Camelback Falls

by Jon Talton

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she had said. Quietly: “We wouldn’t have to move. Unless you wanted to live in San Francisco. Maybe go back to teaching and writing. Be safe.”

  That’s where we had left it. When the last precious drops of single malt were gone from the glass, I walked three blocks to the red brick warehouse that held Beth Proudfoot’s gallery.

  I was mortally afraid of falling on ice. It’s not like you got ice balance growing up in Arizona, and I never gained it in the years I lived in cold places. I had already had two near spills, which were almost worse than just going ahead and falling on my ass. So I walked down Blake Street like a little old man, listening like a Minnesota ice fisherman to the ground crunching under my shoes. The giving texture of the snow made a welcome echo. The hard surface of ice was a single note snap that made me wary. My slow pace made it easy for me to gaze into the broad, clean windows of the bright gallery and see the stocky man standing just outside.

  He was all arm muscles and thick neck, warmed only by a light black windbreaker. He had a low center of gravity, but stood lightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking at nothing in particular. Beyond him, the gallery was deserted. A purple neon sign glowed in the window in signature script: “Beth Proudfoot.” I felt my abdomen tighten.

  “It’s closed,” he said in a slow, heavy voice.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He stared at me, surprised to be asked a question. His eyes were hazel concrete.

  “Closed,” he said, more quietly. “Move on.” Then he held out a meaty hand toward my chest, almost, but not quite, touching me.

  Quicker than he could react, I stepped forward, brought my arms across his forearm and knelt down. It was a neat move I learned years ago in the academy. He grunted and fell to the pavement.

  “You can answer my question, or I’ll break your arm,” I snarled, forcing back all the fears and scruples that civilized living breeds in us. I leaned hard toward the pavement, forcing his arm, and he yelped.

  “Who the fuck are you?!” he gasped.

  “Wrong answer,” I said, and pushed again. I felt his radius start to stretch in a direction it wasn’t intended to go.

  “Owwwww, shit!” he yelled. “OK, OK, we’re here to talk to the bitch. We’re on business!” He added, “I’m a cop.”

  “Bullshit.” I reapplied the pressure.

  “Ahhh! OK, shit, I’m a bounty hunter. I’m licensed. It’s a job, OK? We’re after a bail-jumper.”

  The “we” stuck in my head like a sudden jolt of electricity. I stood quickly and kicked the guy in the stomach, hard. I pulled the Python and jammed it into his nose until blood came out.

  “Listen asshole,” I said, “You come inside and I’ll just kill you. I won’t ask a question or give a warning. I’ll just blow your ass into eternity. Got it?” He nodded intensely and wheezed, but I knew I had only bought a few seconds.

  I jerked open the door; the bell tinkled merrily. I crossed the hardwood floor quickly, heading to the back room. I could hear a woman whimpering, and then the sharp sound of a hand against flesh.

  “You’d better give it up, bitch!” a man’s voice commanded. Then there was another slap. But that infernal bell had given me away, and before I could reach the archway to the back room, it was filled with bad guy.

  “Stop or I’ll kill you,” I commanded, leveling the Python at his chest. I added the nicety: “Maricopa County Sheriff.”

  He paused long enough to glower at me with hate. It was the driver from the parking garage. But outside the car, he was huge. Linebacker huge.

  “Get on your knees,” I said. “Do it!”

  He started down slowly. I didn’t see a gun on him, but I swear I would have shot him and taken my chances with a review board. He was big enough to kill me with his bare hands. I would have done him. But I caught his eyes sneaking a look over my shoulder, and then I heard the festive tinkle of the bell. I tried to use my peripheral vision and step sideways to counter whatever was coming in the door behind me. That was just the millisecond of distraction he needed to rush me.

  In an instant, this human tank was coming for me, yelling like a banshee. It scrambled the circuits in an out-of-shape brain that had spent too many years in comfortable classrooms and bedrooms and drinking establishments, in the luxurious embrace of books and fine dinners and Lindsey Faith Adams. It was not even a second, but it was enough.

