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The first ti
me I ever saw Mike Peralta, he was teaching martial arts at the Sheriff’s Academy, and I was a twenty-year-old cadet. I wanted to save the world with a badge. But I also thought I was pretty damned smart, with my new B.A. degree in history. He took me down so hard, my head rang for two days. Soon after, he was the five-year veteran who broke me in as a rookie when we were patrolling the no-man’s-land between Scottsdale and Tempe. We worked apart for two years while he was trying out jail administration and I was getting my master’s degree. Then we partnered again in the east county as it became clear I was going to be a teacher, not a cop. Now here he was in the big office, the number-two guy in the department. I wish I could truthfully say I knew him.
He sighed, leaned back in his big chair, and really saw me for the first time. I was wearing a loose white cotton shirt and chinos-“goddamned J. Crew preppy shit,” Peralta had called it.
“Put on your ID card,” he ordered. “It’s policy. You may be ashamed of being here, but you’re a sworn deputy like every other swinging dick on Madison Street, and we all have to wear our ID cards.” I pulled it out and clipped it on my shirt. “Deputy Sheriff,” it said, and there I was in a picture, looking not too different from the way I did on my old faculty identification card, with one difference-my beard was gone. The picture would show you I have large, gentle brown eyes and wavy dark hair that women sometimes like, and roundish, undefined facial bones that they don’t.
The picture wouldn’t show you that I’m a little over six foot one-short in the NBA-and I have the broad shoulders and wide stride that helped me cool off tough guys when I was a cop.
“So what do you want?” Peralta demanded.
I told him about Phaedra Riding as he swung his chair back and forth in a slow arc. It was maddening if you didn’t know him, but it was just Peralta. “You pull the incident report?”
I slid it across the desk, and he studied it.
“Julie Riding,” he mumbled. “Where do I know that name? Hey, this is Julie, your Julie,” he said, brightening. “I mean she’s the complainant-it’s her sister. Jeez.”
“That’s what I thought when she showed up at my door last night.”
“I ran into her a couple of weeks ago, and she asked about you,” Peralta said. “She’s still a fox. I never understood how you lucked into that.”
“She left me, as I recall.”
Peralta grunted and went back to the report. I looked around his office; the walls always held some new award or photograph. Peralta with Goldwater. Peralta on horseback with the sheriff. Peralta in SWAT uniform during the killings at the Buddhist temple years before. Peralta in a tux with the business muckety-mucks of the Phoenix 40. Peralta with the Suns at the Western Conference Championships.
“Weird name,” he said finally. “How do you say it?”
“Feed-ra or Fade-ra,” I said, pronouncing it. “Like Phoenix.”
“Weird,” he said. “Sounds like some made-up hippie bullshit name.”
“Phaedra was the daughter of Minos,” I started to explain but his eyes immediately glazed. “Greek mythology…” God, I had been out of the cop world too long.
“Sounds like a head case to me,” he said finally. “Artsy-fartsy little rich girl head case. She’ll turn up. Probably schtupping some new guy.”
“No Jane Does who fit this description turn up lately?” I asked.
“You’re a deputy sheriff,” he said. “Go do some police work. You remember how? Or did all those years trying to pick up college trim ruin your brain?”
“Fuck you,” I said. It was our repartee, harmless for now. “I’m a part-time contract employee, a researcher, and if I get some information on old murder cases, it’s all gravy to you and the sheriff. You know if I go to Missing Persons, I’ll get a whole different reception than if you call the commanding officer and make an inquiry.”
Peralta sighed and picked up the phone. “Dominguez? Peralta. Remember my old partner Dave Mapstone? Yeah, the professor. He’s back in town, working for us part-time. He’s interested in nine nine-two oh one three four five, Phaedra Riding? Ph, yeah, like Phoenix. Anything new? What’d we do?…Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve got people pulled in to work the Harquahala thing.…Okay.”
He turned to me. “They don’t know shit. You know how these missing persons cases go. She’s an adult. No evidence of a crime. We have no reason to suspect foul play. Does Julie suspect foul play?” I shook my head. “What about her car?”
“Blue Nissan,” I said. “I checked the impound lists, the hot sheets, nothing.”
“So it sits,” Peralta said. “She’ll turn up.”
“So you don’t mind if I do some checking?”
“Not as long as you do your work for me first. And you don’t get in some jurisdictional cluster fuck with Phoenix PD. What? You trying to score some points with Julie, rekindle the flame?”
“We’ve both moved on,” I said, standing up to leave. “I’m just helping an old friend.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, crumpling the diet Coke can and tossing it through a Phoenix Suns basketball hoop into the trash can. “Sharon is on my back to have you over for dinner, y’know.”
“I will,” I said. Mike and his wife had invited me over a month ago.
