J. A. JANCE
SKELETON CANYON
Dedication
For Jim Hobbs,
the real mechanical wizard of Queen Anne Hill,
a friend from the bad old days
and from the new good days as well.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
Hands on her hips, youthful breasts outthrust…
CHAPTER 1
It was five o’clock on a friday afternoon in June…
CHAPTER 2
Joanna Brady stopped at the door of her…
CHAPTER 3
Dennis Hacker came home from his shopping trip…
CHAPTER 4
With a hard lump blocking her throat and almost…
CHAPTER 5
Finished dressing, Joanna rushed out to her…
CHAPTER 6
Joanna knew there were lots of people in town…
CHAPTER 7
Angie Kellogg tried calling Joanna several times…
CHAPTER 8
Not knowing what to say in response, Joanna…
CHAPTER 9
Joanna went out to the Crown Victoria and…
CHAPTER 10
Joanna punched the button that ended the call…
CHAPTER 11
Angie Kellogg had seen hummers in news…
CHAPTER 12
Angie and Dennis arrived in the meadow off the…
CHAPTER 13
Ernie and Jaime had just pulled away when…
CHAPTER 14
Standing on the edge of the ridge, Joanna looked…
CHAPTER 15
The next several hours passed in a blur of activity.
CHAPTER 16
By the time they reached Douglas, Joanna realized…
CHAPTER 17
Joanna left the coroner’s office at five. The rain…
CHAPTER 18
Tall, broad-shouldered, and with his brown…
CHAPTER 19
Standing in front of her closet on Monday…
CHAPTER 20
An hour later, while Joanna was busy reading…
CHAPTER 21
Taking two separate cars, Ernie and Joanna drove…
CHAPTER 22
During Joanna’s term as sheriff, paperwork had…
CHAPTER 23
Sitting there thinking the unthinkable and…
CHAPTER 24
When the speeding Crown Victoria finally reached…
CHAPTER 25
Following the speeding Hummer, Dick Voland’s…
CHAPTER 26
Once Ernie Carpenter had applied a tourniquet to…
CHAPTER 27
About four o’clock in the afternoon, still…
CHAPTER 28
As usual, Marliss Shackleford couldn’t keep from…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY J. A. JANCE
RESOUNDING PRAISE
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
HANDS ON her hips, youthful breasts outthrust beneath the bulk of her red-and-gray sweater, seventeen-year-old Roxanne Brianna O’Brien, captain of the Bisbee High School pep squad, tossed her long blond hair and led her six-member team in a strutting parade around the end of the football field.
On a clear crisp late-November night, this was the end of halftime festivities and the beginning of the third quarter in a hard-fought football game between two teams whose long-term rivalry stretched all the way back to 1906. A ragtag marching band—comprised of mismatched players from both the Bisbee and Douglas music programs—had just delivered a faltering, musically challenged performance. Now it was time for the uniformed yell squads of both schools to travel to opposite sides of the field. There each would give an obligatory and good-sportsmanlike cheer in front of the opposing team’s fans.
The Bisbee Pumas might have been two touchdowns behind at the half, but there was no sign of that in the proud carriage of their cheerleaders as they marched down the sidelines toward the part of the bleachers reserved for visiting Douglas supporters.
At the fifty-yard line, Brianna, who much preferred her middle name to the old-fashioned Roxanne, glanced toward the reserved-seat section where her parents usually sat. David O’Brien’s wheelchair was parked in the bottom aisle. As the cheerleaders paraded past out on the field, Bree noticed that her father’s silvery-maned head was inclined toward his program, studying it with frowning concentration. Brianna hoped he’d raise his eyes and at least glance in her direction. She longed for some acknowledgment from her father, for some sign of parental pride or approval. As usual, David was too preoccupied with something else to bother noticing her.
The same did not hold true for Bree’s mother, Katherine. She smiled and nodded encouragement as her daughter went by. Katherine’s beaming pride and unfailing enthusiasm were almost as hard for Bree to handle as her father’s studied indifference. Under the harsh glare of the ballpark’s newly installed field lights, Bree was careful not to let the hurt show through. After all, to those around her—fellow students who had elected her head cheerleader, homecoming queen, and the girl most likely to succeed—Brianna O’Brien had it all—money, looks, and brains. Brianna alone knew the hurt and disappointment that lurked behind those outward trappings of youthful success.
Leading the girls down the field, Bree kept her smiling mask carefully in place. Once at the far end of the visitor section of the stands, she stopped and waited for the other girls to find their proper places. When the line was perfectly straight, she raised her arm like a conductor raising his baton to signal the beginning of a concert.
“Ready, girls?” Bree had to shout to be heard over the rising hubbub in the stands as the teams on the field began to form up in anticipation of the second-half kickoff. “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a peso. All for Douglas stand up and say so.”
