Still leaning against the tree, Joanna wiped away a trickle of tears that suddenly blurred her vision. She had never been someone who believed in ghosts, yet she sensed ghosts were with her right then, watching and listening.
All right, you two, she vowed silently to her father and Andy. I’ll run for reelection. In the meantime, let me do my job.
Ahead of her and off to the left, Frank Montoya was waving frantically, trying to attract her attention. He had moved forward far enough that he was almost at the edge of the clearing. Now, with broad gestures, he pantomimed that he would creep around to the side of the cabin and try looking in through the window. Nodding for him to go ahead, Joanna looked around her own posit ion while she waited.
She and Frank had moved forward on either side of the road. Eventually he sidled up to the cabin and peered inside. Then he turned back to her. “It’s okay,” he called. “There’s nobody here.”
Looking down, Joanna noticed a faint pair of tire tracks branching from the road and winding off through the trees, leaving behind only the slightest trace in the dense ground-covering layer of dead oak leaves. Curious, she traced the dusty trail of crushed leaves. The snapping and crackling underfoot told her she was leaving a trail of her own. In the deepening twilight she threaded her way between trees and bushes and around freestanding chunks of boulders the size of dishwashers. A quarter of a mile from where she had started, the tracks stopped abruptly at the edge of a rock bound cliff
For a moment, Joanna thought the vehicle had simply reversed directions and returned the way it had come. But then, studying the terrain on her hands and knees, Joanna realized the vehicle had gone over the edge and down the other side. Easing her way to the precipice, Joanna peered down. Immediately she was aware of two things: the form of a vehicle, lying with its still wheels pointed sky-ward, and, rising from the crippled wreck, like a plume of evil smoke, the unmistakable odor of carrion.
“Damn!” Joanna exclaimed. With a heavy heart, she drew back and out of the awful stench which, caught in an updraft, eddied away from the cliff. “Poor Irma,” she whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.”
It was then she heard Frank calling, “Joanna, where did you go? I can’t see you.”
“I’m over here,” she called back. “I found a car. And you’re wrong, Frank. There is somebody here—somebody who’s dead.”
Frank trotted up a few moments later. For the better part of a minute the two of them stood on the edge of the cliff trying to ascertain the best way to climb down. Joanna found herself feeling sick to her stomach.
“I don’t want to look,” she said. “Seeing Irma’s body is likely to make me puke.”
“I’ll go then,” Frank offered. “You stay here.”
But as soon as Joanna said the words, she realized they were wrong—a cop-out. It was her job to look; her sworn duty. “We’ll both go,” she said.
Twenty minutes later Joanna Brady and Frank Montoya finally managed to reach the crumpled remains of Irma Sorenson’s pale pink Nissan. By then it was mostly dark. When they were finally able to approach the driver’s side together, Joanna found it necessary to switch on the tiny flashlight she kept clipped to her key ring. Steeling herself for what lay inside, Joanna was astonished to see that the driver’s seat was empty. The passenger seat wasn’t. There, a lone figure, still secured by a seat belt, dangled upside down.
When the beam of light from her flashlight finally settled on the figure’s face, Joanna could barely believe her eyes. “I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed. “I don’t believe it!”
“What?” Frank demanded.
“See for yourself,” she said.
Joanna handed him the flashlight and then let her body slip down beside the crumpled doorframe. The person hanging in Irma Sorenson’s Nissan wasn’t Irma at all. It was her son, Rob Whipple, with what looked like a single bullet hole marring the middle of his forehead.
“How the hell do you think that happened?” Frank Montoya asked.
“The usual way,” Joanna returned. “We’d better go back to the car and change that APB. So much for saving the Irma Sorensons of the world.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the time Joanna and Frank had climbed back up the cliff and hiked back to the Civvie, they were both beat. Fortunately, by then their requested backup had arrived in the person of Deputy Dave Hollicker. While Frank set about making the necessary notifications, Joanna brought Hollicker up to speed on what had happened.
“I want you to go up to the wash and make plaster casts of the tire tracks you’ll find there,” she told him. “If nothing else, the tracks can tell us which was the last vehicle to drive out this way. The sooner the casting is done, the sooner we’ll be able to get other vehicles in and out to the crime scene. If we’re all on foot, it’s a hell of a long walk.”
Hollicker retrieved his casting kit and set off for the wash just as Frank finished up on the radio. “I talked to Doc Winfield,” he said. “He’s on his way. So are Jaime and Ernie. And I revised the APB. I gave them Irma Sorenson’s name and driver’s license number so they can post her picture. I also said she could be armed and dangerous.”
“Good,” Joanna returned.
Frank went to the trunk and returned with two bottles of water, one of which he handed over to Joanna. “Better have some of this,” he said.
The water was warm, but as soon as Joanna tasted it, she realized how dehydrated she was. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”
They both drank silently until the bottles were empty. “Do you really think Irma did it?” Frank asked at last. “Rob Whipple was her son, for God’s sake.”
Joanna nodded.
“How come?”
“How come she did it or how come I think so?”
“Both,” Frank replied.
“The reason Caroline Parker talked to us as much as she did is that both she and her father are grappling with the fact that their supposedly ‘cured’ killer has killed again. I’m guessing Irma reached the same conclusion. She must feel responsible for what her son did. I think I’d feel the same way if I were in her position.”
“Enough to kill your own child?” Frank returned.
Joanna sighed. “Probably not,” she said.
“But aren’t we jumping to conclusions here? We don’t know Irma Sorenson has done anything wrong. For that matter, who’s to say that Ron Haskell didn’t set the whole thing up? Maybe he hired Whipple to unload Connie for him. We still don’t know for sure that Ron Haskell’s in the clear. Maybe he stopped by and took care of Rob Whipple before he came into town to deliver those DNA samples. If there was a conspiracy between them, it’ll be a whole lot more difficult to prove with Whipple out oldie way.”
“I still think Ron Haskell had nothing to do with it,” Joanna insisted.
“Why?” Frank countered. “Because he sounded innocent when we talked to him? He sure as hell isn’t innocent of relieving his wife of her money.”
“That may be true,” Joanna agreed. “But that doesn’t make him a killer.”
“And as for Irma, just because she may have discovered her son had killed again doesn’t mean she’d put him out of his misery like a rabid dog. Not only that, her driver’s license says she’s seventy four years old. How the hell would she get the drop on him?”
“If we ever catch up with her, I guess we’ll have to ask her.”
“But I still can’t understand it,” Frank said. “How does a parent do something like that to her own child?”