David Mapstone Mystery: The Night Detectives Part 14

"But she called you."

"Somebody called here with her phone. She was found dead with a new phone that didn't have any called numbers on it. That was in your report."

Sanchez persisted. "Why would this somebody call here?"

I told her the truth: I didn't know. Maybe it was Tim, using her phone. Considering he didn't know she was dead when I first met him, that seemed unlikely, but no need to tell her that.

I didn't say how this call to our office indicated that whoever killed Grace, set off the Claymore mine, and took the baby had made that call to frame us, or at least slow us down, knowing the police would track the LUDs. This had been planned well ahead of the moment Felix walked in that door.

The only alternative was that Grace herself had actually tried to call us. But why? She didn't even know us.

"I can make your life miserable." Sanchez sat in the chair in front of my desk, crossed her legs, and placed long fingers protectively across her belly. "Losing your license will only be the start of the hurt I can put on you."

"I don't doubt it," I said. "But Kimbrough and Peralta go back a long way, and you've got a bungled investigation on your hands. Let me ask you a question, if you don't mind: you pulled Grace's LUDs. Do they match with the phone found in her purse that night?"

Sanchez deflated by degrees. Even her hair deflated.

"No. They don't match. The phone she was carrying that night was scrubbed clean of recent calls. We traced it to a seventy-year-old woman who lives on Clairemont Mesa. It was stolen from her in a purse s.n.a.t.c.hing at Fashion Valley mall."

"So whoever pushed her off that balcony took her real phone."

She nodded.

"How is the hunt for the baby progressing?"

She forced her expression to harden. "That's confidential law-enforcement information and you're only a private d.i.c.k."

Robin's words again. I stifled a smile.

"Come on, Isabel. You don't have to mimic your jerk colleague."

Two beats, three.

Then: "We don't have anything. Not a d.a.m.ned thing. If I had known she was married or had a kid..." She shook her head. "The vic didn't have any of that information in her purse. Her parents didn't tell us, either."

"I understand." I thought about the wall with our names painted in blood, information I had held back for our protection, and asked about fingerprints.

"The apartment was destroyed. It could take ATF weeks to sort through things and see if there are any usable prints." She cleared her throat. "What do you make of Larry Zisman?"

I laid out the backgrounding I had done. Among a certain group, people who had lived here a long time, Zisman was still beloved for his college-football days. He was a razzle-dazzle quarterback in the glory years of Sun Devil football. He left less of a mark in the NFL, playing for five teams before being forced to retire early.

Zisman was a native Arizonan, attended the old East High School, and came back here to live after he retired from the NFL. Not only that, but to live year-round, not only keep a casita at one of the resorts for the winter months. He had started a non-profit to fund athletics for inner-city schools. He was in demand to give speeches at Kiwanis and Rotary, but removed enough from celebrity to be under the radar in a city with so many comings and goings.

"Did it surprise you that he had a lover on the side?"

I held out empty hands. "Who ever knows? But, yes, a little. From what I picked up, Larry Zip was so full of clean living that he might have been mistaken for a Mormon."

"Do you think he killed Grace Hunter?"

"He's physically capable of it. Former athlete. As a reserve officer, he would have gone through police academy training."

She made a few notes.

I said, "It would be pretty stupid, though, to push her off his own condo balcony. He'd know that he would be the prime suspect. Better to strangle her and dump her body in the East County."

"Unless," she said, "it was an act of pa.s.sion and he did it in the moment."

"Right. But then you have the problem of the alibi, of him being on his boat."

I was only trying to be convivial enough to get Detective Sanchez out of the office. This couldn't be a mutually beneficial relationship because Peralta and I were concealing critical information. We had dug this hole a little scoop at a time, for good reasons at the moment, and now we were in deep. Too deep.

She thought about what I had said regarding Zisman, twirling a strand of her hair.

"I think he could have done it."

"You interviewed him that night and cleared him," I said.

"I read your report," she said. "After our a.s.s-chewing from Kimbrough and before we got on the plane, I dug a little more. The man at the next boat is a good friend with Zisman, you know. He's from Arizona, too. You people really need to find another summer escape. The man is a developer who used Zisman as a spokesman for some of his properties. He might be lying for him."

Zisman hadn't figured in any of my theories about the case-not that I had formed many yet. I had been focused on getting out of that apartment before my body was turned into an aerosol state, and then on examining whether Grace had actually committed suicide.

