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I fell into a deep sleep, and I was hiking across huge grassy hills strewn here and there with piñon and scrub oak. A California landscape, not like Arizona. I was acutely aware of the carpet of rough grass beneath my feet and the nervous sense of height, the world falling off in every direction down hillside and arroyo. It was getting dark and a few lights were visible far down the valley, but I felt compelled to walk. I fell, grabbed a scrubby branch, pulled myself back up, set out again. I wasn’t afraid. Then there was a banging and jangling that didn’t go with the dream, and finally I realized it was the doorbell. I swung off the sofa, slipped on my old, dark-blue Nordstrom robe and walked unsteadily toward the door. I noticed it was two in the morning, and something made me go to the bedroom and get the Colt Python .357 magnum.
I opened the little wrought-iron peephole in the door, saw Peralta, and wondered if I was still dreaming.
“Mike?”
“It’s not the fucking Girl Scouts.”
I opened the heavy door and he walked in. He was wearing a rumpled suit and carrying a gym bag.
I had seen Peralta in meetings and interrogations and even gun fights. But I had never seen him with the bare hint of vulnerability that surrounded him this moment. He seemed to read me and merely held out a finger, commanding silence, as he moved into the living room and sat heavily in Grandfather’s old green leather chair.
“I need a place to stay,” he said. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Are you okay? Is Sharon okay?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. I held up my hands in surrender and we sat in silence. Finally, I went into the kitchen and came back with two beers. He took one in his massive hand, studied the label with disgust—it was a Sam Adams—but he drank.
I was suddenly aware that I was naked under the robe and my crotch was still delightfully wet from Lindsey, and all in the presence of the chief deputy. He didn’t seem to notice. I had never been good at guy talk, where everything real was submerged subtly beneath words of sports and work and women. And I was particularly at a loss in Peralta’s company, where his sheer presence overwhelmed everything like a mountain dropped into flatlands. So we sat. I thought of Lindsey, of her body and expression as she pleased herself atop me. The twelve-foot-tall bookshelves that Grandfather had built kept watch over us.
“Tell me you own a television, Mapstone,” he said at last. “Even you’d want to watch the History Channel.”
So I took him into the little study and he took over Grandfather’s desk chair. With the tube on ESPN, he became a contented self-contained unit. I went back into the living room and read for a while, James Morris’ Pax Britannica, immersing myself in the adventures, characters and follies of the British Empire. It was the kind of book I wish I could write, but now, at forty, I knew I might never have the time or the talent. Still, Lindsey gave me a bookmark with George Eliot’s quote: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
Later, when I could hear Peralta snoring, I went to the linen closet, pulled out a comforter, carefully spread it over him and shut down the house for the night.
Chapter Nine
The trill of the phone pulled me out of a hard, dreamless sleep into a sun-filled room. I was just in my bedroom, seven forty-six on the digital clock next to the photo of Lindsey from the San Diego trip.
Lorie Pope’s voice jumped at me. “David, did I wake you?”
“No,” I groaned and swung out of bed onto unsteady feet.
“You always needed at least seven hours of sleep, as I recall,” she said. “So last night must have been interesting.”
“Not the way you think.”
“Really?” she said. “Isn’t that a wonderful word? Interesting. May you live in interesting times.” She laughed her fine, crystal laugh.
I pulled on some shorts and walked to the kitchen, where I poured orange juice and drank it in one long swallow.
“I don’t have anything new to leak, my dear.” I pulled aside the blinds and looked into the yard. The oleanders and bougainvillea needed trimming, the joys of a nine-month growing season.
“I’m calling to make a deposit, my love,” Lorie said. “It’s only fair.”
I could hear computer keys clattering in the background of her voice.
“Remember your skeletons in the wall? And the man who was executed in the kidnapping? Jack Talbott? Remember he had a girl with him?”
“Right. Frances Richie.”
“She’s still alive,” Lorie said.
I sat at the wicker kitchen table, my heart pounding a little harder. “Really?”
“I shit you not,” she said. “She is still at the women’s unit at Florence, where she has been since 1942.”
