'And won't you need a place to plug it in?'
'No, ma'am. It works off a battery.'
'Like a flashlight, you mean? Lordy, Lordy, what will they think of next!'
It took the better part of a minute for the computer to reboot and recreate the file. Sarah watched the process in abject astonishment. Once Frank had called up the proper files, Joanna glimpsed a fax cover sheet followed by two more pages. The fourth page held a picture. Maybe it wasn't quite as sharp as it might have been with the help of a good laser printer, but the likeness was close enough for Joanna. She recognized Alton Hosfield's son at once. The likeness was close enough for Sarah Holcomb, too.
'That's him, all right,' she said. 'That's little Frankie's friend. How'd you find him? And what's his name again?'
'Merritt,' Joanna said. 'Ryan Merritt.'
Sarah shook her head. 'Never heard tell of no Merritts. Must not be from around these parts.'
'So, then,' Sarah was saying, 'is that all there is to it? Is that all I have to do?'
'No, Mrs. Holcomb, it isn't. I'm going to have to insist that you spend at least tonight and maybe tomorrow night as well in Tucson with your daughter.'
Sarah tapped her cane on the floor. 'Now, see here, Sheriff Brady. Mr. Montoya said that as long as I had someone here to look out for me-'
'That's not going to cut it anymore, Mrs. Holcomb. The man you've just identified is the prime suspect in five murders. That's five, as in one, two, three, four, five. At the moment, you and a discredited police officer are the only people who can link him to two of the dead. And if you're our only witness, I want to be damned sure nothing happens to you. Now, I can understand if you don't feel up to driving yourself at the moment. In fact, I'll be more than happy to have one of my deputies drive you there. Otherwise…'
'Otherwise what?' Sarah asked.
'I'll have no choice but to place you in protective custody. Mr. Montoya will drive you over to Bisbee to the Justice Complex and lock you up for the night.'
'You mean in a cell?' a shocked Sarah demanded. 'In jail?'
'In jail.'
'Why, that's outrageous. I never heard of such a thing.'
'Please, Mrs. Holcomb,' Frank said smoothly. 'Sheriff Brady is right. I'm sure you'd be much more comfortable at your daughter's house. Won't you call her now and let her know you're coming?'
'She won't be pleased, havin' me show up like this on such short notice. She likes to have plenty of warnin' so she can get the house all spiffed up before I come to call.'
'I doubt she'll mind that much,' Joanna said, 'once you explain all the circumstances.'
After a flurry of phone calls back and forth to Tucson, Sarah reluctantly agreed to go see her daughter. Meanwhile, Joanna read through the rap sheet.
'So what's the deal?' Frank asked when he finally had Sarah packed, loaded, and backing her Buick Century out of the drive and onto the street.
'Ryan Merritt's juvenile record is sealed,' Joanna said. '1 have no idea what he did to land himself in the stammer for twenty-one months prior to his eighteenth birthday. They let him out of Adobe Mountain and he was loose for a total of three months before he was arrested again on a parole violation. Because he was no longer a juvenile, he ended up serving the rest of his sentence in Florence. He didn't get out of there until May fifteenth of this year.'
'Does that mean he was out of juvie when Rebecca Flowers was murdered up in Phoenix?'
'We can't be sure because no one knows exactly when Rebecca was killed. But it looks right.'
'So what do we do?' Frank asked. 'Call in an Emergency Response Team and go stake out the Triple C?'
Joanna covered her eyes with her hands. 'I'm thinking. I'm worried that if we try that, he might pull the kind of stunt Monty told me about.'
'The FBI profiler,' Frank said. 'The guy I called for you yesterday. You never said you'd talked to him.'
'That's because I didn't tell anybody,' Joanna said. 'You're the only one who knows.'
'Tell me,' Frank demanded. 'What did he say?'
'Let's see… that the guy was young and white. That he'd had problems with authority figures. That he'd been in and out of prison and had no compunction about killing or hurting people. Monty also said he was probably leaving a message for us in the way he posed his victims. How does this sound to you, Frank? I think scattering dead bodies all over his father's property qualifies as a pretty strong message.
'Monty Brainard also said that our boy probably no longer cares whether or not he gets caught. He thinks he'll opt for going out in a hail of bullets, taking as many people with him as possible.'
'Including his family.'
'Right,' Joanna said.
'But if we go up against him, he may very well be armed with some of Clyde Philips' fifty-caliber sniper rifles. Our guys won't be, so what are we going to do?'
'I don't know,' Joanna said. 'We can't pick him up for questioning because what we have now is strictly circumstantial. If we don't come up with enough to charge him, God only knows what will happen if we have to let him loose again. The problem is, the longer we wait to arrest him, the more danger his family is in. Sarah Holcomb told us Frankie Ramos was Ryan Merritt's friend. Look what happened to him.'
For a long time neither Joanna nor Frank Montoya spoke. In the silence, there was nothing to be heard but the buzzing of a thousand locusts. High above them, a jet from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base arched across the blue sky, leaving behind a narrow band of condensation.
'I have to warn them,' she said.
'Warn who?' Frank asked.
'The Hosfields. I have to let them know.'
'But if you warn them, aren't you warning Ryan, too? What if they tell him we're after him and he takes off? l ire might get away.'
'But what if we're right about him? What if we keep our mouths shut long enough to collect evidence and he ends up killing his family before we actually get our act together? No,' Joanna declared, making up her mind. 'I'm going to go talk to them right now.'
'Alone?'
'Look,' she said, 'the Triple C has been crawling with cops for days now. If a single officer shows up to talk to Alton and Sonja Hosfield, that's one thing. If a whole armored division shows up, that's something else. If I had killed three people in as many days and left a couple of other stray corpses lying around here and there besides, I'd head for the hills if I saw two or three cop cars drive into the yard all at once.'
'You're right,' Frank agreed. 'Only one cop car, then, but with two cops in it. You and me, Joanna. Both of us together.'
Joanna nodded. 'Fair enough,' she said.
Frank frowned. 'But what if it goes bad? What if all hell breaks loose and he comes out with all barrels blazing?'
'That's what we have the cell phone for.'
'By then it may be a little late to call for help.'
'Who says we have to wait to call?' Joanna demanded. 'We're going in the Blazer and I'm going to drive. While we're headed that way, you'll be on the horn to Dick Voland to bring in officers and position them as our backup.'
They headed for the Blazer, climbed in, and fastened their seat belts. 'Shouldn't we have Dispatch send for Eddy Sandoval? I don't know exactly where he is at the moment, but chances are he's closer to Cascabel than any of the other deputies.'
'We can't call Eddy,' Joanna said.
'Why not?'
'Because I just fired him.'
