Outlaw Mountain : A Joanna Brady Mystery (9780061748806)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “You need to call CPS,” Joanna said at once. “Child Protective Services has case workers who are trained to take charge of abandoned children. They get them into foster care, locate their parents, that kind of thing. The sheriff’s department just isn’t equipped—”

  “He’s not a child,” Father Mulligan interrupted. “I can’t tell you exactly how old he is. He could be fifty or so, maybe even older. He told me his name—his first name—and that’s about it. He couldn’t give us his parents’ names or the name of the town where he lives. I checked to see if he was carrying any kind of identification, but he wasn’t. And then I thought maybe there’d be some identifying mark sewn into his clothing, maybe on the labels. But there aren’t any labels on his clothing, Sheriff Brady. They’ve all been removed. I think someone cut them out on purpose, so we’d have no way of following a trail and finding out where they and he came from.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Joanna asked. “I can’t very well put him in jail.”

  “You might have to,” Father Mulligan said. “He was all right at breakfast this morning, probably because he was famished. But at lunchtime he was agitated. As near as we could tell, he wanted his mother. He wanted to know where she was and when she was coming for him. I had a meeting right after lunch. I left one of the sisters in charge of Junior. I thought he could sit quietly in the library and look at books. He got restless, though, and wanted to go outside. When Sister Ambrose told him he couldn’t do that, he knocked her down and went outside anyway. I found him wading in the reflecting pond, chasing the fish. So you see, we can’t keep him here. It’s not that we’re uncharitable or unchristian, but some of the brothers and sisters are quite elderly. They can’t be expected to handle someone like that—someone that unpredictable.”

  “No,” Joanna agreed, “I suppose not. I’m on my way, Father Mulligan. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m just now crossing the San Pedro River on the far side of Saint David.”

  She ended the call and immediately radioed into the department and spoke to Dispatch. “Do we have any missing persons reports on a developmentally disabled male named Junior, forty-five to fifty-five years old, and last seen at the Saint David Arts and Crafts Fair yesterday afternoon?”

  “Nothing like that,” Larry Kendrick, Cochise County’s lead dispatcher, told her. “Why?”

  Joanna gave Larry a brief summary of everything Father Mulligan had told her. “What are you going to do with him?” Larry asked when Joanna finished.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “It sounds like it could be iffy for you to handle this alone. Do you want me to send out a deputy?”

  “Who’s available?” Joanna asked.

  “Nobody right this minute,” Larry replied. “We’ve had a bit of a problem out at Sierra Vista. Those environmental activists showed up on the Oak Vista construction site right at quitting time. They came armed with sledgehammers and spikes and sugar to put in gas tanks. In other words, they came prepared to make trouble and to do as much damage to the contractor’s equipment as possible. It was quite a donnybrook. Terry Gregovich had to call for reinforcements. Dick Voland ordered every available deputy out there on the double.”

  “I’m the sheriff,” Joanna said brusquely. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

  “I’ve been trying to page you ever since it happened, but your pager must be off line and your cell phone’s been busy. I figured if you were in your car you would have heard the radio traffic and would have known something was up.”

  Guiltily,. Joanna glared at her radio. She had turned down the volume while she was making her phone calls. And the pager, back in her purse, must have somehow turned itself off. “Sorry, Larry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be incommunicado. Should I forget about Saint David and head out to Sierra Vista?”

  “No. Chief Deputy Voland was on his way to Tombstone, but now he’s going to Sierra Vista instead. He said if you called in, you’d better go check on the two teams working in Tombstone. Detective Carbajal is there, but other than that, the crime scene investigators are on their own.”

  Joanna shook her head. Even with almost two hundred people working for her, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department was chronically short-staffed. On those occasions when several major things happened at once, that chronic shortage instantly turned critical.

  “All right,” she said. “Radio Chief Deputy Voland and let him know I’ll take care of Tombstone. And Saint David,” she added under her breath.

  After all, someone has to do it.

