Tombstone Courage

by J. A. Jance

  Looking around her, she hoped Jim Bob was right; that Harold had “died with his boots on,” doing the work he loved. But there was something worrisome in the back of her mind, a stray thought that wouldn’t disappear no matter how much she wanted to stifle it.

  The last time Joanna had seen Harold Patterson was two days ago, when he came to Milo’s office. He had seemed anxious and upset when he came looking for those change-of-beneficiary forms. He had talked about wanting to change the provisions of his policies from Ivy alone to someone else. Those are the kinds of changes people don’t undertake without some reason prodding them to do so—a marriage, a death, or, in this case, what seemed to be a change of heart.

  Taken together, Harold Patterson’s policies didn’t add up to a huge fortune, but a cool quarter of a million dollars—or even half that much—couldn’t be overlooked as a possible motive for murder. If Harold Patterson had, in fact, been murdered.

  Joanna racked her brain trying to remember the old man’s exact words. He had told her a story, a parable about his daughters, comparing them to two dogs pulling apart an old saddle blanket rather than sharing it. Did that mean Harold intended to split the proceeds of his policies fifty-fifty? It would be important for the investigators to learn whether or not those beneficiary forms had been properly signed and witnessed and where they were right now.

  A single phone call to Milo Davis or Lisa would have answered that question in a minute, but Joanna was in her own car, with no radio and no kind of communications capability. How long would it take, Joanna wondered, for the new sheriff to have an official, properly equipped vehicle of her own? And how did she go about requesting one?

  Deputy Hollicker had told her three miles. Dick Voland’s Blazer blocked the path at 2.5 in a spot where the road wound between two immense boulders. When Voland stepped up to the side of her car, he leaned down as if expecting her to roll down the window so he could speak to her. Instead, she turned off the ignition, opened the door, and stepped out of the car.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

  Voland shrugged and glowered meaningfully at Joanna’s Eagle. “Nothing much,” he replied sarcastically. “Ernie Carpenter asked me to limit access to the area until he can have casts made of all the tire tracks. As you can see, we’ve been driving on the hump in the middle of the road and on the shoulder to avoid messing up anything important.”

  “So have I,” she answered crisply. “I do know how plaster casts work.”

  A shadow of disappointment crossed Dick Voland’s face so fleetingly that Joanna almost missed it. Clearly the chief deputy had fully expected her to screw up her first time out, but she had managed to outmaneuver him. So much for Round One.

  “Why wasn’t I notified when Harold Patterson’s body was found?” she asked, taking the offensive. “Why wasn’t I called?”

  “The man was already dead,” Voland answered. “Deputy Hollicker, Detective Carpenter, and I had the situation well in hand through the regular chain of command.”

  “Mr. Voland, are you or are you not aware that I was sworn into office as of two o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

  “I knew about that,” he answered reluctantly, “but I saw no reason to drag you out of bed. It didn’t seem like that big a deal.”

  “For your information, I was already up and working at the time the call came in. I haven’t yet had time enough to study all the policies and procedures, but tell me something. How would a situation like this have been handled under Walter McFadden’s administration? Chain of command be damned, would he or would he not have been notified?”

  “Would have,” Voland conceded grudgingly. “Out of courtesy.”

  “Then I expect the same courtesy.”

  “But surely…” Voland started, then stopped abruptly.

  “But surely what?”

  “You don’t want to be called and dragged out of bed to every crime scene?”

  “I didn’t run for office to be nothing but a glorified bureaucrat,” Joanna told him. “Did you think I broke my neck the last two months for the dubious privilege of overseeing departmental budgets and vacation schedules? I’m here to be a full-fledged officer of the law. Possibly my presence won’t be necessary at every unlawful death scene in the county, but for right now I intend to make up my mind on a case-by-case basis. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly.” Voland’s reply was curt and sullen. “Is there anything else?”

  “I came to see the glory hole,” Joanna said.

