J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

By the time Joanna reached the shattered truck, both Ernie and George were wearing face masks over their mouths and noses. Both of the truck’s doors were missing, and the two investigators were peering into the cab of the pickup through the missing uphill door. When Joanna joined them, George Winfield fumbled a third mask out of his pocket and handed it over. She accepted the mask gratefully and put it on at once-not that it did much good.

“What gives?” she asked.

George pointed to a boulder that was perched beside the top of the cab. “No sign of any survivors,” he said. “‘That rock down there on the other side of the engine is what stopped it. The problem is, with the truck’s center of gravity up in the air like this, we can’t be sure the rock is strong enough to hold it secure.”

“So what do we do?” Joanna asked. “Try to get it back on its wheels?”

Ernie nodded. “We sure as hell can’t do any investigating this way. I’m worried about tipping it, though. On this kind of steep grade, depending on the momentum and what it hits going down, it could still roll a long way. Hopefully, though, we’ll accomplish two things-uncover the body so George here can get at it, and have the truck come to rest against something solid enough that we can actually get inside.”

“The grass around here is tinder dry,” Joanna observed. “Any danger of starting a fire?”

Ernie shook his head. “Fortunately, I don’t smell any leaking fuel. If it didn’t catch fire when it came rolling down the hill with the engine running, it isn’t going to burn up now.”

Hearing the sound of falling rocks and pebbles behind her, Joanna turned in time to see a block and tackle fall to the ground behind her. Moments later Dennis Hacker came sliding after it, carrying a crowbar. Without a glance in Joanna’s direction, he walked up to Ernie. “If you’re going to try to move the truck, I thought these might come in handy,” he said.

He paused for a moment and surveyed the situation. “I don’t think that boulder’s enough to hold it. Want me to try prying it out of the way?”

“Sure,” Ernie said. “Let’s see what happens.”

Since Ernie had already agreed, there wasn’t much point in

Joanna’s objecting. Besides, compared to Ernie Carpenter and George Winfield, Dennis Hacker was a hulk of a young man. Somewhere in his thirties, he was a good twenty years younger than the detective and twenty-five or so younger than the coroner. Not only that, he was in tremendously good shape.

“Be careful,” was all Joanna said, then she stood aside and watched. It took several grunting, muscle-bulging efforts before Hacker sent the boulder crashing down the steep face of the mountain, cracking like a rifle shot as it bounced against other rocks along the way and finally rolling out of sight into the underbrush.

The worry had been that with the rock out of the way, the truck itself might slip loose from its precarious mooring and come rolling down on Hacker. It didn’t. Moments later, the four of them, all wearing disposable rubber gloves, were once again uphill from the wreck.

Joanna expected it would take a good deal of effort to move the truck. Her assumption was that they would have to rock it back and forth to get it moving, sort of like pulling a gigantic tooth. In actual fact, they pushed far too hard. The first shove sent the truck tumbling while the pitch of the steep hillside, momentum, and gravity all worked together to do the rest. The Tacoma rolled first onto its side and then up onto its flattened tires. It tottered there briefly and then went right on rolling, careening down the hill twice more before it came to rest, upright again, against a scrub oak.

“Way to go,” Ernie panted. “That tree should hold it.”

But by then Joanna wasn’t listening. She was looking down at her feet, staring at the pitiful lump of smashed flesh that had once been Brianna O’Brien. She lay facedown on the rock-strewn hillside. Her long blond hair fanned out around her, parted by a jagged bloody gash that ran almost the whole length of her head. Her face had been crushed almost flat.

For Joanna, though, the worst part wasn’t the awful physical wounds visible on the broken and rapidly decomposing body. She had expected those. They went with the territory of accident investigation. What Sheriff Brady hadn’t expected was the fact that Brianna O’Brien wasn’t dressed the way her mother had predicted she would be. Bree wasn’t dressed at all. She was, in fact, stark naked.

Faced with that horrifying full view of Bree O’Brien’s mangled and naked corpse, Joanna’s knees went weak beneath her. She had to fight to control the wave of nausea that rose in her throat.

“I’m going to need my stuff,” George Winfield was saying as he picked his way across the mountain’s steep grade all the while struggling to maintain his balance.

“I’ll go get it for you,” Dennis Hacker offered at once, wiping the perspiration off his brow. “Tell me where it is.”

Joanna reached into her pocket and pulled out her car keys. “Thanks,” she said, handing them over. “It’s the brown leather satchel in the back of the Eagle.”

While Dennis Hacker climbed back up the cliff, George Win-field knelt beside the body, close enough to look but without touching anything. In the meantime, Ernie set off down the mountain after the truck. Given an option, Joanna followed Ernie.

In the process of falling the first time, the camper shell had been knocked loose. There was debris scattered all over the hillside. Careful not to touch anything, Joanna picked her way through it-past the battered cooler that had spilled out its cache of sandwiches and smashed and empty soda cans. Past an unfurled bedroll and an air mattress that was still fully inflated. Past broken camp stools and a still-zipped cloth suitcase that trailed clothing out of its torn side.

Joanna was sidestepping the suitcase when she saw a book. The cover-blue with a cascade of pale pink flowers-matched the others she and Ernie had seen in Brianna O’Brien’s bed-room. “Ernie,” she called, “here’s the journal.”

Ernie had pulled out a camera and was already taking photos of the battered wreck. “One journal or two?” he called, without bothering to look over his shoulder.

“Only one so far,” Joanna replied. “The other one’s probably around here somewhere. Is it okay if I pick this one up and look at it?”

“You’re wearing gloves, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead then, if you want to,” he said.

Fully aware that the person who had last touched the book was dead, Joanna approached the journal reverently, almost as though it were a holy relic. Dropping down onto a nearby rock, she opened the front cover. Written in the same girlish hand Joanna remembered from the other volumes, this one covered the period of time between October 9 of the previous year and this year’s March 4.

“It’s the completed one,” Joanna called to Ernie.

“Well then,” Ernie replied impatiently between squeezes on his camera’s shutter, “go look for the other.”

By then Dennis Hacker had returned from the Eagle with George Winfield’s equipment satchel. Taking out an evidence bag, Joanna slipped the book inside. Then she began to comb the hillside, searching for the missing book. It was hard, hot work. She went to what appeared to be the edge of the debris field-the camper shell-and started there. At the end of hill an hour she was too hot and winded to continue.

“Your face is all red,” George Winfield observed, glancing in her direction. “Better have some of that water of yours. I’d hate for you to have a heatstroke.”

“Thanks,” Joanna said. She heeded his advice immediately. Sinking down next to the evidence box, she helped herself to water from her canteen. As she did so, the journal was right there, sitting in plain sight, tempting her. Finally, handling it with the gloves on, and being careful to touch only the edges, she slipped it out and opened it, turning to the last entry first.