by J. A. Jance
Sonja nodded wordlessly.
Leaving the engine running and drawing her Colt, Joanna dropped out of the Blazer. She hit the ground rolling, shoulder first, and came to rest against a pillow-sized boulder. The force of hitting the rock knocked the wind out of her lungs and sent the Colt spinning away from her hand. Only when she had retrieved the gun did she realize how badly she had hurt her shoulder. Her whole arm was numb. It was all she could do to maintain her hold on the Colt's grip.
Seconds later, still rubbing her bruised shoulder, she heard the clatter of an arriving helicopter. Good as his word, Todd Kries had already dropped over the mountains and was bringing in his two sharpshooting deputies as promised. Way to go, Todd, Joanna thought, but before she could finish that train of thought, the engine of the ATV surged to lifer. Moments later, it came roaring down the road,
"Joanna," Frank shouted, "look out! He's coming your way!"
But then Joanna realized that Merritt wasn't coming toward her at all. He was actually aiming for the Blazer. In a flash of intuition, she realized that her four-wheel drive vehicle was what he was really after. A fateful flat tire had disabled Ryan Merritt's main means of escape. He had other transportation. For off-roading, the ATV was great, but long-term, it wouldn't move far enough or fast enough for him to get away. And it wouldn't carry any kind of payload, either.
As those thoughts flashed through Joanna's mind, she also realized that because the road was terribly rough right there, he was being forced to use both hands to drive. Both hands. For those few seconds, then, Ryan Merritt wasn't armed.
Measuring the distance between him and the Blazer and between herself and the Blazer, Joanna knew it would be a foot race-a life-and-death foot race. She also knew she had to get there first. Placing second wasn't an option. If Ryan beat her, the Blazer would be his. It was sitting there running with the key already in the ignition and with Sonja Hosfield trapped in the backseat.
He wouldn't hesitate at killing Sonja, any more than he would hesitate at killing someone else, Joanna thought.
Sometimes during the summer, before diving into the icy-cold, well-water depths of the Elks Club pool, Joanna would stand on the diving board and gulp a single preparatory breath. She did that now. Then she pushed up off the ground and propelled herself toward the Blazer.
She beat him there by mere inches, flying horizontally into the open driver's door from five feet away and sliding all the way across the seat. The knuckles of her fingers slammed against the door handle on the passenger side. Once again the Colt was knocked from her hand. This time it landed on the floorboard. By the time she had groped around and found it, Ryan Merritt was already behind her at the open door. And now he, too, was armed. He was raising the deer rifle to aim it when the deafening sound of a gunshot exploded in Joanna's ears.
She looked on in horror while a shocked expression froze on Ryan Merritt's face. The bullet smashed into his forehead, leaving a seemingly small hole. Then it exploded out the back of his head in a shower of gore. The half-raised deer rifle clattered to the ground. It fell backward, away from the open door. And so did he.
At first Joanna thought that Frank must have raced back to the far side of the Blazer and fired the fatal shot from there. But then she saw him. He was still yards away. The shot had come from much closer than that.
The sound of the shot reverberated in Joanna's ears. The smell of cordite stung her nostrils. Puzzled, she raised her-self up and turned around. In the backseat of the Blazer sat Sonja Hosfield. A small but deadly and still smoking pistol was gripped in her trembling hand.
"I wanted him dead," Sonja said simply. "Ryan deserved to be dead, and now he is."
"But where did the gun come from?" Joanna asked. "I thought…"
"It was in my purse," Sonja Hosfield explained. "It's always in my purse. I've carried it for years."
"You'd better hand it over," Joanna said. Without a word, Sonja Hosfield complied.
The next few minutes were a blur of activity. But when there was a pause in the action, Joanna tried to slip away on foot, putting a little distance between herself and the din of arriving emergency vehicles. Some thirty feet from the roadway, she sank down on a boulder. She had retrieved her cell phone from Frank. Unfortunately, her attempt at a discreet exit hadn't gone unnoticed. She had removed the phone from her pocket and was punching numbers into the keypad when Frank Montoya came surging through the undergrowth.
"What's the matter?" he asked anxiously. "Are you all right?"