  The chief deputy spun on his heel and started back up the mountain. “This way,” he grunted. “We walk from here. Stick to the shoulder.”

  “So what’s the status?”

  “Ernie’s about finished with what he can do up top. He’s rigging a rope to the come-along on his winch so we can lower him down into the hole itself. He wants to take pictures and gather evidence before calling in a stretcher and sling to drag Old Man Patterson’s body out.”

  “What happened?”

  “You’ll have to talk to Ernie. He’s not big on talking about what he’s finding. He’s his own one-man show.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Ivy, I guess.”

  “How’d she do it? This is a long way from the house.”

  “Like I said,” Dick Voland groused. “Talk to Ernie.”

  At five-thousand-some-odd feet of elevation, the steep path soon took its toll on Richard Voland’s more-than-ample frame. Exertion made it difficult for the chief deputy to walk and talk at the same time, and Joanna soon regretted her own double layers of clothing. Removing her jacket, she slung it over her shoulder as she trudged along behind him on the rocky verge of the road.

  They crested the top of a steep rise and entered a small basin. A fenced-off area in the middle surrounded the glory hole’s mound of tailings. Parked nearby was Ernie Carpenter’s crew-cab pickup and Harold Patterson’s much-used International Scout. Off to one side was a vintage decommissioned fire truck—a pumper—semipermanently positioned next to a metal stock tank. A length of hose led from a spigot on the truck’s tank to the one on the ground. Joanna surmised the truck was used to haul water to thirsty stock in the Rocking P’s upper pastures whenever necessary. From the desiccated cow pies littering the area, Joanna knew this section of pasture wasn’t currently in use.

  Seated on the running board of the old truck was the red-haired, red-bearded giant Joanna recognized as Yuri Malakov. Two weeks earlier, he had come to church with Ivy. Joanna had seen him and assumed from things Marianne had told her that’s who the huge stranger had to be. But that Sunday had been right toward the end of the campaign. Instead of staying for after-church coffee and socializing, Joanna had rushed off to give a speech in Double Adobe.

  Seeing him at first glance when they topped the rise, Joanna assumed the Russian was wearing a blue work shirt. As she came closer, however, she realized he was naked from the waist up. What she had thought to be blue cloth was actually ink. Above a wide silver-and-turquoise belt buckle, Yuri’s massive chest was covered by a wild assortment of tattoos.

  He was leaning against the side of the truck with his eyes closed, dozing. Joanna had never seen such a display of tattoo art. For several long moments, she studied the amazingly detailed patterns that had been inked into his skin.

  Most of the pictures were surprisingly well crafted and artistically done, but the subject matter was anything but Russian. The picture covering most of the man’s chest showed a complicated bucking bronco complete with cowboy flailing a Stetson. Beneath that tattoo, lettered in English, was the caption COWBOY SAM.

  Two distinct versions of coiled rattlesnakes were inked onto the bunched muscles of his biceps. One forearm featured a hangman’s noose, while the other pictured a single long-stemmed rose. Beneath the rose were the letters “Yellow Rose of Texas.”

  Despite brilliant blue skies, native Arizonans still regard November as winter. For them, it’s no time to be lounging out in
the sun, soaking up rays, but Yuri Malakov came from another climate entirely. What his new neighbors experienced as cold, he considered balmy.

  Although Joanna was unaware of making a sound, Yuri’s eyes suddenly blinked open. As soon as he saw her standing a few feet away, he grabbed for his shirt and hurriedly pulled it on, scrambling to his feet and blushing in confusion.

  “So sorry,” he mumbled, in his severely broken English, clumsily fastening buttons as fast as he could. “So very sorry. I did not think woman would be here. Please excuse.”

  “It’s all right, Yuri. They say Ivy is the one who found Mr. Patterson?”

  “No. Yes. But she tell me to come here to look while she stays at ranch, at house. Later she ask me to bring police here.”

  “She knew where to look without actually coming here?” Joanna asked. “How did she do that?”

