A streak of bright red blood dribbled from one corner of his mouth and disappeared into the equally red bandanna he wore around his neck. His pencil-thin mustache was neatly trimmed, even though his dusty, threadbare shoes and the rank odor of sweat told her that in his effort to cross the border, he must have walked across miles of scorching desert.
Kneeling beside him, Joanna picked up his limp arm and felt for a pulse. Finding none, she let his wrist drop back to the ground. Knowing there was nothing she could do for him, she rose and moved on to someone else. This one was an older man in his fifties or sixties, with his left leg crumpled unnaturally under the right one. The skin on one whole half of his face had been scraped away, leaving behind a raw, seeping wound.
His eyes fluttered open as soon as she touched his hand. “Agua, par favor,” he whispered weakly. “Agua.”
She helped him raise his head and then held the bottle of water to his parched lips.
He gulped a long drink and then sank back gratefully. “Gracias,” he murmured.
“Don’t move,” she told him in her awkward textbook Spanish. “It’s your leg.”
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He nodded and motioned her to move on. “The others,” he said. “Help the others.”
With a screech of its siren, yet another invisible ambulance arrived on the roadway above her. A new team of EMTs scrambled down the bank carrying a stretcher and cases of equipment. “Over here,” she shouted, waving at them. “This man needs help.”
As Joanna stood up to move out of their way, Deputy Debbie Howell, who had been the first Cochise County deputy on the scene, appeared at Joanna’s elbow. “How bad is it, Deb?” Joanna asked.
Deputy Howell’s face was grim. “Five dead so far. We’ve counted twenty-three injured and several of those are critical. The Air-Evac helicopter should be here soon. We’ve alerted hospitals in Douglas, Willcox, Bisbee, and Tucson.”
Joanna was dumbfounded. “You’re telling me there were twenty-eight people crammed in that SUV?”
Debbie nodded. “Twenty-nine, counting the driver.”
“Where is he?” Joanna demanded. “Dead, I hope?”
Debbie Howell shook her head. “No such luck. He’s evidently the only one who was wearing a seat belt. As far as we can tell, he isn’t here.”
“You mean he took off?” Joanna demanded.
“Exactly.”
“Call Dispatch,” Joanna ordered. “Tell them to get the K-9 unit out here on the double.
That man’s a killer, and I want him found!”
“Right away, Sheriff Brady,” Deputy Howell answered. She turned and headed back toward the roadway.
“Wait a minute,” Joanna called after her. “Who’s in charge?”
Debbie nodded impatiently toward a group of uniformed 165
officers who stood near the damaged Suburban. Joanna recognized one Department of Public Safety uniform and three from Border Patrol. “Beats me,” she said. “It looks like those guys got here first, but with any kind of luck, you’re the one in charge.”
Joanna hurried over to the officers, most of whom she knew personally. When she had first arrived on the scene, the other officers had been scattered among the victims, checking them out and, in some cases, administering whatever aid they could. Now, though, with the arrival of several more EMTs, the four uniformed men stood wrangling among themselves, arguing about how best to proceed with the investigation. Jurisdictional considerations aside, Sheriff Joanna Brady outranked them all, and the accident was on her turf.
“What’s going on, gentlemen?” she asked.
She was answered by Officer Bill O’Dea of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
“Oh, hello, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “We’re discussing who pays.”
“Who pays?” Joanna repeated.
“For the medical care,” O’Dea answered. “For the dispatched ambulances, the air ambulance, everything. Ed Coffer here of the Border Patrol was first on the scene.”
Ed Coffer nodded in agreement but said nothing.
“UDAs are a Border Patrol problem,” O’Dea continued. “I talked to my captain on the radio. He says Border Patrol needs to step up and take responsibility for this situation.”
The momentary anger Joanna had felt toward the missing SUV driver now coalesced and focused in laserlike fashion on that invisible captain who, far removed from the bloodied and broken bodies, was interested only in protecting his department’s bottom line.
“This is everybody’s problem,” Joanna snapped. “People are 166
hurt. How about if we take care of the victims first and worry about the medical bills afterward? Since the driver took off, I’ve got a K-9 unit on the way. Does anyone know which way he went?”
More than happy to let Joanna take charge, the other officers breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Somebody said he took off in that direction,” O’Dea told her, pointing to the left of the roadway.
“I want that man caught,” Joanna declared. “Bill, how about driving up the road a mile or so to look for him. My guess is that sooner or later he’ll be back on the highway trying to hitch a ride.”
“Yes, ma’am,” O’Dea responded. “Will do.” He set off for his waiting patrol car at a fast trot.
Behind her, a woman screamed out in a torrent desperate Spanish. “jDonde estd nino?
M nino … mi nino … jDonde estd mi niiio?”
Joanna turned toward the EMT, who was fitting the woman with a back and neck brace.
“Did she say something about a baby?”
The medic nodded grimly. “That’s right. She’s looking for her baby.”
Joanna turned at once to the three remaining Border Patrol officers. “Has anyone seen a baby around here?”
The three officers looked blankly from one to another, shrugging and shaking their heads. “Not so far,” Ed Coffer said.
“If she says there’s a baby, there’s a baby,” Joanna growled at them. “How about if you three go look for him?”
As the Border Patrol agents set off, Joanna once again scanned the scene in time to see the man with the broken leg and flayed face being strapped to a stretcher and then carried up the
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steep embankment. Then, for the first time, Joanna noticed a middle-aged Anglo woman in shorts and sandals sitting on a nearby rock. With her face buried in bloodied hands, she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Joanna hurried up to her. “Excuse me,” Joanna said. “Are you hurt?”
When the woman removed her hands, her face, too, was stained with blood, but it was the vacant expression in her eyes that provided an answer all its own.
“Who, me?” the woman replied dazedly. “No, I’m not hurt. I’m fine, but I’ve never seen someone die before. I was holding him-that man over there.” She pointed at the still and bloodied form of yet another man.
Little more than a boy, really, Joanna thought. A teenager.
“I asked him if he was okay.” Her body shook as though she had just emerged from a pool of icy water. “But just then he stopped breathing,” the woman continued. “I learned about giving mouth-to-mouth years ago. I tried to help him. I did my best, really I did, but there was so much blood coming out of his mouth … You’ve gotta believe me, I tried, but… but he died anyway. I’ve never felt so … useless.”
She broke off into another fit of sobs.
Joanna crouched down next to the woman and put an arm around her shoulders. “You did what you could,” she said. “Nobody can fault you for that.”
The woman nodded vaguely, but she didn’t stop crying. Or shaking.
“Would you like a drink?” Joanna asked, offering her the water. While the woman stopped weeping long enough to gulp some water, Joanna realized that although this innocent passerby wasn’t physically injured, she, too, was wounded.
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“You should probably use some of the water to wash off,” she suggested as the woman finished drinking.