Skeleton Canyon (16 page)

In actual fact, that part of Highway 80 was inside the Bisbee city limits and, as such, outside the jurisdiction of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Since this was a dream, however, jurisdictional boundaries didn’t apply. In real life, Sheriff Joanna Brady had never once made a traffic stop, but in the dream landscape, that didn’t matter, either.

“Pull over,” she announced in a voice that reverberated as though being broadcast through a huge megaphone. “Pull over and step out of your vehicle.”

Ignoring the order, the driver of the Miata shot forward, racing down the grade onto the long flat stretch of highway that runs along the edge of Lavender Pit. Generations of speeding drivers have given that part of Highway 80 the unofficial name of Citation Avenue. The driver of the speeding convertible seemed determined to do her part to help maintain the legend, but Joanna wasn’t about to be outdone. This was hot pursuit, and she was determined to pull over the speeding motorist.

With Joanna’s Crown Victoria right on the Miata’s back bumper, they raced down through the back side of Lowell and then onto the traffic circle. Around and around they went, time and again. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Miata simply stopped. As Joanna approached the vehicle, weapon in hand, the driver’s side door popped open and a woman stepped out. She was tall and blond, wearing a miniskirt and a pair of impossibly high heels.

“Hands on your head,” Joanna ordered.

“You can’t do this to me, Joanna Brady,” Rowena Sharp Bonham screeched. “You can’t pull me over like a common criminal. I won’t stand for it. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Yes, you were,” Joanna told her calmly. “You were cheating.”

She woke up then, laughing. For a moment she was disoriented by waking up outside the house rather than in her own bedroom, but that momentary jar gave way to a feeling of well-being. Mourning doves cooed their early morning wake-up calls. Across the Sulphur Springs Valley, dawn was tinging the sky a vivid orange. But something was different.

For weeks now
,
clouds had drifted up from the south each afternoon, bringing with them the tantalizing promise of much-needed rain. By morning they would retreat back into the interior of Mexico without leaving behind a trace of moisture. This time, though, the clouds were still there, billowing up in tall, puffy columns above the far horizon. From miles away across the thirsty desert came the welcome scent of an approaching storm.

Joanna had grown to adulthood with a desert dweller’s unbridled delight in the prospect of a summer rainstorm. What she wanted to do more than anything that morning was to sit on her porch and watch the storm build. She wanted to track the wind and surging clouds of dust as they marched across the desert just ahead of the rain. She wanted to sit back and watch jagged flashes of lightning electrify the entire sky, and to listen to the rolling drums of thunder, but first, she wanted to make a pot of coffee and read the Sunday paper. In order to do that, she’d have to collect the paper from the tube down by the cattle guard.

She went inside. The house had been dreadfully hot when she came home the night before. To counteract the heat, she had left the swamp cooler running all night long. Overnight, both indoor and outdoor temperatures had dropped enough that now the house seemed almost chilly. The first thing she did was switch off the cooler. As soon as she did so, she was startled by how quiet it was. Far too quiet.

Don’t stand around dwelling on it,
she told herself firmly.
Do something.

Throwing on a pair of jeans and one of Andy’s old khaki shirts, she hurried into the kitchen to start the coffee. Then, after stuffing a carrot into her pocket and with both dogs trailing eagerly behind, she walked out to the corral.

In the last few months, since Bucky Buckwalter’s horse Kiddo had come to live on High Lonesome Ranch, one of Jenny’s weekend duties had been to ride the horse down to the end of the road to bring back the Sunday paper. Before Kiddo’s arrival on the scene, Joanna herself would have driven down in the Eagle. This morning, while water dripped through the grounds in the coffeemaker, Joanna decided to take the horse herself and go get her newspaper.

As soon as the nine-year-old sorrel gelding heard the back door slam shut, he came to the side of the corral and peered eagerly over the fence. Ears up, whickering, and stamping his hooves, he shook his blond mane impatiently while Joanna stopped in the tack room long enough to collect a bridle. When she came into the corral, Kiddo gobbled the carrot and accepted the bridle without complaint.

“I’ll bet you miss Jenny, too, don’t you?” Joanna said soothingly, scratching the horse’s soft muzzle once the bridle was in place. “That makes four of us.”

