Devil’s Claw

Joa

Witter shook his head. “It’s too bad, but I was afraid that’s what would happen. I’ve seen gunshot wounds before. This one didn’t look survivable.”

“Where’s that?” Joa

“In the service,” he said. “I was in Korea and Vietnam both. Something like this brings that other stuff back-stuff I wish I’d forgotten.”

As he turned away from her, Joa

“It’s real sandy down here, Sheriff Brady,” he reported. “And it looks like the EMTs pretty well tore things up getting her out of here. I doubt we’re going to get any useful pictures out of this, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get any usable footprints.”

“Do the best you can, Jaime,” Joa

By then it seemed Hal Witter had regained his composure, so Joa

Witter frowned. “You might want to check the weeds here. See where they’re mashed down? I suspect she was pushed or thrown out of a vehicle, rolled down into the ditch, and then dragged into the culvert. That’s just my initial impression.”

Joa

For the next several minutes, Joa

Finished with that, Joa

He shook his head. “None, and I checked, too. There was no purse, but people sometimes wear medical identification tags. There wasn’t one of those, either, but I did find a necklace-a little silver necklace with a strange turquoise-and-silver pendant on it.”

“What kind of pendant?”

“It looked like a devil’s claw,” Hal answered. “You know, those fu

Joa

“What did the woman look like?” Joa

“Native American or Hispanic,” Hal Witter said at once. “I’d guess she’s somewhere in her mid-thirties. Dark hair-not really black-and going a little gray around the temples.”

“Wearing?”

“A sweatshirt-a red sweatshirt with nothing on it-no logo, no Walt Disney characters, or anything else. Jeans. Te

“Other than the necklace you already mentioned, was she wearing any other jewelry?”

Hal shook his head. “No watch. No rings, and no sign that she had worn either one recently.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because when you wear a ring long-term, it usually leaves an indentation around the base of the finger. And in this climate, watches and rings both leave pale spots wherever the sun doesn’t reach. There wasn’t one of those either.”

Joa

He gri

“Why’d you quit?” Joa

“Couldn’t afford it,” he said. “The hours were too long and the pay too low. I figured I was better off back in the army. The pay wasn’t that different, but it came with a place to live and a chow line.”

“Career army then?” she asked.

He nodded. “Retired Special Forces. Colonel.”

Just then Jaime Carbajal’s voice came from behind them, from the far side of the road opposite where he had disappeared into the culvert. “I may have found something after all. Look at this.”

As the three people on the road turned to look, Jaime materialized at the far end of the culvert holding three plastic milk cartons aloft. Two were empty. One still contained a quart or so of water.

“UDAs?” Joa

“I think so,” Jaime replied.

“But they could have been through here anytime. There’s no way of saying they were here last night, is there?”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” the detective answered. “One of the handles is stained with something that looks a whole lot like blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if it matches up with our victim’s.”

Joa

In the past few months, the UDA crisis had gone from bad to worse. Recently the number of illegals apprehended in rural Cochise County rivaled those captured in San Diego, with far fewer officers and far less money available to deal with the problem. As the number of illegals increased, a vocal group of ranchers whose properties lay on the most traveled routes had been raising a call to arms.

Several isolated ranch owners had been victims of unsophisticated burglaries. They complained that cattle had died after ingesting abandoned plastic bottles that the illegals used to carry life-sustaining water as they walked across long stretches of unforgiving desert. Ranchers reported that faucets on stock tanks had been left open, allowing precious water to drain out, that fences had been cut down, allowing livestock to stray onto roads and highways, and that their properties were littered with human waste. Several of the most vociferous of the frustrated cattlemen had threatened to take the law into their own hands. Their position was that if the government couldn’t be counted on to protect them from foreign invaders, the ranchers would do so themselves and round up any illegal found trespassing on their land.

Joa