"I'm okay," Joanna said shakily, holding up the phone so he could see it. "But if you don't mind, I need a little privacy-to call my daughter."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Afterward, Joanna barely remembered the rest of that Friday night. She finally went dragging home sometime around midnight. There was a message on the machine from Marianne saying that if it was all right with Joanna, the services for Esther would be Monday afternoon at three o'clock.
She stood in the shower until she ran out of hot water, but no amount of showering could wash away the horror of what Fran Daly had shown her when she met up with the medical examiner in the hot little room behind the garage on Alton Hosfield's Triple C. Monty Brainard's assessment had been right on the money.
The frost-covered freezer compartment of Ryan Merritt's refrigerator was his trophy room. There, wrapped in separate plastic sandwich bags, Fran Daly had discovered the frozen, bloodied remains of four newly harvested human scalps. A few feet away, in the bottom dresser drawer, she had found one more, much older than the others.
"What do you think?" Fran Daly had asked, opening the drawer and shining a flashlight so Joanna could see inside.
Joanna had sighed. "I think we just found the rest of Rebecca Flowers," she had said. "The poor little runaway from Yuma."
After the shower, Joanna went to bed and tried to sleep, but without much success. She found herself almost wishing that Butch had come back to the house so she could have cuddled up next to him. It wasn't that her body was chilled; her soul was.
Butch called the next morning as Joanna was getting ready to leave for work. "How about breakfast?" he asked.
"I can't," she told him. "I have to be in the office in ten minutes."
"Are you okay?"
Joanna closed her eyes, grateful that he had asked the question, while at the same time wondering what about her voice had given her away.
"No," she said. "It turns out I'm not all right. But I have to go in all the same. We've got a whole lot of cleaning up to do around the department this weekend. It'll probably take most of the day."
"Dinner, then?"
"I think so," she said, "but call me later, just to be sure."
During the morning briefing, Joanna learned from Dick Voland that more than thirty thousand dollars in cash had been found packed into the back of Ryan Merritt's truck. "Since we didn't find any guns other than his father's deer rifle and the one fifty-caliber in his truck, I think it's safe to assume that he unloaded most of the weapons from Clyde Philips' shop. We don't know where yet, but I've got ATF chasing after them. The agent in charge wanted to know how come we hadn't clued his office in earlier."
"You mean you hadn't?" Joanna asked.
Voland looked at her sheepishly and shook his head. "I told him I put on too much Vitalis and it must have slipped my mind."
In spite of herself, Joanna smiled. "How'd that go over?" Voland grinned back at her. "Not too well," he said. "But what could the guy say?"
"Not much." Joanna turned to the others. "Now, have we had any luck sorting out the connections between Frankie, Clyde, and Ryan?"
Ernie nodded. "As a matter of fact, we have," he said. "The evidence techs were going over Frankie Ramos' VW bus here in the impound lot when they found an unfinished letter addressed to his folks. Here's a Xerox copy."
Dear Mom and Dad,
I'm sory for all the trubble I caused. Clyde was nice to me but he was getting sicker and sicker. I tried to take
him to the doctor but he wuldn't go. Ryan said we should take the stuff from the shop and cell it. He said he had frends from Florens who wuld buy guns and stuff, but Clyde hurd and was mad as hell. Ryan hit him and put him to bed I thought he was dead but he wasn't. When Ryan saw he was still breathing he wanted me to hit him to, but I culdn't. I put a bag over his head. Mom, pleese ask God to forgiv me.
I'm scarred of Ryan. He sez he's comming tonite to giv me the mony. But I don't want it. What shud I do? I can't tell what
The letter ended in mid-sentence. "That's all there is?" Joanna said.
Ernie nodded. "That's it."
"Has Ruben Ramos seen this yet?" she asked.
"No," Ernie answered. "Not yet."
"You'll take it to him?"
"Right away. As soon as wt. finish up here."
"And stay with Ruben after he finishes reading it," Joanna added. "He may need, someone to talk to."
