Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

Dehan had gone quiet, and I was watching the roadside, waiting to see something that would tell me I had found the place. I saw it after about five minutes. It was an esplanade, just before a small bridge that crossed a broad track. The track wound its way down into the canyon and was lost among juniper bushes and mesquite. I slowed right down, spun the wheel, and eased off the road and down onto the track.

It must have been about ten a.m. by then, and it was getting hot. As we bumped down along, clouds of fine red-and-gray dust rose up around us. But there was no breeze to carry them away, so they just lingered and followed us, like sleepy, lonely ghosts that had been abandoned in the desert too long.

We bounced and rattled down the track for about fifteen minutes, with the sides of the canyon growing steeper and narrower around us the deeper we sank. As we proceeded I began to realize that it wasn’t really a track at all, but a dry river bed. And after a quarter of an hour, we came to a place where a second, smaller river joined this bigger one. I figured they only flowed in the rainy season. I stopped and sat staring. The banks and the slopes were overgrown, but the bed itself was clear. There were rocks but no growth.

“When is the rainy season in the Panhandle, Dehan?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“May and June. The water must come down there at quite a rate, washing everything away. That’s why the watercourse is clear of vegetation, while the sides are overgrown. December, there is very little rain here.”

“Really…”

“Yup.”

I killed the engine and climbed out. I started scrambling up the dry tributary and heard the truck door slam behind me. We scrambled and climbed for about five minutes toward a dense clump of juniper bushes that had grown up around a sharp bend in the stream. I could imagine that during the rainy season a lot of water accumulated there, making that spot especially fertile. I thought about explaining that to Dehan but decided to leave it till later, over a beer.

I stopped about twenty yards from the thicket. You could see clearly where, over the years, the water had carved out a new course for itself to get around the obstruction. Dehan came and stood next to me, panting slightly and perspiring, with her hands on her hips. She was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, “Son of a bitch.”

I grinned at her and said, “Ha! It is as I thought!”

She ignored me and we clambered the remaining few yards. A decade of heat and rain had taken its toll on the car. The red paint was faded, and there was a lot of corrosion. The windows were down, and I peered in. Dehan leaned in the other side. It was hard to be sure at a glance. There was no telling how many times the car had been flooded with fast-moving water over the years. Dehan, not for the first time, spoke my thoughts aloud.

“You’ve got air and you’ve got water, so you’ve got bacteria, and so, fast decomposition. Plus, you have all kinds of wild animals. There are going to be bits of them all over this canyon. But I’d lay money on a man and a woman.”

I nodded, staring at the passenger seat. There was a small collection of bones on the floor and what looked like a thigh bone on the seat. I said, “We should leave it untouched and get the forensic anthropologist to have a look at it. But I just want to have a glance…” I pulled open the door and peered in the back. There were bones back there too, mainly small to medium. I made a mental note, then leaned down and looked under the passenger seat. It was there. I got my handkerchief, reached in, and carefully pulled it out. A skull. The lower jaw was barely hanging on, but it was there. Dehan watched me as I set it on the roof of the car and photographed the teeth from several angles. Then I put it back where I had found it.

The other skull was smaller, and it was wedged under the driver’s seat. I did the same, then put it back where I’d found it. “The positions of the skulls don’t tell us much, because water and animals may have moved them around several times, but it’s interesting his skull was under the passenger seat.”

I found the release button and popped the trunk. I closed the driver’s door and walked to the back.

There was nothing much to see except a spare wheel, a tool case, and an old sports bag. Dehan was by my side staring in. I glanced at her. “You done?”

She nodded and I closed it. I stayed a while, leaning against the car and gazing down along the desiccated channel among the dusty junipers. I said, “We haven’t got long. We have to report this, and as soon as we do, it goes over to the bureau. That gives us twenty-four, forty-eight hours at the outside.”

“What the hell were they doing? It’s a miracle they got the car here at all! Why would you do that?” She scowled at me, like Mick and Maria and I had all got it wrong. “He’s going to Mexico—we at least agree he was headed for Mexico?”

I nodded. “Yes, he was headed for Mexico.”

“So why, instead of driving directly south on 83, out of Shamrock, straight to the Mexican border, does he go maybe a hundred miles out of his way to the Palo Duro Canyon and take his beloved, priceless, 1969 Mustang down a dry riverbed?”

I shook my head and held up my hand. “Stop.”

She didn’t. She went