Picking her way south along the cliff face, Joanna was thankful she wasn't particularly frightened of heights. She did worry, though, about the possibility of tripping over a dozing rattlesnake.
"Here you are," Eddy Sandoval said at last. He stopped and stepped aside, allowing Joanna to make her way past him and into the awful stench of rotting flesh. Fighting the urge to gag, she found herself staring down at a pile of rocks. Considering the broken cliff just above them, one might have assumed the pile had appeared there as a result of that slide. Except for one small detail. These were the wrong kind of rocks. In the wash below, Joanna had seen how the sandstone-like cliff had broken apart in long, rectangular brown chunks that looked almost as though they had been hacked apart with a saw blade. The round, smooth rocks forming the pile, colored a ghostly gray, were river rocks that someone had hauled up the mountainside one at a time.
The far end of the rock pile was where the slide had roared through, taking with it the rocks at that end. And there, where the river rocks were missing, lay two partially skeletalized human legs. On one of them most of the foot was still attached, while the other one was missing. At the ankle joint just above that remaining foot was a thick length of knotted rope that bound one leg to the other.
Joanna swallowed hard. Clyde Philips might have committed suicide. This person hadn't. She turned back to Eddy.
"You told Ernie it was a woman," she said. "But if that little bit of leg is all you can see, what makes you think its a female?"
Eddy Sandoval had been hanging back and holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. Now he switched on his flashlight and shone it on something at Joanna's feet, near what had to be the head of the burial mound.
"I guess we still don't know, not for sure, but I think it's a pretty good guess. Look at this."
Peering down, Joanna found herself standing over a short, makeshift cross. The marker had been crafted by using two twigs of mesquite bound together with what appeared to be strips of cloth. Taking Eddy's flashlight, Joanna squatted beside the cross in order to examine it more closely. It took several seconds before she realized the bindings-what she had assumed to be strips of material-were really articles of clothing: a sports bra and a pair of nylon panties. Both pieces of underwear appeared to have been white originally. Now they were stained with blotches of some dark substance.
In the dim glow of the flashlight, Joanna couldn't tell for sure what that substance was, but still she knew. The underwear was stained with blood. Lots of blood.
In Sheriff Brady's previous life, that awful discovery would have sent her reeling. Now she simply took a deep breath-took one and wished she hadn't. "You've photographed all of this, Deputy Sandoval?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Good, but I suspect the detectives will probably want to take their own pictures before we start bagging and inventorying evidence."
As she turned to look at the bier once more, another low growl of thunder rumbled across the valley. "We'd better hurry," she told him. "There's a storm coming. Go back down and there's anything you can help carry. And then you should probably round up as many plastic tarps as you can find just in case we get rained out before we have a chance to finish gathering evidence."
Nodding, Eddy Sandoval hurried away down the narrow shelf. Meanwhile, Joanna turned back to the mound of rocks and stared at the pair of protruding bones. Joanna's law enforcement studies had taught her that there is often a message in the position of the body, especially if the murderer has gone to the trouble of posing his handiwork.
This is posing, all right, Joanna told herself, gazing down the mountainside from this sheltered yet desolate spot, one that commanded a view of the entire river valley. It had taken time and effort to bring the rocks here, and the victim as well. This was posing, all right. With a capital P.
CHAPTER NINE
For the next few minutes, standing there alone, Joanna turned her attention once again to the bones, which were visible from just below the knee down. The rope that bound the two limbs together was tied in a clumsy half hitch that would have been easy to undo-if, that is, the victim's hands had been free and she had known anything about ropes and knots.
If he kept her tied up, how did he get her up the mountain? Joanna wondered. Dead or alive, she couldn't have been carried. The mountain was too steep, the path too treacherous. So did he lure her here or did he force her at gun- or knifepoint? Or did they simply meet, expectedly or by accident, up here on this ledge? Perhaps the meeting was unexpected on the victim's part, but the presence of the rope shows advance planning on the killer's.
Premeditation was a necessary ingredient for a case of aggravated murder. If that was what her detectives were dealing with here, Joanna would have to make certain that every procedure was followed, every t crossed and every i dotted.
Ernie Carpenter, lugging two cumbersome equipment cases, came huffing and puffing up the ledge. "What do we have?" he asked, selling down his load near Joanna.
"A sicko," she answered. "A male sicko."
"You've already decided the killer's a male? What makes you say that?"
Joanna was startled to realize he was right, that she had decided, but she also understood that Ernie's question wasn't necessarily a criticism. He wanted to understand her rationale while at the same time drawing his own conclusions.
"Look at the rocks on the mound for starters," Joanna told him. "Some of them went tumbling down the mountain when the slide hit, but there must be more than a hundred or so left. How much do you think each of those little hummers weighs?"
"Ten pounds," Ernie guessed. "Some of 'em might go as high as fifteen to twenty."
"Right," Joanna said. "And look at the kind of rocks they are. They aren't from around here. They didn't come from the cliffs themselves. Those are river rocks, Ernie. Somebody went to the trouble of picking them out, one by one, and then hauling them all the way up here from down by the river. Even if the killer was strong enough to pack them two at a time, it still took a major effort on his part-effort and time both. So did piling them together all nice and neat.
"Next, take a look at this." Using the toe of her hiking boot, she pointed to the cross. "Once the rocks were in place, he manufactured this little grave marker and planted it at the head of his burial mound."
Ernie squatted and peered intently at the marker. "Underwear?" he asked.
Joanna nodded. "Bloodstained underwear."
Ernie sighed. "We'll bag this first thing."
"So call me a sexist if you want," Joanna continued, "but I can't see a woman doing this kind of thing-not the rocks and not making a trophy out of bloody underwear."
Ernie rubbed his chin. "I suppose you've got a point," he allowed.
"A point?"
"Right," he said. "The killer probably is a man. The next question is, was he a smart man or a dumb one?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like you said, it must have taken him a hell of a long time to drag all those rocks up here. What I'm wondering is whether he was smart enough to wear gloves the whole time he was doing it. And if not, is there a chance we've got some decent prints hiding in there out of the weather?"
"You're saying we should dust all the rocks for prints?"
"You've got it."
"But how? With a storm coming we can't possibly take the time to do that now…"
"The first thing we do is bring Deputy Sandoval's Bronco as close to the bottom of the ledge as we can get it. Then we load in as many rocks as it will carry and drag them back to the department."
That was the moment Fran Daly and Jamie Carbajal arrived with their own loads of equipment. Mike Wilson from Search and Rescue, also drafted into the role of pack animal, brought up the rear.