  A horrific force slammed against my chest—I swear I could hear my ribs crack—and then I was airborne. The tasteful black cylinders of the display lights flew past my eyes, and then I was cruising sideways headed toward a trifold portable wall. Several brightly framed canvases came up to meet my face. I hit hard, pain shooting out of the top of my head. When I hit the floor, it felt like carpenter’s nails had been driven into my spine. Then the heavy man-shape in the air above me crashed down.

  There was a time fugue where a round black fog started closing down my field of vision and I wasn’t there. But one word slammed through my traumatized brain and woke me: gun.

  The goon had both his huge hands on the Python, trying to rip it out of my hands. I pulled it toward me, my arms screaming from the strain. The barrel swung toward my nose and I nearly broke my wrist pointing it back out. That fine, ribbed Colt 4½-inch barrel I had paid a premium price for. The steel glinted in the lights. His hands were gigantic and powerful, slowly overwhelming me, but his fingers seemed like delicate little ghouls invading to dislodge my hold on the trigger.

  I wiggled like a madman and kneed him in the groin. He didn’t even grunt. He just kept up this rhythmic, weightlifter’s breathing. His breath smelled like a trash can in July. Suddenly other black arts of the street cop came back to me, and I pulled the gun hard toward me, then quickly pushed it back to him. The force of his grip snapped the heavy revolver back into his face. It crashed across the bridge of his nose, opening a wide, fleshy cut. He let up enough that I could crawl out from under him. He jerked up on his knees, looking like a rattler about to strike. Then I pistol-whipped him again across the jaw. He grunted and fell backwards.

  The guy from the doorway sprang at me, but he was slow. I stepped aside and he crashed into a black metal table. The two men crawled around on the floor like large, dangerous roaches. One shook his head violently and tried to stand. I backed away and stepped through into the back room. Beth looked at me with wild eyes.

  “Is there a way out the back?” I rasped. She nodded, and led us down a dark passage to the alley. Outside, I grabbed her wrist and we ran like hysterical refugees through the dirty, day-old snow.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Beth didn’t want to call the Denver cops. So we ended up back in the hotel room, where Lindsey procured ice. The right side of my face was swollen and felt like an overused pin cushion. My left hand had a nasty cut from some point in the fight. My left shoulder hurt like hell unless I kept it raised as if I were in a perpetual half-shrug. But I felt like I got off easy.

  Beth sat in a green upholstered chair, holding an ice pack to her eye. Her shirt had been ripped, and she had a small, deep strawberry-colored cut on one cheek. A crescent bruise was working its way down her perfect jawline. She was wearing black leather pants, and sat with her legs drawn up to her chest. She sobbed quietly.

  “We’ve got to talk, Beth,” I coaxed.

  “They showed me badges, just like you guys,” she whispered. “They said they were going to kill me.”

  “Did they say why?”

  She shook her head and hunkered deeper in the chair. Speaking slowly, she told us how the two men had come in a half hour before I arrived, then waited for her last patrons to leave. When they were alone, the big one shoved her into the back room and started slapping her.

  “What did they say they wanted?”

  “I don’t want to talk now,” she said. “I want to go home.”

  “OK,” I said, nursing my own pain. “They may be waiting for you
at home.”

  She looked at me as if I had slapped her. I suggested, “It’s time to call the police.”

  “No,” she said, too loud. Lindsey glanced at me. Beth stared at the floor and said, “They wanted Leo. They wanted me to tell them where he was.”

  “I thought you hadn’t talked to Leo,” I said.

  “You know I did.” She smiled unhappily. “We corresponded by e-mail. It was censored by the prison, of course. He was coming up for parole, finally. He was actually hopeful that this time he might make it.”

  “When did you last hear from him?” I asked.

  There was a commotion in the hall and my stomach knotted up, sending a sharp pain into my ribs. Lindsey sprang up, drew her Glock, and moved lightly to the door, which was already bolted. She just shook her head. The noise died down. I asked Beth the question again.

