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I rubbed my hands, feeling the dried blood on them seeming to cake up into little flakes.
“My point is this whole thing stinks.”
God, why didn’t I keep us in the nice hotel downtown with the friendly shower?
I watched the entry to the waiting room, hoping to see a doctor who might tell me something, something good. Every scrub-clad medico walking past drew my eye, but each merely continued going.
Vare stood and pulled out the chair, then placed it directly in front of me and sat again. She pulled closer until our knees almost touched.
“Did it ever occur to you that Peralta might have sent this woman after you?”
You mean the woman who keeps her promises?
I said, “That doesn’t make sense. He’s my friend…”
She immediately talked over me, like old times. “I thought he was a good cop, too. Obviously we didn’t know him. Maybe he’s tying up loose ends. Maybe he thinks you know something. It’s strange he left a note specifically about you on your business card in his truck.”
Word traveled fast.
She leaned in. “Have you heard from Peralta since the crime?”
I looked at her without blinking, forcing discipline into every cell of my body.
“Kate, my wife is in critical condition and I’ve had my ass kicked by a girl. So anything I do right now might be grief, or because my face hurts like the devil. But you’ll consider it a ‘tell.’ ”
Next I looked down and to the left, blinked rapidly, and cleared my throat. “See what I mean?”
Her cheeks turned red with frustration.
I said, “The answer is no, I haven’t heard from him.”
I was a good little liar, too.
“Do you know something about the diamond robbery, Mapstone?”
I knew the woman wanted the diamonds. Before that, I had found another business card Peralta had left for me across from the Flagstaff train station. “Find Matt Pennington.” Lindsey had been about to tell me about Pennington when I provoked our ruction and she walked out.
I knew Orville Grainer had seen Peralta exit the truck, change the license plate, and get in a sedan. And Peralta, playing lawn boy on what I hoped was a forgotten landline, had told Sharon that I needed to watch my ass. I hadn’t watched it very well.
I said, “No. I want Lindsey protected.”
“It’s already done.”
I let out a long breath.
Vare made me go through it all over again and I did. Lindsey leaving to go for a walk, me following.
“Why did you follow her?”
“At first I didn’t want to go walking, then I changed my mind.”
No way was I going to tell her we had a fight. For any cop that provided a sweet, low-hanging fruit—alleged marriage trouble. Maybe Mapstone was screwing this woman and she got tired of hearing him promise to leave his wife. Or Mapstone actually encouraged or even paid her to kill Lindsey and set it up to look like a random crime.
She let it pass. “You should know we found a burglar bag near where you encountered her. It had lock tools, an alarm bypass, handcuffs. You pissed somebody off.”
This information passed into my nervous system and chilled me.
Five beats. “Any marital troubles, Mapstone?”
