Page 12 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
To Butch’s amusement, his future son-in-law really did get down on one knee when he offered Jenny her plate. “Jennifer Ann Brady,” he said, “will you marry me?”
For a long moment after she saw it, Jenny simply stared. “Should I eat it or wear it?” she asked finally.
“Wear it by all means,” Nick said, “but is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a definite yes,” she said.
The joyous celebration that followed, complete with passable coyote yips from both Dennis and Sage, was cut short by another call on Joanna’s phone, this one from Dispatch.
Stepping away from the table, Joanna made the sudden switch from wife and mother to cop. “What’s up?” she asked. “Is the bridge in St. David okay?”
“The bridge is fine,” the dispatcher responded, “but one of the highway workers assigned to clear debris away from under it pulled out a duffel bag. Turns out there’s a dead body inside.”
“A body?” Joanna repeated.
“Yes,” came the answer. “I’m told it’s a little kid.”
Joanna took a steadying breath. “Okay,” she said. “I’m on my way.”
“Sorry,” she said to the tableful of people who were watching her. “Duty calls.”
Before leaving the house, she took her Glock out of the gun safe in the laundry room and belted it in place. Then, glancing outside, she added a slicker and her Stetson. Although she had one of those—regarded as necessary equipment for any self-respecting sheriff of Cochise County—she seldom wore it. Rainy days were the exception because the sturdy felt kept the rain out of her hair and away from her eyes.
Butch followed her out to the garage to kiss her goodbye. “What if the washes are running?” he asked.
There weren’t any washes on the highway between Bisbee and St. David. However, there were four major washes on High Lonesome Road between their ranch and Double Adobe Road. The Mule Mountains off to the west marked the back boundary of the ranch itself, and runoff from those could quickly turn those easterly-flowing washes into treacherous rapids.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, but she wasn’t entirely sure.
When Joanna reached the first wash, she actually got out to check. Muddy water was running a little over four inches deep, but with no visible wall of water approaching, she got back into her Interceptor, put it in low, and plowed on, making it through all four washes without pausing again or second-guessing herself.
Once on Highway 80, she took a deep breath and brought her vehicle up to speed as much as the water-soaked pavement allowed. It was still raining, but not nearly as hard as it had been. St. David was fifty minutes plus north of Bisbee. In this weather, she knew it was going to take all of that.
Thinking about what had happened at dinner, she gave Nick Saunders credit for popping the question in front of the whole family. That was something Joanna actually appreciated. Yes, in many ways she’d be losing a daughter once Jenny married, but that generous gesture on Nick’s part suggested that, in return, she might end up gaining another son.
With that settled in her mind, Joanna turned her thoughts to what she’d be encountering at the scene. She wasn’t sure which of her detectives would be there because Tom Hadlock was now in charge of scheduling. Dispatch had told her that the body in the duffel bag belonged to a child. What child? Whose? As far as she knew no missing children had been reported anywhere in her jurisdiction or even in Arizona, so if this wasn’t a currently active case, was it from somewhere else or was it maybe a cold case?
The body had been pulled from the San Pedro. Obviously, the bridge in St. David wasn’t the crime scene or even the actual dump site. And since the headwaters of the San Pedro were across the line in Mexico, there was a chance the victim was also from there. Captain Arturo Peña, the man in charge of the Federales unit based in Naco, Sonora, was someone Joanna knew personally. He had attended Bisbee High School as a foreign student and had eventually graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in criminal justice, but now wasn’t the time to call him—not until she knew more about what was going on.
Since the rain was still falling, there was no flash of blue sky as she emerged on the far side of the Mule Mountain Tunnel. The landscape around her was a dingy gray. The usually red rocky cliffs looming over the right-hand side of the highway had turned into cascading waterfalls. Once that water too fed into the Mule Mountain Creek, it would eventually flow into the San Pedro, making things farther downstream that much worse.
Approaching Tombstone, the rain let up a little, so Joanna took the opportunity to call in to Dispatch. “Who all’s working the scene in St. David?” she asked.
“Detective Howell is already there. Detective Raymond is ten minutes out. Highway 80 is coned down to one lane on the bridge. Deputies Creighton and Nuñez are directing traffic.”
“What about the ME?”
“Dr. Baldwin just arrived. Where are you?”
Kendra Baldwin’s home was up Tombstone Canyon in Old Bisbee, so it made sense that she’d be fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of Joanna.
“I’m just passing Tombstone Airport Road,” Joanna replied, but glancing out the window, the only evidence of an airport was a dirt runway surrounded by a few metal shacks scattered across a mostly barren landscape. There wasn’t a single aircraft in sight. “Let people know I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Once she arrived in St. David, due to the traffic backup, Joanna parked on the shoulder of the road, a good half mile from the bridge itself. She nodded in Deputy Nuñez’s direction as she walked past. Nearing the river, Joanna was amazed to see pooling water spread across an adjoining field leaving the cattle grazing there wading in three to four inches of standing water.
Prior to the 7.5 Sonoran Earthquake of 1887, the San Pedro had been deep enough that people had been able to use rafts to carry people and goods up and down the river. At that time, the area around what was now the small farming community of St. Davidhad been little more than a malarial swamp. After the quake, however, the river had gone underground. These days there was seldom more than a trickle of water in the riverbed. Today, however, it was filled by a roaring flood that overflowed the riverbanks.
Coming closer, Joanna saw a clutch of people gathered in the middle of the bridge’s eastbound lanes where someone was erecting a small metal and canvas canopy. It wasn’t until Joanna reached the bridge itself that she was able to see the blue cloth bundle sheltering underneath the temporary structure. Just then a puff of wind blew the distinctive smell of human decomposition into Joanna’s nostrils. If this was a cold case, it wasn’t nearly cold enough.
