Fatal Refuge: a Mystery/Thriller (The Arizona Thriller Trilogy Book 2)

by Sharon Sterling

  “It’s the greed eating away at righteousness. I’m takin’ aim at it first. War puts another dollar in the pocket of some heartless millionaire every time an innocent soldier dies. Listen to this…” She lifts the notebook and reads, “I’ve named them now, dubbed all vile ghouls; now crime’s outdated and war’s the crime of fools.”

  She shakes her head and rubs the side of her nose. “I know if Ruth was here, she’d be one of the nine hundred righteous. She was never a bad girl. It was that Marine that led her down the wrong path, lured her away when she was only seventeen, didn’t know any better.” She pauses, a shadow of grief darkening her face, her thoughts darker still. Even if there aren’t nine hundred righteous here, some can be redeemed to fill the tally. They can be educated, persuaded! But not all will learn and respond. Some will be sacrificed.”

  • • •

  Chapter Five

  Kim was motivated by the need to report and recover the woman’s body. She made the hike down the slopes of the Kofa in less than half an hour. When she reached her SUV she used the tail of her shirt to protect her hand from the hot door handle then went around and opened the other door to let the hot desert air replace the superheated air in the cab. She grabbed an old towel from behind the seat and looked around for a cool place to sit.

  The only remnant of shade in sight was the vehicle’s shadow, so she spread the towel on the ground by the tail gate. She checked to confirm reception on her smart phone, then paused to drink most of the water in her second quart bottle. The first call would be 911, the second to the team leader of her canine search and rescue group and the third to Allie Davis, her former counselor and current friend.

  The 911 operator transferred her to a Yuma County Sheriff’s Deputy Wagner. He listened to her story about the body, and said he was inclined to mosey on out with the body recovery team until she told him about what appeared to be a bullet hole in the back of the woman’s skull.

  A desiccated corpse was not a very surprising thing to find in the Kofa. There were many methods of meeting one’s end in the desert, both natural and man-caused. A body with a bullet hole in the head usually said “suicide,” less frequently “accident.” The placement of this particular body’s bullet hole might say “murder victim,” depending on whether it was an entrance or exit wound. The deputy told her he would bring Lieutenant Raney. She knew who he was, that he wore the hats of both crime scene tech and lead homicide detective.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Kim said to the deputy, and pressed the end-call button before he could press for more details.

  She sat with her elbows on her knees and the phone in her left hand for a few minutes before she called her friend in Search and Rescue. He owned an important member of the canine team, the cadaver dog.

  “Hey, Angelo, we’ve got another job.”

  “Oh, goodie. Cuddles is getting bored. He would love a new dead body. When and where?”

  “Tomorrow, in the Kofa. Just body parts search and evidence search. A woman.”

  “Every body needs Cuddles,” Angelo said, a corny play on the dog’s name.

  “Yeah, we need Cuddles, but consider burying the joke, Angelo.”

  “Well, don’t get testy, Kim. Tell me more.”

  “She’s only been…the body is less than a week old, I’d say. The animals have been at it.”

  “So Cuddles and I will search for body pieces to complete the jigsaw puzzle. You and Zayd doing the evidence search?”

  “Of course. I’ll call Terri for backer. She’ll do Nav/Comm, take care of the GPS and the radio. But who can we get to fill in if Zayd and I wear down before we’ve covered the grid?”

  Angelo snorted. “Not much chance of that. When have you and your pup ever needed a second string? And why can’t we do it now? Cuds and I could use a good run today.”

  “Because the crime scene tech hasn’t done his work and the body is still there. After they remove it, you’ll get the official request from the Sheriff.”

  “So where exactly in the Refuge do we begin our latest doggie dance?”

  “Meet at Saguaro trail head tomorrow at first light.”

  "It’s a date, Tall And Gorgeous. Don’t you be late.”

  “Of course not. You wouldn’t think of doing it without me, would you? I’ve got a stake in this one.”

  “You did say ‘her’ instead of ‘it.’ What’s that about?”

  “Later, Angelo. Got to go. Bye.”

  Kim let the hand with the phone drop to the towel. She wiped perspiration from her face with one forearm then the other. She closed her eyes, propped her elbow on one knee and rested her forehead in her right hand for a few seconds. Resisting the urge to drink more water, she keyed in Allie’s number at the mental health clinic.

  At the welcome sound of the older woman’s voice, she said, “Hi, Allie. I’m glad it’s you and not the voice mail.”

  “Only because my appointment had to cancel at the last minute. But why are you calling me in the middle of your day off? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay, but I’ve got bad news.”

  “Oh, damn. I get enough of it here.” A second’s pause. “Sorry, Kim. It’s not about you, is it? And it’s not really bad?”

  “Not about me, but yes, it’s really bad. I’m hiking in the Kofa and. . .”

  “Isn’t it too hot to be out there in the middle of the day?”

  “I started early and I expected to be gone by now.” Kim shifted her legs sideways. The sun’s inexorable movement had extinguished part of her shady patch and the fierce rays were now scorching them.

  “Allie, I have to ask you something. Your friend Cindy. I know you’ve been worried about her. Didn’t you say she should have been home two days ago and you haven’t been able to reach her?”