Joanna had worried initially that Kiddo would be too much horse for Jenny to handle, but the two of them—horse and child—had become great friends. Jenny had taken to riding with an ease that had surprised everyone, including her mother. She preferred riding bareback whenever possible. Girl and horse—both with matching blond tresses flowing in the wind—made a captivating picture.

Joanna herself was a reasonably capable rider. For this early morning jaunt down to the cattle guard, she too rode bareback. The sun was well up by then. On the way there, she held Kiddo to a sedate walk, enjoying the quiet, reading the tracks overnight visitors had layered into the roadway over the marks of her tires from the night before. A small herd of delicately hoofed javelina—five or six of them—had wandered down from the hills, following the sandy bed of a dry wash. In one spot Joanna spied the telltale path left behind by a long-gone sidewinder. There were paw prints left by a solitary coyote. She saw the distinctive scratchings of a covey of quail as well as the prints of some other reasonably large bird, most likely a roadrunner.

Butch Dixon—a city slicker from Chicago—had come to visit the High Lonesome and had marveled at how empty it was.

It isn’t empty at all,
Joanna thought.
I have all kinds of nearby neighbors. It’s just that none of them happen to be human.

Coming back from the gate, with the folded newspaper safely stowed under her shirt, Joanna gave Kiddo his head. They thundered back down the road with the wind rushing into Joanna’s face. It was an exhilarating way to start the morning.

No wonder Jenny liked Kiddo so much. It was almost like magic. On the back of a galloping horse it was impossible for Joanna Brady to remember to be sad.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Angie and Dennis arrived in the meadow off the south fork of Skeleton Canyon just as the sun came up. Settling into a rocky cleft, Dennis reached into his backpack and pulled out two pairs of powerful binoculars, one of which he handed to Angie. “There’s no real trick to this,” he said. “You just have to be patient. They’ll show up eventually.”

As promised, the hummingbirds appeared half an hour later. There they were, hundreds of them, hovering in vivid color against an overcast sky. “The dark green ones with the black bills are Magnificent Hummingbirds or
Eugenes fulgens,”
Dennis explained. “The lighter greens—chartreuse almost with the orange bills—are called Broad-billed or
Cynanthus latinostris.
The ones with distinct red caps are male Anna’s
—Calypte anna.”

Enchanted but also self-conscious that he knew so much more than she did, Angie held the binoculars glued to her eyes. “And the ones with the purple throats?” she asked.

“Male Lucifers—
Calothorax
Lucifer.
I spotted some Black-chinned in here the other day, but I don’t see any of them now.

Angie watched until her arms grew tired of holding the binoculars. When she took them down, she was surprised to find Dennis Hacker looking at her rather than the birds. Nervously, she cast around for something to say. “It doesn’t seem fair that the males are always so much prettier than the females,” she said.

“That may be true for birds,” Dennis told her, “but it certainly isn’t true of humans.”

Embarrassed, Angie looked back at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He grinned. “It means you’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re willing to hike a mile and a half uphill to watch birds at six o’clock in the morning. You’re interested in my parrot project. What else is there? I think I’m in love.”

Not knowing how to reply, Angie put the binoculars back to her eyes and said nothing.

“I’m serious, you know,” Hacker continued. “I told my parents once that I was going to marry the first woman I ever found who was as interested in birds as I am.”

In the few hours they had spent together, Angie had found Dennis Hacker to be pleasantly likeable, but she could tell from the way he spoke that he was serious. There was no point in letting things go any further.

“Look,” she said, “this is silly. You don’t know anything about me.”

“But I do. You’re a hard worker. You’re kind to old drunks. You’re a woman of your word. All day long yesterday, I was afraid you’d stand me up.”

Angie smiled. “I almost did,” she said.

“But the point is, you didn’t. You’re here. Maybe you don’t believe in love at first sight, but I do.”

That was it. “Look,” she said forcibly, “you think I’m a woman of my word, but I already lied to you. When you asked where I went to school, I know you meant where did I go to college. I’ve never even been to Ann Arbor. I went to high school in a place called Battle Creek, but I didn’t graduate. When I ran away from home, I took the name Kellogg after the factory my father worked in back home. I don’t have a degree in teaching. I’m an ex-hooker. The job in the Blue Moon as a bartender is the first real job I’ve ever had.”

