Free Old Poison by Joan Francis Page A

don’t get much warning. The
water begins as a hard rain in the highlands. Drops collect one by
one, forming many tiny rivulets that converge into fewer but larger
dry stream beds until finally a wall of water of awesome power
fills the main channel. Moving brush, boulders, and debris down the
wash, the flood fills the silent desert with a monstrous roar. When
I was a young girl I would go out and wait beside a wash, hoping to
see a flash flood. Twice I was lucky enough to be in the right
place at the right time. I stood mesmerized, taking guilty pleasure
in the exhilaration of being so close to such thrilling power, and
knowing my dad would kill me if he found out.
    Thinking of childhood adventure, I climbed
out of the wash and was brought abruptly back to present time. A
man stood on the bank watching me. I thought briefly about the gun
I had left in my suitcase in the car and hoped I wouldn’t need
it.
    “Good evening,” he said.
    “Hello.”
    “I saw your jeep down there. You having any
trouble?”
    “No, no trouble. You, ah, just passing by
this far off the highway?”
    He smiled and his thin features lit with a
warmth and shy charm. “No. Sorry if I startled you.”
    As he walked a little closer, I could see he
wore a police uniform, but the identifying shoulder patch was
hidden under his blue denim jacket. He was about five-foot-ten,
slender, with wide shoulders, slim hips, and looked to be in his
late twenties or early thirties. He introduced himself, but my
brain was so busy wondering if this could be Evelyn’s killer that I
didn’t catch his full name, just Jim somebody.
    I responded automatically with my own
self-introduction and saw his face change completely. His smile was
replaced with a look of startled recognition. In that first
telltale moment, I saw a candor I usually associate with persons
totally lacking in the stony-faced artifice of law enforcement. In
the following moments, however, his quiet, slow appraisal of me
showed the control and self-assurance of an experienced police
officer. The measured tone of his voice told me he had carefully
constructed his next question.
    “Diana Hunter. What brings you here, Ms.
Hunter?”
    I decided to give no information until I got
a little. “I was rock hunting. What brings you here?”
    He considered the question, and probably
read my apprehension. His voice took on that quiet, relaxed,
conversational tone a good police officer can use to reassure a
nervous witness.
    “I’m on my way home. My house is just a
little way on down this road. Out here if we see a car off-road,
like your jeep, we check to make sure the driver isn’t lost or sick
or injured. A few weeks ago I met another woman here when I was on
my way to the office. I stopped to see if she needed any help and
she assured me she didn’t. Basically told me to mind my own
business. So I did, or thought I did. About a week later I saw her
here again, but that time she had been murdered. So you see why I
would be reluctant to leave another woman out here in the same
place.” Though he tried to keep his voice even, I could hear an
echo of my own regrets. Evelyn had gotten to him too.
    “You actually spoke to her a week before she
was killed?”
    A hint of angry defensiveness slipped into
his voice. “I tried to get her to let me help her, but she flat-out
refused and she wasn’t doing anything to arrest her for or–
    “I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I didn’t mean
to imply criticism. Believe me, I understand. Evelyn did the same
thing to me, refused my help and left in a taxi. I never heard from
her again until the FBI called me yesterday to identify her
body.”
    “Yesterday! Camas just got around to calling
you yesterday?”
    A clap of thunder rolled through the clouds
above us, and large drops of rain started making quarter-sized
rings on the ground.
    “It was your PI card we found in her, her
clothing?”
    It was more a statement than a question, but
I nodded.
    “So you did know