by Lakota Grace
The fire chief was apologetic. “I'm sorry, Deputy Quincy, if we disturbed stuff up there. We just wanted to put the fire out, before it started to spread. Too late now to do anything about it, I guess.”
Too late for the dead man, anyway. What had the man been doing up on Black Mountain? Was his death a tragic misstep or something more sinister?
The fire chief gave me road directions to the burned campsite above the pit. I said I’d be by later to interview the firefighters.
When I called the sheriff to report the dead body, he wasn’t happy.
“No trouble for years, and then you show up.” His voice roughened. “I'm attending a commissioners' meeting this afternoon, a budget meeting. Do your investigation of the accident and write the report. I don’t need complications up there.”
His budget concerns weren’t my problem. Inexperienced or not, I’d take a close look at the situation before I ruled it an accident. Sometimes that habit of standing my ground got me in trouble. I still carried the scar over one eyebrow from when my mother's then-boyfriend took offense at my smart mouth. But in this case, I was closer to what happened in Mingus than the sheriff was. He’d just have to trust me.
Slamming the door of the old Crown Vic, I cranked the engine and did a U-turn, then headed out of town. Navigating a series of sharp switchbacks on Highway 89a, I climbed from the mile-high elevation at Mingus to the top of Black Mountain, over two thousand feet higher.
When I reached the cut-across road at the top of the mountain, I turned right. The squad car bounced on worn shocks as I drove down the dirt trail to the burned campsite. A yearling mule deer raised its head at my approach and then returned to browsing on purple thistles nestled among the Ponderosa pines that thrived at this higher elevation.
At the far side of one meadow, I saw old pickup—it looked like my grandfather, HT Tewksbury’s, truck. I narrowed my eyes for a closer look. Fuzzy dice on the rear-view mirror and one fender, primer gray—his truck all right. What was he doing up here?
I looked around the clearing, but there was no sign of him. Instead, two strange men emerged from the shadow of the pines. The first was dark-eyed with black hair pulled back in a knot at the base of his skull. He looked to be Italian, or maybe part Native American. It was hard to judge his age because of his small stature, perhaps a skinny seventeen.
The second man was a big hulk of a guy, his height diminished as he leaned forward, one arm supported by a steel crutch. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with longish gray hair and the blotchy complexion of a heavy drinker. Both men looked uneasy at my approach. However, when I pulled to the side of the road and got out to meet them, their attitudes changed.
“Hey Peg! I'm Armor Brancussi, a good friend of your granddad.” The big man projected a forced cheerfulness. “And this here is my nephew, Ben Yazzie.”
“Where's my grandfather?”
The two men exchanged glances.
“I'm borrowing his truck for the afternoon,” Armor said. “He lets me do that sometimes.”
Ben picked up the story line. “We're just looking for peresia. It's a plant.” He launched into a description of the desert herb: how it served as a styptic to stop bleeding and as an aid in childbirth. His uncle stood silently behind him.
My B.S. antenna cranked up a notch at the lengthy explanation. Was the young man dodging the real reason they were up here? Might it have anything to do with the dead man on his way to the morgue? I needed to interview them, but I also wanted to examine the site of the man’s fall before dark set in.
Signaling for them to wait a moment, I pulled out my phone and called my grandfather’s house. He wasn’t there, but his housekeeper Isabel confirmed the truck loan. That settled it. I’d go up to the campsite first and question these two later. Mingus was a small town. I knew where to find them.
I waved a hand in the boy’s direction, cutting his explanation short. “I need to get to the top of the cliff that overlooks the old copper mine.”
“You'll want to head this way.” Armor pointed to the left fork in the road ahead.
“But it looks like the fire truck went there.” I extended my hand to the right where tire tracks were clearly visible.
Armor shook his head, challenging my statement. “Landslide up there. This way peters out a quarter mile in. Go left.”
I took their phone numbers and addresses and said I’d be in contact. Then I walked back to the squad car. Shifting into low gear, I turned left. The old chassis groaned as I crept down the rutted lane and across several washouts. The car tilted one direction and then the other, almost high centering. The Crown Vic hadn’t been made for this type of terrain, even in its good years. The oil pan grated across one sharp rock and the brush closed in on either side of the car, as the road narrowed. Rough chaparral brush scraped desert pin striping on the side panels of the cruiser.
