by R. P. Dahlke
She swung around, hands on her plump hips, furious that I would presume to keep her from her rescue. “What is it now? I’m exhausted, hot and sweaty, and I just want to get the hell outta here.”
She blinked and looked down at her feet. “There it is. Come to mama,” she said, reaching for the rope.
The rope, however, was a couple of feet behind her, and that’s when I heard the distinct sound of a warning rattle.
Pearlie lurched upright, screamed and stumbled back into a bush.
There was a whisper of movement in the dry grass as the rattler slithered away.
I ran to her side, but my cousin was still kicking and screaming.
“Oh my God,” she said, eyes wide, holding out her right hand. “I’ve been bit!”
I squatted down and looked at the hand. I found one tiny puncture on her forefinger, but the skin was already an angry red.
“If you were wearing your contacts you’d have seen that snake wasn’t a rope.”
“Stupid me.” She sniffled, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “And here I thought I couldn’t afford to waste any water on tears, when now I’m gonna die!”
Fussing at her about her contact lenses when she’d been bitten by a rattler was also pretty stupid. She’d saved my life and proved her mettle more than once in my book. I owed her. Certainly, I could manage my impatience better than this.
“You just have to stay calm,” I said, “I’ll get Caleb and we’ll drive down and pick you up.”
Pearlie whimpered. “Don’t leave me. I’ll die before you come back.”
Well, this wasn’t working, so I reverted to being her older cousin. “You’re not going to die, so just suck it up kiddo. We’ll get you to the hospital and the antivenom you need.”
She sniffled once more, but my strong dose of reality finally did the trick and she quietly nodded.
Leaving the safety of the goat track, I was drenched in sweat by the time Caleb reached down and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me up onto the road.
I leaned in to hug him then recoiled. This wasn’t Caleb. It was Deputy Dick, his brow furrowed in an angry glare. “Where’s your friend?”
There was nothing to do but pray he wasn’t here to kill us. “She’s been bit by a snake.”
“I figured it was something bad. That woman has some lungs on her.” He tsked and said, “You got no damn business being where there’re rattlers.”
“Not by choice! Your granddad ran us off with his shotgun.”
He visibly flinched. “Sorry about that. If you’d just called instead of going to the house, I would’ve warned you this wasn’t one of his good days. Where?”
“On her hand. She was going for the end of the rope you threw and touched a snake instead.”
“I meant how far down the trail is she?”
“About as far as the end of that rope you threw.”
“Then there’s no time to waste,” he said, pointing me to the passenger side. “Get in.”
I noticed that his truck was white, a big Dodge Ram with a chrome grill, and sure enough, it had a bull sack hanging off the trailer hitch.
I thought about resisting, but changed my mind. If Deputy Dumb-Ass wanted to kill us, all he had to do was wait until I got to the top and then kick me off the hill, leave my cousin to die of snakebite, and no one would think it was anything but an accident. It was the desert and people died out here. Caleb had barely made it, so how could two women expect anything different?
“Can you drive the truck down there?” I asked, forcing a calm voice I didn’t quite feel.
“Of course. It’s uphill that’s the problem. Buckle up and hang on,” he said, and the truck tipped its big nose over the ledge then flopped down on all four wheels. We bucked and jumped rocks, careened through bushes, dust smothering the windshield until he turned on the wipers.
“There she is,” I pointed.
I jumped out and ran to her side. Her face was pale and sweaty, but she was conscious. “We’re here, Pearlie, can you walk?”
When she nodded, I attempted to pull her to her feet. She swayed and moaned, shaking her head. “I-I can’t…”
Deputy Dick bent down and hoisted Pearlie up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “What the hell you been eating?”
Pearlie’ head snapped up, her face red and tearstained. “If I’m too heavy, you can just put me down!”
Ignoring her outburst, he readjusted his grip and started up the goat track.
I struggled to keep up, but in spite of the deputy’s dour behavior, he was incredibly gentle with my cousin when he settled her inside the truck.
“You get in next to her,” he ordered, hurrying around to the driver’s side.
Pearlie slumped against my shoulder and closed her eyes, all the fight gone out of her.
He got into the driver’s seat, started the engine and tilted the A/C vent to flow over Pearlie’s dirty red face. A fierce expression crossed his features. “The hospital in Sierra Vista has snake bite serum. They’ll fix her up. Hang on, it’s gonna get rough.”
Though the truck bucked and jostled like a rodeo bull trying to unseat its hapless riders, we made it to the bottom intact.
As we passed his house, I looked at the deceptively serene setting. “Your granddad won’t torch my rental car, will he?”
“I don’t know why you’d think that. My granddad’s a lot of things but he’s not a pyromaniac.”
“He took potshots at us and forced us to run up that hill.”
“I came for you, didn’t I?” he said, his shoulders hunched defensively.
He was right. He rescued us and now he was driving as fast as he could to get her help.
“Thank you,” I said. “How did you know where to find us?”
“The waitress at the café said you two were asking about me. I wish you hadn’t gone back to our ranch. I knew it would upset him.”
“Upset him? Pearlie and I could’ve died on that hill.”
