Jon Talton - Concrete Desert

“Well, none of my business,” Sharon said. “You need some time. Everybody does after what you’ve been through. But you’re very different from most people, David. I can’t help my matchmaker impulses.”

“Thanks, Sharon.”

“And we both hope you’ll stay in Phoenix. This is your home. This is where your roots and friends are, and as we get older, those things get more important.”

I believed that, but my relationship with Phoenix was complicated. Being back in town seemed like the most natural thing in the world. There were new freeways and neighborhoods. The water conservation policies had converted many lawns to desert landscaping. But it was still my city. Camelback and Squaw Peak and the South Mountains again became my dramatic compass as I drove the predictable grid of streets. The nights had the old familiar quality of dry, open spaces. I felt safe and centered here-a feeling that surprised me, given how burned-out I’d been when I left Phoenix years ago.

But the city had also become so big and dangerous. There was the heat and lack of rain, which I would always hate. And there was the job situation. Despite being an alumnus, I didn’t receive a warm homecoming from Arizona State University, which said in a curt letter that it had a hiring freeze on, and even if it hadn’t, my published articles as a historian had been “lackluster” and all hiring had to be done under the goal of “greater diversity.” I only hoped I could find a new job before my savings ran out.

“But for now, he needs work,” Peralta said, reading my mind. “So what did the cops forty years ago miss about Rebecca Stokes?”

Sharon started to object to work talk, but she stopped when I said, “They missed a serial killer.”

Peralta sat silently, wreathed in bluish cigar smoke, letting me lay it all out. I told them about Opal Harvey, the Creeper, John Rogers. One by one, I detailed the four other homicides of young women and their similarity to the Stokes case. Sharon’s large coffee-colored eyes never left me.

Finally, after a long silence, Peralta let out a huge sigh and said, “Jesus.”

He refilled our glasses with cognac. “It’s not airtight that these are related, but it’s pretty compelling. Especially for the little town Phoenix was in those days. I’d never heard of any of these other cases.”

“I didn’t find any newspaper accounts of the others,” I said. “But they probably didn’t have Rebecca’s family connections.”

Peralta asked, “How come the cops back then didn’t make this connection?”

“That’s the big question,” I said. “The lead detective on Stokes was a man named Harrison Wolfe, and I can’t find him, can’t even find a record of his death. He might know. Opal Harvey thought the powers that be didn’t want to attract the negative publicity.”

“Never underestimate the amount of ass-covering cops can do,” Peralta said. “Harrison Wolfe. I’ve heard of him. He was very old school. When I went to the Academy, there were still stories about Harrison Wolfe.”

“Such as?” Sharon asked.

“Oh, racist, sexist, politically incorrect stuff, honey.” Peralta smiled.

“So you like him,” Sharon teased.

Peralta went on. “He was a hard-ass. There was a story that was still making the rounds when I was a rookie in the early seventies about how years before this cop came on some bad guys down at the Southern Pacific yards one night, caught them breaking into a boxcar, but they had him surrounded and had their guns on him. The son of a bitch pulled his own gun-drew against the drop-and killed two of them, wounded the two others. His name was Harrison Wolfe.”

“Sounds like a whackadoo to me,” she said. “Clinically speaking, of course.”

“So what else have you found?” Peralta asked.

“There was some newspaper coverage of Rebecca’s disappearance, but there was not a word-that I could find, anyway-to indicate she was the governor’s niece. But everybody seemed to know it anyway. That small-town thing again.”

“Suspects?”

“I’m working with Records to pull up a list of likelies for you: Felony convictions involving breaking and entering, assault, rape and/or murder in the Southwest during those approximate years.”

“But the killings just stopped?” Sharon asked.

“As far as I can tell,” I said. “In 1962, a flight attendant named Gloria Johnson disappeared, then turned up a few days later under the same circumstances. Then nothing, at least for the next several years.”

“Sometimes they just stop,” Peralta said. “Green River stopped, or died or was killed, or maybe arrested for something else. Serial killers aren’t nearly as neat and methodical as in the movies. And there are more unsolved murders than the cops would ever like to admit.” He thought for a moment and then said, “I wish this Harquahala bastard would die.”

I drove home in a contented buzz through light late-night traffic on Squaw Peak Parkway. But I had retrieved my old holster for the.357 Python and now both sat ominously in the Blazer’s glove compartment. I wasn’t ready to start packing all the time-it was hard to conceal a weapon in this heat-but I wanted it nearby. I kept wondering who wanted me to back off investigating Phaedra’s disappearance. And why. One thing that was clear now was that Julie’s apprehensions were correct. Her little sister was into something bad.

At home an hour later, I was on-line, plugged into MCSO Central Records and running Phaedra and her old boyfriends through the National Crime Information Center, when there was a knock at the office door. I jumped at the sound. Then I unholstered the heavy revolver and stepped to the side of the door to look out. Too dark. Damn burned-out light.

“Who’s there?” I said. It was 2:13 A.M.

“Julie. It’s Julie.”

I set the pistol on a table and opened the door.

Julie Riding stepped in quickly and wrapped her arms around me. She was trembling. I closed the door and locked it.

“I’m really scared,” she said, and for a long time, she stayed in my arms, shaking from time to time as if she was cold. I watched my unattended PowerBook put itself to sleep, and the only light in the room was Grandfather’s green-shaded banker’s lamp, which had fascinated me when I was a little boy.

“What is it, Julie?”

“I really need a drink, David.”

I steered her over to the leather couch and poured us both scotch. Julie had changed her hair again. It was straighter, parted at the center, and closer to her natural shade of light brown/blond. Her eyes glistened. When I sat next to her, she said, “I think someone is following me.”

My eyes automatically sought out the reassurance of the Python on the table.

“Did someone follow you here tonight?”

She shook her head. “I took a really roundabout route.”

“Where’s your daughter?”

“With her dad. We have joint custody, and Mindy’s with him all month.” She sighed. “That’s not true. He has custody. She sees me every other weekend. Don’t ask, David. That’s what happens when you get in a court battle with a fucking lawyer.” She pushed her hair back.

I asked her why she thought someone was following her.

“I noticed him when I came here the other night. A man sitting in a black Mustang convertible. It’s strange enough to see somebody sitting in a car on a residential street late at night. Something about him really gave me the creeps, but I put it out of my mind, you know? Then I saw him again when I left work yesterday. He was just sitting in the parking lot for hotel employees. Tonight, I went out with some girlfriends, and afterward, when I was walking to my car, I turned around and he was walking behind me, maybe half a block back. Just walking behind me. He was small, but really muscled up. And when I pulled out, that black Mustang was right behind me.” She swallowed her drink. “I lost him on the freeway.”