Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

At loose ends, I turned on the television for the first time in probably more than a year. A handsome man holding a microphone was standing in the parking lot where Peralta had talked to the G-man this morning. The reporter had positioned himself so the “S” made out of whitewashed rocks on the slope of a hill above Sunnyslope showed over his right shoulder. I turned up the volume.

“…still no details about the police situation here in Sunnyslope,” the reporter said. “Officers have sealed off several blocks around a house on Dunlap, as these aerial images show…”

The screen flipped to an overhead shot of the house, with a long roof and several cars parked in its driveway. The nearest police or FBI vehicles appeared to be at least two hundred yards away. I shut it off. This was turning into the goatfuck that I had feared. I had to get out of the house.

It didn’t really matter if the bad guys were tracking me now. They had bigger problems. So I didn’t even bother to remove the spy device from the Prelude before I rolled off to catch the freeway system that would take me to Tempe. Fortunately, I saw the disaster of the Papago Freeway before I turned onto the Third Street on-ramp. Rush hour, or hours rather, was not allowing anybody to move at more than a slow crawl, if that. So I settled for the street grid.

By the time I got to Larry Zisman’s house at The Lakes, the sun was down and it looked as if most everybody who lived on the cul-de-sac had made it home, closed their garage doors, and were watching television back in their Arizona rooms. Not a single other car was parked at the curb. The lights were still off at Zisman’s place, but you never knew. Unlike houses in the historic districts, most of these homes focused activity away from the front and the street. Zisman could well be in his Arizona room watching the “police situation in Sunnyslope” unfold. If so, I could finally ask some questions.

At the moment I didn’t give a damn if he was a reserve police officer. I wanted to sit across from him and watch his face and body language as he told me about the night Grace Hunter was pushed off the balcony of his condominium. He wasn’t on her client list, so why did he claim she was his girlfriend? Former football star or no, Larry Zisman seemed an unlikely man to attract Grace. I had seen recent photos of Zisman: he had lost his athletic body to a gut and his face was puffy. It wasn’t as if Grace needed more chances to, as my once semi-prudish wife puts it, fuck and suck.

I wanted to know who he was covering for: his son, Andrew? Edward Dowd? And where was he when Grace died? Was he really already at his boat? If so, why did he leave her with her murderer at the condo? This was only the beginning of the questions I intended to ask.

But when I set the tip of my toe on the step of the arched entranceway, I knew that he would not be giving me any answers.

The big answer popped me in the nose: that unique, fiendish sulfurous smell I had first encountered as a young deputy, the scent of a body that had been dead for a while. In an un-air-conditioned building in the Arizona heat, it would become noticeable within a day. Air conditioning gave you a little longer. Often mail carriers or neighbors would be knocked down by the odor halfway across the yard.

We called them “stinkers.”

A quick scan of the front door showed a mail slot. So no mail was piling up obtrusively outside. Maybe the mailman had a bad sense of smell. No newspapers were accumulating on the doorstep, either, but fewer people subscribed now, a sad thing for democracy.

It was tempting to walk around the house and look through a window. But that would definitely attract a neighborhood watch hotdog. So I walked back down the wide driveway toward the street, looking as if I belonged there in the warm suburban air, stealthily scanning to see if anyone was watching from the neighboring houses. Nobody seemed to be.

Out of the cul-se-sac, I drove north to Baseline Road and found a rare pay phone. There, I called 911 and reported a strange odor coming from the Zisman address. Larry Zip had thrown his last pass. Now I wondered if he had killed himself or become one more loose end for Dowd to tie up.

My phone rang. Peralta.

He was brief. “Get up here as fast as you can.”

He didn’t have to say where “here” was. I drove as fast as I could to the parking lot on Seventh Street and Dunlap. Peralta’s truck was moored beside a dozen marked and unmarked law-enforcement units, plus two giant command vans. All of the television stations had positioned satellite trucks there as well. Bright TV lights were focused ahead of me. I parked the Prelude and pushed my way through a crowd of civilians and cops.

Eric Pham, wearing a vest with “FBI” emblazoned on it, was reading a statement for the cameras. Peralta was standing beside him. He couldn’t resist the cameras. He never could.

“…at five p.m., a SWAT team made entry into the home. A brief exchange of fire resulted in one man dead. Our preliminary information indicates he was armed with a semi-automatic rifle and fired on the officers. Five other men were taken into custody. A large cache of weapons was seized, including Claymore anti-personnel mines. We believe these mines were stolen from Fort Huachuca. We also took possession of computers and maps that indicate these individuals were planning to use the mines in attacks on shopping malls and federal facilities in the Phoenix area. We also believe they intended to use shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down an airliner landing or taking off from Sky Harbor Airport…”

His statement contained all the caveats about the early nature of the investigation and how he couldn’t disclose further information that might compromise an ongoing probe.

“We believe,” he said, “that we have disrupted what could have been a catastrophic domestic terrorism attack.”

“Agent Pham!” A female reporter with perfect red hair shouted the question. “We have information that these men were members of the White Citizens Brigade, a domestic terror group. Is that true?”

“This was an organized, anti-government group. Beyond that, I’m not prepared to comment, Megan.” He was cool and unruffled as a cascade of further questions followed. What were the names of the suspects? Who was the man who was shot by SWAT? What were the specific targets the terrorists intended to strike? He gave up nothing.

My stomach was an acid bin. No mention of the baby. Why had I expected anything different?

“Is this connected to the explosion in San Diego last week?”

“It’s too early for us to draw conclusions, Brahm.”

“What is former Sheriff Peralta doing here?” a reporter wanted to know.

Pham nodded knowingly. “Retired Sheriff Peralta is acting as a consultant for the bureau.”

When the press conference wrapped up, Peralta worked his way toward me like a slow-moving bulldozer, ignoring the journalists’ questions as only he could do. As I had watched countless times over the years, he didn’t answer but he worked the crowd. It was showtime all over again. It made me wonder if he intended to run for sheriff again someday, maybe when sanity returned to Arizona.

“Where were you?” He wrapped me in his big arm and steered me toward his truck. I thought: I was rifling my wife’s luggage, learning about her fuckathon in the nation’s capital while I was sleeping with her younger sister in our marriage bed. A normal family. Any other questions? I said, “I wanted to talk to Larry Zisman.”

“How’d it go?”

“He’s been dead inside his house for some time. I called Tempe PD anonymously.”

“Balls. Get in.”