Free Old Poison by Joan Francis

organizers of the First International
Environmental Expo in Long Beach. She was a keynote speaker or
something. They ought to have lots of stuff on her.”
    He took a breath, gave me his toothy,
lopsided smile and said, “Right. I’ll do that. It’s been a real
pleasure dealing with such a pro, Hunter.”

    * * * * *

THIRTEEN

    Her body had been found a hundred miles
northeast of Flagstaff. The dry wash wasn’t on the map, but with
the instruction I had gotten at the library in Tuba City, it wasn’t
hard to find. I left the highway a few miles out of Tuba City and
followed a good dirt road north to the foot of the butte. Parking
my rented jeep at the first spot where the road bent close to the
wash, I walked up the dry riverbed looking for some sign that would
indicate the exact location.
    The temperature was right on my comfort
cusp, a little too cool in the shade, making the sun feel
deliciously soothing and warm. Despite my unhappy purpose for being
here, the happy memories of childhood seemed to materialize in the
clear air of the open desert, like ghosts, unexpected and
unbidden.
    The mines my dad had run were always two
hundred miles from anywhere, so I’d spent my free time searching
those open, wild lands for neat rocks, trap door-spiders, lizards,
coyotes, rabbits, birds, wind-carved caves and other secret places,
known only to me and the critters.
    With habit engendered by early training, I
placed my feet carefully, making only a whisper of sound in the
sand and giving a wide berth to any brush or rock that might
conceal a rattlesnake soaking up a last bit of the early winter sun
before hibernation.
    The crime scene wasn’t hard to spot. There
were several sets of tire tracks on the west bank, just before the
wash made a wide turn past a red sandstone cliff. As I walked from
the sunny wash into the cold shadow of the cliff, a shiver ran down
my spine. It wasn’t due entirely to the change in temperature. If
Evelyn’s spirit had survived, she was here in the desert, not in
the morgue.
    At the library in town I had looked up the
newspaper report on her death. It didn’t tell me much, but as I
looked around, neither did this dry wash. I found month-old tire
tracks, rounded spots in the sand that may have once been
footprints, and a bit of rabbit fur caught on a creosote bush.
Nearby coyote tracks finished the rabbit’s tale, but what of
Evelyn? Was she dead when she was dumped here, or was this cliff
the last thing she saw before she died? Etched in my memory was the
look on her face as she left in that taxi, sad, frightened,
resigned. Had she known her fate in advance? Why then would she run
to it? Was her death due to that damned diary or her protests or
some tragic accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time?
    “Damn you, Evelyn! Why didn’t you let me
help you?” The sound of my own voice breaking the silence of this
empty place was a shock. More surprising was the pain I heard in my
own cry. I sat on an outcropping at the edge of the cliff, studied
the sand, and wondered what on earth I thought I would accomplish
by coming to this spot.
    I stood and began a careful foot-by-foot
search. I worked my way slowly upstream for about two hundred yards
until the path became choked with rocks, cactus, and brush, then I
turned around and headed back, searching the same ground from
another perspective.
    By the time I retraced my steps the sun was
setting and the clouds to the west were blocking what little
daylight remained. Streaks of gray streamed down from the ragged
edges of the clouds, and the winds carried the sweet perfume of wet
earth, creosote and sage. Some lucky folks were getting rain, and I
was getting cold.
    Standing there blithely considering the
blessing of rain in the dry lands, it dawned on me that those heavy
rain clouds were upstream, and it would be wise to head for higher
ground. It is a bleak irony that every year a few folks die in the
middle of the desert by drowning. You