But as I sipped a mocha, my legs went up to the desktop and laziness set in. I didn’t look forward to falling all over the feds, and I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with Kate Vare. I picked up the phone, eager for a shortcut.
As it happened, my friend Lorie Pope was in the newsroom over at the
“John Pilgrim!” she exclaimed. “Do I know about John Pilgrim? Jesus Christ, David, this case has been driving me crazy for my whole career!”
She had a big voice, one that had gotten raspy with years and too many cigarettes since the first day I met her, back in the ’70s when she was a cub reporter and I was a rookie deputy. I moved the receiver closer to my ear again and continued.
“Why driving you crazy?” I asked.
“Because the whole thing is…Wait a minute, David. Why? Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just naturally curious.” I could already imagine the explosion from Peralta if the story of the found badge appeared on the front page of the local newspaper.
“Bullshit,” she said, glee in her voice. “David, you were a lousy liar when you were my boyfriend…”
“Was I your boyfriend? I recall there were several of us.”
“What can I say,” she said. “I’m loveable. But I guess you’re happier now with Leslie.”
“Lindsey,” I said.
“Don’t try to change the subject. You’ve got something new on Pilgrim.”
Now it was my turn to be obstinate. “’Bye, Lorie.”
I held the phone out just enough to hear her hollering. “Stop! Don’t hang up!”
I said, “So give me the short version of why this case matters to you, and I’ll try to help you, too.”
“Bastard,” she said, not without affection. “OK, it’s the only unsolved murder of an FBI agent in Arizona history. John Pilgrim was found floating in an irrigation canal on November 10th, 1948. He had a single gunshot to his heart. The locals and the FBI interviewed more than a thousand people, and they never made an arrest in the case.”
I asked her why.
“That’s what always drove me nuts. I was assigned to do a story on the Pilgrim case years ago, just a historical feature on famous local cases that had never been solved. I’d never even heard of the case before. But I didn’t get anywhere with the FBI. Even some of my good sources wouldn’t talk. And I’m like, what’s the deal? This is a case that happened decades ago. Why do they give a shit? Well, let me tell you, David, they do. I came back five years ago and filed a FOIA, Freedom of Information Act request, for the Pilgrim files. Guess what? They blocked it.”
I sipped the mocha, trying to square Lorie’s information with Eric Pham’s willingness to share the case with the local cops.
“What about the county files?”
“The assholes tried to block that, too. The paper took them to court. I got this very redacted version. Lots of reports were missing. This was all before you came back to Phoenix, David.”
“So why do they care so much?” I asked.
“I’d like to tell you it’s the great Phoenix murder mystery, that’s it’s got sex, betrayal, a dead body and somehow ties the FBI into the Kennedy assassination. But my theory is that Pilgrim killed himself, and that would have been an embarrassment to the FBI. But who the hell knows. Not everybody would agree.”
“Who is not everybody?” I asked.
“There was someone I spent some time with who was one of these amateur crime buffs. A.C. Hardin-how could I ever forget. A.C. was convinced that Pilgrim was killed by gangsters.”
“Where can I find Hardin?”
“Used to live down in Tubac. Hang on…” I heard her banging through drawers, and then she came back on with a phone number. I thanked her.
“Yeah, well, A.C.’s a nut,” she said. “So now it’s your turn, Deputy-Professor-Ex-Boyfriend. Talk.”
I saw a shadow at the pebbled glass of my door. “Later,” I said, and hung up. I could hear her cursing as the phone sank to its cradle.
Kate Vare opened the door without knocking. “We’ve got to canvass the shelters, find out who this guy was,” she muttered.
“Can’t the detectives do that?” I asked.
“We are the detectives, Mapstone,” she said. “Didn’t you see TV this morning? A fourteen-year-old girl kidnapped at gunpoint from her parents’ house. Everybody in my shop is busy on that. Not that we didn’t have enough to do already.”
She looked around my office. “How do you rate so much room? And this furniture?”
“This was just a storeroom when I cleaned it up,” I said. “Actually, it was the sheriff’s personal office when the courthouse was built in 1929, but it had been forgotten all these years…”
I wasn’t even going to get into how I found the 1930s hardwood chairs and bench, and the leather sofa, in county storage. Her eyes were blurry with boredom.
“I didn’t hear about the kidnapping,” I said. I was just making conversation. My stomach hurt, the ache of unpleasant people. My stomach said, Be somewhere else.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, giving me a small, sad smile. “You read books.”
“Or the newspaper.”
“Who has time.”
She fished in her tote and held out two handfuls. “We have some photos of the guy, and his jacket in a bag. Maybe someone will remember dealing with him.”
I stayed at my desk. “Kate, I have a wonderful idea. You check out the homeless guy, and I’ll work things from the Pilgrim angle. That way we’ll stay out of each other’s way.”
“No way,” she barked, and squared her shoulders against me. “I’m not taking the shitwork while you play professor.”
“This isn’t-”
“I’ve dealt with sexism my whole career, Mapstone. So don’t think you can pat me on the head, tell me I have pretty legs, and send me on my way.”
“I-”
She drilled an index finger my way. “If you want to be part of this case, you have to step up and do the real work, just like me.”
She stalked off toward the elevator, pausing to toss her head at the door into the great sexist’s office. She said, “Coming?”
Chapter Five
I followed her down the curving, Spanish tile staircase, feeling more amused than annoyed. Amused in a lethargic way. I was still wrung out from my time in Portland, and this case just didn’t make me feel territorial about who would discover the connection between a homeless man and a missing FBI badge. Maybe it was diminishing testosterone-I sure didn’t feel that in other ways. Maybe I was growing a little bored playing cop, as Dan Milton had wondered about me before he died.
My task with Kate that morning seemed like a fool’s errand, but that was why I had never made it in the law enforcement bureaucracy. I didn’t understand the importance of process. Of appearing to do something. Maybe I would get credit as a good team player, “handling” Kate Vare, as Peralta put it. I would try it for a while, at least. But it seemed like a lousy way to make progress. We didn’t have a good photo of the dead man-the morgue shots definitely didn’t make him look “so lifelike, so at peace.” A bloated corpse face stared out at us. As for the jacket, it was standard-issue Levi’s, very faded and authentically “distressed.” Even beneath the heavy clear plastic of the evidence bag, the jacket felt vermin-infested.
“We can take my car,” Vare said.
