Free Camelback Falls by Jon Talton

precious corner. I dived into it and prayed.

Chapter Ten
    I was forty-three years old and in the principal’s office. We all were. Me, Lindsey, Kimbrough, half a dozen Phoenix cops, and the school security guard who had opened the place so we had somewhere to sit. It was 4:45 A.M. on Thursday.
    “Dave went to school here, and now he’s the sheriff,” Lindsey said to the security guard. “They ought to have a Dave Mapstone Day.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to understand.
    “Sheriff, if I may speak frankly,” Kimbrough said.
    “Yes, yes.” I waved my hand at him. I was sitting bent over in a too-small plastic chair, suddenly wishing I could sleep for about a hundred years.
    “Sir,” Kimbrough said, “with all due respect.”
    Lindsey said, “Just say it. I bet I agree with it.”
    He let loose: “What the fuck”—this last word was shouted—“was that little stunt about!?” He added quietly, “Sheriff.”
    He wheeled on Lindsey. “And you! You were supposed to keep him from doing something pretty much just like this!”
    “Sorry,” she said. “He’s headstrong. I like that, sometimes.”
    “Jesus!” he said. “It’s like you have Peralta’s recklessness without, without…”
    He let it hang, and a grizzled Phoenix captain said, “His balls.”
    Kimbrough raised up and said, “Fuck you. Where were your people when we needed them? Where were those silly-ass bicycle patrols? The suspect just walks down Interstate 10 and gets away, while Phoenix PD is at Krispy Kreme.”
    Kimbrough turned back to me. “How did he even get your number?”
    “It’s listed,” I said, feeling ever more foolish.
    “Who’s going to write this report?” a younger city cop demanded, realistically.
    God, my head and knees hurt. Maybe I’d end up like one of those old people who has total knee replacement with some very expensive composite material, kind of like the stuff flying off those cars in the tunnel, and yet your knees still hurt like hell.
    I looked around the room.
A jurisdictional goat-fuck
, I heard Peralta’s voice say. Yes, my friend, and you would know just how to take charge. Just the right amount of politicking, and just the right amount of hard-ass. Well, if I knew those things I’d have tenure at a major university history department.
    I said quietly, “It’s not O’Keefe.” Everybody stopped talking and looked at me.
    “O’Keefe didn’t shoot Peralta.”
    “Oh, bullshit,” the Phoenix captain said under his breath.
    “He just tried to shoot you, too!” Kimbrough said. “And from the way you describe the shot, I wouldn’t be surprised if ballistics finds this is the same gun that shot Peralta.”
    I shook my head. “He’s not our guy.”
    “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Kimbrough said. “Leo O’Keefe was an accessory in the worst assault on Maricopa County deputies in history. Leo O’Keefe is a convicted murderer. Now, he’s an escapee. We have a threatening note, sent by him, found on the body of a former deputy, who was also involved in that Guadalupe incident. And now he’s tried to take a whack at you, Mapstone—you, the deputy who arrested him and signed his booking record. The guy is two decades of trouble. He’s a monster.”
    I had to admit told that way it sounded airtight. Leo O’Keefe, broken out of the big house and come to settle the big score with the sheriff’s office. But I also knew the ways of law enforcement bureaucracies. Leo was our only theory in a high-profile shooting. Without Leo, we were screwed.
    I said, “It wasn’t a threatening note. It was his name on a piece of paper. Tonight, Leo didn’t seem to know who I was, beyond the guy on the television from the press conference yesterday. That doesn’t sound like somebody who’s been carrying a hit list stamped on his heart since 1979. He said he didn’t shoot Peralta.”
    Lindsey said, “Dave, can you really believe what he said on the phone? Did he actually say he didn’t shoot