by Jon Talton
“You were in on it with him.”
She shook her head. “No. Not at first.” She stammered. “Well, not much. Friday morning, he told me he was going on a special case. He gave me a prepaid cell phone and told me to only use it if he called or texted me on it. He told me not to be home between ten a.m. and two p.m., to be near the Piestawa Parkway, and not to trust anyone but you. Then he was out the door.”
“But you didn’t think to tell me this until now?”
“He didn’t want you to know about this case. He thought you’d be safer if you didn’t.”
“And dumb.” I shook my head.
She said, “He called me on his new cell around noon Friday. Now I know it was a little after the robbery. Something had gone wrong. A woman had tried to take them while he was changing the tag on his truck. I met him in north Phoenix and he gave the diamonds to me.”
“Where are the diamonds right now?” I demanded.
“They’re beneath the spare tire in my car. In socks.”
My whole face throbbed. “What about when the FBI-executed the search warrant?”
“They were all over the house, but didn’t spend much time on my car.”
I tried to shake off the shock of the lie. I asked her what Peralta’s plan was.
“I don’t know. He said wait for his text. If everything was clear, he would call.”
I hemmed her in with my arms and called her a liar.
“I’m not! He said the less I knew, the better. And there wasn’t a lot of time. He wanted to get on the road.”
I asked if it were possible he meant for her to give the rough to Matt Pennington? She said she didn’t know, only that she was to follow his instructions. He was afraid the FBI might be able to pick up her prepaid cell if she used it more than once or twice.
When he thought things were safe, he would send her a text with the words, “ready for dry cleaning pickup?”
If someone else saw her phone, it would seem innocuous. If she were in trouble, she would respond “no.” If she were safe, she would text “yes,” and he would then call with fresh instructions for her. It was a more elaborate version of the asterisk signal between Lindsey and me. But his text had not yet come.
For me, pieces came together.
Not only had the original plan been blown when Peralta encountered Strawberry Death, he also began to doubt even Eric Pham or one of his agents. Peralta was careful that way, seeing possibilities five moves ahead. So he had gone to ground. His worry must have only increased when he didn’t hear from the real Pennington.
I pulled out my iPhone and read out the number I had called and Peralta had briefly answered.
I said, “Is that the number you have?”
She nodded. “He made me memorize it. It’s not even in the new phone.”
“I called that number and he acted as if he didn’t know me.”
“He hadn’t texted me and I hadn’t responded,” she said. “He probably thought you were under duress to make the call.” She thought about it and asked how I found his secret cell number.
I told her.
She dropped her head. “Oh, no. No!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Then you would have known I had the diamonds.”
“So all the way up to Ash Fork and back, we had them in the trunk.”
“Yes.”
“In Ash Fork, the old cowboy told me he got into a car with some men. What about that?”
She sighed. “He told me there was a man up there who would let him borrow a car and lie convincingly to the FBI about him getting in a car. He used to run a hunting lodge near Hell Canyon where Mike would go, back before I made him stop killing innocent animals. They remained friends.”
Orville Grainer. A patient of my grandfather, Doc Mapstone, my ass.
I slapped the wall in frustration, but my voice was resigned. “Oh, Sharon…”
“The landline was a lie, too. There is no landline. I made up the Paco stuff because he was adamant about you knowing there was real danger, after he was nearly ambushed in the garage.”
Who could lie better than a shrink?
“What about Saturday night, when somebody called you to the hospital” Was that Mike?”
“No,” she said. “I swear, David. That was a voice I didn’t recognize.”
She kept apologizing, tried to put her hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it away. I made no attempt to comfort her.
“So why the hell did you beg me to find him? What was that about?”
She shrugged. “I lost my nerve. He didn’t say anything about going to the High Country. I panicked.”
“But not enough to tell me the whole truth.”
She shook her head.
I said, “What happens if you text him the key word first, before you hear from him?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. He was afraid the whole plan is compromised. He made me promise to wait for his signal before I did anything, including involving you.”
I thought about that. This would be a good time for a sensible person to walk back over to Johnnie’s and knock on the back door. Peralta must be overreacting. Or contact Kate Vare, bring in the entire cavalry. There was Ed Cartwright, too.
But for various reasons none of those options felt right. Cartwright had said he needed to lay low. The local law would muscle me out of the way and wreck the mission, which was to bring down the person who stole the diamonds. Pham…He was trustworthy, right? After the past six days, I trusted fewer and fewer people. I recalled the agents inside the former hotdog place watching me. Pham might be penetrated and not even know it. Then there was Strawberry Death. She belonged to me.
So I told Sharon to text “DM is bringing the dry cleaning per the dictaphone.” That should make it clear enough.
I watched as she typed the words and pressed send.
In only a few seconds the text appeared. “Yes.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Bring the rough.”
“But I don’t even know where he is.”
“I have a good idea,” I said. “Give me your car keys.” After I pocketed them, I added, “Watch over Lindsey.”
“But what if someone follows you?”
“That’s the idea.”
As I walked away, she was leaning against the wall sobbing.
