Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

With all the windows open, I could hear televisions, a couple making love, and the subtle resonance of the surf a block and a half west. It brought back memories of the rare nights when there was fog and I would hear the foghorn coming from down by the pier. Tonight, it was so still I could hear my steps on the concrete.

It was ten degrees cooler than downtown. For a few minutes, I let the temperature help me feel normal again instead of breathless from the Phoenix heat. Then I walked to the gate and stared up at the apartment. The windows were closed, curtains open, and lights off. The tension that had been swelling for hours in my middle relaxed. The kid was gone and had forgotten to call me. He was mourning. He had a baby to take care of.

I thought about walking down to Newport and taking the bus downtown, but it was better to be sure. The vocal passion coming from the southeast apartment had subsided, so the gate loudly protested against me pulling 1950s metal hinges against each other. It put me on guard, but no curtains parted to see who was coming in. The pool was deserted and the water sat perfectly still and inviting.

When I looked up this time, I could see Tim’s door was partly ajar.

The dread wouldn’t let me go. Sure, there was a chance he was sitting inside, enjoying the breeze through the cracked door, playing a video game on headphones while the baby slept.

But only a fool would believe that.

I took the stairs two at a time, careful to keep my footfall quiet.

By the time I reached my old unit, I had the lightweight Smith & Wesson in my right hand. The windows to Tim’s apartment were on the far side of the door so I couldn’t see what was inside the apartment. I tapped lightly on the hollow door and called Tim’s name. The door was open three inches. Beyond was darkness. Now it didn’t seem like such a good idea to have come alone. Second-nature almost got the better of me: I almost called, “Deputy sheriff!” but I pushed the door all the way open and stepped silently into the room.

I moved to the side, to avoid providing a backlit target.

The outside light streamed in through the windows. Tim was sitting upright in the dining chair I had used earlier that day. It was directly facing the door. His face was tombstone white and the blood from his slit throat had flooded his T-shirt. There was no point in checking for a pulse. His dead eyes stared at nothing and his hands were in his lap, bound with handcuffs that glinted from the ambient light. Something like a big, curved bar of soap was in his lap. It had probably come from the kitchen.

Tim was gagged with a dish towel wrapped with duct tape. My eyes were drawn to his hands. Every one of his fingers had been broken. They had tortured him before they slit his throat.

The killer had also tossed the place. Clothing, food, video games, books, cushions and the flotsam of daily life were strewn around. Every drawer had been pulled all the way out and turned over, in case something had been taped beneath it. The pillows had been slit open and their stuffing pulled out.

Why didn’t you leave when I told you ? I forced back that thought. Right now, I had to secure the scene and observe, even if I wasn’t the law anymore.

There was enough blood to do finger painting on the south wall of the living room. The red characters were uneven and drippy, but the words were familiar.

PERALTA AND MAPSTONE, P.C.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

The moron had left his fingerprints in Tim’s blood.

A closer look would have to wait.

I hurried into the bedroom and swept it with the barrel of the revolver, fearing what I would find. No bad guys. And no baby in the crib. I quickly checked the bathroom and the closet. No baby. I felt my own pulse slamming against my temples. The bedroom had also been thoroughly gone through. Whoever had done it, and taken the baby, hadn’t bothered with the baby supplies.

I pulled out my phone to call Peralta and then the police.

Then something clicked in my brain. I dropped the phone back in my pocket, barely feeling my hand.

The object in Tim’s lap was not a bar of soap. And it had lettering that suddenly opened a file in my vast memory of trivia.

The lettering carved into the object said,

FRONT

TOWARD ENEMY.

“Oh, God.”

I heard a voice say those words. It was my voice, but my mind was desperately processing my options. I don’t know if I made a conscious decision because my next memory is reaching the walkway outside the door and letting adrenaline heft my right foot to the top of the railing, balancing myself with my left hand. Then I was midair headed down for the pool.

Hoping that I remembered which side was the deep end.

The smooth surface came up suddenly and next I was underwater, surprised by the liquid cold, my terror-filled muscles acting in concert with only one goal: dive deep. I touched the bottom and started counting but only got to three before feeling a sharp concussion overhead. It popped my ears and pushed me violently against the far wall of the pool. I swear my brain felt about to burst. Something large and heavy missed my head by no more than six inches. It was half of a cinderblock.

When I came up, gasping for air, Tim’s apartment was gone and the smoke made it difficult to assess the damage to other units. The surface of the water was coated with glass fragments, burning drapes, a can of Pringles, papers, the debris of daily life-and little metal balls. Those had been ejected from the Claymore anti-personnel mine that had detonated. Robin’s cross floated on the surface, glinting under the light, still attached to the chain around my neck. The revolver was still in my hand.

Something soft bobbed against my arm.

It was Tim’s head, face up, hair like seaweed, staring at the overcast.

We started back to Phoenix at dusk the next day, driving through the desert at night the way people used to do, before advanced automobile cooling systems. Back in the days when only a fool would cross the wilderness without an adequate supply of water.

Before we left, Peralta found a deserted space where he could park and get into the steel storage compartment that sat in the extended cab behind our seats.

It was a gun case.

“Time for heavy metal,” he said, and I didn’t think he was about to break out some Black Sabbath CDs.

Ten minutes later we were speeding east on I-8. I had received a tutorial on a Kel-Tec RFB assault rifle, “a bull pup,” he called it. Barely more than two feet long, it was black and homely. But with the fire-selector capable of semiautomatic and a twenty-round box magazine, it didn’t need to win a beauty contest. I slid it beside me, barrel down, safety on. Peralta slid an assault rifle into the well between his seat and the door. It looked a little like an M-16, but it was matte black with a retracting stock and a rough-edged thing on the barrel that might have been a flash-suppressor or a hand-guard-or not. He didn’t bother to explain besides telling me it was a Colt AR15 Magpul Special.

“A good truck gun,” he said.

My world was still a little blurry from the blast. My stupid question: “Why?”

“I want to have an edge,” he said. “Are you steady enough for this?”

“Yes.”

The question irritated me, but I had no time for that. I had no time for sentimental thoughts about departing from my second hometown as we climbed out of Mission Valley into El Cajon and began the long uphill grind-away from Ocean Beach, away from my other life in this beautiful city and its balm of cooler weather. I opened the glove box, pulled out the gun-cleaning kit, unloaded my Airlite, and began cleaning and oiling it to avoid any trouble from its contact with the pool. My hands shook.