Contents
Title Page & Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
About Lois D. Brown
Skeletons Among Us
by Lois D. Brown
Published by Levanter Publishing
Copyright Lois D. Brown 2017
ISBN: 978-1-940576-14-5
Summary: With their relationship picking up momentum, Maria and Rod travel to Arizona for his class reunion. While there, a terrible discovery in the Superstition Mountains lands Rod in jail and Maria in a panic, unsure of whom she can trust. Rod’s old law school professor? Former classmates? His defense attorney? Or the leader of mysterious Keepers? Like Maria, everyone seems to be hiding their own dark secrets. But if she can’t uncover the truth, Rod will never make it out of Arizona alive.
To Writers Cubed
James, Jo, Tahsha, Margie, and Jen
PROLOGUE
IT WAS TAKING TOO long. Usually it was a quick twist. A sharp pull. But this one struggled. She was stubborn. Flailing about. She reared back and hit her face on a boulder, causing blood to gush from her nostrils. The red liquid coated her neck, making it too slippery to grip. Choking was no longer an option. This called for the knife, which could be so messy. But the woman’s maddening nosebleed had already made the situation anything but tidy, and her eventual beheading would just add to the chaos.
Hopefully the next one wouldn’t put up such a fight.
Because there would be a next one.
There always was.
CHAPTER ONE
Legend tells of the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine hidden somewhere within the 160,000 acres of brutal Arizona desert known as the “Superstition Mountains.” The promise of a $200 million mother lode has lured thousands of treasure hunters and continues to claim the lives of those eager to decipher the legend’s clues and riddles.
—“Searching for the Dutchman’s Riddles,” Legends of the Superstition Mountains. History Channel, A+E Networks, 2015.
ROD’S SHOULDER PRESSED AGAINST Maria’s in the dark. She breathed in his smell—a mix of freshly cut cedar and a field of wild herbs—and wondered, for the hundredth time, what on earth she was doing in a high school auditorium.
The stage lights flickered as Mrs. Adelaide Wolfgramm, Kanab activist and cat lover, adjusted her scarlet cloche hat and grabbed the microphone as if she was about to eat it whole. “Ladies—and, oh, gentleman,” she began, batting her eyes in Rod’s direction. “It is such a privilege for me to be here. Since being named Kanab’s Woman of the Year, I’ve thought a lot about what I would say when it was my time to pass the title to someone else.”
The large room was full of women from the small desert town—young, middle-aged, and old. It was as if every female in town had dropped what she was doing to come to the annual Women’s Forum. Maria imagined her grandmother had come every year and loved it. But Maria was an outsider. As an adult, she’d lived in Kanab less time than most sun-chasing tourists and their motor homes.
All the same, Rod had insisted she go to the event (against her better judgment). He’d appealed to her sense of duty (and guilt) by reminding her that a “public servant” did more than write traffic tickets and track down bad guys. She needed to help the citizens trust her, and to make that happen she needed to attend things like the Women’s Forum.
It was like Rod to want to help her “adjust” and make friends. He was a social guy. She, not so much. But, to make his point, he’d accompanied her to the event, promising lunch afterward.
Maria had reluctantly donned one of the few pencil skirts she owned and a matching silk blouse. It was only an hour out of her day, and, to be honest, ever since the mayor’s murder had been solved the office had been pretty quiet—an office as calm and serene as a recovering ex-CIA operative with PTSD needed it to be.
“Each year, names are submitted to the Women’s Forum committee by residents of Kanab. These names represent the great women of our community—those whose valiant actions have made our little corner of the world a better place.” Mrs. Wolfgramm dabbed at one eye with a crocheted hanky.
On the large screen behind her appeared photographs of each of the past thirty-three “Kanab Women of the Year recipients,” with their wise, wrinkled smiles and thinning gray hair. Among them Maria recognized the face of Ms. Tuttle, the town librarian and old friend. Maria had the ultimate respect for the woman.
“You look nice by the way,” whispered Rod. “You hardly ever wear one of these.” He ran his finger along the hem of her pencil skirt, tickling her knee.
“That’s because they’re uncomfortable, and they make it a pain to conceal my gun,” Maria whispered back, crossing her legs.
Rod’s eyebrows raised. “So,” he leaned in closer, “where is your gun?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Maria turned her head back toward Mrs. Wolfgramm who was talking about the upcoming community food drive, a project she and a few of her friends organized each year.
“But now, to the real reason we’re all here,” Mrs. Wolfgramm said. “With no more ado, I present this year’s recipient of the Kanab Woman of the Year to—” She paused and looked around, enjoying the control. “—Maria Branson, our new chief of police.”
Maria choked.
What?
Rod grinned and nudged her. “Congratulations, Woman of the Year. I think you’re supposed to go up to the front.”
