J. Jance - Rattlesnake Crossing

"Joanna," Butch said, gently shaking her naked shoulder, "wake up. You're having a bad dream." He reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm okay," but her heart was hammering inside her chest. Sweat-soaked bedclothes clung to her naked body. Unbidden tears filled her eyes while a sob choked off her ability to speak.

Butch encircled her with both arms and held her against his chest. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Joanna took a deep breath. "He disables his victims," she said. "He cripples them and then he leaves them to bleed to death. After they're dead, he mutilates the bodies."

"Someone in your dream did this?" Butch asked. His warm breath lingered on her ear.

"No," she said. "The serial killer we're tracking. The real one. I talked to an FBI profiler named Monty Brainard. He says we're dealing with a spree killer."

"But the killer was in your dream?"

"No, there were boys in my dream. I thought they were pulling the legs off frogs. But when I got close enough to see, it turned out they had Jenny."

"Boys had Jenny, not the killer," Butch mumbled. He sounded half asleep. "I don't understand."

"I do," Joanna replied determinedly. "Frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails, that's what little boys are made of. The profiler is right. The killer's a boy, and we've got to find him before he kills somebody else."

"Don't worry," Butch said, sounding now as though lie was more than half asleep. "It was only a dream. We'll talk about it in the morning." With that he reached across and switched the light back off.

Joanna could tell by the way Butch had spoken that he was already drifting off. She waited until he was snoring softly before she eased her way out of his grasp, pulled on a robe, and crept out of the room. The clock in the kitchen said 4:15 as she turned on the kitchen light. After starting coffee, she slid into the breakfast nook to wait.

In the familiar confines of her kitchen, with the lights on and with coffee slowly bubbling into the pot, the dream receded from her consciousness, but it left behind a strange sense of both uneasiness and comprehension. Monty Brainard and her subconscious mind had dealt with the same problem and arrived at the same answer. The killer was a young man, little more than a boy. A man/boy with no sense of right or wrong, and with a video-game player's concept. of life and death.

Intuitively, Joanna suspected that whatever his name, he was most likely the person Sarah Holcomb had identified as Frankie Ramos' loutish friend. With Frankie dead and unable to tell them who the friend was, Joanna knew they would have to come up with some other way of finding him.

There was always a chance that the evidence techs would discover a usable fingerprint. In the old days, latent finger-prints could help convict a known perpetrator, but they had been virtually useless in identifying unknown criminals. Now, though, with the help of AFIS-the Automated Finger-print Identification System-that had changed. By using computers, it was possible to compare points of similarity on unidentified prints to those of millions of prints, often booking prints, that had already been loaded into the system. With the computer searching for similarities, it was sometimes possible for a crime-scene fingerprint to lead directly to a named suspect.

AFIS made the odds of that happening better, but it wasn't foolproof. For one thing, assuming Monty Brainard's assessments were right about the killer's previous run-ins with law enforcement, his prints were likely to be in the system. The problem was, he was also being extremely cagey about not leaving prints behind. Even if a usable print existed at one of the crime scenes, Joanna knew her people were utterly overwhelmed by the avalanche of crime-scene evidence that had come in over the past few days. It might take weeks or months to sort through it all. In the meantime, how many more victims would die?

So how do we do this in a timely manner? Joanna asked herself. How do we sort through masses of crime-scene evidence to identify the killer?

When the coffee finished brewing, she poured a cup.

Then after donning a warm jacket over her robe, she tools her coffee cup out to the porch. There, sitting on the swing and soothed by the companionable presence of both dogs, Joanna considered the problem.

Monty Brainard claimed the killer was a loner. Maybe Frankie Ramos had been his one real friend-a fatal offense which had also qualified him as victim. But were there other acquaintances, other people who ran in the same crowd? They might not have been as close to the killer, but that didn't mean they didn't know him. Whoever those people were, they might very well suspect what the killer had done. They'd be scared now, worrying that perhaps they, too, had moved from the role of pal to potential victim.

The answer, when it came, seemed to materialize directly out of the steam wafting from Joanna's cup of coffee-Deputy Eddy Sandoval. Quietly easing the door open so as not to disturb Butch, she retrieved the portable phone from the living room and went back outside. Sitting on the swing, she dialed the department's number. Stu Farmer, the night watch commander, took the call.

"You're up bright and early this morning, Sheriff Brady," Stu told her.

"Funniest thing," she said. "I can't seem to sleep."

"Wonder why," Stu replied. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"What time does Eddy Sandoval come on duty today?"

"Hang on," Stu said. "Let me check the roster." Joanna listened to several minutes of clattering computer keyboard keys. "Here it is. He works three to eleven today. Want me to have him check in with you as soon as he comes on shift?"

Joanna didn't want Eddy Sandoval to have any kind of advance warning that she was about to land on him. "No," she said. "That's all right. I may be stuck in a meeting about then. It wouldn't do to have him waiting around to hook up with me. I'll contact him once I'm free."

"Anything else I can do?"

"Actually, there is. I want you to run a check on Clyde Philips."

"Philips? The guy who's dead?"

"That's the one," Joanna said. "I want to know what, if anything, is on his sheet."

"Will do. After I run it, want me to call right back with the information?"

"No, that's okay. Just put it in an envelope and leave it on Kristin's desk. She'll give it to me as soon as I come in tomorrow morning."

"Begging your pardon, Sheriff," Stu Farmer said, "it's almost five. That's this morning."

"Right," Joanna said. "This morning."

She put down the phone and sat waiting for the sun to come creeping up over the Chiricahuas and for the mourning doves to send their sweet daytime greetings across the waking desert. The tops of the mountains were just turning gold when the screen door squeaked open behind her. With wagging tails, both dogs went to greet Butch.

"Do you always get up this ungodly early?" he asked, easing himself down beside her. Barefoot and wearing jeans but no shirt, he had already poured himself a cup of coffee.

"You bet," Joanna said. "My folks always told me that the early bird gets the worm."

Butch groaned. "I suppose it'll wreck the analogy if I point out that the poor dead worm is also an early riser. How are you feeling?"

"Okay."

He reached over and ran his index finger along the rim of Joanna's ear. "I was hoping for something a little more effusive than that. Something on the order of 'wonderful' or 'fantastic.' " He paused. "Not feeling any regrets, are you?" he added. "I mean, you're not sorry I stayed over, are you'?"

Joanna thought about that before she answered. She hadn't ever really contemplated the possibility that someone besides Andy might share the bed that had once been theirs. The likelihood of that had seemed so remote, she had succeeded in ignoring it entirely. When long-buried urges had overcome her the night before, they had taken her by surprise and created such blinding abandon that there had been no room for either guilt or regret.