Rattlesnake Crossing

"Onions," she explained. "Crying's the best part of making salsa. If there aren't a few tears mixed in, it's not real salsa."

Looking around the room, Joa

On the ledge of the window stood a series of several handmade clay pitchers. Roughly formed and out of balance, they struck a familiar note-the kind of handiwork that childish hands might create in a Bible school arts and crafts session. Well-used pots and pans dangled from a metal framework attached to the high ceiling. Old-fashioned wooden cupboards complete with white knob handles went all the way to that same ceiling. A worn step stool in one corner of the room hinted that it might be the secret to making Sonja's top shelves more accessible.

Next to the cupboard at the far end of the table was a wall-mounted phone-the old-fashioned dial type. Next to that hung two framed diplomas from the University of Arizona. One listed the recipient as Sonja Marie Hemmelberg. The other had been issued to David Alton Hosfield. Both of them dated from the mid-sixties.

Sonja glanced in Joa

"Artifacts?" Joa

Sonja laughed again. "I was a Home Ec major," she said. "I don't think they make those anymore. Since I was in Home Ec and Alton was an Aggie, everybody thought it was a match made in heaven. We met at a mixer between my dorm and his fraternity the first week of school our freshman year. I was in Pima Hall-sort of an honors dorm for poor but smart girls." She shrugged. "What can I tell you? It was love at first sight."

They've spent more than thirty-five years together, Joa

The words burst out of Joa

Sonja slopped chopping. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I'm sorry, too," Joa

"No, it's fine. But you're wrong about the timing-ours, that is. We haven't had that many years together, either. Alton and I went together all through college, but then we broke up during spring semester of our senior year. We had a big fight over something stupid, and I gave Alton back his engagement ring. He wanted me to take birth control pills, you see. They were fairly new back then. He said he didn't want us to, as they called it back then, 'get in trouble and have to get married.' But birth control pills were against my religion-or at least they were against my parents' religion. I told him if he really loved me he wouldn't even ask me to do such a sinful thing."

Sonja scraped the pile of finely chopped onions across the cutting board into a mixing bowl. Then she absently stirred the contents of the bowl with the blade of her knife. "I'm not sure how I came to all those erroneous conclusions," she said finally. "Here we were sleeping together-had been for years. It seems to me now that risking an unwed pregnancy should have counted as more of a sin than taking birth control pills, but then Home Ec majors always were strong on cooking and short on philosophy."

She stopped stirring and brought the dish of freshly made salsa over to the table. The combination of chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro was enough to make Joa

"With everything that's on TV and in the movies nowadays," Sonja continued, "the whole thing sounds ridiculous-almost quaint, doesn't it? But it wasn't ridiculous b then. Not at all, and we broke up over it. Alton and I each married other people and spent the next eighteen or nineteen years in hell. I found someone who didn't want a stay-at-home wife, and Alton married someone who wasn't one. By the time we met again, at our twentieth class reunion, we were both divorced. In our case, it was re-love at first sight. So we haven't been married very long, either. More tea?"

As the jasmine-laced tea poured over Joa

"Do you have any children?" Sonja asked.

Sipping her tea, Joa

"So she's not all that much younger than Jake," Sonja said. "He just turned twelve this past March. He's ours together, Alton 's and mine, but we both have other kids besides. He has a son, Ryan, and a daughter, Felicia, from his first marriage, and I have two boys-men now-Matt and Jason. When I divorced their father, the boys couldn't understand why I was leaving. They opted to stay with the big bucks-with the house and the cars and the swimming pool. Living in a ratty little two-bedroom apartment wasn't for them. I don't think they've ever forgiven me. Not for leaving then, and certainly not for being happy now."

Taking another knife from a wooden block on the counter, Sonja began to slice up the cornbread. "What happened to your husband?" she asked. "Was he ill?"

Joa

"In the line of duty?"

Even though Deputy Andrew Roy Brady had been officially off duty at the time of the incident, the county commissioners had ruled his fatality as line of duty. "That's right," she said.

Sonja nodded. "I remember now. He was ru

"Yes," Joa

"I've never been one of those women's libbers," Sonja said. "Being a woman in a man's job must be difficult at times."

Joa

Sonja shrugged. "Maybe it is."

For a little while it was quiet in the kitchen, except for the noisy hum of a teapot-shaped electric clock on the wall over the stove. The sound of it served as a reminder to Sheriff Brady that she was neglecting her responsibilities. "About last night…" Joa

"I heard them," Sonja told her. "The gunshots, that is. There were several of them, one right after another. Then, after a pause, there were several more. They sounded like the M-80 firecrackers my boys used to like so much when they were kids. It's not the first time I've heard them in the last few weeks. I figured they were just leftovers from somebody's Fourth of July. Now, though, I'm thinking Martin's not much of a shot and this was the first time he’s actually managed to hit something."

Noting that Sonja Hosfield immediately assumed that Martin Scorsby was the person responsible, Joa