Free High Country Nocturne by Jon Talton Page A

placed it on top of the file.
    I signed papers from the Sheriff’s Office and a certification document from the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training Board. Next came a Bible out of that damned messenger bag. We stood up and he swore me in at the rooftop bar. So help me, God.
    He fished out a business card and scribbled numbers on the back. He held it up and I took it.
    â€œYou’ll report directly to me. Read the case file and call me in the morning. We’ll get started.” He paused and then put his hand on my shoulder like we were good buddies. “It gets better, David. Trust me. You’re from Maricopa County. This is your hometown. You owe, don’t you think? To leave it a better place for our kids than we found it?”
    I wanted to break his hand.
    â€œDo you want a ride home?”
    I shook my head. “I’ll take light rail.”
    â€œGlad somebody uses it. I hear it runs empty all the time.”
    I picked up the file, slid the badge case in my blazer pocket, and walked away.
    As I reached the elevators, the crowd was surging into the bar, and Call-Me-Chris Melton had disappeared.

Chapter Nine
    I walked out of the hotel in a trance, oblivious to the perfection of the evening, crossing First Avenue mid-block. I was about to step over the light-rail tracks, across the low concrete barrier where it was stenciled DO NOT CROSS, when the horn shook me into the moment.
    The train was no more than half a block to my right, the operator flashing his lights and laying on the horn. I stepped back and let the train come into the station, walking around it.
    The majestic old county courthouse was as lovely, dignified, and enduring as when it opened in 1929, an art deco interpretation of Spanish architecture. It had been built as a combined city-county building. So, here, facing Washington Street, was the courthouse. On the west side, guarded by carved Phoenix birds, was the entrance to old city hall. With such attributes, it amazed me that Phoenix had not torn it down.
    Enough damage had been done. When I was a boy, lush grass and shrubs, shaded by queen palms, surrounded the building. Now all that was gone, replaced by dirt and the skeletons of palo verde trees. Somebody thought they were saving water, even though it was being misused to fill artificial lakes in subdivisions thirty miles away.
    I wondered about the workers that had ripped out those noble trees back in the 1980s and whether they had realized the damage they were doing.
    Then I made the mistake of looking back at the graceless, sterile cube of CityScape and how it overpowered the flawless art deco Luhrs Tower in the next block, its fourteen stories with elegant setbacks built for a low-rise city that held 48,000 people. CityScape, heavily subsidized by the taxpayers, was doing fairly well for now. It had a comedy club and a bowling alley. The bottom of the Luhrs Tower was empty except for a Subway shop. This was Phoenix.
    At the front of the courthouse, the old fountain was still there. A plaque read:
    IN MEMORY OF
LIEUT. JACK W. SWILLING
1831-1878
WHO BUILT THE
FIRST MODERN IRRIGATION DITCH
AND
TRINIDAD, HIS WIFE
1850-1929
WHO ESTABLISHED IN 1868 THE FIRST
PIONEER HOME IN THE
SALT RIVER VALLEY.
ERECTED BY
MARICOPA CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1931
    I sat on the fountain’s concrete lip and listened to the water.
    â€œSwilling’s Ditch” was one of the hundreds of miles of canals built by the Hohokam to divert water of the Salt River in this great alluvial valley. “Those who have gone”—the disappeared civilization, the canal builders. Then the Anglos came, found the ancient waterworks, the most advanced in the New World outside Peru. They cleared out the ancient canals, built new ones and the Phoenix was reborn.
    Old Phoenix kept its secrets. Jack Swilling was one of the town’s founders. He was also a scoundrel who helped betray the Apache leader Mangus Coloradus, leaving