Rattlesnake Crossing

After leaving the river, the three-vehicle caravan traveled up and up through deepening twilight and steep, trackless terrain. Finally, Mike Wilson stopped his Bronco directly behind Eddy Sandoval's. Putting the Blazer in park and switching off the engine, Joa

Just then a low rumble of thunder came rolling across the valley behind them. Here we go again, Joa

Deputy Eddy Sandoval had been sitting out of the heat in his idling Bronco. Now he came slipping down the steep hillside to meet them as Fran Daly heaved herself out of the Blazer. "Let's get a move on," she said. "Where's this body supposed to be?"

Once again Dr. Daly succeeded in tweaking Joa

"Right, Deputy Sandoval," Joa

"It's up there." He pointed toward the cliffs. "There's a narrow rock shelf that runs along the base. Most of the way it seems solid enough, but just beyond the body it breaks off into a gully. From the looks of it, that's the spot where most of the water drains off the upper cliffs. There's been enough runoff the last few weeks that some of the cliff broke away. When it slid down the mountain, it took a big chunk of the shelf right along with it."

"A landslide?" Fran asked, pausing from the task of unloading her equipment from Ernie and Jaime's van.

Deputy Sandoval nodded. "I went down into the wash and checked to see if it looked safe for people to walk out there. I don't think the bank is undermined, but…"

Having just witnessed the collapse of Clyde Philips' floor, Joa

Obligingly, Eddy turned and started back up the hill, past the two parked Broncos. Joa

Joa

Eddy led Joa

For the next several minutes she examined the walls of the arroyo. In the end, she agreed with Deputy Sandoval's assessment. As long as another gully-washer of a storm didn't break loose another several-ton hunk of cliff face, the shelf was probably safe enough. After that, they retraced their footsteps out of the wash and then made the steep climb up to the shelf.

Once they were out on the ledge, footing was somewhat more solid than it had been on the hillside, but it was still a long way from foolproof. Here and there, loose rocks and gravel lay along; the surface, wailing to trip the unwary. The shelf was five to six feet wide and not more than three to four feet tall. The problem was that beneath that three-foot sheer drop, the rocky flank of the mountainside fell away at an impossibly steep angle. Anyone tumbling off that first three foot cliff probably wouldn't stop rolling for a long, long, way.

Picking her way south along the cliff face, Joa

"Here you are," Eddy Sandoval said at last. He stopped and stepped aside, allowing Joa

The far end of the rock pile was where the slide had roared through, taking with it the rocks at that end. And there, where the river rocks were missing, lay two partially skeletalized human legs. On one of them most of the foot was still attached, while the other one was missing. At the ankle joint just above that remaining foot was a thick length of knotted rope that bound one leg to the other.

Joa

"You told Ernie it was a woman," she said. "But if that little bit of leg is all you can see, what makes you think its a female?"

Eddy Sandoval had been hanging back and holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. Now he switched on his flashlight and shone it on something at Joa

"I guess we still don't know, not for sure, but I think it's a pretty good guess. Look at this."

Peering down, Joa

In the dim glow of the flashlight, Joa

In Sheriff Brady's previous life, that awful discovery would have sent her reeling. Now she simply took a deep breath-took one and wished she hadn't. "You've photographed all of this, Deputy Sandoval?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Good, but I suspect the detectives will probably want to take their own pictures before we start bagging and inventorying evidence."

As she turned to look at the bier once more, another low growl of thunder rumbled across the valley. "We'd better hurry," she told him. "There's a storm coming. Go back down and there's anything you can help carry. And then you should probably round up as many plastic tarps as you can find just in case we get rained out before we have a chance to finish gathering evidence."

Nodding, Eddy Sandoval hurried away down the narrow shelf. Meanwhile, Joa

This is posing, all right, Joa