South Phoenix Rules (22 page)
Read South Phoenix Rules Online
Authors: Jon Talton
I turned to Peralta and asked if he had any evidence gloves.
“I want to see that cell phone and the last number he called.”
He shook his head. “Give me your gun.”
“What?”
He held out his hand.
I hesitated, and then I slipped off my holster and handed it to him. One, two, three cars sped by.
“I'm going back inside,” he said. “You're going to call 911 and sit on the curb. We're not the law any more.”
I dialed as he trotted back to our office. The excitement over, my body resumed sweating.
In the distance, I heard sirens.
Once again, I called upon my police brain trust, especially Cal Lash and Bill Richardson; as usual, they provided invaluable help. Frank “Paco” Marcell, retired from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and now running Crime Assessments LLC, is Arizona's leading expert on gangs. He was very generous with his time in guiding me through the labyrinthine passages of gang land. David William Foster, regents' professor at Arizona State University, Virginia Foster, professor emerita at Phoenix College, and Deputy Maricopa County Attorney David R. Foster assisted me with everything from the history of the city's barrios and cleaning up my rusty Spanglish, to keeping my firearms protocols straight. Talk about a family with talent. For help with the Japanese internment, I'm grateful to Jack August, Jr., research professor at the University of Arizona and the best historian in the state, as well as Emily Thompson of the University of Georgia. John Bouma of Snell & Wilmer, a great lawyer and a man of living history, aided me in recalling other pieces of old Phoenix. As usual, blame me for any errors, deliberate changes, or inconsistencies. Finally, as should be clear, America has a treasure in the independent Poisoned Pen Press, and my thanks go to Robert Rosenwald, Jessica Tribble, Nan Beams, Marilyn Pizzo, and Annette Rogers. Most of all, my editor Barbara Peters helped bring it on home with her customary skill and graceâwithout resorting to South Phoenix Rules.
Phoenix, Arizona in August. The sky's the colour of bleached concrete and it's 114 degrees in the shade⦠and it's going to get even hotter for David Mapstone.
Jax Delgado, a New York professor in Phoenix to research his next book has been tortured, murdered, his head severed and sent to his girlfriend. It shouldn't be an assignment for a cold-case investigator like Mapstone, but the girlfriend in question just happens to his sister-in-law, Robin.
Delgado's murder has all the hallmarks of drug cartel execution, and Mapstone fears Robin could be the next target. But is she as innocent as she claims? Is she hiding something? And why would a professor be targeted by a drug cartel?
If there are answers, they lie deep in South Phoenix â the city's gang-infested hinterland where the police fear to tread. Mapstone's investigation will compel him to cross this line, to enter a world that plays by a different set of rules: South Phoenix Rules.
“A great read!”
Michael Connelly
“A strong new voice in contemporary hard-boiled fiction.”
Washington Post
“Talton has created a richly complex character in Mapstone... a well-crafted, nuanced series.”
Booklist
“A haunting noir story vividly rendered by Talton's white-hot prose... original... impressively unyielding.”
New York Journal of Books
“Talton crisply evokes Phoenix's New West ambience and keeps readers guessing with unexpected plot twists.”
Publishers Weekly
PHOENIX COLD CASES
David Mapstone: ex-cop, ex-history professor.
As a cop, Mapstone learned never to trust anyone. As a historian, he learned that the past is never past and everything is connected.
Now he's digging into Phoenix, Arizona's secrets. Buried secrets that the city is not about to give up easily.
Just as well he's armed with a .357 magnum Colt Python
1.
Concrete Desert
A young woman's body is found dumped in the desert in circumstances identical to those of an infamous 40-year-old unsolved murder.
Concrete Desert
is available
here
.
2.
Cactus Heart
Mapstone unearths the skeletons of a pair of four-year-old twins, the victims in a notorious Depression-era kidnapping case. But what should be a matter of tying up loose ends quickly becomes something more sinister, more personal⦠and more deadly.
Cactus Heart
is available
here
.
3.
Camelback Falls
When Sheriff Peralta is shot by a sniper, Mapstone must confront his own past and the deadly consequences of a small-town shoot-out in 1979 that left Peralta and Mapstone standing over four dead bodies.
Camelback Falls
is available
here
.
4.
Dry Heat
Half a century after the unsolved murder of an FBI agent, the victim's missing badge is found on the body of a dead transient. The trail leads Mapstone into the Arizonan desert, and eventually to San Francisco, as he slowly uncovers the bloody secrets surrounding the FBI badge.
Dry Heat
is available
here
.
5.
Arizona Dreams
Mapstone receives a letter confessing to a forty-year-old murder and providing directions to the body. But things are never what they seem in Phoenix. There's a body right where the letter said it would be â but it's only weeks old, not years...
Arizona Dreams
is available
here
.
6.
South Phoenix Rules
Phoenix, Arizona in August. It's 114 degrees in the shade but it's going to get even hotter for cold case investigator David Mapstone when he starts investigating a drug cartel execution.
South Phoenix Rules
is available
here
.
