Outlaw Mountain

CHAPTER FOUR

Two miles east of I-10 on Houghton Road, Joanna could a-ready see the flashing lights several miles farther east that indicated the presence of several emergency vehicles parked on either side of the road. She stopped directly behind a van from the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office. As Joanna stepped out of the Crown Victoria, the familiar figure of Dr. Fran Daly emerged from the back of the van.

“Well, if it isn’t Sheriff Brady,” Fran Daly drawled, dropping a man-sized equipment case onto the ground between them. “Long time no see,” she added, wiping her hands on the worn leg of her jeans before proffering one of them in greeting. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Fran was a tough-talking chain-smoker who had, during the previous summer, worked on a series of homicides with Joanna’s department. When George Winfield, the Cochise County medical examiner, had taken off for Alaska on a honeymoon cruise, the board of supervisors had opted to contract with a neighboring county for whatever forensic services might be necessary in Winfield’s absence. Fran Daly, the assistant medical examiner for Pima County, had been drafted into service. At the time the arrangement was made, no one could possibly have anticipated that during the two weeks Dr. Winfield was out of the county, Joanna’s department would unmask Cochise County’s first-ever serial killer, uncovering the remains of several brutally mutilated victims along the way.

Joanna’s first encounter with the pinch-hitting Dr. Daly had been anything but cordial or smooth. The sheriff and the ME had first butted heads at a crime scene where a termite-infested floor had threatened to collapse beneath them at any time. Gradually, though, as one after another of the Cascabel Kid’s tortured victims came to light, the two women had achieved an uncommon level of mutual respect. In the process Joanna had seen beyond Fran Daly’s gruff and overbearing manner to the consummate professional underneath.

“How’s it going, Fran?”

Dr. Daly grinned. Reaching into the pocket of her Western shirt, Fran pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She shook a Camel loose from the pack and then lit it by striking a match across the huge silver-and-turquoise buckle on her leather belt.

“Can’t complain,” she said, blowing a plume of smoke. “Of course, I’m overworked and underpaid, but then what else is new? By the way, what are you doing here? From what the dispatcher told me on the phone, I was under the impression that the victim was found well within Pima County boundaries. Or has Cochise County annexed this portion of Houghton Road and nobody’s gotten around to telling me?”

“This is Pima County, all right,” Joanna said with a short laugh. “But if the victim turns out to be who we think she is, she disappeared from her home in Tombstone sometime Saturday night. The Border Patrol down in Nogales stopped her vehicle when four juveniles tried to take it across the border Sunday evening. So, depending on where you say death occurred, this may turn out to be our case or yours. If it happens to come to us, I don’t want to be last in line when it comes to information.”

Fran Daly nodded. “Fair enough,” she said. “Do you have detectives here then?”

“Not yet, but they will be. One of my homicide guys, Detective Carpenter, is on his way from Bisbee even as we speak. For the moment Frank Montoya, my chief deputy, and I are the only ones here. Unfortunately the victim’s son, His Honor Mayor Clete Rogers of Tombstone, is also on his way.”

“What for?”

Joanna shrugged. “Who knows? I told him he’s got no business here, but the mayor isn’t big on taking other people’s advice. He’s also an elected official who thinks his office gives him carte blanche to do any damned thing he wants.”

“In other words,” Fran said, “the man’s an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“You could say that.” Joanna grinned in reply. “But please don’t let on that I’m the one who told you so.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Fran said.

Just then a uniformed Pima County deputy emerged from a thick stand of cholla, trotted across a shallow dip, and approached Fran Daly. “Howdy, Dr. Daly. Want me to give you a hand with that?” he asked, nodding toward the equipment case.

“No, thanks, Sergeant Mallory. I’m used to lugging this crap around. I can handle it by myself. Do you happen to know Joanna Brady here? She’s the sheriff down in Cochise County.”

Claude Mallory was tall, rangy, square-jawed, and thick-necked. He might have been good-looking had it not been for the fact that his eyes were set far too close together. He favored Joanna with an appraising glance that seemed to imply: What the hell is she doing here?

“We’re not sure who gets this one,” Fran Daly explained in answer to Mallory’s unasked question. “It could be ours; it could be theirs. In any case, Sheriff Brady and her people will be on the scene, and they’re to be allowed the same access as officers from Pima County.”