“You knew about this, didn’t you?” Maria’s eyes watered as the saliva that was building up in her throat caused a violent coughing spell. She swatted Rod’s arm, her way of telling him he should have told her.
“Chief Branson,” Mrs. Wolfgramm called out, “could you please take your rightful place in our quiver of honored recipients. And while she’s coming up, I’ll take a minute to tell you a few things about Maria. To begin, she is incredibly agile and fit. Why, the first day I met her she scaled a tree fifty-feet high in the town cemetery to retrieve my Cocoa Puffs.”
Unfortunately, Maria hadn’t completely uncrossed her legs before she tried to stand. Instead of putting one foot in front of the other to walk, she put one foot on top of the other—causing her to lurch forward, stumble, and fall to her knees.
“Ouch,” she mumbled, catching herself before face-planting into the auditorium’s rough carpet. The audience was uncomfortably quiet, not knowing whether to gasp, laugh or offer help. Quickly getting back up, Maria strode as fast as she could to a short set of stairs and teetered up to the stage. Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor as she walked to the podium.
Mrs. Wolfgramm cleared her throat, acti
ng oblivious to Maria’s public stumble. “Maria is also very intelligent, as all of us learned when she solved the murder of Mayor Hayward.” Mrs.Wolfgramm shoved the microphone into Maria’s face like a TV news anchorwoman. “Any insightful words for us?”
“I … uh … I … uh.” Maria’s face flushed.
An unannounced hard tap on Maria’s back—the same sensitive spot where one of the terrorist guards in Tehran used to apply pressure during torture sessions—jolted Maria. Instinctively she reached behind and clamped her hand around her assailant, about to flip the attacker onto his back. It would have been an impressive taekwondo move had she been sparring at a dojo. But she wasn’t.
A rumble of laughter came from those sitting in the chairs below.
Maria let go and spun around to find a handsomely dressed nine-year-old boy, hair combed and parted, holding a gorgeous bouquet of flowers in one arm. With wide eyes and taking a few steps backward, he recited his memorized line. “On behalf of Kanab, we c-congratulate you for your e-e-exem-pl-ary work,” he stuttered.
Good grief. What was her problem?
Maria bent down and accepted the bouquet with a plastered smile. “Thank you.” The sound of someone’s phone ringing punctuated the scene.
The boy, wanting to get off the stage as badly as Maria did, practically threw the flowers at her and ran. How Maria wished she could follow. Instead, she stood and faced the podium like a grown-up. It was time to give her thanks. As she cleared her throat to begin her “speech,” whispers from a group of women in the far back corner of the auditorium grew from hushed and constrained to urgent and intense.
“He needs help.”
“They don’t know what to do.”
Instantly, Maria calmed. There was an emergency. She could smell it. Her breathing slowed and her head cleared.
“Please,” said Mrs. Wolfgramm, trying to divert attention back to the stage. “Ladies, I’m not done up here. We still have—”
It was hard to see what was going on in the darkened audience chairs. To Maria, it appeared that several women were standing. Someone walked down the aisle.
“We need the house lights on,” Maria ordered into the microphone. She had no idea to whom she was speaking, but large overhead lights burst on. Maria blinked several times, helping her eyes adjust to the brightness. A group of ten or so women were huddled together. One of them was crying, holding her stomach as if it might rip apart.
Was she in labor?
No, she was too old for that.
“It’s Linda Erickson’s son,” someone in the group shouted out. “He’s stuck climbing in the Cracks. His friends are there and say he’s in a bad way.”
In less than two seconds, Maria was off the stage and headed in the direction of the terrified woman. Maria had no idea what “the Cracks” were, but she planned to find out. Another second passed and Rod was at her side, jogging up the aisle.
“How long has he been stuck?” Rod asked, his Search and Rescue training springing into action.
A woman pulled her phone from her ear and answered Rod in a loud voice. “They say he hasn’t been able to go up or down for about half an hour. He was free climbing so he doesn’t have a safety line on.”
Someone was stuck rock climbing. A kid. Teenager probably. Scanning the group, Maria saw the woman who had appeared in pain earlier. Now it was clear she was bent over hyperventilating.
While Rod gathered information about the stranded climber’s location from the woman on the phone, Maria cleared space around the shaking, hysterical mother, Mrs. Erickson she assumed. “Someone call 911,” Maria said. “We need an ambulance here. She’s going into shock.”
The woman standing next to Linda Erickson dialed her phone and began talking to dispatch.
Maria turned her attention back to the group of women. “How far away are the Cracks?” she barked.
“About twenty minutes outside of town,” someone in the crowd answered.
Rod looked at Maria, frustration in his eyes. “My gear’s at my house. That’s fifteen minutes away.”