"What about Tim?"

I c.o.c.ked my head.

She went on. "Maybe he followed her to Zisman's condo and found out she was cheating on him. Oldest motive in the world."

To me, he barely had the guts to change a baby's diaper, much less kill his wife or have the strength to do it in such a physical manner. Sure, people would surprise you, especially if money or s.e.x were concerned. If so, he would have had to do a good job feigning surprise and sorrow when I told him Grace was dead. And been tough enough to slit his own throat and wire his apartment to explode.

I remembered a case in Scottsdale years ago, where a man cut the throats of his family, shot them, set the house on fire, and blew it up. They never caught him.

Detective Sanchez also didn't know that our names had been written in blood on the apartment wall. Tim Lewis didn't do that in the seconds before his carotid arteries bled out. Then there was yesterday's phone call, Mister UNKNOWN saying he had detonated the Claymore and with his aerial theater implying he either had the baby or had murdered it.

"Tim was genuinely torn apart when I told him Grace was dead," I said. "And remember, the pimp was beating him up when I got there. And if Tim was Grace's killer, who took the baby?"

She sighed. "I wish I could keep things simple. Occam's Razor, right? My a.s.s is on the line for this now, and there's a hundred local, state, and federal investigators living in my s.h.i.t because of that explosion and kidnapping."

I appreciated a woman who could quote the cla.s.sics, but this was one instance where the least complex hypothesis wouldn't do.

"The pimp is Keavon William Briscoe," she said, spelling the first name. "He's middling, not a big player. This is a guy who provides prost.i.tutes for sailors and Marines on leave and runs streetwalkers, not escorts for big-time executives and legislators."

"He claimed Grace worked for him."

"Maybe she did. It wouldn't be the first time a coed made some money on the side. The reason I don't like Briscoe for this is that he was in jail on the night of April twenty-second, a parole violation. He had a baggie of pot in the car. He'll probably go back to prison but it gives him an alibi for the one-eighty-seven." The homicide.

"How did he find where she lived?"

"That's the thing," she said. "He was cruising O.B. on April twenty-first and said he saw her, followed her home, and was driving around the block for a parking s.p.a.ce when a marked unit stopped him and arrested him. His sister didn't bail him out for several days."

"Did you execute a search warrant?"

"Don't p.i.s.s me off, Mapstone." The dark eyes deepened. "I usually don't f.u.c.k up cases. Yes, we gave his place a total colonoscopy and didn't even find a cheap gun, much less explosives. That brings me back to Zisman. If Zisman found out that Grace was tricking on the side, he would have even more motive to kill her. Maybe it's his baby. Maybe he has access to military explosives."

I nodded, but I had seen this so many times: a detective latches onto a theory and does whatever it takes to make it stick and clear the case. Back when I untangled cold cases for the Sheriff's Office, this was often the original sin in what turned out to be an unsolved case, or worse, one that sent an innocent person to prison.

I also appreciated the heat she was feeling from the bra.s.s.

Sanchez didn't know the full extent of Grace's entrepreneurship. It sounded as if she was unsure if she had even been a real prost.i.tute or only a wild child.

"What about her friend, Addison?"

"Addison Conway," Sanchez said. "Jones talked to her. She went back home to Oklahoma at the end of the semester. Grace hadn't made a call to her since March."

"So did Zisman and Grace have contact the day of her death?"

She sighed. "It's not in the LUDs. I went back through two years of records and didn't find his number. Grace called her mother on the twenty-first. She received a call from the human resources department at Qualcomm that same day. She called your office on the twenty-second. That's the only call she made on the day she died. The other thing is, the s.e.m.e.n inside her doesn't match Tim's DNA. In fact, it shows evidence that she had s.e.x with three different men, but none of them her husband."

The information exchange was definitely working in my favor. I was processing it, thinking out loud. "Grace had gone to a lot of trouble to drop out and get away from guys like Larry Zisman..."

A big smile played across her face. "Until she needed him. Come on, Mapstone, don't be nave. Babies are expensive and there's college coming right up on a parent. You probably have kids, so you understand. She hadn't even started her job at Qualcomm. Her bank account was drawn way down, only six hundred dollars."

I wondered if they had checked all her bank accounts, but said nothing.

