Outlaw Mountain

“Thanks,” Joa

“Ernie. Isn’t he the detective who was at the crime scene yesterday?” Fran asked.

“He’s the one,” Joa

“Ba

“That’s right.”

“What a jackass!” Dr. Daly muttered.

Smiling to herself, Joa

“What did you find?” she asked, returning to postmortem results.

“Did you ever hang out with football players much?” Fran responded.

Joa

“I don’t suppose Alice Rogers did, either,” Fran continued. “But the bruises I found on her back, just over the kidneys, are consistent with the kinds of injuries you’d see in an emergency room on a Saturday morning after a hard-fought football game on Friday night. We’re talking about bruises that would show up on someone’s body after they were tackled from be-hind. That’s the first thing I noticed-the bruising. And not just on the victim’s back, either. There are definite fingertip-type bruises around her wrist-her right wrist. There’s some additional bruising there as well that isn’t obviously related to the handprints.” Fran paused. “Wait just a minute, will you?”

Joa

“Bruising to the wrist.”

“Right. So I’m thinking somebody knocked her down and then grabbed her by the wrist, which, considering the cholla spines in the back of her hands, was probably a little tricky.”

“In other words, her attacker should have some cholla puncture wounds of his own.”

“His or her,” Fran Daly said. “Whichever. Most of the cholla puncture wounds are on her back, although there were also quite a few on her legs, arms, and both hands.”

“Anything else?”

“She was drunk,” Fran answered. “Point one-eight. And something else.”

“What’s that?”

“She was clutching a vial in one hand-an empty insulin bottle. Which makes me wonder if maybe that extra bruise on the inside of her wrist might have been caused by a needle-an injection.”

“An insulin shot then,” Joa

“Insulin isn’t usually injected in arms,” Fran Daly told her. “Since it’s self-injected, it usually goes in the thighs. With long-term insulin use then, there’s damage to the fat tissue in the legs-a puckering where the fat cells die due to repeated injections. I examined Alice Rogers’ legs. There was no evidence consistent with long-term use. If she was on insulin, she hadn’t been for long. We can find out for sure, once we locate her personal physician.”

“Diabetics don’t usually drink, do they?” Joa

“I talked to her daughter,” Joa

“Unless the daughter wanted to kill her,” Fran put in.

“There is that,” Joa

“It depends on how much extra, what the person’s physical condition is, and any number of variables.”

“And if the person was already drunk?”

“Well,” Daly said. “Again, it depends on how much insulin is administered. A hundred units of insulin or so, given to someone as drunk as Alice Rogers was, might cause her to pass out, but she’d wake up hours later and be fine, except for a hang-over, that is. With five or six hundred units, though, it could very well be lethal. In this case it might not have taken nearly that much, especially since there was already so much booze in her system, she was probably in shock from falling in the cactus, and she had almost no protection from the cold. I believe she passed out and her blood pressure dropped too low to sustain life. Whatever the cause, she died of heart failure. Still, I’m betting on insulin. If it’s there, you can be sure we’ll find it.”

“What do you use, a blood test?” Joa

“A serum test, not blood.”

“And how long does that take?”

“Two weeks, about. The thing is, without the presence of the vial, we wouldn’t generally bother with an insulin test at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. An insulin test isn’t part of standard autopsy protocols. And that’s what’s so odd. It’s as though the killer went out of his way to leave a calling card.”

“Can batches of insulin be traced?” Joa

“Certainly. I’ll get right on it.”

“So where does this leave Detective Lazier and the joyriders he’s pla

Fran Daly laughed. “Up a creek, if you ask me. This doesn’t square with a bunch of gangster-wa

Joa

“He didn’t strike me as being that happy to begin with,” Joa

Fran allowed herself another deep-throated chuckle, which was followed by a spasm of coughing. “Do you want a copy of my results?”

“Please,” Joa

“Will do.”

She had ended the call but had not yet put down the phone when it rang in her hand. Shaking her head, Joa

“Hello.”

“Hi, Joa

George Winfield, Cochise County’s medical examiner, had been Joa

“No,” she said. “I’m just driving from point A to point B. What’s up?”

George Winfield paused before he answered. “It’s about your mother,” he said.

George most often referred to Eleanor Lathrop Winfield as Ellie, a loving nickname that had once been the private pre-serve of Joa

“Is something the matter with her?” she asked. “Is Mother sick or something? Has she been hurt?”

“Not exactly.” George said the words with such studied reluctance that Joa