Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

Controlling my rage as best I could, I told him I heard it from Bobby Hamid. Peralta expelled a mulish breath. “I think he has a mole in the department.”

“Maybe he’s the killer,” I said.

“God doesn’t like me that much,” Peralta said. Then, “So you’re gonna get all territorial on me about Adams? Anyway, I thought you had something new going with that tall redhead. Or are you doing both of them-damn, I always wanted to do that, but it seemed like a lot of trouble.”

I was still standing in the entryway at home. I needed a drink. “You didn’t tell me you were using Lindsey as bait. I just thought she was working on the tech side of it, hacking the strangler’s computer. Something safe. Why the hell is she working with Patrick Blair…?” I called all this over my shoulder as I mixed an angry Bombay Sapphire martini.

When I came back in the living room, he said mildly, “Are you going to get a Christmas tree?”

He was knocking my anger off stride. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

“She volunteered for the job,” he said. “And she’s a deputy sheriff, same as you, and she took an oath to protect and serve, even if it means personal danger, same as you.”

“Spare me the damned academy graduating class speech!”

He made a purring sound and set the Gibson aside. “What did you find out today on your case?”

I drank a big slug of gin and told him about Zelda Chain. His eyes became slits as he listened. Then he said, “Preliminary lab work on Max Yarnell says he was knocked down by a serious blow to the chin, maybe a kick. Then the petrified wood was driven into his heart. Nothing unusual in the trace evidence, fibers, blood, chemical workup.”

“What about that doll?”

“It’s the same brand as the one delivered to your office. You can buy ’em at any Toys ‘R’ Us. No prints, no unusual fibers or chemicals. The blood was painted on, a common, water-based art-store paint. Made in China.”

“So we’re nowhere!” I said a little too vehemently, plopping down in the other leather chair.

“Look,” he said, leaning his bulk forward. “There’s a whole subculture out there of escorts working on the Web. You have heard of the Internet, right Mapstone?”

“Fuck you.”

“I never can be sure with you and pop culture,” he went on. “Anyway, they cruise chat rooms and set up profiles to let guys know they’re available for business. It’s hard as hell to police, because they can hide their identity and screen potential customers.”

“Apparently not well enough,” I said.

He nodded. “All these girls were involved with meeting people online. The early victims were escorts. But the last two haven’t been, although they did frequent chat rooms or dating sites. One was a college student. The other was a housewife. So the bastard has upped the stakes. He’s broken out into the general population.” He made the killer sound like a disease.

“Lindsey’s team was initially working with the Internet service providers to track the guy, but I guess it’s so easy to hide your trail if you know what you’re doing. So we felt we had to do something more.”

“Why her?” I demanded.

“She volunteered,” he said. “And, she looks kinda racy and cute. The other deputies I could call on look like East German swimmers.”

“It’s not just that, and you know it! She fits his profile, right? Straight, dark hair, and pale skin. You wanted him to come after her. You put her photo in the paper!”

Peralta started to say something and stopped. He finished his drink and held it out to me to refill. I ignored him.

“Look, Mapstone, this is complicated, and very confidential. This guy is a risk-taker, always pushing the envelope. We think his first victim was a street hooker that he just picked up. Then, this whole Internet thing starts, and, believe me, not all these victims are crack whores. He kept moving more upscale. In some cases, these were party girls who made a little cash on the side with freelance prostitution. But now we’ve had two victims with no known ties to prostitution. He meets them online-he can pretend to be anybody. Then they meet for real, and sayonara. This city’s on the verge of panic.”

I took pity on him and made a new Gibson. When I came back he continued, haltingly, hating to give up so much information.

“We heard from this guy. He sent a note, dropped it on the sidewalk in front of headquarters. He wrote that he was so powerful now he would kidnap and kill a female detective, just to show us he could. Nobody knows this outside the key investigators.”

“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.

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.