Chapter Forty
I took the long skywalk to the parking garage, pulled the black duffel bag of weapons out of the Honda Prelude, and found Sharon’s car. I resisted the temptation to open the trunk. Out of the corner of my eye was a black SUV. So I tossed the duffel into the passenger’s side and settled into the driver’s seat. The fine German engineering cradled my hindquarters and made me realize how old everything in the Prelude was, right down to the seats.
When I pulled onto Third Avenue going south, the SUV was right behind me. But I made it a point to put down the ragtop so it was obvious Sharon was not behind the wheel. Here was a test about whether Mann’s FBI watchers took me seriously. Sure enough, by the time I had gone five blocks, the SUV turned left. Somebody had given an order.
Somebody might have a tracking device on the car anyway.
At the house, I changed into black jeans, black turtleneck, and Timberland boots. I moved quickly. That was a very expensive car sitting in my driveway.
Back in the convertible, I adjusted my cell so its GPS was working. My dark device was now trackable. Then I put the top up and drove, crossing over to Third Street and taking the ramp down to the Papago Freeway, which ran though Midtown under a park. Crossing all the lanes of traffic, I made it to the Loop 202 exit and went straight east on the Red Mountain Freeway, past the north end of Tempe, Town Lake, Sun Devil Stadium, lots of shopping schlock, and getting off at Country Club
Drive in Mesa. I turned left, crossed the Salt River, and the road became the Beeline Highway.
The rain had scrubbed away the smog and the day was spectacular. Ahead of me towered Four Peaks and the Mazatzal Mountains. Ahead of me were the High Country and the town of Payson.
At the top of the hour, I listened to the radio news. Fresh developments on the Saturday night shooting of a deputy’s wife. The suspect was Amy Lisa Russell, a former Mountie. You could go on the station’s Web site to see her photo. Police were “tight-lipped” about a motive.
The motive that would satisfy a prosecutor was the stones.
Vare had invested hours in badgering the truth out of RCMP headquarters in Ottawa. Canada is a major producer of diamonds. While Amy Russell was chief of security at the Ekati mine, she compiled an impressive record of installing ever-better anti-theft technology and detaining employees who tried to sneak out little bits of rough.
It was only months after Russell resigned that mine officials realized that over a year between fifteen million and twenty million dollars in gem-quality rough had gone missing. The thefts happened a little at a time, but they added up impressively. Further investigation showed that the new security measures had proved essential to cloaking the drip-drip-drip heist. Only then was Russell seen as the obvious suspect and the RCMP was called in.
But she was missing, last known address in Vancouver.
I didn’t know how her stones ended up as FBI evidence. Or how Horace Mann figured in. Was he working with her and the Russians? Or Pamela Grayson really was Suspect Number One. Maybe Mann was innocent.
As to Amy Russell’s motive that would satisfy curious fellow humans…perhaps even she didn’t know. If I were a hot-shit Mountie, I wouldn’t throw away my career for diamonds. But then I hadn’t suffered through finding my family massacred. I didn’t feel this supernatural pull of the stones that locked onto so many, made them willing to steal, kill, take every risk. Changed them. And who the hell knows why anybody does anything?
The next few hours might tell.
My phone rang. Kate Vare.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Lindsey woke up,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said. “I want to interview her.”
“Tomorrow. She’s in a lot of pain. They only let me talk to her for a few minutes before she fell asleep. She didn’t remember the shooting. Where are you?”
“Pennington’s office. We got in the safe. He had fifteen million in cash, twenty million in euro bearer bonds, some diamonds.”
After a long pause, she added, “He had a list of numbers. I’m guessing they’re offshore bank accounts.”
“I bet you find one for an FBI agent named Pamela Grayson. Or Horace Mann.”
“That will require bringing in the FBI, but yes.” She sounded very happy.
Then I told her what I had learned about Pennington’s actual job.
She didn’t answer.
I said, “So contact your DEA friend. They’re not going to like losing their own.”
She gave a heavy sigh. “This is a hell of a mess.”
The desert lowlands fell away as I passed the abortion of Fountain Hills—I remembered when it was a lovely saguaro forest—then the rugged enchantment of Red Mountain and the Indian casino and the cottonwood-lined Verde River at Fort McDowell.
The car climbed effortlessly through millions of years of geology. Fantastic shapes appeared beside the highway. Cones and ribs, spires and mesas, crags that looked like human faces and nearly vertical walls. Steep climbs reached thresholds, followed by wide expanses and then more steep hills, ravines, and tight passages.
It was all here to see, the way time had pitted one element against the other to create our fleeting moment. Broken ground was cut by dry washes and arroyos. As I drove, precipitous cliffs and sharp drops and fold upon fold of rough mountains constantly remade the vista. Cactuses gave way to scrubby trees and grasslands fighting for their share of water. Overhead, the sky was enormous and deep blue.
I was lousy company on an Arizona road trip. Lindsey loved for us to drive around the state, armed with a detailed atlas and books on roadside history, geology, and Audubon guides. Yes, when it came to pleasure, she often liked physical books. But she was younger. I knew what was lost, what this country was like before six-and-a-half million people moved here. Fountain Hills was only one example. I became especially surly in Sedona, which I remembered as an empty place without a single traffic light. Alone, I was little better. The Beeline had been re-engineered into a divided-highway marvel. But that only allowed more people to profane the desert.