  When Anglos first showed up in southern Arizona, the area along the San Pedro River, a few miles south of what is now Benson, was a mosquito-infested, swampy wasteland. Despite the hardships, a few hardy souls had settled there. When a severe earthquake rocked the Sonora Desert on May 3, 1887, no one in the Saint David area was injured, nor was there much structural damage, primarily due to the fact that so few people lived there. The non-killer quake left lasting evidence of its handiwork by instantly draining the swamp and forcing much of the San Pedro watershed underground. The former swamp turned into a fertile farmland oasis studded by ancient cottonwoods.

  It was late afternoon when Joanna Brady slowed her Crown Victoria at the three wooden crosses that marked the entrance to Holy Trinity Monastery, a Benedictine retreat center beyond the eastern boundary of Saint David. The center had been there for as long as Joanna remembered. It was only as an adult that she had considered it odd for the Catholic Diocese in Tucson to have established a retreat center in the middle of Mormon farming country in southeastern Arizona.

  Nestled under the San Pedro’s towering cottonwoods, the monastery contained a small, jewel-like church—Our Lady of Guadalupe—a bird sanctuary, a pecan orchard, an RV park, and a library/museum, as well as a used-clothing thrift store. Living quarters for monks, sisters, and resident lay workers consisted of a collection of mobile homes clustered about the property in a haphazard manner. Throughout the year Holy Trinity held Christian Renewal retreats for various groups from the Catholic Church. Twice a year—spring and autumn—the monastery hosted a fund-raising arts festival and fair.

  Shimmering golden leaves captured the setting sun and reflected off the surface of a shallow pond as Joanna parked in front of the church. As soon as she switched off the ignition, a tall, angular man in a long white robe and sandals came flapping out of the church to meet her.

  “I’m so glad you came right away, Sheriff Brady,” Father Thomas Mulligan said. “I’ve been quite concerned.”

  “The sister who was left with him wasn’t hurt, was she?”

  “No,” Father Mulligan said. “She bruised her elbow when he knocked her down, but other than that she’s fine.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the church. There are lots of lighted candles in the sanctuary, and he seems to like them.”

  “Is it safe to leave him there alone?” Joanna asked.

  “He isn’t alone. Brother Joseph is with him. Back when Brother Joseph was a high school gym teacher, he taught judo. According to him, judo is like riding a bike. You never forget the moves.”

  Half-trotting to keep up with Father Mulligan’s long-legged stride, Joanna followed the priest into the adobe-walled church. The setting sun, shining in through stainedglass windows, filled the small, carefully crafted sanctuary with a muted glow. Two men sat in the front pew. One was an elderly white-robed priest. The other was a wizened, hunched little man whose huge ears and doleful face reminded Joanna of an elf.

  “Junior?” she said, holding out her hand.

  Slowly he raised his eyes until he was staring up into her face. Politely, he held out his hand as well, but his grip barely clasped Joanna’s.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Brady.”

  Without a word, Junior scooted sideways in the pew until he was huddled next to Brother Joseph. Then, burying his head in the priest’s robe, he began to moan. “Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it.
”

  “Didn’t do what?” Joanna asked.

  “Not bad,” Junior wailed, pressing even closer to the priest, who by then had wrapped a protective arm around his shoulders. “Junior not bad. No jail, please. No jail. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt Junior.”

  Seeing that he was utterly terrified of her, Joanna stood for a moment trying to decide what to do. Then, from some far recess of memory, she recalled one sunny spring afternoon years earlier. She had been in her Brownie uniform, stationed in front of the post office in Warren, hawking Girl Scout cookies. A man had ridden up to her on a bike, a girl’s bike. He had stopped and stood beside her, staring down into her wagonload of cookies.

  He had stood there for a long tune, and his silent staring presence had worried her. After all, he was wearing a badge and a bolstered gun. Joanna had been petrified that she was doing something wrong, that he was going to arrest her for it.

