New River Blues Read Free Page A

to the city’s reputation and grants to its university. In pursuit of these benefits the city minimizes street lights, hoods the illumination it can’t do without, and supports a Dark Sky Association whose function is to remind suburban dwellers that clear desert air, unsullied by artificial light, has a fat bottom line.
    So at 4 a.m. in mid-November, most of El Encanto Estates was black as the inside of a boot. Sarah Burke found the house on Avenida Santa Teresa easily, by heading toward the light pouring out of all its windows.
    Big floods were already set up in the yard, too. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across the driveway, enclosing a swarm of busy men. Take away a few blue uniforms, Sarah thought, this scene could remind you of an ant farm. She parked her department Impala behind the crime-scene van at the curb. Neat in business casual, she strode at the steady don’t-mess-with-me pace of the street cop toward the uniformed officer behind the tape.
    I know him, what’s his name? They’d worked street patrol in adjacent sections of south Tucson when they were both rookie cops, and backed each other up through many a long night. Name, name. Had a wife who sold real estate, twin boys . . . then she got it, Lopez, and stepped up to the tape, smiling. ‘Morning, Frankie. How’re those twins?’
    â€˜Hey, Sarah. They’re wrecking my house, you want a couple boys?’ He opened his metal posse box and asked her, ‘What’s your PR?’
    She gave him her five-digit payroll number. He wrote it on his sheet after her name, and entered the time, saying, ‘You must have really burned rubber, you’re the first detective here.’
    â€˜I live in Campbell-Grant,’ she said, ‘just a few blocks north of here.’ A few blocks north in a different world. She liked her quiet midtown neighborhood, and didn’t lust after million-plus mansions like this one. But maybe just a few square feet of all this space . . . Her family circle had recently expanded to include a ten-year-old niece and a frequently visiting boyfriend. They were all doing careful minuets around times in the bathroom and her two decent reading lights.
    The Field Sergeant was already there, deploying patrolmen at the front and back doors of the house and around the yard. This was going to be an expensive crime scene to secure; there was much more property in back. Directly in front of her, a beautifully tiled fountain stood quiet on its night-time setting. Behind it, the house sat well back on perfectly manicured grounds, a classic Spanish Colonial two-story, buff-colored stucco, red roof tiles and wrought-iron balcony railings. Solid and spacious, it looked like an implicit promise of the good life. But if Delaney’s first report was accurate, there would be no contentment at this address any time soon.
    She pulled her phone off her belt, remembering the last thing he’d said: ‘You’ll probably get there first, so go ahead and get the warrant, will you?’ Miserable time to call a judge, but what can you do?
    Judge Peter Geisler answered on the first ring. At sixty-four, he had come to regard his worsening sleep dysfunction as a chance to catch up on his reading. He was halfway through the latest dismal book about Iraq, he said, and was not sorry to be interrupted. She told him she was investigating the double murder of a couple in their own bed and he said that sounded pretty mild compared to what our government was up to in foreign lands. She waited patiently while he ranted about the intellectual disconnect of people in high places.
    As soon as he paused for breath she described the house, grounds, garages, and several vehicles that would need to be searched. He endorsed her choices and authorized his signature. Sarah got on well with Judge Geisler, who had a good memory for which detectives turned in complete paperwork.
    Delaney was parking behind her