by J. A. Jance
When I finally realized that the crazy bastard on the horse was headed right for me, I took my foot off the gas and slammed on the brakes. The Kia stopped dead. At the same time, something smashed into and through the windshield. It smacked into the shoulder rest of the passenger seat only a foot or so from where I was sitting. Simultaneously, a spiderweb of tiny cracks spread across the windshield’s safety glass.
By then I had seen the gun and understood that the son of a bitch on the horse was shooting at me—shooting to kill! Covering my head, I dived for cover and put the Kia’s engine block between me and any more flying bullets. Even muffled by sand, I could hear the thud of the horse’s hooves as it pounded by. I waited until I couldn’t hear it anymore. Only then, with my small backup Glock in my hand, I cautiously raised my head and peered out.
Off to the south, the riverbed curved slowly to the left. Horse and rider were fast disappearing around that bend. By then, they were already far beyond the range of my wimpy backup handgun. Shaking my head in disgust, I climbed out of the car. I plowed through deep sand in my once pristine Johnston and Murphys and surveyed the damage. The windshield was a goner. Both axles were buried up to the hubs. It would take time and a well-equipped tow truck to dig me out.
I set out to finish crossing the river on foot. A stiff wind blew from the south, kicking powdery sand into my eyes. As I walked along, half-blinded by the sand, I heard Joanna Brady’s voice calling my name.
“Beaumont, what are you doing down there?” she demanded. “Are you hurt?”
Looking up, I caught sight of her. She stood on the edge of the far bank. The top of her Blazer was barely visible in the background. It hurt my pride to admit it—hurt like hell, in fact—but I had to do it.
“I’m stuck,” I called back, “but the guy on the horse went that way.” I pointed to what I assumed was downriver, although I learned later it was actually up.
Joanna turned her back on me and disappeared from view. I figured she would leave me stranded and go after Brampton without me. Instead, moments later, the speeding Blazer hurtled down the bank. Instead of setting out across the expanse of treacherous sand, she stayed near the edge, where the sand was covered with what looked like a cracked, hard-baked crust.
“Come on,” she yelled, motioning for me to join her. “We haven’t got all day! The border’s only a mile away.”
Running through sand is a joke. My feet sank up to my ankles with every step. I’ve always assumed that quicksand is wet. This was dry, but it was treacherous as hell. I finally lost one shoe altogether and had to go back to retrieve it. At last, shoe in hand, I caught up with the Blazer, wrenched open the door, and clambered inside.
“Did you get a good look at him?” she demanded.
That morning, in the conference room, I had studied Jack Brampton’s mug shots. “It’s him, all right.” I panted. “Believe me, he is armed and dangerous.”
“NO KIDDING,” Joanna said.
There was no time to look at him as Beaumont slumped in the passenger seat. Her eyes were glued to the riverbed. Sticking to the shelf of caliche, she headed south.
“The bastard tried to kill me,” Beaumont grumbled. “Shot the hell out of my windshield. I’m lucky he didn’t take me out, too. By the way,” he added in what sounded like a grudging afterthought, “thanks for the vest.”
“You’re welcome,” she returned. “And don’t worry. Brampton won’t get away. Frank went on ahead. He’s meeting up with some federales. They’ll be waiting at the border.”
“Right,” Beaumont said. “I heard them.”
“So did Brampton,” Joanna said grimly.
They drove in silence after that. Periodically the narrow shelf of caliche would give way to sand. When they hit that, it took all of Joanna’s considerable driving skill to keep the Blazer moving, even with four-wheel drive. She was paying attention to the sand directly in front of them when Beaumont yelled, “There he is.”
Ahead of them, Joanna caught sight of the galloping horse and rider. The little mare, laboring through the treacherous, knee-deep sand, was struggling to maintain the pace. Beyond Princess, Joanna spotted the string of fence posts that marked the international border. Unfortunately, Frank Montoya and his promised squad of federales were nowhere to be seen.
