Damage Control (3 page)

“Come on, Buttercup,” Alfred urged, smiling and putting his large hand over Martha’s small one. “Let’s do it.”

Martha sighed and arranged her face in the tight grimace that
passed for a smile. She had always been ashamed of her crooked, misshapen teeth. Even though the false teeth she had worn for the past twenty-five years were as straight as could be, she had never managed to change her lifelong habit of not smiling when faced with a camera.

Once the picture was taken, the young woman stayed on, chatting gaily with Alfred while Martha repacked the hamper and folded the tablecloth. Alfred had always been the gregarious one in the family—someone who made friends easily wherever he went. And when it came time to push Martha’s chair back to the Buick, the young woman—whose name was Trudy—helped out by carrying the hamper. In her younger days, Martha might have been a little jealous.

“Trudy and her friends are here to spend two weeks hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” Alfred explained as he helped Martha into the car.

“What a bunch of foolishness,” Martha said. “Why walk when you could ride?”

Alfred didn’t have an answer for that one, so he said nothing.

Once in the car, Martha automatically reached for her seat belt, then thought better of it. “I don’t suppose we need those this time,” she said.

“No,” Alfred agreed. “I suppose not.”

With a fond glance in his wife’s direction, Alfred put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space. There were more cars in the lot now, but there was still a single empty spot in the line of cars parked so they looked out over the San Pedro Valley far below. There was a low rock wall positioned as a guardrail in front of the cars, but Alfred knew if he picked up enough speed
before he got there, the Buick would either smash through the wall or jump over it.

Keeping the emergency brake on, Alfred pressed his foot on the gas pedal. The Buick’s old V-6 came to life. Only when the engine was a full throttle did Alfred shove it into gear and release the hand brake. Once he was sure they’d make it through the space between the other two cars, he let go of the steering wheel and sought Martha’s hand, squeezing it hard enough that the thin bones ground together.

And that’s what Alfred and Martha Beasley were doing when their Buick went screaming over the wall and plunged down the steep mountainside—they were holding hands. They were still holding hands when the Buick came to earth the first time in an explosion of metal and glass and dust. The car hit once and then turned end over end. The force of that first blow drove them apart. Alfred tried to hold on, but he couldn’t.

The last thing Alfred Beasley knew, Martha’s hand was lost to him, but strangely enough, he felt like he was flying.

And he was.

The 911 calls reporting the horrific accident started coming in just after eleven that morning. Several witnesses dialed in almost simultaneously, all of them calling to report seeing the same thing—a vehicle at the Montezuma Pass Overlook in the Coronado National Forest had gone racing through the parking lot with an elderly man at the wheel and with an equally elderly woman in the passenger seat. The speeding Buick had plowed
through a retaining wall and then plunged off the side of the mountain, ejecting both passengers in the process.

One of the frantic witnesses, a German national, took it upon herself to clamber down the steep mountainside to check on the two victims. When she finally managed to reach them—at some considerable risk to her own life and limb—she called back up to her hiking companions and reported that neither of the two victims had survived.

When the calls first came in, Joanna was at her desk and was just starting to wade through the morning’s mail. Knowing that the appropriate departmental assets had been dispatched to the scene, Joanna’s initial reaction was to stay where she was and keep her nose to the grindstone. An hour or so later, however, Ernie Carpenter, her chief homicide detective, called in for reinforcements.

“Sorry to bother you, boss,” he said, “but we need some help out here.”

“What kind of help?”

“We’ve got two bodies lying on rocks halfway down the mountain in terribly difficult terrain,” he said. “Deb was able to drag her butt down there to take a look at the situation. I didn’t even try.”

Deb was Debra Howell, Joanna’s recently promoted newbie homicide detective.

“She says it’s dangerous as hell down there,” Ernie continued. “One false step and the rescuers will be done for, too. Not only that, it looks like there’s a serious storm blowing in. If you want those bodies picked up before they get washed down the mountain and end up floating away to who knows where, it’s going to take a miracle to get them hauled out of here. That or a helicopter.”