  “I got the last message from him just before Christmas.”

  “Did you have any sense he was planning an escape?”

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently, tossing her fair hair, pushing it back with an agitated hand.

  “Why would he escape if he thought he might get parole?” Lindsey asked, returning to sit on the bed.

  “I don’t know,” Beth said.

  “Really?” Lindsey asked.

  “Yes, really.” Beth stared daggers at Lindsey.

  “So what did you tell these tough guys when they wanted to know where Leo was?” I asked.

  “I told them I didn’t know,” she said, lightly touching a finger to the cut on her cheek. The motion made my face throb.

  “So Leo hasn’t contacted you since he escaped?”

  “No, damn it. He hasn’t. Why would he come to Denver if he was in Phoenix last week?”

  Lindsey and I kept poker faces. But Beth was quick, if dulled a bit by being beaten up. She realized instantly we hadn’t told her that Leo was seen in Phoenix. She muttered an obscenity and stared into her lap.

  “What do you want from me?” she demanded in a raw voice.

  “The truth would be a good starting point,” I said.

  She stared out into the room for a long time. Then, quietly, she said, “Tell me about you guys. I’m usually very intuitive about people, and you two definitely don’t look like cops.”

  I’d seen Peralta break down hard guys in the interrogation room. He could browbeat, threaten, manipulate, and sometimes be the most compassionate man in the city. But his interview skills always had a beginning, a middle, and an end designed to wear down the suspect. He never let the suspect take control, as Beth had just done. But I went along with it.

  “Lindsey works with computers.” I said. “I’m the acting sheriff.”

  “You’re the sheriff?” she asked, with enough incredulity to sting my ego. “How did that happen?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question,” I said quietly. “The real sheriff is badly wounded. I told you that yesterday. I guess the county brass figured I’d be the safest choice to fill in for a few days.”

  “You’re a cop?” she demanded.

  “Not really. I work on old cases. I’m a historian by training, and I used to teach. I kind of landed in this job three years ago.”

  “Unbelievable,” she said, but seemed pleased with this information.

  “So tell us what really happened,” I prodded.

  “They told me they’d kill me if I said a word!” She looked at me straight on, fear in her eyes.

  “Tonight?”

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently. “No, damn it. Twenty years ago…” She tried to slow her breathing. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  We just sat and watched her. The room smelled of winter heat. Beth wrapped her arms around her legs and talked in a slow voice. “That night in 1979, when the shooting happened. It wasn’t what you think. Billy and Troyce had a deal with those old cops. They stole twenty pounds of cocaine from the evidence room, and Billy and Troyce were going to break it down and sell it. They were going to split the profits.”

  My head felt heavy from the swelling around my eye, and from Beth’s words. I said, “Beth, these were decorated deputies, killed in the line of duty on a traffic stop.”

  “Yeah, right.” She laughed. “I was there, OK? I saw what happened.”

  Lindsey asked, “How did all this come about? How did Billy and Troyce know the deputies?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, too quickly. “They knew a lot of bad people.”

  “How did you get there?” Lindsey wanted to know.

  “They picked up Leo and me, to go riding,” she said. “We didn’t know what the hell was going on. And once we realized, it was too late to bail out. So we were just supposed to meet these cops in Guadalupe, take the stuff and go. That was it.”

  I said into the pause, “What went wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know for certain. We stayed in the car. But I could see Billy and Troyce start shouting. It got really heavy. Then Billy ran back and got this rifle, and started shooting. We ducked down in the back seat. I just knew we were dead.”

  She readjusted the ice on her jaw and went on. “Don’t you get it? The cops were dealing drugs. There was twenty pounds of cocaine in that cop’s car that night.”

  “But you said you were threatened about talking,” I said. “Who threatened you?”

