Outlaw Mountain : A Joanna Brady Mystery (9780061748806)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Well, then,” Frank said. “How about if I work with the phone company and try to find out where that call came from?”

  “Can you make inquiries like that after hours?”

  “Watch me,” Frank replied.

  The radio was quiet for a moment as Joanna considered her next move. “Do that if you can,” she said at last. “In the meantime, we’ve got another problem.”

  “I gathered that much from what Tica said. What’s going on?”

  Joanna reeled off everything she knew as well as what she suspected concerning the disappearance of Lewis Flores. “What’s the next step then?” Frank asked when she finished. “If you’ve got deputies at both Childers’ house and at Brainard’s, what else is there to do?”

  “I’m on my way out to Sierra Vista right now,” Joanna told him. “I want to talk to the deputies in person and find out what, if anything, they’ve discovered. If it goes bad, though, I’m going to need you on the double.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “I’ll stand by. Call if you need me.”

  Going back to Tica, Joanna asked for detailed directions to the two houses in question. Karen Brainard lived near Huachuca City. Childers’ house, in Sierra Vista Estates, was far closer, so Joanna headed there first. She was about to turn off the highway when she was hit by a sudden stroke of inspiration. All of Lewis Flores’ difficulties seemed to stem from the controversy swirling around Oak Vista Estates. Maybe that’s where the answers lay as well.

  Switching off her turn signal, Joanna continued on down Highway 92. At the entrance to Oak Vista, she found that a makeshift barbed-wire gate had been pulled across the road and stretched between the two upright posts of the cattle guard. There was a padlock hanging on a chain around one end of the gate, but when Joanna checked, she found it wasn’t fastened. If the lock was supposed to keep monkey wrenchers out, it wasn’t going to do much good left open.

  Joanna opened the gate, drove across the cattle guard, then doused the Blazer’s lights and turned off the engine. “Tica,” she said into the radio. “I’m out at Oak Vista Estates right now. I’m stopped just inside the entrance, and I think I’d better have some backup.”

  “I’ll get someone right there. What’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure. The gate has a chain and a padlock, but it wasn’t fastened shut. I’m afraid someone may be here ahead of me.”

  “The monkey wrenchers?” Tica asked.

  “Maybe, but I don’t know. That’s why I want backup.”

  “I’ll send the deputies who are already at Mark Childers’ house. They should be able to get to you in under ten minutes.”

  “Have them come ASAP,” Joanna said. “But no lights or sirens. I don’t want to advertise our arrival.”

  “Got it,” Tica said.

  Joanna stepped out of her car. A raw autumn wind was blowing down off the Huachucas. Shivering against the cold, Joanna returned to the Blazer and pulled on her sheepskin jacket—the one with the bullet hole still in the pocket. Fingering that hole and remembering how the weapon she had carried there had once saved her life, Joanna pulled the Glock out of her small-of-the-back holster. She was just putting it in her pocket when she heard first one shot, then another and another. The shots were followed by something else—a woman’s terrified scream that floated down to Joanna carried on the icy wind. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent her scrambling into the Blazer.

  Waiting for backup to arrive was no longer an option. The deputies summoned from Mark Childers’ house were still minutes away. The terror and desperation in the woman’s scream left no margin for delay.

  “Shots have been fired,” Joanna declared into her radio microphone. “I’m going in, Tica. Tell my backup to use the hell out of their sirens. I want Flores to know we’re coming. I want all of them to know we’re coming.”

  With the gas pedal shoved to the floor and with her own siren screaming, Joanna tore up the freshly bladed road that wound uphill to the construction shack. And that’s where Joanna’s headlights zeroed in on a silver Taurus station wagon. Lewis Flores sat on the hood, leaning back against the windshield. One weapon lay across his lap. From a distance, Joanna couldn’t make out if he was holding the shotgun or the rifle, but it didn’t really matter. Either one of them was sufficiently lethal.

  She parked, cut the lights, and opened the window, but she didn’t step out of the Blazer. If it came to a shoot-out, she wanted the benefit of whatever cover the engine block might provide.