Later, when the briefing had finished with the one set of cases and moved on to more routine matters, Frank Montoya brought up the issue of Eddy Sandoval's dismissal. Firing a deputy put a real crimp in Dick Voland's Patrol Division. It also meant that Frank's carefully contrived work roster for the following month would have to be redone. Neither of the two chief deputies was happy about that, but neither of them faulted Joanna for her decision.
Hours afterward, Joanna had just put down her phone for what seemed like the tenth time and was reaching for her office bottle of aspirin when the private line rang.
"Joanna," Eleanor Lathrop Winfield said the moment her daughter answered, "you'll never guess what happened!"
"What?"
"We're here in Seattle getting ready to catch our plane back to Phoenix when there you are!"
"Mother," Joanna said, "I haven't been anywhere near there. Believe me, I've been stuck right here in the office all day long."
"Not in person, silly," Eleanor said. "Your picture. It's right here on the front page of the Seattle Times, along with a big article that was continued two pages later. What in the world have you been up to while we've been gone? I've read the article and so has George. We can hardly believe it. And the article calls you a hero. Whatever happened to the word 'heroine'? I think it's ever so much nicer. 'Hero' makes you sound so… well… masculine. In my day, a woman who wrote books called herself an authoress, not an author. That sounded much more ladylike, too, if you ask me."
Joanna sighed. "I didn't write the article, Mother. As a matter of fact, who did?'
"Someone from the Bisbee Bee," Eleanor answered. "The article and picture both must have been picked up by the wire services."
"Marliss Shackleford didn't write it, I hope."
"Heavens, no. She's nothing but a columnist. No, I think it was probably Kevin Dawson, the son of the publisher. Anyway, I have to go now. They're calling our plane. We won't be in until late tonight. Will I see you tomorrow?"
"I doubt it, Mother," Joanna said. "I'll need to spend time with Jeff and Marianne tomorrow before Jenny and the Gs get home. The funeral's Monday."
"Funeral!" Eleanor exclaimed. "What funeral?"
"Esther's," Joanna said wearily.
"Esther? You mean Jeff and Marianne's little girl?"
"Yes. She died yesterday afternoon at University Medical Center in Tucson. She had surgery and then she caught pneumonia."
Eleanor was outraged. "Joanna Brady!" she exclaimed. "Why on earth didn't you call and let me know?"
"It turns out I was a little busy." And then Joanna almost did it again. She was on the verge of apologizing when she caught herself and realized that she didn't have to. There was nothing to apologize for. "Besides, Mother," she added, "you were on a ship, so you weren't exactly available. Remember?"
"Oh," Eleanor Lathrop Winfield said. "I guess that's right."
An hour later, Joanna picked up the phone, called the Copper Queen, and asked to be put through to Butch Dixon's room.
He came on the line and greeted her. "Does this mean you've surfaced?"
"For the moment. Do you have any plans for the evening?" "Hopes, yes," Butch said. "Plans, no."
"How'd you like to come on out to the house? We'll cook dinner together. And bring your jammies," she added with a nervous laugh.
"Wait a minute, does that mean dinner might turn into another sleepover?"
"It might," she conceded. "Jenny comes home tomorrow afternoon. That's when I turn back into a pumpkin."
"When should I show up?" Butch asked.
"Make it an hour," Joanna said. "I still have to go to the store and buy groceries."
"Make it half an hour," he countered. "I'll go buy the groceries."
Butch was as good as his word. He showed up with his Outback loaded with groceries five minutes after Joanna had walked into the house and kicked off her shoes. They had an early dinner, listened to Patsy Cline, and were in bed but not exactly sleeping when the phone rang at a quarter past ten.
Joanna groaned first, but she answered.
"Sheriff Brady?" Tica Romero said. "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but we have a problem here."
"What kind of problem?"
"There's a convoy of eighteen-wheelers parked in front of the department. We've got a man and woman screaming something about unlawful imprisonment, and then there's a whole bunch of pissed-off truckers who claim the woman-who happens to be married to one of them-is the naked hitchhiker who's been running the honey-pot deal out on I-10. What should we do?"
"Call Dick Voland," Joanna said. "Tell him I'm under the weather. He'll have to handle it."