Not knowing what kind of reaction to expect, she stopped and waited. It wasn’t long in coming. A grin creased Dennis Hacker’s face. “You’re kidding!”

“I’m not.”

Angie Kellogg couldn’t possibly have anticipated what happened next. Dennis’s initial grin dissolved into gales of laughter. He laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks and he had to hold his sides. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” he gasped at last.

But Angie didn’t think it was funny. She put down the bin-oculars and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Come on, Angie. Let me explain.”

Angie Kellogg wasn’t interested in explanations. Without a glance over her shoulder, she bolted away from him, heading back down the mountain the way they had come. Dennis, shaking his head and still chuckling, took his time packing up. He returned the two pair of binoculars to their separate cases and then put them and the bottled water he’d brought along back in his backpack. He had no doubt that he’d meet up with Angie back at the truck. Once she realized what he was laughing about, Dennis knew it would be all right.

Hefting the pack onto his back, he started after her. On the way up, he had followed a meandering path that had kept the rise in elevation from being quite so steep. For going back down, though, and because he wanted to reach the Hummer about the same time Angie did, he set off straight down the mountain.

Which was how, half an hour later, Dennis Hacker stumbled onto the wrecked remains of a smashed red pickup.

After rubbing Kiddo down, feeding him, and returning him to the corral, Joanna went back to the house. By then the coffee was ready. She poured herself a cup and was headed for the porch when the phone rang.

“Sheriff Brady?” Tica Romero, one of the departmental dispatchers, was on the phone. “We’ve got a problem.” “What’s that?”

“A one-car fatality rollover has just been reported in the Peloncillos. Off the road up in Skeleton Canyon. A hiker reported the incident. Called it in on his cell phone. At least one person is dead, but it’s pretty rough country. There could be more bodies and they just haven’t found them yet. The guy who found it gave me a description and a license number.”

“And?”

“I thought you’d want to know right away. It’s a red Toyota Tacoma,” Tica replied. “Registered under the name of David O’Brien. Isn’t that the missing person case—”

“Yes, it is,” Joanna interrupted. “Any ID on the victim?”

“Not so far. The body must have been thrown free in the accident. The vehicle fell on top of it. There won’t be any way to tell exactly what’s underneath until we get a tow truck in there to move the vehicle.”

Joanna’s throat constricted. Her right hand shook so badly that she had to put down her coffee cup in order to keep from spilling it. The O’Briens’ worst fears and Joanna’s niggling premonition were both coming true. Brianna O’Brien was dead, but there could be no notification made to the parents waiting at Green Brush Ranch until after the sheriff’s department had some additional confirmation.

Joanna turned at once to the enlarged map of Cochise County that she had tacked to the wall over her living room phone. There were two forks to Skeleton Canyon. The south fork ran virtually north and south and was entirely inside Cochise County. The north fork ran east and west and crossed over into New Mexico.

“You’re sure this is our deal and not Sheriff Trotter’s over in New Mexico?” Joanna asked. She couldn’t help hoping the wrecked truck would end up being someone else’s problem instead of hers.

“It’s ours, all right,” Tica answered. “It’s the south fork, not the north. And the truck isn’t all,” she continued. “Mr. Hacker says—
^”

“Mr. Hacker?” Joanna asked. “You mean Dennis Hacker, the parrot guy?”

“I don’t know anything about parrots, but that’s the name he gave. Dennis Hacker. Do you know him?”

“Yes. What does he say?”

“That one of your friends is missing up there as well. Her name is Angie Kellogg. Hacker says that in all the confusion of finding and reporting the accident, she wandered off some place by herself. He says she’s out there alone without any food or water. He’s asking for help organizing a search party.”

Angie missing?
Joanna wondered.
How could that be?
With a sinking feeling, she remembered her conversation with Angie the night before—remembered how Angie had been concerned about going on what had essentially been a bird-watching blind date. Joanna also remembered all too clearly that she, Joanna, had been the one who had urged Angie to put her concerns aside and go.