Of course, the perpetually strapped Cochise County Sheriff’s Department didn’t have a helicopter of its own. Fort Huachuca, a U.S. Army military installation located entirely inside Joanna’s jurisdiction, did have helicopters available—more than one, in fact. They also boasted a well-trained search-and-rescue team, but getting folks from the fort to cooperate with their nonmilitary neighbors was never an easy sell. They weren’t what you could call big on providing mutual aid.

First Joanna took herself out to the scene so she could assess the situation with her own eyes. Herding her Crown Victoria up the narrow winding road was challenging. Then, once she got to the viewpoint, one look was enough to put her in total agreement with Detective Carpenter’s opinion. Having deputies use stretchers to hand-carry broken bodies up the steep mountainside was utterly out of the question. The idea of risking fully half a dozen workers’ comp claims at the same time would have sent her budget-conscious chief deputy Frank Montoya into a fiscal spasm.

“I guess I’ll put on my best poker face and go to Fort Huachuca to talk to whoever’s in charge,” she said.

“Want me to call Doc Winfield?”

Dr. George Winfield was the Cochise County medical examiner. Now married to Joanna’s mother, Eleanor, he also happened to be Sheriff Brady’s stepfather.

“Not yet,” Joanna said. “He can’t climb down there either, and there’s no sense having George standing around with nothing to do until we’re somewhere near ready to hand over the bodies.”

Once on post, it took two hours of going through channels and across desks before Joanna finally made her way to Colonel
Donald Drake, someone with enough brass on his uniform to make a decision to bypass any number of prohibitive rules and regs.

“That’s very rugged terrain out there, Sheriff Brady,” he observed somewhat patronizingly. “Even setting aside the problems of using military equipment and personnel for an essentially civilian purpose, I’m not sure you understand some of the extensive technical difficulties involved in that kind of operation.”

Donald Drake wasn’t a large man, but he was stern-faced, hawk-nosed, and imposing. Joanna half expected that, at some point in the conversation, he’d look at her over his reading glasses and call her a “little lady.”

Running the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had given Joanna Brady considerable experience in dealing with the cool macho dudes of this world. Many of them could be brought into compliance with a smile along with a short-enough skirt and a well-displayed bit of leg. She recognized at once, however, that none of that would work with Colonel Drake. Here her uniform and badge helped level the playing field. So did not backing down.

“I just came from the scene,” she told him. “I’m well aware of the difficulties posed not only by the terrain itself but also by the severe crosswinds that will most likely accompany the storm that’s currently blowing in from the southeast. According to the weather service, we should start seeing the first serious gusts from that at around sixteen hundred hours. I was hoping we could have the situation wrapped up before then.”

Drake gave her a piercing look. “We’d have to use our own personnel,” he said. “I wouldn’t want some untrained yahoo on the ground who wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of how to use
our slings. If they’re not fastened properly, we could end up dropping one of those bodies instead of hauling it out.”

This sounded like a major concession. “Absolutely,” Joanna agreed quickly. “That would be dreadful.”

“From what you’re saying, I assume this is strictly a recovery operation. My guys go in, pick up the bodies, drop them off at a prespecified point, and then we’re out of there. Correct?”

“Understood,” Joanna said.

Drake thought about that for a moment. “What’s the situation again?” he asked. “And where?”

“Several hundred yards straight down from the viewpoint at Montezuma Pass. The victim drove through the parking lot, over the wall, and down the side of the mountain.”

“How many victims total?”

Obviously Drake hadn’t bothered to listen to her to begin with, because he hadn’t expected to be involved. Joanna found it heartening that he was asking her to repeat the details.

“Two,” she said. “An elderly man and woman.”

“What happened?” Drake asked. “An accelerator problem?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna answered. “It could be. Or it might even be a homicide/suicide.”

Maybe the incident was the result of a mechanical failure in the Beasleys’ car, but Joanna suspected that Drake and his commanding officer would be far more interested in being involved in a possible homicide investigation than in the aftermath of a mere accident.

