High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  He slid a paper toward me. It was from the Department of Corrections and showed a woman with stringy long hair and cellblock eyes.

  “Fourteen years ago, her boyfriend beat her little girl to death. She helped him bury the body in the desert. Shallow grave. She called the police and told them her daughter had been taken by a Mexican man. This was while you were away, but it was a big deal in the media. Peralta interrogated her personally, played it perfectly, got her to confess and testify against the boyfriend. He went away for life and she was sentenced to fifteen years as an accessory.”

  I held up my palms: so what?

  “Look at the sheet again.”

  I scanned it. The woman’s name was Amy Sue Morris. But she didn’t look anything like the woman who had shot Lindsey.

  “Women can redo their hair,” he said. “Here are the two salient facts. First, in the sentencing, she went nuts. Peralta was in the courtroom and she threatened to kill him and his family. Second, she was released a week before Christmas from the Perryville prison.”

  “Eric, it’s not the same woman. The one who nearly killed Lindsey is after the diamonds. She wore Chanel Number Five. How many released prisoners do that? I smelled Chanel Number Five in Pennington’s office. She had been there.”

  “You’re a perfume expert?”

  He was almost making me start to doubt myself. But the woman I had tangled with had moves they don’t train you for in prison.

  Pham cut me off. “I don’t want to get distracted here. The asset told me that the phone rang while you were in Pennington’s office, you answered it claiming to be Pennington. The man expects you to call him.”

  I nodded.

  “What did he sound like?”

  “No accent. Baritone. No background noise. When I asked about Peralta, he said that he was ‘a different problem,’ that it was better for me not to know. Also, he told me that Mann’s window is closing.”

  Pham stiffened. “He named Horace Mann?”

  I nodded and he wrote it down on a legal pad.

  “What about Pamela Grayson? Did that name come up?”

  I shook my head. “But he also knew about the hitwoman. He named her. Amy Morris. That’s the same name that Phoenix PD identified when they raided a place up by the Biltmore this morning. She’s been wounded but she was gone.”

  “Wounded?” Pham raised an eyebrow.

  “I shot her last night but she was wearing body armor. I followed her to the house. If she doesn’t have anything to do with the diamonds, why did Horace Mann show up there this morning?”

  “Because you called it in.”

  “But…”

  “You’re creating a feedback loop to bring everything back to the person who shot your wife. It’s understandable. You’re emotionally involved. You’re also blinded by it.” He tapped the corrections report. “That’s your female. Give that to Phoenix PD.”

  “I know what I know.” Still, I forced my breathing to slow down and took a careful, objective look. It wasn’t her. The eyes, mouth, and cheekbones were all wrong, even if she could have changed her hair so radically.

  I said, “Why are you so goddamned uncurious about this woman?”

  He was unruffled, his voice the schoolmaster dealing with an unruly and not-so-bright pupil. “Do you have any idea how serious it is for evidence to be stolen from a secure Federal Bureau of Investigation facility?”

  “I know it’s embarrassing.”

  Now he did a little stretch with his head and neck, a man struggling with his temper. I was half a second from being thrown out of his sanctum and pushed away from the case.

  He said, “This is very real, Doctor Mapstone. Someone with the clearance to smuggle out that evidence might be greedy. Or she could have the means to penetrate other highly secure Bureau operations. This is a national security matter.”

  I tried nodding with great seriousness. Then, “Where did these diamonds originate? Before they were in your evidence room?”

  He squared his shoulders. “It’s not a ‘room,’ and I can’t disclose the origin of the evidence. Retrieving the diamonds and arresting the rogue agent is Washington’s top priority, right from the director.”

  “And Peralta’s safety?”

  “He volunteered,” Pham said. “I have confidence he can take care of himself.”

  “Even though you don’t know where he is?”

  “You talked to him.” The schoolmaster’s tone again. “He sounded like a man in control of the situation.”

  God, I hated the feds, most of them anyway. Peralta could conceal his troubles better than anyone I ever knew. The only thing I learned from calling him was that he was still alive.

  Pham said, “I know you have many questions.”

  That was an understatement.

  “I’ll tell you what I can. The Bureau owes you as the one who wrapped up the only unsolved murder of an FBI agent in history.” His eyes bore in. “But goodwill only goes so far, and I need you to make that call. Are you on the team?”

  I pressed my jaw together and nodded. “I do have a few things to clear up.” Best to start with a relative softball. “Why were you fired as the SAC, at least that was the cover story? Seems to me it might telegraph to your suspect that the Bureau was waiting for him.”

  “We thought about that but decided the suspect wanted her diamonds so much she wouldn’t be thinking that way. She would likely know we were tracking the gems and knew they were coming here. She’d find a way to create a distraction and get them.”

  “Pamela Grayson.”

  Pham tapped on a six-inch set of files. No paperless office at Johnnie’s “We’re talking about a senior person with plenty of access to evidence and intel. She fits perfectly. Look, if we had played it straight, we might have gotten the Russians. But there’s a very good chance we wouldn’t have caught the rogue agent or anyone else she was working with. This could be a conspiracy within the FBI.”

  “‘Anyone else.’ The question mark on the white board.”

