Cactus Heart Read Online Free Page A

“We’ve got file boxes full of reports. We’ve got computers full of reports. We ain’t got dick. We have an FBI serial-killer team living in my shit, and they think we’re morons.” He made an extravagant wipe with his napkin and slurped coffee. “So we need some good press. This is a notorious unsolved case, a rich family. If you help close an old kidnapping—remember, you were front-page news during the Riding case—maybe we can buy some time before the politicians start calling for our hides.”
    â€œThe trained egghead, to the rescue.”
    We settled up and walked to the parking lot in silence, my ankle shooting pain bullets into my brain with every step. Peralta’s shiny black Ford sat officiously next to my silver BMW convertible, the flotsam of a failed marriage.
    â€œThis car, Mapstone.”
    â€œDon’t start…”
    â€œNo deputy can drive a BMW. People will think you’re dirty.”
    â€œPatty bought it for me. You know that.”
    â€œNo way would I let a woman buy me a car!” Peralta snorted.
    â€œYour wife makes ten times what you make, and she’s bought you everything but your guns.”
    â€œThat’s different,” he sniffed. “Anyway, Patty’s your ex now. And it’s…” He waved his hand at the car. “It’s just not what we drive in this family.”
    â€œI need a good beat-up jeep, huh? With a gun rack and a ‘Peace Through Superior Firepower’ bumper sticker?”
    â€œExactly. You know, you could have gotten killed last night, being unarmed. It’s department policy for deputies to carry a piece at all times.”
    â€œEven consultants?”
    â€œWell, you’re kind of in a gray area.” He took off his suit coat, exposing the nine-millimeter Glock automatic in a shoulder holster. He tossed the coat into the Ford.
    Finally, he said, “That woman died.”
    I looked at him blankly.
    â€œThe doctor’s wife. She never came out of her coma. Died of massive head trauma. So now it’s a murder rap.”
    â€œOh, no.”
    Peralta said, “When you and I started out in this business, the world was still safe enough that there were some places where you had to carry heat and most places where you didn’t. And you could tell the difference, know what I mean? Nowdays, hell, nobody knows when you’ll meet some sociopath who doesn’t even know enough to be afraid. Carry a gun, Mapstone. I don’t want to have to save your ass over and over. It was hard enough when you were twenty-one.”

4
    I climbed into the BMW, slid in Coltrane’s
Blue Train
CD and took Seventh Avenue downtown. Dammit, I liked the car. Somewhere, the cold autumn wind was whipping leaves down streets scented with chimney smoke: the genuine fall of our movie-and-TV-seeded collective memory. But in Phoenix, it was seventy-five degrees and intensely sunny. The desert did change with the seasons, but the transformation was very gradual: autumn was a sweet mildness in the late afternoon, a change in the quality of light, a wistful abbreviation of the day. You had to pay attention.
    When I hit Indian School, the cell phone rang.
    â€œSo, David,” a woman’s voice said, “I hear you got into some trouble last night.”
    â€œI didn’t think Pulitzer Prize winners got up this early,” I said to Lorie Pope of the
Arizona Republic
.
    She laughed without humor. “Yeah, well, the fad-du-jour over here is re-engineering the newsroom into ‘teams,’ where we all get to rotate into the cops beat. It’s supposed to make everyone feel equal. I feel like I’m twenty-one years old again.”
    â€œI remember when you were twenty-one.”
    â€œAnd I remember you, my love,” she sighed in her husky alto. “But I digress. So what about it? A robbery downtown last night? The heroic Chief Peralta saving the distressed