Cool in Tucson (8 page)

“Good.  Don’t forget closets, storage sheds, garage.”

“Right.”  Did he think she’s never asked for a warrant before?

“Computers, files, books, what else?  Get everything!  Wish I could come with you, but I’ve got a meeting.  Keep me up to date, though—oh, and pass it along to the PI, will you?”

“For sure.” 

She was making her list for the warrant when the jittery kid from the support staff,  the one with the coke-bottle glasses and bad acne, appeared in her doorway.  What was his name? 
Scott.  I think
.  Lately he had taken to covering his insecurities by giving himself titles that grew more presumptuous every week.     

“Genius Geek has done it again,” he said, handing her a memo, snapping the rubber bands on his braces as he bowed to imaginary applause.  Was it Scott Tracy, or Tracy Scott?  Anyway he knew how to get maximum drama out of a routine search.   “Perkins, Adolph.  Address and one cell phone number.” 

            “No land line?”

“No.”

“Okay.  Paseo Redondo, that’s the little street off Granada, right?” 

“Correct.  Just a few blocks from here, actually.”

“An apartment, right?”

“In a big building full of many apartments.  Genius Geek looked up the manager.  It’s that second name and number there.”  He pointed to the paper she was holding.

“Well, hey, Genius Geek, go to the head of the class!  Thank you very much.” 
Never fail
to praise extra effort.  People remember praise
.  If he needed to invent a ridiculous name for himself, what harm?  The least she could do was play along and please him.  She could never remember his name because this kid annoyed her almost out of her mind sometimes—he always seemed to be in antic mode when she was grim and lethargibc when she was in a hurry.  But today she needed him so she slathered on flattery.  “Now I can get my search warrant right away, and call this manager and get him to meet me there, see how you expedited?  Could you go after the phone records next, have you got time?”

“Genius Geek can do that with ease.”  He responded to praise by growing taller and rosier.  Swaying above her, gleaming, he asked, “How far back you want to go?”

“He’s only been out of prison since Spring sometime—if you just get everything for this year, that’ll do it.”

She called Judge Garrity’s office first because she was tight with his clerk, Phyllis, who said the judge was in chambers, and yes, she had time to type a warrant and sure, they’d put a rush on it.  Phyllis was another of the good-to-know people Sarah was constantly collecting inside the system—they made all the difference when you needed to move a case along. 

She tried to hold onto the warm feeling from Phyllis’s favors while she passed the victim’s ID to Jenny Cunningham in Public Information.  Something about Jenny’s perkier-than-thou persona ticked her off.  She didn’t know why, and she didn’t want to think about it today, so she focused on the ceiling light while she reeled off the facts and got off the phone.

Still waiting for Ibarra, she read over the dead man’s prison record again, and dialed an outside line. 

“Dietz.”  Good voice today, steady, no tremor.  

“Will, it’s Sarah.”

“Hey.”  The voice warmed up half a notch.  “What’s shakin’?”

            “Quite a bit.  I went to work before sunup this morning.”

“Oh?  What’d you draw?”

“A jogger found a body in Rillito Park.”   

“Ah.  Le Fever said he saw a scene getting taped up there.  Up near the racetrack, right?”

“Yes.  Almost on the bike path, actually.  Started out as a John Doe, no ID on him at all, but we got lucky and matched his prints.  So I thought I might tap your vast store of information.”

“My vast store, ach du lieber.”  A tiny chuckle, almost soundless.  “My store’s pretty empty these days, but you’re welcome to what I’ve got.”  The new Will Dietz.  Before he got shot, he’d been undercover in narcotics and not inclined to tell her much more than the date and time.         

Sarah had greatly admired the old Will Dietz.  Before the bullets found him, he had seemed like an unshakeable iron man, capable and smart, a tower of strength.  But she was beginning to like the new, vulnerable Will Dietz so much she wasn’t sure she wanted to see his rehab succeed all the way. 
Where was I? 
 “Our victim was a guy named Adolph Alvin Perkins.  Any chance you’d know him?”

“Uh…don’t think so.  Should I?”

“Well, he was released early this year from Florence.  Three-to-ten for dealing.  I thought he might be your collar.” 

“The name doesn’t ring any bells.  Tell you what, though, I haven’t gone to work yet, I’m in my car a couple of blocks from you.  Why don’t I come up and look at what you’ve got?”  

“Oh?”  She had intended to fax it to him if he showed any interest.  “Well, if you have time—”

“Won’t be ten minutes.”  He hung up before she could argue.  

Eight minutes later he stood in her doorway, a medium-sized nondescript man with plenty of mileage on his face.  Working undercover had augmented his natural tendency to disappear into the woodwork; he was usually the last person in the room people noticed. 

A seasoned homicide detective when she transferred in from auto theft, he had helped her plenty during her first months in the section.  Impressed by his skills and savvy, she maneuvered to get put on his cases.  He was thorough and shrewd, had a wry sense of humor that helped on rough cases and an instinct for organizing information so the hard kernel of truth dropped out of the chaff of conflicting testimony.

“Everybody tries to put lipstick on the pig,” he told her.  “Even when they mean  to tell you the truth, they’ll still do their best to make their part of the story look better.  Watch their eyes and hands when they tell you the parts where they come in.”  He was totally professional, so they had been colleagues rather than friends.  But she came to rely on his judgement and missed him when he transferred to narcotics a few months later. 