Knowing Brampton was almost at the border, Joanna stomped on the gas and the Blazer shot forward. Then, unexpectedly, the horse stopped. She stopped abruptly, but her rider didn’t. Jack Brampton kept right on going. He tumbled headfirst over the horse’s neck and shoulders and then over the fence, where he lay still in the sand.
Tossing her head, Princess wheeled around and started back toward the Blazer. Meanwhile, Joanna jammed on the brakes, stopping twenty yards downriver from the fallen man.
“Hit the dirt!” she ordered. Drawing her weapon, she flung herself out of the Blazer and down onto the sand. On the far side of the Blazer, J.P. Beaumont followed suit.
Princess trotted back toward them and then stood still once more, with her trembling legs spread wide apart and her head drooping. She was close enough to the Blazer that Joanna could hear the exhausted horse’s snorting and labored breathing. Lying flat on the ground, Joanna wriggled a pair of binoculars out of her pocket and looked through them. On the far side of the fence, Jack Brampton lay in a crumpled heap on the ground.
“Freeze!” Joanna shouted. “Don’t move.”
Brampton complied with the order. Joanna and Beau watched for half a minute and detected no sign of movement.
“Closer?” Beaumont asked.
Joanna nodded and stowed the binoculars. “Go!” she said.
With their weapons drawn, they advanced again. When they ducked for cover the third time, Brampton still hadn’t moved. “He’s either knocked out cold or he’s dead,” she said.
Before they moved forward that last time, a gust of wind blew down the bed of the river, bringing with it a sudden flurry of movement. A cloud of something seemed to rise up ghostlike out of the ground beside the fallen man. It floated toward them, eddying in the breeze. As the mini—dust devil came closer, it separated itself into individual pieces of paper. Only when one of them landed beside her did Joanna realize it was a twenty-dollar bill—one of hundreds of other bills, twenties and fifties and hundreds—spiraling through the air.
Blood money, Joanna thought.
Still the suspect didn’t move. “Shall we take him?” she asked.
Beaumont nodded. “Let’s.”
“Go!” she ordered.
Joanna and Beaumont scrambled to their feet simultaneously and rushed toward Jack Brampton. When they reached the border fence, they stopped. On the far side of it their murder suspect lay lifeless on the ground, his neck twisted back toward them, his eyes open but unmoving. Still strapped to his body was a torn backpack leaking money.
“He must have thought Princess was a jumper,” Joanna Brady muttered as she reholstered her weapon. “Lucky for us, it turns out she wasn’t.”
Twenty
HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS twenty-twenty. What Joanna Brady and I probably should have done the moment we saw Jack Brampton was grab him by his legs and drag his body back under the fence. Unfortunately, we were so relieved to be alive that neither of us figured that out until it was too late. By then, the federales had arrived on the scene, and all bets were off.
I worked the Seattle PD Homicide Unit for the better part of two decades. In all that time, I never had to bring a dead suspect’s body back across an international border. I was about to get a firsthand lesson, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
Sheriff Brady spoke. Frank Montoya translated. The federales listened and shook their heads. One of them caught sight of the packets of money spilling out of the fallen backpack. At that point the head-shaking became even more adamant. I believe the applicable term would be “No way, José.” Right then I knew how it was going to play out. Without the personal intervention of Vicente Fox, or even God himself, Jack Brampton wasn’t coming back a
cross the border anytime soon. Neither was the money.
Frustrated beyond belief, I went plowing back down the river, gathering hundred-, fifty-, and twenty-dollar bills as I went. I had a whole fistful of them by the time Joanna Brady, her face clouded with anger, caught up with me. I glanced back at what should have been an official crime scene in time to see the Mexican officers summarily load Jack Brampton’s body onto a stretcher and cart him away, right along with his backpack.
“Which do you want to take back?” she demanded. “Princess or the Blazer?”
“Princess?” I repeated.
“The horse,” she said impatiently. “The horse’s name is Princess.”
