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“Into the bathroom?” Joa
“That’s right,” Hal said. “It caught me completely off guard. The door hit me square on the shoulder and pitched me all the way into the tub. Headfirst. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck. Before I had a chance to get my legs back on the floor, something jabbed me in the butt. That’s the last I remember.” “
“Jabbed you. Like a needle, you mean?”
Hal nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “It felt like a bee sting. Whatever it was, it knocked me for a loop. I don’t re-member a thing after that until a little while ago, when I woke up in the trunk smelling smoke. You had a guard on me, Sheriff Brady. How did this guy get past the deputy?”
“Cold-cocked her with a beer bottle,” Dick Voland said gruffly. “You say guy. Did you see your attacker?”
“No.”
“How do you know it was a guy?”
“Because of the way the door hit me. There was real power behind it. Not only that, whoever did it must have lugged me out to the car.”
Voland nodded. “I see what you mean,” he said. “What about the suicide note?” he added.
Morgan looked puzzled. “Suicide note? What suicide note?”
“We one we found on the computer screen in your room.”
Hal Morgan shook his head. “I never wrote anything of the kind,” he said.
Joa
“We never do composites.”
“We’re doing one now,” Joa
“You want to do that on Saturday?” Voland objected. “That’ll cost a fortune. I thought there was a budget crunch.”
“There is,” Joa
“No, no,” Voland agreed quickly. “I’ll do it.”
For a moment, the three people shut inside Joa
“It’s a frame, isn’t it,” Hal Morgan said at last. “Whoever killed Bucky Buckwalter figured you’d blame me. When it didn’t work the first time because that girl dragged me out of the barn, the killer decided to try again. This time with a phony suicide note. The only thing that saved me is the fact that the Buick burned oil like it was going out of style.” He looked questioningly at Joa
“I’d like to think my people are better investigators than that,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s always a chance it might have worked.”
“Will he try again?”
Dick Voland was the one who answered that question. “I’d give that one a definite yes. Obviously we can’t take you back to the Rest I
After some discussion, they finally decided to call on Father McCrady. One of his friends from seminary was the priest at Saint Dominick’s in Old Bisbee. That’s where Father McCrady was staying. One phone call was all it took to make arrangements for Hal Morgan to stay there as well. A few minutes after Dick Voland left to deliver Morgan to the church rectory, Ernie Carpenter parked behind Joa
“So much for my weekend off,” he said. “What’s happening?”
With that, Joa
The rest of the night, spent mostly in waiting, passed slowly. For the second time in two days, Joa
“Whoever it was must have had a car parked here to begin with,” Cordell explained later to Joa
“But wouldn’t Tom Givens have seen them if they came hack down the mountain after we were here?”
Cordell shook his head. “Not necessarily. If whoever was driving was familiar enough with the lay of the land, he might have known that there are a couple of private roads-ranch roads-that he could have taken. Following those, he could have made it all the way back to Elfrida without once touching the highway.”
“Damn!” Joa
Ernie Carpenter was philosophical about the oversight. “I expect you had one or two other things on your mind right about then,” he said. “I know I would have.”
It was one-thirty when Joa
When she walked into the house, though, the place was dead quiet. Even the dogs, locked in the bedroom with Je
Afraid that turning off the lights might disturb him, Joa
She awakened minutes before the alarm to the smell of brewing coffee and the sounds of Je
Pulling on a robe and taking a stab at flattening her sleep-bent hair, Joa
“What in the world are you doing?” she asked.
Butch looked up at her and gri
Joa
“Now, now,” he soothed. “What did you expect nee to do, sit around and twiddle my thumbs? You don’t even have decent TV reception. I was bored. How about breakfast? Je
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