Mallory nodded. “It’s gonna be pretty crowded,” he said.

Fran Daly shrugged. “The more the merrier,” she said.

Mallory started away from them. “The body’s over this way. If you’ll both just follow me.”

But Fran Daly was not yet done with her smoke. “How long before that detective of yours gets here, Sheriff Brady?” she asked.

“I sent for him as I was leaving Tombstone,” Joanna re-turned. “If Detective Carpenter left the office right then, he can’t be more than twenty minutes behind me.”

Fran nodded. “All right. I’ll go on up to the scene, get set up, and snap a few pictures. I won’t do anything critical, though, until after Carpenter gets here-just as long as he’s not too slow about it. By the time I finish taking photographs, he’ll probably be here. In the meantime, Sergeant Mallory, are you the officer in charge?”

“At the moment. The two detectives are up with the body.”

“According to Sheriff Brady, a man who’s the son of our suspected victim is on his way here from Tombstone. What did you say his name is again, Sheriff Brady?”

“Rogers,” Joanna replied. “Cletus Rogers.”

“Right. Rogers. You got that, Sergeant Mallory? When Cletus Rogers shows up here, you’re not to let him through. I don’t want any civilians blundering through my crime scene. You let Mr. Rogers know that if he’s planning on doing an identification of the body, he’ll need to come to the morgue in Tucson after it’s been transported.”

“Gotcha, Doc,” Mallory agreed. “I’ll handle it.”

“Good.” With that, Fran Daly ground out her cigarette butt on the pavement. Then she picked it up and dropped it into a small rectangular box of the red-and-white Altoid variety. Only when the box was closed and shoved into her hip pocket did she once again heave her equipment case off the ground.

“Now then,” she demanded of Sergeant Mallory. “Where is it we’re going?”

“This way. It’s not far, but the cactus grows so thick you can’t see inside it.”

As Claude Mallory and Fran Daly walked away, Joanna started to follow them. She went as far as the ditch and then stopped. Fran was dressed in proper crime scene attire-a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and snakeskin cowboy boots. Joanna was in high heels, a silk blouse, and a cotton-knit blazer and skirt. One glance at the thick grove of spiny cactus convinced her that what she had worn into the office that morning-clothing that would have been entirely appropriate for an appearance at a board of supervisors meeting-wasn’t going to cut it at a cholla-studded crime scene.

Remembering her mother’s old adage about an ounce of prevention, Joanna retreated to the trunk of the Crown Victoria and dug into the small suitcase of “just-in-case” clothes she kept packed at all times.

She extracted jeans and a worn pair of tennis shoes as well as an ankle-length cotton duster straight out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. After changing, she was just starting to cross the ditch when a battered Ford F-100 pickup pulled up beside her. It screeched to a halt with Clete Rogers at the wheel. Parking half-on and half-off the road, he rammed the pickup into neutral and jumped out.

“All right, Sheriff Brady,” he demanded. “Where is she? Over there? In that stand of cactus somewhere?”

Joanna had hoped Clete Rogers wouldn’t arrive until after Sergeant Mallory had returned from leading Fran Daly to the crime scene. That way, someone from Pima County could have taken the flak for sending the mayor of Tombstone on his way. Unfortunately, Sergeant Mallory had dodged the bullet.

“You can’t go there, Mayor Rogers,” Joanna said, stepping into the path and barring his way. “As I told you earlier, crime scenes are off limits to civilians.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Rogers objected. “This isn’t Cochise County. You’ve got no authority here.”

“Yes, I do,” Joanna told him. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Fran Daly of the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office about this. She made it clear she doesn’t want you here. You’re to go to the Pima County morgue in Tucson to make an official identification. If you’d like, you can go there and wait.”

“How long will that be?”

“No telling.”

“Is it hours, then? Days?” Clete Rogers demanded. “What are we talking about here?”

“As I said, there’s no way to know.”

Another car pulled up and stopped. This one was a cherry-red Chrysler Sebring convertible with an auburn-haired woman at the wheel. She, too, parked without first bothering to move her vehicle entirely out of the path of traffic. She jumped out of the car. Leaving her door ajar, she came striding up to where Joanna and Clete Rogers stood.

“What’s going on here?” she asked.

Clete turned to Joanna. “If I’m not supposed to be here, why is she?” he demanded. “Who told her?”

