“I remember the rocks,” Holly said softly, almost to herself. “Rocks that were so big, I could barely lift them.”
“Holly!” Amy warned, but her voice had no effect.
“I carried them for her one at a time. Carried the rocks over to the hole. I could hear him the whole time. He was down there in the hole, crying and begging her to stop, please stop. But she wouldn’t. Mother kept right on throwing the rocks down there…”
“Holly!” The tears had stopped. Holly’s voice had taken on a strange, dreamlike quality. It was as though she wasn’t telling a story that had happened almost half a century ago, but reporting something she was watching right then, the action being replayed on the indelible screen of a much younger mind.
“…and crying and saying he’d never do it again. He’d never hurt anyone ever, ever again. And then Father was there. He grabbed her by the arms. He held her and made her stop. I remember now. He held us both. And he said it was going to be okay.”
The whole time Holly was speaking, Joanna never took her eyes off Amy. For some time after Holly finished, they were all three quiet.
“You’re finished, aren’t you?” Joanna said at last to Amy Baxter. “This shoots your credibility right down the toilet.”
“You think someone’s going to believe her?” Amy said contemptuously. “If she remembered one thing wrong, the rest of it may be wrong as well. People will just call her a liar.”
“I’m not lying!” Holly said. “I’m telling the truth. Why did you do it?”
Amy shook her head. “This is stupid. It’s too cold to stand outside arguing like this. I’m leaving.”
She turned and started back toward the edge of the dump. If she was walking away with no further threat, it seemed as though the confrontation was over. In the sudden quiet, Joanna could hear sirens now. A whole flock of them, so perhaps backup help was on its way.
Meanwhile Holly was pulling herself up onto her hands and knees. “Why did you?” she said again. “Why did you make me throw those rocks again, just like I did before. You said it was Uncle Thorny and that I was finally going to get rid of him. But it wasn’t. It was my father. My God, Amy! I killed him, didn’t I? You made me kill my own father!”
As she spoke, Holly’s voice keened up in pitch, rising on the cold air like the howl of a wounded wild thing. And the sound of that desperate voice acted like a string on her body, pulling her collapsed form up from the ground the way a puppeteer gives life to a limp marionette.
Amy didn’t pause or look back. Holly, on her feet now, lurched after Amy.
Joanna, watching Amy over the top of the bern, making sure she intended no further harm, saw too late that Holly was flailing after Amy.
Afterward, there was never any clear way to tell exactly what happened-whether Holly Patterson reached out for Amy to grab her and stop her or whether she pushed her over the edge. For a moment, the two of them grappled there together tottering on the brink, hanging in space.
And then they both disappeared.
Two separate and distinct screams floated back up to the top of the dump. Joanna Brady heard them both, heard the clatter of falling rocks and boulders that were jarred loose as they fell. And then there was silence.
A moment later, Dick Voland’s voice floated up to her. “Sheriff Brady,” he shouted. “Sheriff Joanna Brady! Where the hell are you?”
“Here,” she called back. “Up here on top!”
Huffing and puffing, out of breath from a mad scramble up the side of the dump, Chief Deputy Dick Voland was the first person to reach Joanna’s side.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, throwing his own jacket around her quaking shoulders.
“I’m okay.”
“The hell you are.” He stomped away from her to the top of the bern. “We need another ambulance up here,” he shouted. “Now! And blanket& On the double!”
Voland came back. Somehow Joanna’s legs gave way, and she sank back to the ground. Dick Voland knelt beside her. “The city ambulance is down below. I’ve got cars and an ambulance coming here, but they’ll have to come by way of the main gate with a P.D. watchman escort.”
Joanna nodded through chattering teeth that made speech impossible.
“Lie down,” Dick Voland urged. “Lie down before you fall down!”
Joanna did her best to obey. The two hands that eased her down to the ground were both strong and amazingly gentle.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Just… co……. cold!”
Two deputies and a pair of emergency medical technicians scrambled over the top of the bern.
Blankets appeared out of nowhere. One of the EMTs slapped a blood-pressure cuff around Joanna’s arm, while the other helped wrap her in the blanket. “How are the other two?” Voland asked.
The EMT shook his head and didn’t answer.
Which, in itself, was answer enough.
Voland knelt in front of Joanna and examined her stained and bleeding feet, watching her face anxiously while the medics went to work. As it became clear Joanna wasn’t badly injured, his anxiety turned to anger.
“If you were one of my deputies,” he growled, “I’d fire your ass in a minute! What the hell do you mean trying to pull some kind of rescue stunt without a damn word? If that lawyer hadn’t lost his nerve and yelled for help, it could have been much worse.”
Joanna tried to answer but couldn’t. Right then talking was out of the question.
“Forget it!” Voland barked. “And by the way, forget about that letter I gave you. If you want to fire me, fine. But if you’re going to pull this kind of damn-fool stunt, you need me too damned bad for me to quit.”
Things BECAME hazy after that. Gradually, Joanna realized there were emergency lights coming toward them on the road that ran along the out side edge of the dump. The ambulance that arrived was an old one that Phelps Dodge still maintained on its own property.
The next thing Joanna remembered was arriving at the hospital. An emergency-room nurse approached the gurney. Brandishing a pair of scissors in one hand, she had a determined businesslike look on her face, but she spoke like an effusive kindergarten teacher.
“I’ll just help you out of those wet things,” she said, starting to peel off the wet layers. “We’ll get you wrapped up in some nice warm blankets.”
Joanna looked down at what was left of her torn blouse and once-good wool skirt. The material on both was a yellow, mottled brown. “Don’t cut off my clothes,” Joanna said. “I can take them off my self. This is an almost new outfit. I’ll have it cleaned.”
“Forget it, honey,” the nurse told her. “What ails these clothes no dry cleaner in the world is going to fix.”
With that, she started with what was left of Joanna’s panty hose and began working her way up.
Only when she got as far as the bulletproof vest and shoulder holster, was the nurse stymied enough to let Joanna remove them under her own steam.
Jenny arrived at the emergency room, big-eyed and frightened, as the doctor finished cleaning and bandaging Joanna’s stained and lacerated feet.
“Mom, are you okay? What happened?”
Two more people were dead - Amy Baxter and Holly - in addition to Harold Patterson. Joanna was struggling to figure what part of the responsibility for those two additional deaths was hers alone.
“It’s a new job,” Joanna said. “I think it’s going to take a while to learn how to do it.”
Eva Lou Brady appeared and said she was taking Jenny home with her and that she’d make sure the dogs got fed. “Thank you,” Joanna told her.
The phone in Joanna’s room rang almost before the nurses lifted her off the gurney and loaded her into the bed. “How long are you in for?” Adam York asked.
“Just overnight I think. How did you know to call me here?”