The Night Detectives (15 page)

“Holy crap!” She put her hands on her hips. “Zisman's married. You know he's a reserve officer in Phoenix?”

“I do. He also owned the handcuffs.”

A burst came over her radio and she keyed her mic. I was being saved by a call: a burglar alarm a mile away.

She touched my shoulder. “Gotta roll, David. Call me sometime and we'll catch up. Good luck with Larry. Good guy in my view. Not so much his son.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm surprised the Army accepted him. Don't tell Larry I said that.”

All my senses kicked to a higher gear. The Army. “Of course not. Stay safe, Amy.”

In a few seconds she was back in the cruiser, where she executed a U-turn over the rounded curbs and zoomed back out toward the exit of the subdivision. I turned off the dome light and tried to breathe normally again.

28

I drove back to the center city on surface streets, sick that Peralta's plan didn't seem to be working. My phone was charged and had plenty of time left. It wasn't ringing.

Through downtown Tempe on Mill Avenue, across the Salt River, Galvin Parkway took me through Papago Park, the two iconic buttes backlit by the city, preserved desert all around. I thought about what Amy Taylor had said—not the “call me sometime” part, but about Zisman having a son. That was another new angle. Or it was Occam's Razor and Zisman was the john, even if he wasn't on the flash drive, and Grace had tried to blackmail him exactly as Detective Sanchez had said.

But did that explain why Tim Lewis had been tortured, every finger broken? Somebody thought he had information. Information to kill for. If it were simple blackmail, the problem would have been solved with Grace's supposed suicide. “Death solves all problems,” said Joseph Stalin, who had yellow eyes. “No man, no problem.” Well, no woman, but there was still a problem. Larry Zisman, former football player, could easily have subdued Grace and thrown her over the balcony. The torturing of Tim Lewis had taken a crew.

At McDowell, I turned left and entered the Phoenix city limits, then drove uphill between the buttes and was greeted by the dense galaxy of lights stretching all the way to the horizon. Phoenix was beautiful at night. On the downhill drive, the iPhone rang.

“I think I've got your tail,” Peralta said.

My pulse kicked up. “Do tell.”

“A truck followed you though Tempe, made every turn, and then kept going as you went up Galvin through the park and turned on McDowell. He's probably a mile behind you. A black Dodge pickup. California plate. He's got a tag frame that says ‘I love Rancho Bernardo,' with a heart thing instead of love, you know.”

I did know. It was the truck that had passed me the night I got out of the cab in Ocean Beach, the one I thought was simply looking for a parking space.

“Let's box him in,” I said. “Do a felony stop.”

After a long pause, Peralta's voice came back on. “No.”

“Why?”

“First,” he said, “because we're not the cops anymore. Second, because when I hired you many years ago, I hired your whole toolbox, not just the hammer. Since a year ago, all I get is the hammer.”

Now it was my turn to be silent. His words stung. His words were accurate.

“So what's the plan?” I asked, and he gave it to me.

“Stay on the phone,” he said.

I drove back through downtown and went north on wide, fast-moving Seventh Avenue. Numbered avenues and drives run north and south west of Central; numbered streets and places run north and south east of Central. Now you know how to get around Phoenix. I assumed the pickup driver was learning this from our excursion.

At Northern, I turned west again and after about two miles reached the Black Canyon Freeway, which ran in a trench below grade level. A Motel 6 sat a few blocks up the southbound access road. Getting to it required turning north into the K-Mart parking lot, then passing through the Super 8 parking lot, and finally reaching the Motel 6 parking lot. We didn't even need streets with so many seas of asphalt.

I parked away from the motel building and stepped out into the heat. I had a cell phone in each pocket as I walked the fifty feet to a room on the ground floor right in the middle of the ugly four-story box. It had none of the charm of the old motels that had once lined Grand and Van Buren with their Western themes and neon signs.

Three other cars were parked in the lot, all of them empty.

Precisely as Peralta had said, a key card was slipped into the edge of the door all the way down at ground level. I retrieved it, unsnapped the holster holding the Colt Python but, against my better judgment, left the gun there. I popped the card into the lock and stepped inside.

Nobody shot me.

