detective would give up the search so soon.
“So what do we do now?” Brian asked.
“We dig,” Leggett returned. “Or rather, you dig and I watch. I’ve got a bad back. I trust you were wearing gloves when you handled those first few bones?” Brian nodded.
“Good boy. Chances are there won’t be any fingerprints, but then again, you never can tell.”
As the sun went down behind the Baboquivari Mountains in the west, Detective Leggett sat to one side of the hole, smoking, while Brian Fellows dug. He pawed in the soft dirt with renewed vigor. Slowly, one bone at a time, the grisly collection beside the hole grew in size. After several minutes of finding nothing, Brian was about to give up when his gloved fingers closed around something thin and pliable.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Hey, look. A wallet.”
Leggett was at his side instantly, hand outstretched to retrieve the prize. “This hasn’t been down there long,” he said, holding it up to examine it in the fading light. Leaving the wallet to Detective Leggett, Brian returned to searching the hole for any remaining evidence.
“That’s funny,” Leggett reported a few moments later.
“What’s funny?”
“There’s a current driver’s license here,” Leggett reported. “One that still has a year to run. I would have thought the corpse was far too old for that.”
“What’s the name?” Brian asked, climbing out of the hole.
“Chavez,” Leggett answered. “Manny Chavez. Indian, most likely. There’s a Sells address but no phone number. Want to have a look?”
Leggett handed the wallet over to Brian, leaving the plastic folder opened to the driver’s license page. Brian glanced at it, started to give it back, then changed his mind to take a second look.
“Wait a minute,” he said, pointing to the picture. “That’s the guy from this afternoon. I’m sure of it.”
“What guy?”
“The one we air-lifted into TMC just before I called for a detective. The one who’d had the crap beaten out of him before Kath Kelly found him.”
“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”
“Hell, yes, I’m sure.”
“In that case,” Leggett said, “I guess I’d better go talk to him. You stay here and keep the crime scene secure. I’ll call for a deputy with a generator and lights to come out and relieve you.”
“What are you going to do?” Brian asked.
“I already told you. Go to the hospital and talk to the guy.”
“How?”
“What are we doing, playing Twenty Questions?”
“How are you going to talk to him?” Brandon insisted.
“You’re some kind of comedian, Deputy Fellows,” the detective said. “To quote a former President, read my lips. I’m going to talk to Mr. Chavez with my mouth.”
“Do you speak
“No, do you?”
Brian nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“No shit?”
“No shit!”
For a moment Leggett stood looking at him. Finally he shrugged. “In that case,” he said, “I guess we’ll get somebody else to secure the damn crime scene, because you’re coming with me.”
Mitch Johnson had a large, trunk-sized box that he sometimes used to haul canvases around. Both the top and floor of the custom-made wooden box had matching grooves in them that allowed him to stack in up to twenty wet canvases without any of them touching each other. In advance of heading into town with Lani, he had emptied the box and loaded it into the back of the Subaru. Then, after blindfolding Lani with one of the cut pieces of scarf, he led her out of the Bounder.
Already the new dose of scopolamine was having the desired effect. Clumsy on her feet, she stumbled and fell against him as she stepped down out of the RV. It gratified him to hear the involuntary moan that escaped her lips when the injured breast, encased now in a still-sodden cowboy shirt, brushed up against his body.
“Smarts, does it, little girl?” he asked.
The Bounder was air-conditioned; the Subaru had been sitting in the afternoon sun. The interior of the box was stifling as he heaved her inside, sending her body sprawling along the rough, splintery bottom. There were ventilation holes in the sides—that was, after all, the point of the thing. He put canvases inside it to dry. That meant that once he turned on the air-conditioning in the car, the temperature inside the box would reduce some, too. Enough to keep her from croaking, most likely. Not enough for her to be comfortable.
Mitch had slammed the tailgate shut and was headed for the driver’s seat in the Subaru when he saw a set of blue flashing lights snaking across the desert floor from Tucson. His heart went to his throat.
Close to panic, he almost had a heart attack when the car slowed at the turn-off to Coleman Road and then again as the pair of headlights came speeding toward him. By then he could hear the siren wailing through the still desert air.
