A DEAD RED MIRACLE: #5 in the Dead Red Mystery Series (9 page)

"I did," he said, tightly. "I would
never
betray a pal."

Sick at heart, I went to bed while Caleb stayed up, the living room light and TV on, better to think about what I'd just told him.

The other side of our bed remained cold and empty until my restless sleep was interrupted by a phone call from county search and rescue. "We have a lost Alzheimer's patient," the caller from the sheriff's office said. "Karen Paquette is out of town and we need an air scent dog. Bring Hoover."

.

Chapter Thirteen:

Our search and rescue team had been out for most of the night in search of an elderly native American Alzheimer's patient.

I looked up to see the Milky Way lighting a brilliant path across the sky, the result of yesterday's rain scrubbing the ever present dust out of the atmosphere.

I tugged at the neck of my padded jacket in an attempt to keep the cold out. That nagging feeling was back, the one that said this search and rescue for an Apache wasn't going to go well. But then it had been a long night and the last of my reserves were just about shot.

He had wandered away from his daughter's home, about five miles from the tiny hamlet named after the rugged and remote Dragoon Mountains.

We were told only the basics, that he wasn't one to miss a meal and never left the house after dark and that she'd searched on her own, then enlisted neighbors and finally admitting defeat, called 9-1-1.

When Hoover found the man's trail, I had to lean back to keep his stride in check.

"Slow down boy," I said, the leash in my hand a taut line between us.

If I couldn't keep him under control, the dog could easily bound away and out of sight. Soon he had us trotting in a southerly direction, down through an empty arroyo and up again, trailing six footsore men in our wake.

"Crap," I said. "He's headed for the Cochise Stronghold." This was where Cochise and his legendary band of Chiricahua Apache played hide and seek with the American Cavalry and if Hoover's nose was right, it was also where an old Apache was making his last stand.

With sunlight firing the tips of the pinnacles above us, Steve pointed out a well traveled animal path. "It'll be easier going now," he said.

We stopped to reconnoiter with the team to the west of us. Sloshing the contents of his thermos around, Steve shoved it into my hands. "Drink up."

I tried to wave him off, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. "Don't be a ninny. This is high desert and even on the coldest day you can still get dehydrated."

What he wasn't saying was that I needed to follow orders. I smiled my thanks and gulped down the last of his lukewarm tea.

While Hoover worked the trail, Steve gave us a history lesson. "Outstanding runners, the Apache. Deep chested, and except for Cochise who was reported to be six feet tall, no more'n a few inches over five feet. The Apache toughened their boys by having them throw rocks at each other."

"That sounds harsh," someone said.

"It was duck or die," Steve said. "Rocks and then bows and arrows. They also trained them to run with a mouthful of water. That's without spilling or swallowing for up to four miles."

"I could use a beer," Bob said.

Someone behind him snorted.

Steve raised his voice over the laughter. "Lalla might want to hear this, you know. As I was saying, they could cover sixty miles on foot, raiding for cattle. It's been said they never took much to horses. They stole 'em, used them to herd the cattle home, then ate them. "

"Injuns," Bob said, "don't talk much as I recall. What'd the daughter say about the old man? He's some kind of shaman, or is that a witch doctor?"

"I guess we'll find out soon enough," Steve said.

This time when Bob groaned, I had to agree with him. The desert before us was a whole lot of cold and rough terrain with enough mesquite to tear off chunks of skin if one were clumsy. Add jumping cholla to the painful stickers and you had an uncomfortable trip.

Hoover surprised me by taking a jog to the east where he kept to a faint trail glimmering lightly against an otherwise sullen landscape.

Steve grunted in relief. "He found a shortcut? Then we'll follow."

Too cold and tired to comment, we picked up our feet, hunched our shoulders against the morning cold and followed the single track as it wound up into the mountains. The sky was now empty of everything but one lone star in the west and the land below us seemed to spread out for miles. A half-hour later, we were face-to-face with the domineering cliffs, their craggy faces still deep in shadow.

"Hear that?" I asked.

Bob jerked his head up, cupped his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. "Donkey and a cow bell a couple of miles away but…"

Steve waived us to be quiet.

