Rattlesnake Crossing

by J. A. Jance

  "I'm out in the middle of nowhere," Joanna said. "East of Benson. The signal is probably weak. I tried to call you earlier this afternoon, but no one was home."

  "That's what I wanted to tell you about. This afternoon."

  Up ahead of the Blazer, a small procession moved toward the waiting van. The two technicians from the Pima County ME's office carried a loaded stretcher. Behind them walked Fran Daly. Not surprisingly, she was sucking on the smoldering stub of a cigarette.

  When Ernie and Daniel Berridge met up with them, the little procession came to a sudden halt. Fran Daly stepped forward and nudged the lead technician out of the way. After a brief conference with Detective Carpenter, she unzipped the top of the body bag, then stood aside to give Daniel Berridge an unobstructed view.

  "Mom," Jenny said insistently, "are you listening to me or not?"

  "I'm sorry, Jenny. There's lots going on right now. What were you saying again? I must have missed some of it."

  "We were out picking rocks in the field today, and Melvin let me drive the tractor. My very own self. Can you believe it? He let Rodney and Brian do it, too. I didn't think he was going to let me because… well, you know. Because I'm a girl. That's what Rodney said, anyway. But Grandpa talked to him-to Melvin, not Rodney-and the next thing I knew, there I was driving the tractor. It was great. Aren't you proud of me?"

  "Yes, I am. Of course I am."

  Over Jenny's excited prattle, Joanna watched the drama unfold in front of her. She saw Daniel Berridge glance briefly into the body bag; then she saw the way he shuddered and drew back. As the color drained from his face he nodded and his lips moved. "It's her." Even though Joanna couldn't hear him, she knew exactly what he had said. Then he turned and blundered blindly away from the others. Several feet away he settled heavily onto a boulder, and once again buried his face in his hands.

  Watching someone else encounter the soul-killing death of a loved one always carried Joanna directly back to that awful time in her own life, to that sandy wasteland of a wash where she had found Andy's mangled and bleeding body.

  In that respect, Jenny's phone call couldn't have come at a better time. It had kept Joanna inside the truck with the windshield and a few feet of desert creating a sort of emotional buffer between her own aching heart and Daniel Berridge's mind-numbing pain. Without the luxury of that distance, Joanna knew only too well that she would have been sucked down into Daniel Berridge's crushing whirlpool of grief right along with him.

  "… that's okay, isn't it?"

  Again Joanna had no idea what was being said on the other end of the cell-phone connection. "Is what okay?" she asked stupidly.

  "Mother!" Jenny complained. "Are you listening to me or not?"

  "I'm trying to, sweetie," Joanna apologized. "As I said, there's lots of other stuff going on. What were you saying?"

  "The Grandma and Grandpa want to take me into town tomorrow to buy school clothes. I told the Gs you wouldn't mind. Please say yes, Mom. They really do want to."

  Joanna sighed. "If they want to spoil you, that's okay with me."

  "Mom, are you all right?" Jenny demanded. "Your voice sounds so funny, and it's not just the phone, either."

  For a second, it seemed as if their roles were suddenly reversed-as though Jenny was the mother and Joanna the daughter. "Esther's in the hospital," Joanna said. "She had her heart transplant this morning. That was one of the things I was going to tell you when I called. But you were out, and I didn't want to leave a message."

  Jenny took a deep breath. "Is she going to be okay?"

  "As far as we know. I talked to Marianne this afternoon. Esther's out of surgery and in intensive care."

  "I'll bet Jeff and Marianne are really scared. Shouldn't we send them flowers or something?"

  "What a good idea," Joanna replied. "I'm planning to go see them later on today. I'll be sure to take them some flowers. I know they'll appreciate it."

  By now the body bag had been zipped back up and the stretcher loaded into the van. Daniel Berridge straightened up and stood for a moment as if uncertain of what his next move should be. Joanna was relieved when Ernie Carpenter took the man by the arm and led him back toward the Blazer.

  "Jenny," she said, "I'm going to have to go."

