171894.fb2
We delivered Beth to the huge, glassy Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Building in downtown Phoenix. To me, it still looked like a call center in the suburbs. Inside, we sat through hours of interviews with the U.S. Attorney’s staff, through a magnificent Arizona sunset out the big windows, and then Beth went off into protective custody with two marshals. What I really wanted was a shower, a drink, and a long sleep with Lindsey curled up against me.
“Sheriff!”
It was Kimbrough, waiting at the foot of the escalator as we descended into the enormous glass shell of the atrium. He shook my hand, then gave Lindsey an awkward hug.
“Congratulations,” he said, “We’re not waiting for federal indictments, either. We’ve already picked up two of these bounty hunters. And they’ve given up two other scumbags, former deputies, who were working with them. And we have arrest warrants issued for all the ones you said on the phone.”
He looked at my face. “Man, that must hurt,” he said. It did. It looked worse. On a trip to the men’s room, I spent several minutes scrutinizing the colors of my shiner.
“Don’t ask about Peralta,” he said. “I don’t know anything new.” We walked past the metal detectors and out onto Washington Street. Outside, it was nicely brisk-balmy compared to the weather in Denver or out on the Navajo Reservation with Beth by the roadside.
“You know Beth cleared him,” I said.
He bit his lip. “I know she backed away from saying he stole that cocaine.” We stopped on the street, facing each other. “Look, don’t make me the bad guy in this, Sheriff. I’m just doing the job. We still have to deal with Peralta’s badge number in Nixon’s payoff book.”
“Maybe we don’t,” Lindsey said. A little clot of traffic passed by, and she went on.
“While Dave was getting beaten up, I took all the badge numbers in the book and set up a database to handle other information we had about East County deputies for April, May, and June 1979. Things like personal logs, court appearances, overtime reports, sick time. Then I created a program to make some comparisons.
“Here’s the thing: It doesn’t make any sense the way Nixon recorded it. He lists a payoff of $1,200 to Peralta’s badge number on April 3, but for most of that month Peralta was at an FBI school in Quantico.”
I remembered. He was.
“The same result comes out in several other instances. A payoff is given to a badge number, but the deputy is on sick leave. Another payoff is listed, but that badge number goes to somebody who’s been transferred to the West Valley.”
“So,” Kimbrough said, “you’re saying it’s all bogus?”
“Not necessarily,” Lindsey said. “It might be pretty simple. They might have thrown in some innocent deputies on that list to provide cover, just in case they were ever caught. Or it might be a code. For example, maybe Peralta’s badge number in the logbook actually means somebody else. I ran some scenarios that way, and they came out in a way that would make sense. Maybe not airtight for a courtroom, but enough to point us to the real dirty cops. Certainly enough to clear Peralta.”
“Wait a damned minute,” Kimbrough said. “I want this to be a happy ending, too. But you’re using technology that didn’t even exist twenty years ago, and if it did no damned sheriff’s deputy knew how to use it.”
“They wouldn’t have to,” I said. “It would be as simple as a sheet of paper with the real dirty cops and their badge numbers on one side, and the decoy badge numbers on the other. Just a simple key. Now I don’t know why that key wasn’t with Nixon’s book. But the bad guys obviously thought we had it.”
Kimbrough stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the sidewalk. “OK, Sheriff,” he said. “Maybe it gives us a starting point.”
I leaned over and whispered to Lindsey, “You’re pretty smart for a propellerhead.” She lightly stroked my cheek.
“Sheriff Mapstone!”
It was a federal guard, walking briskly from the building. “You got a message. It came through the security office. From a woman named Sharon at Good Samaritan?”
“Yeah?” I felt a cold bolt driven into my legs.
“She wants you at the hospital. Said it’s urgent. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so,” I heard myself say.
“Here,” Kimbrough pointed us toward the curb. “We can take my car.”
The elevator moved upstairs slowly. It was sized for two or three hospital beds, but the three of us just seemed to move involuntarily into one corner. The cables and gears churned quietly. The panel glowed with a single button depressed to the correct floor. And then we were there. The doors opened with a heavy jerk. I forced myself to walk quickly down the hall, half-lit now for night running. Across the polished floor tiles: Step on a crack…My stomach felt that hard thumb of pain again. My panic attack, if Beth was to be believed. To have come through all this just to…
“Mapstone.”
Peralta lay in his bed, halfway raised, his large dark eyes wonderfully open. His skin was too pale and his lips were badly chapped. But he looked at us. We bunched up in the doorway, afraid to walk farther.
“Mapstone,” he repeated, his voice reedy and soft. “Where the hell have you been?”
Sharon was sitting in a chair beside the head of the bed. She looked up at us and began to tear up. “He woke up two hours ago. Just woke up.” She swallowed hard. “I’m taught to discount miracles. I’ll take this one.”
I stepped forward and put a hand on his big shoulder. “Good to have you back,” I said.
He shook his head. “You got beat up, Mapstone.”
“I hurt ’em back,” I said.
His eyes followed me. “Did you get the bad guys?” he asked.
“Almost,” I said. “We’re about to get them all.”
“You know about Camelback Falls, the River Hogs?” he whispered insistently.
“David, let him rest. .” Sharon prodded.
I pleaded with her with my eyes. I glanced back at Kimbrough, then Lindsey. Then I pulled up a chair and let him talk.
He filled in some gaps for us. Told us what we needed to know. I could hear Kimbrough scratching some notes on his pad.
Peralta closed his eyes for a second, then gave in to some coughing-also a wonderful relief to hear. He looked at me again, and this time his voice had some of the old steel in it.
“Well,” he said. “Don’t get too used to that title, Sheriff Mapstone.”
I smiled so wide my face convulsed in a dozen points of pain. It felt great.