Threepersons Hunt by Brian Garfield

Watchman took them. “A Xerox of an envelope?”
    â€œI sent the originals down to the lab. But read it.”
    The envelope was addressed to the Highway Patrol with a little typed notation at the lower left: “Attn. Officer In Charge Of Threepersons Case.” That made Watchman look at the postmark. “Globe, Ariz., July 6, P.M.”
    Dear Sir,
    With reference to the escaped convict Joe Threepersons, this is to inform you that he was not guilty of the murder that he was in prison for.
    Watchman turned it over but it was only a Xerox and there was nothing on the back of it. He looked at Wilder. “What the hell.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œJoe didn’t write this himself.”
    â€œOkay, detective, why didn’t he?”
    â€œOne, he was still bottled up in Florence when this was mailed in Globe. Two, I doubt Joe knows how to use a typewriter. Three, I doubt he’d be able to spell, let alone compose a letter in business style.”
    â€œGo to the head of the class. What do you make of it?”
    â€œNo signature. I thought anonymous tips like that usually came on the phone.”
    â€œUsually they do. But we get letters. Maybe it’s somebody with a recognizable voice. A speech defect or something.”
    Watchman thrust his hand out the car window to give the Xeroxes back but the lieutenant said, “You keep them, it’s your case. We’ve got the originals down in the lab. I’ll let you know if anything turns up by way of finger-prints. We’ll find out what kind of machine it was typed on, but I doubt we can spend the time to find out who wrote it. Could be some crackpot. Most likely is.”
    â€œOr somebody with enough interest in Joe to try and persuade us to go easy on him.”
    â€œYeah, it could be the sister. Maybe she’s a trained business secretary or something.”
    â€œLiving on the Reservation?” Watchman folded the Xeroxes. “I’ll find out when I talk to her.”
    â€œIt makes sense,” Wilder said. “I mean she might figure we’d be less inclined to shoot him on sight if we thought there was a chance he was innocent.”
    â€œIs there?”
    â€œA chance? Come on, Sam. He had the gun in his pocket and he made a voluntary confession. Far as I know he never tried to rescind it.”
    â€œThen it’s kind of strange, this letter.”
    â€œBut it’s got you wondering, hasn’t it.”
    â€œAeah.”
    â€œI suspect that’s what it was supposed to do, Sam.”

6.
    Driving up toward the mountains, east out of Phoenix along U.S. 60, you pass a dirt road below Superior that curls south from the highway into scrubby hills. It is marked “APACHE TEARS ROAD.” Watchman passed the sign at sixty-five.
    In the 1880s the Apaches had a stronghold on top of a sheer cliff below Superior. They staged attacks from there on Pima towns and white settlers until the blueleg Cavalry surrounded the stronghold and besieged it. When the Apaches ran out of ammunition the braves elected to leap from the cliff rather than suffer the indignity of capture. In the morning their women buried the dead at the foot of the cliff and their tears drenched the earth and instantly froze into dark pebbles of pure volcanic Obsidian glass. That is the legend. Today the lapidaries sell the Apache Tears as costume jewelry. Most of them come from pockets at the foot of Apache Leap Mountain.
    Watchman took the bypass ramp around the town of Superior. He drove on up through the discolored slag piles of Miami and into the chrome, plastic and neon town of Globe, with its miners’ saloons and used-car arenas and drive-in root-beer stands.
    Out of Globe the highway makes a wide turn into more hills studded with scrubs: greasewood and paloverde and manzanita, here and there the spines of yucca, century plant and cactus.
    The road climbs and climbs until without warning the earth falls away: beyond hangs an