Rattlesnake Crossing (29 page)

"How come?" Frank asked. "Surely you don't think someone from the department is involved in this case, do you?"

Joanna shook her head. "No, but I don't want any inadvertent leaks, either. If the press gets wind that the Feds are involved, we'll have a media stampede on our hands and panic besides. As far as I know, we've never had a serial killer loose in Cochise County before. The fact that we're calling in the FBI would scare people to death."

"Gotcha," Frank replied. "I'll get on it right away." He walked as far as the office door, then slopped without opening it. "What about Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?" he asked. "With that whole shopful of guns gone missing, shouldn't we notify them as well?"

"Check with Dick on that. He was supposed to notify them yesterday. If he did, they aren't exactly beating a path to our door."

Frank shrugged. "It figures," he said.

Once Frank had left the room, Joanna settled down and tried to get a handle on her own paperwork. Since she was a firm believer in her mother's old adage about sauce for both the goose and the gander, Joanna started the process by doing her own contact reports, covering her conversations with Alton Hosfield, Belle Philips, and Sarah Holcomb.

The one with Sarah bothered her. Looking at what she had written, Joanna couldn't help thinking that she had blown that interview. Sarah had become so defensive when she realized that Belle Philips might wind up being a suspect that the flow of information had simply dried up.
Maybe I need to take another crack at her,
Joanna thought.
Maybe that's something I can do while everybody else is out interviewing the people at Rattlesnake Crossing.

She moved from the contact reports directly into the unending stack of daily correspondence. She felt as though she was making great progress until Kristin reappeared with that day's collection. The top item on the stack was a copy of the
Bisbee Bee.

"I wouldn't read that if I were you," Kristin warned as Joanna reached for the paper.

"That bad?"

Kristin nodded. "That bad."

Picking up the paper, Joanna turned immediately to Marliss Shackleford's column, "Bisbee Buzzings."

Anyone who's had the misfortune of having to deal with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department, of late probably already knows that's one pant of county government where the word "public servant" has fallen into disuse.

Someone needs to remind Sheriff Joanna Brady that she serves at the direction and will of the people who elected her. She also needs to understand that if a crazed killer is plunked down in their midst, the people have a right to demand to know what's going on.

She needs to understand as well that declaring the entire Triple C Ranch east of Benson as an off-limits crime scene is not the way to conduct an effective investigation. Hello, Ms. Brady. Are you listening? Banning reporters from doing their job is no way for you to do yours.

Joanna tossed the paper in the air. It sailed briefly on the current from the air-conditioning duct. Then, in a move not to be duplicated, it landed directly in the trash. "Good shot," Kristin said. "Looks like you filed it right where it belongs."

"Thanks, Kristin," Joanna said. The secretary started toward the door. "Have Ernie and Jaime dropped off their reports yet?" she asked.

"They just did."

"Good," the sheriff said. "Copy it all—autopsy reports, crime-scene reports, everything—and bring it to me right away."

By eleven-thirty, the whole stack of material landed on Frank Montoya's desk. He was just starting to fax it when Joanna left for lunch. She grabbed a quick combination breakfast/lunch at Daisy's and was back at her desk working and not watching the clock when the phone—her private line—rang at two-thirty.

"Sheriff Brady?" someone asked.

"Yes."

"Monty Brainard here, FBI. Excuse me, but is this a home phone number?"

"No. It's a private line in my office. If you don't mind, I'd rather not have your calls come through the switchboard. I'm trying to downplay this as much as possible. The less attention we call to the idea of a serial killer, the better. If people around here get wind that your office is involved... Well, you know the drill."

"I certainly do," Brainard replied, "although I'm not sure how much help we'll be able to give you. As I told the fellow who called me about this earlier—Mr. Montoya, I believe—we're so slammed here at the moment that I can't promise much more than just a cursory treatment. For more than that, you'll have to go through official channels and get on waiting lists and all that. Since you've sent me the info, however, I can probably give you a quick-and-dirty assessment, although I don't know how helpful it'll be.

"Do you want me to give it to you, or should I pass it along to your lead detective—Mr. Carpenter, I assume?"

