Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [61]
And so, since there was nothing else to do as she drove, Joanna Brady went ahead and prayed. “Please, God,” she whispered aloud. “Be with those poor people. Comfort the injured and the dying, and guide all those who would help. Amen.”
Nine
It was just after five when Joanna, still driving behind the ambulance, rounded the last curve and saw a clutch of first-responder emergency vehicles lining the road. From where she was, though, the accident scene itself remained invisible. The sun had dipped behind the tall cliffs that topped the rugged Perilla Mountains, casting the whole area into shadow. Joanna parked her Civvie and then hurried to a spot where a shattered wall of Jersey barriers spilled down the rocky cliffs onto the baked-sand floor of Silver Creek.
It wasn’t until Joanna was standing directly over the newly constructed culverts that she was finally able to see the smashed SUV. Looking like the work of a suicide bomber and crushed beyond recognition, the Suburban lay upside down in the midst of what appeared to be a scatter of brightly colored rags. It took several moments for Joanna’s mind to come to terms with the awful reality. Those scattered bits of colored cloth weren’t rags at all—they were pieces of clothing with dead and injured people still inside them. Uniformed officers—some of them EMTs—and a few concerned civilians crouched here and there, offering aid to the victims, some of whom moaned and whimpered softly while others shrieked in agony. A few of the victims, lying still as death, had either been abandoned as beyond help or were as yet untended and uncomforted.
Rushing back to the Civvie, Joanna grabbed one of the several jugs of bottled water she kept there. Then she plunged down the rocky bank toward the nearest victim. This isn’t an accident scene, she told herself grimly. It’s a damned war zone!
The first person Joanna reached was a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. 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, por 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.”
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