Concrete Desert

I’d been through several hours of interviews with the Internal Affairs team from Phoenix PD, then the IAD investigators from the Sheriff’s Office (who were wondering who the hell I was). Then the Public Affairs officers from both departments: The TV stations were all leading their newscasts with “Cop killing on city street in broad daylight.” Then came several layers of brass, asking the same questions over and over. The Sheriff himself came to ask some questions, patted me on the shoulder, and then left to brief the reporters waiting in his pressroom.

Then an extended private ass-kicking from Peralta: Why had I been following Brent McConnico? How could I be sure Dennis Copeland was the same man I’d seen at Metrocenter? Why hadn’t I waited until more backup was available? How could I have let such inexperienced officers try to stop Copeland? Why was I such a bad shot? How could I have let Copeland escape-twice? And-the heart of the matter-why did I “screw the pooch,” as he called it, with his bete noire, the Phoenix Police Department?

It was a bad scene, as we used to say in the sixties. Peralta had moved past his demonstrative anger-the shouting and thundering and pounding on his desk-into a barely controlled rage of pedantic lectures and nasty questions, over and over. It was Mike Peralta at his worst. The Brent McConnico factor left an especially bad taste in my mouth. Peralta claimed to disbelieve that McConnico had even been at the strip mall on Shea Boulevard, meeting Dennis Copeland. I wasn’t my best, either. I accused Peralta of soft-pedaling McConnico’s role to preserve his own political skin. That started him all over again. The only thing that saved me was Peralta being summoned to a disturbance at the jail. I’d had enough for one day.

I walked down the dimly lighted corridor totally spent. I was exhausted and sore. The palms of my hands hurt from the 130-degree temperature of the asphalt I’d hit earlier that day. Even my ankles hurt.

In a little alcove by the elevator, Lindsey was sitting with her feet propped up on another chair, dozing. In sleep, there was something darkly reassuring about her beauty, gold stud in her nose and all. I sat down beside her and gently brushed her hair away from her face. The indirect light caught the rich browns and auburns in what had first appeared to be nearly black, fine, straight hair. My raven. She smiled and sighed and stretched.

“Hey, Dave,” she said. “I figured you could use a friend.”

“You figured right,” I said.

“I told you to be careful.”

“I tried.”

She reached out her hand and I pulled her up. We took the elevator and escaped into the night.

We went to her apartment in Sunnyslope, where we sat on an old couch covered with a comforter, drinking Chardonnay, listening to angry young music, and talking for hours.

She had a cat, a big languid gray tabby named Pasternak, reflecting a late-teen obsession with Russian literature and history. We talked about Dr. Zhivago and Lindsey said she had always been touched by the character of Lara, wrenched from love and doomed by revolution. In the movie, there was the streetcar scene, of course, where Yuri and Lara see each other years later but are hopelessly separated by time and motion.

I always remembered Zhivago’s brother, the Soviet officer, who talked about how Yuri and Lara were among the millions murdered to realize the Communist ideal, which of course was a sham. Tens upon tens of millions killed in this bloodiest of centuries, all in the service of murderous ideologies that sought to kill even history-especially history! — a trail of inhumanity and rage and social disintegration, a steady return to barbarism that led even to Maricopa County, Arizona, and young women left dead in the desert.

This was the point at which my dating life usually self-destructed, but Lindsey stayed with me, for some odd reason genuinely interested. “I wish I could have studied history with you,” she said.

The cat purred at my feet. I let it sniff my finger and then chucked it under the chin. “Pasternak likes you,” she said. She took my hand and stroked it lightly, skin on skin, touch on touch. She had long, elegant fingers. “I do, too.”

She held my hand against her warm lips and kissed it.

“I don’t have any answers,” I said.

“I don’t want any.” She ran a finger down my face, tracing the curve of my cheek, mapping out my lips.

I looked at her. Her eyes were a subtle blue, something I had not noticed before, overpowered by the monochromes of her dark hair and clothes and white skin.

“I don’t know the human heart.”

“I don’t, either,” she said, and kissed me lightly.

“I failed in my marriage,” I said.

“Stop living in the past, History Shamus.”

“I’m thirteen years older than you. I don’t have movie-star looks or a sailboat. I don’t even have a real job.” I sighed. “I’m feeling pretty broken right now.”

“I like the way you’re broken,” she said, and kissed me again, our tongues touching lightly. “I know what you are.”

I started to open my mouth, but she put two fingers against my lips. “Shhhh.”

And so I took her in my arms, Lindsey Faith Adams, and kissed her like I’d wanted to from the first second I ever laid eyes on her.

In the morning, I cooked us breakfast, Mexican omelettes and English muffins, and we sat in bed eating and reading about the shooting in the Republic. As usual, the media got the story only half- right. Pasternak went out on the balcony and provoked a mockingbird, who fussed at him loudly.

“So what’s your unified field theory?” Lindsey asked.

“I prefer lying in bed with a beautiful naked woman, reveling in what a sexy, wonderful find she is,” I said. I felt sore in all the right places, all the forgotten, out-of-practice places. “Out there!”-I nodded out the window-“they can all go to hell.”

Lindsey ate a forkful of omelette. “This is very good, Dave.”

“My theory?” I said. “Add Brent McConnico, the next governor, to our list of people who have landed in bad shit. I kept thinking this Copeland guy from the Metrocenter had to be tied into Phaedra’s murder. But I guess-and here’s where my theory runs out of track-he’s connected to McConnico, which means he’s connected to Rebecca Stokes, who was murdered forty years ago. But he’s no damned ghost.…”

“Something from that long ago still matters,” Lindsey said. She put some preserves on a piece of muffin and fed it to me. “Something matters enough to kill for.”

“So we get a break in one case, and it knocks the legs out of the other one. Shit. I just need to let that go. Let Peralta throw Julie in jail forever.”

She read my face and said, “You know this isn’t going to be a happy ending with Julie, don’t you, Dave? Are you sure you want to go there?”

I tried to smile. “You’re pretty smart for a computer nerd.”

“It’s the database of the heart,” Lindsey said.

“I’m with you,” I said, kissing her hand. “It’s where I want to be.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m glad for both of us.”

Afterward, I took our plates to the kitchen and then climbed back into bed. Lindsey draped a long leg across me. Young, taut skin-the most amazing feeling.

“So let’s tie up some loose ends,” I said. “Why did Julie say she was being followed?”

“We know she’s truth-challenged,” Lindsey said. “But if she’s on the level, maybe she first saw this guy Copeland when he was actually watching you.” She smirked. “She obviously thinks every man wants her. Then Copeland sees Julie with you and decides to find out if she’s important, so he follows her.”

Lindsey was under the covers, kissing my calves, running her fingers up my thighs. The exquisite softness of her hair brushed against me. Every pore of my skin was tingling. All my reasoning powers ran away and I just wanted to feel her wonderful lips and mouth.

“What about-Oh God, that feels so good-what about Metrocenter? That was about Rebecca Stokes?”

Lindsey popped her head out of the covers. “It made sense to think Copeland was after Susan Knightly and Phaedra. Actually, it looks like he was after you.”

“Then he really is a bad shot.”

“And I’m glad of that, too.” She smiled. “Now, stop thinking, Professor.”