J. Jance - Rattlesnake Crossing

"Is she okay?" Sonja asked.

"No," Joanna told them. "She's not okay. She's dead."

As she heeled the Blazer around and headed back for Pomerene Road, Joanna glanced at her watch. Six o'clock, straight up and down. She had stayed at the Triple C far longer than she had intended, and time had slipped away from her. Now, with exactly one hour before her date with Butch and with more than an hour's worth of driving between the Triple C and High Lonesome Ranch, she was headed for Rattlesnake Crossing, which lay in the opposite direction.

Rather than hightailing it for home and a relaxing evening of fun with someone whose company she had come to value, Sheriff Joanna Brady was, instead, off to investigate her second crime scene of the day-her second homicide of the day.

Slowing almost to a crawl on the rough, washboarded surface, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse once again and checked the roaming light to be sure she still had a signal. Then she punched in the memory code for Butch's Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria, near Phoenix. Obviously, since her date with Butch was scheduled for Bisbee-a minimum of four hours by car from the Phoenix area-he wouldn't be at the Roundhouse to take the call himself, not at the bar and restaurant downstairs or in his bachelor apartment upstairs. Nevertheless, Joanna knew from past experience that Butch Dixon was a conscientious business owner who never left town without leaving behind a telephone-number trail to let people know exactly where he'd be staying. That way, in case of any unforeseen circumstances or emergencies at his place of business, the daytime bartender and relief manager would have no difficulty in reaching him.

Punching SEND, Joanna waited, listening for the phone to ring. Then, because there was so much road noise, she held the phone away from her ear long enough to punch up the volume. When she put the phone back to her ear, an operator's recorded announcement was already well under way. "… you feel you have reached this number in error, please hang up and dial again. If you need help, hang up and dial the operator."

Puzzled, and scowling at the phone, Joanna punched RECALL. She studied the lit display long enough to verify that the number she had dialed was indeed that of the Roundhouse. Once again she pressed SEND. This time she was careful to hold the phone to her ear, only to hear the familiar but irritating sequence of a disconnect announcement. She listened to the message from beginning to end.

"The number you have reached has been disconnected. If you feel you have reached this number in error, please hang up and dial again. If you need help, hang up and dial the operator."

Disconnected! Joanna thought dazedly. How on earth could Butch's number be disconnected? And why wasn't there a forwarding referral to another number? How could that be?

The Blazer bounced across the rattle guard at the edge of the Triple C and lurched to a stop at the intersection of Triple C with Pomerene Road. Her stopping there had far more to do with a need to think than it did with the stop sign posted there. What on earth had happened?

Joanna waited while first one car and then another rumbled past. The second one she recognized. Seeing Detective Ernie Carpenter roar by in his private vehicle, the Mercury Marquis he called his "geezer car," was enough to shock Joanna out of her reverie. Not wanting to be left out of the loop, she quickly turned onto the road and followed him, maintaining just enough distance between his vehicle and hers to avoid most of the cloud of dust kicked up by his tires.

Following Ernie and operating on autopilot, Joanna continued to grapple with the puzzling problem of what had happened to Butch Dixon and his restaurant. She remembered how, during the past few weeks, he had told her over and over how busy he was. More than once she had allowed herself the smallest possible qualm that perhaps another woman had arrived on the scene. Now, though, other scenarios marched through her head. Maybe something terrible had happened to him, something Butch hadn't wanted to burden her with. What if his place had burned down? What if he had somehow landed in financial trouble and had simply run out of money? And if he hadn't left a forwarding phone number, how did he expect anyone-her included-to be able to get in touch with him?

For a few minutes she toyed with the idea of calling Dispatch and asking them to send an officer out to her place to meet Butch and tell him exactly what was going on. She considered the idea, then dismissed it. Prior to her arrival on the scene, the Cochise County Sheriff's Department had operated like a little fiefdom, with on-duty officers running personal errands on behalf of their supervisors. Under Joanna's administration, that practice had been expressly forbidden. And as someone who wanted to lead by example, Sheriff Brady couldn't afford to fly in the face of' the very rules she herself had created.

No, she decided finally as she turned in under the arched gate marked "Rattlesnake Crossing." We'll have to let the chips fall where they may. I'll stop just long enough to make an appearance. Since Ernie's here to take charge, I won't have to hang around. With any kind of luck, Butch will wait at the house until I get there.

Once again Joanna found herself driving on a mile-long dirt track. The Triple C holdings were situated along the river bottom. Rattlesnake Crossing, however, like Martin Scorsby's Pecan Plantation, was located on the other side of the road-upland and away from the river itself. What Joanna knew about Rattlesnake Crossing was more countywide gossip than anything else.

Under the name The Crossing, the place had come into existence in the mid-seventies as a residential psychiatric treatment center for patients of Dr. Carlton A. Lamphere. Dr. Lamphere, a New York native and a devotee of R. Buckminster Fuller, had bought up a tract of land, sunk a well, and then created his treatment facility by building a massive main ranch house in the center of the property and scattering the rest of his hundred and twenty acres with twenty or more Fuller-inspired geodesic domes.

Lamphere, operating on the theory that his patients lacked the self-esteem that came of self-reliance, insisted that his clients stay in these individual "cabins," as they were called. There they were expected to live alone, commune with nature, and learn to face their personal demons. The patients' nonpenal solitary confinement was broken each day by the arrival of golf-cart-riding orderlies who delivered trays of proper macrobiotic vegetarian meals and clean linens. Other than the orderlies, the only visitor to the individual cabins was Dr. Lamphere, who came by regularly for counseling sessions and to make sure the patients were staying on course.

Everything was going fine at The Crossing until one patient, a twenty-two-year-old schizophrenic, returned home and immediately came down with severe flulike symptoms. Her mother correctly diagnosed morning sickness, and a court-ordered blood test established that Dr. Lamphere himself was most likely the father of the young woman's baby.

A subsequent investigation-one that had set the entire San Pedro Valley on its ear-had revealed that Dr. Lamphere's course of treatment had routinely included drugging and raping his female patients-with particular concentration on the younger and more attractive ones. Not only had he victimized the women, he had also managed to maintain such a high degree of mind control over them that not one of them had told. None of the other victimized patients had become pregnant, so had it not been for that single alert mother, Lamphere might never have been caught.

In the aftermath of the investigation, The Crossing was shut down. For years the geodesic domes sat empty and in danger of crumbling back into the desert. Then, surprisingly, in the early eighties, Rattlesnake Crossing had risen Phoenix-like from the ruins. Locals had scoffed at the idea of somebody running a summer camp for well-heeled grown-ups pretending to be Apache, but it seemed to be working. Almost fifteen years later, the place was still going strong with guests that purportedly came from all over the world.