“That’s why we need to get the bodies of the victims out of there before the rain hits,” she added. “To help preserve the evidence.”

Drake stood up. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll take this to my CO. Maybe I can pass it off as a training exercise.”

Joanna knew this was a hint for her to leave his office and keep a low profile until he came back with his answer. “I’ll wait,” she said with a smile, and refused to budge. Since Joanna wasn’t leaving, Colonel Drake did. He returned less than five minutes later.

“All right,” he said. “It’s a go. Let’s understand going in that we’re not going to make a habit of this, Sheriff Brady. Where do you want the victims taken?”

“There’s a gravel turnaround right at the junction with Highway 92. It’s on the flat, but it’s only about three miles from where the bodies are now.”

Drake smiled. “Probably less than that as the crow flies—which we do.”

Joanna smiled back. “I’ll have the medical examiner waiting there with vans,” she said. “How long?”

Drake glanced at his watch. “Let’s say an hour to an hour and a half to scramble my people, check out their gear, and arrive on the scene. One other thing, though. What about media involvement?”

“What about it?” Joanna asked.

“My CO was wondering if there was a possibility of getting some press,” Drake said. “Good press, of course.”

The homicide gambit had worked.
I called that shot,
Joanna thought.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. In actual fact, she already knew the press was already either en route or on scene. She had encountered two camera vans from Tucson stations lumbering up the mountain road earlier, as she was coming down. No doubt there’d be plenty of opportunity for positive PR for the Fort Huachuca Search and Rescue Team from whoever was doing the local stand-up news commentary.

Feeling just a bit smug, Joanna hurried out to her Crown Victoria and dialed George Winfield.

“Not you,” he said when he picked up. “Not on Friday.”

“What do you mean, not me and not on Friday?” Joanna asked.

“I mean your mother and I have plans,” George replied. “We’re supposed to drive up to Tucson to have dinner with friends.”

“You also have two dead bodies that’ll be flown out of the Coronado National Forest right around four
P.M.
”

“Two!” he exclaimed. “Hell of a time to have two at once. Bobby’s on vacation at the moment. Won’t be back until the end of next week.”

Bobby Short was George’s only full-time assistant.

“And if I miss dinner again, Ellie will kill me. But you say they’re being flown out? From where? What’s going on?”

And that was the real problem for Joanna’s mother, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. With her new husband, she was perpetually at war with her daughter. When it came to George’s choosing between dinner with his wife’s friends or tackling a homicide investigation for his stepdaughter’s department, Joanna always held the trump card.

“Car drove off the Montezuma Pass Overlook late this morning,” Joanna explained. “Two people are dead. The bodies were thrown from the vehicle in incredibly rough terrain. Fort Huachuca’s search and rescue unit is bringing in a helicopter and crew to fly them off the mountain. I told Colonel Drake that you’d have vans waiting at the junction where the road from Montezuma Pass meets Highway 92.”

“And exactly how do I go about producing a second van?”
George demanded. “They don’t grow on trees, you know. I suppose I’ll have to rent an ambulance. The Board of Supervisors won’t like that. I’ll probably have to go there, hat in hand, and beg for money to pay the bill.”

Joanna thought about Claire Newmark and wondered how George would fare with her when it came time to plead his budgetary case.

Better you than me,
Joanna thought with a slight smile.
Just make sure it doesn’t sound like a stump speech.

WHILE STOPPING OFF TO GRAB A QUICK LUNCH IN SIERRA VISTA,
Joanna called Ernie to let him know the helicopter and crew would be there eventually. “That’s good news,” he said. “Better them than us.” Which was the same thing Joanna had just told herself about George Winfield.

“How are things?”

