“And there’s no point in you two heading back down yet, Al,” I said. “Not until we know what they find up above.”
“That’s good news,” Al said, and lit a cigarette. He’d unpacked a black plastic body bag, and he and Judy stretched it out.
Bishop nodded at Walsh’s rifle, still lying where he’d dropped it under the oak scrub. “I want pictures of that before it’s touched,” I said. “Of this whole area where he was sitting.” I straightened up with radio in hand, taking time to suck some air into my lungs.
“We’ve got some O2 with us, Sheriff,” Langham said, my actions not lost on him.
“No, I don’t need oxygen. I’ll be fine. Mountain climbing is not my thing.” I raised the radio. “Robert, what did you find?”
“Sheriff,” he began, but his radio barked a long complaint of static. “Sheriff,” he said again, “we’ve located Connie French.”
“Is she alive?”
“Alive but unconscious. My first guess would be multiple fractures and internal injuries. A helicopter would sure make things easier.”
“All right. Any sign of her brother?”
“Negative, sir. Tom and Wade are working the area, but nothing yet.”
“All right. Linda, did you copy that?”
She didn’t respond immediately, but I’d probably caught her between boulders. “Yes, sir,” she panted after a minute.
“Let me see if I can reach dispatch by phone. If not, we’re going to have to keep you down at the radio.”
“Yes, sir.”
A dinosaur when it came to most new gadgets, I still viewed the little cellular telephones as nuisances that distracted motorists. This time, the gadget served its purpose. Gayle Torrez’s voice came through perfectly.
“Gayle, I’ve got a list for you,” I said. “First of all, we’re going to need a helicopter. It’s rugged, high country, so you better see if the State Police Jet Ranger is somewhere in this part of the state. While you’re at it, find where the Med-Evac plane is. And then see what personnel you can rustle up. We may need to cover a lot of ground before this is over.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Do you want me to put in a call to state police for ground support as well?”
“Hell, yes. Whoever you can find. Jerk the Forest Service out of bed, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get back to you in a little bit.” I shifted to the handheld radio. “Robert, is Connie stable?”
“That’s negative, sir. She’s got an open compound of her right arm, what looks like a broken hip, and a really nasty injury to the back of her head. I would guess a fracture.”
I looked at Al Langford. “We’ll get some help up there, Robert. Al and Judy are on their way. You think it’s going to be all right?”
“Probably,” Torrez said. “There’s no sign of Gutierrez in the immediate area.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Langford said.
“I wish we knew,” I said, and lifted the radio again. “Robert, are you and Doug going to need more help with Connie in addition to the EMTs?”
“That’s negative, sir. But they need to hustle. She’s in deep shock, and her position is head down and really awkward. I don’t want to move her until we can stabilize her neck, but we don’t have any way to do that.”
“Ten-four. They’re on their way. And Gayle’s looking for the chopper.”
James Walsh was bagged and ticketed for his trip down the hill, but he was going to have to wait. The backboard went up the hill with Al and Judy.
“I’ll go on over with them and see what Bobby wants to do next,” Bishop said.
“Well, wait a minute. I’m going to go back down to the vehicles and sit the radio,” I said. “Linda needs to be up here where she can do some good, but somebody needs to be able to communicate.” I slipped the phone back in my pocket. “All I need is to have us all up here, and the battery in this thing goes dead. I’ll send her up. Show her what we need.”
“All right.” Bishop didn’t sound overly eager, but that was understandable considering his choices. He could either scramble over rocks until he was purple in the face with bruised hands and barked knees, or sit in the sun with a bagged corpse.
“Sir, this is Linda,” my radio crackled.
“Go ahead.”
“Gayle said that John Rivera was en route from the Forest Service office, and that the chopper is in Las Cruces, sir. Their best ETA is less than an hour.”
“Copy that,” Torrez’s voice interrupted. “Tell ’em to firewall it. Make it a short hour.”
“Yes, sir and sir? The Med-Evac plane is in Deming. They’ll meet the chopper at Posadas.”
“Outstanding,” I said, “I’m coming down. We’re going to need you up here.”
“Affirmative.”
I craned my neck and looked uphill, spotting a patch of brown. “Thomas, do you copy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you able to find the location where Connie was standing before she fell?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
“How far did she fall?”
“It looks to be about thirty feet, sir. And that’s with a strike about halfway down. There’s a ledge that she would have hit. We found her rifle and a little day pack partway down.”
“Any sign of Scott?”
“That’s negative. A little patch of blood, though.”
“Is there any way to tell what direction he might have gone?”
“Negative, sir. And the way this terrain is, he could be anywhere.”
“Make sure nothing is disturbed. Linda’s on her way up. One of you guys needs to be with her.”
“Yes, sir.”
I holstered the radio. Down below, I could see Linda Real standing beside one of the county units, waiting for me. I glanced at my watch. I had twelve minutes before Judge Lester Hobart would expect me in his chambers. If I hurried, I could be halfway back to the trucks by that time.
“Linda?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have Gayle give Judge Hobart a call. Advise him of the situation, and tell him that Cliff Larson will be attending the hearing this morning instead of me. If that’s not going to work, he’ll just have to reschedule.”
“It’s a hell of a good time for somebody to rob a bank,” I said to Bishop as I turned to start down the mountain.
Chapter Forty-six
“Use lots of film,” I said to Linda as she drew near. I was sitting on a rock a third of the way down-and her rapid progress up the canyon was an acute reminder that this was a young person’s game. She paused, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, the massive camera bag slung over her shoulder.
“I want details of the spot where Connie was standing when she fell, and anything else in the area. They say they’ve found her stuff, so that will be important. And”-I nodded back up the hill where Howard Bishop was waiting patiently-“that spot there, where we found Mr. Walsh.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m on my way.”
“Take your time,” I said. I was talking more to myself than to her, since there was no reason for a healthy, hearty twenty-six-year-old to take her time with something as insignificant as a little mountain and a few boulders. I stood up and started downhill again, rediscovering for the umpteenth time that if I held my head just right, the lower portion of my bifocals blurred the rocks so that I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Sir, we found his rifle,” Tom Pasquale’s voice was sharp and excited. I had just broken out onto the stretch of relative level ground by the vehicles, and I turned to look back uphill. It wasn’t clear who Pasquale was talking to, but that didn’t matter.
“Don’t touch it,” I said.
“No, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir. It looks like the rifle was dropped, sir. He didn’t just lean it against a tree. It’s jammed down between an old tree stump and some rocks.”
“Let Linda get pictures before you touch it or move it,” I said. “Are there any scuff marks that might show which direction he went?”
“It’s solid rock here, sir. Wait a sec.” I did, and then Pasquale added, “It looks like a blood smear, maybe. I don’t know for sure.”