David Mapstone Mystery: The Night Detectives Part 17

South of Old Town, the shopping strips became more downscale and behind them were ordinary tract houses built in the sixties. At Roosevelt, I crossed over into Tempe and the street changed names: Rural Road. It had once been rural. Now all the fields were long gone. The main Arizona State University campus loomed on the right, including the stadium where Larry Zisman had thrown his legendary pa.s.ses. Then the big new Biodesign Inst.i.tute. Who knew what they were working on?

By then, I was ready to chew my arm off from the traffic. The average Phoenician made this kind of drive or even longer every day. How did they stand it? The only place I felt comfortable was in the old city. This was my hometown, but it didn't feel like home any more. The j.a.panese Flower Gardens were gone. The miles of citrus groves were gone. Why did I stay here? I would miss my friends in the old neighborhood, the familiar diorama of mountains, the smell of citrus blossoms in the spring, not much else.

Larry Zisman lived at The Lakes, a series of subdivisions that took over the farm fields south of Baseline Road starting in the seventies. The tract houses were built around little lakes, hence its namesake. Tempe had made a fetish of artificial lakes, most notably Town Lake, contained within dams on the Salt River.

After some wandering along the curvilinear streets, I found Zisman's house. Unlike some of the houses in The Lakes, it lacked any old-growth shade trees. One pitiful little tree was planted on a small, square lawn. Beyond that stood a stucco house with one window, a door through an arch, and the mandatory large garage door and driveway. Above the garage was a second story.

The lights were off. Modest and relatively small, it seemed like an odd home for a one-time football star, but maybe he lost most of his money. Maybe he preferred it here, not far from his college glory days. I pulled directly in front, shut off my lights and engine, and checked in with Peralta. My stomach became a sea of acid. This was as risky as Paradise Valley. Everything about Lindsey's old Prelude screamed "Does Not Belong Here." Signs proclaimed a neighborhood watch. I didn't know how long I dared sit.

Not long.

The Tempe Police cruiser slid in behind me and a spotlight swung white light into the Prelude.

I put my hands on top of the steering wheel and tried to mentally untangle my internal organs. The officer or officers would be looking me over, typing my license plate in for wants and warrants, wondering if the driver was armed. That was my first problem. My second problem: if the person following with the GPS tracker had me in sight, he might misinterpret this interaction. He had ordered me on Sunday to bring no law enforcement. Now here I was, with law enforcement come to me.

"Turn on the overhead light please." A female voice. She was right behind me, in a proper protective stance. I flipped on the dome.

"David Mapstone!"

She came into sight and slid her flashlight into her equipment belt.

"Hey, Amy."

Amy Taylor had been a patrol deputy for the Sheriff's Office. I had worked with her on a number of occasions before she left for a better-paying job in Tempe. She looked the same, attractive and strawberry hair in a tight bun. I glanced over at the truck-stop phone sitting on the pa.s.senger seat, willing it to not ring at this moment.

"How's the Sheriff's Office?"

"It sucks."

"That's what I hear. What are you doing?" Her tone was friendly.

So I told her part of the truth. I was working with Peralta now as a private investigator. A young woman had fallen from Larry Zisman's condominium in San Diego, handcuffed and nude, and we have been engaged to find out whether it was a suicide or something more.

"Holy c.r.a.p!" She put her hands on her hips. "Zisman's married. You know he's a reserve officer in Phoenix?"

"I do. He also owned the handcuffs."

A burst came over her radio and she keyed her mic. I was being saved by a call: a burglar alarm a mile away.

She touched my shoulder. "Gotta roll, David. Call me sometime and we'll catch up. Good luck with Larry. Good guy in my view. Not so much his son."

"Yeah."

"I'm surprised the Army accepted him. Don't tell Larry I said that."

All my senses kicked to a higher gear. The Army. "Of course not. Stay safe, Amy."

In a few seconds she was back in the cruiser, where she executed a U-turn over the rounded curbs and zoomed back out toward the exit of the subdivision. I turned off the dome light and tried to breathe normally again.

28.

I drove back to the center city on surface streets, sick that Peralta's plan didn't seem to be working. My phone was charged and had plenty of time left. It wasn't ringing.

Through downtown Tempe on Mill Avenue, across the Salt River, Galvin Parkway took me through Papago Park, the two iconic b.u.t.tes backlit by the city, preserved desert all around. I thought about what Amy Taylor had said-not the "call me sometime" part, but about Zisman having a son. That was another new angle. Or it was Occam's Razor and Zisman was the john, even if he wasn't on the flash drive, and Grace had tried to blackmail him exactly as Detective Sanchez had said.