  "Will you call me tonight and let me know how Esther's doing?"

  "Yes, of course I will."

  "And Mom?"

  "What?"

  "What about poor little Ruthie? What will happen to her if Esther dies or something? What if she never comes back from the hospital? Daddy didn't. They took him away and he never came back. The same thing could happen to Esther."

  With death there is no "or something," Joanna thought. "Don't worry, Esther will be fine," she said with as much conviction as she could manage. "But even if something awful did happen, Ruthie would still have Jeff and Marianne to love her."

  "That's different," Jenny said. "That's not like having a real sister."

  "No," Joanna agreed, "I don't suppose it is. I've got to go now, Jenny. I love you."

  "I love you, too."

  Ernie Carpenter was pulling open the back door to the Blazer. "We've got a positive, Sheriff Brady," he told her unnecessarily. "From the looks of things, the evidence techs and the detectives are going to be here for the next several hours. Probably right up until dark or until it rains again, whichever comes first. So if you wouldn't mind taking Mr. Berridge back to Rattlesnake Crossing, I'd really appreciate it.

  Glancing to the east, she saw columns of fat thunder-heads rising over the Chiricahuas. Quickly she folded her phone and returned it to her purse. "No problem," she said, motioning to the still ashen-faced Daniel Berridge. "I'll be glad to take you back."

  The return trip to Rattlesnake Crossing was conducted in absolute silence. While a stricken Daniel Berridge stared stonily out the window, Joanna tried desperately to think of something to say that wouldn't sound either stupid or patronizing. Only when he opened the door to climb out did she finally find words.

  "I'm very sorry about all this, Mr. Berridge. I lost my husband, too, so I know what you're going through. It's a bitch!"

  He had started to slam the door shut. But when he opened it once more and stared back across the seat at Joanna, she was touched to see that trails of tears were still clearly marked on his pallid face.

  "You warned me," he said, "but I didn't know how had it would be to see her like that. I had no idea."

  "We should have foreseen that. If I'd been thinking, we could have wailed and just used dental records. It might have taken a little longer, but not much, and it would have spared you-"

  "No," he interrupted. "I wanted to see her. I wanted to see her the way she is now. That way I won't be able to kid myself into thinking that she's coming back."

  Joanna saw the terrible emptiness in Daniel Berridge's eyes. She knew part of the pain had nothing whatever to do with how Trina Berridge looked now-had nothing to do with the indignities that had been inflicted on her body during and after her death. Her husband's hurt came from what had gone before, from the quarrel that had sent Trina Berridge into the desert in the first place. Hoping to ease the man's pain, Joanna found herself admitting to this stranger something she had mentioned to no one else, not even to Marianne. It was something so hurtful that she barely acknowledged it herself.

  "Andy and I fought too," she said quietly.

  "Excuse me?" Berridge said.

  "Andy," Joanna said. "My husband. We had a big fight the morning he was shot. It took me months to learn that I had to let it go, Mr. Berridge. I can never take back those angry words, but the words aren't what killed him. The two aren't related."

  The combination of surprise and aching distress that flashed across the man's face told Joanna she was right, that she had unearthed part of what was adding extra weight to an already overwhelming burden of grief.

  "But it is my fault," he insisted. "We had a fight, she walked out, and now she's dead. If I had just kept my mouth s
hut-"

  "If it hadn't been Katrina," Joanna heard herself saying, "it would have been someone else."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We're dealing with a monster here, Mr. Berridge. I believe he was out hunting, looking for someone to kill. My guess is your wife walked into his range finder and he blew her away. That same night he also shot up some of Alton Hosfield's cattle and an irrigation pump over on the other side of the cliffs but still on Triple C property. He probably gave the same amount of thought to killing your wife as he did to killing the cattle."

  "But how…"

  "He's a serial killer, Mr. Berridge. We're pretty sure of one other case and have tentative links to at least one more. There may be others as well, ones we don't know about yet."

  "But how can this be? I had no idea there were others. If he's been operating around here, how come nobody ever heard anything about him?"