An angry woman marched up until she stood within inches of Clete Rogers’ face. Belligerently she stared up at him. “She’s my mother, too,” she stormed. “And it happened just the way I said it would. 1 tried to tell you the guy was bad news-that he was trouble. But you’re always so much smarter than anyone else. You knew all about this long before I did, but you didn’t bother to lift a finger. If you had told me what was really going on, I might have prevented this from happening, but oh no. Not you. And now Mother’s dead because of you, because you’re such a closed-mouthed son of a bitch. I hope you’re happy.”

“Wait just a damned minute here!” Clete railed back at his sister. “You’re saying what happened is all my fault? No way!”

“You should have made her break up with him.”

Clete hooted with laughter. “Sure,” he said. “Me make her. When did anybody ever make Mother do anything she didn’t want to do?”

Joanna remembered what Frank Montoya had said about the previous day’s incident in the Grubsteak, about the two-sided fight between Susan Jenkins and her brother, and the scuffle that had included a table’s worth of flying crockery and glassware. Before they could start whaling on one another, Joanna attempted to soothe the raging waters.

“Excuse me,” she began calmly, holding out her hand. “You must be Susan Jenkins. I’m the-”

“You stay out of this,” Susan snarled back. “Who the hell do you think you are? If I want to tell my brother he’s a jackass, it’s nobody’s business but ours. Now leave us alone.”

“A jackass!” Clete choked. “Why, of all the-” He clenched one massive fist and drew back, as if preparing to deliver a brain-crushing blow.

Joanna’s mind echoed with all the police academy cautions about the danger of stepping into the middle of a domestic dispute. She knew the statistics involved-the textbook recitations of cops killed and injured nationwide when summoned to intervene in family disturbances. Even so, as Clete Rogers wound up to deliver a haymaker to his sister’s skull, Joanna had no choice but to act.

“All right, you two,” she said, stepping into the fray and inserting her own body between the bristling pair, both of whom towered over her. “Knock it off!”

Surprisingly enough, Clete complied immediately. Susan Jenkins, however, held her ground. “I told you to leave us alone.”

“And I said knock it off!” Joanna repeated.

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are-”

“I’ll tell you who I am,” Joanna told her. “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady, and I’m ordering you back to your vehicle. Now!”

“Why? If my brother’s allowed to be here, I should be able to-”

“Return to your vehicle immediately, Mrs. Jenkins. Otherwise I’ll be forced to place you under arrest.”

“Under arrest!” Susan screeched. “Me? My mother’s dead. My worthless brother turned a deaf ear and let her boyfriend kill her, and you’re telling me I’m the one who’s under arrest?”

But even as she objected, Susan Jenkins took a backward step. Joanna stepped after her, hoping to keep her moving in the right direction. “All the way to the car, Mrs. Jenkins,” Joanna urged. “I want you to stand behind your vehicle. Spread your legs and place both hands on the trunk.”

The big danger in domestic disputes is always the possibility that both combatants will stop fighting with one another and turn on the police officer. Concerned that Clete Rogers might come at her from behind, Joanna glanced over her shoulder. She was relieved to see that rather than joining in, he had moved away, backing up until he collided with the rear bumper of Fran Daly’s van. It took mere seconds for Joanna to see that he posed no threat, but that momentary lapse of attention was enough for Susan Jenkins to launch a full-scale attack. By the time Joanna realized what was happening, the enraged woman was almost on top of her.

Dodging to one side, Joanna reached out, grabbed Susan by one arm and then tossed her over an outthrust hip. One moment Susan, bent on attack, was rumbling forward. The next she was sailing skyward and flipping end over end. She landed on her back with a thump that sent the air whooshing out of her lungs. For several long moments she didn’t breathe. She simply lay there, staring bug-eyed into the sky.

With her own heart pounding, Joanna placed one foot on her opponent’s shoulder. She was in the process of wrestling her Glock out from under the billowing duster when another car-a familiar white Econoline van-stopped beside her. Her burly, middle-aged homicide detective, Ernie Carpenter, vaulted from his vehicle and into the fray. “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

“Cuff her, Ernie,” Joanna ordered, moving away. “I don’t think she’s armed, but you’d better check.”

