Rescue?”
“They’re on the way,” Tica responded.
“Tell them we’ve got an inexperienced hiker lost out here in the Peloncillos, and it looks like a big storm is coming. If they need something of Angie’s to give the dogs her scent, have them get in touch with her boss, Bobo Jenkins, at the Blue Moon up in Brewery Gulch.”
By the time Joanna got off the radio, Frankie Stoddard was standing directly behind her. “So what gives?” the private investigator asked. “Is it her?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the wreck.
Joanna nodded. “We’re pretty sure,” she said. “Pending positive ID, of course.”
“And she just ran off the cliff here?”
“That’s how it looks.”
For a long moment, Frankie stood with her arms crossed, staring down at the wreck. “I know it’s your job to notify the parents,” she said at last. “But I’d guess you’re going to be tied up here for quite some time. If you’d like, I could drive back into town and tell the O’Briens that there’s been a fatality accident out here and the victim is most likely their daughter.”
Notifying the O’Briens was a task Joanna had been dreading from the moment she looked over the edge of the cliff and saw the smashed red pickup far below. “Once we get the body back to town, we’ll need them to come do an official identification, but you’re sure you wouldn’t mind telling them initially?”
Frankie Stoddard shook her head sadly. “Mr. O’Brien hired me to find his daughter,” she said. “It looks as though I have.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
the next several hours passed in a blur of activity. While awaiting the arrival of the Search and Rescue unit, Joanna stayed on the scene of the accident investigation. Overhead, the sky went from merely overcast to dark and threatening. The constant and ominous rumble of thunder to the south put real urgency into the race to gather evidence.
Joanna, along with Jaime Carbajal, worked at combing the steep hillside, bagging, logging, and labeling the debris they
“I’m about to give the wrecker operator the all-clear to haul this away, but f wanted you to take a look first,” he said, motioning Joanna in the direction of the truck’s interior. “See anything strange?”
Joanna looked inside. At first glance, there was nothing to see. The truck was absolutely empty. With both doors missing and both the windshield and back window broken out, there was nothing loose, including the driver, that hadn’t been shaken out during the truck’s roll down the mountain. On the gray leather headrest of the driver’s seat was a single smear that looked like blood, but that single stain was all there was.
Joanna had been there when the truck was removed from the body. She had seen the terrible laceration on the back of Brianna’s skull, a blow so severe that it had left part of her brain exposed. With a wound like that, there should have been blood. Lots of it.
“Where’s the spatter?” Joanna asked.
“Precisely,” Ernie returned. “You’re definitely starting to get the hang of this.”
Joanna appreciated her investigator’s unsolicited compliment, but there was no time to savor it. “So what?” she asked. “You’re saying Brianna was already dead when the pickup went over the edge?”
“It’s a possibility,” Ernie said. “A distinct possibility.”
Joanna felt yet another emotional hole open up and swallow her. On Saturday afternoon David O’Brien had expressed his fear-no, his firm belief-that something terrible had happened to his daughter. He had wanted Joanna to call in the FBI immediately. Had she done so? No. Instead, Sheriff Joanna Brady had taken refuge in the twenty- four-hour missing persons cop-out. She had done nothing. She wondered now if the outcome would have been any less fatal had she made a different decision.
“What about the other journal?” Joanna asked. “It’s not out on the hill. We’ve searched every inch of it. I thought maybe it might be inside here, under the seat or behind it.”
Ernie shook his head. “Believe Inc, this cab is clean as a whistle. So maybe whoever killed her took the book with him. Maybe she had written something in it that was incriminating.”
Joanna nodded, remembering the last entry in the other journal. “My mother is a liar.”
While Ernie went off to confer with the tow truck driver, Joanna returned to the spot at the bottom of the cliff where Doc Winfield had just finished zipping the body bag closed. As the two deputies loaded it into a basket, George turned to Joanna.
“I’m worried about trying to maneuver the body up that trail. Looks to me as though it’s going to be next to impossible. Do you think Mr. Hacker would mind if we used his block and tackle?”
Joanna wasn’t much interested in what Dennis Hacker would or wouldn’t mind. “He left it here,” she said. “He must have meant for us to use it.”
While Winfield attached the come-along to the basket, one of the deputies took the rest of the block and tackle back up the cliff. Even with Detective Carbajal and the two deputies to apply muscle, pulling the body up was still a tricky process. The face of the ridge wasn’t smooth. More than once the basket got hung up, once on a clump of mesquite and another time it wedged in underneath a jagged outcropping of rock. The second stall was far more serious than the first. With Doc Winfield on his hands and knees at the edge of the cliff shouting instructions, Joanna had to work her way out onto a narrow ledge far enough to pry the basket loose. The storm was almost on them by then. Sand and grit flew in her eyes, and the force necessary to set the basket free also threatened to knock Joanna off her precarious perch. It took half a dozen tries before the basket swung free and disappeared overhead.
“Good work,” Ernie said, stretching out a hand to pull Joanna back to the relative safety of a newly made path. “It’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck.”
Joanna was standing there catching her breath when she heard Doc Winfield’s shout. “Hey, Ernie. Come on up. There’s something here you need to see. Quick, before the wind blows it away.”
Grumbling, Ernie did as he was told, with Joanna close on his heels. When Joanna reached the top and could see, George Winfield was still on his hands and knees, staring intently into a scraggly clump of yellowed grass. “What’s this look like to you?” he asked.
Wedging his way between Jaime and one of the deputies, Ernie Carpenter dropped to the ground beside Winfield. The detective, too, stared into the grass. “I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed a moment later.
Joanna, coming up behind the group, was almost run over by Jaime, who was heading for the van at a gallop. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Ernie’ll need a set of hemostats,” he said. “I’m going to get them, along with the evidence log and the tape measure.”
“And evidence bags,” Ernie called after him. “I’m all out of the small ones.”
Catching up with the others, Joanna peered over Ernie’s shoulder and saw nothing. “What did you find?” she asked.
“A hair,” Ernie answered. “A single strand of long blond hair.”
“You’re thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you?” George Winfield said, “‘That she was dead long before she hit the ground.”
Ernie nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said.
Angie knew the storm was brewing. She was out on the flat now and traveling at an angle toward the road, but behind her in the mountains and to the east of them, she could see a block torrent of rain falling from the sky. She had always been afraid of thunderstorms. One of the girls in her first grade class in Battle Creek had been hit and killed by lightning at an outdoor barbecue. There was nothing for it, though, but to keep walking.
