J. Jance - Rattlesnake Crossing

Turning off the freeway, she started down the hill into Benson. A few seconds later, she spotted a city patrol car parked off to the side of the road just beyond the bowling alley. She drove past, then reconsidered. After making a U-turn in the middle of the highway, she back up the hill to the patrol car.

"Can I help you, lady?" the officer asked, shining a flashlight in Joanna's eyes without bothering to set foot outside the comfort of his air-conditioned vehicle.

Joanna whipped out her badge. "I'm Sheriff Brady," she said. "I was wondering if it would be possible to talk to Chief Ramos."

"Is this important? After all, it's the middle of the night."

"You have a dispatcher, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have Dispatch call Chief Ramos on the phone. Tell him I have to talk to him and that I'll be glad to come by his house if need be. Tell him it's about his son."

With a shrug of his shoulders, the officer reached for his radio. After several exchanges back and forth, he returned it to its clip. "The chief says he'll come here. He wants you to wait."

That struck Joanna as odd. Had she been awakened in the middle of the night by a fellow law enforcement officer needing to speak to her in person, she would probably have asked him to stop by the house or the department. A middle-of-the-night rendezvous in a deserted summertime parking lot would not have been her first choice.

A minute or two later, an emergency call of some kind came in. With lights flashing, the patrol car sped off to answer it, leaving Joanna alone in the lot. She waited there for another five minutes or so until an unmarked, two-year-old Crown Victoria pulled up beside her. She recognized Ruben Ramos as soon as he rolled down the window.

"Let's cut to the chase," he said without preamble. "What's Frankie done now?"

"I'm sure by now you've heard about Clyde Philips-"

"Look," Ramos interrupted, "when you're a cop, you raise your kids under a damn microscope, And with three of the four, it worked fine. But Frankie's something else. I just didn't want it on his record, okay? The kid's got a hard enough row to hoe without that."

"You didn't want what on his record?"

"It wasn't that big a deal," Ramos continued. "Booze only, no drugs, nothing like that. If there had been drugs there, too, well, that would have been another story. But kids have been getting adults to buy their booze ever since Prohibition went out the window. Frankie was drinking. So what? He would have had a Minor in Possession and that would have been the extent of it. And Clyde would have been charged with providing alcohol to a minor and maybe an open container. I talked to a few people," Ruben added. "And the paperwork ended up not going anywhere. Maybe it was illegal. Hell, I know it was illegal, but I don't know too many fathers who wouldn't do that for one of their kids. If they could, that is."

Taken aback, Joanna realized there was a yawning gulf between what she had come to discuss with Chief Ruben Ramos and what he thought she had come to discuss. "You think that's what this is all about?" she asked. "That I asked to see you because your son was caught in possession of alcohol?"

"Isn't it?"

Joanna shook her head.

Ruben stared at her, his eyes narrowing. "Wait a minute here, you don't think Frankie had something to do with what happened to Clyde Philips, do you? You can't be serous. It couldn't be." He looked incredulous.

"Tell me about the MIP," Joanna said.

"Somebody put you up to this, somebody who's out to get me," Ramos muttered. "Who is it? Somebody on the City Council? I probably shouldn't even be talking to you without having an attorney present."

"Chief Ramos, I am not out to get you. I'm dealing with a series of homicides-four, to be exact, including Clyde Philips. A serial killer is loose in Cochise County. I need your help and your son's help as well."

"What kind of help?"

"You've told me yourself that Frankie had some connection to Clyde Philips. I suspect the killer did, too. All I want from your son is for him to give us the names of some of Clyde's other pals. Was there anyone besides Frankie involved in the incident where your son wasn't arrested?"

Ramos shook his head. "No, it was just the two of them. They were driving back to Frankie's place and Clyde missed a turn. They went into a ditch. No damage. According to what I was told, Clyde wasn't all that drunk. It wasn't that big a deal. At least that's what Eddy said."

"Eddy?" Joanna repeated. "You mean Eddy Sandoval?"

"Come on, Sheriff Brady," Ruben Ramos said. "Don't climb Eddy's frame about all this. He and I go back a long way. He knew about some of the problems Alicia and I have had with Frankie. He was just trying to help out."

Joanna wasn't impressed. "Look, Chief, if I've got a deputy looking the other way at drunk-driving offenses, then my department has a serious problem, one I need to address. But for right now, catching a killer takes precedence over everything else. Just tell me what happened."

Ruben Ramos sighed. "It was June," he said. "Right after school got out. Frankie had just graduated. Not top in his class. Not even in the top half, but he did graduate. And I told him-I told all my kids-that as long as they were going to school, they had a place to stay. And the other three all took me at my word. They all graduated from college. One of 'em is even working on a doctorate at San Jose State. But Frankie wasn't having any of it. He said he didn't want to go to college, and he sure as hell wasn't athletic enough to get himself a scholarship the way my other son did. So I told him fine, do it your way. But I also told him that once he was out of high school, he was out of the house, too. I thought that as soon as he had to cut it in the big, cruel world, maybe he'd come to his senses and get his education same as I did."

Ramos paused, shook his head, then continued. "So Frankie graduates and he gets himself this little nothing job working for a roofing contractor. I told him the morning after graduation that he had two weeks to find a place to live. And he did, too. Next thing I knew, he was living in this wreck of a mobile home over in Pomerene. The place is a dump, but it was the best he could afford. He told me Clyde Philips owned the place and he was letting Frankie work off part of the rent by doing odd jobs around his gun shop-cleaning, sweeping, that kind of thing. The good thing about it was Frankie could work there at nights or on weekends when he wasn't doing his regular job.

"Alicia and I were real happy about that-more power to him. He was making his own way, maybe learning some-thing useful. I was happy about it right up until Eddy Sandoval called me because he'd found Clyde and Frankie in that ditch, with Frankie drunker'n a skunk. Eddy called me as a favor and asked me what I wanted him to do about it. I told him if he could see his way clear to let it slide, I'd really appreciate it."

"Then what happened?" Joanna asked.

"I talked to Frankie about it. I tried to explain to him what a stupid thing that was for him to pull. I told him a Minor-in-Possession conviction would screw up his insurance premiums and all that other stuff for years to come. He just sat there with that damned nose ring on his face, staring at me like I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, like I was some kind of moron. That's the problem with kids-they always think they know so much more than their parents do.

"I just gave up after that. I told him if it happened again, he was on his own. I wouldn't lift a finger to help him. And that's that," Ruben finished. "The long and the short of it. I've barely seen him since then. Neither has his mother."

For a time, Joanna didn't know how to respond. Despite Ruben's protestations of having washed his hands of responsibility for his son, he was obviously still very concerned. He had volunteered the story of Frankie's MIP thinking that was behind Joanna's midnight visit. She agreed the man had every reason to be worried about his son, but not for any of the reasons he thought. Compared to the specter of AIDS, dodging a moving violation was trivial. And what was worrying Joanna right then was what other things Frankie might have done for Clyde Philips besides sweeping in order to work off his rent. Was he only a part-time janitor, or was there a sexual relationship as well?