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rtment. My odd personal history consisted of five years as a deputy sheriff, much of it as Peralta’s partner, then 15 years as a college history professor. Back with a badge, I worked on the old unsolved cases, using a historian’s techniques to budge them, if not solve them. It had turned into a little media bonanza for the sheriff. Now he wanted the most notorious cases we had solved compiled in a book. For which he, of course, would write the introduction.
“I’m getting to it…” I started.
“Getting to it?” Peralta said. He pulled down his legs and sat up straight.
“I’ve got other work.” I pointed to a pile of manila folders on the desktop. “You wanted me to go back and look at the 1976 Don Bolles case, remember?”
“That can wait,” he said.
“I’m supposed to start teaching at ASU this fall, a course on urban American history. I need to prepare for that. It’s just one course, but it will be nice to be back on a campus again.”
“Why do I care?”
“Because you want me to be happy?” He frowned. “I didn’t think so. It will be good publicity for you. And I’ve been contacted by a bank in Chicago—this is kind of cool. They want me to research whether one of the banks they bought in Louisiana was ever connected to slavery.”
“Quit fucking around!” he barked, his voice deepening with finality. He smoothed his thick hair back and pointed a meaty finger at me. “There’s an election coming up, and don’t assume the next sheriff will need a history professor.”
“You’ll be sheriff until you decide to become governor,” I shot back. “And I serve at your pleasure, if such a thing is possible. If you didn’t want me to stay, why did you try to talk me out of the job at Portland State?”
“You didn’t get it anyway,” he said. “You don’t have enough of that precious diversity you talk about.” His eyes narrowed smugly. “I was defending you the other day against the county supervisors.”
“Me, personally?”
He nodded. “They were questioning your salary. Why pay it when DNA and forensic evidence is the way other counties are clearing cases today. They also didn’t like keeping your office here after the building was rehabbed.”
I watched his face for a hint that he was joking: a slight lift in his eyebrow, an extra watt in the eyes. His expression was impassive. My stomach was suddenly hurting. Our conversation had gone from idle to nasty in racecar time.
“I thought that nut Earley was just grandstanding.”
“That nut represents a lot of voters,” Peralta said, leaning forward and sketching something indecipherable on my desk.
I said, “So he wants to cut funding for public schools and Child Protective Services, then decry why we have so many young people who end up in your jail.”
“That may be true,” Peralta said, “but it doesn’t seem to matter when people vote. They respond to this stuff that Earley says. He’s the face of the new Republican Party, Mapstone, and you’d better believe they want to knock me off in the primary. And I mean as sheriff. Forget about governor.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re an institution. A legend.”
He grunted and shook his head. “Times change, and in their eyes I’m just somebody with brown skin.” I looked at him. Peralta was incapable of irony.
“This town runs on two engines,” he said, “conservative politics and real estate. And Tom Earley is big in both. He made a fortune developing shopping centers. He’s incredibly connected. He’s ambitious as hell…”
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked, my voice rising. “Give him a campaign contribution? Resign?”
“If you lose your job, you can sell that house,” he said. “Have you seen the price appreciation for those old houses? I don’t get it. But, hell, you could sell it, buy a bunch of rental houses, leverage the hell out of your equity…”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said.
He sniffed and cleared his throat. “The main reason I tried to talk you out of going to Portland was your wife. I couldn’t lose Lindsey. She’s my star. She’s one of the top computer crime experts in the country now, Mapstone. She works with the feds as often as she works for me. She means a half-million-dollar grant from the feds to the Sheriff’s Office. I’d have had to make her divorce you if you went to Oregon…” He sat back and drummed his big fingers on his belly. “Do you get my point? These guys like Earley are gunning for me and for you. So if you want to keep playing cop and playing historian, you’d better…”
“I’ll write the goddamned book,” I snarled. “So you can run for governor.”
He was about to say something when a knock came at the office door.
“Dr. Mapstone?” The voice went to a woman, who leaned her head around the door. I beckoned her in. Peralta stood and strode out with the grace that only certain big men can manage.
4
“Was that Mike Peralta, the sheriff?” the woman asked.