“I told you, today is not one of his good days.”
“Oh? He seems to think we’re trying to frame you for Bethany’s murder. What’s that about?”
“Granddad has dementia. I doubt he knew what he was talking about.”
“He sounded pretty lucid to me. He knew who we were and that Mac Coker hired my cousin to help find his daughter’s killer.”
“Then maybe it’s one of his good days,” he said, going back to staring at the road. “It comes and goes, okay?”
“What’s his problem with Mac Coker?”
The deputy glanced at me before pulling onto Highway 92 and punching the gas. A few miles passed before he spoke again. “Mac Coker bought the lien on our property a while back. I’ve been trying to help, but even with two jobs I can’t make enough, not in time for the sale coming up at the end of this year.”
“Mac owns your property?”
“The tax lien. We have to pay it back or he gets it for the back taxes. In the last few years, he’s picked up four other properties along Red Mountain Road. It’s the drought. Ranchers have been quitting their places right and left. Dicks have owned property here since before Arizona was a state, and losing that land is gonna kill my granddad.”
I looked to the south where a rusty trickle of water and a hard metal fence bisected the U.S. from Mexico.
What were the chances that a man like Mac Coker with his ties to organized crime was getting ready to become a real estate developer? Or was he paving the way for a massive corridor for drug transportation?
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Chapter Twenty-eight:
With Pearlie pressed against my shoulder, Deputy Dick sped toward Sierra Vista and the antivenom my cousin needed for the rattlesnake bite.
I looked over my shoulder at the mountains sheltering our property, the Dicks’, and Bethany Coker’s art compound. What seemed safe and welcoming when we first got here, now looked dangerous and forbidding. And rattlesnakes aside, the idea that Mac Cocker was acquiring land along the back
side of Red Mountain Road now appeared more than just suspicious. “What other places has Mac Coker been able to acquire through tax lien sales?” I asked the deputy.
“The two ranches on either side of us. The folks there were old and ready to retire anyway, but not my granddad. He thinks he’s keeping it for my inheritance. Damned old fool.”
He looked over at Pearlie. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her breathing shallow. “He’ll be after your place next.”
A county zoning map might confirm it, but I would bet he was after property he could keep free of residents. Everything he could get his hands on that lined up from the border to the Coker place. Bethany’s art compound would become something else entirely. He’d boot the artists so he could shelter illegals, mules and itinerant workers. The barns and outbuilding could be turned into sorting and storage for the drug trafficking.
And he would need someone in law enforcement. I knew from my experiences with cops in Modesto that bribing a cop wasn’t out of the question. The police chief took the time to answer a distress call from Mac Coker’s daughter instead of letting someone else do it. Or did he answer it because he was working for Mac on the side?
Then too, Deputy Abel Dick worked for the sheriff’s department and now seemed a pretty good time to ask him a question.
“Why’d you run me off the road the other day?” I asked.
His lips tightened into a thin line. “Nobody uses that road but me, and I didn’t know it was you driving. All I saw was a Jeep hogging the road.”
“That road ends at Bethany’s place.”
Something in Deputy Dick’s eyes flashed, but before he could answer, Pearlie moaned and opened her eyes.
“It hurts. How much longer?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes,” the deputy said, flooring the gas pedal. “If we get DPS on our tail, at least we’ll have an escort to the hospital.”
He slowed only to tap his brakes and honk at the occasional slow moving motorist then sped around them, and I was very relieved to see the emergency entrance come into view.
In spite of his bulk, Deputy Dick hopped out and ran around to the passenger side. Yanking open the door he impatiently signaled for me to get out, then reached in and gently lifted Pearlie out of the cab and carried her into the ER.
With the attending physician seeing to Pearlie, I asked the deputy to wait while I gave Pearlie’s health care cards to the business office.
He shuffled his feet for a few minutes then mumbled that he needed to get back to work and loped for the exit.
I shoved Pearlie’s health cards at the bookkeeper, and hurried after him.
When I called his name, he rounded on me, looking ready for a fight. “What do you want, Miss Bains?”
I took a step back. “I just wanted to thank you again for saving my cousin.”
“Are you going to tell Detective Tom?” he asked.
“About your granddad and his shotgun? Of course not.”
“You could, you know. On account of him, your cousin was bitten by a rattler. I’m supposed to be a lawman, and I can’t even protect folks from my own family.”
“Your granddad is under a lot of stress, I understand that.”
“Won’t make any difference if you do or don’t. He’s about to lose the only home he’s ever known, and I can’t do a thing about it. I doubt I’ll even last through this first year in the sheriff’s department.”
“I’m sure it will get better with time, Abel,” I said putting my hand on his arm.
He looked at my hand and tears filled his eyes. “All I ever wanted to do was be a sheriff like my dad and grandpa, but I don’t stand a chance, not with the bunch I work with.”
“Your father and grandfather were sheriffs, too?”
“Dick used to be a respected name in this county, and it helped when I was applying for the job, but I’m not light on my feet and I don’t react quick like I should, or so my sergeant says. I might as well quit now.”
Here was the opener I needed and I grabbed it.
