Rattlesnake Crossing

by J. A. Jance

  As Wilson went off to issue orders and dispatch his people, Joanna turned to Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal. Ernie's face was screwed into a disapproving frown. "What the hell's the deal?" he asked. "Why send Search and Rescue to do something detectives and evidence technicians should handle? Those clowns may be fine at finding lost hikers, but they're not going to know real evidence from a hole in the ground unless it jumps up and hits them in the face. Send those guys home and wait for people who actually know what they're doing. We're going to have plenty of help from real detectives. I just heard Pima County is sending us a pair of investigators. So is Maricopa."

  "I'm afraid we're going to have more than plenty of help," Joanna said grimly. "Which is why we need to do what searching we're going to do now, before the place is overrun with a bunch of outsiders."

  "What do you mean, more than plenty of help?" Ernie asked.

  "Has either one of you ever heard of a race-car driver named Danny Berridge?"

  Detective Carbajal shrugged his shoulders. "Not me," he said.

  "Danny Berridge." Ernie Carpenter repeated the name as a frown burrowed across his forehead. "That sounds familiar somehow. Wait-wasn't he that Indy 500 driver who dropped out of sight several years back, sometime in the late eighties or so? I seem to remember that he was involved in some kind of on-track accident and then… Wait… are you telling us Danny Berridge is Katrina Berridge's husband?"

  "One and the same," Joanna replied.

  "How did you find that out?"

  "I just lucked into it."

  "But is it confirmed?"

  "Yes. Frank Montoya already checked it out. So that means we not only have a serial murderer on our hands, we also have a case that's going to arouse a good deal of national interest. With the other cases and other counties involved, it would be bad enough to just have the Tucson and Phoenix media breathing down our necks. This one will probably draw reporters from all over."

  "Great," Ernie grumbled. After a moment he brightened. "Get thinking about it, this thing could have an upside."

  "What's that?" Joanna asked.

  "My mother-in-law loves the National Enquirer," he re-plied. "Phylis is always asking me when one of my cases is going to appear in her paper. If the Indy driver turns out to be our killer, maybe this is it."

  "Don't even think such a thing," Joanna told him.

  While Ernie and Jaime set off to join the S and R team in the ground search, Joanna stared up the road, wondering how long it would take for Dick Voland and Frank Montoya to arrive on the scene. It was early afternoon in the middle of August. As the desert heat bore down on her, she rummaged in the back of the Blazer for a bottle of water. She had finally succeeded in locating what was evidently her last one when the phone in her purse rang.

  Joanna's cell phone had come complete with an option that allowed her to adjust and personalize the ringer. In order to differentiate her phone from others, she had chosen the ringer option that sounded for all the world like the early-morning crow of an enthusiastic rooster.

  "Hello," she said, after finally pawing the instrument (nit of the depths of her purse.

  "They're done," Marianne Maculyea said. "Esther's out of surgery and in the transplant intensive care unit."

  Joanna breathed a relieved sigh. "Thank God," she said. "How are you and Jeff doing?"

  "We're both pretty ragged," Marianne admitted. "Jeff's at a phone down the hall calling his folks. I decided to call you."

  Joanna heard the unspoken subtext in that simple statement. Jeff Daniels could call his parents and tell them the news. Marianne couldn't. Marianne's parents had never recovered from their daughter's public defection from the Catholic Church and becoming a Methodist minister. Over the years, Marianne had given Joanna helpful hints about resolving the mother/daughter rifts between Joanna and Eleanor Lathrop. That didn't mean, however, that she had ever been able to heal the long-standing feud with her own mother.

  "Thanks for letting me know," Joanna said, not commenting on the unspoken part of the message. "Angie called early this morning to let me know what was happening. I decided that it was better for me to wait for you to call me rather than the other way around. Are you staying in Tucson?"

  "For tonight anyway," Marianne replied. "We've booked a room at the Plaza at Speedway and Campbell. Once Jeff gets off the phone, he'll probably head over there to catch a nap. He'll come back later and spell me. I don't know about tomorrow. One or the other of us will go home to be with Ruth, or maybe Angie or somebody can bring her up here for a little while during the day."

