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He must have been hiding in the oleander to the east of the carport, because I never saw him. I only felt it when he hit me hard on the back of the neck. My knees just gave out and I instantly wanted to throw up. I didn’t even think of fighting back. For what seemed like several minutes, I couldn’t even feel my arms and legs.
“I could kill you right here, hero,” he hissed in my ear, and I felt a gun barrel, surprisingly cold, considering the hot night, press against the side of my face. I was beyond coherent thoughts. I was scared as hell. “Some fucking cop you are.” He had very bad breath. “You’re in way over your head.” A sharp kick in my side. “The message is: ‘Back away.’ Back away. Get the message, or I can find you again.”
That was all I heard before I passed out.
Chapter Seven
The first time I ate a plate of Sharon Peralta’s trademark chicken enchiladas was fifteen years ago. I had worked my last shift as a deputy sheriff; I was a freshly minted Ph.D. in history, with a new job at a midwestern college; I was anticipating living away from hot, dry Phoenix for the first time in my life, and I ate way too much. Now, Friday night, I was still hurting from the ignominious ass-kicking of two nights before, and our conversation about life, work, and Phoenix was nonstop. But I still managed to polish off four of those wonderful enchiladas. I helped clear the table while Sharon and Mike fussed; then Mike steered me into the study for cigars and cognac.
The Peraltas had an airy new house in far north Phoenix, situated just below some of the low, bare mountains that once sat nameless and secluded well outside the city limits. While most of the house reflected Sharon’s careful touch, the study was cluttered with western furniture, a couple of knockoff Remington sculptures, three walls of books, more photos and awards, and a very large oak gun cabinet. This was Mike’s room. He went to his humidor, extracted two large dark brown cigars, and gave me one.
“Anniversario Padron,” he said, cutting it for me. “Make sure you light it evenly. Let the smoke waft across your palate.”
Sharon, wearing blue jeans and a white cotton short-sleeved blouse, her long black hair pulled over one shoulder, sat opposite us with a glass of white wine. “If I haven’t left him over this cigar habit, I guess we’re together for life,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“You know you love this, honey,” Mike Peralta said, puffing and rolling the cigar as he lit it.
“I think it has interesting Freudian undertones,” she said, sniffing.
Mike and Sharon had been childhood sweethearts. By the time I met Mike, they had been married nearly five years. Now they had two grown kids and managed to make a good life for themselves. God knows, it couldn’t have been easy living with Mike, and I knew they came close to breaking up while Mike and I were partners years ago-but somehow they had made it.
If Mike had barely changed, Sharon had become nearly unrecognizable from the person I knew fifteen years ago. Then, she was a pudgy, shy social worker who was fighting her husband about continuing her schooling. I guess she won, because she went on to get her doctorate in psychology, go into private practice, write a popular book on eating disorders, and, for the past two years, host a radio psychologist show on a local station. Dr. Sharon was a minor celebrity now, poised, polished, and aerobicized. Another thing that struck me was how Sharon had a calming influence on Mike. His coiled anger seemed subdued that night, his mood almost playful.
I sat back on the brown leather sofa, dragged on the cigar, and felt peaceful. My ribs still hurt like hell, though. I hadn’t told Peralta about the encounter in the carport. I couldn’t say exactly why. I guess I felt stupid for being so careless. Not only was Peralta a kind of big-brother figure to me, but he was my old self-defense instructor. I couldn’t bear to admit to him that I had been on the losing end of a fight.
I’d come to in the carport maybe half an hour after I’d passed out, with a big tomcat licking my face and purring at me. I was covered in sweat and my head felt like I had been through a week-long binge of drinking bad whiskey. I pulled myself into the house, locked up behind me, and thought about what had happened and why. I wasn’t as scared as I was surprised, and then angry, and then embarrassed. Working the streets for four years as a patrol deputy, I had seen plenty of violent situations, especially the family fights where the cops are target number one, and I had learned to take care of myself. But it was clear that years of the soft, safe life of academia had settled into me far more than I wanted to admit.
As to the why: I didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t imagine my work on the Stokes case mattering to anyone. I doubted it was some Marxist historian trying to settle an intellectual score with me; they had gotten me kicked off the faculty already. So it had to involve Phaedra. I hadn’t been prepared to draw a conclusion Wednesday night, and I still wasn’t. I’d called Julie Riding the next morning to see if she was okay, but she was distracted with work and we didn’t talk long. I didn’t tell her about the attack, either.
“So when are you going to bring me Stokes, signed, sealed, and delivered?” Peralta asked.
“Soon,” I said. “Tell me why you tossed this case my way?”
“No,” Sharon interjected. “No more work talk. I am sick to death of work talk.”
“You do shrink talk,” Peralta protested through a plume of cigar smoke.
“Not tonight, my love,” she said. “We’re going to talk about David.”
I shifted uncomfortably and nursed the cognac.
“Mike tells me Julie Riding has come back into your life,” Sharon said. I nodded and told her about the search for Phaedra.
“What’s Julie like now? What’s she doing?”
“Everybody changes,” I said. “She’s not the same woman I knew twenty years ago.”
“I bet she’s gotten old and ugly,” Peralta said.
“You are so low,” Sharon said, then turned back to me. “I don’t know if I should say this. I never thought Julie was right for you, David. Too immature, too insecure. You two were so different. You gave a lot more than you got.”
“That was a long time ago, Sharon. I have no illusions about Julie. I just told her I’d help her find her little sister, Phaedra.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Sharon said.
“Ahhh.” Mike puffed. “She’s just run off with some boyfriend, or to get a tattoo or some Doc Martens, or whatever the hell it is they do now. Probably has a ring in her nose.”
“Not from the pictures I saw,” I said.