“As far as I can see,” I said, “you’re a hero. You saved Pearlie, and you’re doing everything you can to save your granddad’s home. I think if we worked together, we could find Bethany’s killer, which also might give you the boost you need in the department, and if everything falls into place, maybe there could be some kind of resolution with Mac Coker too. What do you say?”
Abel’s brows scrunched up in thought. “Gee. I-I don’t know. Work on a case outside of the sheriff’s department—that’s against the rules, you know.”
I could tell him that working outside of the law was actually kind of fun, but then I wasn’t standing in this young man’s shoes, seeing my dreams of becoming a real lawman slip out of my grasp.
“Abel, think how grateful the department will be when you’re the one who breaks this case. Besides, I suspect Mac Coker doesn’t want any publicity, only Bethany’s killer. So what do you say?”
He slipped his hand into his pants pocket, brought out a package of gum, and offered me a piece.
Momentarily flustered by this maneuver to side-step my question, I watched him unwrap the gum from its silver foil, fold it into quarters, and then insert it into his mouth. It was such a familiar gesture I had to look away to keep from laughing.
When my dad wanted to put a little space between a question and an answer, he did exactly the same thing. Unwrap a stick of gum. Fold it up. Chew.
If Abel’s sergeant and his peers thought him slow, perhaps it was only because they didn’t understand that he was simply evaluating the facts before making a decision.
“If I took what I know to Homicide,” he said, “they’d just make dirty jokes and that, well, it wouldn’t be right.”
I’d had enough of my own troubles with unsuitable remarks from police officers to agree.
“What would they have to joke about? Was it something you did?”
“Not me. It’s something I know about Bethany. I-I think it’s what got her killed, but you’d have to promise not to tell Detective Tom.”
He would agree, but only as long as I didn’t tell the homicide detective? If he was lying, and was in Mac Coker’s pocket, I might be a mine pit’s next victim. On the other hand, what did I have to prove that Mac was a murderer? Nothing, unless I could enlist this young man’s help.
“If you’ll work with us, my cousin and me, and we find the proof we need to get an arrest, you should be the one to take it to the detective.”
He chewed on his gum, rocking on his feet, heel to toe and back again. “I wish it could be like that. But I’d get tossed out of the department sooner rather than later. No, it’s got to come from you, or no deal.”
He was waiting for me to say the one thing that would allow him to let go of a secret that could net us a killer.
“Why don’t you tell me what you know, and then we’ll decide what to do about together.”
I was not totally surprised to learn why he’d chosen to keep this secret from the investigating detectives, and it certainly explained Bethany’s very private lifestyle, and perhaps why her cell phone and laptop were still missing.
Before he left, he said, “I’ll see that you get your rental car delivered to your home later today.”
.
Chapter Twenty-nine:
My cousin was asleep, her bandaged hand propped up on some pillows, an IV in the other arm. I nudged her shoulder. “Pearlie. Wake up. I have good news.”
Her eyes fluttered and opened. “I was peacefully dreaming, but now that I am awake, I can honestly say that I hate you.”
“Oh, please,” I said, readjusting the pillows behind her head. “It was your idea to visit Mr. Dick’s house, not mine. Besides, we have some help in the sheriff’s department.”
“Really?” she groaned at the effort to sit upright, and motioned for me to raise the back of her bed. “So who’d you get? Sheriff Tom?”
I hit the button on her bed control. “Better?”
“Oh ye
ah. I need my lipstick, please.”
I retrieved her purse and handed it to her.
“It’s Deputy Dick,” I said. “The poor kid is struggling as the new deputy in the department, and he’s willing to help our investigation.”
“What could that big goof possibly know that could help us?”
“That big goof saved your life. Or don’t you remember?”
“No. I don’t remember anything after that darn snake bit me. Is my Lady Smith still in my purse?”
“Other than digging through your wallet for insurance cards, I haven’t looked and no one else has bothered it. I did notice the picture of Mad-Dog Schwartz though. I thought you were over him.”
“I am, but I like to remind myself about the things that don’t work, and I swear I’m running out of points to avoid. Aren’t there any good ones left?”
“Caleb—but you can forget it—he’s taken.”
“Not my type anyway.”
“And maybe that’s your problem. Your type always disappoints you. As for your Lady Smith, save your ammo, I’m not wasting time hiking around the hills looking for a rattlesnake when we have a killer to catch.”
“Thirsty,” she said, pointing to the water cup on the table.
I held the plastic container so she could sip from the straw. She waved it away and asked, “So why is Deputy Dumb-Ass willing to help us?”
“You better start calling him by his real name, Abel Dick, and you’ll never guess why he agreed to help.”
“My head hurts and my hand is throbbing. Either tell me or go away so I can get some sleep.”
“Do you remember Jason and Reina telling us that Bethany had a talent for helping broken people?”
She blinked and yawned. “Dumb-Ass was one of them?”
“Now that he’s on our side, please refer to him as Deputy Dick or Abel Dick. He worked his way through college installing TV’s and exterior routers for remote homes in the county. One installation was Bethany Coker’s house.”
“Go on.”