  “Lewis,” she called as she drew the heavy-duty Colt 2000 out of her shoulder holster. “That’s enough. Lay down your weapon.”

  For an answer, Lewis Flores reached out. Joanna thought he was going for his other gun, which lay beside him on the hood. Instead, he picked up something else. By then Joanna’s eyes were adjusting to the lack of light and she was able to make out that he had picked up a bottle—a tequila bottle perhaps—and was taking a swig.

  “Lewis.” Joanna tried to make her voice sound authoritative but calm. “More deputies are on their way. They’ll be here in a few minutes. You’ll be surrounded. Give up before someone gets hurt.”

  “I already am hurt,” he said.

  Joanna breathed deeply. She had him talking. That was a good sign. “Where are Mark Childers and Karen Brainard, Lewis? What have you done with them?”

  There was a sudden pounding. It seemed to be coming from one of the Porta Potties. “I’m in here,” Karen Brainard yelled. “I’m locked in the toilet. He’s been shooting at me. He’s crazy. Get me out of here.”

  Relief spilled over Joanna. At least one of the two was still alive, still safe. “Where’s Mark Childers?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Lewis responded.

  But Joanna didn’t want to talk to Mark Childers. She didn’t want to take her focus off Lewis Flores. He was the one with the guns. “Why are you hurt, Lewis? What’s happened?”

  “They lied to-me,” Lewis answered. “They told me that it wouldn’t matter if the process got hurried up a little. They said they’d make it worth my while, and no one would care. But people do care, and as soon as there was trouble, they turned it all on me. Tried to make out that it was all my fault—all my responsibility.”

  “That’s not true,” Karen responded from her prison. “We didn’t do any such thing, did we? Tell her, Mark. Tell Sheriff Brady that Lewis is lying.”

  But if Mark Childers had anything to add to Karen Brainard’s denial, he wasn’t saying. In the distant background, Joanna heard the sound of at least one siren. Reinforcements were on their way. The cavalry was about to ride to the rescue.

  “Please, Lewis,” she begged. “Think about Carmen. Put down your weapons. Move away from the car with your hands in the air.”

  “I am thinking about Carmen,” Lewis Flores replied. “I was thinking about her and all those steps and her having to climb them every day. Of her having to carry groceries home just the way her mother did. I wanted a better place for her, something really nice. And Mark Childers was going to help me get it. But it’s not worth it. I finally figured that out. I’ve lost everything now—my job, my family, my self-respect. They’ve taken it all away.”

  “You have to let us out of here,” Karen Brainard pleaded. “He locked us in here, and he’s been using us for target practice. Please let us out.”

  Half a mile away across the desert, a patrol car rumbled across the cattle guard and then roared up the roadway.

  “Do you hear that, Lewis?” Joanna asked. “The other deputies are coming right now. Please, put down your weapon so no one gets hurt.”

  His hand shot out again. Joanna thought he was reaching for the bottle again, which was out of her sight line on the other side of the hood. But what Lewis Flores raised to his lips that time wasn’t tequila. Joanna saw the flare of light as the gun was fired, heard the explosion, and saw him flop backward against the windshield.

 
; “No!” she heard herself screaming as she ran toward the Taurus. “Nooooooo!” But Lewis Flores was dead long before she reached him.

  “Oh, God. What’s he doing now?” Karen screeched. “Make him stop. He’s going to kill us. The man is crazy. He’s going to kill us all.”

  Joanna stopped at the Taurus long enough to grab Lewis Floras’ limp wrist. Briefly her fingers searched for a nonexistent pulse. One look at the bloody carnage that had once been the back of Lewis Flores’ head told her there was nothing to do. Dropping his lifeless arm, Joanna raced to the line of Porta Potties just as a patrol car skidded to a stop behind her Blazer.

  Unholstering his side arm, Deputy Dave Hollicker jumped out of the vehicle. “What’s the status, Sheriff Brady?”

  By then Joanna was at the door to the Porta Potty. It wasn’t just closed. It had been nailed shut. The top of the door was riddled with bullet holes. From inside, she heard the sound of hysterical weeping.