I pointed up at the cliffs. "It sounds like someone is drumming," I said. "Think that's him up there? That's good, right, Steve?"

"Yeah, great. He's entertaining himself while he waits for someone to come get him."

"Up there? How're we gonna get him down off that cliff?" Bob asked.

"Not as hard as it looks," Steve said. "The trail is there. Just follow the path to the left and around the rocks. We'll find him."

"Look," Bob said, pointing up the mountain. "Is-is he dancing?"

I followed his pointing finger. I wouldn’t have thought there was room for a man to walk around, but from where I stood he looked to be dancing on a pinnacle. An illusion, a trick of light and oddly magical.

The cold was causing my hands to shake so I stuck them back into my pockets to warm them. Heights didn't bother me. It reminded me of flying… well, sort of. A nice enclosed cockpit wasn't a mountain top.

"Should we let him know we're here?" I asked.

"Oh, I'd say he knows." Steve said, turning to our crew.

Steve called the EMTs to put the local hospital on stand by for a helicopter. "Okay. Lalla, me and Bob will go up. If his daughter is right and the ol' boy has dementia, we may have our hands full for an extraction."

Steve zipped up his vest and readjusted the weight in his backpack. "All set, Lalla?"

"Yes," I said, patting the items on my belt and checking again the extra batteries for my radio, the repetition soothing my jittery nerves.

"Then let's get to it." Steve took off, blending into the shadows. I had to jog to keep up. The man was almost sixty, he'd been out here most of the night and he still had the energy to leave the rest of us in the dust. Maybe it was the adrenaline, knowing that our search was almost over. All we had to do was get him off the ledge, down the cliff, get the EMTs to check him over and get him home again.

Steve loped up the trail with us hard on his heels. As we went higher, the going got tougher. Boulders birthed rocks and rocks became slippery shale that made the uphill climb treacherous. I slipped and fell to my knees, cursing at the sharp rocks tearing at my skin. Bob stopped to pull me to my feet and I thanked him, but he just laughed. "I'm sure you'll be able to return the favor someday."

Steve waited for us at a trailhead where a ledge cantilevered over an outcropping of huge boulder. Above us, we heard the old man's shuffling feet keeping time to a drum.

I tilted my head, "What's he singing… is that−?"

Bob chuckled. "Jesus Loves Me? Sure sounds like it. He must've been in Bible school at one time."

Steve shushed us. "We're right under him," he whispered. The drum was now silent but in a weak and reedy voice he started singing the second stanza
.

"I think it's best if I go alone," Steve said. "See if I can talk him down. If that doesn't work, I'll come back and we'll split up, take him on both sides."

And if it came to it, the EMTs would sedate him.

Steve ran up the path and disappeared.

I looked down at the valley below. I could hear the team, their voices even at this distance as clear as if I were standing next to them. Of course, the old man heard us coming.

Above us, a voice called. "Hiya!"

We looked up to see a pair of bright black eyes glittering with an unseen light. The elfish, wrinkled face split into a wide grin.

I didn't know how to respond. "Shouldn't Steve be at the ledge by now?"

Bob nudged me. "Say something. It'll distract him until Steve can grab him from behind."

"I'm not so sure about this… what if we spook him?"

"Can't hurt, and he seems interested in you."

The old man's face turned from me to Bob, apparently very interested in our conversation.

Bob tilted his head up and waved. The old man waved back.

"See? He likes you. Go on, say something."

"Me? He waved at you. And what if he doesn't know any English besides the words to
Jesus Loves Me
?"

"Come on, it'll help Steve."

I blew on cold, fisted hands, looked up at the face peering over the ledge. "Uh. Hi there."

He laughed, said something that must have been in his native language and withdrew his head.

"Crap," I said. "I didn't get what he said."

"Apache. I know a little Navajo, but not Apache."

"Wait," I said grabbing Bob's sleeve. "I hear Steve's voice. He's talking to him."

I leaned back, turned on my flashlight and aimed the beam upward.

Bob swatted at the pebbles and feathers cascading onto our helmets. "What the…. ?"

