CHAPTER TWELVE
As Joanna headed north toward St. David with Darren's image still fresh in her mind, she was struck by a sudden pang of loneliness. Missing Jenny terribly, she grabbed up the cell phone and let the auto dialer call the Unger farm outside Enid, Oklahoma. All she wanted to do was talk to her daughter, to reassure herself that Jenny was holding her own against her hooligan cousins. But there was no answer, and by the time the Ungers' answering machine was about to begin, a radio transmission was coming in from Chief Deputy Montoya.
'What do you have for me, Frank?' she asked.
'All I can say is, that little bird of yours is right on the money,' Frank told her. 'Katrina Berridge's husband, Daniel, is indeed retired Indy driver Danny Berridge.'
'That's what I was afraid of.'
'Ruby Starr and I were just finishing working over the menus for next month, but if there's something else you need me to do…'
'Actually, there is,' Joanna replied. 'You and Dick Voland both better hotfoot it over to this new crime scene on the Triple C north of Pomerene. There's going to be lots of media attention on this one, and I'll want you to be on tap from square one. I'll brief you both once you get there.'
When Joanna herself reached the crime scene, Detective Carpenter and Dr. Daly were already on-site and on the job. In the sheltering shade of a thicket of mesquite just short of the river bed, Dr. Daly was using what looked like a finely screened butterfly net to capture flies. Meanwhile, Ernie had gone up to the first crime scene on the ledge to confer with the evidence techs who were there working on the previous night's burial mound. By the time Joanna was ready to approach the body, Fran Daly was bent over it, carefully tweezing what looked suspiciously like maggots into a small glass vial.
Lost in concentration on her grisly work, and wearing a mask over her mouth and nostrils, Dr. Daly seemed oblivious to the sheriff's approach. Joanna had tried to steel herself in advance for what was coming, but the effort was mostly wasted. One look at the dead woman's bloody, denuded skull and gas-bloated body was enough to leave Joanna feeling weak-kneed and nauseated.
'What do you think?' she asked at last, after once again taming her unruly gag reflexes.
Dr. Daly looked up. 'Well, Sheriff Brady,' she said, 'it's like this. I think we're looking for some asshole who has delusions of grandeur. Thinks of himself as some kind of Ernest Hemingway-style big-game hunter. She was shot from some distance away. Look here.' Dr. Daly pointed at the woman's sliced shorts where a shallow wound cut from back to front across the victim's right thigh.
'That looks to me like a shot that nearly missed, one that just barely grazed her. The same goes for this one that nearly severed her left hand. My guess is he was aiming for a body shot each time and missed. It must have taken hills three shots or more to adjust for windage. After that first shot-the one on her thigh, most likely-she took off running. At least she tried to run, but she couldn't get out of range. The shot that actually killed her came from the back and exited through the front of her chest. From the looks of it, I'd say it took most of her heart and lung tissue with it. That one killed her instantly.'
Joanna felt an involuntary chill as she remembered how the other victim-Ashley Brittany-had been rendered helpless by four deliberately placed close-range shots that had shattered her joints and left her stranded on her back as helpless as an overturned box turtle.
'In a case like this, I guess dying instantly is a blessing, isn't it,' Joanna managed.
Dr. Daly gave her an appraising look and nodded. 'Yes,' she agreed. 'I suppose it is.'
'Can you tell what kind of bullet?' Joanna asked.
'From the size of the exit wound, I'd say we're looking for something one notch under a cannon.'
'Something like a fifty-caliber?'
Fran Daly frowned. 'Maybe,' she replied. 'Why do you say that?'
'Because night before last, we had reports from this neighborhood of shots being fired. Two cattle were killed and an irrigation pump was shot to hell, all of it done with what we've pretty well ascertained must have been a fifty-caliber sniper rifle.'
'That happened right here on the Triple C?' Dr. Daly asked.
Joanna nodded. 'This ranch, but not in this same spot. About a mile or so from here.'
'But sniper-rifle kill ranges can cover that much ground and more,' Fran said. 'Are you thinking maybe a killer started out shooting up machinery and livestock just for the hell of it and then moved on to her?'
'Right.'
Removing her face mask, Fran lit a cigarette. 'It could be,' she mused. 'It just could be.'
With that the medical examiner fell silent. The second-hand smoke from her unfiltered Camels helped to cut some of the awful odor. Somehow ignoring the gaping wound in the dead woman's chest, Joanna tried to understand exactly what had happened.
'Do you think this is where she fell?' she asked.
Fran shook her head. Using her cigarette, she pointed toward where two thin dark strands of stain wandered off across the rocky terrain. 'If you follow that trail out about twenty-five yards, you'll find the kill zone. It's pretty much out in the open. He dragged her in here under the trees after she was already dead.'
'So if we're going to find bullets, that's where they'll be,' Joanna said. 'Out there where she fell.'
'That's right.'
Joanna looked upward through the lacy canopy of mesquite leaves that sheltered the scene from the worst of the early-afternoon sun. 'If he went to the trouble of bringing her this far, maybe he was worried someone would be looking for her. Maybe he thought someone might mount an airborne search. Bringing her under cover would make spotting her from the air almost impossible.'
Fran Daly nodded thoughtfully. 'Sounds reasonable to me,' she said.
Basking in the doctor's mild but still unexpected approval, Joanna went on theorizing. 'The scalping's the same, but there are some obvious differences between the two cases. This body is still fully dressed, while Ashley Brittany was naked. There's no cross here, and no rocks, either. But maybe the killer just hadn't gotten around to that part of it yet. With Ashley, he must have known he had plenty of time. Her pickup truck was found over near Redington Pass. He probably moved it there himself. At any rate, he most likely was fairly confident no one would come looking for her here. That's why he could shoot her and leave her to bleed to death at leisure. That's also how he could afford to spend God knows how long gathering up the rocks he used to bury her.
'With this victim, he's more rushed, more hurried. It's as though Ashley's death was premeditated, while Katrina's wasn't. Maybe she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he came out here to shoot up the cattle and stumbled over her in the process.'
When Joanna stopped talking, Fran Daly was staring at her, staring and frowning. 'How long did you say you've been a homicide detective?' the medical examiner asked.
At once Joanna felt embarrassed and self-conscious, sure her blatant lack of experience was showing. 'I didn't say,' she said.
'Why not?' Fran Daly pressed.
'Because I never have been,' Joanna admitted. 'I've managed an insurance office and been a mother, but I've never been a detective.'
'You could have fooled me,' Fran Daly said. 'It sounds like you've got a good head for it. Now, have you established any kind of trajectory on the shots that killed those animals?'
Surprised by this undiluted praise, Joanna had trouble answering. 'Not yet,' she managed. 'We're working on it.'
'Well, we'd better make that a top priority. If we can figure out where the guy was when he started pulling the trigger, maybe we can find something that will tell us who he is and how to find him. We've got to take this animal off the streets, Sheriff Brady,' she added urgently. 'If we don't, you'd better believe he's going to kill again.'
With that the medical examiner resumed her work. Dismissed, but feeling a sense of connection to the brusque woman, Joanna returned to her assembled troops-the two detectives and the members of the S and R team, all of