  A questioning “Yes?”

  “When did she leave Yuma?”

  “A week ago yesterday. Why?”

  “Yeah, what I thought.” Kim drew a deep breath, and dug her heels into the loose dirt at the edge of the towel.

  “Allie, I found a body out there today – a human body.” She remained silent, waiting for her friend to ask the question.

  “You. . .you’re not saying it’s Cindy?”

  “Yes. I think so. No, I’m sure it’s Cindy. She’s the only person I know with that color hair, and I recognized her shirt. It was the one she wore to your cookout last month.”

  Silence. Then Allie’s slow, deep inhale and sighing exhale. Kim could almost hear Allie’s mantra, which she often expressed aloud: "It is what it is. Accept it."

  “Allie, I know you were going to start calling around to her friends to ask if they’ve seen her. I think you should call the police instead, report her missing.”

  “Missing? For heaven’s sake, why? You found her. She’s not missing.”

  “Because I don’t want to tell the Sheriff who she is. They would pull me from the search job, and I want to be in on it.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Because it was wrong. That’s not what I mean, of course it was wrong that she was murdered. But for some reason, this is personal to me. Maybe it’s because she was a friend of yours, or maybe something else. I don’t know. I just know I want the killer to pay for it, and I’m going to try to see it happen.”

  “Are you sure you can’t just let them know her name?”

  “They wouldn’t take my word for it, anyway. They have to have a positive ID. They’ll work it out. And – you told me she had dated a guy you work with. What’s his name? Yeah, Win. Don’t say anything to him and don’t mention my name to anyone.”

  She paused while Allie processed what to her must have sounded like very strange requests. Finally Allie said, “Okay, Kim. But only because I know and trust you. Crap! How are you doing? It must have been horrible…”

  “I’m fine, Allie. I hardly knew her, just through you. You’re the one who’s got the loss. Sorry. I have to go now, but you can call me later this afternoon if
you want to.”

  Kim keyed off the phone to save the battery and tossed it on the towel beside her. She breathed deeply and when she exhaled she felt her shoulders drop and chest sink with relief. The most difficult conversation was over.

  • • •

  Law enforcement arrived like the cavalry of old, in a cloud of dust caused not by a posse on horseback, but a patrol car carrying Deputy Amos Wagner and Lieutenant Lon Raney followed by a Hummer carrying the body retrieval team of four Search and Rescue volunteers. The team often arrived with a trailer and ATV to cover ground faster for body extraction but today they would have to hike it. The governmental agency charged with overseeing Kofa, Arizona Fish and Game, didn’t endorse the use of off-road vehicles driven by the public and tolerated it from law enforcement and search and rescue if time or distance demanded it. This job didn’t meet those criteria and if it did, the terrain was steep and rocky enough to challenge even an ATV. The extraction team would hike up with Kim and the deputies, then back with the body to the Hummer. The medical examiner’s van would meet them at the highway to transport the body to the morgue.

  Kim waved the dust away from her face with her cloth hat while she watched the men dismount their vehicles. The recovery team busied themselves with their equipment and hung back to follow the lead of law enforcement.

  The deputy wore a uniform of brown pants and tan shirt, while Lieutenant Raney was clad in light-weight grey slacks and a white polo shirt with the Yuma County Sheriff’s logo on the front. Both wore hiking boots.

  “Kim Altaha, isn’t it?” the lieutenant asked as he approached. “We met last month at the volunteer recognition lunch.”

  Kim remembered Lon Raney as slow, serious and silent, while today he appeared still serious but revved up to work. He handed Kim a plastic bag filled with a bottle of water, sticks of beef jerky and a protein bar. He said, “You’ve been out here a while today, haven’t you? You should always carry at least an extra gallon of water in your Jeep, along with a few protein bars.”

  Kim nodded with an “I already know that,” expression but was silently grateful, especially for the water. She took in the lieutenant’s appearance, starting with intelligent blue/green eyes, a color commonly called hazel. She thought the word didn’t describe the striking effect of combined shades of blue and green with brown flecks. His body, as well, appeared anything but ordinary. His constitutionally slender physique reminded her of a racing greyhound.

  She waited while the men shrugged into backpacks loaded with their own supply of water. Lieutenant Raney carried an additional bag, a hand-held case like an old-fashioned doctor’s house-call bag. As they started up the mountain, true to her characterization, he followed close on her heels with seemingly effortless strides. The deputy followed, and at a distance back, the recovery team. All were silent as they climbed the slopes.

  The smell of the body hit them before the sight of it. The sun had passed its zenith but still radiated such heat that the land was now at full sizzle. The odor of decay weighted the atmosphere even more.

  Deputy Wagner stopped to let the others precede him, giving Kim a sour look as she brushed past him. He puffed and blew air, his face red from sun and exertion, shirt dark with sweat stains on his sternum and around his arm pits. Kim thought it probably wasn’t so much excess weight that caused his distress but poor conditioning from too many days spent at a desk or in the seat of a patrol car.

