Paradise Lost jb-9

by J. A. Jance

  “Phrenologist, not friend,” Kelly corrected. “Phrenology was a supposed science that’s now considered bogus. During the eigh­teen hundreds, phrenologists believed they could tell how people would behave by studying the size and shape of their heads.

  “But getting back to the Apaches, you have to remember that history books are usually written by the winners. That’s why Indi­ans always end up being the bad guys while the U.S. soldiers who turned the various tribes out of their native lands are regarded as heroes or martyrs.”

  “You mean like General Custer?” Cassie asked.

  Kelly smiled. “Exactly,” she said. “Now, tomorrow Amber and I will be leading a hike up to the ruins of Fort Bowie. But wher­ever you go tomorrow or later on, when you visit places like the Wonderland of Rocks or Cochise Stronghold, I want you to bear in mind that Anglos weren’t the first people here. I’d like you to look at the land around here and try to see it through some of those other people’s points of view.”

  Abruptly, Kelly Martindale sat down. After that, Mrs. Lambert saw to it that the evening turned into the usual kind of campfire high jinks. There were games and songs and even an impromptu skit. Finally, a little after ten, she told the girls it was time for lights-out and sent them off to their tents.

  “It’s too early to go to bed,” Dora muttered, as she and Jenny approached their tent. “I never go to bed at ten o’clock. I’m going for a walk.”

  “You can’t do that,” Jenny said. “You’ll get it in trouble.”

  “Who’s going to tell?” Dora demanded. “You? Besides, I need a cigarette. If I smoke it here, Mrs. Lambert or those two snooty college girls who think they’re so rad might smell the smoke and make me put it out because I might start a fire or something. You wanna come along?”

  Jenny was torn. On the one hand, she didn’t want to get into trouble. On the other hand, she wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet, either. Not only that, their tent seemed to be far enough away from the others that it was possible no one would notice if they crept out for a little while.

  “I’ll go,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “But first we’d better climb into our bedrolls and pretend like we’re going to sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll bet Mrs. Lambert will come around to check on us, that’s why.”

  “Okay,” Dora grumbled. “We’ll do it your way.”

  It turned out Jenny was right. Ten minutes after they lay down on their bedrolls, they heard the stealthy rustle of shoe leather approaching through dry grass. Moments later, the light from a flashlight flickered on the outside of the tent..

  “Everybody tucked in?” Faye Lambert asked.

  “Tucked in,” Jenny returned. With the tent flap closed, the stench of Dora’s body odor was almost more than Jenny could bear. She could hardly wait for their leader to go away so they could slip back out into the open air.

  “Well, good night then,” Mrs. Lambert said. “I’ve made out the duty roster. The two of you will be cleaning up after breakfast. Is that all right?”

  “It’s fine,” Dora told her. “I’m better at cleaning up than I am at cooking.”

  The flashlight disappeared. Jenny listened to the sound of Mrs. Lambert’s retreating footsteps and then to the slight squeak as the door to the motor home opened and closed. Kelly Martindale and Amber Summers were sleeping in their own two-man tent. Mrs. Lambert would spend the night in the motor home.

  “Shall we go then?” Dora demanded.

  “Wait a few minutes longer,” Jenny cautioned.

  Ten minutes later, the two girls stealthily raised the flap on their tent and let themselves out. Walking as silently as possible, they slipped off through the scrub oak. While waiting in the tent, their eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Once outside, they found the moonlight overhead surprisingly bright. Walking in the moon’s sil­very glow, they easily worked their way over the near edge of the basin. Within minutes they were totally out of sight of the other campers. At that point, Dora sank down on a rock and pulled two cigarettes out of the pocket of her denim jacket.

  “Want one?” she asked.

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Come on,” Dora urged. “What are you, chicken? Afraid your mom will find out and put you in jail?”

  For the second time that evening, Jenny was aware of the burden of being the sheriff’s daughter. She wanted nothing more than to be accepted as a regular kid. This dare, made by someone she couldn’t stand, was more than Jennifer Ann Brady could resist. “Okay,” she said impulsively. “Give me one. Where do you get them?” she asked, as Dora pulled out a lighter. She lit her own cigarette first, then she lit Jenny’s.