  “Those,” he said, jerking his head skyward. “She say go follow those birds. There also we find father.”

  Joanna glanced in the direction indicated. Far overhead, three huge buzzards, harbingers of death, circled the mountaintop in long, lazy circles. But they might just as easily have been circling over a road-killed rabbit or coyote rather than over the body of Ivy Patterson’s father.

  “What time did you call in the report?”

  Yuri shrugged. “Early,” he said. “Five or maybe four.”

  “Early-bird buzzards,” Joanna said. “They must have been out looking for worms.”

  Yuri looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Excuse?” he asked.

  Joanna shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she said. “An old joke.”

  The hair prickled warningly on the back of Joanna’s neck. There was no reason to tell Yuri Malakov that she knew either he was lying or else Ivy was. Even if the vultures had been up and circling overhead that early in the morning, they wouldn’t have been visible in the dark, not to someone three miles away, down in a valley.

  Joanna glanced toward the glory hole. While Joanna and Yuri had been talking, she had watched while Dick Voland used a winch and leather harness to lower Ernie down into the hole. Now, with Ernie back on the surface, the two men were earnestly conferring in tones hushed enough that none of the words carried as far as the fire truck.

  “Wait here,” Joanna said to Yuri. She walked to the glory-hole fence, eased her way through the strands of barbed wire, and joined the two men on the little mound of rock-chip tailings. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Ernie said slowly.

  “Accident or not?” Joanna asked, abandoning all hope that Harold Patterson had died of natural causes.

  “It’s no accident,” Ernie said firmly. “And no cave-in, either. Somebody bashed his skull in with a five-pound river rock.”

  “River rock?” Joanna repeated, looking around at the shards of brick-red shale that littered the basin. “There’s no river rock around here.”

  “That’s right. The closest place to get it would be the last crossing of Mule Mountain Creek at least half a mile away,” Ernie answered. “But that’s not the major problem.”

  “What is?”

  “Come look,” he said.

  Together, the three of them walked to the edge of the glory hole and looked down. The ugly stench of not-yet-disinfected death wicked up from the hole into Joanna’s face. The odor that had attracted vultures from miles around sickened her, causing a bubble of nausea to rise in her throat. She held her breath to contain it.

  “Here,” Ernie said, taking out a flashlight and handing it to her. “Use this.”

  Fighting back nausea and battling dizziness as well, Joanna moved forward and aimed the flashlight into the pitch-black hole. It was some time before her eyes adjusted to the gloom; before she could see anything at all in the glow of that frail artificial light.

  At last, though, the pale yellow beam illuminated something—Harold Patterson’s open, blankly staring eyes.

  “What about it?” Joanna asked, still not sure what she was supposed to be seeing.

  “Look under his shoulder,” Ernie Carpenter said. “Under his right shoulder.”

  By now Joanna could see well enough that she noticed river rocks scattered here and there on the floor of the hole. At first the white bulge sticking out from under Harold Patterson’s shoulder seemed like one of the same.

  “It’s just another rock, isn’t it?” she asked, keeping her voice controlled and steady.

  “I wish it were,” Ernie Carpenter said softly. “I wish to God it were. It’s a skull, Sheriff Brady. A human skull. It looks as though the rest of the skeleton is under Harold. It’s somebody who’s been down in that hole a hell of a lot longer than Harold Patterson has.”

  “But who?” Joanna asked.

  “I guess we’ll just have to find out, now, won’t we?” Dick Voland said.

  Joanna could have been mistaken, but it seemed as though the chief deputy was smiling to himself when he said it. But the meaningful look that passed between the two men required no interpretation.

  Federal EEOC guidelines notwithstanding, both Ernie Carpenter and Dick Voland regarded crime-scene investigation as an all-male preserve. They had expected Dave Hollicker’s roadblock to function as a No-Girls-Allowed notice, but she had ignored the warning.

