Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [125]
Joanna pointed toward the wrecked pickup. “The driver’s missing,” Joanna said. “I want you to find her.”
Terry nodded. “Will do,” he said.
Taking Spike, he walked down the embankment and over to the wrecked vehicle. Joanna was relieved to see that Spike was wearing his new custom-fitted Kevlar bulletproof vest. Joanna watched while Deputy Gregovich reached inside and removed something from the tangled interior. Hurrying behind him, Joanna was astonished to see Terry was holding a single tennis shoe up to the dog’s nostrils.
“Where did that come from?” Joanna asked.
“It was wedged up under the dash. And that’s the good news,” Terry said. “If she took off with either one or both shoes missing, she’s not going to be that hard to track down.” Then, keeping a tight hold on Spike’s leash, he gave the order. “Find it!”
For the next few minutes the dog, with his nose to the ground, went round and round in ever-widening circles. Ernie Carpenter reappeared at Joanna’s side.
“Still no luck,” he said. “We’re looking on the ground, but if she was airborne, it’s possible she could have been tossed up into one of these clumps of mesquite.”
Suddenly Spike stopped circling. He stood stock-still, ears up, tail straight out behind him, sniffing the air. Then he dashed off to the west, with Terry Gregovich galloping along behind him.
“They need backup,” Joanna said.
Ernie nodded and headed for Terry’s Blazer. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
Joanna was barely in the passenger seat when Ernie flung the SUV into gear and they bounced away. Fifty feet from the wreck, Terry Gregovich and Spike paused briefly at a barbed-wire fence posted with an official-looking No Trespassing sign. They delayed for only a moment before Spike crouched and slid under it while Terry clambered up and over the top. Spike and Terry were well beyond the fence when Ernie stopped in front of it.
“What’s the word, boss?” he asked. “Do you want to go look for a gate?”
“Are you kidding? Go through the damned thing!” she ordered. “We can always fix the fence later.”
Ernie backed up a few feet. After putting the Blazer in four-wheel drive, he roared forward. For a time the wire seemed to stretch, then it broke, sending fence posts and coils of wire spiraling into the air as the Blazer rushed through.
“Cut the lights,” Joanna ordered when they once again had Terry and the dog in view. “Now that we’re away from the ballpark, there’s enough moonlight tonight that, once our eyes get accustomed to it, we should be able to see just fine. If we keep our lights on, we’re liable to blind them.”
And let Stella know they’re coming, she thought.
Without a word, Ernie cut the lights. It took only a moment before their eyes adjusted to the dark. Soon, though, the silvery light cast by a wedge of moon was enough to allow them to make out the movements of both the officer and his dog as they traversed a ghostly landscape.
Off to the left lay what looked like a pale layer of white earth. That was a long-abandoned tailings dam—waste left over from the copper-milling process—that covered acres of desert with a relatively flat layer of debris. To the right was the mound of steep hills that formed a backdrop to the neighborhood of Warren. The tops of the hills, tipped with silver, gleamed against the sky with the reflected glow from the ballpark lights where the softball game was still in full swing.
And straight ahead of them, at the base of those hills, crouching in shadow, lay broken hulks of buildings that had once, long ago, been a state-of-the-art ore crusher. Joanna remembered that she and her father had once spent hours exploring the ruin. The machinery and equipment that had been used to grind copper ore to dust had disappeared right along with the men who had once operated it. But Joanna knew that the concrete shells of those long empty buildings would offer shelter for a fleeing Stella Adams—shelter and cover.
“She has to be headed for the old crusher,” Joanna said.
Concentrating on driving, Ernie could only nod in agreement. Joanna