Rattlesnake Crossing

"The feds are looking for oleander? What's the matter?" Joa

"It's poison."

"Of course it's poison. But then, according to what my mother always told me, so are poinsettias. Maybe oleander's getting the same bum rap."

"I wouldn't know about that," Ernie replied. "But somebody back in D.C. came up with the bright idea that oleander is killing wildlife out in the wilds of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. They commissioned a study, and that's what Ashley was doing. She was working on a summer internship sponsored jointly by Northern Arizona University and the USDA. The Pima County Sheriff's Department found her camper and her pickup truck parked in Redington Pass three weeks ago, but they never found her."

"Because she wasn't anywhere near Redington Pass," Joa

She was thinking about the sign posted outside the Triple C. About no trespassing for employees of the federal government or for people giving information to the federal government. And about the conflicting layers of regulation that, according to his wife, threatened to strangle Alton Hosfield's efforts to keep the Triple C alive and ru

"Who owns those ledges along the river?" she asked.

"I don't know," Ernie answered. "I'm not sure where the boundary lines are. That land looks as though it might belong to the Triple C, but that may not be true. Once I finish up with Doc Daly, I could check with the county recorder's office and see who the legal owner is."

"Don't bother," Joa

"Okay," Ernie said. "Will do."

"Speaking of autopsies, what's happening on that score?"

"Because of the dental chart deal, Dr. Daly decided to do the girl first. That one's done. She's taking a break and then she'll do Philips."

"She told you she thinks he's a suicide?"

"She said something to that effect, but we'll see."

"Good," Joa

She put down the phone and sat staring out her office window at the lush forest of green grass and fully leafed ocotillo covering the steep, limestone-crowned hillsides be-hind the justice center. She had seen Alton Hosfield's No Trespassing sign, but was it possible he had made good on the implied threat by killing some poor girl out earning a college degree through doing an oleander survey? That seemed so silly as to be almost laughable. Still, Joa

Joa

Do

"Thanks, Do

There were two phones on Joa

"How about lunch?" Butch Dixon asked. "You name the place and I'll be there with bells on."

"Oh, Butch," Joa

"Yes, it's me," he said. "Don't sound so disappointed. Now that I get thinking about it, I could even use an apology. The dogs and I had a nice evening watching the stars and the moon, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

"I'm sorry," Joa

"I know," he said. "I picked up a copy of the Bisbee Bee this morning and read all about it. I could see from the headlines that you had your hands full yesterday. No hard feelings."

The fact that Butch was so damned understanding about it made things that much worse. Joa

"Where do you want to have lunch?" she asked. "And when?"

"Seeing as how I missed breakfast, any time at all would be soon enough," Butch told her.

Now that he mentioned it, Joa

There was the smallest hesitation in his voice before he answered. "Daisy's."

"All right. See you there. In what, about twenty minutes?"

"That'll be fine."

She put down the phone, finished racing through the few holdover items on her desk, and put that day's crop of correspondence to one side. Then she picked up the phone. "Kristin," she said, "I'm going to lunch. After that, I'll be going up to check on things in Pomerene. When I'm done there, I may end up going on to Tucson as well, so don't expect me back in the office today."

Picking up her private phone once again, she punched in the code that would forward all the calls on that line directly to her cell phone. If Maria

Joa

"What is it, Kristin?" she asked impatiently. "I was just on my way out the door."

"I know, Sheriff Brady," Kristin Marsten said. "But I thought you'd want to take this call. It's from Detective Carbajal."

"Right. Put him through."

"I think we found her," Jamie said as soon as he came on the line.

"Found who, Katrina Berridge?"

"That's right," he said, but there was nothing in his tone that sounded like the usual elation and pride of accomplishment that follow a successful search-and-rescue operation. Joa

She felt a sudden clutch of dread in her gut, a knowledge that the other shoe was about to drop. "She's dead, then?"

Jamie sighed. "Yes, she is."

"How did it happen? Where did you find her?"

"The body is only half a mile south of where we were last night. If we hadn't been delayed by finding the first one yesterday, we might have found this one then as well. The victim was shot to shit with something big."

"How big?" Joa

"Possibly."

But there was something more in young Jaime Carbajal's voice-a pained reticence-that Joa

"This one's the same as the other one," he said.

"What other one?”

"The victim we found last night. Like I said, she was shot. That's probably what killed her, but afterward…"

There was a part of Sheriff Joa