Turning on the light switch, I surveyed a cheap motel room looking like every other cheap motel room in America. It had been the scene of countless assignations. Bring in an ultraviolet detector, and the pattered orange bedspread would have revealed an army of old semen stains, dead in mid-slither.

I spoke into the headset. “Where's my tail?”

“He's backed off. But don't spend too much time there. I don't have a good feeling about this. Remember, he can track you on a computer. He doesn't have to see you.”

I looked at the bed again. The spread looked ruffled, as if a couple had finished and moved on moments before I got there. I sat in a chair and waited for a call on the other cell. The device was a little Sphinx made in a foreign sweatshop.

Then I saw it, sitting on the low chest of drawers. It wasn't a Claymore mine, but somehow it stuck a spike of dread into my throat.

I studied the Zero Halliburton briefcase with its tough aluminum construction. Somewhere I had read this was the brand of case that a military aide carried at all times with the president. Inside was the “nuclear football” containing the launch codes to end the world. And this one looked that sinister.

“What the hell is this?” My voice sounded strange alone in the room.

He knew what I was talking about without describing the flashy case that looked so out of place in the shabby room.

“Sharon bought it today. Open it up.” He gave me a code. I dialed open the lock and unlatched it.

Inside were some men's clothes, legal pads and pens, and a shaving kit.

“Look in the socks,” he said.

Sure enough, inside one of the rolled-up pairs of socks was a flash drive.

He was inviting them to steal it.

“Is this the real flash drive?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But Lindsey encrypted it so it would take even a good techie hours to break in.”

“But…”

“Mapstone, why don't you hang there for a few more minutes, then find a place to stash the case, and call me when you're back in the car.” He hung up.

The motel room felt close and hot around me. I used the bathroom, checked to make sure the door was locked again, and searched for some artful spot to place the briefcase. The bed was on a solid wood frame, so that wouldn't work. The drawers would be too obvious: better to make them think I was trying to hide it. So I arranged it under the pillows and remade the bed with military neatness.

Back in the car, sweating and worried, I started to go out to the access road, but changed my mind.

Instead, I cruised north through the alley behind the motel, turned around, shut off the headlights, and slowly drove back the way I had come. I nosed out behind the building in time to see another car: a new white Chevy Impala coming around the front of the Super 8. There are thousands of lookalike Impalas. But this one looked exactly like the one that I saw on the security camera earlier in the day outside our office, right down to the Nevada tag.

Wishing the Prelude were not so damned white, I watched as the Impala sped up to the door I had left minutes before. If he noticed me, it didn't show. He was moving so fast, I thought he might ram through the wall. But, no, he slammed to a stop at the last second. If I had the brake-shop monopoly in Phoenix, I would be a rich man.

I dropped the emergency brake enough to slide another couple of feet beyond the edge of the building. The security lighting on the outside of the motel was impeccable. Back where I sat was relative darkness.

Out of the Impala stepped the high-and-tight haircut who had been searching the Prelude earlier in the day. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, carrying something in each hand. One something was a gun. He headed straight to the motel room door without even looking in my direction. If he were a soldier or a former soldier, it was poor situational awareness, but it worked in my favor.

I relayed all this to Peralta on the iPhone.

“He's also got some kind of a crowbar,” I said. It was small and black, easy to conceal, and made quick work of the door. “He's inside. I'm going to take him.”

Peralta might have had a very clever plan. But this was as close to the suspect as we were likely to get. I felt suddenly cool and comfortable, my breathing even.

Peralta barked at me. “No. This is not the guy who was tailing you. Don't go back to that room, Mapstone…”

“Too bad.” I pressed the little red virtual button on the glass screen that said, “end call,” and tossed the earbuds onto the seat.

I mapped it out in my head: twenty quick strides to reach the door, keep the Python down against my leg so it wasn't obvious I was packing, pause, assess, and try to quietly ease the door open. No kicking it down. The crowbar had made that unnecessary. Then he and I could have a civil conversation about where the baby was. That is, unless he raised his firearm.

But with my hand on the Honda's door latch, I hesitated. What if the black Dodge Ram suddenly showed up?

High-and-tight almost immediately re-emerged, carrying the Halliburton briefcase. It gleamed in the light. So much for my clever job of hiding it. He quickly got into the Impala and drove toward the access road. I rolled after him, headlights off.

