Rattlesnake Crossing (5 page)

Joanna considered. As far as she knew, no crime had been committed. She was there to talk with Clyde. The man certainly wasn’t a suspect in any ongoing investigation.

"So are you coming or not?" Belle urged.

Shrugging, Joanna stepped over the threshold. Her first Impression upon entering the hot and stuffy little house was that a goat lived there. The place stank. It smelled of dirty mocks and dirty underwear, old shoes, stale beer, and cigarettes. Even though the unscreened windows stood wide open, without air-conditioning, the heat inside the room was overwhelming. The room was tall and narrow with a rust-stained tin ceiling. A single light fixture dangled from the center of the room. Ratty, broken-down furniture was littered with a collection of beer cans, paper trash, garbage, and bugs.

"'That's the other thing about Clyde," Belle said. "His mama never taught him about cleanliness bein' next to godliness and all that, and he never did learn how to pick up after hisself, either. As you can see, once't I quit doing for him, the whole place went to hell in a handbasket. Hang on," she added. "If you think it's bad out here, you sure as heck don't want to see the bedroom. He allus sleeps in just his birthday suit with hardly any covers."

Joanna nodded. "You go on ahead," she agreed. "I'll be happy to wait out here."

Belle lumbered toward a short hallway. Beneath filthy, chipped linoleum, the aged plank floor groaned in protest with each passing step.

"Clyde?" Belle said tentatively, tapping on a dingy gray door that might once have been painted white. "You in there? It's me—Belle. There's somebody here to see you. A lady, so don't you come wanderin' out with no clothes on, you hear?"

There was no reply. In the answering stillness of the house, there was only a faint but insistent mechanical sound that Joanna assumed had to be coming from the bedroom air conditioner Belle had mentioned earlier.

Belle knocked on the door again. "Clyde?" she said insistently. "Listen here, you gotta wake up now. It's late. After three, but if you're very nice to me, I might consider whipping you up an omelet just because. Okay?"

Again there was no answer. Belle glanced apologetically over her shoulder in Joanna's direction. "Sorry about this. The man always did sleep like a damned log. Guess I'm gonna have'ta go give him a shake. If you'll just wait here ..."

With that Belle opened the bedroom door. As soon as she did so, a chilly draft filtered into the room, carrying with it an evil-smelling vapor, one that totally obliterated all other odors. That putrid smell was one Sheriff Joanna Brady recognized and had encountered before—the awful scent of death and the rancid stench of decaying flesh. Without even seeing it, Joanna guessed what kind of horror lay beyond that open door, but for a time, Belle seemed oblivious.

"Clyde?" she said again. "Wake up, will you?"

Then, after a moment of silence with only the air conditioner humming in the background, the whole house was rent by a terrible, heart-wrenching, wordless shriek. Hearing it, Joanna cleared the living room in two long strides. When she reached the doorway, she stopped long enough to observe a scene that might have been lifted straight from some grade-B horror movie.

With her cigarette still in her mouth, Belle had crossed the room to where a male figure lay on an old-fashioned metal-framed bed with a sagging single mattress and no box springs. Just as she had predicted, the man was naked. Above him swirled a cloud of flies.

As Joanna stepped inside she saw Belle lift the man up by the shoulders. Belle began shaking him back and forth the way a heedless child might shake a loose-jointed Raggedy Andy doll. It was only then, when she raised the man off the pillow, that Joanna realized Clyde Philips wasn't entirely naked. A black plastic garbage bag covered his face and was fastened tightly around his neck with a belt.

Seeing the way the head flopped back and forth, there was no question in Joanna's mind that the bag had already completed its awful work. No amount of shaking would awaken him. Clyde Philips. He was dead.

"You gotta wake up, Clyde," Belle Philips was sobbing am she shook the body back and forth. "Don't joke with me now. It's not funny."

Fighting to control her gag reflexes, Joanna ventured far enough into the room to lay a restraining hand on the distraught woman's shoulder. "It's too late," she said gently. "Leave him be now, Belle. You'll have to leave him be."

Still holding her dead husband in a sitting position, Belle Philips swung around and glared at Joanna. The look on her face was one of such baleful rage that for an instant Joanna thought the other woman was about to take a swing at her. Warily trying to move out of range, she stepped back. And it was that one full step that saved her.

