by Betty Webb
The day promised to be a hot one, so after exiting the Trailblazer I attached a filled canteen to my gun belt. Through no fault of my own, I’d once been caught out in the desert without water, and I’d never let that happen again. I patted my jeans pocket to make certain my cell phone hadn’t slipped out while I’d been rustling around inside the car. It was there, but remembering those big mesas and their tendency to block signals, I doubted the phone would work. Still, the tenuous connection to civilization made me feel more secure.
Steeling myself, I set out to follow the coyote’s paw prints to her den.
The ground was so strewn with boulders and rocks that tracking was difficult but not impossible. Stretches of soft sand revealed that the coyote had crossed the road mere feet in front of my rental. She appeared to have come from the east, in the direction of the mitten-shaped mesa. I struggled up the loose shale of the graded incline bracketing the road until I reached a hard granite ridge at the top. Squinting my eyes against the sun, I made out a tumble of boulders at the base of the mesa. The perfect place for a wild animal’s den. Ever alert for the rattlesnakes endemic to this part of the country, I wove my way through the rock-strewn ground toward it.
A few minutes later I found the coyote’s den, cunningly hidden in a depression between two massive boulders and further disguised by a dense stand of brittlebrush. Cautiously, I looked in.
Out of a litter of four pups, three were already dead.
I helped the last one die.
The desert was populated by scavengers that might spread the disease, so I holstered my .38 and sealed the tomb with rocks. Heavy-hearted, I started back toward the Trailblazer. As soon as I was in calling range, I would alert the Walapai County Department of Health Services. The coyote hadn’t developed rabies on her own; she’d contracted it somewhere. Maybe from a skunk, a bat, or even a brush with a rabid mountain lion. The outbreak needed to be eradicated before a human came into contact with a rabid animal.
I was so deep in thought that at first I didn’t respond to the shower of sand that suddenly kicked up from the desert floor nearby. But when it was followed a millisecond later by the sharp report of a rifle, I dove for cover behind a rock outcropping.
Some fool city hunter out for pronghorn, amateur enough to shoot at anything that moved?
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hold your…”
Before the word “fire” left my mouth, another shot rang out. This time the bullet pinged off the outcropping, scattering stone chips everywhere.
“Asshole!”
Another shot. A hit even closer than the last.
No amateur, then. Whoever the shooter was, he was zeroing in. On purpose.
Someone was trying to kill me.
The “why” being irrelevant right now, I slipped my .38 out of its holster and waited. During my running and ducking, I hadn’t been able to get a definite fix on the source of the shots, but I thought they’d come from an area fifty yards to my east. The next shot, illuminated by a brief flash, proved it.
Now that I knew where my assailant was hiding, I could take appropriate defensive action. One quick look behind revealed the long, safe barrier of the rock ridge I’d originally clambered up. A few yards beyond that, my Trailblazer waited on the side of the road. Enough large boulders lay between my present position and the ridge that I might be able to make it, but once the land fell away on the shale slope, there was no cover at all. When I started down, I’d be totally exposed.
Often the best defense is a good offense, so I aimed in the general area where I thought the shooter had taken cover and snapped off a shot. I was rewarded by a grunt of surprise.
Good. Now he knew I was armed.
Simply returning fire was no solution. My snub-nose .38 might be a nice weapon for close work, but it performed poorly at distances. From the sound of my assailant’s gunfire, he had a rifle, maybe even one with a sight, so he was better armed for our desert shootout. A quick check of my cell phone revealed that my earlier concerns were true: no signal. At least I’d had enough sense to bring along a canteen. I had only taken a couple of sips while searching for the coyote’s den, so there was a chance I could simply wait the shooter out. But from a better spot, one visible from the road.
Gauging the distance to a boulder nearer the Trailblazer, I fired two more times, then ducked and ran. I reached cover before he had time to react, and paused to regain my breath. Only one more sprint and I would reach the rock ridge.
Better to act now before he realized what I was doing.
