DEPUTY GARTH RAYMOND RACKED THE DRIVER’S SEAT AS FAR back as it would go and then leaned into it and relaxed. Leaving the engine idling for the moment, he let the heater warm his feet before tucking into what was now the next-to-last of the meat-loaf sandwiches that Grandma Juanita had packed for him before he left the house on Sunday afternoon. When he’d told her he had to go back out to the crime scene for another overnight shift, she had promised to make sandwiches for him to take along.
He awoke in the late afternoon to find she’d made meat loaf and was busy assembling a stack of sandwiches.
“I had to wait long enough for the meat loaf to cool,” she explained, handing him a plate with a sandwich already on it. “I made five—one for now, one for dinner, one for a midnight snack, one for breakfast, and one for me. They’re too good to pass up, if I do say so myself.”
Garth took a first bite of his and groaned with pleasure. “Nobody makes better meat loaf,” he told her.
“Maybe so,” she told him, “but the next time we have meat loaf, you’ll be the one making it. I won’t last forever. You’ll need to know how to manage on your own. Besides,” she added, “do you know where I got this recipe?”
“No idea,” Garth answered, mumbling because his mouth was full.
“Handed down from Great-Grandma Raymond, who taught my Jebbie how to make it when he was just a kid. He brought it to a youth-group potluck at church. As soon as I took that first bite, I was hooked, and the rest is history.”
“So you’re saying I need to know how to make a decent meat loaf in order to find a girl?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Grandma Juanita said. “You need to find someone to marry before you get too old and set in your ways.”
“Grandma,” he objected, “give me a break. I’m only twenty-three.”
“That’s two years older than Jebbie and I were when we tied the knot.”
More than three years had passed now since they’d lost Grandpa Jeb. Garth knew that his grandmother still grieved for her lost husband, but when she spoke of him now, with humor and affection, it was clear her loss was no longer the aching black hole it had been to begin with. Garth was quite sure that the fact she still felt responsible for him was part of what made her keep on keeping on. Without her grandson’s need for her, she might simply have given up.
When he finished the midnight sandwich, which had somehow turned into an early-morning sandwich, he opened the last of the three thermoses of coffee that Grandma had sent along. He wasn’t sure why Grandma Juanita always sent three, but he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. He poured the steamy liquid into the plastic lid that served as a cup and took a tentative sip.
Chief Deputy Hadlock had told him the previous afternoon that one more day of searching the site would probably be the end of it. That was disappointing. He’d been hoping for several more overtime shifts that would enable him to make a couple of extra payments on his student loans.
Garth moved the seat back to an upright position. His feet were warm again, and it was time to take another turn around the crime scene, just to be sure no one was on the prowl. The previous afternoon when he’d shown up for duty, there’d been a crowd of reporters gathered on the perimeter. Hadlock was worried that once he was gone for the day, some of them might return. That hadn’t happened, at least not as far as Garth could tell. Other than a couple of Border Patrol guys stopping off to say hello, he’d been completely alone all night long.
Tonight, this far from civilization and beyond the reach of any streetlights, the glowing stars overhead had been spectacular. Garth had enjoyed the solitude and the wonder of it. With or without Great-Grandma Raymond’s meat loaf, he couldn’t imagine ever finding someone who would love the Arizona desert as much as he did. It just didn’t seem as though meeting the right girl was in the cards. Garth suspected that he’d end up being a lot like Tom Hadlock someday—a confirmed old bachelor with no real way to explain why things had turned out that way.
After first making sure the hand warmers were still in the pockets of his jacket, he turned off the engine and let himself out of the cab. He was well away from the vehicle when he became aware of the intermittent flashes of light that told him a vehicle was approaching, speeding toward him on Skeleton Canyon Road. What he realized about that vehicle, long before he heard it, was that it was coming far too fast. There was a sharp turn just ahead where the road veered south and ran alongside a steep ravine. If whoever was driving didn’t slow the hell down, they weren’t going to make it.
And they didn’t slow down. Garth stood transfixed, watching the scene unfold before his eyes—knowing how it would probably end and utterly helpless to do anything to prevent it. He could see the individual pinpricks of headlights now and hear the laboring engine—as though whoever was behind the wheel had shifted down into low and was driving faster than the transmission could handle.
The headlights started into the turn. Garth waited for them to emerge again on the far side of the curve, but they didn’t. Instead he heard the sound of a distant crash and saw a headlight-illuminated cloud of dust billow skyward.
Garth was a hundred yards away from the Tahoe when the crash occurred. He sprinted back, climbed into his vehicle, hit the light bar, and raced off into the night. Trying to radio for help was useless. He was out of range. That afternoon when he’d come on duty, Chief Deputy Hadlock had told him the satphone wasn’t working and he was taking it back to the Justice Center to see if someone could fix it.
No, Garth realized, if people in that crashed vehicle were injured and in need of assistance, he was their only hope.