Outlaw Mountain (13 page)

Carefully Joanna pinned the badge to the pocket of Junior’s shirt. “All right now, can you raise your right hand?”

Both hands shot high in the air. “Do you swear to be a good deputy, Junior?” Joanna asked.

Junior’s face split into a wide smile and he jumped to his feet. “Me good,” he said. “Junior very good de-de-deputy.” It took several times before he could finally make his lips form the unfamiliar word. “Go now,” he added. “Go right now. Get in car.”

“Right,” Joanna said. “We’ll go get in the car.”

Junior raced down the aisle, with Joanna and Father Mulligan following behind. “That was very impressive,” the priest said under his breath. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Desperation,” she told him. “Desperation plain and simple.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Between Saint David and Tombstone, Joanna said little and Junior said even less. He sat huddled in the far corner of the passenger seat with his arms clutching his chest. When Joanna asked him a direct question, he ducked his head and stared out the windshield without any acknowledgment that she had spoken to him.

What the hell have I let myself in for?
Joanna asked herself. Obviously Junior didn’t belong in jail, not even in protective custody—as if that would be protection enough from some of the casually abusive thugs populating the Cochise County jail. The county hospital down in Douglas contained a mental ward, but Joanna was sure Junior wouldn’t qualify as a mental patient, either. He may not have been in possession of all his faculties, but he certainly wasn’t crazy. He was lost. Abandoned. And, as Joanna could see, terribly, terribly sad.

So if jail and the hospital are both out of the question, what do 1 do with him?
she asked herself. In the past she would have gone straight to Marianne Maculyea with that kind of thorny problem. Marianne had the unerring knack of knowing just where to turn for help in sticky situations, but at this point in Mari’s life, she was at such a low ebb that she couldn’t even help herself. How on earth, then, could she be expected to help someone else?

That was as far as Joanna had managed to noodle the problem by the time she reached Tombstone. Once there, she had to call in to Dispatch to get directions to Alice Rogers’ home. It was on the far northern outskirts of town, past the dusty pioneer cemetery, and off on a dirt track called Scheiffelin Monument Road. At the far end of that road was a rocky cairn containing the worldly remains of Ed Scheiffelin. Scheiffelin was a hardy prospector whose silver strike had been the original foundation of Tombstone’s fabulous if short-lived mineral wealth.

Joanna’s father, D. H. Lathrop, had venerated the cussed independence of Ed Scheiffelin and others like him. With the Sonora Desert alive with marauding Apaches, Scheiffelin had left Tucson alone and on foot with little more than a mule, a chaw of tobacco, and a dream of achieving impossible wealth. And when that dream came true—when the silver claims other people had scoffed at came to fruition—Scheiffelin had gone on to wealth, fame, and high living without ever forgetting his humble roots. Years later, before he died in Oregon, he had asked to be returned to Arizona and buried near the site of that initial mining claim.

For D. H. Lathrop, people like Ed Scheiffelin epitomized the heroes of the Old West in a way the good guys and had guys—the Earps and the Clantons—did not. Lathrop had filled his daughter’s head with stories about Ed’s greedy partners who had done their best to cheat him out of what was rightfully his. Her mother had disparaged everything about Tombstone—the clapboard buildings, the phony gunfights, and the tacky tourist souvenirs. For Eleanor Lathrop the place was little more than a vulgar tourist trap—something to be despised and certainly not patronized.

Joanna had grown up with her father’s love of legends on the one hand and with her mother’s unflinching disapproval on the other. Thinking about Alice Rogers, it made Joanna sad that as far as she knew Alice and her father had never met. She sensed that D. H. Lathrop would have had much in common with a woman whose whole life seemed to be tied in with Tombstone’s fabled mineral wealth. In fact, Joanna wondered now: Did Alice’s mining claim at Outlaw Mountain have anything to do with her death?

Joanna pulled up to the group of cars parked on both sides of the road. Alice’s house was completely surrounded by the thick six-foot-tall adobe-and-stucco fence Susan Jenkins had told her about. Stopping for a moment outside the arched wrought-iron gate, Joanna considered the workmanship. Regardless of how much Farley Adams had been paid for building the fence, it was clear the construction project had been a labor of love. On either side of the gate and set at ten-foot intervals were beautifully wrought sconces made of turquoise-shaded stained glass and powered by carefully concealed wiring.