Finally, the path vanished in front of an old cypress tree. To the right, the view opened up across the Verde Valley. I stopped the car and yanked on the emergency brake for good measure. Then I switched off the ignition and rolled down the window. The odor of burn and char filled my nostrils. The campfire site had to be close. I got out of the car and walked over to the cliff for a look. The town spread below me, the old mine forming a rough open patch at the far end. I triangulated on it to locate the edge of the cliff where the burnout should be located.
It looked to be about five hundred feet ahead of me. Gingerly dodging prickly pear and yucca, I walked to the top of a large knoll. I once again peered over the edge of the cliff. I was close. Far below me, the police barrier tape stretched out in a yellow square and the last of the sun glinted off the tailings pond.
Up ahead, smoke marks on still standing tree trunks increased. It looked as though the fire had spread outward from the campsite, igniting the lower manzanita brush and then leaping upward to char the shaggy-bark junipers.
The crew had countered by drawing backfire lines in the dirt and clearing the underlying duff. They had managed to hold the fire to the size of a large vacant lot. I broke into an open area and in front of me lay the makeshift campsite. No fire or smoke remained, but the ground was trampled and sooty. The bare outline of a tent flapped in the breeze, mostly destroyed by the fire. No sign of a vehicle. Had the man hiked to this location?
A few feet beyond the tent, the cliff dove straight down several hundred feet to the gravel pit below. The soil was crumbly and disturbed near the edge of the cliff, but that could be from the men fighting the blaze. I peered over the edge, holding onto a juniper branch. The earth sunk beneath my feet and I jumped back. A long way to fall. I picked up a handful of dirt and rubbed it between my fingers to cut the stickiness of juniper pitch.
It wasn't an official crime scene yet and might never be if the commissioner’s budget had anything to do with it. Indeed, the fire crew had trampled much of the crime scene, if it were such. Still, I was curious. My life goal in joining the sheriff’s department was not pounding the street writing tickets. I was destined for bigger things, like homicide detective.
What better way to prepare for that future than gain a little surreptitious practice, out of the watchful eye of my superiors? The good angel urged caution, but the dark angel was performing a victory dance. Here, in the solitude of this late afternoon forest, I could practice my ultimate goal of becoming a CSI expert with nobody looking over my shoulder.
I performed a visual grid search of the area near the ruined tent. Nothing obvious. Then, using the tent as a pivot point, I walked a spiral search pattern out from the center. It was a dusty business. My boots crushed the black ash sending up clouds of flume, and I coughed as the particles entered my throat.
Some of the prickly pear and bear grass, missed by the fire, created a patchwork of green in the midst of the black scar. But other than a few scraps of clothing, almost everything of human origin appeared destroyed in the blaze. I returned to my car and retrieved the evidence kit I'd bought myself as a present
when I graduated from the Police Academy and gathered what fragments of cloth I could.
Then I spotted a single, pointed-toe boot print hidden in the shadows beside a large rock. Cowboy boots weren’t regulation footwear for a hotshot crew. There was ample evidence of their hobnailed wear throughout the burn site. I traced my memory: the dead man had been wearing loafers. And the print seemed fresh, set down within the last day or so, which would mean it could have been made just prior to the fire.
Had there been two people at the campsite? Perhaps someone meeting the dead man had left this footprint. The earth had been sheltered from the rains by the overhanging boulder, but shifting storm winds could destroy potential evidence.
I hadn’t taken an impression in the field before, but the steps of evidence collection came back to me from the Academy lectures. First, I used my camera to take pictures of the general location of the print relative to the tent fragments. Then I placed a scale next to the print and photographed it at both a low oblique angle and then from directly overhead. The tedious work that underlay creating an evidence framework quieted my mind.
Thunder growled in the distance and I picked up the pace. I'd only seen how to make an impression of a footprint in a demonstration, but it didn't look hard. Just mix up some dental stone to the consistency of pancake batter, they said, and pour it in the depression. Simple easy.
