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“No.”
I didn’t hate her. Faced with the same facts, I would have asked the same question.
Next Vare wanted to know about recent cases I had investigated as a private detective and what Lindsey had been doing. I kept my answers calm, short, and factual. They filled three handwritten pages of notes.
“That’s all for now. There have been a bunch of felony paroles and early releases to save the state money. So we’ll check for bad guys you arrested or testified against who might have gotten out recently.”
“Thanks.”
Four women walked past in purple scrubs. None looked in the waiting room.
Vare closed the portfolio, pushed the chair back into place, said they would send over a sketch artist, and handed me her card.
I didn’t immediately take it.
Chris Melton was on the television across the room. “Live,” the banner said at the bottom on the screen. “Downtown Phoenix Shooting.”
The TV morons didn’t even know it was Midtown, not downtown, if they were talking about what happened to Lindsey.
Melton was standing out in front of the St. Joe’s E.R entrance.
“Turn that up, please. Please!”
The Hispanic woman at the other end of the room complied and I heard him talking.
“The Phoenix Police are the primary department investigating this case. What I can tell you is that the wife of a Maricopa County deputy was shot while she was taking a walk. Obviously I can’t identify her. She’s fighting for her life and I ask everyone to send their prayers.”
My face started throbbing violently. As reporters shouted questions, I could see Vare stiffen.
“No questions,” Melton said. “Here’s what I can say, any attack on a family member of a Maricopa County deputy sheriff is an attack on all of us, on the entire law-enforcement community, on the community as a whole. We will not stop until this animal is run down and brought to justice…”
Maybe there had been another shooting of a deputy’s relative. But no. The shooter was identified as an Anglo woman in her thirties with reddish blond hair, who remained at-large.
“Goddamn him,” I hissed.
Vare stood over me and her sharp features darkened. “Are you with the Sheriff’s Office again, Mapstone?”
“It’s temporary.”
“Fuck you,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working for Meltdown right off?”
I reacted with equal fury, standing, and towering over her. “He swore me in tonight, damn it! I’ve been a little distracted, if you didn’t notice. My wife is in there…” I threw an arm in the direction of the trauma suites and my voice broke.
But I forced some composure, sat, and spoke slowly. Kate Vare could help me or really hurt me. I needed her help. “He wants me to look into an old dead-body case.”
“What case?”
“I haven’t even begun checking out the file. It was a body I found back when I was a patrol officer. I was in my twenties, Kate. In the last century. I don’t remember much about it. Some guy who went hiking in the desert, got lost, got dead. It didn’t seem suspicious. I turned it over to the detectives and thought it was closed.”
“So what’s his angle?”
“I wish I knew. He said there’s been a new development. He wouldn’t tell me what until I had studied the file he gave me. This happened literally three hours ago.”
I had so lost track of time that probably wasn’t “literally” true. Close enough. I wasn’t grading freshman essays.
She put her hands on her hips.
“I want to know what it is.”