Steve appeared, the light striking him in the face. He threw up his hand, the yellow patch of the Cochise County Search and Rescue Team glinting in the beam. Alarmed that he appeared to be about to go over the ledge, I called to him. "Steve!"

A feather helicoptered down to land on my upturned face. "What the hell is going on?"

"I don't know," Bob said, "but something's wrong. I think we better get up there and find out."

Voices above us rose and fell in argument. Steve consoling, cajoling, the other protesting and suddenly the morning sun burst over the rim of the mountains.

"There!" I said pointing to the silhouetted figure. He was in a brightly beaded and feathered costume but before I could remark on it to Bob, the old man raised his arms over his head and sang. The song, in spite of being in his native language, was enough to give me goose bumps. It was a plaintive cry, but I had no idea if it was for help, or justice or just to make it rain. He stopped for a moment as if to admire the view over the valley, or perhaps he was seeing far into another time.

But then he spread his arms wide, bent his knees, yelled something I couldn't quite hear and leaped into the air.

Feathers did nothing to hold back gravity and his headlong race for the valley floor was quickly met with a violent end. His body bounced once, rolled and finally came to rest against a boulder.

For a few seconds our team stood silent, shock and dismay on their upturned faces until someone yelled and they ran to see if there was any life left in the man to rescue.

.

Chapter Fourteen:

"I don't know, Caleb," I said, pulling off my dusty hiking boots. "I know it isn't rational, but I could've sworn he said something as he leaped off that ledge and I can't stop thinking that I should've been able to understand it."

Caleb moved one of my pillows from my side of the bed and tucked it behind his back. "I sincerely doubt that you or anyone else could've understood him. He was speaking Apache, wasn't he?"

"I suppose so. But I recognized the words to
Jesus Loves Me
."

"And Steve had no indication that the old guy was going to jump?"

"No. He said he handed the old man his jacket because he was shivering. Later, Steve figured it was just a ruse to distract him and leap off that cliff. Steve feels terrible about it. We all do."

Caleb reached out and pulled me off balance, one boot still dangling from my foot. I fell onto his chest and felt his arms tighten around me.

"It could've been a lot worse," he said, warming my ear with a light kiss.

Caleb would know, since he'd spent the last twenty-three years in law enforcement. First as a deputy, then as sheriff of Stanislaus County in California and now as police chief of Wishbone, Arizona.

"I need a shower," I said, without the energy to back it up.

"Me too," he said, sitting upright with me still encased in his arms. That's what comes of daily exercise in a gym. Me, I just traipse up and down hills all night looking for lost Alzheimer patients.

"Shower?" he asked, nibbling on my dusty ear.

"You're that desperate?"

"No. But I happen to know you're that easy," he said, pulling me out of bed and into the shower.

I have to say, he did a good job of scrubbing my back and the rest of me, and by the time he tucked me into bed and left for work, I felt very clean, very tired and very, very happy.

I was dreaming. It had to be a dream because I was hearing organ music. Hard to hear under water. Water? I looked up. A blue sky. "I could get used to blue sky," my dad said. He should be at his place now. What was he doing, looking down at me as I sat on the bottom of the ocean? The watery image above shifted and morphed into someone else. His face ducked under the water, his black eyes blinked open. He started to speak and drew in a mouthful of water. Choking, he promptly removed his head.

I woke myself up wondering why I could talk under water and he couldn't.

Rolling out of bed, I decided the dream was the result of sleeping late, something I had originally thought of as a decadent luxury that I would indulge in every chance I got. Retired from the aero-ag business meant I was no longer at the beck and call of irritable farmers who expected their crops to be cleared of pests at a moment's notice. I could sleep in as long as I liked. Read or eat crackers and peanut butter in bed. That illusion was quickly snatched away with the day-to-day workload Pearlie and I signed on with Ron Barbour.

Eleven a.m. Uh-oh, Pearlie must've called by now and I slept through it. Deciding I needed coffee before I could face the tongue-lashing I would get from my cousin, I went to the kitchen and found a thermos of hot coffee with a note on it from Caleb; "Hoover looks mighty proud of himself today. He either passed muster last night or he got lucky. Either way, I fed him, gave him a doggy treat and turned off your cell and the land-line so you could sleep."

