Catch Her If You Can Read Free Page B

think he’d found a fuel source in the bed of the pickup.”
    Pancho stroked one side of his droopy handlebar mustache. Despite all the expensive wax he applies daily, the tips insist on turning down more often than up. It always reminds me of that cartoon character Yosemite Sam, except Pancho’s handle is jet black instead of fire-engine red.
    “Any idea what he was after?” he asked, eyeing the dusty pickup.
    “No.”
    My tone implied that it wouldn’t be proper to tamper with evidence before Sheriff Alexander arrived. Pancho’s tone implied the opposite.
    “Maybe we should take a look-see.”
    I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Thought about the kangaroo rat. Bit down harder.
    “Maybe we should.”
    So I have a lively sense of curiosity? Sue me.
    I checked with Noel first to make sure he was comfortable. I also checked the pad covering his wound. No fresh, bright blood stained the gauze. Confident my sergeant would survive to continue his sessions with his shrink, I pushed to my feet and joined Pancho.
    He’s an inch or two shorter than I am. Five-six or -seven to my five-seven. But he’s tough and wiry and very reassuring to have at your side when approaching a pickup with suspicious contents.
    The dented red beer cooler drew my immediate attention. Looking back, I’m not sure what I expected to find when I lifted the lid. A skinned and butchered deer maybe. Or the feathered carcass of one of the endangered Northern Aplomado falcons so prized by poachers on both sides of the border. Certainly not three disembodied heads turning a moldy green!
    When the aroma that shot out of the cooler hit me, I slammed the lid down and promptly contaminated the crime scene by throwing up. Pancho jumped back just in time to keep from getting his boots similarly contaminated.

CHAPTER TWO
    BY the time Sheriff Alexander arrived, Sergeant Cassidy was on his feet and word of the shooting had spread through Dry Springs.
    Thirty-seven inquisitive souls had gathered in the dirt parking lot. They constituted the town’s entire population, less two kids bussed to school some twenty miles away and Eloisa Rivera, currently visiting her daughter in San Diego. The crowd batted absently at flies and speculated on the identity of the Bear, now covered with an oil-stained canvas, as well as the other three deceased.
    I knew most of the folks in the crowd. My team and I had shared beers with the regulars who hung out at the bar and had met the others during stops at the convenience store side of Pancho’s establishment. They pretty much took the Bear’s corpse in stride. Violence has become a fact of life this close to the U.S.-Mexico border. The severed heads fascinated them, though.
    Speculation ran rife about who the deceased were and how they’d ended up in the beer cooler. I caught snatches of conversation that touched on everything from the drug wars raging just south of us to a Silence of the Lambs –type cannibal with gruesome appetites. I also caught more than one glance aimed at Snoopy. I’d kept mum about his taste in snacks but rumors were already circulating. The arrival of a black-and-white spared me a public explanation.
    Sheriff Alexander emerged from the cruiser and settled his straw Stetson low on his brow. Like so many in this part of the country, his face is all weathered skin and white squint lines. After greeting Pancho, he turned to me and tipped two fingers to his hat brim.
    “Hello, Samantha. What’s with you and corpses?”
    He was referring to the decomposing bodies I’d stumbled across while testing another invention last year. Or maybe the rogue FBI agent who ran Mitch and me into an arroyo and got dead as a result. Or the ex-Army sergeant who’d tried to gun down his lover until I threw off his aim.
    “I don’t know,” I replied with some feeling, “but I’ve bagged my limit for the foreseeable future.”
    Nodding, the sheriff approached the canvas and hunkered down on his heels. He lifted the tarp