by J. A. Jance
“Where to now?” Wilson asked, looking around as he came into the shady gloom beneath the canopy of trees. The ground around them was littered with a layer of loose rock that she recognized as tailings from the glory hole. For a time Joanna had no answer, but then she caught sight of Terry and Spike as they came into view, slithering, one at a time, under a rusty iron grate that was virtually invisible in the muted sunlight.
She stepped up to the metal barrier made from iron rods that had been drilled into the limestone cliff face and then welded together to form what should have been an impenetrable barrier. Determined digging by some four-footed creature had created a cleft under the grate that granted entrance. No doubt that was how Junior had gotten inside as well.
“Still no response from Junior?” Joanna’s question came out in a breathless gasp.
Standing up, Terry made a futile attempt to brush the coating of gray dust off his uniform and off the dog’s burnished black-and-brown coat.
“Not so far,” he replied. “At least not from him, but that poor cat is raising all kinds of hell. It must be hurt pretty bad.” He looked at Joanna. “Are you going in?”
She nodded.
“If you’ve got some Vicks on you,” Terry cautioned, “you’d better plan on using it.”
A dot of Vicks VapoRub under the nostrils was a time-honored way for cops to deal with the foul odors often associated with homicide scenes. Considering Junior had been missing for only a matter of hours, Joanna was surprised that the smell could already be that bad, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled out the tiny can marked Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream.
For Christmas, Maggie Dixon, Joanna’s clueless mother-in-law, had sent her a zipped plastic container full of Burt’s Bees products. Maggie’s presents were always a little off. The previous year she had sent a gift package of makeup that had clearly come with the purchase of some cosmetic or perfume item at an upscale shopping emporium. The pastel hues in the collection had clearly not been chosen to complement Joanna’s complexion or her red hair and green eyes. She had donated the unopened package to the church rummage sale and forgotten about it.
This year’s present, a Burt’s Bees assortment of salves and ointments, was most likely a regifted item Maggie had picked up somewhere along the trail as she and Butch’s father motored their hulking RV from one campground to the next. Maggie was prickly enough that Joanna and Butch spent as little time as possible in her company. Even with limited contact, however, Maggie had made it clear that she disapproved of Joanna’s minimalist approach to cosmetics, which included short fingernails that were seldom, if ever, professionally manicured and polished.
Upon seeing this year’s gift, Joanna had regarded it as yet another snide commentary on what Maggie considered to be Joanna’s hopelessly inadequate beauty regime. Joanna’s first instinct had been to toss the whole thing in the trash without even bothering to open it, but then she spied that small metal container of cuticle cream.
For a long time, Joanna had kept standard-sized jars of Vicks VapoRub in the glove compartments of her various vehicles, leaving the jars in the car because they were too bulky to carry on her person. The cuticle cream container was flat and no larger than a silver dollar. Once she got rid of the cream, she had refilled the tiny slender container with Vicks and carried it with her everywhere, slipped invisibly into the shirt pockets of her various uniforms.
“Step back now,” Lieutenant Wilson warned as Joanna daubed some Vicks under her nostrils.
A moment later, the metal-slicing K12 saw howled to life. With a shower of sparks, it bit through the iron rods, slicing them as easily as if they had been made of butter. By the time the opening was large enough to allow upright passage in and out of the cavern, the remainder of the crew had arrived, bringing along the rest of their equipment.
Wilson shut off the saw and turned to Joanna. “Are you in or out?” he asked.
“In,” she replied, passing him the Vicks. “Want some? Terry says we’re going to need it.”
“Thanks,” he replied. Wilson applied some of the gel and then addressed his crew. “Okay, guys. Somebody give Sheriff Brady here a helmet. She’ll need a headlamp, too.”
The guy who handed over his helmet was another six-foot bruiser. Once on Joanna’s head, the thing was so big that it covered her eyes completely. While Joanna adjusted the helmet straps for a better fit, Wilson buckled on his rappelling harness and then helped her into one as well, giving both harnesses a final snap to be sure they were properly secured.
