“I won’t be gone long, Dave. Just a week.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll just be writing. Everybody can sleep better knowing they got the ice-pick killer. If they got him.”
She raised an eyebrow.
I said, “I could see Patrick Blair using a Taser on the poor guy’s nuts to get a confession.”
Lindsey just looked at me. Then she withdrew her leg.
Something had changed in the big room. I said, “I was making a joke.”
“Patrick is very professional and kind,” she said quietly. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“It was a joke, Lindsey,” I said, feeling my face flush. “I’m sorry I offended your friend. I’m glad he has you to defend him.” My voice had an edge to it. I could hear that.
“What is it about you and Patrick?”
Before I could answer, she added quickly, “I know you’re after some trip to the dark side. I don’t know why.”
I stammered, “I was just joking.”
“No you weren’t.”
The office air was filled with static electricity of things unsaid, unasked. A long time passed in silence. Then Lindsey touched my hand lightly and left. She didn’t slam the door.
19
The next night was a Friday. The sunset took over the entire sky, starting with a subtle pink in the east, then turning to ever more lurid oranges and crimsons in the west. The colors spread out across ripples of high thin clouds that seemed drawn by gravity into chasing the end of the day. If you haven’t seen it, you wouldn’t believe it. I didn’t get the best view, driving northeast to Carefree. By the time I reached my destination, all that remained was a pencil-line of flame across the horizon and the beginning of the long deep indigo desert twilight. I hadn’t intended to be there, but I had no place else to be. I had taken Lindsey to Sky Harbor that afternoon for her flight to Washington. Unlike me, she wasn’t afraid of flying. So until I got the call that said she had reached the hotel in D.C., I would be at loose ends. From the airport, I went back to the courthouse. The phone was ringing when I unlocked the door.
“David. I need to see you. Can I see you tonight?”
I recognized Dana’s voice without prompting.
“I don’t keep office hours on Friday nights. Or don’t you remember that from college?” She wasn’t to blame for my mood, but hearing from her wasn’t helping.
“David, please…” I could almost see her watery eyes tearing up.
“I’ll be happy to give you the name and number of a detective who can handle this case,” I said. “It’s not good for my career for us to be seen together.”
“But I have the proof you asked for. I have proof of the blackmail.”
I just let dead air fill the phone. Somebody was pounding on the floor above, where the old jail was located before it was closed in the 1960s. I could claim a ghostly visitor and just hang up.
“I have more for you. Maybe my information can help you find who really killed Louis Bell,” she said.
“So tell me. I’m listening.”
“I can’t say this over the phone.”
“So tell a detective.”
“No.” Her voice was lower, harder. “I need to see you, damn it. Don’t you give a damn about that kid taking the fall for murdering Louis Bell? You know he didn’t do it.”
I stared at the ceiling, toward the old jail, then acquiesced. She gave me the name of a shop at El Pedregal, a fancy shopping center that’s attached
to the Boulders Resort. She didn’t want anyone to recognize her, she said. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. I was dreading trying to explain to Peralta why I was making contact again with Dana Earley. But I was more than curious. If it hadn’t been for Dana’s lie, I would never have known Louis Bell. His murder would have been one more macabre Phoenix cop tale, even though it echoed close to home, in the similar killing of my neighbor, Alan Cordesman. With Dana, the coincidences became too much. She had launched me into something that was still playing out.
El Pedregal looks like a cross between an adobe Anasazi village and a Cold War blast shelter. But there was nothing to complain about with the natural surroundings: buttes made of gigantic boulders, each unique in its construction and the image it might concoct in the eye of an imaginative viewer. I had first seen all this before it was part of one of the priciest resorts in town, before the dry sun-bleached boulders were spectators on the edge of an emerald golf course. This night, there was not much to see beyond the black silhouettes of the buttes and the Carefree Mountains. The parking lot was mostly empty. As I walked toward the shops, most looked closed.