  “After we were put in jail, this detective talked to me. He said if I ever talked about what I’d seen that night, they’d find me and kill me. He told me what I was supposed to say, and gave me a statement to sign. The statement said we’d been stopped for speeding, and Billy and Troyce opened fire on the cops for no reason. That’s not at all what happened.”

  “Did you tell your lawyers any of this?” Lindsey asked.

  “Are you nuts?” Beth said. “This guy said they’d kill me, and I believed him. I always hated having a rich father, but that time I let him rescue me, and I never talked about what happened.”

  I asked, “What did this detective look like?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, flustered. “A white guy. Average. Dark hair.”

  “What happened to the cocaine that night?”

  She sighed and stretched out her legs. “You got anything to drink?”

  There was a bottle of Glenlivet on the dresser. I rounded up three glasses and poured everybody two fingers. Beth bolted down the scotch in one slug. Then we sat in silence, listening for God knows what coming down the hallway. A soft murmur of downtown traffic penetrated the window.

  Finally, Beth said, “Another cop took the coke.”

  We didn’t say a word, so she went on. “He was big. Hispanic.”

  Every one of my aches throbbed deeper, but I just sat there and nursed the Glenlivet. I wished for the more expensive scotch I had enjoyed earlier in the evening, when my overly complicated life was a little less complicated than it had since become.

  “Why don’t you walk us through what you remember,” Lindsey suggested.

  “I was in the back of a squad car, handcuffed,” Beth said. “But I had a good view. This Hispanic cop walked to the trunk of the first cop car. The trunk was already open. And he took out the coke, and put it in his car.”

  “How do you know it was the cocaine?” Lindsey asked.

  “I saw it,” Beth said. “The old cops had pulled it out and showed it to Billy and Troyce before things turned bad. It was in this grocery bag. And after…well, this big Hispanic cop took it.”

  “Beth,” I said. “You’d just been through a shootout. You were afraid for your life. Are you sure you remember that correctly?”

  “That’s when your senses are at their peak,” she said. “Look”—she sighed—“the big cop took it, he and his partner, a tall Anglo. A younger guy. He was the son-of-a-bitch who threw me down in the dirt and handcuffed me.”

  I just stared into the golden liquid, wondering what her game was. She said, “Don’t you see why this could get me killed? And Leo? That deputy wa
s named Peralta. I saw his photo in the newspaper after I was arrested, and I never forgot that name. And I know he’s your sheriff now. So how the hell are you going to protect me, professor?”

  Lindsey glanced at me, but I had no grand plan to telegraph back. I said, “Will you testify about this?”

  “Are you nuts?” She laughed. “When those two gorillas showed up tonight, it was just like that detective had told me twenty years ago. If I talked, they’d find me and kill me.”

  “What about the FBI, the U.S. Attorney?” I said. “Nobody can touch you there.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  The phone rang. I reached over and picked it up, but it was just empty air. I set it back into the cradle. A flash of alarm registered in Lindsey’s dark blue eyes. I tried not to feel paranoid.

  The phone rang again, an efficient electronic trill. I watched it for a moment, let it ring three times and picked up.

  “Mapstone,” an unfamiliar voice said. A male voice. Wait, had I heard that voice last week on the phone in Peralta’s office? The voice said, “You’re all dead.”

  “We’ve got to go,” I said, dropping the receiver, tossing aside the ice pack and standing. Lindsey had read the situation and was already moving.

  “What?” Beth shouted. “What?”

  “There’s no time,” I said. “We’re in danger. We’re going to the Denver police.”

  “No!” she shouted, her voice jagged. “I have a business here. I can’t have this. Jesus, I have tried to get away from all this for twenty years!”

  Her face worked in agony. Her jaw tensed and eased, tensed and eased. She jumped up. “OK, I’ll go back to Phoenix. I’ll talk to your U.S. Attorney. Just talk.”

  There was no time. The phone’s insistent trill still seemed embedded in the walls. We grabbed coats, guns, and bags, checked the hallway, then carefully went down the fire stairs and out into the cold.