“You’ll need these,” he said, handing her a pair of leather rappelling gloves. Predictably, the gloves were too big, too.
“This way,” Wilson explained. “If what Terry says is true and the rocks inside are unstable, the harnesses guarantee that we won’t fall to the bottom the same way Junior did. Ready?”
Nodding in reply, Joanna followed Wilson through the opening and into the cavern. Despite the sharp odor of menthol under her nose, her unwilling nostrils filled with the ugly smell of death that was thick in the air. As a rule Joanna wasn’t claustrophobic, but as the darkness closed round, she more than half expected that their sudden intrusion might send a colony of bats bursting into flight. The only sound that greeted her straining ears, however, was the plaintive yowling of what sounded like a badly injured kitten.
The LED lights on their helmets helped lighten the gloom. Even so, it took several moments for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once Joanna could see, she realized that she and Lieutenant Wilson were standing in a low earthen entryway that led back into what was probably a much larger cavern. The ceiling in the first room was tall enough that Joanna, at five foot four, was able to stand upright. Adam Wilson, who was well over six feet, had to stoop over in order to walk. In one corner of the room just inside the doorway, a slight depression in the earthen part of the floor and a scatter of small bones indicated that an animal of some kind—a coyote or maybe even a bobcat—occasionally used the place as a den.
Lieutenant Wilson moved forward a foot or two and then stopped abruptly. “Watch your step,” he warned. “There’s a long drop-off here.”
Even with the sturdy harness, Joanna approached the edge warily and peered down into the hole some hopeful prospector had carved out of the earth probably more than a century earlier. About ten feet down, stranded on a narrow ledge, was the marooned kitten. Another twenty feet below that, Junior Dowdle lay, facedown and unmoving, on a boulder-littered floor.
“Looks like there’s been at least one rockfall in here and maybe more,” Wilson observed, “but there’s no way to tell when the last one happened. Maybe that’s what caused Junior to fall. You stay here. I’ll rappel down and check things out.”
Joanna had attended a mountain rescue workshop. Rappelling wasn’t something she was good at, but she had done well enough to pass the course. If the situation called for rappelling, her technique wouldn’t be pretty, but it would get the job done.
Wilson spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Bring in a crew to handle my rope. The cat’s down about ten feet. At my signal, haul me back up. Once the cat’s safely out of the way, I’ll rappel down and assess the victim.”
On his command, the rope-handling team edged into the cave, filling the cramped space and forcing Joanna up against the rough wall. Standing there, looking out across the void, she caught sight of a crystal winking back at her in the reflected lights of any number of headlamps. Her father, D. H. Lathrop, had once shown her a broken chunk of geode, its interior alive with lavender crystals. He claimed that someone had carried it out of another limestone cavern, a much larger one townspeople had always dubbed the Glory Hole, before the entrance to that had been walled off with tons of debris from construction of the Highway 80 bypass.
Joanna turned her attention back to the scene just as Lieutenant Wilson went over the edge and dropped out of sight. The crew manning his rope let i
t out slowly. Moments later, two sharp tugs on the rope indicated he was ready to return to the surface. When he reappeared, he was holding a bloody, struggling kitten by the nape of its neck.
Joanna edged her way over to the lieutenant to take charge of the injured animal. Once she had it in hand, she very nearly dropped it. Clearly terrified, the traumatized kitten fought for its freedom, biting and scratching anything that got near it. Needle-sharp claws penetrated Joanna’s shirt, slicing through any skin not covered by either the leather gloves or her Kevlar vest.
Careful not to disrupt the crew, Joanna edged back out through the entrance. In the blinding sunlight her first real glimpse of the wounded animal sickened her. It was a gaunt and gangly tabby, a female, probably not more than three or four months old. Her face was a bloody mess. The ears had been sliced through over and over, most likely with a tool like a razor, leaving behind wreckage that was little more than an ear-shaped fringe. The kitten’s entire body was covered with tiny round scabs where someone had burned her with lit cigarettes.