As the applauding Douglas fans surged to their feet, the Bisbee girls turned a series of handsprings up and down the sidelines. Then they resumed a parade stance and headed back toward their own side of the field via the end zone holding what were now Bisbee’s goalposts. The cheerleaders’ backs were turned to the players on the field when a referee blew his whistle, announcing the resumption of play.
The second-half kickoff flew high in the air, sending the ball tumbling toward the Bulldog offensive unit, stationed at the far end of the field. Fifteen yards from the goal line, the ball plummeted into the waiting hands of Douglas quarterback and team captain Ignacio Salazar Ybarra. He paused for a moment, searching the field for any sign of weakness among the Bisbee defenders. Seeing a hole, he clasped the ball firmly to his chest and started down the field, deftly dodging between other players—friend and foe alike—with all the grace and agility of a fleeing white-tailed deer.
As both teams rumbled down the field toward the marching cheerleaders, there was no hint on Roxanne Brianna O’Brien’s shadowless face that in the next thirty seconds her young life would be inalterably changed.
Afterward, newspaper accounts of the game reported that throughout the first half of the game on that crisp fall evening, Bulldog Iggy Ybarra had played nothing short of inspired football with a confidence that came from knowing every yard gained carried him that much closer to winning a coveted football scholarship, one that would pay his way to college.
Pounding toward the goal line, Iggy angled across the field and then stayed just inside the sideline markers. He had outdistanced most of the Puma defenders and thought he was almost home free when, five yards short of the goal line, he heard someone gaining on him from behind. Dodging out of the way, he went one step farther
than he meant to, crossing over the sideline marker in the process. He had just stepped out of bounds when someone smashed into him from behind. The two players crashed to the ground only a yard or so from the cheerleaders.
Bree was close enough to the action that, even over the raucous roar of enthusiastic fans, she heard the bone snap. Turning her head in horror, she saw a Douglas player crumple to the ground with Bisbee defender Frankie Lefthault on top of him. The awful groan that came as the Douglas boy fell seemed to have been wrenched from his very soul. Bree saw him lying there, writhing and helpless, moaning in agony while penalty flags blossomed and referee whistles sounded all over the field.
Long before anyone else reached the injured player, long before Frankie himself scrambled to his feet, Bree O’Brien was kneeling at the fallen boy’s side, holding his hand. She responded out of instinct, out of an inborn compulsion to go to the aid of anything or anyone in need. It was only as she knelt there that she realized player number eleven on the Douglas Bulldog team was someone she actually knew.
The previous summer, Brianna had attended a two-week fine arts session at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There, she had met Nacio Ybarra, as he called himself. The two of them had wound up in the same drama workshop. In an honor bestowed by their peers, they had been paired to play the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene for the end-of-session grand finale.
In the process of working together, they had established an easy friendship. That last night, after the performance, they had taken a long walk, ending up at the fountain by Old Main. There they had exchanged several long unstaged kisses. The next morning, before going their separate ways, they had promised to keep in touch, but they had not done so. The hubbub of respective senior year activities and the twenty-three miles between them had proven insurmountable.
“Nacio,” she whispered. “It’s me, Bree. Hang on. Help is coming.”
He looked up at her, but there was no sign of recognition in his pain-filled eyes. “Oh, God,” he sobbed. “My leg. It’s broken. I know it’s broken.”
“It’s not my fault,” Frankie wailed behind them. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
By then coaches, trainers, managers, and referees were all converging on the scene. One of them brusquely thrust Bree out of the way. She retreated to a spot behind the goal line where, for the next few minutes, she and the other cheerleaders stood rooted to the ground. Around them, the entire ballpark went deathly still. The only sounds to be heard were the heart-wrenching, involuntary moans that periodically escaped Ignacio Ybarra’s tightly clenched teeth.
One of the Douglas coaches popped out of the group huddled around Ignacio and gestured frantically toward a waiting ambulance that spent each home game parked just inside the ballpark gates at the far end of the field. Accompanied by the low growl of a siren, the ambulance picked its way down the visiting team’s sidelines through clumps of stunned players from both teams. Two uniformed EMTs leaped from the ambulance. One brought out a stretcher while the other cut through the cluster of anxious onlookers.
All the while, that almost breathless silence lingered over the stricken crowd. Except for mindlessly shifting out of the way to let the ambulance or stretcher pass, no one moved or spoke. Working quickly but expertly, the medics covered Ignacio Ybarra with blankets and then eased him onto the stretcher. They were trying to be gentle. They were being gentle. Even so, that little movement elicited another gasp of pain that was more shriek than groan. The desperate sound caused Brianna O’Brien’s own knees to nearly buckle.
As the stretcher started toward the ambulance, the Douglas cheerleaders, still at the far end of the field, began leading a cheer to honor the injured player. Belatedly, the Bisbee squad joined in as fans from both towns stayed on their feet, offering encouragement.
