When Joanna arrived at the crime scene, her Blazer was third in line, behind both Frank Montoya’s Crown Victoria and Detective Carbajal’s Ford Econoline van. Frank Montoya, Jaime Carbajal, and another man Joanna didn’t recognize stood pointing off the road into a brush-clogged drainage ditch.
“I know it would have been better if we hadn’t had to disturb the crime scene,” the unidentified man was explaining to Detective Carbajal. “But as long as there was a chance of saving her, I figured that took higher priority than preserving evidence.”
“This is the spot then?” Joanna asked, walking up behind them.
The three men turned to face her. “Sheriff Brady,” Frank said. “Yes, this is it. Down in the culvert. And this is Hal Witter, the man who found the victim.”
Joanna held out her hand. From her height of five feet four, Hal Witter seemed tall. He was silver-haired and in his mid-to-late sixties. Distinguished-looking, he carried himself with the straight-backed bearing of a military officer.
“Glad to meet you, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I’ve had some dealings with your office over traffic concerns for our various Volksmarches, but I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting you in person.”
“You say the victim was hidden in the culvert?” Joanna asked.
Hal Witter nodded. “Completely out of sight. I’m guessing she was there but unconscious this morning when we all walked past. It’s a miracle we didn’t miss her this afternoon as well. I was bringing up the rear. That’s my self- imposed task assignment. I keep an eye out for stragglers. In Volksmarching, everybody walks at their own pace. I don’t want to rush anybody, so I give everyone else plenty of space and let them go on ahead.
“I was walking by myself when I heard a moan. At first I was afraid one of my marchers was sick or hurt-that maybe someone had fallen and twisted an ankle. Sprains are pretty common at these kinds of events. As soon as I saw all the blood, though, I knew getting help ASAP was a matter of life and death. I used my cell phone. The cops and medics who showed up did what they could for the poor woman and then called in a helicopter. But I guess she was too far gone. Mr. Montoya here tells me she didn’t make it.”
Joanna nodded. “That’s right.”
Witter shook his head. “It’s too bad, but I was afraid that’s what would happen. I’ve seen gunshot wounds before. This one didn’t look survivable.”
“Where’s that?” Joanna asked. “Where have you seen gunshot wounds?”
“In the service,” he said. “I was in Korea and Vietnam both. Something like this brings that other stuff back- stuff I wish I’d forgotten.”
As he turned away from her, Joanna noticed him brushing away a tear. Wanting to give the man some privacy, she focused her attention on Jaime Carbajal. Armed with a camera, the young detective had clambered down into the ditch and was snapping pictures around the entrance to the culvert.
“It’s real sandy down here, Sheriff Brady,” he reported. “And it looks like the EMTs pretty well tore things up getting her out of here. I doubt we’re going to get any useful pictures out of this, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get any usable footprints.”
“Do the best you can, Jaime,” Joanna told him.
By then it seemed Hal Witter had regained his composure, so Joanna redirected her attention to him. “Since you were first on the scene, Mr. Witter, is there anything you saw to begin with that may have been disturbed by all the coming and going?”
Witter frowned. “You might want to check the weeds here. See where they’re mashed down? I suspect she was pushed or thrown out of a vehicle, rolled down into the ditch, and then dragged into the culvert. That’s just my initial impression.”
Joanna looked up and down the road. If a vehicle had been there once, now there was no sign of it. Other than the three parked official sheriff’s department vehicles, the road was totally deserted in both directions as far as the eye could see.
For the next several minutes, Joanna and Frank Montoya scrutinized the winter-brittle grass along the roadside. As Hal Witter had suggested, broken stalks testified to the fact that something sizable had rolled from the roadway down into the ditch. Careful not to step inside the area, Frank and Joanna marked it off with a boundary of yellow crime-scene tape so it could be searched later for any kind of trace evidence.
Finished with that, Joanna turned back to Hal Witter. “You found no identification?” she asked.
He shook his head. “None, and I checked, too. There was no purse, but people sometimes wear medical identification tags. There wasn’t one of those, either, but I did find a necklace-a little silver necklace with a strange turquoise-and-silver pendant on it.”
“What kind of pendant?”
“It looked like a devil’s claw,” Hal answered. “You know, those funny two-pronged gourds? It resembled a tiny one of those, with a pearl-sized seed of turquoise showing through from inside the gourd and with the two prongs made of silver. Why someone would walk around wearing a silver devil’s claw around her neck is more than I can figure.”
Joanna glanced in Frank Montoya’s direction and was relieved to see that he was busily taking notes. For the time being, that meant she didn’t have to. She was also relieved to know that the victim was wearing a piece of what sounded like very distinctive jewelry. Something that unusual might possibly make the prompt identification of an unknown victim far more likely than it would be otherwise.
“What did the woman look like?” Joanna asked. “How old was she? Anything you can tell us about her would be a big help.”
“Native American or Hispanic,” Hal Witter said at once. “I’d guess she’s somewhere in her mid-thirties. Dark hair-not really black-and going a little gray around the temples.”
“Wearing?”
“A sweatshirt-a red sweatshirt with nothing on it-no logo, no Walt Disney characters, or anything else. Jeans. Tennis shoes-Keds, I think. No socks. Nothing really memorable or remarkable about any of her clothing.”
“Other than the necklace you already mentioned, was she wearing any other jewelry?”
Hal shook his head. “No watch. No rings, and no sign that she had worn either one recently.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because when you wear a ring long-term, it usually leaves an indentation around the base of the finger. And in this climate, watches and rings both leave pale spots wherever the sun doesn’t reach. There wasn’t one of those either.”
Joanna shot Hal Witter a quizzical look. “That’s pretty observant for a civilian,” she said.
He grinned back at her. “Thanks,” he said. “I trained as a cop once, years ago. After Korea and before I re- upped in the army, I was a trooper in upstate New York.”
“Why’d you quit?” Joanna asked.
“Couldn’t afford it,” he said. “The hours were too long and the pay too low. I figured I was better off back in the army. The pay wasn’t that different, but it came with a place to live and a chow line.”
“Career army then?” she asked.
He nodded. “Retired Special Forces. Colonel.”
Just then Jaime Carbajal’s voice came from behind them, from the far side of the road opposite where he had disappeared into the culvert. “I may have found something after all. Look at this.”
As the three people on the road turned to look, Jaime materialized at the far end of the culvert holding three plastic milk cartons aloft. Two were empty. One still contained a quart or so of water.
“UDAs?” Joanna asked.
“I think so,” Jaime replied.
“But they could have been through here anytime. There’s no way of saying they were here last night, is there?”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” the detective answered. “One of the handles is stained with something that looks a whole lot like blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if it matches up with our victim’s.”
Joanna found the very suggestion chilling. In recent years the steady stream of undocumented aliens coming north from Mexico had turned into a vast flood, one that threatened to overwhelm the resources of local law- enforcement jurisdictions and of the Immigration and Naturalization Service as well. Increased enforcement in one place only caused the flow to move to some other likely crossing point. It seemed to Joanna that as soon as INS
