everything around her—a dove cooing in the trees just ahead of her; the abrasive cawing of a crow; the white-noise buzz of cicadas that was noticeable only when, for some reason unknown to her, the racket stopped and then resumed once more. A small puff of cooling breeze caressed the overheated skin of her face.
At any moment, an armed and dangerous Rob Whipple could have materialized out of the house or from between trees in front of her. Given that, it was with some surprise Joanna realized that although she was being careful, she wasn’t necessarily scared. She was doing her job—what she was supposed to do; what others expected of her and what she expected of herself. It was during that silent and stealthy approach to Rob Whipple’s isolated cabin that she realized, for the first time, that she was doing the one thing she had always been meant to do.
Struck by that electrifying thought, Joanna sidled up to the gnarled trunk of a scrub oak and leaned her full weight against it. Standing in the deepening twilight, she suddenly felt closer to both her dead husband and her dead father than she had at any time since their deaths. It was as if she were standing in the presence of both Sheriff D. H. Lathrop and Deputy Andrew Roy Brady and hearing once again what both of them had tried to tell her from time to time—how once they set out on the path to “serve and protect,” it had been impossible for either one of them to do any-thing else.
Joanna’s father had spoken time and again about the importance of “making a contribution” and “doing one’s part.” Andy had insisted that he was in law enforcement because he wanted to make the world “a better place for Jenny to live.” And now Joanna Brady was amazed to realize that she had been bitten by the same idealistic bug. She, too, wanted to make a contribution. There were far too many Connie Haskells and Irma Sorensons who needed to he saved from the many Rob Whipples that were loose in the world.
Still leaning against the tree, Joanna wiped away a trickle of tears that suddenly blurred her vision. She had never been someone who believed in ghosts, yet she sensed ghosts were with her right then, watching and listening.
Ahead of her and off to the left, Frank Montoya was waving frantically, trying to attract her attention. He had moved forward far enough that he was almost at the edge of the clearing. Now, with broad gestures, he pantomimed that he would creep around to the side of the cabin and try looking in through the window. Nodding for him to go ahead, Joanna looked around her own posit ion while she waited.
She and Frank had moved forward on either side of the road. Eventually he sidled up to the cabin and peered inside. Then he turned back to her. “It’s okay,” he called. “There’s nobody here.”
Looking down, Joanna noticed a faint pair of tire tracks branching from the road and winding off through the trees, leaving behind only the slightest trace in the dense ground-covering layer of dead oak leaves. Curious, she traced the dusty trail of crushed leaves. The snapping and crackling underfoot told her she was leaving a trail of her own. In the deepening twilight she threaded her way between trees and bushes and around freestanding chunks of boulders the size of dishwashers. A quarter of a mile from where she had started, the tracks stopped abruptly at the edge of a rock bound cliff
For a moment, Joanna thought the vehicle had simply reversed directions and returned the way it had come. But then, studying the terrain on her hands and knees, Joanna realized the vehicle had gone over the edge and down the other side. Easing her way to the precipice, Joanna peered down. Immediately she was aware of two things: the form of a vehicle, lying with its still wheels pointed sky-ward, and, rising from the crippled wreck, like a plume of evil smoke, the unmistakable odor of carrion.
“Damn!” Joanna exclaimed. With a heavy heart, she drew back and out of the awful stench which, caught in an updraft, eddied away from the cliff. “Poor Irma,” she whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.”
It was then she heard Frank calling, “Joanna, where did you go? I can’t see you.”
“I’m over here,” she called back. “I found a car. And you’re wrong, Frank. There is somebody here—somebody who’s dead.”
Frank trotted up a few moments later. For the better part of a minute the two of them stood on the edge of the cliff trying to ascertain the best way to climb down. Joanna found herself feeling sick to her stomach.
“I don’t want to look,” she said. “Seeing Irma’s body is likely to make me puke.”
“I’ll go then,” Frank offered. “You stay here.”
But as soon as Joanna said the words, she realized they were wrong—a cop-out. It was her job to look; her sworn duty. “We’ll both go,” she said.