Six months ago, after sirens had wailed around town for an hour, the detectives at Stone Avenue began hearing the terrible story of how Will Dietz and his partner, on what should have been a routine interview, happened into a shoot-out between dealers.  Dietz took five shots, two of them life-threatening, and lay a week in intensive care.  Sarah learned they had the same blood type when she, like everybody in the department, volunteered a donation.   He sent a note from the recovery ward thanking them all for that “good tough cop’s blood that pulled me through.” 

Hard months of therapy and counseling followed before he was pronounced fit even for light duty.  When he turned up at her elbow at a department party in mid-summer, for a second Sarah wasn’t sure who he was.  He was thinner and gray-faced, walked with a slight limp and had a new part in his hair in addition to the old one.  His eyes were like a TV screen when the power’s off, and his hand shook when he picked up his glass.         

Because she’d worked with him and knew how able he’d been, Sarah couldn’t get his predicament out of her mind.  She began to find excuses to e-mail him with a bit of gossip, a copy of a clipping or a question.  Afraid a one-woman campaign of friendliness might get too obvious, she got Jimmy to phone him with a question, maneuvered Eisenstaat into passing along a news item.  She was gratified when he began to initiate a few e-mails himself. 

It was odd, how fast she became invested in his recovery,  A couple of weeks ago she had caught a glimpse of him chatting easily in a restaurant with some other people in the Department, and felt her throat grow tight with pleasure at the sight.  She told herself wryly that she had better be careful who she donated blood to if she was going to get this involved in the outcome.

Now he stood in front of her desk with his eyes crinkling a little at the corners and said, “My God, homicide finally got new chairs.”

“You haven’t seen them?  Well, please,” she waved him to a seat.

He sat.  “Oh, excellent.  My tush endorses the choice.”  They both laughed.  The awful chairs in homicide division when she came on board had introduced Sarah to the reality that the bitching in homicide was every bit as colorful as any she had ever heard in auto theft.

His color was good again, his voice had regained the quiet crackle she remembered.  He even smiled.  He had not been much given to smiles while she worked with him—another improvement, she thought. 
Maybe we should all get shot now and then
.  She beamed back at him, delighted to see he was most of the way back. 

He looked around, nodded to Eisenstaat, turned back and smiled some more.    “Well…is the arrest record here, or—” 

“Oh, here—”  She passed it to him and he sat in front of her, reading.  There was a deep line between his eyebrows now, but his hands, holding the paper, were perfectly steady.  Square and capable looking…had somebody turned up the heat?

He looked up and shook his head.  “On my way up here I tried to remember his name and couldn’t.  And now that I see his picture I’m sure—I don’t know him.”  He thought, scratching his chin.  “You know a lot of people in narcotics division?”

“No.  Except for you, hardly anybody.”  

“And now I’m not there.”  He didn’t say if he wanted to go back.  “But…I think who you ought to talk to is Tony Delarosa.  He’s been there for years and he works on everything, he’ll know if your victim’s been a player here.  You’re after personal habits, friends, stuff like that?”

“Yeah, anything that gives me a place to start.”

“Tony’s your man, he’ll know.  You want me to call him?”

“Would you?” 

“Sure.  Glad to.”  He made notes in tiny, neat handwriting.  “Have you had time to run him through NCIC yet?  I’ll probably have time to run some searches tonight, would that help?  See if he turns up in other parts of the country?”

“That would be great.  Thanks.”  He stood up.  She scanned the notes on her desk but found nothing more she could possibly ask him.  

He squinted down at her humorously and said, “Well, what other occasions for merry-making are coming up, hmm?”

“Actually, second floor’s thinking of working up a bash for Hallowe’en,” she said.  “You mind wearing a mask?”

“Aren’t they kind of hard to drink through?”

“Oh, we’ll have straws for the booze.”

“That sounds good.  You mean I’m invited?”

“Absolutely.”

“Terrific!  I’ll get my broom ready.” 

  She stood up while they were both still smiling, reached across the desk and shook his hand.  It felt just the way she’d expected, firm and dry.  She let the touch last one extra second before she said, “Thank you so much for coming in.”

It occurred to her as he walked away that he had not needed to come up here to exchange this little bit of information, they could easily have handled it by phone and fax.  So when he turned at her doorway and nodded, she sent him a smile that said plainly,
I wanted to see you too
. 

Sitting down when he was gone, unreasonably aglow, she began reviewing a shortlist of her best friends in the department.  Who could she get to stir up a Hallowe’en party? 
What came over me?
  She had no time to sort it out because her phone was ringing. 

Phyllis said her warrant was ready, and she wanted to know, was Sarah working the Speedway holdup or the body by the Rillito?  Phyllis, like everybody in the system, got her jollies by being in the know about the stories behind the headlines.  Sarah fed her a few details, as much as she could within the bounds of discretion, because Phyllis had made a big difference by getting out this warrant so fast. 

As soon as she was off the phone she stepped over to the half-wall that separated her cubicle from Eisenstaat’s.  “Am I talking,” she asked across the wall, “to that dashing Harry Eisenstaat who’s way past due for a breath of fresh air and would not mind driving to the courthouse to pick up a warrant at Judge Garrity’s office?”