  “Bring a crowbar, Dave,” she ordered. “And make it quick. There’s one in the back of my Blazer.”

  Leaving the first Porta Potty, Joanna went down the line until she found another one that had been nailed shut. Again, the top of the door was riddled with bullet holes. Lewis had been firing at the Porta Potties all right, but high enough not to hit anyone inside—scaring hell out of them but not necessarily trying to kill anyone.

  “Mr. Childers,” Joanna called through the door. “Are you in there? Are you all right?”

  There was no answer, not even a whimper. Behind her Joanna heard the sound of running footsteps and, off across the ghostly starlit grassland, another siren. Dave was headed toward the first Porta Potty, but Joanna stopped him.

  “Open this one first,” she ordered. “The woman’s all right, but I’m not so sure about Mark Childers.”

  It took several tries before Dave Hollicker finally pried open the door. When he did so, Mark Childers’ limp body cascaded out onto the ground.

  “He may have been shot,” Joanna said, kneeling beside the stricken man and checking for a pulse. There was one. It was faint and erratic, but it existed. Nowhere on his body, however, was there any sign of blood.

  “Call for an ambulance, Dave,” she said. “We’ll have to have him airlifted out of here. And bring blankets.” About that tune Mark Childers’ pulse disappeared altogether. Without even thinking about it, Joanna began to administer CPR.

  “Please,” Karen Brainard pleaded from her prison. “What are you doing? Can’t you let me out? What’s taking so long?”

  Joanna wanted to tell the woman to shut up and wait, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. She was too busy concentrating on what she was doing—too busy keeping track of the rhythmic and life-saving breathing and pushing. In the end, Joanna didn’t have to say a word. Dave Hollicker did it for her.

  “Quiet in there,” he yelled as he came racing back to Joanna’s side with an armload of blankets. “We’re trying to save a man’s life out here. Be patient. We’ll get to you in a minute.”

  Fourteen

  IT WAS almost three o’clock in the morning before Joanna finally made it home to High Lonesome Ranch. She had stayed long enough for the Air-Evac ambulance to load Mark Childers’ ominously still body onto a stretcher and carry it away. She had stayed long enough for Ernie Carpenter to arrive on the scene.

  “What do we do with her?” the detective asked, nodding in the direction of a no longer hysterical Karen Brainard, who had taken refuge in the back of Dave Hollicker’s patrol car. “Do we book her and haul her off to jail?”

  “Not yet,” Joanna said. “We don’t know enough. Have someone take her home for now, but tell her that she’d better not leave the county.”

  After that, and with a heavy heart, Joanna drove to Bisbee and made her way up the steep steps to what had been Carmen and Lewis Flores’ home. As she climbed them, one at a time, it hurt Joanna to think that those very steps—the ones Lewis had wanted to spare his wife from climbing—were at the root of all the trouble.

  When she arrived in the tiny yard, Joanna was dismayed but not really surprised to see that all the interior lights were off. Convinced her husband had merely taken off on a hunting trip without bothering to tell her, Carmen Flores had evidently gone to bed and to sleep. Roused by Joanna’s knock, Carmen flung open the door before she finished tying on her flannel robe.

  “Joanna!” she exclaimed when she saw who was standing in the glow of the porch light. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  And so Joanna told her story. This time she waited until Carmen’s sister Rose actually arrived on the scene before she left the Flores house. Then, knowing there was nothing else to be done, Joanna headed home. On the way, she called the department and left word for Dick Voland. She told him she was scrapping that day’s morning briefing and that she probably wouldn’t be in the office much before noon.

  It warmed Joanna’s heart to drive into the yard of High Lonesome Ranch and see lights glowing at the window; to see Butch’s Outback parked in front of the gate. He and the two dogs, Sadie and Tigger, bounded out the back door to greet her before she managed to park the Blazer and turn off the ignition.

  “Rough night?” Butch asked, opening the door.

  “You could say that. But you didn’t wait up for me all this time, did you?”