  There was a pause. "You don't necessarily sound all that hot yourself, Joanna. What's going on with you?"

  Jeff and Marianne were enmeshed in the all-consuming cocoon of their own little crisis, and justifiably so. Joanna could see no reason to trouble Marianne Maculyea with any of the grim details of what was happening right then on the Triple C.

  "I'm overseeing a search right now," Joanna answered carefully. "And then I have some interviews, but I thought I'd try dropping by the hospital later on this afternoon if that's all right with you."

  "Please," Marianne said. "That would be great. I'd really like to see you. So would Jeff."

  Something in Marianne's tone bothered Joanna-something she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Esther is all right, isn't she?" she asked.

  "Yes," Marianne replied, her voice cracking. "At least I think so."

  "What's wrong, then?"

  "That's just it. I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired. We were here all night long. Neither one of us has had any sleep…"

  "No, Mari," Joanna countered. "It's more than that." A long silence filled the phone. "What is it?" she urged. "Tell me."

  Marianne took a deep breath. "You remember that night Andy was here in the hospital?" she said at last.

  Joanna remembered every bit of it. Too well. "Yes," she said.

  "Remember when you told me you were trying to pray, but you couldn't remember the words?"

  That moment was still crystal clear in Joanna's heart and memory, as if it had happened mere minutes ago. She squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden film of tears that threatened to blind her.

  “You told me that it didn't matter," Joanna said. "You told me that trying to remember the words was good enough because God knew what I meant. And then you offered to pray for me."

  "I shouldn't have," Marianne said now. The black hopelessness in her friend's words wrung Joanna's heart, made her want to weep.

  "What do you mean, you shouldn't have?"

  "I had no right," Marianne said. "I didn't know what I was talking about."

  "Of course you did. What are you saying, Marianne? What's wrong?"

  "I've been here all night trying to pray myself, but I can't, Joanna. And it's not just the words that I've lost, either. It's more than that. Far more. How could God do something like this to us and to Esther? How could He make Esther so sick that the only way to save her is for some other mother's baby to die? That's not right. It's not fair."

  Marianne lapsed into a series of stricken sobs. For several seconds Joanna listened and said nothing. There was nothing she could think of to say. How could she go about comforting someone who was a steadfast friend and pillar of strength to everyone else?

  "You'll get through this," Joanna said finally.

  "Yes," Marianne choked, "maybe I will. But how will I ever be able to stand up at the pulpit and preach about faith when my own is so totally lacking? How can I teach about a loving God when I'm so pissed off at Him I can barely stand it?"

  Joanna smiled in spite of herself. Marianne Maculyea, the rock-throwing firebrand rebel she had known in junior high at Lowell School, was a firebrand still.

  "If you're so totally lacking in faith," Joanna pointed out, "you wouldn't even acknowledge God, much less be pissed at Him. Now, have you had any asleep?"

  Even as she asked the question, Joanna reminded herself of her mother-in-law. For Eva Lou Brady, a crisis of the sou
l was almost always rooted in some physical reality.

  "No," Marianne admitted.

  "What about having something to eat?"

  "Jeff brought me a tray from the cafeteria a little while ago, but I couldn't eat it. I wasn't hungry."

  "Is the food still there?"

  "The tray is."

  "Eat some of it," Joanna urged. "Even if it tastes like sawdust when you try to choke it down. You're going to need your strength, Marianne. If you don't eat or sleep, you're not going to be worth a plugged nickel when you'll want to be at your best. If you're strung out because of lack of food or rest, you won't have anything to offer Esther when she finally comes out from under the anesthetic. She's going to need you then, and you'd better be ready."

  There was another stretch of silence and Marianne seemed to consider what she'd been told. "I'll try," she said at last.

  Joanna saw two vehicles pulling up behind the Blazer-Dick Voland's Bronco and Frank Montoya's Crown Victoria. "Good," Joanna said. "You do that. And remember, I'll be there either later this afternoon or else this evening. All right?"