But did that explain why Tim Lewis had been tortured, every finger broken? Somebody thought he had information. Information to kill for. If it were simple blackmail, the problem would have been solved with Grace's supposed suicide. "Death solves all problems," said Joseph Stalin, who had yellow eyes. "No man, no problem." Well, no woman, but there was still a problem. Larry Zisman, former football player, could easily have subdued Grace and thrown her over the balcony. The torturing of Tim Lewis had taken a crew.

At McDowell, I turned left and entered the Phoenix city limits, then drove uphill between the b.u.t.tes and was greeted by the dense galaxy of lights stretching all the way to the horizon. Phoenix was beautiful at night. On the downhill drive, the iPhone rang.

"I think I've got your tail," Peralta said.

My pulse kicked up. "Do tell."

"A truck followed you though Tempe, made every turn, and then kept going as you went up Galvin through the park and turned on McDowell. He's probably a mile behind you. A black Dodge pickup. California plate. He's got a tag frame that says 'I love Rancho Bernardo,' with a heart thing instead of love, you know."

I did know. It was the truck that had pa.s.sed me the night I got out of the cab in Ocean Beach, the one I thought was simply looking for a parking s.p.a.ce.

"Let's box him in," I said. "Do a felony stop."

After a long pause, Peralta's voice came back on. "No."

"Why?"

"First," he said, "because we're not the cops anymore. Second, because when I hired you many years ago, I hired your whole toolbox, not just the hammer. Since a year ago, all I get is the hammer."

Now it was my turn to be silent. His words stung. His words were accurate.

"So what's the plan?" I asked, and he gave it to me.

"Stay on the phone," he said.

I drove back through downtown and went north on wide, fast-moving Seventh Avenue. Numbered avenues and drives run north and south west of Central; numbered streets and places run north and south east of Central. Now you know how to get around Phoenix. I a.s.sumed the pickup driver was learning this from our excursion.

At Northern, I turned west again and after about two miles reached the Black Canyon Freeway, which ran in a trench below grade level. A Motel 6 sat a few blocks up the southbound access road. Getting to it required turning north into the K-Mart parking lot, then pa.s.sing through the Super 8 parking lot, and finally reaching the Motel 6 parking lot. We didn't even need streets with so many seas of asphalt.

I parked away from the motel building and stepped out into the heat. I had a cell phone in each pocket as I walked the fifty feet to a room on the ground floor right in the middle of the ugly four-story box. It had none of the charm of the old motels that had once lined Grand and Van Buren with their Western themes and neon signs.

Three other cars were parked in the lot, all of them empty.

Precisely as Peralta had said, a key card was slipped into the edge of the door all the way down at ground level. I retrieved it, unsnapped the holster holding the Colt Python but, against my better judgment, left the gun there. I popped the card into the lock and stepped inside.

n.o.body shot me.

Turning on the light switch, I surveyed a cheap motel room looking like every other cheap motel room in America. It had been the scene of countless a.s.signations. Bring in an ultraviolet detector, and the pattered orange bedspread would have revealed an army of old s.e.m.e.n stains, dead in mid-slither.

I spoke into the headset. "Where's my tail?"

"He's backed off. But don't spend too much time there. I don't have a good feeling about this. Remember, he can track you on a computer. He doesn't have to see you."

I looked at the bed again. The spread looked ruffled, as if a couple had finished and moved on moments before I got there. I sat in a chair and waited for a call on the other cell. The device was a little Sphinx made in a foreign sweatshop.

Then I saw it, sitting on the low chest of drawers. It wasn't a Claymore mine, but somehow it stuck a spike of dread into my throat.

I studied the Zero Halliburton briefcase with its tough aluminum construction. Somewhere I had read this was the brand of case that a military aide carried at all times with the president. Inside was the "nuclear football" containing the launch codes to end the world. And this one looked that sinister.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?" My voice sounded strange alone in the room.

He knew what I was talking about without describing the flashy case that looked so out of place in the shabby room.

"Sharon bought it today. Open it up." He gave me a code. I dialed open the lock and unlatched it.

Inside were some men's clothes, legal pads and pens, and a shaving kit.

"Look in the socks," he said.

Sure enough, inside one of the rolled-up pairs of socks was a flash drive.

He was inviting them to steal it.

"Is this the real flash drive?"

"Of course not," he said. "But Lindsey encrypted it so it would take even a good techie hours to break in."

"But..."

"Mapstone, why don't you hang there for a few more minutes, then find a place to stash the case, and call me when you're back in the car." He hung up.

The motel room felt close and hot around me. I used the bathroom, checked to make sure the door was locked again, and searched for some artful spot to place the briefcase. The bed was on a solid wood frame, so that wouldn't work. The drawers would be too obvious: better to make them think I was trying to hide it. So I arranged it under the pillows and remade the bed with military neatness.