“It’s a damned zoo. The local LEO is here and helping out,” Ernie said, referring to the national forest’s federally funded law enforcement officer. “But there are far too many people in too small a space. I’ve called for a tow truck to retrieve the vehicle once we get the bodies out of there, but I just ordered two television news camera crews to clear out. I’m tired of them being under hand and foot. Most of our witnesses aren’t just from out of state, they’re from out of the country. They’re here with an
international climbing club from somewhere in Germany, I believe. If we don’t interview them and get their statements now, we’re going to miss out.”

“Call the news teams back,” Joanna said.

“Call them back?” Ernie sounded stunned. “Are you kidding? Did you hear me? I said ‘television news camera crews.’”

“I heard what you said,” Joanna told him. “The question is, did you hear me? I want you to call them back. We need those cameras. We’re getting Fort Huachuca Search and Rescue for free as long as they can come away with some good PR. Do not send any more news crews packing!”

“Hey,” Ernie shouted, blasting a hole in Joanna’s ear. “Hey, you with the camera. Forget it. I take it back. You don’t have to leave after all.” Then he came back on the line. “You owe me,” he said.

“No, I don’t,” Joanna said. “Because otherwise you’d be one of the guys scrambling down the mountain on your hands and knees to retrieve those bodies.”

“Point taken,” Ernie agreed grudgingly.

“Any ID on the victims yet?”

“Tentative. The vehicle is registered to Alfred Lawrence Beasley. Deb found a wallet with his name in it. Do you know them?” Ernie asked.

“I’ve probably met them, but I don’t know them,” Joanna said. “I’m pretty sure he worked in the post office, and I believe she was a cook in the high school cafeteria.”

“Know anything about next of kin?”

“I don’t,” Joanna said. “My mother might. She’s a fountain of information about everyone in Bisbee, but right now probably isn’t a good time to ask. And what did the witnesses say about
our victims?” Joanna continued. “Were they quarreling? Was there some kind of disagreement?”

“None whatsoever,” Ernie replied.

“And the woman got in the car willingly?”

“Absolutely. No sign of force whatsoever. One of the witnesses was standing in front of his vehicle which was parked right next to the spot where they went over. He swears they were holding hands when they went by him.”

“A suicide pact, then?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe,” Ernie said.

By 3:00
P.M.
Joanna was standing next to her Crown Victoria at the bottom of the road leading to Montezuma Pass. The sun was unbearably hot, and the high humidity made the air almost too thick to breathe. Off to the east, thick dark clouds were building. A storm was definitely brewing. Watching it, Joanna uttered a small prayer that high winds, which were an automatic prelude to an approaching monsoon, would hold off long enough for the helicopter crew to work its search-and-rescue magic.

Knowing how long it would take to sort things out, Joanna called home to check on Butch and on Dennis, who had passed the four-month mark two days earlier. Now that Joanna’s maternity leave was over, Butch had been doing a good job of being Mr. Mom, but she knew there were times when he was overwhelmed. She also knew he was up against a deadline for finishing the review of the copyedited manuscript for his second book,
Collateral Damage.
Unfortunately, taking care of the baby was getting in the way of Butch’s being able to work.

“I finally got the little twerp down for a nap,” Butch Dixon grumbled. “Obviously he’s a chip off his mother’s block. He can
get by on minimal amounts of sleep, but that means I’m not getting anything done.”

Jenny was fourteen now, and this summer she had been a godsend, helping care for her little brother. But Joanna also remembered how it had felt to be at home looking after Jenny as a baby while Andy, her first husband, had been away at work. There were times when she had felt she was losing her mind. There had been countless days when nothing got done—when clothes didn’t get folded, dishes didn’t go in the dishwasher, and when the idea of taking even a quick shower was an impossible dream.

“Anything I can do to help?” she asked.

“Yes,” Butch said. “Bring home a pizza. I haven’t had a chance to get to the store. That way I won’t have to worry about dinner.”

“It may be late,” she said. “I’m on the scene of what could turn into a double homicide.”

“What’s late?” Butch returned. “I didn’t manage to eat lunch until just a few minutes ago.”

“I’ll see you then,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said. “But I’ll love you more if you bring me a double pepperoni.”

