Behind her, a woman screamed out in a torrent desperate Spanish. “jDonde estd nino?
M nino … mi nino … jDonde estd mi niiio?”
Joanna turned toward the EMT, who was fitting the woman with a back and neck brace.
“Did she say something about a baby?”
The medic nodded grimly. “That’s right. She’s looking for her baby.”
Joanna turned at once to the three remaining Border Patrol officers. “Has anyone seen a baby around here?”
The three officers looked blankly from one to another, shrugging and shaking their heads. “Not so far,” Ed Coffer said.
“If she says there’s a baby, there’s a baby,” Joanna growled at them. “How about if you three go look for him?”
As the Border Patrol agents set off, Joanna once again scanned the scene in time to see the man with the broken leg and flayed face being strapped to a stretcher and then carried up the
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steep embankment. Then, for the first time, Joanna noticed a middle-aged Anglo woman in shorts and sandals sitting on a nearby rock. With her face buried in bloodied hands, she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Joanna hurried up to her. “Excuse me,” Joanna said. “Are you hurt?”
When the woman removed her hands, her face, too, was stained with blood, but it was the vacant expression in her eyes that provided an answer all its own.
“Who, me?” the woman replied dazedly. “No, I’m not hurt. I’m fine, but I’ve never seen someone die before. I was holding him-that man over there.” She pointed at the still and bloodied form of yet another man.
Little more than a boy, really, Joanna thought. A teenager.
“I asked him if he was okay.” Her body shook as though she had just emerged from a pool of icy water. “But just then he stopped breathing,” the woman continued. “I learned about giving mouth-to-mouth years ago. I tried to help him. I did my best, really I did, but there was so much blood coming out of his mouth … You’ve gotta believe me, I tried, but… but he died anyway. I’ve never felt so … useless.”
She broke off into another fit of sobs.
Joanna crouched down next to the woman and put an arm around her shoulders. “You did what you could,” she said. “Nobody can fault you for that.”
The woman nodded vaguely, but she didn’t stop crying. Or shaking.
“Would you like a drink?” Joanna asked, offering her the water. While the woman stopped weeping long enough to gulp some water, Joanna realized that although this innocent passerby wasn’t physically injured, she, too, was wounded.
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“You should probably use some of the water to wash off,” she suggested as the woman finished drinking.
The woman looked down in amazement at her bloodied clothing and hands. Using the remaining water, she began to sluice off. “Your face, too,” Joanna added.
As the woman doused herself with water, Joanna pulled the notebook and pencil out of her pocket. “You saw the accident?” she asked gently.
The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I was right behind it, by only a minute or so. When I came around the curve and saw it, the dust was still flying. I couldn’t believe it. That idiot had passed me a mile or so back, out while we were still on the flat. I was doing seventy. He came tearing up behind me like I was standing still and almost ran me off the road. He must have been doing ninety when he went flying past. Then when he hit the first set of curves, I don’t think he even slowed down.
At least I never saw any brake lights.”
Finished with the water, the woman looked questioningly at Joanna’s notebook. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself,” Joanna said. “My name’s Brady. Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County. When the call came in, I was at a rodeo waiting to see my daughter’s first barrel race. Who are you?”
“Suzanne Blake,” the woman answered.
‘Are you from around here?”
Suzanne shook her head. “From Douglas originally, but I live in Las Cruces now,”
she said. “My folks still live in Douglas. I come down once a month to check on them.”
“You’ll need to be interviewed,” Joanna told her. “So if you could give me your parents’
names and numbers …”
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For the next several minutes Joanna gathered Suzanne Blake’s pertinent information, including the exact time of the accident and where and when she had been passed by the speeding Suburban. “If you want to continue on your way,” Joanna said as she returned her notebook to her pocket, “one of my investigators will be in touch with you tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Suzanne said. ‘And you’re right, I should go. I called my parents when I left Cruces. My father knows exactly how long it takes to drive from my house to his. He timed it with a stopwatch once. He’ll be worried
