Jon Talton - High Country Nocturne

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too. Anyway, they were really interested in that Ford pickup that got towed off.”

“Did you see how it got there?”

“Oh, yeah. Man parked it there. A big man, broad shoulders, black hair. Taller than you. He was smoking a cigar.”

“Anglo?”

Grainer shook his head. “Could have been. Probably Mexican. I wasn’t close enough to be sure and he stayed in the shadows.”

Grainer was describing Mike Peralta.

I asked how far away he was when he saw the man?

“About a block away, standing behind a tree.”

He contemplated as his jaw worked the chewing tobacco, then continued.

“It was too far away to make out his face. But the fella didn’t act lost. He was careful to pull into the dark instead of sitting under the light. Got out of the truck. Lit his cigar. Walked around. I told all this to that big black G-man.”

“Did the man at the truck seem nervous?”

He squinted, exposing dozens of little ravines on his face. “You sure you ain’t the law?”

“Not anymore.”

I had to wait for the conversation to work at its own speed. Grainer pulled a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket and stuffed another piece of chaw inside his rosy cheek. A sudden gale of cold, dry wind failed to make any impression on his wide hat.

“He didn’t seem nervous. He walked my way a bit, so I was getting worried he’d find me watching him. Then he yawned and stretched and turned around. Went back and leaned against that truck, and enjoyed his smoke. He waited maybe twenty minutes and a car pulled up. White four-door, California plates. I couldn’t read the numbers. Eyes are going. He climbed inside and they went back on the Interstate.”

“Heading?” I hoped he knew their direction.

“Couldn’t be sure.”

“Do you know about what time he got here?”

“Little after ten.”

That was several hours unaccounted for after the robbery.

I asked if he had unloaded anything from the truck.

Grainer shook his head.

“Nothing?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

Diamond couriers used a small suitcase on wheels. The FBI had played the tape for me, showing Peralta and the second guard going through a back corridor of the mall. They walked side-by-side-the hallway was made for deliveries, so it was plenty wide. The other guard had the wheelie bag.

Then Peralta suddenly spun the man off balance and snatched the case with his left hand. When the man reached for his gun, Peralta already had his Glock in his right hand and fired. One shot. The other guard fell back. Peralta took the bag and walked calmly out of the camera’s view.

This was all the feds would show me. I asked about other cameras, other angles, and they went into the we-ask-the-questions attitude. But the reality was that they had lost him.

Then he got to Ash Fork.

But the weapons locker in his truck was empty. That was unusual. The man always drove around with multiple guns. I would have to do an inventory of the room-sized armory back at the office, which Lindsey’s sister Robin had christened “The Danger Room.” Now we had plenty of danger.

I thought about what Grainer had told me. The diamonds could theoretically be stuffed in his pockets, depending on the size of the settings. So he had decided to dump the suitcase.

“Did he do anything while he waited?”

He puffed out his cheeks and smiled at the miracle of a returned memory.

“Yep, yep. Now that you mention it, he did. Got on his haunches and fiddled with the back bumper of the truck.”

I thought about that. Arizona only required one tag on a vehicle, not two. Peralta must have put on a different tag to get out of town. His real one would have been on all the police broadcasts. Otherwise, it was one of thousands of Ford pickups. Then he changed back to his real tag. He intended for the truck to be found and identified.

And he left the business card with the message for me on the dash.

“When the car pulled up, did anybody get out? Did it seem like he was being forced inside?”

“No, sir,” he said. “The man got right on in and they was gone.”

“What did the FBI tell you?”

He shook his head, the wind stirring the tendrils of his beard. “Not a damned thing. The Yavapai deputies think I’m a pest, calling about the burglaries, the crime around here. They have a trailer shack down the street here, but you hardly ever see a deputy. Budget cuts and all. I come to think, screw ’em. I can handle things if I need to.”

He opened a button on the coat and patted the butt of a pistol.

Of course.

I handed him my card and asked him to give me a call if anything else came to him, or if he saw that four-door car again.

He mumbled something unintelligible about private eyes, shook my hand, and limped back into his forlorn village.

Mapstone had nothing to do with this. Tell him not to try to find me.

Whatever Peralta really intended by the message, whether he meant it or somebody was leaning on him, he had worked with me long enough to know that sometimes I didn’t follow orders. Even his orders.

Back in the car, I slid on my holster. Sharon had brushed out her hair and, with the visor mirror down, was nervously freshening her lipstick. She had been agitated on the entire drive up. Who could blame her?

I asked her about Ash Fork and why Mike might have come up here.

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“You still have the cabin in Heber?”

“Yes. The FBI was very interested in that. They’re probably at the place now, hoping he’ll show up. They spent hours at our house today-well, yesterday, now-with a search warrant.”

I drove west on the one-way street, turned a block, then came back on the eastbound one-way that returned us to the Interstate. Grainer was gone and it was difficult to imagine the thriving town he had described.

“Did you expect to find him dead here?” I asked Sharon.

“No.”

My body tensed even before she spoke the next sentence.

“He called me tonight.”

Two obscenities came out of my mouth before I stopped myself.

“I’m sorry, David.”

I asked her what time he called. Around eight-thirty.

“When were you going to tell me?”

She flipped up the mirror and the light went off. Her large brown eyes watched me.

“He said not to tell you anything.”

“Sharon…” I stared at the highway, a stream of semis passing us as I stuck to the speed limit. “I can’t believe it. You know the FBI has your phones tapped. You’ll be implicated in this.”

“They don’t even know about this phone. Years ago, the county installed a second landline at the house as a backup in case of an emergency. Then they forgot about it. After he left the sheriff’s office, I called twice to have them take it out. They never did.”

“What did he say?”

She laughed, a surprising sound in this cockpit of tension.

“When I first met him, before I even knew you, I was this girl from the barrio. A nobody. He was a deputy sheriff, the son of a judge. He had grown up in a fancy house in Arcadia. My family had a four-room, tarpaper shack in Golden Gate, before they bulldozed it for the airport. He’d been to Harvard, for God’s sake, and I barely got out of high school. But I was very vain. I knew men liked me. And he liked me. I didn’t always look like an old lady.”

“You’re very attractive, Sharon. And you’re the most accomplished person I know.”

She waved it away. “I wasn’t digging for a compliment, David. There is a point to the story.”

I shut up and ten miles later she continued.

“He liked me, and we started dating. He was only one generation out of the barrio, but he would tease me. He enjoyed making me mad. One of his things was to impersonate a guy named Paco Sanchez. He made up this character that was a gardener who spoke terrible English but was going to take me away from that cop Peralta I was dating. It made me angry, that he was making fun of me. And it made me laugh.”