Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

Moonshine?

But the slobbery, snuffly, smelly something stopped bathing her face, and the weight lifted abruptly from her chest.

Rachel drew breath in a gasp and opened her eyes. She looked up…and up at a long, tall silhouette against a blue-white sky-but for only an instant, because almost at once the silhouette folded up and came down on one knee beside her in the sandy shade of a clump of Joshua trees. Now she wondered if she could still be dreaming, because she found herself gazing at a face that seemed to have come straight out of a Western movie. Steely blue-green eyes stared down at her from the shadows cast by the broad brim of a cowboy hat, eyes that were squinting in apparent concern, causing a fan of lines to radiate from their corners. Sandy blond hair straggled from beneath the hat’s brim to feather over a khaki shirt collar, and a thick growth of reddish-brown whiskers failed to hide a mouth that stretched in a thin, unsmiling line.

Once again, she struggled to sit up, but now it was a hand planted firmly on her shoulder that kept her where she was.

“Take it easy, miss…uh, Sister. We’re gonna get you some help, okay?” The voice spoke with unmistakable authority. It was deep and scratchy, and matched the weathered and rough-hewn face perfectly. There were traces of an accent, too. Southern, she thought.

The face came closer, bending over her, and fingers touched her face with unexpected gentleness. “Can you tell me who did this to you?” And the voice was at the same time softer and more dangerous. “Are you hurt, uh, anywhere else?”

Two things occurred to Rachel then. One, that she was wearing a nun’s habit, which explained her Good Samaritan’s reticence-even embarrassment-regarding her person. And two, he’d obviously noticed the bruises on her face.

And following close on the heels of those two realizations came a third: She was probably due for another contraction. Any second.

How was she going to explain that?

She pushed at the hand holding her down and managed to prop herself on one elbow. “I’m not hurt,” she said, trying not to hold her breath or clench her teeth. Trying to breathe. Normally. Trying not to give away the fact that she hurt everywhere. “I was just-I got a little tired, and thirsty and I thought I’d rest a few minutes in the shade. I guess I must have dozed off. I’m okay-really.”

The truth was, she’d gotten scared when she’d noticed several cars slowing down as they passed on the highway. That was when she’d hidden behind the grove of spiky Joshua trees. And there’d been a couple of contractions-bad ones-and after that, she’d curled up on her side to rest…just for a minute. She couldn’t have been asleep for very long.

The man put his hand under her elbow and helped her to sit up, while at the same time he unhooked a canteen from his belt. He had a lot of other things attached to his belt, she observed as he unscrewed the lid to the canteen and offered it to her. One of which was a gun. And there was a metal star pinned to his shirt. Which she supposed explained a lot of things. And did not reassure her.

Now that he seemed satisfied her circumstances weren’t dire, his eyes regarded her more with suspicion than compassion. They narrowed again as he watched her drink. “You want to tell me what you’re doing out here in the middle of the desert? Alone?” His voice was a typical lawman’s voice: hard and without much expression. “And how you came to have those bruises on your face?”

“Bruises?” The innocent and slightly puzzled frown came easily to her; distrust of law enforcement was automatic now. Awareness of that fact drifted like cloud shadows through her consciousness, along with a sense of sadness and guilt. I’m sorry, Grandmother. I know you didn’t raise me to be like this.

But the shadows weren’t dark enough to stop reflexive responses of caution and cover. “Oh,” she said, feigning sudden enlightenment as she wiped water from her lips with the back of her hand. She touched one still-tender cheekbone. “I guess that must have happened when I…”

“When you…” her Good Samaritan prompted when she paused.

Rachel closed her eyes and exhaled. “I feel so stupid. You see, I swerved to miss a-I guess it must have been a coyote-well, I’d never seen one, and I was distracted, and the next thing I knew, I was careening across the desert, and, um, I wound up in a ditch. Thank God for air bags!” She crossed herself and cast her gaze prayerfully skyward-a rather nice touch, she thought, considering what she was wearing.

I wonder if he bought it.

In his long and not always illustrious career as a homicide detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, J. J. Fox had been lied to many times. Although never before, he was fairly certain, by a nun. He knew what bruises left by human fists looked like. Plus, now that he’d had a chance to examine these more closely, he was pretty sure they were at least a couple of days old.

But who in the hell would beat up a nun?

“When did this happen? This…accident?”

A frown etched delicate pleats between her eyes. Dark eyes, almost black, so dark he could see himself reflected in them. Eyes fringed with thick black lashes, and with a slightly Asian cast, he noted. Probably mixed blood, and if he’d had to guess, given her size, he’d have said maybe Cambodian or Vietnamese.

“This morning…I guess it must be afternoon now, right? I’ve kind of lost track of time…”

J.J. fingered the radio mic on his shoulder. “We’ll get someone out here to take care of your car, ma’am-uh, Sister. Can you tell me whereabouts this happened?”

Again the frown. And this time she nibbled delicately on her lower lip. A very soft and full lower lip, he noted, and immediately felt ashamed of himself. The woman was a nun, for God’s sake. No disrespect intended.

“Oh-I don’t know! I think it was…back that way-no, wait…I’m so confused. I’ve been wandering around…maybe I’ve been going in circles, do you think so?” Her gaze lifted to his with helpless appeal.

Which might have had more effect on him if he hadn’t seen something else in her eyes, something he’d seen all too often, in his line of work, in the eyes of suspects and witnesses alike: a mixture of calculation and fear. This woman really did not trust him. And plainly, she did not want him to find her car. He wondered why.

It didn’t bother him too much that she wouldn’t give him the location of her vehicle; there had to be evidence of where she’d left the road, which should make it easy enough to locate. But no doubt about it, something about this woman and her situation was off-way off. Here was a nun, fairly young-judging from her flawless and unlined skin-of Eurasian ancestry and tiny in stature, out in the middle of the desert, miles from any outposts of civilization, on foot and sporting bruises that had almost certainly come from a beating. Small wonder his cop-radar was pinging like crazy.

He stood up and pivoted away from the woman while he got Katie on his radio and instructed her to send a tow truck out south on Death Valley Road. “Tell Bucky he’ll have to hunt for the tire tracks-don’t have the exact location, but I’m guessing it’s gonna be south of my location a couple miles, at least.”

“Got it,” Katie said. And after a pause: “So…is she?”

“Is she what?” Although he knew.

“A nun?”

“Remains to be seen,” J.J. said, and signed off.

When he turned back to the woman, she was on her hands and knees trying to get up and not being graceful about it. Evidently the lady had gotten herself tangled up in her habit, which seemed to him a little strange. He’d have thought someone used to wearing one of those things would have figured out how to manage it by now. Mentally rolling his eyes, he bent down and got a hand under her elbow and hoisted her to her feet.

No sooner had he done that, than she gave out with a groan, uttered a very un-nunlike word and folded right back up again, while hanging on to his arm with the desperation grip of someone in immediate danger of drowning.

Damn woman might have mentioned she was hurt! Swearing both aloud and mentally, J.J. scooped her up in his arms and hollered for Moonshine, who was panting in the Joshua tree’s shade a little way off. He set out with long strides across the sand, and about halfway to his car it occurred to him that, for a little bitty thing, this woman was a whole lot heavier than she looked. Then he looked down at what he was carrying.

What the hell?