Around me was the Tonto Basin, land of many stories and much history. Zane Grey had written a novel of the same name. This had long been ranching country, once the whites had wrested it from the Apache. There were a few old mines, but they didn’t have the riches of the territory to the west, around Prescott and Jerome, so they quickly played out. It had also been a hiding place for outlaws and rough territory that a lawman entered at his peril.
The Tonto National Forest began a few miles back and, for now, kept out the developers. The Bush Highway connected. To the south was Punkin Center. As a boy, I had loved stopping at the little store there. It was like something out of a cowboy movie. Ahead, the former cavalry watering hole of Sunflower was gone in a few seconds
Up here, if you looked past the divided highway, it was still possible to catch glimpses of the majesty of the land, the lonely, sublime American West and Arizona High Country. Here were fleeting vistas—once they were so abundant—without a single thing made by humans.
When Theodore Roosevelt had come to the Grand Canyon more than a century before, he had said, “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.”
Now some grifters wanted to develop land right outside the Grand Canyon National Park boundary. How long before they privatized the park itself?
I had no time to dwell on the land or the past. The present demanded my entire attention.
Traffic was very light. A few hotdogs in big pickups blew past at ninety. If anyone was deliberately following me, he was very good.
Peralta had intended for me, and by extension, Lindsey, to have nothing to do with this operation. But, as Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Now I was at war.
If my hunches proved wrong, this war would be lost.
I thought about a book I had recently read on the Donner Party, trapped in the Sierra Nevada in 1846, reduced to cannibalism. The author had argued that many of the people made decisions that seemed rational at the time, until it was too late and winter caught them early. Then they had to forge on, no matter.
One of the sentences stayed with me: “The trap clicks behind.”
When did the trap click behind me? Somewhere on this highway? Or much, much earlier?
I touched the car window. It was cold. Now all I could do was forge on.
Chapter Forty-one
The highway made one last upward leap and I entered the forest and then Payson. When I was a boy, this had been a trifling place with maybe a thousand residents. I remembered log trucks rumbling by. The town, with its storied cowboys and saloons, had only recently been opened to the outside world, the highway being paved in 1959.
Now logging was long gone, the population was fifteen times larger, and Phoenicians used it to flee the bludgeon of the summer heat. This had not made it better.
The forest looked sickly. Climate change and the bark beetle were slowly killing it. To the north was the largest virgin stand of Ponderosa pines in the world. How many times I had gone camping there with the Boy Scouts and later as an adult. Now I wondered if it would still exist in a couple of generations.
Mammoth wildfires were common now, another difference fro
m when I was young. Land swaps in the National Forest had allowed subdivisions to be built in the pines. Almost every year, millions of dollars were spent to keep these tract houses from burning down.
A few years ago, the state’s worst fire up to that time erupted to the east. It began after a woman had a fight with her boss, or was he her boyfriend? She stalked off into the woods in shorts and flip-flops with only a towel, cigarettes, and a lighter. When she became lost, she used the lighter to set a signal fire, or so she said. By the time the fire was out, more than 730 square miles had been reduced to ashes.
The ground was also perfectly dry. January in the High Country used to mean snow. The mountain snowpack melted in the spring and filled the reservoirs for Phoenix’s water supply. But we were getting less snow, had been for several years. I could only lose friends in Arizona by starting a conversation about climate change. Even Peralta didn’t believe it was real.
Amid the grotesqueries, freak shows, and fears, however, the Mogollon Rim still kept watch.
Newcomers had to learn to pronounce it correctly, MUG-EE-on, like they learned Gila was HEE-la and the iconic cactus was a Sa-WAR-oh. Or they didn’t learn.
The escarpment dropped as much as four thousand feet straight down from the Colorado Plateau. From here, in the late afternoon light, the Kaibab limestone gleamed alabaster. Above it, clouds were moving in.
Seeing it again, inhaling the tart smell of the pines, reminded me of my Boy Scout days. Camp Geronimo was north of here, at the foot of the Rim. My troop, which met at the Luke-Greenway American Legion Post near downtown, went there every summer. After dinner by the campfire, the scoutmasters would tell us stories of the Mogollon Monster, Arizona’s version of Bigfoot. Then they would lead us on night hikes. Even with our flashlights, it was the blackest dark I had ever experienced.
All grown up now, I settled for an early dinner at Wendy’s and then pulled into a deserted section of the enormous lot of the Walmart Supercenter to consolidate my load. Far fewer people lived here through the winter.
Stepping out, I slid on my leather jacket. The temperature was at least thirty degrees cooler than in Phoenix. I used the key fob to pop the trunk of the Lexus. The inside was immaculate, but sure enough two white athletic socks sat in the spare tire compartment. I lifted them out with effort, holding the bottom to keep the contents from fraying the threads of the cuff ribbing. They were heavy as hell. Back in the car, I indulged in feeling though the fabric. The contents indeed felt rough. Then I unzipped the duffel and hefted them inside, careful not to let the contents scratch the guns.