I ran again but this time he was ready for me and his next shot hit my canteen. At least a half cup of precious water spilled down my leg before I managed to fling myself over the ridge. After landing hard on the loose shale, I caught my breath again, then put my thumb over the hole to still the flow. Scrabbling around on the desert floor, I found a pebble that looked to be the right size. When I jammed it into the hole water still trickled out. Desperate to stop the flow I ripped a piece off my tee shirt, wrapped it around the pebble and jammed it in again. Success.
I took a short sip from the canteen, then placed another pebble in my mouth, an old Indian trick used as a stopgap from thirst. As the sun rose higher, the day would heat up even more. No point in going to all this trouble just to ultimately pass out from dehydration.
I reloaded my .38. There was no way of knowing whether this would end in a face-to-face shootout but if it did, I wanted to be ready. My situation wasn’t good, but it could have been worse. I was within sight of the blacktop, and soon cleaning ladies would begin their commute to Sunset Canyon Lakes. Or maybe I’d be seen by some early-bird shopper heading toward Walapai Flats to buy more fancy Western duds. All that increased activity might scare the shooter away. Then again, maybe not, because what good would a Walapai cleaning lady or an Eastern dude do me? Threaten the shooter with a mop or a Mont Blanc pen? With no reasonable alternative in sight, I settled in and waited for the shooter to make the next move.
Twenty minutes passed, then thirty. The morning breeze stilled as the sun climbed higher. Birds that had ceased their calls when the shooting started began to sing again. Warmed from the sun, a gopher snake slithered toward a gnarled mesquite where a woodrat sat nibbling on a seedpod. Sympathizing with the prey, I whistled a warning, and the woodrat scurried away.
A while later—I’d stopped checking my watch—a grouping of four cars sped along the road toward the resort. None slowed to look at the parked Trailblazer. Maybe they thought some tourist was having a look-see at the pretty scenery. As soon as the last car disappeared over the horizon, the shooter tried his luck again but I was well hunkered down now and his shots did little more than kick up sand.
One of the worst things about holding a crouching position for a length of time is that your body rebels. My weak left leg, scarred from a bullet wound during my days on the Scottsdale police force, began to cramp. I twisted it first one way, then the other, but what little relief I could find was momentary. As soon as I reversed it to the original position, it cramped again and the right leg began cramping in sympathy. The pain increased, making me realize that my plan of waiting out my attacker out wouldn’t work. I needed to end this stalemate before I became so crippled up that I couldn’t move at all, let alone run for cover. But try as I might, I couldn’t think of a sensible and safe alternative. Not even a semi-sensible, semi-safe one.
I was still racking my brain for a possible solution when Fate, that arbitrary dame, intervened. In the distance I heard music. A choir of angels singing me up to Heaven? Given my past, doubtful. The music drifted closer, revealing the rich tenor of Garth Brooks bragging about friends in low places. Barreling toward me was a battered red pickup, an American flag flapping from its big CB antenna. Seconds before the truck reached my Trailblazer, I saw printed on its side, MONTY CARSON, FARRIER. The windows were down and the driver, a male, was blasting his stereo at top volume. Unless I was wrong, that long dark shape in the rear window was a loaded gun rack.
Angels don’t always wear wings; sometimes they wear leather aprons.
I knew what to do. When the driver slowed to check out the Trailblazer I fired my .38 at the truck’s hood. The resulting clang was testament to the hours I’d spent at the firing range. Braking, the truck slewed sideways along the asphalt, leaving behind two curls of rubber. Oh, yeah, I’d caught the driver’s attention, all right.
As the truck came to a complete halt, I fired twice more, this time in the air. Garth Brooks yelped a final note and stopped singing.
Within seconds, a bowlegged little man wearing a farriers’ leather apron and carrying a big shotgun, came hurrying toward me.
“You shot my truck!” he howled. “Drop that gun, you stupid bitch, and get your reckless ass down here before I shoot it off!”
Never had bad temper sounded so sweet.
“Radio for help!” I yelled down to him. “But don’t come any closer. Someone’s shooting at me, and I’m pinned down here!”
From the next ridge over, I could hear rocks sliding in the distance. When I peeked above my own ridge, I saw a trail of dust rising from the desert floor, testament that my outgunned assailant was hoofing it out of there. It was over.
