the rest of it may be wrong as well. People will just call her a liar.”
“I’m not lying!” Holly said. “I’m telling the truth. Why did you do it?”
Amy shook her head. “This is stupid. It’s too cold to stand outside arguing like this. I’m leaving.”
She turned and started back toward the edge of the dump. If she was walking away with no further threat, it seemed as though the confrontation was over. In the sudden quiet, Joanna could hear sirens now. A whole flock of them, so perhaps backup help was on its way.
Meanwhile Holly was pulling herself up onto her hands and knees. “Why did you?” she said again. “Why did you make me throw those rocks again, just like I did before. You said it was Uncle Thorny and that I was finally going to get rid of him. But it wasn’t. It was my father. My God, Amy! I killed him, didn’t I? You made me kill my own father!”
As she spoke, Holly’s voice keened up in pitch, rising on the cold air like the howl of a wounded wild thing. And the sound of that desperate voice acted like a string on her body, pulling her collapsed form up from the ground the way a puppeteer gives life to a limp marionette.
Amy didn’t pause or look back. Holly, on her feet now, lurched after Amy.
Joanna, watching Amy over the top of the bern, making sure she intended no further harm, saw too late that Holly was flailing after Amy.
Afterward, there was never any clear way to tell exactly what happened-whether Holly Patterson reached out for Amy to grab her and stop her or whether she pushed her over the edge. For a moment, the two of them grappled there together tottering on the brink, hanging in space.
And then they both disappeared.
Two separate and distinct screams floated back up to the top of the dump. Joanna Brady heard them both, heard the clatter of falling rocks and boulders that were jarred loose as they fell. And then there was silence.
A moment later, Dick Voland’s voice floated up to her. “Sheriff Brady,” he shouted. “Sheriff Joanna Brady! Where the hell are you?”
“Here,” she called back. “Up here on top!”
Huffing and puffing, out of breath from a mad scramble up the side of the dump, Chief Deputy Dick Voland was the first person to reach Joanna’s side.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, throwing his own jacket around her quaking shoulders.
“I’m okay.”
“The hell you are.” He stomped away from her to the top of the bern. “We need another ambulance up here,” he shouted. “Now! And blanket& On the double!”
Voland came back. Somehow Joanna’s legs gave way, and she sank back to the ground. Dick Voland knelt beside her. “The city ambulance is down below. I’ve got cars and an ambulance coming here, but they’ll have to come by way of the main gate with a P.D. watchman escort.”
Joanna nodded through chattering teeth that made speech impossible.
“Lie down,” Dick Voland urged. “Lie down before you fall down!”
Joanna did her best to obey. The two hands that eased her down to the ground were both strong and amazingly gentle.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Just… co……. cold!”
Two deputies and a pair of emergency medical technicians scrambled over the top of the bern.
Blankets appeared out of nowhere. One of the EMTs slapped a blood-pressure cuff around Joanna’s arm, while the other helped wrap her in the blanket. “How are the other two?” Voland asked.
The EMT shook his head and didn’t answer.
Which, in itself, was answer enough.
Voland knelt in front of Joanna and examined her stained and bleeding feet, watching her face anxiously while the medics went to work. As it became clear Joanna wasn’t badly injured, his anxiety turned to anger.
“If you were one of my deputies,” he growled, “I’d fire your ass in a minute! What the hell do you mean trying to pull some kind of rescue stunt without a damn word? If that lawyer hadn’t lost his nerve and yelled for help, it could have been much worse.”
Joanna tried to answer but couldn’t. Right then talking was out of the question.
“Forget it!” Voland barked. “And by the way, forget about that letter I gave you. If you want to fire me, fine. But if you’re going to pull this kind of damn-fool stunt, you need me too damned bad for me to quit.”
Things BECAME hazy after that. Gradually, Joanna realized there were emergency lights coming toward them on the road that ran along the out side edge of the dump. The ambulance that arrived was an old one that Phelps Dodge still maintained on its own property.
The next thing Joanna remembered was arriving at the hospital. An emergency-room nurse approached the gurney. Brandishing a pair of scissors in one hand, she had a determined businesslike look on her face, but she spoke like an effusive kindergarten teacher.
“I’ll just help you out of those wet things,” she said, starting to peel off the wet layers. “We’ll get you wrapped up in some nice warm blankets.”
Joanna looked down at what was left of her torn blouse and once-good wool skirt. The material on both was a yellow, mottled brown. “Don’t cut off my clothes,” Joanna said. “I can take them off my self. This is an almost new outfit. I’ll have it cleaned.”