  “I steal them from my mother’s purse,” Dora admitted, inhaling deeply. “She smokes so much that she never misses them as long as I only take a few at a tine.”

  Jenny took a few tentative puffs, holding the smoke in her mouth and then blowing it out again. Even that was enough to make her eyes water.

  “That’s not how you do it,” Dora explained. “You’re supposed to inhale—breathe the smoke into your lungs—like this.”

  She sucked a drag of smoke into her lungs, held it there, and then blew it out in a graceful plume. Jenny’s game effort at imita­tion worked, but only up to a point. Moments later she found herself bent over, choking and gagging.

  “You’re not going to barf, are you?” Dora Matthews demanded.

  “I think so,” Jenny managed.

  “Well, give me your cigarette, then. Don’t let it go to waste.”

  Jenny handed over the burning cigarette. Embarrassed, she stum­bled away from where Dora sat, heaving as she went. Twenty yards farther on, she bent over a bush and let go. In the process she lost the contents of her sack lunch along with the popcorn and Orange Crush from the campfire. Finally, when there was nothing left in her system, Jenny lurched over to a nearby tree and stood there, leaning against the trunk, gasping and shivering and wishing she had some water so she could get the awful taste out of her mouth.

  “Are you all right?” Dora asked from behind her. She was still smoking one of the two cigarettes. The smell of the smoke was enough to make Jenny heave again, but she managed to stave off the urge.

  “I’m all right,” she said shakily.

  “You’ll be okay,” Dora told her. “The same thing happened to me the first time I tried it. You want an Altoid? I always keep some around so my mom can’t smell the smoke on my breath.”

  With shaking hands, Jenny gratefully accepted the proffered breath mint. “Thanks,” she said and meant it.

  The two girls stood there together for some time, while Jenny sucked on the breath mint and Dora finished smoking the rest of the remaining cigarette. When it was gone, Dora carefully ground out the butt with the sole of her shoe. “I wouldn’t want to start a fire,” she said with a laugh. “Somebody might notice. Then we would be in trouble.”

  They were quiet for a time. The only sound was the distant yip of a coyote, answered by another from even farther away. Then, for the first time that evening, a slight breeze stirred around them, blowing up into their faces from the valley floor below. As the small gust blew away the last of the dissipating cigarette smoke, Jenny noticed that another odor had taken its place.

  “There’s something dead out there,” she announced.

  “Dead,” Dora repeated. “How do you know?”

  Jennifer Ann Brady had lived on a ranch all her life. She recog­nized the distinctively ugly odor of carrion.

  “Because I can smell it, that’s how,” Jenny returned.

  The slight softening in Dora’s voice when she had offered the Altoid disappeared at once. “You’re just saying that to scare me, Jennifer Brady!” Dora declared. “You think that because they were saying all that stuff about Apaches killing people and all, that you can spook me or something.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jenny insisted. “Don’t you smell it?”

>   “Smell what?” Dora shot back. “I don’t smell anything.”

  Jennifer Brady had seen enough animal carcasses along the road and out on the ranch that she wasn’t the least bit scared of them, but she could tell from Dora’s voice that the other girl was. It was a way of evening the score for the cigarettes--a way of reclaiming a little of her own lost dignity.

  “Come on,” Jenny said. “I’ll show you.”

  Without waiting to see whether or not Dora would follow, Jenny set off. The breeze was still blowing uphill, and Jenny walked directly into it. After watching for a moment or two, Dora Matthews reluctantly followed. With each step, the odor grew stronger and stronger.

  “Ugh,” Dora protested at last. “Now I smell it, too. It’s awful.”

  Their path had taken them up and over the ridge that formed one side of the basin where the troop had set up camp. Now the girls walked downhill until they were almost back at the road that had brought them up into the basin. And there, visible in the moonlight and at the bottom of the embankment that fell down from the graded road, lay the body of a naked woman.

