I closed the door. Lindsey climbed in the passenger side. I slid the Suburban into drive. Lindsey said quietly, “Cocksuck your way back to Denver, baby.”
Beth pounded on the driver’s window. “Don’t leave me!”
I started rolling forward slowly.
“Bastard!” She hit the window hard. “They told me to tell that story!”
I stepped on the brake and lowered the window two inches.
“They told me, if anybody ever asked, to say a deputy named Peralta stole that cocaine,” she said, breathless. “They told me again last week to say the same thing. They said he was the sheriff now. They said they’d kill me if I didn’t.”
I lowered the window halfway, my finger on the remote-control button like it was a torture device.
“Who is they?”
“The detective! I don’t know.” Her fingers were red and raw from the cold, clutching the top of the window.
“Who is they, damn it!” I let the truck start to roll.
She screamed a name. I felt a new chill.
“I want to know what those goons were after,” I pushed.
“You were there,” she said. “You heard. They wanted to know where Leo was.”
“That’s right,” I said into the wind. “I was there. I heard them say ‘Give it up.’ Not ‘Give him up,’ but ‘Give it up.’ What is it, Beth?”
“How would I know? This is insane!”
I let up the brake and the truck rolled. The highway was empty to the horizon in both directions. “No!” she yelled and sobbed. “Don’t leave me!”
“The truth, Beth.”
“They wanted the letter.”
I put the truck into park.
“Dean Nixon wrote me a letter six weeks ago. How he found me after all these years, I don’t know. He and Leo had been in contact, and he said he wanted to make things right for Leo. I guess he wanted to do one good thing before his life was over. He said he was going to tell what really happened in Gaudalupe, what really happened with the cocaine. He was going to go to the new sheriff, Peralta. But he was afraid. And he was afraid for what might happen to Leo. The River Hogs had gang contacts inside the prison, and they could kill him if he seemed like he was going to talk.”
“Where’s the letter, Beth?”
She looked at me, red-eyed, and more tears came down her cheeks. She reached into her pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me carefully, and I handed it to Lindsey. I stepped out to open the back door for her. She fell back against the side of the truck and said, “I’m so tired of this.”
“Get in, Beth.”
“You may as well know, things that night didn’t go down the way I said.”
I faced her. She looked wrung out, her skin bloodless.
“We were going to rob those old cops. Me and Billy and Troyce. We were going to double-cross Dean. We had Jonathan’s money, and the cops had the stolen drugs, and we were going to take both. Jonathan wouldn’t miss it, and Billy and Troyce wanted to go to Mexico. Poor Leo was just along because he loved me.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, when those deputies, Matson and Bullock, pulled in behind us that night, they thought they were just going to get cash for the drugs they took from the evidence room. I got out of the car…”
Her words sunk in. I suddenly said, “Beth, anything you say-” She held out a hand in a violent “stop” gesture. “Don’t read me my fucking rights. I got out of the car and walked back and smiled, and they were just stupid fucking men.”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“I know that,” she said. “I also know I have a right to counsel. Just like Leo did.” She sobbed and rubbed her nose. “I waive my rights. Don’t you get it, Mapstone? While I distracted those old guys, Billy and Troyce got out of the car and came up and shot them. Right there. It happened so fast. Then, they started going through their pants to get the car keys, to get the coke out of the trunk. But it was too late. You guys charged in. I guess Nixon finally got the coke. Maybe the detective did. I don’t know.” She shook her head against the implacable wind. Then she shouted, “So, you see, I’ve had a lot to try to run away from all these years.”
“You didn’t know they were going to kill those cops,” I blurted suddenly, inappropriately chivalrous.
She looked at me, a look like the young girl Marybeth had in that vivid photo from Camelback Falls.
She said, “Yes, I did.”
Chapter Thirty-two
We delivered Beth to the huge, glassy Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Building in downtown Phoenix. To me, it still looked like a call center in the suburbs. Inside, we sat through hours of interviews with the U.S. Attorney’s staff, through a magnificent Arizona sunset out the big windows, and then Beth went off into protective custody with two marshals. What I really wanted was a shower, a drink, and a long sleep with Lindsey curled up against me.
“Sheriff!”
It was Kimbrough, waiting at the foot of the escalator as we descended into the enormous glass shell of the atrium. He shook my hand, then gave Lindsey an awkward hug.
“Congratulations,” he said, “We’re not waiting for federal indictments, either. We’ve already picked up two of these bounty hunters. And they’ve given up two other scumbags, former deputies, who were working with them. And we have arrest warrants issued for all the ones you said on the phone.”
He looked at my face. “Man, that must hurt,” he said. It did. It looked worse. On a trip to the men’s room, I spent several minutes scrutinizing the colors of my shiner.
“Don’t ask about Peralta,” he said. “I don’t know anything new.” We walked past the metal detectors and out onto Washington Street. Outside, it was nicely brisk-balmy compared to the weather in Denver or out on the Navajo Reservation with Beth by the roadside.
“You know Beth cleared him,” I said.
He bit his lip. “I know she backed away from saying he stole that cocaine.” We stopped on the street, facing each other. “Look, don’t make me the bad guy in this, Sheriff. I’m just doing the job. We still have to deal with Peralta’s badge number in Nixon’s payoff book.”
“Maybe we don’t,” Lindsey said. A little clot of traffic passed by, and she went on.
“While Dave was getting beaten up, I took all the badge numbers in the book and set up a database to handle other information we had about East County deputies for April, May, and June 1979. Things like personal logs, court appearances, overtime reports, sick time. Then I created a program to make some comparisons.
“Here’s the thing: It doesn’t make any sense the way Nixon recorded it. He lists a payoff of $1,200 to Peralta’s badge number on April 3, but for most of that month Peralta was at an FBI school in Quantico.”
I remembered. He was.
“The same result comes out in several other instances. A payoff is given to a badge number, but the deputy is on sick leave. Another payoff is listed, but that badge number goes to somebody who’s been transferred to the West Valley.”
“So,” Kimbrough said, “you’re saying it’s all bogus?”
“Not necessarily,” Lindsey said. “It might be pretty simple. They might have thrown in some innocent deputies on that list to provide cover, just in case they were ever caught. Or it might be a code. For example, maybe Peralta’s badge number in the logbook actually means somebody else. I ran some scenarios that way, and they came out in a way that would make sense. Maybe not airtight for a courtroom, but enough to point us to the real dirty cops. Certainly enough to clear Peralta.”
“Wait a damned minute,” Kimbrough said. “I want this to be a happy ending, too. But you’re using technology
