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“Senator,” he said. “Since you own my ass, you know that if you don’t get out of that chair and walk outside quietly with me and Deputy Mapstone”-Peralta looked at me and his eyes smiled-“I’m going to handcuff you and carry you out like the sorry sack of shit you really are.”
Peralta nodded to the waiter, who approached timidly. “Check, please.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The next night, a big storm swirled in from the south and east. Thunderheads congregated over the Superstition Mountains and spilled north to the peaks of the McDowells. But they just hung in the sky, looking fat with rain and promise. I pulled off the Red Mountain Expressway and turned north into Scottsdale, cursing the unchanging heat in the city. Maybe we would end up like the Hohokam. Maybe all our cleverness couldn’t overcome the eternal logic of the desert. The wind pushed a tumbleweed across the expensive cross-walk brickwork of Scottsdale Road. I veered onto Goldwater Boulevard and found the address Lorie Pope had given me.
It was an old adobe house, set back from the exclusive galleries that lined the street. A relic of the old farm village of Scottsdale, soon to be gobbled up by the wealthy appetite of the world-famous resort city. I drove slowly past, pulled around the corner, and got out. I had the Colt Python and two speed loaders on my belt. I didn’t have to do this alone. Shouldn’t have, by Peralta’s later reckoning. But somehow, the past month had created its own little obsessive clockwork inside me. I was ready to see things through now-wherever they led.
The door to the adobe was ajar. I was about to push my way through, when I heard men’s voices.
“I can’t believe you’re still al
ive. You’re like some devil that won’t die.” It was an old-man’s tenor voice, driven as much by breath as by vibration of vocal chords. I sank back into the shadows of the porch.
“None of this had to happen,” the voice said. “If that Mexican sheriff and that goddamned history teacher hadn’t gotten back into it. In my day…” He chuckled, an odd, unsettling rumble. “Well, in my day, you knew what would happen.”
Silence. A very long silence. The wind whipped against the door and made it creak. The adobe felt rough and reassuring against my hand.
“I’ve got nothing to confess to you,” the voice went on. “You don’t scare me. You didn’t scare me forty years ago. That girl’s death was an accident. You know that. I didn’t mean to grab hold of her the way I did. It’s just that she went crazy, just like a wild animal.”
The other man said something I couldn’t make out.
Then the old man’s tenor rasped, “My God, I had a wife and a family. I had a law practice and standing in the community. Things were different then. She wanted too much. We could have settled things. But she wanted too much. I am so goddamned sorry it was John Henry’s niece, so goddamned sorry. I tried to make it up to him, to his son. But that’s all in the past. Killing me won’t change one minute of it.”
I unholstered the Python and stepped into the room. It was a small front room, made smaller still by stacks of law books and newspapers, by the halfhearted light of a tattered floor lamp. One man sat deflated in an old chair. Everything about him was the color of cigarette ash: his loose skin, the wisps of hair ringing his bald head, even the old-man pants and shirt that were now too big for him. The other man was Harrison Wolfe.
Wolfe said, “Mapstone, meet Sam Larkin.” He added distastefully, “The Kingmaker.”
“You don’t need that,” Wolfe said, indicating the Python. “My God, that’s a piece of artillery.” Stuck in his belt, Wolfe had a Smith amp; Wesson.38-caliber Chief’s Special: old-fashioned, compactly lethal. I holstered the big Colt.
Wolfe said, “You’re thinking, I didn’t even know Sam Larkin was still alive. Well, I thought the same thing until you stirred this up again. Then after you and I met, somebody’s muscle started following me. That got me to thinking, Who would give a tinker’s damn about this case after all this time? And I knew I had to pay a visit to old Sam here. He looks every one of his eighty-seven years, doesn’t he?”
Larkin regarded me with watery eyes. “You could have left well enough alone.”
“I needed a job,” I said. “Now I think that Mexican sheriff is going to want to talk to you.”
“Nobody’s talking.” It was a new voice, coming from behind me. The next thing I felt was a gun barrel push me into the room. I turned, to see Dennis Copeland. His eyes were like burned glass.
Larkin laughed until he started wheezing and coughing.
“My associate arrived just in time,” he gasped.
“He doesn’t work for McConnico?” I demanded, mustering a bravado I didn’t feel, looking down the barrel of a.44 Magnum. The Python was now a hand’s grasp away-might as well have been a light-year.
“You’re a young fool,” Larkin spat at me. “This man works for me. If you’d have paid attention to him, none of this would have happened.”
He ran a bony hand across his bald crown. “Brent is a young fool, too.”
I noticed Harrison Wolfe again when he subtly shifted his weight and faced Copeland.
Wolfe said, “Mr. Copeland, you murdered a Phoenix police officer. If you don’t put that gun down, I will kill you where you stand.” His voice was different now, calmer, almost sleepy.
Copeland laughed and cocked his head back contemptuously. It was a stupid move.
Before I could even process what was happening, Wolfe had the Chief’s Special in his hand and put two rounds between Dennis Copeland’s eyes. The small man collapsed backward into the doorway, his fall seeming to take longer than Wolfe’s move. Then the loud crack-crack faded into a hum in my ears, and a haze of gun smoke sat at eye level like thin morning clouds. I knelt down and confiscated the.44 Magnum.
Wolfe’s cold features didn’t change. He merely turned and put the gun to Larkin’s temple.
