A chill wind shrieked through the three-foot-tall grass. Lightning forked across the sky and thunder rumbled all around her. Angie wore jeans and boots and a long-sleeved shirt, but nothing waterproof. She hadn’t expected to be out in the rain on foot. She hadn’t expected to be in the desert alone.
The wilderness was still a frightening and alien place to her. Watching the desert birds was wonderful, but there were other desert dwellers that weren’t nearly so pleasant. She had heard, for example, that snakes and Gila monsters came out in advance of rain storms. Archie McBride had told her that, and Willy had backed him up. They both claimed that a Gila monster bite could kill you within a matter of minutes. A lot of what Archie and Willy said was so much bullshit. It was possible they had just been teasing her with more of their tall tales. Still, out there all by herself, with the wind whistling and the glass bent almost double, it seemed likely that they had told the truth.
In the course of hours of waiting and walking, Angie Kellogg had moved beyond being hurt. Now she was simply mad. “Damn you anyway, Dennis Hacker,” she shouted into the screeching wind. “Go ahead and laugh. See if I care.”
“You think it’s hers, then?” Joanna asked, watching Ernie fight the windblown hair into an equally windblown glassine bag.
“Who else’s would it be?” he asked. “As soon as we can get the body transported, we’ll have to search the rest of the area up here, just in case. And we’re going to have to hurry. The storm’s almost here. Get her loaded into that truck on the double.”
“Truck?” Joanna asked.
Ernie nodded. “Deputy Raymond brought along his pickup. He can take her back to Bisbee in that.”
Joanna looked at Matt Raymond’s Ford F-100 parked four vehicles down the hill. Then she looked back at the basket and the body bag. “No,” she said.
“What do you mean, no?” Ernie countered.
“Just what I said. We’re not going to haul Brianna O’Brien’s body back to town in the bed of a pickup truck like she was a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay. Put her in my Eagle.”
That announcement stunned the little group gathered around the body basket into total silence. Joanna caught the questioning look George Winfield leveled in her direction. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Load her up.”
As Deputies Raymond and Lindsey hurried to comply, Joanna turned back to the others, “Doc Winfield and I will go on ahead. The rest of you, don’t spend too much lime looking, for evidence. It looks like this storm’s going to be a doozy, It’s the first one of the season, so most of the water should soak in, hut I don’t want anybody taking any chances with that wash.” She aimed the last sentence directly at Jaime Carbajal, who grinned apologetically.
“Don’t worry, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I’ve learned my lesson. Besides, if we get into any trouble, the wrecker’s already here.”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. With the storm boiling in from the south, the possibility of vehicles getting stuck was one consideration. What was far worse, however, was the thought of Angie, out by herself, lost and afraid in a storm of that magnitude. She knew nothing at all about the desert. If a fully loaded vehicle couldn’t stand up to a flash flood, what would happen to her if she made the mistake of stepping into a raging, water-filled wash?
The rain hit long before Angie made it to the road. Within seconds she was soaked to the skin. Her hair was plastered down around her face. The downpour was startlingly cold.
Still, what choice did she have? Treading carefully, she picked her way across the rain-slick blacktop and positioned herself on the far side of the road. Through the pouring, slanting raindrops, no vehicles were visible as far as she could see in either direction. It looked as though it was going to be a long damned wait.
She stood in the rain for what seemed like a very long time. Peering blindly off to the east, she didn’t even hear the car bearing down on her from the west until it was almost upon her. When she did hear it, she turned just in time to see a VW bug flash by. It looked like Marianne Maculyea’s car. Sea foam green was the right color, but…
A few feet beyond where Angie stood the VW’s brake lights flashed on. Skidding dangerously back and forth across the center line, the car came to a stop and then the backup lights came on.
Angie ran forward, meeting the vehicle just as Marianne rolled down the window. “What are you doing here?” Angie asked.
“What do you think? That I’m out for a Sunday ride?” Marianne asked. “I’m looking for you. I came as soon as I could get loose from coffee hour. Climb in. You’re soaking wet.”
Summoning as much dignity as she could, Angie walked around to the far side of the car and got inside. “I knew they were looking for me,” she said. “I heard the sirens, but I didn’t want them to find me.”
“Why not? It’s pouring rain.”
Angie’s eyes filled with tears. “Because Dennis Hacker made fun of me,” she said. “I told him who and what I was and he laughed.”
Reverend Marianne Maculyea put the VW into a sharp U-turn and then shifted back up to speed. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” she said kindly. “Tell me about Dennis locker. I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but he sounds like a creep in need of having his lights punched out.”
It took several minutes for the body and Doc Winfield’s satchel to be loaded into the Eagle. After that a series of several backing maneuvers were necessary before Joanna could turn the Eagle back down the ridgeline. In the rearview mirror, she saw the investigators scouring the ground where the body had been hauled up over the cliff. She was just picking her way past Ernie’s van when the detective came huffing up behind her.
“On the way back to Bisbee, Jaime and I will stop by and see this Ignacio Ybarra down in Douglas.”
Joanna nodded. “You think you’ll be able to find him all right?”
“Are you kidding? Half of Jaime’s relatives live in Douglas. Finding him won’t be a problem. What about going to see the O’Briens? Do you want us to handle that, too?”
Joanna considered his offer. She had already done one cowardly thing by letting Frankie Stoddard handle the initial notification, which, by rights, should have been a function of the sheriff’s department. It would have been all too easy to let Carpenter and Carbajal go and take the brunt of David O’Brien’s wrath. Easy, but not fair. Joanna had been the one who had insisted on following procedure. Regardless of whether or not the twenty-four-hour rule had made any difference in Brianna O’Brien’s survival, it was only right that Joanna should take the heat for that decision.
“After I drop the body off at the morgue, I’ll go home, clean up, and change. Call me as soon as you get in. We were the ones who went out to see the parents yesterday. We should be the ones to go there today.”
Ernie gave her a half-assed salute that was at once both mildly teasing and respectful. “Right, Chief,” he said. “I’ll give you a call as soon as we hit town.”
As he backed away from the car, Joanna started to roll up the window. Then she thought better of it. Instead, she left it down. The smell of moisture sweeping across the parched desert was a welcome antidote to the smell of decaying flesh that leaked through the thick folds of the body bag and permeated the air.
“I appreciate this,” George Winfield said as they started down the mountain. “The truck might have done the job, but you’re right. It wouldn’t have shown the proper respect.”
“What about the autopsy?” Joanna asked. “How soon can you do it?”
“Tomorrow,” Winfield answered. “Unless you need it sooner.”