  “Oh, my God,” Dora groaned. “Is she dead?”

  Jenny’s neck prickled as the hair on the back of it stood on end. “Of course she’s dead,” she said, wheeling around. “Now come on. We have to go tell Mrs. Lambert.”

  “We can’t do that,” Dora wailed. “What if she finds out about the cigarettes? We’ll both be in trouble then.”

  Jenny was worried about the same thing, but the threat of get­ting in trouble wasn’t enough to stop her. Neither was Dora Matthews.

  “Too bad,” Jenny called over her shoulder. “I’m going to tell anyway. Somebody’s going to have to call my mom.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was after eleven when the vibrating of Dr. George Winfield’s tiny pager jarred him awake. Next to him in bed his wife, Eleanor, let loose a very unladylike snore. The Cochise County Medical Examiner tiptoed across the room and silently pulled the door shut behind him before he switched on the light and checked the number on the digital readout. He was used to being rousted out of bed by middle-of-the-night calls from various law enforcement agencies, but the number showing on the screen wasn’t one he instantly recognized.

  To make sure the sound of conversation wouldn’t awaken Eleanor, he went all the way to the kitchen and used that phone to return the call. “Chief Deputy Montoya,” a voice answered after less than half a ring. “Doc Winfield?”

  “That’s right,” George answered, rubbing his eyes. He hadn’t been asleep for long, but his eyes were gritty, and he was having a hard time pulling himself out of the fog. “What’ve you got, Frank?”

  “A problem,” Frank replied.

  “Someone’s dead, I assume,” George said, tuning up with a hint of sarcasm. “If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be calling me. What’s the deal?”

  “White female,” Frank Montoya answered. “A Jane Doe. From the looks of her, I’d say she’s been dead for a day or two. On the other hand, it’s been so hot lately that maybe it’s less than that.”

  “Where was she found?”

  “On the road to Apache Pass. Looks like someone threw her out of a vehicle and let her roll down an embankment. She’s naked. No identification that we’ve been able to find so far, but we’ll have to wait until morning to do a more thorough search.”

  Something about Apache Pass niggled in the back of George Winfield’s consciousness, but right then he couldn’t quite sort it out. Still, there was no denying the underlying urgency in Frank Montoya’s voice. Even half asleep, George noticed that and assumed Frank had found something deeply disturbing about the condition of the body. Maybe the woman had been mutilated in some unusually gruesome way.

  “I’ll get dressed and be there as soon as I can,” George Winfield said. He was relatively new to the area, a transplant from Min­nesota, so his grasp of southeastern Arizona geography was still somewhat hazy, forcing him to make copious use of his detailed topo guide to get wherever he needed to go. “How far is Apache Pass from here and where is it exactly?”

  “Off Highway 186. From Bisbee it’s about an hour’s drive,” Frank answered, his native-son knowledge apparent in the casual ease of his answer. “Depending on how fast you drive, of course.” Deputies around the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department didn’t call the new county medical examiner “Doc Lead Foot” for nothing.

  “Good,” George replied. “I’ll be there as close to that as I can manage. See you then ...”

  “Wait,” Frank interrupted. “Before you come, there’s something else you should know. Jennifer Brady is the one who found the body—she and one of her friends, a girl named Dora Matthews.”

  By virtue of having married Eleanor Lathrop, Dr. George Winfield was stepfather to Sheriff Joanna Brady and stepgrandfather to Joanna’s daughter, Jenny. It came to him then that the something that had been niggling at the back of his mind throughout his conversation with Frank Montoya was something Eleanor had mentioned in passing: Jenny and her Girl Scout troop would b camping on a ranch in the Apache Pass area over Memorial Day Weekend.

  “How did they manage that?” he asked.

  “According to Jenny, after lights out, she and Dora took off on an unauthorized hike. They were going off by themselves to have a cigarette—”

  “Jenny was smoking cigarettes?” a disbelieving George Winfeld demanded. “She’s twelve years old, for cripes’ sake! How the hell did she get hold of cigarettes?”