Absolute fury surged through Joanna’s body like a bolt of electricity, and it took a moment for her to regain control. “I need water over here,” she barked. “Now.”
One of the firefighters, a guy whose name tag identified him as Corporal Arturo Fisher, sprang forward with a bottle of electrolyte-infused water in hand. Seeing the injured kitten, Arturo’s face contorted in anger, but he immediately understood what was needed. Opening the bottle, he poured water into his cupped hand and offered it to the injured animal, who lapped up every drop. When the kitten finally had her fill, she looked up into the man’s eyes as if to say thank you.
“If the bastard who did this isn’t dead, he sure as hell should be,” Fisher muttered.
Joanna found herself nodding in agreement. She was accustomed to dealing with the terrible things people did to other people. The damage that had been inflicted on this helpless animal made her blood boil.
The kitten heaved a plaintive sigh. As if aware that she had arrived in a safe haven, she closed her eyes and subsided limply against Joanna’s chest, resting and relaxed this time rather than squirming and fighting. Just then another member of the fire crew walked up behind Joanna and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Lieutenant Wilson’s calling for you. He says the victim is dead. He wants to know if you want to go down and do a survey.”
At that point in the investigation, Joanna had no homicide detectives on the scene. Of all the people in her department, she was by far the smallest physically. If the firefighters were going to have to be raising and lowering people up and down with ropes, she was a better candidate than anyone else. She had some training in crime scene investigation. Armed with the camera on her phone, she knew she’d be able to record what was down there as well as any of her CSI folks could. Besides, before Joanna delivered the bad news from the scene to anyone else, including Moe and Daisy Maxwell, she wanted to verify that the dead man really was Junior.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’m ready, but what do I do with this?” she asked, glancing at the sleeping kitten.
“I’ll take care of her,” Corporal Fisher volunteered, stepping forward. “Give her to me while you go check things out. If the dead guy did this, the bastard got what he deserved.”
CHAPTER 3
AS THE GUYS IN THE CAVE ADJUSTED THE RIGGING ON HER HARNESS, Joanna looked down into the darkness and pondered what Corporal Fisher had just said. She had known for some time that Daisy and Moe had been having issues with Junior—that he’d been acting out and behaving in ways he never had before. Still, was it possible that he could have done something so appallingly evil to a defenseless kitten? In Joanna’s previous dealings with him, the man had almost always been unfailingly kind—sweet, even. Up until only a matter of weeks ago, he had been at Daisy’s every day, where he spent his shifts greeting customers with stacks of menus and a beaming smile.
Whenever Joanna had seen Junior around animals, he had been gentle and respectful. Only a week ago, when Jenny had taken Desi into the restaurant on a service dog training exercise, not only had Junior been there, he had also been absolutely delighted with the pup. Joanna couldn’t make a connection between the Junior she recalled laughing at Desi’s antics and the cold-blooded person who had mutilated a helpless animal. Was it possible that Alzheimer’s could cause those kinds of personality changes and result in episodes where people would behave in ways that were entirely foreign to their previous natures? Try as she might, Joanna couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea that Junior would do such a thing. She doubted Moe and Daisy would be able to, either.
As the team of rope handlers lowered Joanna into the hole, she was grateful for the light on her helmet and for Lieutenant Wilson’s steadying hands on her shoulders as he caught her on the way down and guided her to a smooth landing. The rough surface at the bottom of the hole meant that every shifting rock underfoot was an invitation to a twisted ankle or a broken leg.
“This is a crime scene,” she admonished. “Did you touch anything?”
Wilson shook his head. “All I did was check for a pulse; there wasn’t one.”