I had far more faith in my ability to drive a Blazer than I did with my skill on a horse. For one thing, just inside the border fence on the U.S. side, I had spotted a reasonably serviceable roadway someone had carved through the desert. I suspected it had been put there for the convenience of passing Border Patrol vehicles and agents, and it looked to be in better condition than either of the narrow tracks I had driven on earlier.
“I’ll drive,” I said. “What about the money?” I added, showing her the wad of bills I held in my hand.
“Give it to Frank,” she said. “He’ll have deputies gather what they can and bring it back to the department. I’ll be more than happy to put it in the confiscated-funds account.”
Without another word, Joanna tossed me the keys, then she stalked off toward the Blazer. Once there, she pulled a gallon-sized plastic bottle of water out of the luggage compartment and poured it into a hard hat she evidently kept on hand in an equipment locker. Holding the water-filled hard hat in front of her, she moved cautiously toward the horse, making soothing clucking sounds as she did so.
As a city-born-and-bred boy, I figured the animal would take off. Instead, Princess pricked up her ears, trotted straight over to Joanna, and gratefully buried her muzzle in the water. By the time Princess had drunk her fill, Joanna had the creature’s bridle firmly in hand. Without a word, Sheriff Brady vaulted easily into the saddle. As she rode past, she tossed me the hard hat.
“Put it back in the Blazer, would you?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
Watching her ride away, I remembered what Harry I. Ball had said all those days earlier about Joanna Brady being a latter-day Annie Oakley. As it turned out, he hadn’t been far from wrong.
JOANNA DELIVERED PRINCESS BACK to the Lozier place. By then someone had contacted Billyann Lozier at work, and she had come home to be with her mother. Alma Wingate, worn out by all the excitement, was back up in her bedroom lying down. Billyann was ecstatic to see Princess. She ran across the road to greet them when Joanna and the horse emerged from the riverbed. With tears running down her cheeks, Billyann Lozier buried her face in the horse’s long black mane.
“Thank you so much for bringing her home, Sheriff Brady,” Billyann murmured. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. After what Mother told me, I didn’t think I’d ever see Princess again.”
“You’re welcome,” Joanna said.
Returning the horse safely was the single bright spot in the day’s events. Joanna should have been happy knowing that Jack Brampton was done for. He would never be able to harm anyone else. The problem was, he had died without revealing anything about the people he had worked for—the people who had provided the money that the wind had blown out of his backpack. As far as Joanna was concerned, the job of apprehending the killer was only half done.
Not only that, but from the ham-fisted way the federales were handling the situation, Joanna doubted she and her investigators would learn anything more from the effects on the dead man’s body. Plus, she didn’t even know if Jack Brampton had gone to his death with an additional supply of sodium azide still in his possession, although Frank had apprised the Mexican officers of the possibility.
It was only when Joanna was standing in Paul and Billyann Lozier’s front yard that she realized one of the backup deputies she had summoned had yet to appear. The others had both been sent down to join Chief Deputy Montoya and Ernie in searching for more of the scattered money. The K-9 Unit, however, wasn’t with them.
Once Beaumont handed over the keys to the Blazer and they were headed into town, Joanna got on the radio to Dispatch. “Tica,” she said, “whatever happened to Deputy Gregovich? He never showed up.”
“He’s at the hospital,” Tica Romero replied. “At least Deputy Gregovich is. I don’t know about Spike. Kristin’s about to have her baby.”
“Oh,” a relieved Joanna said. “That explains it.”
Minutes later, while requesting a tow truck to come to retrieve Beau’s damaged Kia, she turned to him and asked, “Where should they take it?”
“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “The rental agreement’s in the glove box. Have the tow-truck driver call Saguaro Discount Rental in Tucson and ask them where they want it. Unless you need it for evidence, that is. If so, you can take it back to your department and have someone dig the bullet out of the passenger seat.”
Joanna shook her head dispiritedly. “Why bother?” she asked. “The shooter’s dead and you’re not. I don’t see any point in wasting time or energy on it.”
“Makes sense to me,” Beaumont agreed.
