Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

"Did you get your problems settled?" she asked just to end the silence.

"Yup. They lost circulation, then weren't getting any returns. They pumped down a little cement and pea gravel ten days ago. The drilling is about over. They hit paydirt. They'll be moving in a completion rig soon. From the sound of it this is going to be a hot well. Good thing too. Probably saved Gus's job. That boy ordered way too much of everything. Once pipe and gravel's been delivered, it's yours. Folks get real persnickety if you try and return it. Maybe that's where Brent ran afoul of them. He'd have recommended how much, how far, how deep. Could be he was off."

"Would they have shot him for it?"

"Nope. Happens all the time. Drilling is a gambler's game. If it happened too often they just wouldn't use Roxbury anymore. They'd get themselves a new boy. We're barking up the wrong tree."

Anna appreciated the "we."

Dust overwhelmed them then, and Holden needed all of his concentration just to stay on the road.

Night had come to further obscure the mysteries of the desert by the time they returned to Holden's office. There were three messages on his desk: a courtesy call from the sheriff's office telling him the only print lifted from the shell casing was Oscar's. Iverson had picked it up by the ends, planting his thumb on the base of the shell. A call from Laymon's secretary informed Holden the Roxbury funeral would be in Carlsbad the following day, with a short graveside ceremony at the Santa Catarina Cemetery. The last message was from Rhonda. By the way Holden smiled and folded the scrap of pink paper into his shirt pocket, Anna deduced he treasured up every communiqué from his wife.

Holden limped to his truck and Anna to her Neon aphid. Letting the engine warm up, she fiddled with the radio tuner trying to decide between half a dozen country-western stations playing more or less the same song. The day had been long, tiring, and confusing, but not a waste of time. Though she was no closer to knowing the identity of Frieda's killer, or Brent's, she was compiling a stock of information. Most of it would prove useless, but she was accustomed to that. Somewhere in this miasma of gossip, observation, and speculation, there would be answers.

Roxbury's ledger was filling fast: a dishonorable discharge from the army, bad information to a drilling company, a reputation for falsifying data, a presence at the first attempt, the opportunity to talk with Oscar Iverson during the rescue, on site at Frieda's death, and the victim of the second murder.

Oscar had the opportunity to conspire with Brent after the attempt and before Frieda's death. He was in the neighborhood, could have known Brent was meeting Anna at Big Manhole, and he'd screwed up the evidence either intentionally or accidentally.

Zeddie was present for the attempt and at Frieda's death. She knew where Brent was to meet Anna and how to get there. The love of her young life, Peter McCarty, had been blackmailed from her side by another woman. If Sondra had been the victim instead of Frieda, Zeddie would have been at the top of Anna's list.

The picture was skewed. Either the pieces of more than one puzzle had been mixed, or a piece was missing.

Anna backed the Neon into the deserted parking lot and fumbled with an unfamiliar dashboard in hopes of locating the headlights. Each time she laid out her thoughts, going over old information or incorporating new, she always ended back at the same blank wall: Sondra McCarty. A fugitive on the lam? A runaway wife? A frightened witness? Another victim?

After Brent's funeral Anna would dedicate her time to tracking down the doctor's wife.

Funerals gave Anna a displaced feeling, a sense of purposeless rattling through life. Since the death of a boy her junior year in high school, during the aftermath of which most of the class sat in the back of the funeral parlor undecided between giggles and tears, she'd managed to avoid them. Despite her connection with the corpse, she would have weaseled out of this one had she not wanted to study the other attendees.

For a rotten afternoon, cold and cloudy with a flaying north wind, a goodly number of people turned out. They looked as miserable as she felt. To focus on the casket with its decaying reminder of mortality was morbid. To think of anything else was irreverent. Mourners turned up their collars against the wind, settled their faces into neutral solemnity, and stared at the ground. Not where it erupted in new earth to receive Roxbury's remains but the little safe patches of brown grass in front of their toes.

The caving community was represented by a motley assortment of poorly dressed individuals. Those who had come to Carlsbad to work or study underground had not arrived with a wardrobe suitable for weddings or funerals. Anna had ridden down with Zeddie, Peter, and Curt. On behalf of the park, George Laymon and Oscar Iverson were there. Holden had come and with him Rhonda. A dozen others were in attendance. People Anna didn't recognize, friends and business associates of the deceased.

Roxbury didn't leave this earth awash in tears. Every eye in the place was as dry as the north wind. Brent's wife looked on with the drawn face of shock but without any indication of great sorrow. A wide-bodied man in a good suit seemed bent on protecting her not only from the wind but from the storms of life. Imposing in a calf-length black wool coat, he stood at her side, his shoulder touching hers. Mrs. Roxbury's head was inclined toward him as if it was there she sought comfort. The saddest note in this bleak formality was Brent's little girls. At three, they were too young to understand what was happening. Identically clad in tiny navy blue coats, double-breasted and buttoned up, they hung one on each of their mother's hands. Well-behaved little creatures, they didn't whine or pull away, but time and strangeness weighed upon them. They wiggled, peevish and playful by turns.

Arsonists liked to hang around to watch the firetrucks arrive. Serial killers often enjoyed reading about their exploits in the newspaper. Had Brent's killer come to his funeral? The possibility was there. Not so much to return in some way to the scene of the crime or to gloat over the finality of the act, but because most murderers know their victim. Often they are close friends or family. In that situation, not to appear at the funeral could be cause for comment.

Anna studied the faces. Uniformly grim, pinched with cold, and red-nosed from the wind, the mourners listened to the preacher's words. With the exception of Brent's wife, the mourners were uninteresting. She clung too close to her male companion to win any awards in the grieving widows category.

"What's with the fat man in the expensive coat?" Anna whispered to Zeddie as Mrs. Roxbury stepped forward to drop a handful of dirt on the dearly departed.

"That's the boyfriend," Zeddie told her. "He's a local dentist."

"Did Brent know?"

"Yeah. The marriage was over. They were just dickering over the details."

"What details?"

"Kids, dogs, house. Shh."

Anna hushed and, jamming her hands deep in pockets devoid of warmth, watched her suspect pool flood over its banks.

An estranged wife, a new boyfriend, a custody battle; as potentially illuminating as these bits of information were, Anna did not welcome them. Like an obsessed scientist, she wanted only data that proved her theory. This new twist could indicate Brent Roxbury's death had no connection whatsoever to Frieda's. Anna had used the Roxbury incident to prove that Dierkz was murdered. If it was freak coincidence, she was back to Frieda's testimony-recanted-and the butt-print- buried. Holden, her one ally in this quest, would desert her for the seductive realm of the guilt-ridden.