High Country Nocturne (14 page)

Chapter Twenty

When I returned to the hospital, a woman in a gray pantsuit with short red hair intercepted me at the elevators. Her face was full of freckles and smiles. So this was not the social worker who would tell me that Lindsey had died while I was gone.

I let loose the breath I had been holding.

Then I noticed the gold shield and gun on her belt.

We shook hands and she introduced herself as Megan Long, a Chandler Police detective. She had an engagement ring with a large clear diamond in the main setting and smaller ones on the band. I had come to notice such things.

“Buy me a cup of coffee,” she said, and we walked to the Starbucks near the main lobby and sat at a table.

“I thought you'd want to know that we found the diamonds.”

“Yes,” I managed, my mind scrambled by what I feared would come next:
and Peralta is dead
.

But the phrase didn't come. Out of a dry mouth, I added, “Where?”

“Apparently in the parking lot of the mall.”

She watched my expression. Her eyes were jade. I tilted out my hands in bafflement.

“Yesterday, a woman brought a small wheeled suitcase to the station. She put it beside the front doors and left. We thought it might be a bomb so everything went on lockdown and the bomb squad was called. ‘Shelter in place.' What a stupid-ass expression.”

“But it wasn't a bomb…”

“It was the diamonds meant for the jewelry store, packed exactly as they were shipped. We showed them to the jewelry store people at the mall. Then they called the man from Markovitz and Sons who had brought them to Sky Harbor and handed them off to Peralta. He stayed in town after the robbery. Anyway, he came to the station and verified that they were real. He put them under a microscope. Very fancy-looking thing.”

“Nothing was missing?”

She shook her head. “Nope. We captured the woman's image on the cameras and the license of her car. A SWAT team arrested her last night.”

I asked who she was.

“A housekeeper at the San Marcos.”

It was the oldest hotel in town, established in 1912 by Doctor Alexander Chandler and built in the Mission Revival style. For decades, it had been the centerpiece of a little town on the Southern Pacific Railroad surrounded by farms. That was before the trains went away and Chandler turned into an affluent “boomburb” with almost a quarter million people and Intel semiconductor plants. The Crowne Plaza was now running the San Marcos as a golf resort.

I said, “You're kidding me.”

She shook her head. “Catalina Ramos. She has a second job at the Johnny Rockets by the Harkins Theatre in the mall. She had parked at the far edge of the lot, as employees are required to do. She claims that after she got off work, she drove home, and discovered the suitcase in the trunk of her Toyota.”

“Why didn't she call the police?”

“She's undocumented. Been in the country since 2001. But after SB 1070, she was afraid that if she went to the police, we would deport her. This kind of thing has happened all over, especially since the new sheriff began his ‘immigrant sweeps.' We had a good relationship with the undocumented community before that.”

SB 1070 was the law that cracked down on illegals, or, as some critics said, merely drove them deeper into the shadows. Nationally, it made Arizona into a place of bigotry and hate. It was good politics. Ask Chris Melton. Peralta opposed it and lost the election.

I said, “And you believe her? She had nothing to do with the robbery?”

“We do. She has a totally clean record and children in school. No brothers in prison. No boyfriend. Her employment checks out and she was at work when the robbery went down. She decided to leave the jewels at the front door of police headquarters.”

I asked if the Toyota had been locked. It had. But it was a twenty-year-old car without an alarm and could have easily been opened with a Slim Jim device.

That would have taken some brass: shoot the second guard, take the diamonds, get in your truck, take the time to stop at an anonymous Toyota, break in and pop the trunk, drop in the suitcase, lock up, and drive away. All this while police were converging from every direction.

It was the kind of brass that Peralta had.

Detective Long said, “What are you thinking?”

“Where this leaves Peralta.”

It wasn't exactly a lie.

“He's still wanted on warrants for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.” She paused. “I know you worked for him and he's a friend. Everybody in our department is stunned that he did this. But I'm still going to find him and put him in prison. He was caught on the camera. The evidence is definitive.”