Sanchez continued: "What if she showed up at Zisman's condo unannounced and wanted money? Former pro football player-she's got to figure he's loaded. Pay up or I'll tell your wife. Better than that, pay up or I'll tell your wife I had your baby. Zisman loses it and tosses her off the balcony, goes to his boat, and has his friends cover for him."

"Wouldn't Grace have been seen coming into the lobby? Or him going?"

"The night concierge didn't come on duty until eleven," she said. "n.o.body was at the front desk for eight hours that day. They've been having staffing problems. In San Diego, 'sunshine dollars' only go so far."

I thought back to our visit to the condo. "But the building has a card-key entrance. n.o.body could get in without using the card."

"Unless somebody coming in held the door for them. Anyway, after the body hit the concrete, the concierge runs out to the pool area. So if Zisman left, n.o.body would see him."

"Cameras?"

She shook her head. "The lobby cam was broken all week."

It didn't seem so neat to me. But the former football hero was in her radar lock.

"Have you interviewed Zisman again?"

The luminous black hair shook. "He's not answering his phone. But I've got a lot of questions when he resurfaces."

I still wondered about the missing hours in Grace's day. I said, "Why would she leave the apartment without telling Tim?"

She shrugged. "Men aren't the only ones who lie about s.e.x."

24.

Peralta still wasn't at the office when I had finished writing up the notes from my meeting with the San Diego detectives, and I was starting to worry, which was silly given Peralta's ability to protect himself and others.

My concern was forgotten when I buzzed open the gate for Lindsey. It closed and locked automatically after she pulled in. Lindsey in a miniskirt would chase away every concern, to be shamelessly shallow about it. She also carried lunch and my new iPhone, which FedEx had delivered that morning. After putting down the bag, she gave me a kiss and a hug that seemed almost normal. Her hand went up inside my shirt across my belly and onto my chest.

"Was this Robin's?" She touched the cross of Navajo silver.

I hesitated, then nodded.

"May I have it?"

"Of course." I removed it and slipped the chain over her head. She bent toward me as if receiving some kind of decoration.

The Order of the Lost Sister.

I pulled the cross around to fall above her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and fluffed out her hair.

"Thank you." She was trying not to cry, so she made herself laugh. "This way it won't tickle me when you're on top."

I tried to hold her, but almost immediately she dropped to her knees and started unzipping my slacks.

"Lindsey." I pulled her up and hugged her. "Just be with me."

"Yeah." Her voice was one notch above a whisper but I heard the sardonic tremolo. She was barely with me. Lindsey's body was in my arms but Lindsey was somewhere else. This appearance was conditional. She wasn't wearing her wedding band. It wasn't her fault. All she had of her child was a tattoo.

A few days ago I had nearly died, despite the claim by UNKNOWN that he waited before detonating the mine. I remembered the chunk of wall torpedoing into the pool inches from my head. I was living on bonus time but did she care? She had said that she had messed up, but maybe that meant getting fired, not leaving me. Lindsey, just be with me. What a d.a.m.ned fool I was.

I pushed her over to the desk, kissing her, caressing the soft skin beneath the hem of her shirt. After enough kissing to feel her body relax and even wilt, I lifted her onto the desktop, removed her sandals, and slid off her panties. Sitting in the chair, I started sucking her toes and licking her perfect ankles, slowly working my way north with my mouth and tongue. The fabric of her miniskirt tickled the top of my nose. She didn't resist. I held my arms behind her so she could lean back against my hands. She clutched my head with her hands, bent her knees, and rested her warm feet atop my shoulders.

Circles and slides and figure eights. Cheerleader legs. I played her, made it go on a long time, loving being so connected to everything she was feeling, loving giving her pleasure. I even knew when she was ready to intertwine her hands in mine, gripping me for the grand last movement.

Afterward, she slid into my lap and this time didn't resist being held.

"I love you." I couldn't help myself. It came out involuntarily.

She didn't say anything, but nestled closer.

I was a fool. The Bettye LaVette song played in my head: Everything Is Broken.

s.e.x would keep anxiety and time and death at bay. I never have panic attacks if I am getting laid. I had to be satisfied with this eternal truth for the moment. But s.e.x with Lindsey made me lose focus, made me forget, made me fall in love with her again, ensured that I might withdraw my emotional siege machines.

Steps on broken pavement.