  “Exactly. Removing me as SAC sent a powerful message through the Bureau. I was to blame for the failed operation. The suspect would let down her guard. We’ve got her phones and computers under surveillance.”

  “But Horace Mann fits this profile, too,” I said. “He fits it better.”

  Pham shrugged. “The asset told me you believe this.”

  “So did the guy who called Pennington’s office.” I studied Pham’s face and decided not to push it. “So let’s say I’m wrong. Mann is totally legit. Why is he leaving me alone? I haven’t seen him since Friday night in the High Country.”

  “He doesn’t take you seriously,” Pham said. “Don’t be offended. You’re a former history professor who worked for the local Sheriff’s Office. He’s done enough checking to believe you didn’t know about the robbery in advance and Peralta won’t be contacting you. Your phones might be tapped but that’s it. He’s only got so many agents to stake out locations and follow people.”

  Once again I was grateful Lindsey had turned my iPhone into an impenetrable dark device. No reason for Eric Pham to know this.

  I tried something tougher. “So how was the operation supposed to go down?”

  He hesitated and drew a deep breath. “All right, Doctor Mapstone. But this is confidential FBI information. Do you understand?”

  “Sure.”

  He swung his computer screen so we could both see it and tapped on the keyboard. A color video appeared.

  “This is Terminal Four at Sky Harbor on Friday morning. As you can see, Peralta and the other guard approach this man.” He pointed to a nondescript middle-aged Anglo in a cheap suit. “That’s the jeweler. He’s passed through security to the main terminal. Peralta signs for the shipment and takes the rolling suitcase. It has the diamonds inside.”

  More tapping a
nd black-and-white images came up. “This is from the service hallway at the mall.”

  Here was something I had already seen. A mall security guard lets in Peralta and Cartwright. There’s a conversation and the mall guard walks ahead several paces and disappears around the corner. Then Peralta pushes Ed back and draws his weapon. He fires and Ed goes down. Peralta walks quickly toward the camera, pulling the suitcase, and going back the way he came.

  I said, “So far, so good?”

  “All according to plan.”

  Another view appeared on the screen, this time in color. Peralta was walking fast, carrying the suitcase now. He opened the door to his pickup, tossed the bag inside, backed up, and drove toward the street. It is a huge parking lot. Almost every space was taken. Two, no, three shoppers walked by as he cruised past.

  “Here.”

  Pham froze the screen. Peralta had stopped at the outermost bank of parking. The truck was beside an old Toyota. The one belonging to Catalina Ramos.

  The action moved forward slowly. As I had suspected, Peralta used a Slim Jim to open the driver’s side, from which he could pop the trunk. He dumped the suitcase inside, closed the trunk, and drove away.

  “This is where things went sideways?” I asked.

  “No,” Pham said. “We planned for him to do this so the GPS tracker in the suitcase would be useless.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If you think Grayson is the bad guy, why not let her follow the tracker? She’d have access to that technology.”

  “It would be too easy.” Pham’s hand was tightly gripping the computer mouse. “Grayson might suspect something.”

  As he talked, I thought about Horace Mann. He would be even more bulletproof. If he recovered the diamonds aboveboard, he’d be a hero. Even if the rough were in the hidden compartment, there would be no probable cause to arrest him. Quite the opposite. If he found the suitcase alone, he would have time to take the rough unobserved. But Peralta beat him to it.

  He continued to talk about Grayson. “She needed to see that Peralta had found the hidden rough and taken it. That would rattle her. So we planned for Peralta to dump the suitcase.”

  “It’s a hell of a gamble when Chandler Police was converging on the mall.”

  “Peralta is a cool cat.”

  He was that.

  Pham continued the footage as the truck rolled out on Chandler Boulevard, pulled to the curb as two police cruisers raced past with lights going—there was no sound on the video. A quick left turn and he was on the 101 freeway traveling north in moderate traffic.

  I asked, “Where did you get this?”

  “A drone.”

  The video continued to follow him as he drove north, taking the interchange to the Superstition Freeway and popping out of the concrete spaghetti going west. Another four miles and he hit wide Interstate 10. The immediate direction was north into Tempe, then it would veer west into Phoenix.

  Pham said, “The city cops don’t even have a description or tag of the truck by this point.” He seemed very proud of himself and his plan.

  Next, something odd happened. Before the interstate curved west, Peralta got off on Broadway and drove north into mundane, low-rise office buildings and warehouses. No, he was going to Rio Salado College, one of the branches of the huge community college system. It was also where KJZZ, the NPR station, had its studios. The drone hovered and zoomed in on the truck entering the parking garage.

  “By this time, we calculated that the scene would start to be sorted out. The asset was not going to talk. He was wounded, after all. He played even more disoriented. But the cops would eventually know Peralta was the other guard. So this seemed like a good place for him to change his license tag.”

  He fast-forwarded to the truck leaving and returning to the freeway.

  “Wait,” I said. “How much time elapsed?”

  He pointed to a small digital readout on the corner of the screen. “Twenty-one minutes.”

  I said, “That’s a damned long time for a gear-head like Peralta to change one tag.”

  He let the question pass.