  Then a gray-haired woman had emerged from the beauty shop next door to the post office. The man had smiled at the woman, called her Mama, and pointed at the cookies, saying he wanted some. That was when Joanna realized there was something wrong with him. That he was a grown-up who was also somehow still a child. His mother had bought a box of cookies—Thin Mints—and she had explained that her son “wasn’t quite right,” that he liked to “pretend” to be a policeman. Both the gun and the holster were toys. The sheriffs badge was a prize from a box of Cracker Jacks.

  From that long-ago memory came the seed of inspiration.

  “I’m not here to take you to jail,” Joanna said. “Did you ever want to play policeman?”

  Junior quieted and peeked up at her from behind Brother Joseph’s robe. “Play?” Junior asked.

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “Would you like to play policeman?” Reaching into her pocket, Joanna extracted her leather ID folder and handed it over to him. Inside were both her identification and her badge—the badge with the words “Serve and Protect” engraved in square gold letters. Looking at it, Junior’s eyes bulged with excitement. He fingered the metal.

  “Would you like to put it on?” Joanna asked kindly. “You could wear it while we go for a ride in my car and look for your mother.”

  “Junior wear it?” he repeated wonderingly. “Me wear it?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “But you’ll have to come with me. Okay?”

  Junior nodded his head emphatically, eagerly. “Me wear. Me wear. Put on. Put on now.”

  Carefully Joanna pinned the badge to the pocket of Junior’s shirt. “All right now, can you raise your right hand?”

  Both hands shot high in the air. “Do you swear to be a good deputy, Junior?” Joanna asked.

  Junior’s face split into a wide smile and he jumped to his feet. “Me good,” he said. “Junior very good de-de-deputy.” It took several times before he could finally make his lips form the unfamiliar word. “Go now,” he added. “Go right now. Get in car.”

  “Right,” Joanna said. “We’ll go get in the car.”

  Junior raced down the aisle, with Joanna and Father Mulligan following behind. “That was very impressive,” the priest said under his breath. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Desperation,” she told him. “Desperation plain and simple.”

  Seven

  BETWEEN SAINT David and Tombstone, Joanna said little and Junior said even less. He sat huddled in the far corner of the passenger seat with his arms clutching his chest. When Joanna asked him a direct question, he ducked his head and stared out the windshield without any acknowledgment that she had spoken to him.

  What the hell have I let myself in for? Joanna asked herself. Obviously Junior didn’t belong in jail, not even in protective custody—as if that would be protection enough from some of the casually abusive thugs populating the Cochise County jail. The county hospital down in Douglas contained a mental ward, but Joanna was sure Junior wouldn’t qualify as a mental patient, either. He may not have been in possession of all his faculties, but he certainly wasn’t crazy. He was lost. Abandoned. And, as Joanna could see, terribly, terribly sad.

  So if jail and the hospital are both out of the question, what do I do with him? she asked herself. In the past she would have gone straight to Marianne Maculyea with that kind of thorny problem. Marianne had the unerring knack of knowing just where to turn for help in sticky situations, but at this point in Mari’s life, she was at such a low ebb that she couldn’t even help herself. How on earth, then, could she be expected to help someone else?

  That was as far as Joanna had managed to noodle the problem by the time she reached Tombstone. Once there, she had to call in to Dispatch to get directions to Alice Rogers’ home. It was on the far northern outskirts of town, past the dusty pioneer cemetery, and off on a dirt track called Scheiffelin Monument Road. At the far end of that road was a rocky cairn containing the worldly remains of Ed Scheiffelin. Scheiffelin was a hardy prospector whose silver strike had been the original foundation of Tombstone’s fabulous if short-lived mineral wealth.

  Joanna’s father, D. H. Lathrop, had venerated the cussed independence of Ed Scheiffelin and others like him. With the Sonora Desert alive with marauding Apaches, Scheiffelin had left Tucson alone and on foot with little more than a mule, a chaw of tobacco, and a dream of achieving impossible wealth. And when that dream came true—when the silver claims other people had scoffed at came to fruition—Scheiffelin had gone on to wealth, fame, and high living without ever forgetting his humble roots. Years later, before he died in Oregon, he had asked to be returned to Arizona and buried near the site of that initial mining claim.

