“Whatever it was,” Lindsey said, “Nixon didn’t want it at his trailer. But he didn’t want it that far away, either.”
I grasped the handle of the box and pulled it out of the ground. “Well, we’re about to find out.”
I put latex gloves back on and released the metal catch on the ammo box. The top swung open, releasing sand and rocks. Inside it was empty.
“I don’t believe it,” Kimbrough said. “This is like when Geraldo opened Al Capone’s vault.”
“Wait a minute.” I put my hand on the bottom and it gave way. A piece of dark metal, cut to create a false bottom. I pulled out the metal plate and beneath it was some kind of book, wrapped in plastic. I pulled it out and shook it off, being paranoid about scorpions and other desert creepy-crawlies. But inside it was clean and dry, a red, hardcover journal. It was the kind of logbook you might have seen in any small business a generation ago.
“Hmmmm,” Kimbrough said, reacting to the cover. It was a vivid cartoon of two pigs in police uniforms, having sex while riding a Harley. Beneath it was inscribed, “MCSD RIVER HOGS.”
“That dates it,” I said. “Back in the seventies, it was the Maricopa County Sheriff’s
“What were the River Hogs?” Lindsey asked.
I shook my head, looking over at Kimbrough.
“Before my time,” he said. “But I never heard the phrase before.”
“When did Nixon’s ex get that envelope?” I asked.
“She didn’t recall exactly,” he said. “They divorced in 1991, and she moved to Tempe. She knows Nixon gave her the envelope to hang onto after they divorced. She said she hadn’t even seen Nixon since 1995.”
“Dave’s ex gave him a BMW,” Lindsey said, poking my ribs.
“So he was anticipating somebody killing him for at least five years, maybe longer?” I said.
“Maybe,” Kimbrough said. “But he was a drunk and a washout as a law enforcement officer. Maybe he was just paranoid.” I held out the book again and opened the cover. Beyond some blank initial sheets, the pages turned dense with columns. Pages and pages of numbers and columns. I flipped through. Nothing but numbers and columns. One column appeared to be dates, starting in 1977. On the last page, the date was 12/31/80. Another column was clearly about money: Each page saw that column set off with a precisely-drawn dollar sign-and the same person appeared to have written all the entries. The sums weren’t small, $1,000 being a common amount, and some lines showing as high as $15,000.
“What’s that?” Kimbrough indicated another column, with four-digit numbers.
I shook my head. “Some kind of code, maybe.” I scanned the pages, and the four-digit numbers frequently repeated themselves. A few appeared quite regularly, every week.
“Like a book-making operation?” Lindsey asked. I shook my head, feeling suddenly like something cold had wrapped itself around my neck.
“Or payoffs,” I said. “Bribes to cops. Nixon left nothing in this case except this book. He obviously thought it was self-evident, and that the information was explosive. We’re not talking about records of poker games, here.”
“That’s why he wrote the thing about taking it to the U.S. Attorney,” Kimbrough said.
“So what is the code?” Lindsey asked. “Maybe there’s a key somewhere in the book.”
Kimbrough’s star and gun hanging on his belt caught my eye, and it was clear. “They’re badge numbers,” I said.
Lindsey drew closer. “Jeez, Dave, are you in there?”
“What was Nixon’s badge number?” I asked. Kimbrough shook his head.
“Hang on,” Lindsey said, pulling out her Palm Pilot.
“I guess I have to get one of those,” I said.
“This one’s old,” she said, using a stylus to make some marks on the little screen. “It takes a long time to beam into the mainframe down on Madison Street.”
I looked out, past the blown-apart, burned boulders, over the brown haze obscuring the city.
“Got it,” Lindsey said, reading out Nixon’s number from the central computer. And, sure enough, Nixon was a regular in the book. In just one month, he accounted for $8,500, and that was 1979 money.
Lindsey drew close to me and began scanning the pages herself. Suddenly, she drew in a sharp breath. “Oh!”
I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to. But there it was. And it reappeared. Again and again, on page after page.
“That can’t be,” I said.
“What the hell are you guys talking about,” Kimbrough demanded. But then his eyes picked up the four digits, too.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
There was only one badge number that was so familiar in the Sheriff’s Office that everyone knew it by sight.
Chapter Twelve
As acting sheriff of Maricopa County, I could tell you a lot about what we do. We have 1,500 sworn deputies, and a volunteer posse of 3,200 reserve deputies. We police a county spread over 9,200 square miles, a larger area than some states. On the side of our patrol cars is the motto: “Protect and serve.”
The Sheriff’s Office is organized into nine bureaus. Patrol and detective operations are handled in four districts, dividing up the county. We have expensive and showy helicopters, heavily armed SWAT teams, and even a tank. We have a low-rider to win friends in the barrio.
Detaining prisoners is a big part of what we do. They’re kept in six different jails, including the former sheriff’s fabled Tent City jail, where the inmates live in tents, wear pink underwear, and eat green baloney. They seem to enjoy it.
Fifteen deputies have been killed in the line of duty, starting in 1922.
But that’s all numbers and organization, gadgets and background material off the sheriff’s web site. I know. I helped write it. But it doesn’t get at the heart and character of the organization. Even college faculties have heart and character. At the MCSO, even under the former sheriff’s showbiz years, those traits were best expressed, and embodied, in a man named Peralta.
I knew all his bad sides. He was stubborn. He could be relentless. He was the very antithesis of the teary- communicative, huggy-therapeutic postmodern man. But I had been blessed by his brave heart and manly charity more times than I could count. Not just the night in Guadalupe when he saved my life, but in the aftermath of the shooting when he made sure I was assigned to easy duty. He would have been insulted if I had thanked him. To his mind, I had done my duty, and that wrapped me forever in his web of mutual obligation. That’s why he stayed in touch all those years when we had nothing in common but a shared past. And it’s why he gave me a job when nobody else would, and kept the Jack Abernathys of the department off my back until I had time to prove myself. That was Peralta.
But right then he lay before me unseeing, unhearing, a machine doing his breathing. We were alone in the room. I sat deeply in a chair with slick vinyl sides, watching his chest rise. I was in quite a state. But no one would know. Only Lindsey would, but she had gone with Kimbrough to log in the evidence we found in Dean Nixon’s ammo box. They figured I would be OK alone here, guarded by a phalanx of deputies in jumpsuits and flak jackets patrolling the hospital halls.
“Log the evidence in quietly for now,” I’d instructed Kimbrough. He’d looked at me pointedly. “What are you asking me to do, Sheriff?”
I said, “I am asking you to do just what I said. That’s all.”
And then I came to Good Sam to sit with the man whose badge number appeared repeatedly in Dean Nixon’s