Definitive. Hardly anything else in this case was.

She sipped her coffee and continued. “He probably expected to come back and get the diamonds once the initial response died down. Or, he had her tag number, so he could have come to her house. She might never have known the diamonds were there if she hadn't checked her trunk.

“I was wondering where you were,” I said. “The FBI called me up to Ash Fork in the middle of the night when they found Peralta's truck. I kept looking for a Chandler detective.”

Her face scrunched up.

“What bullshit. I've dealt with fed interference before—they never play well with others—but nothing like this. They swooped in and took the case. I protested and got stuck deeper on the bad-girl list. Command folded like a cheap suit, is that the expression?”

I nodded.

“I didn't get it,” she continued. “What was their jurisdiction? But we were forced to back off. Since 9/11, their powers have expanded to the moon. When they found the truck, they didn't even tell us until twelve hours later and by that time they had towed it back to Phoenix.”

The green eyes lasered me. “Why do you think they took my case?”

“You're giving me more credit than I deserve. Peralta was close to the old SAC, Eric Pham. It was an unusual collaboration with a fed. After he became a private detective, Pham threw him a few jobs.”

“You, too,” she corrected. “You're his partner.”

“Fair enough.” Then I felt obligated to say I had been brought back to the Sheriff's Office. It's temporary. To consult on an old case. I'm not a racist. I don't hate Hispanics.

She laughed, a fine melody that reminded me of Lindsey. “Is that going to be how you identify yourself every time? It might take awhile to get all that out when you're breaking down a door.”

Before I could do more than smile, she added, “Horace Mann is an asshole.”

“Yes,” I said. “How did he react to you finding the diamonds?”

“Like an asshole.” She looked at the ceiling and blew out a sigh of exasperation. “He came out with his entourage, waited long enough for the diamonds to be verified as the stolen property.”

“How did he seem?”

“What do you mean?”

“Happy? Relieved?”

“Not at all. He was pissed. The hicks in Chandler solved the case.”

There might have been other reasons he was vexed but I kept them to myself. A dead man was attached to a doorknob in an office half a mile north of us. Somebody on the phone who was expecting those diamonds had told me that “Mann's window was closing.” I didn't know enough yet to advance a theory and didn't want to dig myself in deeper.

She chuckled.

“Do you know what this was?”

I shook my head, unsure of which “this” she was talking about.

“When the call first came in, I expected the shipment was a bunch of engagement rings, something like that. But the jewelry store manager told us it was a closed show for their most exclusive customers.”

“Chandler has changed,” I said.

“Lot of money,” she said. “Not quite Scottsdale, but getting there.”

“Enough rich women to be exclusive customers.”

She frowned. “That's a sexist thing to say.”

I started to apologize, but she tapped my knee. “I'm kidding. Relax. You know what you call a woman flying an airplane?”

“No.”

“A pilot, you sexist pig.” The fine laugh rang out again, and then her face grew serious. “Here's the thing. This wasn't any ordinary diamond show. It was ice. Bling. Hip hop stuff. Amazing, gaudy, huge. The big deal was a pair of rings that Tupac Shakur had worn, 3.6 carats, top clarity and color. You know who he was?”

“Even I know.”

I told her it didn't fit with the white-bread image of the suburbs.

“That's probably where most hip-hop music is bought,” she said. “It's all my son listens to. Ugh. How many talks have I had with him about the misogyny and hate for the police in the lyrics. He thinks I'm so out of it. He talks about how it's poetry of struggle and oppression. Do you have kids?”

“No.”

When I said the word, something closed in her face and she thought differently about me. In Chandler, what married man wouldn't have children? She didn't know anything about Lindsey or me. Now I was simply strange, beyond comprehension.