“Well,” Cynthia Jean Howell whispered in Bree’s ear when the cheering ended, “with that damned quarterback out of the way, maybe we can finally do something about winning this game.”
Stunned, Bree wheeled around to face her. When it came time to elect the captain of the cheerleading squad, C.J. Howell had come in second. Not on the best of terms before that, Bree and C.J. were even less friendly now.
“Shut up, C.J.!” Bree whispered back. “He might hear you.”
C.J. shrugged. “So what?” she hissed. “Who cares if he does? Do you want to win this game or not?”
What happened next was strictly reflex. Bree’s right hand flashed out and connected with the other girl’s cheek. The resulting slap knocked C.J.’s head sideways and left the plain imprint of an outspread palm on the carefully made-up contours of her narrow jaw.
As quickly as it happened, the other girls swooped in to separate them. “What’s the matter with you?” C.J. sputtered. “Are you crazy or what?”
“Didn’t you hear what happened?” Bree raged at the other girl. “That bone in his leg is shattered. What if he never walks again?”
“So?” C.J. returned, massaging the bright red skin of her cheek. “What business is it of yours? Besides, he’s from Douglas, isn’t he?”
“He may be from Douglas, but Ignacio Ybarra is a friend of mine. Don’t you forget it!”
“That’s your problem,” C.J. returned.
At that point Bree might have gone after C.J. again had not one of the other girls restrained her. “Come on, Bree. Leave her alone.”
In response, Roxanne Brianna O’Brien simply turned her back and walked, striding purposefully away from her own bleachers and back toward the Bulldog side of the field. Bree’s best friend on the squad, sixteen-year-old Kim Young, hurried after her.
“Wait up, Bree. What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“You can’t just walk out like this. It’s the middle of the game.”
“I don’t care.”
“Ms. Barker will have a fit. She may even throw you off the squad.”
“I don’t care if she does,” Bree replied grimly.
Kim stopped in her tracks and wavered back and forth as if undecided about whether she should follow Bree or go back to where the others stood waiting. Being elected cheerleader at the beginning of her junior year was Kimberly Young’s sole claim to fame. She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize her shaky standing as one of the movers and shakers in the B.H.S. student body, not only for this year but for her senior year as well.
Forced to choose, Kim reluctantly opted for ambition and social standing over friendship. Shaking her head, she turned her back on Bree and raced across the field to catch up with the other cheerleaders while a resolute Bree watched her briefly and then continued her own solitary walk down the sidelines.
Barbara Barker, the cheerleading sponsor, headed Bree off before she made it as far as the fifty-yard line. “Where are you going, Bree?”
“The hospital,” Bree answered.
“The hospital,” Ms. Barker echoed. “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Bree said. “A friend of mine’s been hurt, and I’m going to check on him.”
As the loaded ambulance made its way down the field, and while the referees pondered what to do about the unnecessary roughness penalty they had called against Frankie Lefthault, the cheerleading sponsor reached out as if to stop Brianna’s headlong rush along the sidelines.
“Wait a minute, Bree. You know the rules. My girls aren’t allowed to walk off the field without permission in the middle of a game. If you go, I’ll have to kick you off the squad.”
“You can’t kick me off,” Brianna replied. “I already quit.”
From her seat on the fifty-yard line, Katherine O’Brien had observed the unfolding drama both on the field and off it. At football games, regardless of what was happening to the team, Katherine’s eyes seldom left her daughter. Watching the action through the fine pall of dust raised by hundreds of shuffling feet, Katherine hadn’t heard a word of the heated exchange between Bree and C.J. Howell, but she had witnessed
the assault. With a gasp of surprise, she had seen Bree’s hand flash out and slap the other girl’s cheek. As Bree stalked down the aisle, Katherine O’Brien, like Barbara Barker, rose to intercept her.
“Where are you going?” David demanded, reaching out to stop his wife.
“There’s something the matter with Bree,” Katherine said. “She needs me.”
“Leave her be,” David O’Brien admonished, taking Katherine by the hand. “She has to learn to sort these things out herself. You can’t always go flying to her rescue, you know.”
Fifty years of continuous self-effacement made it difficult for Katherine O’Brien to tolerate making a scene in public. In this case, however, the unmasked rage she had seen on her daughter’s face somehow stiffened her spine.
“I’ve got to go to her,” Katherine insisted, pulling her wrist free of her husband’s grasp. “I’ll be right back.”
She reached Bree’s side just in time to see her daughter pull away from Barbara Barker in much the same way Katherine herself had just broken free of David’s restraining hand. “Bree,” Katherine demanded, “what’s going on?”
“A friend of mine is hurt,” Bree replied. “As soon as I get out of this uniform, I’m going to the hospital to see if he’s all right.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Katherine said. “If you leave in the middle of the game, Ms. Barker may throw you off the squad.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Bree returned. “She already has.”
ONE
Skeleton Canyon (9780061752216) Page 1