Skeleton Canyon

CHAPTER FIVE

Finished dressing, Joa

Driving toward David O’Brien’s place, Joa

Despite the sign, the new name hadn’t caught on with most other locals any better than it had with Joa

At the entrance to the ranch, a closed, electronically controlled gate barred her way. On either side of the gate, as far as time eye could see, stretched an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped by V-shaped barbed wire with a coiled layer of razor wire resting inside it. The fencing reminded Joa

At the time the O’Briens had been having the fencing installed at great expense, they had been considered something of a laughingstock. Old-timers around the county had made fun of the whole concept, calling the fence David’s Folly and referring to the ranch itself as Fort O’Brien. That, however, was before the dawn of the era of “Border Bandits,” roving hands of mostly Sonora-based thieves and thugs who practiced home invasions, burglaries, and armed robbery on people who lived along the U.S. side of the border. Taking the grim presence of those folks into consideration, David O’Brien’s fence no longer seemed foolish.

Joa

“Come on in, Sheriff Brady,” a disembodied voice said as the gate slowly began to swing open. “Drive right up to the house. They’re expecting you. Detective Carpenter said you were on your way.”

Joa

“Thanks,” she said, putting the Crown Victoria back in gear and moving forward. “I’m glad to hear they know I’m coming.”

Outside the gate, on the county side of the fence, the far western end of Purdy Lane was little more than a dirt track. Inside the fence, however, the private road leading away from the gate was a smooth layer of well-maintained blacktop. Thinking of the rough, rutted track that led through High Lonesome Ranch and of the sometimes sagging barbed-wire fence that surrounded it, Joa

Following the winding road, Joa

When Ezra Cooper died a few years later, he left behind a widow named Lucille, a six-year-old daughter named Roxa

So much for David O’Brien. Joa

Coming around a curve, Joa

A white-stuccoed ranch house appeared a moment later. Surrounded by yet another razor wire-topped fence, the house was set in a small basin, nestled in among a stately copse of green-leafed cottonwoods. Once again Joa

Threading her way through a collection of several parked police vehicles and past another fiberglass-topped ATV, Joa

Voland glanced up as Joa

Alf was a sunta

In Arizona law enforcement circles, Alf Hastings was notorious. As a Yuma County deputy, he had been the focal point of one of the biggest police scandals in the state’s history. He and three other deputies had been fired for systematically brutalizing a group of teenaged undocumented aliens (UDAs) who had been caught crossing the Mexican border just north of San Luis. The four officers had herded the UDAs into a van, driven them just inside the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and left them there-after first beating the crap out of them and taking their water. No doubt all six of them would have died had they not been found by a feisty Good Samaritan-a spelunking retired schoolteacher from Wooster, Ohio. She had given them water, loaded them into her Jeep Wagoneer, and then carted them off to the nearest hospital.