After a second or two, Belle seemed to lose interest in Joanna. Instead, she let go of the body. As the dead weight of Clyde Philips sank back onto the bed, she threw herself on top of it.

Watching from a few feet away, Joanna was mystified by the gesture. There was no sense to it. There was no way to tell if Belle hoped her smothering, all-enveloping embrace might warm the chilled body or somehow force breath back into the lifeless corpse. Suddenly, under the combined weight of both bodies, the frail old bedstead could bear no more. With a creak and a groan, it gave a lurch. Next, the two ends—head and foot alike—seemed to fold together like someone trying unsuccessfully to shuffle a gigantic deck of cards. Then the whole thing listed to one side, crashed to the floor, and disappeared as the wooden floor disintegrated beneath it.

Almost a minute went by before the dust cleared enough for Joanna to see what had happened. Coughing and squinting through tear-filled eyes, she found herself standing on the edge of a jagged wooden cliff. The aged floor, weakened by generations of hardworking termites, had simply collapsed into the earthen crawl space under the house.

Gingerly, Joanna edged over to the musty abyss and looked down. As the dust cleared, she could see a rough dirt surface five or six feet below. In the dim, dusty gloaming she could see Clyde—at least she caught a glimpse of one naked leg. She could also see the glowing end of the cigarette. Belle, however, was nowhere in sight.

"Belle?" Joanna called. "Are you there? Are you all right?"

No answer.

Joanna knew that the cool, moist earth underneath the house could very well be a haven for any number of unwelcome critters from black widow spiders to scorpions, centipedes, and worse. In her old life, Joanna Brady wouldn't have ventured into that crawl space on a bet. But now it was her job. Her duty. Belle Philips was down there, possibly badly hurt and most likely unconscious.

Looking around, Joanna located a bedside table that had been far enough from the hole that it hadn't tumbled in. Finding a floor joist that still seemed sturdy enough to hold her weight, Joanna lowered the table down as far as she could reach into the crawl space. She had to drop it the last foot or so, but fortunately, it landed upright and stayed that way. Thankful that her skirt and blazer were permanent press, she lowered herself onto the table and climbed down. Once in the crawl space, she spent a few minutes adjusting to the dim light so she could find Belle.

When the bed crashed through the floor, it had spilled Belle off and sent her rolling away from the hole. Fighting an attack of claustrophobia, Joanna finally located the unconscious woman lying with her head against the foundation. By then, Clyde Philips' ex-wife seemed to be coming around.

"Where am I?" she mumbled dazedly. "What happened?"

At the sound of Belle's voice, Joanna went limp with relief. She was grateful, too, for the woman's forgetfulness.

"You fell," Joanna said. "Don't move, because you may he hurt. I'm going for help."

Unfortunately, Belle Philips' blessed forgetfulness didn't last. "What about Clyde?" she demanded, reaching out and clutching at Joanna's arm before she managed to make her escape. "Where is he?"

“You can't help him, Belle," Joanna said firmly. "It's too late for him. I've got to get help for you. Promise me that you'll stay right here. That you won't move. Promise?"

There was a long moment of silence. "I promise," Belle wild finally, and then she began to cry.

CHAPTER THREE

Two separate fire departments responded to the 9-1-1 call Joanna placed from a creaky rotary-dial phone on the wall in Clyde Philips' kitchen. One truck arrived from the Pomerene Volunteer Fire Department, as did another engine and ambulance from Benson. One by one, Belle Philips' would-be rescuers disappeared into the house. Meanwhile, Sheriff Joanna Brady went out to the Blazer and radioed back the department. Larry Kendrick, head of the department’s dispatch unit, happened to be on duty.

"Put me through to Detective Carpenter," she said. Ernie Carpenter was her department's lead homicide investigator. "When I'm done speaking to him, I'll need to talk to Dick Voland as well."

"'This isn't exactly your lucky day," Larry told her "Ernie just went home with a migraine headache, and Deputy Voland is locked up in the conference room with the guys from the MJF "

The Multi-Jurisdiction Force was a group of officers from various jurisdictions that had handed together to deal with crime along or near the U.S./Mexican border. Cochise County's eighty-mile stretch of international line made Joanna's department the natural headquarters for such a group working what law enforcement had dubbed Cocaine Alley.