  In his previous contacts with her, Wagner had been blatantly admiring and made comments about her body that were a little too descriptive. She knew he expected a verbal response which, even if negative, would have given him an opening to connect with her. But she had experienced that kind of crude approach before and simply ignored him. She suspected Wagner hated being ignored worse than he hated being rebuffed, and now his carnal interest in her had turned to resentment.

  • • •

  Chapter Six

  Kim knew Wagner was watching her as she and Lieutenant Raney approached the body together. The detective/crime scene technician opened his bag and removed several items. He slipped blue fabric covers over his shoes and donned blue nitrile gloves. He motioned Kim to stay back, and went to squat beside the body. He inspected the back of the head without touching it. Finally she had to ask. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think it was an accidental death.” He glanced up at her quickly. “Or a suicide. This is a bullet hole and if it was a suicide, the entrance wound would most likely be in the temple or under the chin, so the exit wound would not be in the back of the head. And if this was an exit wound, it would be bigger. There would be more brain matter and bone fragments, more blood spatter. Besides, if she shot herself, where is the gun?”

  “Maybe under her?”

  “Could be. Where do you think the bullet is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If it was small caliber, it could still be in her head. When I finish photographing I’ll look. The M.E. will give the official cause of death after he gets her on the table, but I think she was murdered.”

  “When I found her it looked to me like she was just a birdwatcher. Who would want to murder a harmless bird-watcher?”

  “There are lots of questions here. Like ‘who is she’? Once I’m finished with photos, I’ll look for ID, a gun, the bullet that killed her. I’ll be lucky if I find any of them.”

  He unfolded his lean frame and walked a few steps toward Kim. At six-foot-three, he looked down into Kim’s face, something expectant in his manner. She waited for a question, but he voiced none, and she began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. What was he waiting for? She had told herself she would not feel guilty about keeping information from him but now the word “murder” whirled in her mind and threatened to override the promise.

  She said, “I saw the binoculars there by her arm but I didn’t touch them or walk around looking for anything else she might have carried with her. I didn’t want to disturb things.”

  “Yes, very nice,” he said, “I appreciate that.”

  “But I wondered how she got here. There was no car down at the parking area.”

  “He brought her here and then drove away after he killed her. I checked with Fish and Game. They told me at least six vehicles came and went in the last week. No sense in searching for tire tracks to cast.” He turned back to survey the body. “No obvious signs of a struggle or sexual assault. The clothes look relatively undisturbed. In order for him to get close enough for a shot like that, she must have known him.”

  “Why ‘he.’ If it wasn’t a sex crime, maybe a woman did it.”

  He flashed a hint of a smile and looked into her eyes while he said, “Could be, but the stats say nine chances in ten it was a man. Big risk factor for being a murderer – being male. But – a woman perpetrator – I’ll keep it in mind.”

  He turned to Deputy Wagner. In a soft and almost casual voice he said, “I won’t be done here until almost dark. The body team can bring her down then. Why don’t you tell them to find some shade and relax for now? Then look around for any belongings, anything else significant. If you see any footprints that don’t look like hers, call me.”

  From his bag he took a set of small, orange plastic evidence markers, open triangle in shape, with numbers in white on both sides. Next came a dozen paper bags of various sizes, a few plastic baggies, a felt-tip pen to mark them with, and last, a digital camera.

  Kim’s eyes couldn’t leave his hands and arms as he worked. His hands and fingers were long, lean, and somehow expressive. His forearms were heavily muscled, tanned and covered with sun-bleached blond hair. Evidently unaware of her observation, he turned, and watching where he stepped, he walked to the pair of binoculars and placed one of the evidence markers by it. Then he began to take photos, quickly moving back to photograph the body from every perspective. The sun had moved far to the west and the boulder no longer shaded the body. The photos would reveal every gruesome detail.

  Finally he stopped taking
pictures, placed the camera back in the bag, and approached the body. When he knelt beside it, Kim turned away. She heard his movements as he began to move the body. She steeled herself to turn back and watch while he lifted one side of the body to look under it then went around and lifted the other side, moved the head to look beneath it, then gently let it back down to rest in the dirt. When he stood he saw her watching and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  He removed his gloves, placed them in a plastic bag and sealed it, then put on a clean pair. He stood looking down at the terrain in all directions. “She might have come from this direction,” he said. Focused on the ground before he placed his feet, he took a few careful steps. Abruptly he stopped and squatted to look at something.

  “Kim, bring me my case, will you?”

  The answer on the tip of her tongue was “get it yourself,” but he had obviously found something important and she was curious to know what.

  He stood to take the case from her. “I found a sneaker print large enough to be a man’s. There’s a partial print there, and a heel mark there, but then the ground gets so rocky there isn’t a trail. But sometimes one good print is enough.”

  “Couldn’t it be just anybody’s print?”

  “I don’t think so. The body is fully visible from here. If a hiker made the track after she was killed he would have seen her and reported it.”

  “So, maybe it was left before that.”

  “I checked the weather with Fish and Game. There was a high wind and even a sprinkling of rain in this area eight or nine days ago that would have obliterated a print as shallow as this one. From the condition of the body I’m guessing she was killed about a week ago so that narrows the window of time when the print could have been made. Logic and instinct says it’s the killer’s print.”