J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

“Why’d you quit?” Joanna asked.

“Couldn’t afford it,” he said. “The hours were too long and the pay too low. I figured I was better off back in the army. The pay wasn’t that different, but it came with a place to live and a chow line.”

“Career army then?” she asked.

He nodded. “Retired Special Forces. Colonel.”

Just then Jaime Carbajal’s voice came from behind them, from the far side of the road opposite where he had disappeared into the culvert. “I may have found something after all. Look at this.”

As the three people on the road turned to look, Jaime materialized at the far end of the culvert holding three plastic milk cartons aloft. Two were empty. One still contained a quart or so of water.

“UDAs?” Joanna asked.

“I think so,” Jaime replied.

“But they could have been through here anytime. There’s no way of saying they were here last night, is there?”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” the detective answered. “One of the handles is stained with something that looks a whole lot like blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if it matches up with our victim’s.”

Joanna found the very suggestion chilling. In recent years the steady stream of undocumented aliens coming north from Mexico had turned into a vast flood, one that threatened to overwhelm the resources of local law-enforcement jurisdictions and of the Immigration and Naturalization Service as well. Increased enforcement in one place only caused the flow to move to some other likely crossing point. It seemed to Joanna that as soon as INS officers plugged one hole in the border fence, another opened up a mile or two away.

In the past few months, the UDA crisis had gone from bad to worse. Recently the number of illegals apprehended in rural Cochise County rivaled those captured in San Diego, with far fewer officers and far less money available to deal with the problem. As the number of illegals increased, a vocal group of ranchers whose properties lay on the most traveled routes had been raising a call to arms.

Several isolated ranch owners had been victims of unsophisticated burglaries. They complained that cattle had died after ingesting abandoned plastic bottles that the illegals used to carry life-sustaining water as they walked across long stretches of unforgiving desert. Ranchers reported that faucets on stock tanks had been left open, allowing precious water to drain out, that fences had been cut down, allowing livestock to stray onto roads and highways, and that their properties were littered with human waste. Several of the most vociferous of the frustrated cattlemen had threatened to take the law into their own hands. Their position was that if the government couldn’t be counted on to protect them from foreign invaders, the ranchers would do so themselves and round up any illegal found trespassing on their land.

Joanna knew that she was dealing with an extremely volatile situation, one already rife with threats of vigilante justice. She dreaded what might happen once news of this incident was made public. The specter of armed illegals preying on lone women motorists along deserted stretches of highway might well ignite a whole new style of range war. It wasn’t difficult to see how this added element of fear might provoke a few rabid individuals into shooting first and asking questions later.

Joanna stared at the bloodstained milk cartons as though they were leaking powder kegs.

“We’d better bag them up and get them to the lab,” Joanna said. Her comment proved to be unnecessary, since Detective Carbajal was already doing that very thing.

“Not only that,” Jaime continued as he entered the bagged cartons into the evidence logs. “It looks to me as though this end of the culvert wasn’t disturbed by the EMTs. There are a few tracks just inside here that are probably worth casting. I’ll go get my equipment.”

With Frank Montoya’s help, Detective Carbajal mixed up a batch of plaster of paris and set about making the casts. Meanwhile, Joanna took down the remainder of Hal Witter’s information-his phone number and address in Mesa, along with the names and phone numbers of friends in Bisbee with whom he was planning to stay for the next several days. When she was finished and because it was nearing sundown, Joanna offered the man a ride back into Pearce.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ll walk. I want to finish the event. Accepting a ride would mean it doesn’t count.” He started away.

“One other thing,” Joanna called after him.

“What’s that?”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention any of what you heard or saw here this afternoon. Of course, you’re welcome to let people know that you found the victim. Good Samaritans are always appreciated, but when it comes to disclosing pieces of our investigation that you may have overheard, I’d rather you kept those quiet.”

“Certainly,” he said. “I understand. Holdbacks and all that. No problem, Sheriff Brady. I’ll be more than happy to keep what I’ve heard to myself. I just hope you catch whoever did it. Shooting some poor woman and then leaving her to die in a ditch like a run-over dog isn’t what I call civilized. The sooner those people are off the streets, the better.”

Once Hal Witter walked away, Joanna went over to where her two deputies were working. “I’m assuming the campground up at the Stronghold is full of RVers. Has anyone thought to check with those folks to find out if any of them saw or heard anything unusual last night?”

“We’re on it,” Frank Montoya returned. “Deputy Pakin went up there as soon as the helicopter took off. As far as I know, he’s still up there. I wanted him to get cracking on interviewing possible witnesses in case some of the campers pull up stakes overnight. I don’t want any of them leaving without letting us know what they may have seen.”

“Good work,” Joanna said.

By then the afternoon sun had long since slipped behind the Dragoons. The cliff-lined canyon that had once sheltered Cochise and his warrior band of Apaches was fast fading into deepening shadows. Even though she realized they were losing daylight, Joanna knew better than to try to hurry the painstaking plaster-casting process. Experience had taught her that with proper analysis, footprints can be almost as foolproof as fingerprints in testifying to a suspect’s physical presence at a crime scene.

She spent the next several minutes pacing back and forth. She was considering the possibility of heading back home and leaving Frank in charge when Deputy Lance Pakin came wheeling up in his Blazer.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Mostly no one remembered seeing anything unusual,” Deputy Pakin answered. “I was about to give up when I ran into a guy named Naujokas-Mr. Pete Naujokas of Estes Park, Colorado.”

“What about him?” Joanna asked.

“He and his wife have a winter home in Oro Valley, but they’ve been out here in the park for several days, camping with some friends who are visiting from Colorado. Yesterday afternoon Pete had to go into Tucson on business. He planned on being back here at the RV in time for dinner last night. Things didn’t work out, though. First he was delayed leaving town, then he had car trouble that kept him in Benson for several hours. By the time he finally made it here, it was almost midnight.

“As he was coming up the road, he came across a vehicle parked up the road with its flashers flashing. He saw a woman down on her hands and knees by the Cochise Stronghold sign, and he stopped to see if she needed any help. She said everything was fine. She had lost a ring and was using the headlights to look for it. Since she didn’t seem to be in any trouble and since there wasn’t that much he could do to help, he went on his way.”