  "All right."

  "You hang tough."

  As soon as the call ended, Joanna stood with the phone in her hand. She thought about calling the Copper Queen Hotel directly and telling Butch that she wouldn't be able to see him that night, but she was afraid he'd talk his way around her. Instead, feeling like a heel and a coward to boot, she hunched in the code for the sheriff's department.

  "Kristin," she said as soon as her secretary came on the line, "I don't have much time. Please call the Copper Queen Hotel and leave a message for Mr. Frederick Dixon. Tell him I won't be able to join him for dinner tonight. Tell him I'm going up to Tucson to see Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea."

  "Got it," Kristin said. "Copper Queen, Frederick Dixon, and you can't make it for dinner. How're Jeff and Marianne doing, by the way? I had lunch with my mother. She was telling me about the transplant. I don't know who told her."

  I can guess, Joanna thought. And her initials are Marliss Shackleford.

  "They're okay," she said. "At least they're doing as well as can be expected."

  Finished with the call, she tried to reassure herself that she had handled the Butch Dixon situation in a kind and reasonable fashion. He might be disappointed, but at least she hadn't just left him hanging for a change. Still, though

  Her thoughts were interrupted by an excited shout from one of the S and R guys a good quarter of a mile away.

  "Sheriff Brady," Mike Wilson yelled, relaying the message. "Come take a look at this."

  With Dick Voland and Frank Montoya both trailing be-hind her, Joanna hurried over to where Mike was standing. Several of the other S and R guys were already converging on the spot. Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal weren't far behind.

  "What is it?" Joanna demanded when she finally reached Mike.

  He pointed toward the ground. "Look," he said.

  There, nestled between a pair of rocks and winking back the brilliant late-summer sunlight, was a watch-a gold-and-silver Omega. On the watch's pearlescent face behind the remains of a shattered crystal, the two hands stood stopped at 10:26. That was the time Sonja Hosfield had told her she remembered hearing shots. Around ten-thirty.

  Looking around, Joanna saw the blood spatters and knew this was the killing ground-the place Katrina Berridge had fallen to earth. She looked up and caught Ernie's eye. "Have you found any bullets?" she asked.

  "Not yet," he said. "But we're looking."

  "Hey, Mike." Terry Gregovich's voice shrilled out of the speaker on a small walkie-talkie fastened to the collar of Mike Wilson's orange hunting vest. "I think we may have found something up here."

  All eyes turned from the watch and the blood-spattered ground around it to the majestic cliffs rising from the valley floor. There, barely visible and clambering over the rock face like so many orange-bodied ants, were the other members of the Search and Rescue team.

  "What have you got, Terry?" Mike Wilson asked.

  "No shells or anything like that," Terry Gregovich replied. "But I've got some funny little marks here in the dirt. Looks like they might have come from someone setting up a tripod. And some footprints, too. A couple of them might even be good enough to cast."

  Joanna closed her eyes. Now we're making progress, she thought. "Great," she said to Mike. "Grab one of the evidence techs from the burial mound and get him over to Terry to make plaster casts. On the double. We lucked out that it didn't rain here yesterday, but that's not to say a storm won't blow through today."

  Joanna knew enough to be thankful. Considering the amount of space involved, it was more than luck that some-one had stumbled across the possible footprints on top of the cliffs and recognized their importance. It also crossed her mind that Terry Gregovich's skills and talents might be underutilized by his being permanently sidelined in Search and Rescue.

  "Hey, Mike," she said, "do your guys carry binoculars?"

  "We all do."

  "Ask Terry to look off the other side of the cliffs and see if he can see the ranch house at the Triple C."

  A few moments later, Terry replied in the affirmative.

  "Now look off to the left of that," Joanna continued. "To the north. There's a well with a big pump on it with two dead cattle nearby. Can he see those from, there?"

  This time the search took a little longer, but eventually it paid off. "I can see them clear as a bell," Terry said.

