Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

“I went to Balboa Park,” he said. “Really beautiful.”

I agreed. It was a very un-Peralta like thing to do.

“It was where they held the 1915 Panama-California Exposition,” he went on.

Yes, I knew that, but quietly noticed his uncharacteristic interest in something that didn’t involve law enforcement.

“We’re checked in to the Marriott on K Street. Know it?”

It was in the Gaslamp Quarter which had been built long after I had left, but I knew how to get there.

“Your key is at the front desk.”

My own room. I wouldn’t have to listen to him snore. He hung up before I could ask how his end of the investigation had gone.

“Mister?”

The small voice behind me went with a small, slender girl with long brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a week.

“Do you want a date?”

I told her I didn’t.

“I’ll suck your cock for twenty bucks.”

She was jonesing from whatever she was addicted to, visibly shaking, looking like a drowned kitten. I asked her how old she was.

“Eighteen,” she said. “I’ll suck your cock for twenty bucks. I need to get something to eat. I know a place we can go.”

She looked sixteen at the most, probably younger. I asked her if I could call a shelter for her, told her she didn’t have to live on the streets. She asked if I was a cop.

“Not anymore.”

“I’ll suck you for fifteen.”

I left her there and walked off the pier and up Newport Avenue to catch the bus back downtown. My heart decided to stay inside me, at least for a while.

The phone buzzed again. Lindsey had actually answered me.

Her text read, “Be careful, Dave.”

San Diego had changed extensively since I had lived there, and, unlike Phoenix, mostly for the good. It was a major high-tech center now, not merely a tourist-and-Navy town. It had less population than Phoenix but surpassed it in almost any measure of quality. About the only thing that seemed the same was the mediocrity of the newspaper, formerly the San Diego Union-Tribune , now under new ownership with its name contracted to U-T. It sounded like a far campus of the University of Texas, but I’m sure a consultant charged big bucks for a new “brand.”

Downtown, thrown away in the 1960s and 1970s, had made a stunning comeback, including the Gaslamp Quarter with its lovingly restored historic buildings and Horton Plaza urban mall. Nobody would know it used to be skid row. Walking to the Marriott, I was struck for the gazillionth time how Anglo the city seemed, even though it sat right on the Mexican border. The barrios south and east of downtown had been carefully tucked away and so it remained.

I showed my driver’s license at the front desk and got my key card to a room on the eighth floor. Before going up, I went into the business center and booted up the computer. I am a lifelong Mac user and couldn’t understand why anyone would use Windows. So I waited, and waited.

Then I plugged in the flash drive and clicked on the icon.

A window popped up and the screen went blank. Then Grace Hunter was talking to me.

“Hi, babe. I bet you’d like to know what’s on this drive. But if you don’t have the code, too bad.”

A white box appeared and I had nothing to enter. The screen went dark again. But for a few seconds she had been alive. I could see her allure with her wide smile, the elegant movement to push her hair out of her face, the sexy taunt in her voice. I popped out the drive and stuck it in my pocket.

When I stepped out of the elevator, a woman was walking toward me: black, shoulder-length hair, attractive if older, elegantly dressed. As she came closer, I was sure I was wrong. I saw plenty of ghosts in my dreams.

But, no…

“Sharon?”

“David!”

She ran to me and gave me a long hug.

Her face was flushed and, up close, her usually perfect hair was mussed.

All I could do was sputter words. “What? Why?”

She grinned at my discomfort.

“What’s wrong?”

Where to begin? She was Peralta’s ex-wife. She had moved away to San Francisco in as final a breakup as I could imagine. I had known both of them for most of my adult life. And here she was, having obviously been in his room. But it was none of those things. I felt the embarrassment of nearly coming across my parents having sex.

“It’s all right, David.” She laughed that full-out laugh that always put me at ease. She studied me. “You’ve lost weight.”

Her eyes held concern rather than a compliment. I knew the suit was now almost hanging on me.

I said, “So you’re why he went to Balboa Park. I thought something was odd.”

“Maybe he can grow a little after all,” she said. “I was down here for a conference, so…”

So, indeed.

She hugged me again, made me promise we would get together for drinks or coffee before we left, and disappeared into the elevator.

After a minute to collect myself, I knocked on his door. He greeted me in a bathrobe.

“Why are you blushing?” he demanded.

“I got too much sun at the beach.”

“Why is your shirt and tie a mess?”

“A baby peed on me, okay? You change and I’ll come back.”

“I’m fine,” he said and walked inside, leaving the door open. I reluctantly followed him.

He plopped down on the unmade bed. I sat on a sofa and filled him in on Tim Lewis, the baby, and Grace Hunter’s small business. He closed his eyes and grunted after every few sentences, taking it in as he always did. He offered no more reaction when I showed him the flash drive. We would have to find someone to break the code.

The room was too warm for my suit.

I wrapped it up. “Tim Lewis has parents in Riverside. I told him to take the baby and go there today.”

“Did you get their address?”

“Yes.” I said it a bit too testily.

“What’s wrong?” His Mister Innocent voice. Then, “Look next to you, on the desk. It’s the entire case file on the girl’s suicide.”

I swiveled to see several thick folders bound with a large red rubber band.

“Man, you have the pull,” I said. “How is Kimbrough doing?”

“He’s happy.” He slurped on a Diet Coke. “I’d like to say it was my pull, but remember that suicide in Coronado? The girlfriend of the millionaire from north Scottsdale who allegedly hanged herself?”

I remembered. It had happened at the Spreckles Mansion in the rich, idyllic town that sat on a spit across from San Diego. The rich guy had purchased the iconic house. As I recalled, he made his money from acne products and cosmetics. The girlfriend, young enough to be his daughter of course, had been alone when his young son had tripped and fallen over a balustrade in the mansion. The child had died.

The next day the girlfriend had been found hanging from a second-story balcony, naked, a cloth in her mouth, and her hands bound with rope. As with Grace, the authorities had pronounced it a suicide.

Peralta shook his head. “I can see your mind making connections, Mapstone. They’re not there. It has nothing to do with our case. Bill Gross is a good friend of mine.” That would be the San Diego County Sheriff. “His department was called in because Coronado PD doesn’t have the expertise for a complex death investigation. The media put Bill through hell on this one. News choppers overhead got pictures of the body and pretty soon it was on the Internet. Everybody became an amateur sleuth. They even got Dr. Phil involved.”

He shook his head. “But the woman in Coronado really did kill herself based on the evidence. Hell, the sheriff’s department even put up a special page with the information on their Web site. Kimbrough said his chief didn’t want Grace Hunter to turn into another media circus. So we lucked out and have copies of everything.”