used the still-working radio in the wrecked Blazer to summon assistance.
“Where’s Hastings, then?” Ernie asked Joanna.
“Beats me. The bad guy I saw was Meadows, and I’m stumped as to motive for Brianna’s death.”
Fortunately, despite having suffered a multiple rollover, the sturdy Hummer still seemed to be driveable. With a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, Dennis Hacker was busy changing the bullet-flattened tire when Ernie put almost the same question to him. “Where’s the other guy?”
“What other guy? I only saw one.”
Ernie shook his head. “I guess we’ll find him eventually.”
“Look at this,” Hacker said, shoving the damaged tire in Ernie’s direction before the detective walked away. “That blown sidewall is enough to make me a believer in exit wounds.”
With the tire changed, Hacker climbed into the battered vehicle, started it up, and drove it right back up the bank, which probably was one of those commercially touted 60 percent grades. When the Hummer was back topside, Joanna loaded the walking wounded into it, ordering both Dennis Hacker and Dick Voland to belt themselves into the backseat. Assured of their grudging compliance, Joanna took it upon herself to drive them out of the war zone.
In the darkness, retracing the path they had followed earlier took longer than she expected. For one thing, because Joanna was taking casualties into consideration, she perhaps drove slower than necessary. She eased the Hummer over dips and bumps both vehicles had taken far too fast earlier when they had been racing in the opposite direction. Joanna found that driving the cavernous growl-and-go Hummer was different from driving either the low- slung Crown Victoria or her old Blazer. In fact, the experience made Joanna miss her Blazer that much more. Months earlier an insurance adjuster had declared it totaled. She wondered if there was any way to get it back.
Here and there along the way the sketchy road became virtually invisible in the dark. Joanna was relieved when the moldering ruins of the ranch house materialized in the wavering glow of her headlights. From then on, the dim path turned into a more well-defined road.
As they traveled, Dennis Hacker related his version of the events of the afternoon-telling how, while he had been on the telephone with Angie, a gun-and-knife-wielding, half-naked, and blood-spattered madman had burst into his camper. He told how they had struggled briefly before Hacker had knuckled under to Aaron’s superior firepower. He told how, while being held at gunpoint, he had struggled to free a wrecked Suburban from the flood- swollen stream while on the bank his captor had fumed and raged. And he told how, once the Suburban was on dry land, he had been ordered to open up the secret storage compartments and to remove a hoard of hidden cash and documents.
“He kept telling me to hurry because somebody was after him.”
Dick Voland, making notes despite the inconvenience of the bouncing truck, stopped writing then. “Did he give a name?”
“Marco,” Hacker said. “I’m sure that’s the name he mentioned, but I couldn’t tell if that was a Christian name or a family name.”
“Neither,” said Joanna. “The man’s name is Marcovich. Ste phan Marcovich. He ’s an air-conditioning contractor up in Phoenix. Unless I’m sadly mistaken, he’s also Adam York’s big-fish Freon smuggler.”
“That’s all, then?” Voland asked Dennis Hacker.
“As far as I’m concerned.”
Voland closed his notebook and flipped off the reading lamp. “All I can say is, you’d better thank your lucky stars for a young woman named Angie Kellogg. She’s the one who came busting into Sheriff Brady’s office yelling that something was up. If it hadn’t been for her, there’s no telling what would have happened.”
Out of sight of both her passengers, Joanna smiled to herself. She found it amusing that her chief deputy had neglected to make any mention of his initial reluctance to believe Angie’s story.
“I know what would have happened,” Dennis Hacker said grimly. “As soon as that Meadows guy no longer needed me, I would have been history.” He paused. “Where is she, by the way? Angie, I man. Is she still in Bisbee? We should call and let her know I’m okay.”
Guiltily, Joanna stole a look at her watch. Almost four hours, had passed since she and Dick Voland had left Angie alone at the Cottonwood Creek Cemetery with orders to stay there, out of sight, and wait for them. At the time, the sun had still been shining. The idea of Angie’s waiting all that time alone in a dark, deserted cemetery seemed like a cruel joke.
When they came into view of Dennis Hacker’s lighted trailer, however, Joanna knew at once that whatever orders had been issued, the free-spirited Angie had disregarded them. As soon as the diesel-driven Hummer rumbled into hearing distance, the trailer’s door flew open and Angie bounded outside.
Joanna was in the process of stopping the Hummer, but she hadn’t quite finished braking when Dennis Hacker pushed open his door. He leaped out and hit the ground running. By the time Joanna had the vehicle stopped and the emergency brake located, Hacker had Angie wrapped in an all-enveloping bear hug. In order to give them a moment of privacy, Joanna waited a second or two before she climbed down.
“I was so worried,” she heard Angie saying. “There was blood all over the place in there and broken glass and the telephone smashed to bits. I was scared to death you were hurt. And you are, too,” she added breathlessly, catching sight of the bandage on Dennis Hacker’s head.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s nothing. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d probably be dead by now. Right, Sheriff Brady?”
Angie, her face awash in tears, turned from Dennis to Joanna. “You saved him,” she said. “Thank you.”
“We were lucky,” Joanna said. “But he’s right. If we hadn’t come right when we did, things might have been a whole lot different.” She walked over to the trailer, intending to close the door. “Come on now,” she added. “As soon as I put up some crime scene tape-”
Glancing in the door, she stopped cold. “What happened in here?” she demanded, turning back to Angie.
“The place was such a mess that I couldn’t stand it,” Angie said with a shrug. “I know Dennis likes to keep things neat. I didn’t want him to come back and find it like that.”
“But it was a crime scene, Angie,” Joanna responded. “It should have been left exactly as it was. Cleaning it like that destroyed important evidence.”
Angie was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry,” she said tear-fully. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I got scared, sitting in the cemetery all by myself. I kept hearing things. Finally, I decided to come here and wait inside. But the place was so dirty. I thought I’d be helping by cleaning it up. Besides, I couldn’t stand just sitting here doing nothing.”
Shaking her head in exasperation, Joanna looked around at the spick-and-span interior of the trailer. “Never mind,” she said finally. “With or without the evidence from here, we should be able to nail Aaron Meadows on kidnapping charges. After all, Chief Deputy Voland and I both saw him in the act. Come on now. Let’s get these guys into town to a doctor.”
It was midnight by the time Joanna finally made it back home to the High Lonesome. Getting ready for bed, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and examined the tattered remains of her three-piece pantsuit. There was a jagged hole in one knee. Two buttons were missing-one from the front of the blouse and one from the sleeve of the blazer. Not only that, underneath it all, Joanna Brady was still braless.
Joanna fell into bed and was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow. At eight the next morning, she hitched a ride with a deputy out to the crime scene, where five other deputies were busy combing the rugged rock- strewn terrain, gathering up wads of wind-scattered hundred-dollar bills. Joanna arrived just in time to see Frank Montoya wave away the tow truck that had hauled the wrecked remains of Dick Voland’s Blazer up the mountainside.
Looking at the smashed hulk, the chief deputy for administration shook his head. “I can already hear what the insurance guy is going to say,” Frank grumbled mournfully as Joanna walked up beside him. “It isn’t going to be pretty.”
“No, I don’t suppose it will be,” she agreed. “Speaking about insurance. What’s happening on my Blazer?”