  “No. I dozed on the couch. Junior’s asleep on the living room floor. Jenny hauled an air mattress and bedroll down from the attic for him. She said you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t,” Joanna replied. “Come on. Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a piece of pepperoni pizza,” she told him. “But I think that was several hours ago.”

  “Do you want me to fix you something?”

  Butch’s questions contained all the familiar words and phrases. Not only had Joanna Brady heard them before, she had actually said them as well. Once she and her mother had been on the other end—the solicitous end—of those carbon-copy conversations. When Andrew Roy Brady had come home after a long and grueling nighttime shift—once Joanna had finished being scared for him, once she had moved beyond being irritated with him for coming home so late—she had always offered to fix him a meal no matter what time it was, no matter how late. And Eleanor Lathrop, in her turn, had done the exact same thing for her husband, Sheriff D. H. Lathrop. It felt strange for Joanna to be the recipient of those ministrations—a receiver rather than a giver—and in her own home as well.

  “All I want is a drink,” Joanna said. “A drink and some sleep.”

  “It must have been bad then,” Butch said.

  He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and led her inside. In the kitchen, he mixed her a vodka tonic, using some of the leftover stock of liquor he had moved down to Bisbee after the sale of the Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. Due to a lack of storage space in his own house, he had used some of it to create what he called a respectable bar at High Lonesome Ranch.

  While Joanna sipped her drink and told him what all had happened overnight, he fixed her a tuna sandwich. By the time she finished both eating and telling, Butch was standing, leaning against the counter. “Weren’t you afraid?” he asked.

  “Of course I was afraid,” Joanna told him. “I was scared to death.”

  “Flores could just as. well have shot you instead of himself,” Butch observed. “What would have happened then?”

  “I was careful,” Joanna said. “I was wearing my vest. I stayed in the Blazer. I used it for cover.”

  “A vest will work for everything but a thick head,” Butch replied. “And you still haven’t answered my question. What would happen to Jenny if something happened to you? What if you hadn’t come home tonight at all? Are you sure this is what you want to do? Do you want to spend your whole life going to someone’s home in the middle of the night, waking up some poor sleeping woman, and telling her that her husband has just blown his brains out?”

  Joanna felt her eyes we
lling with tears. “Please, Butch,” she said. “Not now. I’m too tired to fight.”

  “I’m not fighting,” he said. “I’m talking. That’s why…” He stopped.

  “Why what?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Go on to bed. I’ll clean up here. Then I’ll wake Junior up and we’ll head home.”

  “Don’t go,” Joanna said. “I don’t want you to go. I need you here.”

  He took her glass and plate and put them in the dishwasher. “I don’t suppose a night on the couch will kill me,” he said.

  “I don’t mean for you to sleep on the couch,” she told him. “We’re engaged. I want us to sleep in the same bed.”

  “What will Jenny think?” Butch asked. “She doesn’t know we’re engaged. You didn’t tell her, remember?”

  “I didn’t have a chance. I’ll tell her in the morning.”

  In the end, it didn’t take all that much convincing to get Butch to give up the idea of sleeping on the couch and to come join Joanna in her bed. Still chilled from spending so much of the night outdoors, she snuggled up against the warmth of his body and felt her own muscles begin to relax.

  “By the way,” Butch told her, “we picked up that book from Daisy—America the Beautiful.”

  “Did you have a chance to look at it?”

  “Jenny and Junior did. They spent at least two hours poring over every page.”

  “Find anything?” Joanna asked, but she had to struggle to frame the words. She was fading fast. It was difficult to concentrate.

  “I think so.”

  “Tell me.”

  Butch did, but Joanna Brady didn’t hear a word of it. She was already sound asleep, and she was still asleep the next morning when the phone rang at five past seven. Joanna was so groggy that even the jangling of a phone next to her bed didn’t wake her. Butch answered the call in the kitchen and then came into the bedroom.

  “Phone,” he said, shaking her awake. “Something about a meeting you’re supposed to attend.”

  “I called the department last night and canceled the briefing,” Joanna mumbled, turning over and burying her aching head in a pillow. “Tell them to forget it. Tell them I’ll come in when I’m good and ready.”