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"Where are you now?"
"With Mr. and Mrs. Hosfield at the Triple C."
"Search and Rescue set up a command post just inside the gates to Rattlesnake Crossing Ranch. It's another three miles or so up Pomerene Road from where you are."
"I know where Rattlesnake Crossing is," Joa
"Detective Carbajal's still in Pomerene and tied up with the lady from the Pima County Medical Examiner's office," Larry continued, "so I called Ernie Carpenter at home. He's still a little woozy from whatever medication he took for his migraine, but he said to tell you that he's on his way."
Sighing, Joa
"They must've found that woman," Alton said, turning to his wife. "I probably forgot to tell you. Her husband came around looking for her right after breakfast this morning. He came by while Ryan and I were working on the pump. Said she'd been missing since yesterday afternoon."
"Is she okay?" Sonja asked.
"No," Joa
CHAPTER SEVEN
As she heeled the Blazer around and headed back for Pomerene Road, Joa
Rather than hightailing it for home and a relaxing evening of fun with someone whose company she had come to value, Sheriff Joa
Slowing almost to a crawl on the rough, washboarded surface, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse once again and checked the roaming light to be sure she still had a signal. Then she punched in the memory code for Butch's Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria, near Phoenix. Obviously, since her date with Butch was scheduled for Bisbee-a minimum of four hours by car from the Phoenix area-he wouldn't be at the Roundhouse to take the call himself, not at the bar and restaurant downstairs or in his bachelor apartment upstairs. Nevertheless, Joa
Punching SEND, Joa
Puzzled, and scowling at the phone, Joa
"The number you have reached has been disco
Disco
The Blazer bounced across the rattle guard at the edge of the Triple C and lurched to a stop at the intersection of Triple C with Pomerene Road. Her stopping there had far more to do with a need to think than it did with the stop sign posted there. What on earth had happened?
Joa
Following Ernie and operating on autopilot, Joa
For a few minutes she toyed with the idea of calling Dispatch and asking them to send an officer out to her place to meet Butch and tell him exactly what was going on. She considered the idea, then dismissed it. Prior to her arrival on the scene, the Cochise County Sheriff's Department had operated like a little fiefdom, with on-duty officers ru
No, she decided finally as she turned in under the arched gate marked "Rattlesnake Crossing." We'll have to let the chips fall where they may. I'll stop just long enough to make an appearance. Since Ernie's here to take charge, I won't have to hang around. With any kind of luck, Butch will wait at the house until I get there.
Once again Joa
Under the name The Crossing, the place had come into existence in the mid-seventies as a residential psychiatric treatment center for patients of Dr. Carlton A. Lamphere. Dr. Lamphere, a New York native and a devotee of R. Buckminster Fuller, had bought up a tract of land, sunk a well, and then created his treatment facility by building a massive main ranch house in the center of the property and scattering the rest of his hundred and twenty acres with twenty or more Fuller-inspired geodesic domes.
Lamphere, operating on the theory that his patients lacked the self-esteem that came of self-reliance, insisted that his clients stay in these individual "cabins," as they were called. There they were expected to live alone, commune with nature, and learn to face their personal demons. The patients' nonpenal solitary confinement was broken each day by the arrival of golf-cart-riding orderlies who delivered trays of proper macrobiotic vegetarian meals and clean linens. Other than the orderlies, the only visitor to the individual cabins was Dr. Lamphere, who came by regularly for counseling sessions and to make sure the patients were staying on course.