  It would have been easy for Joanna to take the easy way out. For her to stagger away, grope her way over to the fire truck, collapse on the running board, and wait for her head to stop swimming. Instead, steeling herself against the fainthearted impulse, she stayed where she was and kept her eyes focused full on Harold Patterson’s face.

  “Yes, we will,” she said softly, underscoring the word “we.” “Now how about telling me exactly how you propose to go about it?”

  Twenty-Two

  JOANNA WALKED back to where Yuri Malakov was sitting on the running board of the decommissioned fire truck. He moved aside far enough to make room for her. Sinking down beside him, she wiped her clammy forehead with the sleeve of her jacket and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the memory of Harold Patterson’s eerily blank eyes. She wanted to forget how they had caught the glow of Ernie Carpenter’s flashlight and stared dully back up at her through the darkness.

  Yuri glanced at Joanna with some sympathy, and he seemed in tune with her reaction. “Is bad thing,” he muttered. “Very bad thing.”

  Joanna studied his broad face. Thick eyebrows hunched over heavily lidded eyes. Although from a distance he had appeared to be relaxed and snoozing, she realized now that his carefully hooded eyes were observing everything about him with intense interest.

  Ernie Carpenter, leaving the glory hole for the moment, carted a cumbersome suitcase of equipment from his traveling crime-lab van to a newly dried puddle in the road. There, on hands and knees, he was attempting to make plaster casts of the tire tracks left in crusted mud. Meanwhile, Dick Voland stood beside Ernie’s van, speaking into the radio microphone and gesturing with his other hand.

  “Detective Voland is trying to locate a sump pump,” Joanna explained.

  “A what?”

  “An emergency pump and a generator to run it. They need to empty the water out of the bottom of the hole before they attempt to bring up either body, Patterson or the other one.”

  Suddenly, Yuri Malakov was no longer lounging against the side of the truck. He loomed over Voland and Joanna, dwarfing them both. “Two peoples?” he demanded, his smoldering dark eyes boring into Joanna’s. “More than one? More than Mr. Patterson?”

  Joanna realized at once that she had blundered and spoken out of turn. That kind of information about an ongoing investigation shouldn’t have been casually mentioned to a passing acquaintance who happened to appear at the crime scene. But it was too late to take it back, and there didn’t seem to be any justification in lying about it.

  She nodded. “Detective Carpenter seems to have found another body, a skeleton, under Harold Patterson. He had fallen directly on top of it.”

  “Who?�
� Yuri asked.

  “We don’t know that,” Joanna answered. “The other victim has been dead for a long time—years, most likely. Until they can search the glory hole for evidence, there’s no way to tell.”

  Yuri Malakov lurched to his feet. “Ivy must know about this,” he declared.

  “No,” Joanna objected. “That kind of news should come from one of the investigating officers, from someone official.”

  Yuri shook his shaggy head impatiently. “Investigators busy. I am not busy. I tell her.”

  With that, Yuri stomped away toward the Scout, leaving Joanna no choice but to trail along after him. He was a huge man. The idea of her physically restraining someone his size was laughable. Joanna glanced back toward Dick Voland, who was still talking on the radio. He would be of no help. Besides, she didn’t want to tell him about this. She didn’t want to admit to blabbing out of turn.

  “Wait,” Joanna said. “If you’ll give me a ride back down to my car, I’ll come with you and tell Ivy myself.”

  Yuri stopped next to the Scout with one hand possessively on the door latch. “Okay,” he agreed readily. “I drive. You tell.”

  As they maneuvered past the spot in the road where Ernie Carpenter was working on the plaster casts, Joanna directed Yuri to stop. “I need to tell Detective Carpenter where I’m going.”

  As if that was necessary, she thought afterward. Ernie barely glanced up when she spoke to him, acknowledging their departure with an inattentive frown. By then the homicide detective was totally focused on the solitary pursuit of obtaining evidence. Anything that removed distracting onlookers was to be regarded as a help, not a hindrance.