  “Beats me,” Frank answered. “I’m just passing along what Faye Lambert, the troop leader, told me. Faye’s royally pissed at the two girls, and I don’t blame her. I would be, too. She wants to send them home.”

  Concerned that Eleanor might have awakened and stolen out of the bedroom, George glanced over his shoulder before resuming his conversation. “What about Joanna?” George asked, lowering his voice. “Have you called her?”

  “Not yet,” Frank admitted. “I’m about to, but first I wanted to have some game plan in place for getting those two girls back to town. It’s already after eleven, and Page is six hundred miles from here. It doesn’t make sense having Joanna drive hell-bent-for leather from one end of the state to the other in the middle of the night so they could come pick them up.”

  “What about the other girl’s mother?” George Winfield asked. “Couldn’t she come get them?”

  “Negative on that. I tried calling Dora Matthews’s house up in Tombstone Canyon. There’s no answer.”

  “You’re not asking me to bring them home, are you?” George Winfield asked warily. “They can’t very well ride home in my minivan along with a bagged-up body.”

  “You’re right,” Frank agreed. “It’s totally out of the question, but I am asking for suggestions.”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “Because Jenny’s the sheriff’s daughter,” Frank said. “It’ll look like she’s being given special treatment. Assuming Joanna decides to stand for election to a second term, you can imagine how that would play if it fell into the hands of her opponent.”

  “I suppose you’re right about that,” George Winfield agreed. “What about calling Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady?” he asked after a short pause. “As I understand it, they’re staying out at High Lonesome Ranch to look after things while Joanna and Butch are out of town. When it comes to Jenny, I’m sure they’ll do whatever needs doing.”

  “Good idea,” Frank Montoya replied, sounding relieved. “So who’s going to call them, you or I?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” George said. “Since you’re the one who’s going to have to deal with Joanna, I’ll be happy to call Jim Bob and Eva Lou.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said. “That’ll be a big help.”

  “Are you going to tell her about the cigarettes?” George asked.

  “Not it I don’t have to,” Frank said. “I’d as soon leave that chore to someone else—like Faye Lambert, for instance. The murder investigation is my r
esponsibility. The cigarettes aren’t.”

  “Good luck,” George said with a laugh.

  Once Frank was off the line, George located the speed-dial number for High Lonesome Ranch that Eleanor had coded into their phone. Jim Bob Brady answered on the third ring. “Hey, Jim Bob, it’s George.”

  “I figured that out by looking at the caller ID.”

  “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Naw,” Jim Bob said. “Eva Lou’s in the bedroom getting ready for bed. I’m sitting here watching Jay Leno. Why? What’s going on?”

  In as few words as possible, George Winfield outlined the prob­lem. “Whoa!” Jim Bob exclaimed once he’d heard the whole story. “Joanna’s going to pitch a fit.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” George agreed.

  “Does she know yet?”

  “Frank will be calling her in a few minutes, but he’s waiting to make sure you’ll go out to Apache Pass and bring Jenny and the other girl home. Otherwise, he’s afraid Joanna will light out of Page and drive all night to get here.”

  “Give me Frank’s number,” Jim Bob said. “As soon as I give him a call, Eva Lou and I will head right out to go get them.”

  “You don’t think Eva Lou will mind?”

  “Good grief, no! When it comes to handling ornery kids, there’s nobody better than Eva Lou.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” George Winfield agreed. Much as he loved his own wife, he had no doubt that in this kind of crisis Eleanor Lathrop Winfield would be far less help than Jenny’s other grandmother. “See you there,” he added.

  “Will do,” Jim Bob said. “Drive carefully.”

  George put down the phone. Barely breathing, he crept back into the bedroom and retrieved his clothing, wallet, and keys. Despite his caution, the clatter of lifting his keys from the glass-topped dresser was enough to waken his wife.

  “George?” Eleanor asked. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” he returned. “I’ve been called out on a case. Go back to sleep.”

  “Will you be long?”

  “You know how it goes,” he said. Leaning down, he kissed her lightly on the top of her forehead. “If I’m not home by breakfast, save me a place.”