I holstered my .38 and walked downhill toward him with my hands in the air, wondering how my insurance company would react when the farrier submitted his claim.
***
“People are always shooting something up around here, Miss Jones,” the deputy said, handing me back my ID after I’d explained my situation for the third time. “This is Arizona. But you’d be better off minding your own business, not wandering around causing trouble.”
It was Officer Smiley Face. The wife-beating deputy, now revealed as Deputy Ronald Stark, had arrived less than five minutes after the farrier saved my ass, explaining that he’d been checking on a report of a dead pronghorn in the road.
“I haven’t caused any ‘trouble,’ as you so incorrectly put it.” I was growing more uncomfortable by the minute, partially because Stark’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, the kind that make people look like Martians or hit men.
A cold smile. “Walapai Flats is a small town and I’ve heard about the questions you’ve been asking. We keep an eye on people who poke their noses into things that don’t concern them.” Turning away from me as if I didn’t matter, he said to the farrier, “You did right radioing this in, Monty. For all you knew, there was an emergency. But you know how women are, excitable, always imagining things that aren’t there.”
Monty frowned. “Lena don’t seem all that excitable to me.”
Although from a distance the farrier had appeared to be much older, up close I could see that he was no more than fifty, but his face was deeply creased and burned by the desert sun. After I’d explained my situation, his temper had cooled to the extent that he’d even volunteered to walk back out into the desert with me to look for shell casings to back up my claim of attempted murder. Deputy Stark, however, was reluctant. And his comment about people poking their noses into unwanted places worried me. Was he talking about my connection to the Ike Donohue case, or could he have found the business card I’d given his battered wife? Adding to my discomfort was the fact that his cruiser looked dusty enough to have been driving across surfaces a lot rougher than blacktop.
Stark pasted on his insincere smile again. “Monty, Monty, Monty. If you think you’re a judge of women, you’ve been standing out in the sun too long.”
“Maybe so, but people in glass houses, eh, Ronnie?”
Something passed between them that hinted of past trouble. More concerned about the present, I let it go. “Officer Stark, it’s less than a two-minute walk to that ridge where the shooter was holed up. I counted four shots, which pretty much negates a mere slip of the trigger finger, not to mention the fact that he refused to stop shooting when I identified myself as non-pronghorn. If we find more than one shell casing, it’ll go a long way toward proving I’m right. Otherwise, go ahead and call me hysterical, be my guest. But if I wind up dead on your beat, Monty here might mention to your superiors that a serious crime was reported to you and you did nothing about it, didn’t even fill out a report. Are you ready to shoulder the blame for that?”
Stark shifted his feet. “I’ll take a quick look and fill out that little report you’re putting so much emphasis on, but I’m gonna want you folks to stay with your vehicles.”
“Bullshit to that, Ronnie,” Monty snapped. “I’ll be right on your heels.”
I wanted to kiss the banty-legged little guy. “Me, too, Deputy. As a trained officer of the law myself, which I’m sure you’ve also found out, I can help spot possible evidence.”
Stark looked like he wanted to gun whip us both, but when he started up the shale slope with us right behind him, he didn’t chase us away. Once we reached the top of the ridge where I’d holed up until Monty came alone, I pointed to a scar where a bullet had chipped the granite. When I began digging in the sand in front of it, where the first bullet had hit, the deputy remained silent.
Within seconds I’d managed to unearth an almost-pristine copper slug: while I was no ballistics expert, it looked to me like a thirty-ought six from a low-velocity carbine. Not unusual, maybe, but it was the same type of ammo that had killed Kimama Olmstead. I figured that the sheriff, busy though he was, would be interested in seeing it.
“Are you carrying an evidence bag, officer?” I already knew the answer. No.
Monty volunteered that he had baggies in his truck. While I stood guard over the bullet with a reluctant deputy acting as witness, the farrier hotfooted it back to his truck, then returned with two baggies that smelled faintly of tuna fish.
“Here ya go,” he said, holding them out with one hand while transferring his sandwiches to the other. “Might as well have me an early brunch” With that, he began wolfing them down.
