I stalked out into the sunlight where Robin was leaning against the hood of Peralta’s black Crown Victoria, her sunglasses on, staring down a street of bank-owned houses that was empty except for the police cars. A crime-scene van was pulling up. The two plainclothes deputies in Peralta’s security detail sat in another Crown Vic. They waved. I nodded. I felt like a chump. It was okay. It was a good feeling, in fact, like the clean air I was sucking in to get the smell of dead body to leave my head.
Sure, I’d had a couple of good cocktail conversations with Jax Delgado about Churchill as a wartime leader and our current endless wars, and about the civilizations of Mesoamerica. But anybody can read a book. Anybody can play a role. He could be a cartel killer from Sinaloa. I’d been played, made a chump. I laughed inside and shook my head. Considering the weights around my heart the past few months, being played was almost a holiday.
But this amusement was a product of one hour’s sleep in the past forty-eight hours. It was a feeling, a wish. It wasn’t a thought. My eyes found Robin, surprised by how uncharacteristically fragile she appeared. Then Vare caught up with me.
“I’ll be in touch, smartass,” she said. “In the meantime, you’d better be wondering why the severed head of El Verdugo was sent to your house. And you’d better get Ms. Bryson and check into a motel. Let me know where you go.”
I am not generally a stupid person, but of course what she said was as obvious as a mountain falling on me. But my emotions had been living moment-to-moment lately. Combine it with the turmoil of the past four months, a bad hangover, and the suffocating feeling of being in the death house and you get a stupid person. All the weights stacked back up inside me.
“You will protect her,” I said.
Vare shook her head. “I could lock her up as a material witness. I might still do it.”
I told her that wasn’t what I meant.
“Do you understand budget cuts, Mapstone?”
“Don’t make this personal, about you and me, Kate. They know where she lives. They know she was seeing him. So they were sending her a message, like ‘you’re next’—and you’re telling me you won’t protect her?”
She moved close in, poked me in the chest with her finger. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, you worthless-piece-of-shit excuse for anything. Right now she’s a suspect. If she wants my help, she’d better start telling the truth. Otherwise, she’s your problem, fuck-face.” Spittle came out of her angry mouth, shining in the sunlight. “You’re a deputy sheriff.” She snapped my ID card with her nail. “I feel better about her safety already.”
She spun around and stomped back into the house, nearly colliding with the supertanker of Peralta.
Now two unmarked PPD Chevies came speeding down the new pavement of the street. Two pairs of detectives got out: slim, young, male, shorthaired. They walked over to Peralta and shook his hand, telling them they were sorry he had lost the election. He nodded and clapped them on their arms.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. They slid under the crime-scene tape and walked to the house.
“They probably voted against you,” I said.
“Nah. If the new sheriff really does what he promised and uses the department to play Border Patrol, it’s going to complicate things for every agency. People in the immigrant neighborhoods will go back to fearing the police. We worked years to overcome that. Worse, more paperwork.”
His normally immobile face managed a wink.
“You’re pretty fucking tranquil about all this!” My hands ached from the fists they had been unconsciously molded into for who-knows-how-long. “Here, take this goddamned thing.” I handed him my identification card. Robin gave me what might have been a look of concern or sympathy. I ignored her.
I felt Peralta’s large arm steer me aside and move me down the sidewalk.
“You have an anger-management problem, Mapstone.”
Peralta was the most cant-free person I had ever known. The world turned upside down again and it only made me madder.
“You sound like Sharon now!” I was baiting him. I didn’t care.
His voice was calm.
“Mapstone, you have been the moodiest son of a bitch the past few months. It was just an election. The voters have spoken, the bastards.” His eyebrows subtly philosophized with each other. The corners of his mouth raised a few millimeters. “I came up with that. Pretty good, huh?”
“You didn’t come up with it. Mo Udall said it.”
“Whatever. I’m the one who lost the election, not you. People fall for this ‘be scared of the Mexicans’ crap, even though they want cheap housecleaning and lawn care and never wonder why their homes are inexpensive.” He sighed. “Anyway, you’ll do fine. You’re going to be a professor again, right?”
I tentatively nodded. It seemed that I was in line to become an adjunct professor at ASU. The pay was crap and it lacked tenure track, but any money would help. I had other misgivings: about the tough university president, about the mega-department in which history resided, about my own inability to catch up with the latest politically correct fads. But the ASU people made it sound enticing: I could teach in a multi-disciplinary field: Phoenix history, criminal justice, courses I could put together. It would do until Lindsey and I decided our future. I loved teaching. I needed the distraction of work.
“So what’s bugging you?”
“Things.” I stared at the pavement. The all-too-familiar empty ache returned to my middle.
“You look like crap this morning. You didn’t even shave. How’s your wife?”
“She’s fine.”
He cocked his head. “Maybe you’ll end up in Washington, Mapstone. Lindsey was one of my best. I’m glad she took the job. She could become a star at Homeland Security.”
“She’s trying it out for six months.” I heard the anxiety in my voice.
“Sure,” he said. “Is Robin telling the truth?”
I told him, yes. At least I thought so.
He put his bear-paw hand against my shoulder. It was not a friendly bear.
“Look, this is serious shit she’s landed in. They know where she lives. They know where you live. Get it? Vare is right. You need to get out of the house. You guys can come up to my place, if you want. Plenty of room. I’m hardly ever home. But Robin may know more than she even realizes. She might have seen something, overheard something.”
“What if she didn’t?”
“Whoever tortured that man, whether he was El Verdugo or a professor, and then sent his fucking head to your house, thinks she did.” His voice rose ever so slightly, his anger evident to a close observer of all-things-Peralta. The bear paw came down. “And you’d better get your shit together and focus.”
We walked back to his Crown Vic. Robin had tied her hair into a ponytail. He put her in the front seat. I got in back and tried to focus.
I focused on Robin’s neck, which bore a similarity to my missed love. Lindsey and Robin both had long, elegant necks. Lindsey’s hair brushed against her neck and shoulders as she turned her head. It was art in sensual motion. Just thinking about it could make me feel better.
Then I saw the chain sitting against Robin’s skin. I had never noticed it before. It was a simple ball chain, like the kind that hangs from a bare-bones lamp, one gray kernel snapped into the other.
This chain had blood on it.