“She walked out the door less than five minutes ago.”
They’d passed Bailey’s a mile or so back. Sophia was in a hurry to reach the crime scene, but this made her curious enough to turn the car around. It might be in some way related to Stuart’s death, or provide information that could help with the coming investigation.
Lindstrom was at Bailey’s, all right. Sophia spotted her car in the parking lot. And when she and Rod went inside, they found the detective sitting in a corner booth, wearing an orange sheath dress with her red hair pulled back in her typical tight fashion. She was alone and had her nose in a menu, but a second menu lay near the place setting across from her. She was obviously expecting another person.
“You waiting for someone?” Sophia asked as soon as Lindstrom noticed them.
A scowl creased her forehead as she glanced from Sophia to Rod and back again. “I’m having breakfast with a friend. What does that matter to the two of you?”
“It doesn’t,” Rod said. “Unless that friend happens to be Stuart Dunlap.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s none of your business.”
Sophia blinked innocently. “You don’t want to tell us?”
“No.”
“Then you can continue to wait, and we’ll leave you in peace.” With a shrug, she turned to Rod and they began to walk out. But Lindstrom seemed to catch on that it might be in her best interest to find out why they’d asked.
“What if I am meeting Stuart? What would you say then?” she called after them.
Sophia pivoted, returned to the table and lowered her voice so she wouldn’t be making the shocking announcement to the whole restaurant. “I’d say that you might as well go ahead and eat without him. Stuart Dunlap is dead.”
22
Kevin, the older Simpson, had found Stuart. He was waiting for them when James drove her, Rod and Detective Lindstrom to the site via ATVs. Sophia rode behind James, Lindstrom behind Rod. Although Fitzer confirmed that Dr. Vonnegut had been called—and that he was fully recovered—he hadn’t arrived. It was just the five of them. Bruce would’ve been there and probably Edna, too, except that Sophia had refused to tell them where their son had died or even who had discovered him. She couldn’t risk having him get involved this early. She needed time to process the scene and gather any evidence she could. She’d told Bruce to go home and break the news to the rest of the family before they heard it from someone else and promised she’d be in touch as soon as she had some answers.
But, so far, she knew very little. According to what James had told her when she met him at the house, Kevin had gotten up early to drive the perimeter of the property and had come upon Stuart’s truck in a washed-out gulley. One tire was flat, suggesting it’d been driven over quite a bit of rough terrain. The truck would’ve had to traverse a lot of rough terrain to get where it was. They weren’t anywhere close to a road.
“This is exactly how you found him?” Lindstrom asked when Rod came to a stop and she was able to get off the ATV.
Sophia thought it was obvious that the body hadn’t been disturbed but didn’t say so. The last thing she needed was an argument with Lindstrom. She climbed off the all-terrain vehicle she’d been riding, and walked to within three feet of the cab door, which stood open.
Kevin spat on the ground before answering. “I opened the door, but that’s it.”
Sophia’s arms and legs felt rubbery as she caught her first glimpse of Stuart. James cursed; apparently, this was his first glimpse, too. And Rod stood close by but said nothing. He revealed no outward sign of distress, yet she could sense the negative emotions churning inside him.
Stuart sat slumped over the steering wheel. Blood ran down the door and brain matter speckled the window. Thanks to the recent heat wave, relentless even at night, his corpse was giving off a pungent odor that turned Sophia’s weakened stomach. Blowflies crawled over the corpse, attracted to the moist areas of the eyes, mouth and nose, where they liked to lay their eggs. Sophia was afraid to look too closely for fear she’d already find maggots. According to what she’d learned about entomology, the eggs could hatch within hours, especially in warm conditions like this.
“So you didn’t touch him, try to revive him?” Lindstrom was doing her best to appear unaffected and professional, but the strain in her voice was unmistakable.
“Hell, no,” Kevin said. “One look at him, and I knew he was dead.”
Sophia told herself it was fortunate that Kevin hadn’t disturbed the body. They’d have a better chance of reconstructing the crime, and any evidence the killer had left behind wouldn’t be compromised. Sophia had heard Locard’s Exchange Principle a million times. “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him.” But that principle only seemed to apply on TV.
“Whoever did this took him by surprise,” Rod said.
“He didn’t see it coming, didn’t attempt to get out,” Sophia agreed. “But what brought him here in the first place? Why would anyone drive for several miles over rock, cactus, even a few broken bottles, to reach such a remote location? To do that kind of damage, he had to be driving fast.”
“Maybe he was meeting someone,” James said.
Lindstrom shook her head. “There’re no other tracks.”
“It’s hard to see tracks in this kind of soil.”
Sophia gestured to the plants around them. “There is smashed vegetation.”
“But, with the illegals constantly tramping through here, there’s always smashed vegetation,” Kevin said. “That’s part of my complaint against what’s going on. It’s ruining my property.”
“I think he was drunk and patrolling for illegal aliens to harass, and he ran afoul of a drug deal,” James said. “This feels almost like an execution.”
Or it could be the retaliation they’d all feared—the Mexicans striking back—but Sophia didn’t say it.
Rod shoved his hands in his pockets. “He could’ve been participating in a drug deal.”
Sophia thought of Jamie Skotto, a white girl who was raped in Douglas. At first, Jamie had claimed the culprit was a Mexican national, which incited the whole area. White men from all over Cochise County headed into the desert to avenge her attack on whatever UDAs they could find. When she admitted that she’d actually been beaten and raped by her own uncle, the vigilantes slunk back to their regular lives, but the rise in racism never really receded. Falling back on the recent murder of the rancher near Portal, some people still came out here to harass UDAs. Although they tried to put a patriotic slant on it—“Those sons of bitches have no right to come into our country!”—it often boiled down to basic cruelty. “As much as I don’t want to believe this, he could even be the UDA killer. Until we know more, we can’t rule out any possibility.”