By then, Susan was coughing and gasping for breath. Ernie reached down, hauled her to her feet, and then spun her around to secure her wrists behind her. Meanwhile, Joanna hurried to check on Clete Rogers, who was leaning against Fran Daly’s van. His face had gone dangerously white.

“Are you all right?” Joanna asked.

He nodded. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ve got some medication in my truck. Just help me back to it.”

With him leaning against her for support, Joanna led him back to his pickup. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” she asked. “I can call for an ambulance and have them take you to a hospital in Tucson.”

He waved her away and then reached for a lunch-box-sized cool chest on the seat beside him. “No,” he said, as he opened the lid. “Just let me be for a little. I’ll be fine.”

Sergeant Mallory appeared at that moment. “What’s going on?” he demanded, looking from Joanna to a dust-covered but still belligerent Susan Jenkins.

“I want that woman arrested,” Joanna said, pointing at Susan. “She’s to be charged with assaulting a police officer.” “Who is she?” Mallory asked.

“Susan Jenkins, the dead woman’s daughter.”

Mallory looked puzzled. “I thought the son was the one who was on his way.”

“They’re both here,” Joanna told him. “Clete Rogers is over there in his truck. Somebody had better check on him. He may need medical attention.”

Mallory whistled. “Nice family.”

“Isn’t that the truth!”

While Mallory went to check on Clete Rogers, Ernie walked over to Joanna. His thick, bushy eyebrows were beetled into a frown. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“As I drove up, I saw what was happening,” Ernie continued. “The woman was coming right at you, Joanna. She’s so much bigger than you are, I thought for sure you were a goner. The next thing I knew, though, she was flying through the air like some kind of rag doll. Nice move. Who showed you that one?”

As relief flooded through Joanna’s body, she remembered those countless summertime sessions out in the yard at High Lonesome Ranch where Andy had taught both his wife and daughter a collection of self-defense moves. He had taught them to use a thumbhold that could bring even the most burly opponent to his knees. Not only that, Andy had shown Joanna and Jenny how an attacker’s own body weight could be used against him. Or her, as the case might be.

On wrestling mats Andy had borrowed from one of his old high school coaches at Bisbee High, they had practiced time and again until they had perfected their technique-until Joanna could throw Andy and until Jenny, in turn, could throw her mother. At the time it had seemed like little more than a game-something inexpensive that the financially strapped family could do together. Back then it had never occurred to Joanna that those very skills might one day mean the difference between life and death-between walking away from a fight as opposed to being carried away on a stretcher.

“It’s a gift,” Joanna told Ernie.

Ernie’s frown deepened. “You mean it’s something you were born knowing?”

Joanna shook her head. “No, I mean it’s something Andy taught me before he died. A gift from him.”

“Well,” Ernie Carpenter said. “It’s pretty damned impressive.”

Frank Montoya came up behind them. In his early thirties, Frank was a tall man with a medium build. In hopes of disguising his receding hairline, he kept his hair barbered in a precision crew cut.

“Ernie!” Frank exclaimed. “You’re already here. Good. Doc Daly sent me to find you. She’s almost ready to start the proceedings, and she was hoping you’d arrived.” Frank stopped and looked around at the collection of haphazardly parked cars. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Was there a fender bender or something?”

Joanna chuckled nervously. “No. Chapter two in the Rogers family feud. I’ve asked Sergeant Mallory to place Susan under arrest. Other than that, everything’s fine.”

“You’re sure?” Frank asked.

The very real concern fellow officers showed one another never failed to touch Joanna. “Really,” she said, “I’m fine, Frank. Lead the way to the crime scene. Let’s not keep Fran Daly waiting.”

“If you expect me to arrest her,” Mallory objected, “what about statements? I’m going to need to talk to both you and your detective here.”

“We won’t go back to Bisbee without talking to you, Sergeant Mallory,” Joanna reassured him. “But right this minute, working with Dr. Daly takes precedence.”

As Joanna followed Frank Montoya and Ernie Carpenter into the cholla grove, she slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed Dick Voland’s number. “I just had a little run-in with Clete Rogers’ sister,” she told him. “She seems to think her mother’s boyfriend may have had something to do with all this. His name’s Farley Adams or Adams Farley. I forget which. Anyway, if Detective Carbajal turns up there, you might have him take a run to the mining claim out on Outlaw Mountain. Regardless of what Susan Jenkins thinks about the guy, we owe him the common courtesy of letting him know what’s happened to Alice. I don’t think anyone else is going to do it. Besides, in the process, between Sunday and now, maybe he’ll have remembered some little detail that might help us.”

