Skeleton Canyon by Jance J. A

Author:Jance, J. A. [Jance, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, Suspense, thriller, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780380724338
Amazon: 0380724332
Goodreads: 462990
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1997-08-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By the time they reached Douglas, Joanna realized she had been wrong in her assumption about that first storm of the season. The rain wasn’t soaking in after all. Water came down in such a swift deluge that there wasn’t time for soaking. The dips on Highway 80 northeast of Douglas were already trickling with water that, Joanna knew, could turn into a torrent at any time once runoff from higher elevations drained into the willies and washes.

In Douglas proper, the highway’s railroad underpass was closed—for good reason. Years earlier, the highway department had painted markers on the wall in foot-long increments in order to measure and warn otherwise unsuspecting motorists of the water’s dangerous and potentially lethal depth. Joanna was surprised to see that the water filling the Southern Pacific underpass—murky, reddish brown stuff topped by a loamy white froth—had already topped the four-foot mark and was still rising.

“Now I see what you mean,” George Winfield murmured as the Eagle sat idling next to the yellow-and-black sign that stated the all-too-obvious—DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED.

Southeastern Arizona’s summer thunderstorms are often fierce but brief. For some reason, this one, after that first incredible outburst, had now settled into a steady downpour. George Winfield’s clothing, still damp from getting out to open the gate, made the windows inside the Eagle keep steaming up. Unfortunately, because the air-conditioning compressor wasn’t working, neither was the defroster. As they waited in the detour line to be routed around the flooded underpass, Joanna thought she glimpsed Marianne Maculyea’s 1960s vintage VW far ahead of them.

Seeing the car reminded Joanna that Marianne hadn’t shown up in Skeleton Canyon. Had she been there with the Search and Rescue Unit looking for Angie, Joanna surely would have heard about it. Something serious must have come up in Bisbee, Joanna reasoned. It wasn’t like Marianne not to show up in person when one of her friends and/or parishioners was in trouble.

Thinking of Angie reminded Joanna once again of just how wrong she could be. And how often. This supposedly welcome rain storm was turning into a veritable flood. Instead of spending an unauthorized weekend with her boyfriend, Brianna O’Brien was dead—at the hands of person or persons unknown. And Dennis Hacker, who had struck her as a nice man, had turned out to be a jerk instead.

You’re batting a thousand, old girl, Joanna told herself. just keep it up.

At the Double Adobe turnoff, Joanna stopped to let George Winfield into his own vehicle. “Do you want to transfer her into my van now?” he asked before opening his door. “‘That way you could go straight home from here.”

Joanna shook her head. The rain was still falling. The coroner’s office up in Tombstone Canyon was housed in a former funeral home that came complete with a covered portico. “I’ll take her the rest of the way to your office,” Joanna told him. “That way she won’t get wet, and neither will your satchel.”

“‘Thanks, Joanna,” George told her, climbing out. “See you there.

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