I pushed the thought away and said, “Hip hop has gang connections. Tupac was somehow tied in to the Bloods. Or maybe it was the Crips. Could they have initiated the robbery?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I did some research. A couple of years ago a music producer was robbed of a fifty thousand-dollar diamond necklace, plus a Rolex worth another fifty K. But I didn't find anything this large or audacious. Anyway, the people invited to this show are all respectable, rich, white. For all I know, real rappers aren't so much into bling any more, so it's become a collectable for the housewives who watch reality television.”

“And all this was worth a million dollars?”

“That's what the expert from New York said.”

“Only a million…”

“Yes. I don't know about you, but in my life that's a lot of money.”

I took it in and we settled into silence.

“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, extending my hand.

She took it. Her skin was smooth and cool. “Have you heard from Peralta?”

“No.” I said it without hesitation. But this is what I had been waiting for. Megan Long wasn't here for a courtesy call. Rapport had been established. She was now down to business. So I ran through my Friday, how I knew Peralta had agreed to do a diamond run, but told me nothing more. The dictaphone message, that part I left out.

She nodded as I talked, not writing anything down. This didn't deviate from the statement I had given the FBI on Friday.

“They tell me your wife is in critical condition,” she said. “Do you think this shooting is related to the robbery? Sergeant Vare thinks it is.”

And she would be right. But once again I said nothing about Strawberry Death and the demand for “her stones.” After a moment, “I don't know what to think. I'm focused on Lindsey getting better.”

“Here's to that.” She toasted me with the cup, stood, and gave me her card.

I said, “May I ask a stupid question?”

She cocked her head.

“Didn't the rolling bag have a GPS tracker?”

Her eyes narrowed, trying to conceal her emotions.

She held up her index finger. “Would you give me a minute?” Then she stood and walked twenty paces into the high-ceiling lobby, pulled out her cell phone, and engaged in an animated conversation. She closed the phone and paced, not looking in my direction. In five minutes, the phone rang and she hastily answered.

Sitting down with me again, she looked flushed and was shaking both her legs.

“It's not a stupid question. The case did have a tracker and it was working. I don't know why the FBI didn't turn it on. Or, for that matter, why Peralta didn't cut it out and get rid of it. He had guarded diamonds before. He knew it was there.”

“So maybe he didn't intend to come back for it.”

“Which means what?” Her response was heated. “And why the hell didn't Horace Mann activate the tracker?”

“Maybe he did,” I said.

She stared at me a long time before running a pale hand through her hair.

I ran the scenarios through my mind. Maybe Mann saw the tracker indicating the parking lot and assumed Peralta had ditched the device there while keeping the diamonds. Maybe he put the Toyota under surveillance hoping this Pamela Grayson would show up to claim the bag.

She mumbled, “This is fucked up” and looked at the people around us. I understood. Who the hell knew what had gone down? Who was involved and who could be trusted?

“There's something else.” She bit her lip, wondering whether to tell me more. “The rolling bag had a hidden compartment. Mann found it. Nothing in it. But when I talked to the guy from Markowitz, he said their bags didn't have hidden compartments. It's strange.”

“What about the other guard?” I asked.

She turned and faced me. “He's out of the hospital, wearing a sling. The bullet went through his shoulder but didn't hit any bones.”

I nodded. Peralta was that good a shot.

I said, “Which shoulder?”

“His left.”

“Which is his gun hand?”

The freckles on her forehead scrunched together. “His right.”

“And he couldn't get off a shot?”

“No,” she said. “He said Peralta's shot knocked him down, stunned him. He's an older gentleman. But my partner checked him out and he came back mostly clean.”

“What do you mean mostly?”

“He lives out in the desert by Wickenburg and there's some intel on him being suspected of selling guns to felons, but nothing proved. He has a valid PI license. He's a Native American gentleman.”

My freckle-less face must have shown something.

She asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded, trying to remember what I had seen in the video of the robbery. The second man was wearing a red ballcap, his back to the camera. My attention had been on the image of Peralta, grabbing the bag, turning, and firing. The feds wouldn't allow me to replay the scene.