Both men watched as I rolled the bullet into the baggie and sealed it. A ballistics test would identify the caliber more accurately. Then I stabbed the stick upright into the ground to make the spot easier to find if further investigation proved advisable.
We had more luck when we reached the rock fall where my assailant had hidden out. Four ejected cartridges lay scattered across the ground. Yep, he’d been using a carbine. As I cooed over my finds, Monty gave me the other baggie, and I scooped them in with a rock chip. There was more than an even chance that the shooter’s fingerprints were on them.
Deputy Stark accepted the baggies reluctantly. “I don’t know what you think these will prove, because this entire incident was caused by some deer hunter a little too eager to fire at anything that moves.”
Monty snorted. “A deer hunter using a carbine? Nobody around here’s that stupid, not even the dudes. Far as that goes, Lena don’t look like no deer, neither, and we ain’t exactly standing in the middle of the woods. In clear country like this, any man that can’t tell she’s a woman ’stead of a pronghorn needs to be walking around with a white cane, not a rifle. Have you forgot that we had us a gunshot death a few months ago that nobody’s answered for yet? I wouldn’t mislay those evidence bags if I was you, Ronnie. That woman’s killer could be the same careless deer hunter.” His emphasis on the last two words revealed what he thought of the deputy’s theory. “Maybe even the same deer hunter who killed that Donohue fellow.”
Stark frowned. “From what I hear, no carbine took Mr. Donohue out. As for the other one, you talking about that Indian woman?”
“How many other gunshot women we got us in Walapai County?”
The deputy wasn’t giving up yet. “We do have one unsolved killing on the books, but I’m talking about Mr. Donohue. Unlike you, I’m not certain the Indian woman’s death was murder. I’m guessing she came between a hunter and a pronghorn like Miss Jones here did, and he took off when he realized what he’d done.”
“Nobody in town believes that but you, Ronnie.”
“Maybe you paranoid V.U.M. types don
’t, but I’m speaking for the sheriff’s office.”
I sincerely doubted that. I didn’t trust Officer Smiley Face, so to hammer home the fact that Monty and I had witnessed him accepting the two baggies into evidence, I said, “Unsolved murders tend to make a police department look bad, officer, and I’m betting the sheriff will be curious to see if the rifling on that carbine slug matches up to the one that killed Kimama Olmstead. He might even be curious enough to put a rush on it at the crime lab.”
The cold smile made its reappearance. “We’re done here. You folks have yourselves a nice day.” Without another word, he walked back to his dusty cruiser.
As we watched the cruiser disappear down the road, Monty said, “I got me a police scanner in my truck. Wasn’t no report of a downed pronghorn.”
The news didn’t surprise me. “You know him well, the deputy?”
“Knew his mama. Sweet woman, dead now. Didn’t have no better sense than he does, but that still wasn’t no reason for his daddy to treat her like he did. ’Course, none of them Starks is exactly burstin’ with brains. Ronnie’s the smartest of the bunch, which says a lot about the rest of them.”
He finished his second tuna fish sandwich, then rubbed his hands against his leather apron. “Well, like the boy said, you have yourself a nice day, Miss Lena Jones. There’s some horses waitin’ on me need shoes.” He winked. “And I’ll be talking to your insurance company soon’s I’m done.”
***
After gulping down some water from my canteen, I called the Walapai County Board of Health Services and alerted them to a possible rabies outbreak. Then, I decided that as long as I was in the same general area, I’d stop by Sunset Trails Guest Ranch and talk to Hank Olmstead again. Now that I’d spent some time in Walapai Flats a new question had arisen. Where did his employees stand on the new mine? Did any of them have feelings strong enough about the issue to resort to violence? I hadn’t seen anyone from the ranch at the demonstration, but that meant nothing. Most of the wranglers and lodge workers would have been working. But I also wanted to know more about the guest ranch’s agreement to provide equine activities with Sunset Canyon Lakes. Had Katherine brokered it or had her husband Trent? In a murder investigation no stone should ever go unturned because something ugly might be hiding under it.