Sensing that he wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was, Joanna drove for several miles without saying anything more.
“I’m sorry we didn’t catch him,” she said at last. “If your boss thought we were incompetent before—”
“Ross Connors didn’t say anything of the kind,” Beaumont said quickly. “And just for the record, neither did I.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said, and meant it. “What’ll you do now?” she asked. “Head back home?” She was wondering if he’d say anything more about Anne Rowland Corley. He didn’t.
“Probably,” he answered. “With Brampton dead, there’s not much reason to hang around any longer. Although, since Frank went to the trouble of getting those phone logs, I should finish going over them before I leave. I’ll catch a plane back to Seattle tomorrow sometime.”
Riding Princess back to the Lozier place had given Joanna time to mull over what she had read earlier in the Denver Post article. She wanted to talk to Beaumont about it, but her office at the Justice Center was the wrong place to broach the subject. She glanced at her watch.
“It’s after one now,” she said. “I’ll probably have to spend the afternoon on my knees, begging the governor of Arizona to work with the governor of Sonora to get Jack Brampton’s body shipped back to the States. To do that, I’ll need patience, strength, and food. How about grabbing some lunch?”
“Fine,” Beaumont said. “As long as you let the state of Washington buy.”
Feeling a little underhanded, Joanna stopped at Chico’s in Don Luis. Once inside, she ordered tacos for both of them. Her choice of food was actually a test, and Joanna liked the man better for contentedly munching his way through a plate loaded with Chico’s luncheon special.
“Tell me about your wife,” Joanna said quietly as Beau mopped up the last few crumbs of shredded beef and cheese that lingered on his plate.
When he raised his eyes to look at her, J.P. Beaumont’s gaze was suddenly wary. “Which one?” he asked, but it was only a defense mechanism. They both knew Joanna was asking about Anne Corley.
“The second one,” Joanna said.
“What do you want to know?”
“I’ve read the Denver Post article,” she told him. “Frank downloaded it from the Internet.”
“Damn his computer anyway!” Beau muttered. “Why the hell couldn’t he mind his own business? You, too, for that matter?”
“It is my business,” Joanna said. “You asked me about her, remember?”
His expression softened a little. “Well, yes. I suppose I did. I just haven’t had time . . .”
“As I was reading through the article,” Joanna continued, “something kept bothering me.”
“What’s t
hat?” She heard the tightly controlled anger beneath his question.
“How many cases were there?” she asked. “Besides the two mentioned in the article and the three victims in Seattle, the article hinted there were others. Were there?”
Beau paused before he answered. Finally he nodded. “Several,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter how many. Ralph Ames and I worked with the various jurisdictions and cleared the ones we knew about—the ones Anne had kept a record of. There was no need to make a big deal of it.”
“The article implied that you did it quietly because you were worried about a flurry of wrongful-death suits.”
“That’s not true,” Beau replied shortly. “Anne was dead, for God’s sake. Just as dead as Jack Brampton back there in the riverbed. Ralph and I did it that way so Anne’s name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud any worse than it already had been.”
“Anne’s name?” Joanna asked. “Or yours?”
Beaumont’s face fell. Finally, he nodded bleakly. “That, too,” he admitted.
“My father used to be sheriff here,” Joanna said. “Did you know that?”
“I saw the picture and the name in the display case out in the lobby. I assumed the two of you might be related.”
“Dad always maintained that Anne Rowland got away with murder. He said that by claiming she was crazy and locking her up in a mental institution, Anne’s mother, Anita Rowland, caused a miscarriage of justice.”
“No,” Beau said quietly after a moment. “You’re wrong there. That’s not where justice miscarried. What Anne’s father had done to her big sister—what Anne had been forced to witness as a little girl—drove her over the edge. By the time she killed her father—which she readily admitted—she really was crazy. Locking her up was the right thing to do, but they never should have let her loose. If the legal definition of insanity is an inability to tell right from wrong, Anne never was cured. She was able to see how other people’s actions might be wrong, but never her own.”