A few minutes after three, George Winfield arrived in his county-owned, specially outfitted Dodge Caravan, followed by a green-and-white aid car with Sierra Vista’s logo on the doors.

“How’d you do that?” Joanna asked, nodding toward the second vehicle.

“Pulled in a marker,” George said. “The city manager owed me a favor.”

“How’s Mother taking this?” Joanna asked.

George shook his head. “Don’t even ask,” he said mournfully. “I’ll be in the doghouse for weeks on this one. Do we have names on our victims?”

“Tentative,” Joanna told him. “Alfred and Martha Beasley. Longtime Bisbee residents.”

“Did you know them?” George asked.

“Knew of them more than knew them. Mother might be a better source of information.”

George grunted. “Never mind,” he said. “I doubt she’d be inclined to help. So tell me. How did this happen? These people just drove their vehicle right off the cliff?”

“According to witnesses, they had a little picnic. Then they got back in the car, with the husband behind the wheel. Once they backed out of the parking place, he put the pedal to the metal and then went screaming through the parking lot, through the wall, and over the edge.”

A few minutes later Joanna heard the noisy
thump-thump-thump
of an approaching helicopter. Pulling a pair of binoculars out of her glove compartment, she saw the aircraft coming south following the Highway 92 right-of-way. Just as it passed over Joanna’s head, the helicopter turned sharply to the right and seemed determined to fly directly into the face of the mountain. At last it came to a hovering stop. Seconds later, Joanna could see a figure being lowered to the ground in some kind of harness. The first person was followed by a second. Finally a basket contraption was lowered to the ground as well.

The two crew members wasted no time. Only a few minutes passed before the basket, loaded with a body bag, was winched back into the waiting helicopter. As soon as it disappeared inside, the aircraft changed positions. It shifted to another spot slightly
below the first one and then hovered in place while the empty basket was lowered once more. Finally, once the second body bag and the two crew members had been retrieved, the helicopter wheeled away from the mountain and headed back down toward the junction where Joanna and the medical examiner waited.

When the aircraft came to a noisy stop next to the two vans, Joanna was surprised to see that a grinning Colonel Drake was the first person to exit. “I saw the cameras,” he said. “Two of them at least. I hope they got some good footage.”

So do I,
Joanna thought, but she was grateful the cameras were on the top of the mountain and not there where the bodies were being transferred into the waiting vans.

Within minutes the vans headed for the morgue in Bisbee, and the helicopter took off on its return flight to Fort Huachuca. As it turned into a dot on the horizon, Joanna felt the first puff of breeze that signaled the approaching storm. Grateful that it had held off as long as it had and having done what was needed, Joanna left her investigative team in charge and headed back to the office. On the way she stopped and picked up the pizza. She knew that, as far as Butch was concerned, his pepperoni didn’t have to be hot to be good.

It was after five by the time she returned to the Cochise County Justice Center. The temperature had dropped. When she got out of the car, no precipitation was in evidence, but the wind whipping around her was heavy with the smell of approaching rain. Joanna was a child of the desert. There was something about that distinctive and heady fragrance that made her heart lighter no matter what else was going on around her.

Joanna’s plan was to stop by her office just long enough to
check on things and then head home. By then, Kristin Gregovich, Joanna’s secretary, had already left for the day. Kristin, another relatively new mother, had to be out the door by five on the dot in order to pick up her daughter, Shaundra, from day care. Shaundra’s daddy, Terry, happened to be Joanna’s K-9 officer. Seeing the juggling act Kristin and Terry did every single day never failed to leave Joanna counting her blessings that she had Butch Dixon to manage the home front.

Marveling at the peace and quiet, Joanna sat down at her desk and closed her eyes. Parents of infants often get by on far too little sleep. The working mother nursing-pump routine hadn’t worked well for her. (Having Ernie barge uninvited into her office one day when she’d been in the middle of things hadn’t helped.) So Dennis was now a bottle-fed baby, thriving on formula and rice cereal. That meant that Joanna and Butch could take turns with overnight feedings, but it also meant that neither of them was getting a full night’s sleep.

