skirt, sheer black stockings, black shoes with thick heels. She loved her monochromes, and with her hair and coloring it worked to stunning effect. I said what I thought: “Will you marry me? My God, you are beautiful.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you think so.” She reached down and scratched my shoulder. “You’re pretty sexy in uniform, Dave. This is a part of you I’ve rarely seen.”
I told her about the press briefing.
She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Sometime you’ll have to wear your uniform at home, give me the discipline I need, Sheriff.” Her soft hair ran across my neck and face. I was instantly hard. Right there in Central Records.
“You’re blushing, Dave,” she said. “I thought all you guys who came of age in the seventies had no inhibitions.”
“I’m not blushing.” I said, feeling the heat running out into my face.
“Who’s that?” She put a long finger on the mugshot of Leo O’Keefe.
“He doesn’t look like a cop killer,” she said after I told her. “Just looks like a kid.” She pulled up a chair next to me and sat, crossing her fine dark-stockinged legs. “Now these guys.” She reached over to the prison photos of McGovern and Meadows. “You can see the sociopath in their eyes. But this kid, what was he doing out with the other two?”
“He was this one’s cousin,” I tapped McGovern’s surly face. “He and his girlfriend Marybeth somehow hooked up with them.”
Lindsey bit her lower lip. “What a mess. Could those kids have even done anything to stop the shooting?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was trying to find their statements to refresh my memory. But a lot of the deputies thought they got off too easy, probation for her and a year for O’Keefe. But he’s a loser. Iced a guy in prison and they tacked life onto his sentence.”
She rubbed her hand over my back. “Oh, Dave, you’re not that hard. You know how bad luck comes to people.”
I nodded, felt a pang of something like compassion, and put my hand on her thigh. Right there in Central Records.
Lindsey said, “But if he tries to hurt you, I’ll put a nice tight pattern of hollow-point ammunition in his chest, reload, shoot him again, and then read him his rights.
“I’m actually here on a mission, Dave.” she went on, absently picking through the files. “You asked about Camelback Falls.”
“Yes.” I lowered my voice. “It was the notation in Peralta’s calendar.”
“Camelback Falls was the name of a house,” she said. “It’s still there, actually. On the south face of the mountain. Anyway, does the name Jonathan Ledger mean anything to you?”
“The sex guy?” I asked.
“You are the sex guy,” she whispered as I stroked her leg. “Dave, let me concentrate. Yes, Ledger wrote
“Who owns the house now?” I asked.
“Some rich guy who lives in North Carolina. The house has changed hands five times since Ledger died. The current owner is trying to get a permit to demolish it and build something grander. But the house hasn’t been called Camelback Falls since Ledger. When I called the Realtor today she didn’t even know that was what it was called.”
I sat back in the chair. Now I was more baffled than ever. What could Peralta have wanted to know from me about Jonathan Ledger’s house on Camelback Mountain?
“Thanks, beautiful,” I said. “You’re pretty smart for a propeller head.”
She licked her lips, “What are you doing for lunch, Sheriff?”
“Media briefing,” I said sadly. “But afterward…”
“Actually,” she said, “I have another mission. I’m going to the briefing, too. That’s why I’m kind of preppy- looking today, and I know that look really turns you on, Dave. But I am your new bodyguard.”
“I work alone, ma’am,” I said, deepening my voice. “Anyway, the cyber-terrorists of the world won’t take a holiday while you baby-sit me.”
“Sorry, Dave. You have to be accompanied by a deputy from now on. It’s new policy. So you can have me, or some knuckle-dragger from the patrol bureau. Kimbrough is getting very ticked off that you’re just wandering around unprotected. And so am I.” She sat back, luminous, smiling, proud of herself.
I smiled, too, and said, “Well, don’t expect me to get any work done.”
Chapter Nine
The phone’s ring broke me out of a nightmare about Peralta, shadows at my office door, and suffocating on the end of a respirator hose. But when I picked it up there was only silence on the line, silence in the dark bedroom, Lindsey’s hand against the sweat cooling on my back.
Then a voice said, “David Mapstone?”
“That’s me.”
“Acting Sheriff David Mapstone?”
If this was a telemarketer, I was going to get homicidal. Instead, the voice, a man’s voice-average, unremarkable, baritone-said, “This is Leo O’Keefe.”
I sat up straight, turned on the light and mouthed the words “Leo O’Keefe” to Lindsey. She angled out of bed and disappeared down the hall.
“Leo, we need to talk to you.”
“I saw the news,” he said. “You’re after me.”
“You’re an escaped convict,” I said. The little pinpoint of pain pushed at my middle. “You know the detectives suspect you shot Sheriff Peralta.”
“I didn’t,” the voice said calmly. “Who are you, David Mapstone? Why are you the acting sheriff?”
Beats the hell out of me, I thought. Lindsey came back in the room, a cell phone at her ear. She pantomimed with the other hand: Keep him talking.
“I’m nobody, Leo. I’m the department historian. I was the one they got to fill in after the sheriff was wounded.”
“I’m sorry he’s hurt,” the voice said. He didn’t remember me from Guadalupe, or my name, anyway.
“What about Dean Nixon,” I said. “Did you try to contact him?”
The line went silent. Finally, “That’s right. Have you talked to Deputy Nixon about me?”
“Leo, you’ve got to turn yourself in. I give you my word, you will be treated well.”
He laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I know about that.” His voice picked up momentum, edged up half an octave. “Mapstone, they can’t let any of this come out. That’s why Peralta was shot.”
I started to speak, but he cut me off.
“I have information for you,” he said, now speaking frantically. “I can’t explain now. If you’re interested, walk to the pay phone at the Jack in the Box at Third Avenue and McDowell. I can see if you come alone or not, and I can see if cops are in the parking lot. Make sure you walk.”
“Leo…”
“Come now, Mapstone. Your life depends on it.” And the line went dead.
Lindsey was speaking quietly into the cell phone, incandescently nude. Then she shook her head. “Not enough time. Shit! We should have had this number wired up in advance.”
I stood up and pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt. The house was quite cold, the way we keep it so my Arizona body heat doesn’t smother Lindsey in bed beside me.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to the Jack in the Box down on McDowell, the pay phone. That’s what he said to do. He’ll call
