“I’ve got nothing to confess to you,” the voice went on. “You don’t scare me. You didn’t scare me forty years ago. That girl’s death was an accident. You know that. I didn’t mean to grab hold of her the way I did. It’s just that she went crazy, just like a wild animal.”
The other man said something I couldn’t make out.
Then the old man’s tenor rasped, “My God, I had a wife and a family. I had a law practice and standing in the community. Things were different then. She wanted too much. We could have settled things. But she wanted too much. I am so goddamned sorry it was John Henry’s niece, so goddamned sorry. I tried to make it up to him, to his son. But that’s all in the past. Killing me won’t change one minute of it.”
I unholstered the Python and stepped into the room. It was a small front room, made smaller still by stacks of law books and newspapers, by the halfhearted light of a tattered floor lamp. One man sat deflated in an old chair. Everything about him was the color of cigarette ash: his loose skin, the wisps of hair ringing his bald head, even the old-man pants and shirt that were now too big for him. The other man was Harrison Wolfe.
Wolfe said, “Mapstone, meet Sam Larkin.” He added distastefully, “The Kingmaker.”
“You don’t need that,” Wolfe said, indicating the Python. “My God, that’s a piece of artillery.” Stuck in his belt, Wolfe had a Smith amp; Wesson.38-caliber Chief’s Special: old-fashioned, compactly lethal. I holstered the big Colt.
Wolfe said, “You’re thinking, I didn’t even know Sam Larkin was still alive. Well, I thought the same thing until you stirred this up again. Then after you and I met, somebody’s muscle started following me. That got me to thinking, Who would give a tinker’s damn about this case after all this time? And I knew I had to pay a visit to old Sam here. He looks every one of his eighty-seven years, doesn’t he?”
Larkin regarded me with watery eyes. “You could have left well enough alone.”
“I needed a job,” I said. “Now I think that Mexican sheriff is going to want to talk to you.”
“Nobody’s talking.” It was a new voice, coming from behind me. The next thing I felt was a gun barrel push me into the room. I turned, to see Dennis Copeland. His eyes were like burned glass.
Larkin laughed until he started wheezing and coughing.
“My associate arrived just in time,” he gasped.
“He doesn’t work for McConnico?” I demanded, mustering a bravado I didn’t feel, looking down the barrel of a.44 Magnum. The Python was now a hand’s grasp away-might as well have been a light-year.
“You’re a young fool,” Larkin spat at me. “This man works for me. If you’d have paid attention to him, none of this would have happened.”
He ran a bony hand across his bald crown. “Brent is a young fool, too.”
I noticed Harrison Wolfe again when he subtly shifted his weight and faced Copeland.
Wolfe said, “Mr. Copeland, you murdered a Phoenix police officer. If you don’t put that gun down, I will kill you where you stand.” His voice was different now, calmer, almost sleepy.
Copeland laughed and cocked his head back contemptuously. It was a stupid move.
Before I could even process what was happening, Wolfe had the Chief’s Special in his hand and put two rounds between Dennis Copeland’s eyes. The small man collapsed backward into the doorway, his fall seeming to take longer than Wolfe’s move. Then the loud
Wolfe’s cold features didn’t change. He merely turned and put the gun to Larkin’s temple.
Larkin was sweating terribly, and I could see a large stain spreading in the crotch of his pants. He forced his eyes closed and said quietly, “I’ll meet you in hell.”
Then Wolfe stuck the.38 back in his belt and tossed me a pair of handcuffs.
“You can have him,” he said. “I won’t give him the satisfaction.”
He stepped across Copeland and then turned on the porch.
“You did okay, Mapstone,” he said. “Give my regards to Chief Peralta.”
Then he walked off into the night.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Susan Knightly greeted me at the door and led me into her condo, an airy, sunlit space of plants and wicker furniture and photographs. On one wall was a moody black-and-white shot of workers in a farm wagon under an ancient oak tree and cloud-scudded sky. “California,” she said as I lingered. Inside another simple black metal frame were the faces of two little girls-a color print this time-with old eyes and haunted looks. “The Amazon,” she said. We sat on a dark wicker sofa under high windows dense with palm fronds.
“You’re a hard man to find,” Susan said.
“She said without irony.”
She laughed. “Well, I figured after what I read in the paper, it was safe to come out of hiding.”
“You hide well.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I know it seems silly to you, but I was so unnerved by what happened to Phaedra, I didn’t know what to do. After that night at the shopping mall, I went to San Francisco for a few days. A friend put me up.”
“You could be charged with withholding information in a homicide.”
“What?” she laughed. “I told you what I knew. I think you had just promised me protection when the gunfight broke out.”
“Okay,” I said. “So much for the tough cop routine. You called me. I’m here.”
“Look,” she said. “Phaedra Riding has caused me more trouble than I would ever have imagined. I was just trying to give her a break.”
I watched the palm trees and didn’t speak.
“She played the cello, you know,” Susan said. “It’s a very mournful instrument, when you think about it. I think Phaedra spent most of her life running away from a lot of sadness.”
“Sadness with men?” I asked.
“She was a very sensual creature. That part of her set her free from her devils, I think. Maybe only temporarily, and maybe it was self-destructive. But it was enough for a while.”
“Love?” I coaxed.
“It wasn’t love. Love hurt too much. She told me, ‘Always be the one to leave; never be the one who’s left.’ Quite a philosophy for a twenty-eight-year-old. Once, she told me she always tried to juggle two or three lovers at once so her heart would never be exposed, as she put it. They never knew about one another, of course.”
“Sounds like Phaedra had a lot of secrets.”
She looked at me with those green eyes. “Haven’t you ever had secrets, David? Cheated on your lover? Had a one-night stand with a friend, or with a stranger? Did something you never thought you’d do, and it was strange and wonderful and exciting? You felt alive like you never imagined possible. The next day, you acted like nothing ever happened. That part of your history belongs only to you.”
“What I’m after is the secret that will catch a murderer.”
We sipped tea and watched a bird fighting to get into the palm tree to nest. She asked, “Why are you here?”
“You called me.”
“No, David. I mean, why are you investigating this case? This isn’t an unsolved murder case from 1959. Why in the world are you involved in this?”
She had turned the tables on me very neatly. So much for my great interview skills. “It started out personal. Phaedra’s sister, Julie, is an old friend of mine from college.”
“Talk about secrets,” Susan said. “She’s an old girlfriend, right?” I nodded. “Men have a way of referring to their old girlfriends. Something in their voices. I’ve been referred to that way before.”
I laughed unhappily. “Julie showed up at my door one night and asked me to see what I could do. I thought I was going to make a phone call and be done with it.”
“But you didn’t.”