  “So you want to know what went wrong,” Pham said. “Peralta had a tracker in his boot. It never activated. The next sign we have of him is in Ash Fork. He was never supposed to go to the High Country. He was supposed to dump the truck and hole up in a motel room with us watching him.”

  “And?”

  “The Russians. Peralta would wait three days and contact the people who engaged our asset as diamond guard. Offer to sell the diamonds back to them. We have all their phones and computers monitored. So either they would call the person from the Bureau who was their partner or she would call them. By that time, she’d have seen the news coverage. She’d know the diamonds she worked so hard to steal and get this far were gone. When Peralta set up the meet, we’d get them all.”

  “Did Peralta know the names of the suspected agents?”

  Pham shook his head.

  “So if he heard Horace Mann briefing the press on his truck radio, that name wouldn’t mean anything? It wouldn’t cause him to change course?”

  “No. Why would it? Horace Mann is not a suspect, Doctor Mapstone.”

  “Then why are you here? Does Mann know you’re running this?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “This is about redundancy,” he said. “About compartmentalization. Washington insisted on this. It says nothing about Horace Mann’s competence.”

  The Russian had spoken of compartmentalization, too. What could go wrong? I could imagine two sets of FBI agents getting into a gunfight.

  I wasn’t reassured about Mann, either. One reason why Peralta had left the first business card, the one saying I had nothing to do with the diamond robbery, might have been an attempt to protect me from suspicion. On the other hand, why would the FBI believe the writings of a wanted man? Maybe that first card was meant for me, to telegraph that all was not well with this very complicated operation.

  I said, “What about Matt Pennington?”

  “That came from Peralta via you,” he said.

  “He wasn’t in the mix? He’s on the white board.”

  “Only because of Peralta’s note to you, which you informed our asset about. As you know, when Pennington was in the Navy he worked with Mexican authorities on drug interdiction. I’m trying to find out what happened with Pennington in Mexico. It’s a DEA matter and they’re not being forthcoming.”

  I suspected that I would never find out. Pham had been as forthcoming as he would be and only because he wanted something only I could do.

  I leaned in again. “So show me more of the drone footage.”

  He looked down and spoke quietly. “I can’t. The drone couldn’t pass over Sky Harbor airspace. We lost him. Now it’s time for you to make that phone call.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Afterwards, I stood on the sidewalk by Thomas Road watching the traffic roll by, counting the number of giant pickup trucks that looked exactly like what Peralta drove.

  My mind was fried and then sent back to the kitchen to be scrambled.

  Lindsey was only a couple of hundred strides from where I stood, but every time I left the hospital I felt as if I was committing a small act of betrayal. Yes, there was nothing I could do to help her. Yes, I had promised Sharon I would find her husband, promised Ed Cartwright I would find his friend. It still felt lousy.

  If Strawberry Death wanted to get me at that moment, all she needed to do was be behind the wheel of one of the trucks or SUVs traveling at fifty on Thomas and conquer the curb on the way to splattering me like a bug on the grille.

  Pham would dismiss it as another 962 involving a pedestrian, radio code for accident with injuries. Or 963, accident with fatality. Such tragedies happened daily here, where the civic layout had become wide highways called city streets c
onnecting real-estate enterprises. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  I had spent my day at the extremes of the city, the mansion in Arcadia and the shabby former hot-dog place. Sure, it got worse. There were shanties in south Phoenix with dirt floors and homeless camps by the river bottom. There were thirty thousand-square-foot mansions on the sides of mountains. Neither extreme talked to the other.

  Walking back into the hospital, I felt the anger in my steps. Why was Pham not buying my theory of the hitwoman? In fact, he had gone to the trouble of having his minions find a parolee that debunked my version. But the woman on the corrections sheet wasn’t Strawberry Death. One only learned her moves thanks to professional training and constant practice, and never being caught. She operated in the shadows.

  He also didn’t believe me about Horace Mann. I knew what I heard. I knew Mann was dirty.

  Pham’s inattention stank: the hubris of a boss who had his mind made up, a massive amount of FBI ass-covering.

  Another possibility chilled me. What if Pham was perfectly acquainted with her because Amy Morris was a government agent? She didn’t even have to be FBI. We had so many agencies guarding the so-called homeland now.

  Like Cartwright, Pham had dismissed me but in his case with an odd mix of formality and fake-casual management jargon. “So don’t come back to this location, Doctor Mapstone. Don’t try to contact me. You don’t have the bandwidth to help in this space. So stay away.”

  Stay away, my ass.

  I retrieved my briefcase from the ICU nurses and went to the waiting room. I should have written up my interview with Diane Whitehouse to add to the murder book. As far as Eric Pham was concerned, I was done.

  The phone call back had seemed to go well but the technicians weren’t able to get a fix on the man’s location. We agreed to meet at six tonight by the fountain in Scottsdale Fashion Square. Except I wouldn’t be there. I described one of Pham’s FBI agents as me, as Matt Pennington.

  But I wasn’t done.

  I thought about the white board at Johnnie’s, the boxes drawn in blue marker and labeled PERALTA, RUSSIANS, SUSPECT AGENT, PENNINGTON, OTHER?