I gratefully poured myself a cup and invited Hoover to accompany me out to the patio. He yawned, rose from his dog bed and leisurely followed me outside.

Flopping down next to my chair in the shade, he promptly closed his eyes. "You did good last night," I said reaching over and scratching his big ears.

His eyes stayed closed, but his tail tapped the concrete in agreement. "Sorry we didn't save this one, but that's not your fault, is it my good boy?"

The tail thumbed twice. "So what's going to be next for the Hoover? An adventure to be continued?" I picked up my ringing cell phone.

I had to pull the earpiece away from the squawking on the other end.

"Do you know what time it is!" Pearlie yelled.

I yawned. "Hoover and I were on an all-nighter."

Pearlie had a soft spot for the dog. Once upon a time, they had both been strays. "Really? How'd he do?"

"Like the champ he is. He led us right to the man."

"Then it was a successful mission?"

"Yes, except that the object of our rescue waited until we got there to take a header off a cliff." The memory of the old man leaping out into the air only to die from the fall−sure felt like complete failure to me.

"That's tough to take, but I have good news," she said. "We're cleared as suspects in Ron's death. The bad news is that the kid who went to prison for stealing cars from Wade Hamilton has gone missing."

"What? When?"

"That's the interesting part," she said. "I went for that interview with Joey Green and his boss said he didn't come into work yesterday or today."

"He's skipped? Did you call his mother?"

"Sure did."

I thought for a moment. "Is the file on Wade Hamilton still in the office?"

"Lemme look," she said, putting down the phone.

When she picked up again, she seemed oddly calm. "It's gone."

"You're not surprised because…?"

"Because I figured Damian might break in again. I put the original on the back of our evidence board and all he got was an old newspaper clipping of the shooting."

"Why didn't you set the alarm?"

"I fired the alarm company, remember? Besides, I wanted to see how the little rascal would do it. This time he didn't bother to scale the walls, he simply picked the lock."

"Get a new lock for the door."

"We can't afford a locksmith or the alarm company. Besides, I have a better idea."

"What?"

"I've asked his boss to give us a day. All you have to do is find him before his parole officer does."

"Gee thanks. What're you going to do?"

"Have a talk with Damian, of course."

"He's probably at the gym."

"Good. Then this won't take long. Meet me at the office," she said, and hung up.

<><><><><>

I had just settled into my chair and opened my laptop, ready to start a search for Joey Green when Pearlie walked into the office.

"What did Damian have to say for himself?" I asked.

"Damian, the dear sweet boy that he is, glibly reminded me that
you
told him he could be of help and like I thought he would, he went looking for Joey. Damian's just lucky Joey ran. That guy's already got a nickel of hard time under his belt."

I could see that my cousin was actually enjoying herself. "I gave him a lecture and he's now eager to make it up to us, in any way we want."

"No. Please say you didn't! That kid's a loose cannon! He'll compromise our investigation."

She laughed. "Oh, come on. We could use an extra hand and this way we can keep tabs on the little thief."

Seeing my head swivel five or six times on my neck, Pearlie dropped her smile. "We're already hanging on by a hair. What do we have to lose?"

I ignored the whisper of doubt knocking at my better judgment and gave in. "Okay. Get him in here."

Pearlie opened the door and Damian sauntered in, a wide smile on his mug.

Pearlie went to stand next to our freestanding evidence board, the corked side full of innocuous items: a map of the county, a big calendar and out of date pizza coupons. When she was sure she had his attention, she flipped the six-by-six board over, peeled off the plastic envelope with the original file on Wade Hamilton and waved it under Damian's nose.

"You don't get to waltz into our office and take whatever you like, kid. All you got was some old news-clippings. Certainly not anything that could get you in trouble."

Damian's unrepentant shrug made my fingers itch. I so wanted to slap this kid.

"Take a chair and lose the grin, smart-ass," Pearlie said.

Gee, she sounded just like Ron Barbour. Maybe having an intern of our own to harass might work after all.