  For D. H. Lathrop, people like Ed Scheiffelin epitomized the heroes of the Old West in a way the good guys and bad guys—the Earps and the Clantons—did not. Lathrop had filled his daughter’s head with stories about Ed’s greedy partners who had done their best to cheat him out of what was rightfully his. Her mother had disparaged everything about Tombstone—the clapboard buildings, the phony gunfights, and the tacky tourist souvenirs. For Eleanor Lathrop the place was little more than a vulgar tourist trap—something to be despised and certainly not patronized.

  Joanna had grown up with her father’s love of legends on the one hand and with her mother’s unflinching disapproval on the other. Thinking about Alice Rogers, it made Joanna sad that as far as she knew Alice and her father had never met. She sensed that D. H. Lathrop would have had much in common with a woman whose whole life seemed to be tied in with Tombstone’s fabled mineral wealth. In fact, Joanna wondered now: Did Alice’s mining claim at Outlaw Mountain have anything to do with her death?

  Joanna pulled up to the group of cars parked on both sides of the road. Alice’s house was completely surrounded by the thick six-foot-tall adobe-and-stucco fence Susan Jenkins had told her about. Stopping for a moment outside the arched wrought-iron gate, Joanna considered the workmanship. Regardless of how much Farley Adams had been paid for building the fence, it was clear the construction project had been a labor of love. On either side of the gate and set at ten-foot intervals were beautifully wrought sconces made of turquoise-shaded stained glass and powered by carefully concealed wiring.

  Having seen the fence, Joanna expected the house to be a luxurious hacienda-style affair. Instead, she found herself looking through the gateway toward a modest slump-block building that looked as though it had been thrown up on the cheap sometime in the fifties. With Junior tagging along, Joanna couldn’t risk venturing inside for fear evidence might be disturbed or destroyed. Instead, she flagged down a deputy and sent her into the house to locate Detective Carbajal and send him back to the gate.

  In the deepening twilight, Joanna noticed that lights showed at every window in Alice Rogers’ house. An ordinary passer-by, seeing those lights and all the extra vehicles, might have assumed there was a party going on inside. It’s a party, all right, Joanna thought grimly. Your ordinary crime scene fiesta.

  A harried-looking Jaime Carbajal hustled down the walk. “Hello, Sheriff Brady,�
� he said. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to check on how things are going.”

  “Okay, I guess,” he replied. “We’re working the problem. Looks like a straight-out burglary—no TV, no radios, no jewelry. We’re finding lots of prints, and we’re collecting them all. Between this house and the other one, that’s a lot of ground to cover. It’s going to take time.”

  The detective paused and glanced questioningly toward Junior, who clutched his arms and gazed skyward, saying nothing. “Who’s this?” Jaime asked.

  “I’ve run into a little complication,” Joanna explained quickly. “Junior here got separated from his family, and we’re trying to help find them. Which means, by the way, that I’m not going to be able to go out to Gleeson to check on your other crew.”

  “That’s no problem. They’re about to close up for the night anyway. Besides, you’re driving one of the Civvys today, aren’t you?”

  Joanna nodded. “Be advised,” Jaime Carbajal said. “The road to Outlaw Mountain is a mess. Strictly four-wheel-drive. We’re having to ferry the crime scene guys in and out in one of the Broncos.”

  “What all are you finding?” Joanna asked.

  He nodded toward Alice Rogers’ glowing house. “It’s just like the daughter said. This place has been ransacked. No way to tell exactly how much is missing, since we don’t have any idea what was in the house to begin with. We’ll have to get relatives to help us with an inventory. The mobile home over in Gleeson looks like somebody did a fast job of packing rather than tearing the place apart. If you’re asking for my best guess, I’d say whoever left there did so in one hell of a hurry.”

  “As in on the run?”

  Carbajal nodded. “Maybe.”

  Joanna thought about that. Farley Adams taking off in a hurry didn’t square with Pima County’s kids-as-killers program, but it was something to check out. If Farley Adams had nothing to hide, why had he run away?