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I asked if the Toyota had been locked. It had. But it was a twenty-year-old car without an alarm and could have easily been opened with a Slim Jim device.
That would have taken some brass: shoot the second guard, take the diamonds, get in your truck, take the time to stop at an anonymous Toyota, break in and pop the trunk, drop in the suitcase, lock up, and drive away. All this while police were converging from every direction.
It was the kind of brass that Peralta had.
Detective Long said, “What are you thinking?”
“Where this leaves Peralta.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“He’s still wanted on warrants for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.” She paused. “I know you worked for him and he’s a friend. Everybody in our department is stunned that he did this. But I’m still going to find him and put him in prison. He was caught on the camera. The evidence is definitive.”
Definitive. Hardly anything else in this case was.
She sipped her coffee and continued. “He probably expected to come back and get the diamonds once the initial response died down. Or, he had her tag number, so he could have come to her house. She might never have known the diamonds were there if she hadn’t checked her trunk.
“I was wondering where you were,” I said. “The FBI called me up to Ash Fork in the middle of the night when they found Peralta’s truck. I kept looking for a Chandler detective.”
Her face scrunched up.
“What bullshit. I’ve dealt with fed interference before—they never play well with others—but nothing like this. They swooped in and took the case. I protested and got stuck deeper on the bad-girl list. Command folded like a cheap suit, is that the expression?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t get it,” she continued. “What was their jurisdiction? But we were forced to back off. Since 9/11, their powers have expanded to the moon. When they found the truck, they didn’t even tell us until twelve hours later and by that time they had towed it back to Phoenix.”
The green eyes lasered me. “Why do you think they took my case?”
“You’re giving me more credit than I deserve. Peralta was close to the old SAC, Eric Pham. It was an unusual collaboration with a fed. After he became a private detective, Pham threw him a few jobs.”
“You, too,” she corrected. “You’re his partner.”
“Fair enough.” Then I felt obligated to say I had been brought back to the Sheriff’s Office. It’s temporary. To consult on an old case. I’m not a racist. I don’t hate Hispanics.
She laughed, a fine melody that reminded me of Lindsey. “Is that going to be how you identify yourself every time? It might take awhile to get all that out when you’re breaking down a door.”
Before I could do more than smile, she added, “Horace Mann is an asshole.”
“Yes,” I said. “How did he react to you finding the diamonds?”
“Like an asshole.” She looked at the ceiling and blew out a sigh of exasperation. “He came out with his entourage, waited long enough for the diamonds to be verified as the stolen property.”
“How did he seem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Happy? Relieved?”
“Not at all. He was pissed. The hicks in Chandler solved the case.”
There might have been other reasons he was vexed but I kept them to myself. A dead man was attached to a doorknob in an office half a mile north of us. Somebody on the phone who was expecting those diamonds had told me that “Mann’s window was closing.” I didn’t know enough yet to advance a theory and didn’t want to dig myself in deeper.
She chuckled.
r /> “Do you know what this was?”
I shook my head, unsure of which “this” she was talking about.