Having seen the fence, Joanna expected the house to be a luxurious hacienda-style affair. Instead, she found herself looking through the gateway toward a modest slump-block building that looked as though it had been thrown up on the cheap sometime in the fifties. With Junior tagging along, Joanna couldn’t risk venturing inside for fear evidence might be disturbed or destroyed. Instead, she flagged down a deputy and sent her into the house to locate Detective Carbajal and send him hack to the gate.

In the deepening twilight, Joanna noticed that lights showed at every window in Alice Rogers’ house. An ordinary passer-by, seeing those lights and all the extra vehicles, might have assumed there was a party going on inside.
It’s a party, all
right,
Joanna thought grimly.
Your ordinary crime scene fiesta.

A harried-looking Jaime Carbajal hustled down the walk. “Hello, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to check on how things are going.”

“Okay, I guess,” he replied. “We’re working the problem. Looks like a straight-out burglary—no TV, no radios, no jewelry. We’re finding lots of prints, and we’re collecting them all. Between this house and the other one, that’s a lot of ground to cover. It’s going to take time.”

The detective paused and glanced questioningly toward Junior, who clutched his arms and gazed skyward, saying nothing. “Who’s this?” Jaime asked.

“I’ve run into a little complication,” Joanna explained quickly. “Junior here got separated from his family, and we’re trying to help find them. Which means, by the way, that I’m not going to be able to go out to Gleeson to check on your other crew.”

“That’s no problem. They’re about to close up for the night anyway. Besides, you’re driving one of the Civvys today, aren’t you?”

Joanna nodded. “Be advised,” Jaime Carbajal said. “The road to Outlaw Mountain is a mess. Strictly four-wheel-drive. We’re having to ferry the crime scene guys in and out in one of the Broncos.”

“What all are you finding?” Joanna asked.

He nodded toward Alice Rogers’ glowing house. “It’s just like the daughter said. This place has been ransacked. No way to tell exactly how much is missing, since we don’t have any idea whit was in the house to begin with. Well have to get relatives to help us with an inventory. The mobile home over in Gleeson looks like somebody did a fast job of packing rather than tearing the place apart. If you’re asking for my best guess, I’d say whoever left there did so in one hell of a hurry.”

“As in on the run?”

Carbajal nodded. “Maybe.”

Joanna thought about that. Farley Adams taking off in a hurry didn’t square with Pima County’s kids-as-killers pro-gram, but it was something to check out. If Farley Adams had nothing to hide, why had he run away?

“Do we have any idea what kind of vehicle he’d be driving?” Joanna asked.

“We do have that. A vintage Jeep, a post-World War II Willys model. It belongs to Alice Rogers.”

“Why is everybody so intent on stealing Alice Rogers’ cars? And how did you find that out, Department of Transportation?”

“No,” Jaime said. “I talked to Nadine Harvey, Farley Adams’ neighbor. She runs that junkyard in Gleeson right at the turnoff to the mine. As near as I can tell, she spends most of her life standing out in her yard sweeping chinaberries out of the dirt and watching everything that goes on.”

“Did she have any idea when Farley took off?”

“She knew exactly. Said it was yesterday afternoon. She claims Adams came hauling ass down the road about an hour or so after Frank Montoya left.”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Joanna mused. “That means he has a long head start on us, over twenty-four hours. Have you done anything about finding him?”

“Not yet. I’ve had my hands full, but I will. What do you think, an APB?” he added.

“No. I think that would be premature. Besides, a Jeep that old isn’t going to be hard to find. He may have headed for the border, where he can still buy leaded gas. For now, let’s post the Jeep as a stolen vehicle and wait for somebody to spot it for us. That way, by the time we locate Farley Adams, we may know more about what we’re up against.”

Next to Joanna, Junior stirred restlessly, shifting from one foot to the other, moaning softly. “Go,” he whimpered, making his first sound in almost an hour. “Go. Go. Go.”

Glad that he was speaking to her at last, Joanna did her best to reassure him. “It’s all right, Junior,” she crooned. “We’ll be leaving soon. Just let me finish talking to Detective Carbajal.” She turned back to Jaime. “Sorry I can’t be more of a help right now,” she told him. “As you can see, I—”

“You’ve got your hands full, Sheriff Brady,” Jaime said. “Don’t worry. You take care of him. I can handle this.”

