Left for Dead

When it came time to exit the arroyo, Al climbed up the steep wash. Then he reached down and helped Detective Rush up and out.

“I thought this was where the attack took place, since this is where I found the blood spatters,” he told her. “They were tiny, though, and it looks like they’re pretty much gone.”

He was right. Whatever spatters might have been there on Friday afternoon had been blown away over the weekend by a scouring windstorm.

“This seems like the back of beyond,” Detective Rush said. “So why bring her here? If the incident began somewhere in the Phoenix area, they had to go to some trouble to get her this far.”

“Because it is the back of beyond,” Al said. “It was lucky for her that I turned up when I did. There are thousands of acres of empty desert out here. She might’ve lay dead in the wash for weeks or even months before someone found her. Illegals come through here all the time, and some of them die. As Sergeant Dobbs demonstrated, no one worries about it all that much. One dead illegal is pretty much like another. Whoever did this put her here because they thought nobody would pay attention. Turns out they were almost right.”

“You never saw the vehicle?”

“No, I heard it start up. It sounded like a truck of some kind or maybe an SUV. I’m pretty sure they heard me coming and took off.”

“On foot?”

“Yes. This track dead-ends at a barbed-wire fence about half a mile north of here. It’s a private road, but it’s better than the one we’re on. Made for a faster getaway. I tried calling it in at the time, but if anyone saw the vehicle, it didn’t seem worth stopping. Or else they missed it altogether. There’s a security checkpoint just west of Three Points.”

“There are cameras at those checkpoints?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll try to get a look at the films and see if I notice anything out of line. Maybe we can convince Sergeant Dobbs to help me out with that. What time was this again?”

“Late afternoon. The time should be in the report.”

“If and when said report surfaces,” Detective Rush said.

“I have it on good authority that it’s been located and sent along to Pima County.”

“I’m puzzled about those cigarette burns,” she said thoughtfully.

Al had thought of little else. The deliberate burns on the victim’s skin had haunted his nightmares for two nights. How could someone do that to another human being? “Burns and cuts both,” he said. “What about them?”

“Fresh?”

“I’m no expert. Maybe a day old, but it could be more or less.”

“You found her on Friday afternoon. If the burns were part of what could be called an ‘enhanced interrogation,’ what were her assailants looking for? Presumably, Chico, her pimp, was dead by then. So was this recreational torture only, or were they looking for specific information, something she knew and no one else did?”

Detective Rush pulled out her cell phone. She punched in a number and held it up to her ear. Al was surprised. There were plenty of places in this expanse of desert where cell phone communication was either spotty or nonexistent. Evidently, this wasn’t one of them.

“I want you to check something for me,” she said into her phone. “Go into the ViCAP database. I’m looking for unidentified female homicide victims with evidence of cigarette burns.” She paused. “Let’s say the last five years.” Another pause. “No, anywhere in the country. Get back to me as soon as you can.” Closing her phone, she looked back at Al. “You say this road dead-ends at a fence?”

Al nodded.

“Let’s walk, then,” she said. “You take one side; I’ll take the other.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t belong.”

Several yards short of the fence line but within view of the other road, Al came to a sudden stop. “When you say something that doesn’t belong, would you mean like maybe a cigarette butt?”

Ariel hurried over to where he was standing. The filtered butt lay on the weedy shoulder of the track. “Looks relatively fresh,” she told him. “Way to go. Good spotting. It’s too far from the fence to have been tossed out by a passing vehicle, which means whoever dropped it was walking here.”

Extracting an evidence bag from her jacket pocket, she collected the stub and examined it before slipping it into the bag and back into her pocket, along with the bagged cockle burr.

“Like I said, lots of illegals walk through here,” Al cautioned.

“Yes,” Detective Rush agreed. “I’m sure they do, but how many of them smoke filtered Camels?”

“They took off in a hell of a hurry when I showed up,” Al said. “It doesn’t seem likely they’d have taken time out for a smoke.”

“Maybe not as they were leaving,” Detective Rush said, “but what about on the way in?”

When Al and Detective Rush reached the fence, they found one additional bit of useful trace evidence. A tiny thread, similar to the one on the burr, dangled from one of the barbs on the wire.

“See there?” she said triumphantly. “They were in a hurry, and they got careless.”

“Assuming they parked here,” Al said, “how did they transport her from here to the wash? Did she walk there under her own steam?”

Detective Rush looked at Al questioningly. “How big is she?”

“Hard to tell, but not very. Five-five or so. Maybe a hundred and twenty pounds.”

“So most likely, one guy couldn’t carry her that far by himself. It would take two, at least, to cover this much distance.”

With Detective Rush in the lead, they started back the way they had come. When her phone rang, she stopped to answer and listened for a time.

“Okay,” she said finally. “If you’ve got any connections across the line in Mexico, you might see if there are any similar cases down there. In the meantime, we’ve got another victim with similar injuries. Only so far, this one isn’t dead.”

“What?” Al asked when she closed her phone.

“So far we’ve found three similar cases. Unidentified victims. Cigarette burns. Found in areas frequented by illegals. One in New Mexico, one in southern California, and another one over by Yuma, here in Arizona.”

“So it’s a serial killer?”

“That’s my first guess.”

“What happens if the killer finds out Rose Ventana isn’t dead?”

“Maybe we’d better go try to talk to her, and to that nun you told me about, and let her know that the patient might be in danger.”

“I think she already figured that out,” Al said. “Last night, when I showed up unannounced, she pulled a Taser on me.”

Detective Rush stopped short. “Really? A Taser?”

Al nodded.

“My kind of nun,” Detective Rush said with a laugh. “Definitely my kind of nun.”

“Are we going to stop by Pima County and let them know that the delayed assault report may be connected to a series of homicides?”

Rush thought about that before she answered. “I think we’ll just let it sog for a while. So far all Pima County has is an attempted homicide on their books. I have more than that in my jurisdiction because the victim, Mr. Hernandez, is dead. The last thing I need is to be caught up in some kind of jurisdictional pissing match when I really want to clear my case. And I don’t want anyone swooping in and screwing up my trace evidence. If Pima County comes online and starts working the case, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“What do we do next?” Al asked.

“We’re going to stop by your office and see about getting a look at those checkpoint videos.”

“And meet Kevin Dobbs?” Al asked.

Detective Rush grinned at him. “Remember what I said about people like that?”