"What about Detective Carbajal?" Joanna asked. "Is he in?" Jaime Carbajal was Cochise County's newly minted homicide detective. His promotion from deputy to detective had happened on Sheriff Brady's watch.

"Jaime's in," Larry said. "I can patch you through to him."

"Good. By the time I finish with him, maybe you can pry Dick free from the MJF long enough for me to talk to him. We have a situation up here in Pomerene that could be either a homicide or a suicide."

"But I thought ..."

"You thought what?"

"I understood the nine-one-one call to say that the incident in Pomerene involved a woman with injuries. Something about a bed falling through the floor."

"Right," Joanna said grimly, "but that's only half of it. She and the bed fell, all right, but so did a body. The dead man happened to be on the bed at the time."

"Oh, boy," Larry said. "Okay, then, here's Detective Carbajal."

Jaime came on the line. "What gives, Sheriff Brady?"

"I need you up here in Pomerene," Joanna told him. "ASAP. We've got a dead man with a garbage bag on his head and cinched tight around his neck." Looking down at her tan suit, Joanna caught a glimpse of the grime running down the front of her skirt, blouse, and blazer. "Not only is he dead," she added, "the bed he was on fell into the crawl space under his house. It's a mess down there, so whatever you do, don't show up wearing good clothes."

"Whereabouts in Pomerene?" Jaime asked.

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"Four-two-six Rimrock. Do you know where that is?"

"Not exactly," Jaime said, "but I'll find it. Pomerene isn't that big, and Dispatch has the new county emergency map. Larry Kendrick can give me directions over the radio while I'm on my way. Will you still be on the scene when I get there, or do I need to get the details from you now?"

Joanna glanced first at her watch and then at the waiting ambulance. It was now almost twenty minutes since the six firemen and two EMTs had disappeared through Clyde Philips' front door. It seemed likely that they were having some difficulty strapping Belle's oversized body to a stretcher and then hauling her up out of the crawl space.

"Believe me," Joanna said, "I'll be here."

"Okay," Jaime said. "I'm on my way. You want me to send you back to Dispatch?"

"Please."

"I called Chief Deputy Voland out of his meeting. He's right here," Larry told her. "Hang on while I put him on the line."

"I understand you've got a homicide up there?" Dick Voland demanded at once. "Where? Who?"

"Clyde Philips, that gun dealer Frank was telling us about earlier this morning. I went by his house in Pomerene to see if he might have any idea who would be shooting up Alton Hosfield's Triple C with a fifty-caliber sniper rifle. The trouble is, Philips was already dead when I got here—dead in his bed."

"You're saying somebody killed him?" Voland asked.

"I don't know for sure. He had a garbage bag fastened around his neck, so it could be a homicide or a suicide, either one."

"Have you notified Doc Winfield yet?" Voland asked. As of the first of July, Dr. George Winfield, former Cochise County Coroner, had taken on the revised title of Cochise County Medical Examiner. And as of several months prior to that, by virtue of marrying the widowed Eleanor Lathrop, he had assumed the role of stepfather to Sheriff Joanna Brady. Under ordinary circumstances, Joanna's call to 9-1-1 would have been followed immediately by a call to Doc Winfield. Right that minute, however, the pair of newlyweds was out of town.

"He's away, remember?" Joanna said. "On his honeymoon."

"Oh, that's right. The cruise to Alaska. I keep forgetting. So I guess somebody needs to call Pima County and have them send in a pinch hitter."

"Bingo," Joanna said. "That was the arrangement. I was hoping we'd manage to skate through without needing to do that. Since we haven't, I'd like you to make the call. I'm stuck here in Pomerene for the duration, waiting for the EMTs to haul the victim's injured ex-wife out of the crawl space under the house."

"So what is it, then?" Voland asked. "Some kind of domestic?"

"I'm not sure what it is, although I don't think DV is too likely," Joanna told him. "Anyway, once you settle things with Pima County, I'll need you to do something else. Clyde has a locked gun shop out behind his house. It isn't necessarily part of the crime scene itself, and neither is his truck. We'll need to go through both of those in order to find out whether or not robbery is part of the motive for what happened here."

"You want me to stop off and pick up a warrant?"

"That's right."

"Okay, then," Voland replied. "I'll be there as soon as I can.”