“But I’ll want you at tomorrow morning’s briefing,” Joanna said. “With everything that’s been happening today—here, in Tucson, and out at Sierra Vista—we’re going to need to start the day with firsthand information on all fronts.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jaime said. “I’ll be there.”

By now, Junior had edged away from Joanna and was skittering down the road. He had already passed the Crown Victoria by the time she was able to dash after him, catch him by the arm, and bring him back to the vehicle.

“Go,” he said again, more urgently this time. “Junior go. Junior go now!”

“All right,” Joanna agreed. “We’re going. Come get in the car.”

He tried to shake loose of her hand. Remembering what had happened to Sister Ambrose, Joanna held firm. After a momentary struggle, he quieted. For a matter of seconds Joanna wondered if she should lock him in the backseat rather than letting him ride up front with her, but by then he was no longer fighting. She helped him into the front passenger seat and buckled the seat belt across him. Then she hurried around the car and climbed in herself.

She had started the car, backed up, and completed a U-turn when the sharp and unmistakable odor of urine flooded her nostrils. Her heart sank with the sudden realization of what Junior had really meant when he said he wanted to go. She knew instantly that Junior’s particular brand of “go” was going to play havoc with the Civvy’s cloth-covered interior.

Embarrassed for Junior and angry with herself for not understanding his urgent plea, Joanna floorboarded the gas pedal. There was no point then in stopping the car and trying to hustle him into a rest room. The damage was already done.

What are the guys in Motor Pool going to think when I bring this one in? she wondered.

On the seat beside her, Junior buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “Sorry,” he wailed over and over again. “Junior sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Joanna said, swallowing her own anger in hopes of calming him. “You tried to tell me and I didn’t understand. We’ll be home soon, Junior. We’ll take care of it.”

He raised his head hopefully. “Home?” he said.

A feeling of total helplessness washed over Joanna. She had no idea where his home was or how to take him there. In his innocence he thought she did and trusted her to make good her promise. How could she do that? And how would she deliver on what she had told Father Mulligan, that she would take care of Holy Trinity’s little lost lamb?

Where would she find something as simple as dry clothing for him to wear? There was nothing out at High Lonesome Ranch that would fit him. Joanna had long since sent Andy’s things to a local clothing bank. Even if she was able to solve the basic issue of dressing Junior, what would she do with him after that? For one thing, there was the question of bed-rooms. The house at High Lonesome Ranch was a modest two-bedroom affair with no guest room. Butch had slept fine on Joanna’s cloth-covered sofa. With Junior that wouldn’t be possible—for several obvious reasons.

On the seat beside her, an inconsolable Junior once again dissolved into tears. His despairing, muffled sobs were enough to break Joanna’s heart.

“Hush now,” she said. “Do you like to sing?”

Continuing to whimper, he didn’t answer.

They were through Tombstone now, past the airport, and coming down the long curve into the upper San Pedro Valley. Off to the right—a good twenty miles across the valley—the combined lights of Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca glimmered along the base of the mountains. Ahead of them, in the darkened sky over the Mule Mountains, a single star—the evening star—glittered brightly. Seeing it reminded Joanna of some of the trips she had made back and forth to Tucson when Jenny was a baby. Driving by herself, there had been no way to comfort her crying child but to sing. Would that same magic work on Junior?

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” Joanna began. The familiar tune filled the night. At the sound of her singing, Junior quieted a little. He continued to sniffle and choke, but his heart-wrenching sobs eased.

By the time Joanna finished that first familiar ditty, Junior’s breath was coming in long, ragged shudders, but at least he was quieter. And Joanna felt better, too. As the last notes of “Little Star” died away, she moved on to another equally familiar tune. For the next twenty minutes, she sang every childhood song she could remember. There were ones from Sunday school: “Zacheus,” “Jesus Loves Me,” “I’ll Be a Sunbeam for Jesus.” There were ones from kindergarten: “Eensy Weensy Spider,” “I’m a Little Teapot,” and “Do the Hokey-Pokey.” By the time the Crown Victoria slid across the Divide and dropped down into Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon, Joanna had moved on to Girl Scout songs: “Make New Friends But Keep the Old” and “White Coral Bells.”