“I’ve got mine in my trunk.” Maria kicked off her shoes. “Tell the kid to hold on and that someone will be there in ten minutes.” As she spoke, she unbuttoned the waistband of her skirt and slipped it off. Underneath, she wore a pair of black running shorts and a gun holster velcroed around her upper thigh. Running toward the green exit sign of the gymnasium, she yelled, “Rod, hurry! I need you to show me where to go.”
Rod let his eyes drift for a second to her skirt on the floor and then back to the disappearing form of Maria. “Coming,” he called and took off at a sprint.
CHAPTER TWO
The easy access to the center of the fabled country can be deadly deceptive. Once in the mountains and off the main trails, searchers for the lost mine are greeted by some of the most rugged, hazardous, and inhospitable terrain in the world. Steep cliffs, rocky wind-tortured and heat-infested canyons, scarcity of water, rattlesnakes, death; all are there.
—“Fool’s Gold,” by Robert Sikorsky, Golden West Publishers, 1983, page 17.
HOW JOSH ERICKSON GOT as high as he did without falling sooner was a miracle. A senseless, illfated miracle. If he’d slipped when he was only thirty feet up, he might have survived. But at his current position, at least seventy feet in the air, he was in an impo—
Maria interrupted her own thought. Nothing’s impossible. Instead, she made herself think of the words of her former CIA director. There are only bad situations.
And this certainly qualified as one.
A very bad situation.
The Cracks were a series of incredibly beautiful and terrifyingly steep slot canyons in a sector of mountains outside of town. As Maria expertly strapped on her harness and secured her rack of equipment around her waist, she searched for the path on the cliff wall Josh must have taken to get where he was.
At the bottom of the slot canyon, the two walls were so close all Josh must have had done was stem up them for at least twenty feet. It would have been as easy as climbing a hallway or a door frame using opposite pressure with both hands and feet. At that point, however, the slot widened. Josh had taken the east wall, free climbing, using natural handholds and cracks in the rock’s surface.
An un-established route without gear.
Stupid, adrenaline-hungry teenager. It endeared the kid to Maria. She could picture herself having done something like this. Still could, in fact.
“It was a dare. A dumb, dumb dare.” A blonde, big-eyed teenage girl had her arms wrapped around her waist. Her whole body shook. Next to her were three other teenagers. They interrupted and talked over each other trying to explain what had happened as Rod fastened the belay harness on himself. Maria only half listened. Instead, her eyes scoured the wall’s terrain—chaussy and brittle. From the amount of crumbled rock on the slot canyon floor, it appeared that as Josh had climbed up, his holds had broken off, effectively giving him no way back down. And as to why he hadn’t kept climbing up was anyone’s guess. Pain? Panic? Or maybe the wall wasn’t as flat as it appeared. He might have hit an overhang that wasn’t visible from below.
Whatever it was, Josh now hugged the cliff, holding absolutely still, seventy feet in the air. He looked paralyzed.
He probably was. More or less.
A very, very bad situation.
“Don’t look down, Josh,” Maria yelled upward. “Keep your eyes on the wall. I’m coming up to get you. Your job is to be as still as you can and hold on.”
She wasn’t sure he could hear her that far up. The canyon wind sucked noise in and spit it out as a faint whistle.
Maria checked her equipment one more time.
Shoes. Check.
Cams. Check.
Nuts. Check.
Carabineers. Check.
Harness. Check.
She mentally went through the list. Usually she spent much longer getting ready for a climb like this one, but she didn’t have that luxury today.
“I�
��m ready.” Maria looked at Rod, who nodded.
“I’m secure here, too.” He planted himself in belay position.
The small group of shell-shocked teens backed up without either Rod or Maria telling them to, unconsciously distancing themselves in case the unimaginable happened.
After stemming up the narrow part of the slot in less than two minutes, Maria placed her first anchor above where the walls separated apart. There were some jugs, albeit brittle, to hold onto. But the wall had hardly any cracks. Not what Maria had been hoping for. She needed cracks to secure her nuts and cams into.
Seeking out her own hand holds, she moved up the wall, going more slowly now. But with every pull and lift she was that much closer to Josh. Many of the fragile jugs broke off at her mere touch, and she had to quickly grasp for another.
“Careful!” Rod hollered.
Not helpful.
Maria searched the wall for a better route—ideally a crack she could follow up all the way to Josh. But nothing led to him. The teen had managed to travel up the wall using the absolutely worst path possible.
It was time for Plan B.
Ignoring a loud noise from below, Maria focused on the wall’s terrain. With each movement upward, the ground was a different world—one on which she did not belong. The cliff was her world. It was the only thing that mattered now.
Muddled voices were carried away in the echo of the wind’s travels. Josh had not said anything—or at least he had said nothing loud enough for Maria to hear. To be silenced by fear wasn’t merely an expression. It was real. Maria understood that.
Skeletons Among Us: Legends of Treasure Book 2 Page 1