After the third ring, I activated the iPhone.

Peralta's voice came across: “don't follow him.”

“Are you nuts? This is the guy who was casing our office.”

“The plan is working, Mapstone. Let the plan work.”

All I knew was that I had spent several hours I could never get back driving around Phoenix and had nothing to show for it. Still, I reluctantly swung around the other way, back north through the alley, and turned on my headlights.

As I came around the other side of the motel, two Phoenix Police cruisers were sitting driver's door to driver's door. They might have been talking shop or sports or flirting with each other. Or they were watching me. By this time, however, I was only another law-abiding citizen driving through the night.

The Impala driver was long gone.

I muttered profanities.

“Glad you didn't use the hammer, Mapstone?” I could feel the gloat carried across the cell towers. “Sharon left the briefcase when she rented the room. Earlier today she sewed a small tracking device into it. Two can play this game with electronics and ours are better.”

I spoke low and slowly, in a rage. “So explain the next move to me, Sheriff.”

“Come down to the Whataburger at Bethany Home. Go through the drive-thru. We're in the silver convertible. But don't come over to us.”

I did as told, merging into the concrete river of lights that was the freeway and speeding south two miles. After taking the Bethany Home Road exit, I crossed over and made a quick jog up the northbound access road to the restaurant. The building was separated from the traffic by a faux desert berm with a couple of palo verde trees and some creosote bushes. And the drive through, which ran around it like a letter “C.” The entrance was at the top of the “C,” so I went that way, noticing Sharon's Infiniti parked in one of the spaces to my left, across a gravel-covered berm.

The bad guys knew his pickup, thought they had it rigged with a tracker. In its place, he was driving a silver two-door convertible, starting price sixty grand.

“You're very inconspicuous in that ride,” I told Peralta, “especially in this part of town.”

“Check it out, Mapstone.”

On the left, immediately in front of the restaurant, a black Dodge Ram was parked near the door. Sure enough, his frame hearted Rancho Bernardo. The windows were tinted dark and I couldn't tell if the engine was running.

Better to not linger: I pulled into the drive-thru, anxiously tapping the steering wheel and wondering about the truck's occupant. His partner had probably told him that he had broken into the motel room and taken the briefcase. Now, what would he think if he saw me pulling in? Maybe he was inside, but I doubted it—he would be tracking me from the cab of the truck.

I didn't understand why Peralta was taking the risk of having me drive here. I hoped he believed in coincidences.

“So what's the plan again?”

“Get your order,” Peralta ordered. “Pull around to the front, pull in a couple of spaces apart, and eat it where he can see you. Pretend to be dumb.”

That part was easy.

By this time, I was actually hungry. So I got a burger, fries, and Diet Coke. Then I parked three spaces south of the Dodge Ram. The tinted windows made it impossible to see if anyone was inside.

Take small bites in case you get in a gunfight, like your grandma taught you.

I was two bites into the cheeseburger when Lindsey stepped out of the convertible and walked toward the restaurant. She was wearing a short khaki skirt and a tight sleeveless top that accentuated her small, pert breasts and very erect nipples. Her ability to look ten years younger than her real age was not diminished by the harsh lights of the parking lot.

She strutted within inches of the Ram driver's door and went inside.

My head throbbed. Over the phone, I demanded, “Are you crazy?”

“No.” Peralta was fully in his Zen master mode. I almost preferred the volcano. He was taking a hell of a chance, assuming that my presence would distract the driver. I prayed he hadn't checked me out in enough detail to realize that the woman with the legs that went on for days was Lindsey Faith Mapstone.

Five minutes later, she walked back the way she had come. She paused in front of the Ram's grille and sipped sensually from a drink, paying no attention to me. She turned back as if she were going to return to the restaurant, and then faced forward again, fellating the straw for the occupants of the truck. If they had missed her the first time, they sure didn't now. She stepped off the curb and walked to the convertible, her skirt swinging saucily.

If the truck door opened on the way to grabbing her and hauling her off for rape and ransom, I was going to control and dominate the situation immediately, badge or no badge.

“Fuck!” Lindsey yelled it.