Paradise Lost by J. A. Jance Page B

back. “I don’t smell anything.”
    Jennifer Brady had seen enough animal carcasses along the road and out on the ranch that she wasn’t the least bit scared of them, but she could tell from Dora’s voice that the other girl was. It was a way of evening the score for the cigarettes--a way of reclaiming a little of her own lost dignity.
    “Come on,” Jenny said. “I’ll show you.”
    Without waiting to see whether or not Dora would follow, Jenny set off. The breeze was still blowing uphill, and Jenny walked directly into it. After watching for a moment or two, Dora Matthews reluctantly followed. With each step, the odor grew stronger and stronger.
    “Ugh,” Dora protested at last. “Now I smell it, too. It’s awful.”
    Their path had taken them up and over the ridge that formed one side of the basin where the troop had set up camp. Now the girls walked downhill until they were almost back at the road that had brought them up into the basin. And there, visible in the moonlight and at the bottom of the embankment that fell down from the graded road, lay the body of a naked woman.
    “Oh, my God,” Dora groaned. “Is she dead?”
    Jenny’s neck prickled as the hair on the back of it stood on end. “Of course she’s dead,” she said, wheeling around. “Now come on. We have to go tell Mrs. Lambert.”
    “We can’t do that,” Dora wailed. “What if she finds out about the cigarettes? We’ll both be in trouble then.”
    Jenny was worried about the same thing, but the threat of get-ting in trouble wasn’t enough to stop her. Neither was Dora Matthews.
    “Too bad,” Jenny called over her shoulder. “I’m going to tell anyway. Somebody’s going to have to call my mom.”

CHAPTER THREE
    It was after eleven when the vibrating of Dr. George Winfield’s tiny pager jarred him awake.
    Next to him in bed his wife, Eleanor, let loose a very unladylike snore. The Cochise County Medical Examiner tiptoed across the room and silently pulled the door shut behind him before he switched on the light and checked the number on the digital readout. He was used to being rousted out of bed by middle-of-the-night calls from various law enforcement agencies, but the number showing on the screen wasn’t one he instantly recognized.
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    To make sure the sound of conversation wouldn’t awaken Eleanor, he went all the way to the kitchen and used that phone to return the call. “Chief Deputy Montoya,” a voice answered after less than half a ring. “Doc Winfield?”
    “That’s right,” George answered, rubbing his eyes. He hadn’t been asleep for long, but his eyes were gritty, and he was having a hard time pulling himself out of the fog. “What’ve you got, Frank?”
    “A problem,” Frank replied.
    “Someone’s dead, I assume,” George said, tuning up with a hint of sarcasm. “If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be calling me. What’s the deal?”
    “White female,” Frank Montoya answered. “A Jane Doe. From the looks of her, I’d say she’s been dead for a day or two. On the other hand, it’s been so hot lately that maybe it’s less than that.”
    “Where was she found?”
    “On the road to Apache Pass. Looks like someone threw her out of a vehicle and let her roll down an embankment. She’s naked. No identification that we’ve been able to find so far, but we’ll have to wait until morning to do a more thorough search.”
    Something about Apache Pass niggled in the back of George Winfield’s consciousness, but right then he couldn’t quite sort it out. Still, there was no denying the underlying urgency in Frank Montoya’s voice. Even half asleep, George noticed that and assumed Frank had found something deeply disturbing about the condition of the body. Maybe the woman had been mutilated in some unusually gruesome way.
    “I’ll get dressed and be there as soon as I can,” George Winfield said. He was relatively new to the area, a transplant from Min-nesota, so his grasp of