Joanna pulled out her iPhone and turned on the camera application. As she began snapping pictures, she used pages torn from a pocket notebook, folded and numbered, as makeshift evidence markers. Each time the flash went off, the contrast of the brilliant light followed by overwhelming darkness left Joanna momentarily blinded, but as near as she could tell, there were no footprints or marks of any kind visible on the rock-strewn surface that would indicate anyone other than the dead man had been here.
“Do you think he fell?” Joanna asked, pausing her photo shoot.
“I’m not so sure about his falling,” Wilson waffled. “Maybe he jumped, or he could have been pushed. Come take a look at his face. I doubt a simple fall from that distance would have caused that much damage.”
With Lieutenant Wilson’s hand leading her forward, Joanna made her way closer to the fallen victim. The first thing she noticed about the man was that he was wearing a pair of blue-and-white-striped short-sleeved pajamas. One house slipper, a slip-on Romeo, was still on his right foot. Its mate lay ten feet or so away, toe up against the side of the rock wall.
As soon as Joanna got a clear look at the victim’s face, she recognized Junior, despite the fact that only half his face was still intact. The other half, pancaked on top of a boulder, had crumpled in on itself like a squashed jack-o’-lantern. She didn’t need a medical examiner to tell her that much of what she was seeing on the floor around the victim was the mixed splatter of gray matter and blood. Only a tiny amount of blood had dribbled out of the corner of the mouth of the disfigured face. That told her that Junior had most likely died instantly. For a moment she was struck by the unfairness of that. The kitten had suffered; he hadn’t.
Steeling herself for the task at hand, Joanna resumed taking pictures. She stayed at it long enough to create a comprehensive photo and evidence marker log that contained fifty or more shots.
“What now?” Wilson asked as she finished and pocketed her phone.
“My next call is to the M.E.,” she said. “In situations like this, do you bring the remains out or does the M.E.?”
“We do, although Dr. Machett sometimes has his own ideas about how things should be done,” Wilson said. “I’m not sure his new helper, Ralph, is physically capable of coming down here, and I doubt Dr. Machett will want to do so, either. Might dirty one of the fancy suits he’s always wearing. He strikes me as one of your basic prima donnas.”
Dr. Guy Machett wasn’t high on Joanna’s list, either. The still relatively new M.E., who never let anyone forget that his medical degree came from Johns Hopkins University, had been hired to take over as Cochise County medical examiner when Dr. George Winfield had retired. Doc Winfield, who happened to be Joanna’s stepfather, had been a well-loved and much-respected colleague. The same could not be said of his successor.
Machett’s whole way of doing business—including his high-handedness and lack of empathy—had put him at odds with many of the folks in law enforcement circles. It came as no surprise to Joanna that he had developed a less-than-stellar working relationship with local firefighting teams as well. Joanna didn’t add chapter and verse to Lieutenant Wilson’s derogatory comment. A simple nod of her head was agreement enough.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go back up and make some calls. Are you coming?”
“Not yet,” Wilson said, shaking his head. “I’ll stay with the remains until someone decides what’s to be done. It’s a matter of respect.”
Joanna tugged on her rope. Moments later she rose through the cool dark air. As she neared the surface, her vision improved enough so she could just make out the legs of the rope handlers through the murky darkness on the surface. Moments later hands reached out to deposit her on firm ground.
“Thanks, guys,” she said.
One of them laughed. “Better you than Ernie Carpenter,” he told her. “If he’d been the one down there, we’d have needed another four guys just to handle the rope.”
Outside the cave, Joanna found Corporal Fisher sitting in the shade, tucked up against the trunk of a scrub oak, tenderly cradling the sleeping kitten. She nestled comfortably against his chest as though she belonged there. One front leg draped down casually over the arm of the firefighter’s protective gear.
“Mind if I share your tree trunk?” Joanna asked.
“Help yourself.” Fisher paused and then added, “What’s going to happen to this poor little thing?”