was twenty percent. The county’s population was four million.

And now he sat across from me.

“I know this is awkward,” he said.

The server arrived and saved me from saying many unhelpful things. In addition to the campaign, I could have mentioned the Justice Department investigation of the Sheriff’s Office, brought on by Melton’s highly publicized “sweeps” to round up illegals. This had destroyed years of effort by Peralta and the Phoenix Police to build cooperation in a community that was often victimized by crime. Now it was back in the shadows.

With deputies playing immigration police, response times had risen around the county, even for priority calls. Violent crime in the areas policed by MCSO was increasing. There were allegations of failure to investigate sex crimes. Jail conditions had deteriorated and prisoners had been abused. The county had already paid out three million dollars to settle lawsuits against the department. Local wags were already calling him “Sheriff Crisis Meltdown.”

And this was only from what I had read in the struggling local paper. From a few conversations with old friends in the department, I sensed things were even worse. That the model law-enforcement organization built by Peralta had been trashed.

Melton had even changed the department’s uniforms from light-tan shirt and brown slacks to intimidating LAPD black. He had moved into the new Sheriff’s Office headquarters that was Peralta’s handiwork, the product of years of fighting the county supervisors for funding.

In the newspaper, Melton had called the building, “A sign of the positive changes I’m bringing to this department.”