  "We told your sister earlier, but it must have been after you left the lobby. Once these cases hit the media, as they probably will, either this afternoon or tomorrow morning for sure, you need to know that everything about this case is going to come under intense media scrutiny. Your years of relative anonymity here will be at an end."

  "They already were," he replied.

  "What do you mean?"

  "A few months back, this guy showed up here at the ranch unannounced. I don't remember his name now, but he said he was writing a book on failed sports stars." He paused and frowned in concentration. "What was the title? I'm sure he thought it was real catchy. That's it. Losers Weepers was the name of it. All about sports greats or near greats who, for one reason or another, hung up their cleats or gloves or whatever and went home without ever living up to their supposed potential."

  "And did you talk to him?"

  "For a few minutes, but when he finally explained what he was after, I told him to take a hike."

  "What was he after?"

  "He wanted to know why I quit."

  "And did you tell him?"

  "No," Berridge said. "But I'll tell you. I lost my nerve. It was during the Indy. We were going around the track on a yellow. I wasn't even going that fast-seventy or so, maybe. And I was feeling great. I'd had the lead for twelve laps until somebody else spun out on the third turn. I was coming past the place where the safety team was cleaning debris off the track. And then my left rear tire flew off. For no reason, although they said later that I ran over a piece of metal that exploded the tire and tore the wheel right off the axle. It hit one of the safety guys full in the face. Broke his neck. He died instantly. I remember seeing his kids on TV that night, three little girls. The oldest was eleven; the youngest, seven. I haven't been in an Indy car since then. It just wasn't worth it to me. If I could kill somebody going seventy, what the hell could I do at two hundred?"

  "But your wife wanted you to go back to it?" Joanna asked.

  Berridge nodded. "Trina was really offended by the book and by my being included, with or without an interview. She went behind my back. She started calling up some of our old friends from racing, trying to see if she could put together a deal-a car, a sponsorship, all of that. She almost made it work, too. Two weeks ago, I happened to answer the phone in the middle of the day. Usually I'm outside then. This time, though, when nobody else answered, I picked it up. And I recognized the guy's voice the moment he opened his mouth-Tom Forbes. We used to be buddies when I was on the circuit. Now he's team manager for my old sponsor.

  "'How're you doing out there, Bud?' Tom says to me. That's what he always called me-Bud. 'I hear you're thinking about coming back into the fold.' I didn't know what to tell him… That was the first I had heard anything about it. But as soon as 1 talked to Trina, I figured out where it came from. I told her no deal, and that's when the fighting started. I knew right then it was just a matter of time."

  "That's when you started shopping around for a replacement cook?" Joanna asked.

  "That's right." He paused. "Racing gets in your blood. It can be dangerous as hell, but it's also glamorous and exciting. And you can make a hell of a lot more money by winning a single race than you can grubbing out an existence here for five or ten years. What Trina didn't understand is that I like this better. I like taking the time to plant something and then having a chance to watch it grow. I like taking something apart-like a broken bread machine-and putting it back together so it works like new."

  The plank door slammed at the front of the ranch house. Joanna looked up and was surprised to see a collection of several people-young men, mostly-staring at them. Daniel Berridge saw them, too. "I'd better go," he said. "And I'm doing better now. Thanks for letting me talk. I guess I needed to."

  Joanna nodded. In a few minutes of not asking questions, she had learned far more about Daniel Berridge than might have emerged in even the most focused of interrogations. By talking to him about Andy-by revealing her own dark secret-she had created a bond between them, a human connection, that left her utterly convinced that the man had no involvement in his wife's death.

  Turning the Blazer to drive back out of the yard, Joanna tried to catch a glimpse of Rattlesnake Crossing's current crop of temporary residents. For Apache-warrior wannabes, the group of mop-haired, mostly blond young men standing on the porch looked disturbingly normal and ordinary.

  When Joanna had crossed Pomerene Road earlier to bring Berridge home to Rattlesnake Crossing, the four-way intersection had been empty. Now, though, a white Nissan was parked there-a Nissan Sentra with a Bisbee Bee logo plastered on the door.