Back in the car, sweating and worried, I started to go out to the access road, but changed my mind.

Instead, I cruised north through the alley behind the motel, turned around, shut off the headlights, and slowly drove back the way I had come. I nosed out behind the building in time to see another car: a new white Chevy Impala coming around the front of the Super 8. There are thousands of lookalike Impalas. But this one looked exactly like the one that I saw on the security camera earlier in the day outside our office, right down to the Nevada tag.

Wishing the Prelude were not so d.a.m.ned white, I watched as the Impala sped up to the door I had left minutes before. If he noticed me, it didn't show. He was moving so fast, I thought he might ram through the wall. But, no, he slammed to a stop at the last second. If I had the brake-shop monopoly in Phoenix, I would be a rich man.

I dropped the emergency brake enough to slide another couple of feet beyond the edge of the building. The security lighting on the outside of the motel was impeccable. Back where I sat was relative darkness.

Out of the Impala stepped the high-and-tight haircut who had been searching the Prelude earlier in the day. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, carrying something in each hand. One something was a gun. He headed straight to the motel room door without even looking in my direction. If he were a soldier or a former soldier, it was poor situational awareness, but it worked in my favor.

I relayed all this to Peralta on the iPhone.

"He's also got some kind of a crowbar," I said. It was small and black, easy to conceal, and made quick work of the door. "He's inside. I'm going to take him."

Peralta might have had a very clever plan. But this was as close to the suspect as we were likely to get. I felt suddenly cool and comfortable, my breathing even.

Peralta barked at me. "No. This is not the guy who was tailing you. Don't go back to that room, Mapstone..."

"Too bad." I pressed the little red virtual b.u.t.ton on the gla.s.s screen that said, "end call," and tossed the earbuds onto the seat.

I mapped it out in my head: twenty quick strides to reach the door, keep the Python down against my leg so it wasn't obvious I was packing, pause, a.s.sess, and try to quietly ease the door open. No kicking it down. The crowbar had made that unnecessary. Then he and I could have a civil conversation about where the baby was. That is, unless he raised his firearm.

But with my hand on the Honda's door latch, I hesitated. What if the black Dodge Ram suddenly showed up?

High-and-tight almost immediately re-emerged, carrying the Halliburton briefcase. It gleamed in the light. So much for my clever job of hiding it. He quickly got into the Impala and drove toward the access road. I rolled after him, headlights off.

After the third ring, I activated the iPhone.

Peralta's voice came across: "don't follow him."

"Are you nuts? This is the guy who was casing our office."

"The plan is working, Mapstone. Let the plan work."

All I knew was that I had spent several hours I could never get back driving around Phoenix and had nothing to show for it. Still, I reluctantly swung around the other way, back north through the alley, and turned on my headlights.

As I came around the other side of the motel, two Phoenix Police cruisers were sitting driver's door to driver's door. They might have been talking shop or sports or flirting with each other. Or they were watching me. By this time, however, I was only another law-abiding citizen driving through the night.

The Impala driver was long gone.

I muttered profanities.

"Glad you didn't use the hammer, Mapstone?" I could feel the gloat carried across the cell towers. "Sharon left the briefcase when she rented the room. Earlier today she sewed a small tracking device into it. Two can play this game with electronics and ours are better."

I spoke low and slowly, in a rage. "So explain the next move to me, Sheriff."

"Come down to the Whataburger at Bethany Home. Go through the drive-thru. We're in the silver convertible. But don't come over to us."

I did as told, merging into the concrete river of lights that was the freeway and speeding south two miles. After taking the Bethany Home Road exit, I crossed over and made a quick jog up the northbound access road to the restaurant. The building was separated from the traffic by a faux desert berm with a couple of palo verde trees and some creosote bushes. And the drive through, which ran around it like a letter "C." The entrance was at the top of the "C," so I went that way, noticing Sharon's Infiniti parked in one of the s.p.a.ces to my left, across a gravel-covered berm.

The bad guys knew his pickup, thought they had it rigged with a tracker. In its place, he was driving a silver two-door convertible, starting price sixty grand.

"You're very inconspicuous in that ride," I told Peralta, "especially in this part of town."

"Check it out, Mapstone."

On the left, immediately in front of the restaurant, a black Dodge Ram was parked near the door. Sure enough, his frame hearted Rancho Bernardo. The windows were tinted dark and I couldn't tell if the engine was running.

Better to not linger: I pulled into the drive-thru, anxiously tapping the steering wheel and wondering about the truck's occupant. His partner had probably told him that he had broken into the motel room and taken the briefcase. Now, what would he think if he saw me pulling in? Maybe he was inside, but I doubted it-he would be tracking me from the cab of the truck.

I didn't understand why Peralta was taking the risk of having me drive here. I hoped he believed in coincidences.