Butch grinned as Joanna set down the phone and switched off the light. "Under the weather?" he teased. "Well," she said, "maybe I meant under the covers."
EPILOGUE
The Monday after Ryan Merritt's death was hot and muggy. It was like the aftermath of any other natural disaster. The end of Cochise County's spree killer brought with it a flurry of funerals.
Early that morning, Clyde Philips was laid to rest in the Pomerene Cemetery after a moving service conducted by Belle's pastor at the First Pentecostal Church of Pomerene. And up the road at the Triple C, after a service in the Benson L.D.S. church, Jake Hosfield was laid to rest in the family plot. Alton had wanted to bury Ryan Merritt-a boy the tabloids were already labeling the "Cascabel Kid"-in the family plot as well, but his wife wouldn't hear of it. After a brief but heated battle Alton had acceded to her wishes.
When the younger boy's service was over, Alton took off alone on what had once been Jake's ATV. He rode it all the way to the edge of the river, stopping only when he was sure he was safely out of Sonja's sight. Then he spent a heartbroken half hour scattering the ashes of his other son, his firstborn. As he scattered the ashes, he also turned loose his lifelong dream of one day handing over his hard-held family spread to one or both of his sons. A lesser man might have taken his own life that afternoon, but that wasn't Alton Hosfield's way. When he finished what had to be done by the river, he went back to the house and his wife and tried to go on.
A few miles away, across Pomerene Road at Rattlesnake Crossing Ranch, Daniel Berridge and his sister, Crow Woman, conducted a private ceremony for Katrina Berridge, burying her in a grave the two of them had spent the night digging by hand. A photographer for People magazine tried to crash the ceremony, only to be driven off by what he later called "a shovel-wielding maniac in a black squaw dress and moccasins."
After a short service at a funeral home in Tucson, Ashley Brittany's remains were shipped back to her home in southern California for final burial. Ruben and Alicia Ramos heard an aging priest celebrate their son's burial mass at a small parish church in Benson.
The last of the funerals that day, the one scheduled for three o'clock in the afternoon at Bisbee's Canyon United Methodist Church, had nothing at all to do with the Cascabel Kid and everything to do with Joanna Brady. She sat by the pulpit, nervously aware that she was sitting in Marianne's accustomed spot. Eventually, looking out at the sea of familiar faces a
nd listening to the soothing notes of the organist's prelude, she began to feel a little better.
Esther's casket was tiny and white. Dwarfed by banks of flowers, it was covered by a blanket of white roses interspersed with sprigs of greenery and baby's breath. While Joanna watched, a rainbow of midafternoon sunlight splashed in through the stained-glass window and transformed the delicate white petals into a kaleidoscope of breathtaking colors jewel tones of red and green, blue and gold.
Moments before the three o'clock starling time, the last few people began filing into the front pew, the one that had been reserved with bands of black satin.
Jeff and Marianne were there with their other daughter, Ruth. As usual, Ruth was being a two-year-old handful. It took the concerted efforts of both Angie Kellogg and Dennis Hacker to keep her corralled in the pew. Seeing Angie there in the front row, Joanna couldn't help wondering how many times in her life the woman had actually set foot inside a church. But then, she was there for the same reason Joanna Brady was-because Marianne Maculyea and Jeff Daniels were her friends.
Beyond Dennis Hacker, at the far end of the pew, sat Butch Dixon. Beside Butch, huddled under the protective wing of his arm, sat Jennifer Ann Brady.
At last the organist stopped playing. In the hushed and expectant silence of the room, with no other sound but the distant rumble of the air-conditioning unit, Joanna knew it was time for her to stand and speak. She had expected her knees to knock, her hands to shake, and her voice to quiver, but none of that happened. She was doing this for Marianne. She was doing this because a friend had asked it of her as a favor. And that, Joanna realized, taking hold of the pulpit with both hands, was what made doing it possible. When Joanna Brady conducted Esther Maculyea-Daniels' funeral that afternoon, she did so with a poise and confidence that surprised her almost more than it surprised her mother.
"The first hymn today isn't listed by number in your program," she said. "I didn't think that was necessary, because it's one we all know by heart."