  "That's it, then," Joanna said. "That must have been where he was when he started shooting. Good work, Terry. Great work, in fact. This may be exactly the kind of break we need."

  "So what should I do now?" Terry Gregovich asked.

  "Don't touch a thing," Joanna told him. "Stay right where you are until the evidence guys show up with their plaster. And when you get down off the mountain, make an appointment to see Chief Deputy Montoya."

  "What for?" Terry asked.

  "To put in for a promotion," Joanna said. "You've earned it. You can tell him I said to find a spot for you in Patrol with the possibility of working into Investigations."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ernie Carpenter bagged the blood-spattered watch and Jaime Carbajal logged it. While they worked the actual crime scene, the S and R team continued to range over the river bottom and rising hillsides in search of evidence as well as the ugly, if unspoken, possibility of finding other victims. Within half an hour, Joanna's two detectives were joined by investigators from Pima County, Detectives Lazier and Hemming.

  Hot, bored, and unable to make any real contribution to the task at hand, Joanna finally took Ernie aside. "I think somebody should go to Rattlesnake Crossing and let them know what we've found. I'd hate for either Crow Woman or Danny Berridge to hear the news on the radio or from some enterprising reporter before we deliver the notification in person."

  "We've got three detectives working here now," Ernie said. "So if you'd like me to go along with you…"

  Next-of-kin notifications always left Joanna with a hole in the pit of her stomach. Telling someone of the death of a loved one, regardless of whether that news was expected or not, often took as much of a toll on the messenger as it did on the recipient. Whoever brought the word was automatically lowed into the role of front-row spectator as someone else's entire existence imploded around him. Still, it had to be done, and this one would be worse than most.

  "I'd appreciate that, Ernie," she told him gratefully. "I'd appreciate it more than you know."

  Leaving the on-going crime-scene investigations under the overall direction of Dick Voland, Joanna took Ernie Carpenter along with her in the Blazer for the drive to Rattle-snake Crossing. Bumping up the rough, dusty road toward the main ranch buildings, Joanna had the sense that she was traveling through some kind of deserted movie set. No people were visible, anywhere, but she did notice for the first time that all the ersatz tepees and hogans had air-conditioning units attached to discreetly camouflaged platforms placed at the rea
r of each pseudo-Indian dwelling.

  "If these guys want to pay good money to turn themselves into real Indians for two weeks at a time, you'd think they'd be tough enough to put up with real Arizona weather."

  Ernie ignored the wry humor in her comment. "The scalping's real enough," he said grimly. "Whoever's doing this made damned sure he got that part right."

  Joanna glanced in Ernie's direction. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" she asked.

  "No," he admitted. "I never have."

  "Since it's likely the killer's using a sniper rifle, is it possible all of this is connected to what happened to Clyde Philips?"

  Ernie thought about that for a moment. "It could be, I suppose," he said finally. "The fact that a fifty-caliber may have been used in this latest case does point in that direct ion. We know from what Frank told us that Clyde was trying to demo a fifty caliber, so he must have had one or more in stock.”

  "Frank told me this morning that Clyde claimed to have three different models available for immediate delivery."

  "So he did have some, then," Ernie mused. "But which ones? And how do we know the killer's rifle is one of them? Without any serial numbers…"

  "Wait a minute." Joanna reached for the radio clip. "Frank," she said once she had been put through to Chief Deputy Montoya, "how many companies manufacture fifty-calibers?"

  "Not that many," he replied. "More than five but probably less than twenty nationwide."

  "As soon as you get back to the department, and when you're not busy dodging reporters, I want you to call all those companies. ATF should be able to help out in locating manufacturers. Once you have them on the phone, find out if any of them were doing business with Clyde Philips in Pomerene. They should be able to come up with lists of serial numbers."

  "Will do," Frank returned. "I'll get to it as soon as possible, although it may be a while. The first wad of reporters just drove up and they're clamoring for information. I told them to go to the Quarter Horse in Benson and wait for me there. How are you doing on the next-of-kin notification?"