"I'm sitting here with pad and paper at the ready," she told him.

"Okay, then," Monty Brainard said. "Here goes. In my opinion, you're dealing with a young white male, late teens, early twenties at the most. He's totally self-absorbed. He has no concept that anyone else actually exists. As far as he's concerned, his reality is the only reality."

"You think he's white?" Joanna asked. "You're sure he's not Hispanic?"

"Maybe," Brainard returned. "Hispanic is possible, I suppose, but my gut instinct says no. This is a loner of a young man with some severe issues when it conies to relating to the adult authority figures in his life. He hates women and men just about equally, but I find the fact that he didn't mutilate the male victim telling. There's probably still a sense of fear or awe about adult males. He's primarily targeting women, but he's doing it to get back at the authority figure. Most likely that's his father, but it could be a stepfather or a grandfather, too. Maybe even a mother's boyfriend, but I doubt it.

"Then there's the burial motif. Let me see . . . yes, he did the rock-pile trick with two of the victims, both Flowers and Brittany. If your people hadn't found the Berridge woman when they did, he probably would have pulled the same stunt with her. I'm sure there's a message in the burial routine, but right now, on such short notice and with the information available, I can't decode it.

"The other ingredient, of course, is the scalping. Once you find him, you can pretty well count on finding a trophy room as well. It's going to be ugly."

Joanna's lunch turned sour in her stomach while Monty Brainard paused. "Am I going too fast?" he asked.

After one or two false starts, Joanna's years of taking shorthand dictation had come back to her and was serving her in good stead. "No," she said, mastering her queasiness. "I'm fine. Go ahead."

"Okay. From what I can see, there don't seem to be any connections at all among the women. Is that right?"

"That's correct."

"So they're probably crimes of convenience. He killed them for the same reason some people go out of their way to climb mountains—they were there. The rage was building for a long time, but the first victim, the one in Phoenix, was most likely his first real taste of blood. After that, there's a long pause. I suspect he was out of circulation for a time. Maybe even incarcerated. The lack of fingerprints leads me to think that, too. Your perpetrator is wearing gloves. 1'd guess he knows his fingerprints are on record somewhere. He also knows that if your investigators find them at a crime scene, you'll be able to find him, too. Anyway, he was locked up until sometime earlier this year. Probably until just before this new set of killings started.

"Unfortunately, Sheriff Brady, I believe not only are you dealing with a serial killer, your guy is in what we call the subcategory of spree. In other words, now that he's started on his tear, he's not going to stop until he's caught or dead. I don't happen to think he's particularly concerned about getting caught, either. To paraphrase Margaret Mitchell—frankly, my dear, I don't think the son of a bitch gives a damn. Which is why the stolen gun collection scares the hell out of me. Is that true? Does he really have access to a whole arsenal of weapons?"

"Sad but true," Joanna replied. "And unlimited ammunition as well."

"Great. Well, be advised, Sheriff Brady. He's liable to stage one hell of a grand-exit spectacle. He'll probably try taking along as many people as possible, including any he's missed so far—like specific family members, for example. Killing all these other people may just be leading up to the main event. Working up his courage, as it were." Monty paused. "What kind of guns?"

"Some of everything," Joanna said. "Including the possibility of several fifty-calibers."

Monty Brainard whistled. "Boy, oh boy, you'd better watch your guys, then. Don't send anybody up against him who isn't armed with the same kind of firepower."

"Great," Joanna said. "You wouldn't happen to be in a position to lend my department a couple of fifty-calibers, would you?"

"Not personally," Brainard said, "hut I can put your request to the local agent in charge out there and see what he can do. Want me to have him give you a call?"

"Yes, that would be fine. Only give him the same two numbers Frank Montoya gave you."

"Will do. Hope this was a help."

"It is and it isn't," Joanna replied. "I feel like I'm climbing up a really tough cliff. Now I've turned over a rock and come face-to-face with a rattlesnake."

"There's one big difference between the guy you're looking for and your everyday, garden-variety rattlesnake," Monty Brainard told her.