Within minutes Joanna found herself mired in the day’s stack of unfinished paperwork. Caught up in that, she didn’t notice the deteriorating weather outside until a fierce clap of thunder shattered her concentration. She looked up to find that the promised storm had started in dead earnest. Rain pelted down so hard that it almost obscured the limestone cliffs on the steep hills beyond her office window while almost continuous bursts of lightning lit the sky to the south and east.

Hurriedly she stuffed the most important of the day’s reports and her laptop into her briefcase. Then she grabbed her purse, shut off the lights, and left by the back door. The rain had come so hard and fast that the downspouts were already working at full capacity. Water poured off the roof. Just crossing the two
steps from the covered area to the door of the Crown Victoria was enough to leave her drenched.

When the first of the seasonal summer rainstorms had arrived two days earlier, the water had all disappeared as the parched earth lapped it up. Now, though, the downpour was so severe that the water lay in thin puddles on the desert floor. Joanna knew what that meant. Rather than soaking in, the rain would turn to runoff, filling the shallow gullies and deeper washes with swift-running brown water. Unfortunately, between the Justice Center and High Lonesome Ranch there were several of those that would have to be crossed. Joanna had no intention of being one of those hapless motorists who failed to heed posted warnings that said
DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED.
Every year some drivers who did that merely had to be rescued, while others drowned. Joanna knew that if she didn’t make it home before water in the washes got too deep, she’d be stuck waiting on the far side until the levels subsided.

I hope I’m not too late,
Joanna thought, and she was right to be worried.

The first two washes on High Lonesome Road were dry. The third and fourth had a tiny trickle of water, but the last one—the one after she turned onto their own private road—was actually starting to run. Taking a deep breath, she rammed her foot onto the gas pedal, counting on momentum to finish carrying her across the streambed. She drove the rest of the way to the house with her hands alive with needles and pins.

As she approached the house, another flash of lightning lit the sky, followed by a fierce boom of thunder. The lights in the house flickered slightly and then went out. By the time she made it to the garage door, however, their emergency generator had rum
bled into action. The interior lights flashed back on and the garage door opened when she pressed the clicker.

Still drenched from getting into the car back at her office, Joanna was grateful that she could pull inside the garage. The family’s three dogs were all waiting just inside the door that led from the garage into the laundry room. Jenny’s two, the incredibly ugly Tigger, a half golden retriever/half pit bull, and Lucky, a boisterous but stone-deaf black Lab, gave Joanna a joyous greeting. Lady, Joanna’s far more dignified Australian shepherd, held back. Once Joanna set the pizza box on the kitchen table, however, it was clear that the dogs were far more interested in the possibility of pizza than they were in greeting their newly arrived human.

Butch’s laptop and stacks of manuscript pages sat unattended on the kitchen table. From several rooms away, Joanna heard Dennis wailing at the top of his lungs.

Butch appeared a moment later with the squalling baby propped on one shoulder and with a bottle gripped in his other hand. “He’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore,” Butch said. “The poor little kid was in bed and asleep, but that last crack of thunder woke him up. Do you want him?”

After slipping out of her wet clothing and putting on a robe, Joanna took both the baby and the bottle. When she tried offering him the bottle, Dennis wasn’t the least bit interested. He screwed his angry little face up and kept right on screeching.

With a sigh Butch went over to the table and helped himself to a piece of pizza. “Had to turn off the computer. Didn’t want it to get fried. The power went off, too,” he said. “I’m sure glad we bit the bullet and sprang for a generator. The lights came back on without a hitch a few seconds later, just the way the brochure says they should.”

At the time Joanna and Butch had been building the house, they debated whether or not to take on the expense of adding a liquid-propane-powered generator. Because their house was so isolated, however, they knew that when electrical outages did occur, High Lonesome Ranch could end up a long way down the priority list when it came to having power restored.