  Not Marliss again, Joanna thought despairingly. Not twice in one day.

  She would have tried to drive right on by, but Marliss Shackleford had seen the Blazer coming toward her. She clambered out of her car, waving frantically.

  Joanna slowed and rolled down her window. "Is something the matter?" she asked.

  "Is this where it all happened?" Marliss pointed up the now well-worn dirt track that led off toward the cliffs. "Is this where you're finding all the bodies?"

  "From right here, this is a crime scene," Joanna told her. "That means it's off-limits for everyone but investigating officers."

  "But what happened out here?" Marliss demanded. "Tell me. Back in town we're hearing all kinds of awful rumors. Is it true there's a serial killer on the loose in Cochise County?"

  "As you know, Chief Deputy Montoya is in charge of media relations. I believe he's scheduled a news conference for later today. In the Quarter Horse over in Benson. If you want information, I'd suggest you be there."

  "The Bee's reporters will be there to cover the news conference," Marliss replied indignantly. "I'm a columnist, Joanna. My job is to cover the human-interest part of the story. The angle. Most of the time, angles have nothing to do with the pablum that's dished out at official news conferences."

  "We're not exactly on the same wavelength, then, are we, Marliss?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You say your job is to find an angle," Joanna told her. "Mine is to enforce the law. Between the two, I don't think there's a lot of common ground."

  Marliss Shackleford's jaw stiffened. Joanna Brady had landed a blow, and both women knew it.

  "My, my," the columnist said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Are we power-tripping or what?"

  "You're welcome to call it whatever you want," Joanna returned. "As you said, I'm merely doing my job."

  "And getting a swelled head in the process," Marliss added. "It might be a good thing if you took a good, long look in the mirror once in a while, Joanna. Maybe you'd see how you're treating some of your old friends. Maybe you'd come to your senses."

  "Who are you trying to kid, Marliss? The two of us have never been friends, and you know it. And if you ask me, I don't think we're likely to be buddies in the future, either. So give it a rest. Forget the phony friendship stuff. Stay away from me and stay away from my crime scenes."

  "Why, I'll…"

  As Joanna drove away, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Marl
iss Shackleford stood frozen in a billowing cloud of dust, her mouth open in astonished but silent protest.

  Within half a mile of driving away, Joanna regretted what she'd done. She understood at once that she had taken a bad situation and made it infinitely worse. If Marliss Shackleford had been gunning for Sheriff Joanna Brady be-fore this, now the columnist would be downright rabid.

  Way to go, girl, Joanna scolded herself. You and your big mouth.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Half a mile down the road, Joanna was so caught up in mulling over the confrontation with Marliss Shackleford that she barely noticed an early-eighties F-100 Ford pickup coming toward her. Only when the truck wheeled in a sharp U-turn and came speeding after her with its lights flashing on and off did she pay attention. She pulled over immediately. Stepping out of the Blazer, she was standing on the shoulder of Pomerene Road when the pickup stopped beside her. There were two men in the truck-Alton Hosfield, owner of the Triple C, and a younger man who looked to be in his mid-twenties.

  "Sheriff Brady, what the hell is going on out here?" Hosfield demanded, leaning forward to speak across the young man in the passenger seat. "The phone's been ringing off the hook. My ranch is crawling with people I don't know, but I can't get any of them to talk to me. I think I deserve some kind of explanation."

  "We're conducting a homicide investigation," Joanna said. "Two actually. One body was found up on the ledges just below the cliffs last night. Another was found by Search and Rescue this morning."

  "Two homicides," Hosfield echoed. "On my property? You can't be serious."

  "I am," Joanna returned. "Katrina Berridge was the cook at Rattlesnake Crossing, just up the road. From the looks of it, the weapon that killed her may very well turn out to be the same one that killed your cattle and wrecked the pump. The other victim, Ashley Brittany, was a biology student from N.A.U. in Flagstaff. She was down here doing a master's degree internship."