“Will do,” Dick replied. “Besides, regardless of whether or not they’re suspects, it never hurts to chat with survivors.”

“Also, you may want to have one of the town marshals over in Tombstone slap some crime scene tape across the entrance to Alice Rogers’ house until we have a chance to process it and make sure whatever happened didn’t happen there.”

“I’m one jump ahead of you there,” Dick Voland told her. “By now, the crime scene tape should already be in place.”

“Thanks, Dick,” she said. “I knew I could count on you.”

Talking as she walked, Joanna had been threading her way into the thick grove of ten-foot-high teddy-bear cholla. Not paying close enough attention, she came too close to one of the monster cacti. A gust of breeze caught the end of her duster and blew it against one of the buds of new growth at the end of a branch. Instantly, a spine-covered ball the size of a baseball came loose from the branch and attached itself to the duster. Before Joanna could disengage it, the next gust of wind whipped the duster, cactus and all, against her shin. Several of the needle-sharp barbed spines sliced through several layers of material and jabbed into her leg. Yipping in pain, Joanna reached for her leg, only to knock into another branch with her elbow.

Alerted by her yelp, Frank turned around just in time to see Joanna pull away from the second cactus with a second spine-covered ball sprouting from one elbow.

“I always thought they called cholla jumping cactus because the cactus jumped,” he observed with a smile. “I see now the cactus stays put. It’s really the people who jump.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she ordered curtly, “Come help me. This hurls like hell.”

Without another word, Frank pulled his Leatherman multi-purpose tool from the pouch on his belt. Flipping it open to the pliers configuration, he used that to remove the two offending cactus segments. Once the spines had been pulled free from her body, Joanna stood alternately massaging first her burning leg and then her arm. Even though the needles were gone, her flesh still hurt. It felt like the aftermath of a bee or wasp sting. Adding insult to injury, under her fingertips she felt a run tear through her brand-new pair of No Nonsense panty hose. When it came to crime scene investigation, panty hose were the most common casualty.

“Thanks,” she said gratefully as Frank restowed his Leatherman. “I couldn’t believe how much those spines hurt.”

Frank shook his head. “If you think this was bad,” he warned, “just wait till you see what happened to Alice Rogers.”

They both moved forward then. Deep in the grove of cacti they came to a small space where the cholla wasn’t as thick. Several of them appeared to have been knocked down. In the middle of the fallen cacti and on top of one-impaled on the three-inch spines-lay a small female form that was covered with ants and surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies. Hundreds of needles dug deep into the woman’s back and sprouted from her legs and arms. The slightly bloated body was clad in a print dress and a lightweight sweater. There were torn nylons on her legs, but no shoes. Her vacant, empty eyes stared upward. One tightly clenched fist rested on her breast. The other lay outstretched on the rocky ground, as if searching for the pair of wraparound sunglasses that lay in the dirt just out of reach.

Fresh from her own excruciating encounter with the cacti, Joanna had difficulty looking at the cholla needles piercing Alice Rogers’ insect-covered sunbaked flesh. She didn’t want to think about how much the poor woman had suffered. It hurt Joanna to realize that she had died in such a horrific way-alone and in appalling pain.

A stiff breeze, blowing out of the west, swept across the scene and filled Joanna’s nostrils and lungs with the awful stench of death. Once she would have turned and fled from that all-pervasive odor. Now she simply waited, hoping that eventually her gag reflexes would settle and that her nostrils would adjust.

Engrossed in what was going on around her, Joanna lost track of the fact that Frank was standing at her elbow. When he spoke, she started reflexively, almost as though she had been awakened from a sound sleep.

“Well,” he said. “I’ve heard of people sleeping on a bed of nails, but this is ridiculous.”

It was a nonsensical comment, and it certainly wasn’t funny, but somehow it did the trick. The bile that had been rising dangerously high in Joanna’s throat receded. What came out of her mouth was a chuckle-a hoot of utterly inappropriate, necessary, and life-affirming laughter.

“It’s ridiculous, all right,” she agreed when she finally sobered enough once again to be capable of speech. “Ridiculous but deadly.”