"Oh? What's that?"

"As I understand it, a rattlesnake only kills when it's cornered. This guy is looking for kicks. So good luck, Sheriff Brady. You're going to need it."

"Thanks," Joanna said. "I know."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For several minutes after getting off the phone, Joanna simply sat and stared at the instrument. Her conversation with Monty Brainard had opened a gate, leading her into what seemed like the valley of the shadow of death. It had allowed her a nightmarish glimpse of someone totally evil. What she couldn't reconcile in her mind was Ruben Ramos' view of his son with what she had heard from the FBI agent.

Yes, Ruben and Frankie were estranged. But were they that estranged? And if Frankie had just graduated from high school, that meant he was only eighteen now. That would have made him sixteen at the time Rebecca Flowers was killed. Would a sixteen-year-old "sissy" have done such a thing?

And what about Brainard's claim that between that first killing and the next ones, the killer had most likely been incarcerated somewhere? Surely if Frankie Ramos had already been shipped off to juvie for the better part of two years, Ruben Ramos wouldn't have been so concerned about his being charged with either solicitation or minor in possession.

Then there was the nagging question of ethnicity. Brainard had claimed the killer had to be white. Joanna Brady had never met Frankie Ramos, but she had no doubt he was Hispanic. Maybe when it came to sorting white from Hispanic, the agent was just flat mistaken. After all, nobody ever claimed that criminal profiling was an exact science.

Joanna sat there for some time longer with her door shut and without the phone ringing off the hook for a change. Most of her departmental troops were out in the field doing their respective jobs. It was hardly surprising, then, that the Cochise County Justice Complex seemed unnaturally quiet.

In the brooding silence, letting her mind wander and wool-gather, Joanna Brady remembered something Belle Philips had said the night before: "Clyde liked boys." She hadn't said that he liked a single boy. She had used the plural. More than one. Several.

Joanna's heartbeat quickened in her breast. Maybe that was why Brainard's assessment wasn't adding up. Maybe he wasn't wrong, after all, because there was another boy involved in all this. Maybe Clyde Philips had kept a whole stable of young men around him. If so, Joanna had an idea of someone who might know—Clyde's neighbor, the talkative Sarah Holcomb.

The only question in her mind was whether or not Sarah would talk to her. Joanna's last contact with the woman had gone offtrack so badly that she was half tempted to have one of the two detectives do the honors. After a moment's consideration, however, she realized that both Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were far too busy. Both of them were probably up to their eyeteeth interviewing the soon-to-be-departing guests from Rattlesnake Crossing.

No, Joanna told herself.
This is something I can do.
"Kristin," she said after grabbing up the phone, "if anybody needs me, I'm on my way to Pomerene to see how things are going. I'm forwarding my private calls to the cell phone, so you don't have to worry about trying to catch them."

"Any idea when you'll be back?"

Joanna glanced at her watch. It was almost three. "Probably not much later than six," she said.

Once in the Blazer, she turned on her emergency flashers and went streaking up through Bisbee and out the other side of the tunnel. It was another broiling-hot August after-noon. After five days of no rain, the summer monsoon season seemed little more than a distant memory. The desert was a hazy, blazing furnace. At the base of the Mule Mountains, looking out across the flat plain that stretched from Highway 80 all the way to the booming metropolis of Sierra Vista, Joanna spied a troop of dust devils twirling across the desert. They looked like so many reddish-brown soldiers jogging, zigzag-fashion, in the same general direction.

Once on Rimrock in Pomerene, Joanna pulled up into the welcome shade of the two tall cottonwoods that over-flowed Sarah Holcomb's tiny front yard. Next door, parked in front of Clyde Philips' house, sat one of the department's evidence vans. Joanna was relieved to see it. That meant her people were still working. Ongoing progress was being made.

Joanna's knock on Sarah Holcomb's door brought the lady herself. "Oh, it's you again," she said with a disdainful sniff. "I thought you said next time you'd send one of your detectives. What is it you want?"

It wasn't a particularly welcoming or auspicious beginning. "My detectives are all pretty much occupied at the moment," Joanna began.