"Lalla will show you how to use the computer."

I tossed her a dirty look.

Damian fluttered his lips. "Like I'll hurt your precious computer? You think I'm dumb 'er somethin'?"

Pearlie folded her arms and waited.

I mouthed,
I'll get you for this
and pointed Damian to a chair. "Bring that over here and maybe you'll learn something."

"You said we were going to look for Joey, not do dumb computer stuff."

I lifted a lip and snarled. "Sit! Investigating, as you will soon find out, is research. Sometimes long hours of it, but the payoff can be worth it."

"You actually make money at this shit?"

Pearlie and I looked at each other and, unable to control ourselves, laughed. "So we've been told. Now let's get to work."

I showed Damian how to start with Joey's last known address as a parolee. "What you want to find are his friends, girlfriends and any relatives."

"I know he lived with his mother before he went to prison."

I had to give it to him he had a sharp memory. "Good, but since moms always believe the very best of their children, she's not going to give him up if she thinks he's in trouble, now is she?"

"But he could show up there, couldn’t he?"

"Sure. And we'll stake out her house if nothing else turns up. But I want you to start on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram."

Damian's chin lifted defiantly. "I'm down on all that shit."

I shot Pearlie another dirty look. This wasn't going to work; the kid had a chip on his shoulder the size of Kansas. Pearlie had her laptop open and refused to look at me. Got it. I was on my own.

"Okay, but think about this; Joey has been on parole for a year and until yesterday he had a full time job, a home, a mom and probably a girlfriend. You're both local to the area. You may even have mutual friends."

Damian yawned and his eyes drifted over to the skeleton in the corner. Gabby Hayes did say he was bright, good at math and easily bored. I snapped my fingers in front of his face. "Pay attention, and this will go a lot quicker."

His black eyes twinkled like two basalt stones. "I'm just messing with you."

Now he was having fun? We'll see about that. "Fine, fine. I'm going to leave this picture of Joey next to the computer for comparison. Go on your socials, mention that you're taking a break from training for American Ninja Warrior to catch up with friends, okay? Ask what's new with them. Do not mention his name to anyone. Do a search for his real name, then search for any nicknames he might have. You have a nickname; use that to your advantage. At the very least you'll get some new friend requests. If you see a nickname, ask what their real name is and what they do. He may lie, but that's okay. Post pictures of yourself training. He may post pictures of himself. If it's not him, then move on. I’m hoping that you can lure him into friending you because of your training for ANW. He may claim to live in Fairbanks, Alaska, but he'll have his picture either as part of his profile or gallery photos."

"Anything else?" he asked, his hands poised over the keyboard.

"If you get stumped or reach a dead end, let me know."

His response to that idea was a loud belch. And that was meant to annoy me? If I could put up with Ron Barbour's antics for three years, I could handle this kid. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched his fingers fly. I'd forgotten that kids these days grew up with computers and if Damian was half the computer whiz he said he was, I could relax.

Pearlie gestured her approval with a thumbs-up. I shuddered. Every time someone gave a big thumbs-up, something bad happened. I could only hope this time I was wrong.

"What's next?" I asked.

"We need to find a stoolie."

I thought for a minute. "A disgruntled employee would do it and I think I know just the person. She used to be Wade's bookkeeper, but she's now a hairdresser at Suzi's."

"Suzi?"

"You remember Darlene, don't you? Married to Wishbone's two-timing, wife-beating police chief?"

"Oh,
that
Darlene. Is she still doing your hair?"

"Darlene sold her shop to Suzi and moved to Phoenix, but you'd know that if you didn't run all the way to Tucson to get your hair done."

"I write the trip off as part of my business mileage," she said, primping her artfully blended blonde locks. "Well, at least I did, until Ron sucked up all the business."

"Patience, dear cousin. First we get an arrest for Ron's murderer, find Damian's dad's killer and if we're still in business in a week we'll hunt up some new business."

"Since you go to Suzi, I presume you want the honor of going there now?"

"Might as well," I said, grabbing my purse and pausing at the door. "What're you going to do while I'm gone?"