“Did you know Ruth Houlihan was thought to be having an affair with Rory Markham at the same time?”
Dolores Mattias seemed to be astonished by that news. “No,” she said. “Rory was Aileen’s friend, not her mother’s.”
While Joanna engaged Dolores in conversation, Ernie Carpenter had edged away from the Crown Victoria. Stealthily crossing the yard, he approached the double door on an attached garage. With his Colt.45 in one hand, he wrenched open one of the two hinged doors with the other. Inside the garage was Joaquin Mattias’s Dodge Ram pickup, but no Joaquin.
Ernie reholstered his gun and returned to where Joanna and Dolores were standing. “There’s no one there, but the back of the truck is full of luggage, Sheriff Brady,” he said.
“Where is he, Mrs. Mattias?” Joanna asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You have to tell us,” Joanna insisted. “Your husband is a person of interest in at least one homicide and maybe more. We need to find him.”
“He’s afraid,” Dolores said. “Someone is after him.”
“Besides us, you mean?”
Dolores nodded.
“Then let us protect him. Where is he?”
Tipping her head, Dolores gestured toward the mountains. “Up there,” she said.
“In the Whetstones?” Joanna asked. “What’s he doing up there, hiding?”
“No,” Dolores said. “I wanted to leave two hours ago, but he said there was something he had to do first-some kind of unfinished business.”
“And where are you going?”
“Back to Mexico,” Dolores said. “None of Joaquin’s people are there anymore, but I thought if we once crossed the border, maybe no one would know where to look for us.”
“What’s Joaquin doing in the mountains?” Ernie asked.
“I already told you, I don’t know,” Dolores replied. “He wouldn’t tell me. Just something he had to do.”
“Is he armed?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you tell us how to get where he is?” Ernie asked.
“No,” Dolores said. “But I can take you there. I dropped him off and came back here to finish packing. I’m to pick him up at four o’clock.”
Joanna heard the distinctive pop, pop, pop of gunfire. Echoes reverberated off one canyon wall after another as three separate gunshots bounced down the mountain.
Dolores looked stricken. She turned and started for the garage and the pickup. Ernie caught her arm and pulled her back. “No,” he said.
“But I’ve got to go,” she pleaded. “Didn’t you hear that?”
“Tell us how to get there,” Joanna said.
“It’s too complicated. You’ll never find it. Please, let me go.”
“Get in the back of the Crown Victoria, Mrs. Mattias,” Joanna said. “Ernie will drive. You can direct us until we’re close enough to find the way.”
“But the road’s too rough,” Dolores objected. “You’ll never make it without four-wheel drive.”
“We’ll make it as far as we can and then we’ll walk.”
Without further objection, Dolores allowed herself to be ushered into the Crown Victoria. Once Joanna was inside, she belted herself in and grabbed for the radio.
“Shots fired,” she said. “On the Triple H. We need backup.”
“Whereabouts?” Tica Romero asked. “That ranch is a big place.”
“We don’t know exactly,” Joanna said. “We’ll leave roadside flares along the way wherever we turn off. That’s the best we can do.”
At the point where the main road continued on to the ranch house, Dolores directed them off to the left and onto a much smaller dirt track. Ernie got out and collected the Crown Victoria’s supply of flares. He lit one and left it in the middle of the road they were following, then he returned to the driver’s seat and turned the remaining flares over to Joanna.
“Dispatch has three cars on the way,” she said. “I’ve given them verbal instructions as well.”
Half a mile later, Dolores directed them to the right along a dry creek bed and into a narrow canyon. This time Joanna was the one who got out and lit the flare. The road ahead was rough and steep. “How much farther?” she asked once she was back in the car.
“About another quarter mile,” Dolores answered. “Then there’s a gate.”
Joanna turned to Ernie. “Do you think you can make it?”
“We’ll see.”
Tica’s voice came through on the radio. “It turns out Deputy Raymond is in the area. He’s already turned off onto Triple H Ranch Road. The other two deputies are in Huachuca City and over near Kartchner Caverns. They should arrive soon as well.”
“Good work.”
Several times between there and the gate, the Crown Victoria’s undercarriage scraped across loose boulders and outcrop-pings of rock. Twice, when the creek bed switched back and forth across the road, the Crown Victoria almost mired down in loose sand. Only by maintaining sufficient speed was Ernie able to jolt the vehicle to the far side.
“She’s right, you know,” Ernie grumbled. “Four-wheel drive would be a lot better.”
“This is where I dropped him,” Dolores announced when they reached the gate. Joanna got out to open it, but the track that led beyond the gate was even narrower and rougher than the part they’d just come through. Far below in the distance she heard the faintest sounds of at least two approaching sirens signaling that backup officers were on their way.
Joanna returned to the Crown Victoria. “It looks like we walk from here,” she said to Ernie. “Are you up to it? Your doctor probably wouldn’t call hiking through the desert taking it easy.”
“I can if you can,” he said.
Joanna turned to Dolores Mattias. “You have to stay here in the vehicle.”
“But…”
“Not buts, Mrs. Mattias. We have Kevlar vests. You don’t. It’s for your own safety. You can either give me your word that you’ll stay here, or we lock you in. Which is it?”
“I’ll stay,” Dolores agreed.
“How far is it from here?”
“I don’t know. Joaquin took a shovel with him and went up that path.”
“Did he have a weapon with him?” Joanna asked again.
“Maybe,” Dolores answered. “I don’t know for sure.”
That wasn’t much consolation.
Ernie had gone around to the trunk and retrieved the semiautomatic rifle and twelve-gauge shotgun Joanna kept there. As he handed her the rifle, he stopped short.
“Listen,” he said.
On the far side of the creek, Joanna heard a racket that had to be a fast-moving horse scrabbling over rocks and through the surrounding scrub oak. Joanna and Ernie both ducked for cover behind the Crown Victoria, but the invisible horse kept moving, sending a scatter of rocks down toward the creek bed as it raced by without pausing.
“What if he heads for the gate?” Joanna demanded as the hoofbeats passed out of range. “What if whoever it is goes after Dolores?”
“I’ll go,” Ernie said and was gone.
Alone now, Joanna crept forward. Fifty yards or so beyond the gate the path took a sharp right turn. Another fifty yards beyond that, Joanna caught sight of the charred remains of a crumbling rustic cabin nestled in a small clearing. Winded, she took cover behind a nearby tree. Struggling to steady her breath, she studied the terrain and saw no sign of movement anywhere.
Then, on the far edge of the clearing, something glinting in the sun caught her attention. Sticking to the tree line, Joanna moved closer until she was able to see that sunlight was reflecting off the business end of a shovel that lay to one side of a small mound of freshly dug dirt and what looked like an earth-crusted fruit crate.
Behind Joanna, one of the sirens sputtered to silence. That meant Deputy Raymond must have reached the gate and help was near at hand.
Then she heard it-a low moan that seemed to come from somewhere near the mound of dirt.
“Who is it?” she demanded. “Where are you?”
“Help me,” a weak voice replied. “I’ve been shot.”
Joanna scurried forward. She skirted the box, the mound of dirt, and a small hole. A man lay facedown in the freshly turned dirt of a larger hole, with blood seeping across the back of his denim shirt. A few shovels of dirt had been piled on top of his legs-not enough to bury him alive, but enough to start the job.