I returned to the trunk and dug out the jug of emergency water I carried there. Tipping some of the water into the bag of powder, I squished it a few times to moisten. A tongue depressor deflected the stream of liquid to prevent distortion as I poured the mixture into the print. How long did it take to harden? I checked the bag. No directions on that critical element. I'd have to wing it.
I squatted on my haunches to wait and tried to recreate the scene in my mind. Had the dead man been drinking alcohol? No evidence of more empty bottles or cans up here, but he could have visited a bar and then come up here to sleep it off. If he had walked all this way, wouldn’t that sober him up? Would me, I know.
Still, a misstep in the dark was a definite possibility. Perhaps the dead man had been making a campfire to spend the night when a thief showed up. Why a thief? I played the scenario out in my head. What would this man have that would be valuable enough to kill for? No personal possessions remained intact after the fire. If the man had backed away from an attacker, the result would be the same, death at the bottom of the fall. The pine trees surrounding me were silent, offering no answers.
I touched the dental stone mixture with my finger. Oops! Too soon. My fingertip left an ugly mark on the warm surface. I smoothed the indentation, hoping the lab wouldn't notice my beginner’s mistake. A few minutes later it was ready. By the time I had enclosed the now-hardened impression in bubble wrap and stowed it in the squad car with the rest of my gear, the threat of storm had passed, but the sun was going down.
The burn site turned ominous and dark in the gathering dusk. The adrenaline rush I’d felt at the murder scene earlier receded as well, leaving me cold and empty. Time to head for Mingus.
The tree shadows receded from the headlights as I reached the spot I'd met the two men. My grandfather’s pickup had disappeared and they were gone, too. I continued along the dirt road to the paved highway. When I got there, an old Jeep Wagoneer blocked access to the main road.
My irritation rose. Any idiot could see this side road had been traveled recently. Why park in front of it? Sighing, I unclicked the seat belt and got out.
To continue reading Death in Copper Town,
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About the Author
I've called the American Southwest home for most of my life. Although Fire in Broken Water is set in the fictitious town of Mingus, the mining region of central Arizona is still alive and thriving, and the historical setting that I’ve provided in this book is accurate. Montezuma's Well still has Native American visitors, an irrigation ditch, and water scorpions that defy description!
I have an abiding love for the high desert plateau and the abundance of life it supports. Quail and red-tail hawks visit my feeders; bobcats and coyotes wander by. I maintain a cautious co-existence with the scorpions and javelinas who visit my backyard. Most of all, I enjoy getting up before dawn, watching the sun hit the red rocks, and sharpening my pencil for yet another writing session.
Thanks for reading! Visit me at LakotaGrace.com to see what Peg Quincy is up to next.
OTHER PEGASUS QUINCY
MYSTERIES
If you liked Fire in Broken Water, you might enjoy the beginning book in the series, Death in Copper Town, about Pegasus Quincy's first introduction to policework in the small town of Mingus, Arizona:
Pegasus Quincy, brand-new police academy graduate, is the sole law enforcement officer in Mingus when a dead body appears in an old mining pit. Peg’s boss rules the death an accidental fall.
But the investigation takes an ominous turn when the sheriff’s office is ransacked and a computer stolen. Then it becomes personal when a brick crashes through Peg’s window with a note warning her to “back off.”
Will she catch the murderer before he strikes again? NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON!
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In the second book of the series, Blood in Tavasci Marsh, Pegasus acquires a new partner, Shepherd Malone, and investigates a suspicious drowning at a local marsh:
When Pegasus Quincy reports back to work after mandatory suspension for killing a crazed murderer, she hopes for some peace and quiet in her small town of Mingus. After all, the fall equinox and Halloween are approaching. Instead, she meets a new partner hostile to her way of doing things, and a dead body floating in a nearby marsh.
Then she encounters the Nettle family: an insanely jealous wife, a banished son, and a sister whose little girl has been traumatized by an explosion at the illicit family whiskey still. All have good reason to kill the patriarch and nobody's talking. Peg is furious when her own life is threatened.
Somehow, she must discover who killed old man Nettle before it is too late.
NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON!
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