car.
She yelled Cassidy’s name twice, but saw no movement through her binoculars.
With her heart pounding now, Josie climbed back down, slid inside her jeep, and threw it into four-wheel drive. She could think of no rational reason for Cassidy to be outside. She’d lived in Artemis long enough to know this kind of heat killed in a hurry.
Resisting the urge to floor it, she drove slowly into the desert, feeling her way, sensing the movement of the tires in the sand beneath her. There were areas she wouldn’t take the jeep, even in four-wheel drive, because the sand was so soft the tires would get buried. Having never driven off-road in this area, she advanced carefully.
Josie rarely became emotionally tangled with other people’s lives but occasionally her guard slipped. Cassidy had remained in Josie’s thoughts since leaving the department. The girl lived her life by being at the wrong place at the wrong time and Josie often wondered about the situation with her boyfriend. She hoped it hadn’t just ended in tragedy.
About fifty feet from what she was now certain were bodies, Josie felt the sand give way under her tires. Rather than chance getting the jeep buried, she grabbed her water bottle from the center console and opened the door, leaving the jeep and its air conditioner running. She pulled her gun and ran toward the bodies.
As she approached it was obvious she was facing the possibility of two dead. She found Cassidy, lying on her side, her face in the sand. Josie glanced at the body lying ten feet to the left of Cassidy but didn’t bother checking vital signs. The man was already dead: swollen, deteriorating, and smelling rank. He had been there a few days. Even with the decomposition she could tell he was not Cassidy’s boyfriend.
Josie kneeled close to Cassidy’s head to block the sun from her face and placed two fingers on her neck. The girl’s face was bright red and her pulse racing. Her skin was dry to the touch and Josie feared heatstroke, which could turn fatal fast.
She pulled her portable radio out of her belt and signaled Lou.
“Call the clinic. Tell them we have a probable heatstroke. I need a medic fast. She needs IV fluids. Then call Otto. We have a dead male. Possible illegal. Body is due east of the blue Ford Focus on Scratchgravel Road. Call the coroner.”
During her time as a custodian at the police department, Cassidy had been good-natured and friendly. She had been a hard worker and Josie had hated to see her leave when their regular custodian came back from his medical leave. Jimmy was a sixty-something-year-old who was slow and quiet and rarely interacted with anyone in the department. Cassidy had been a welcome addition.
She lived with a man quite a few years older than she was, an odd guy, close to forty years old with a long scruffy beard and dark eyes that bothered Josie. During a traffic stop several years ago, he had avoided Josie’s eyes, never once meeting her gaze. She could not imagine what the attraction was for this pretty young girl.
Waiting for Lou to respond, Josie opened the water bottle and took Cassidy’s head in her hand, tilting it up, trying to wake her and get her to drink something. There was no response. She poured water over Cassidy’s face and her wrists, attempting to lower her body temperature. Cassidy’s hand moved but nothing more. Josie stood and put the water bottle in her gun belt. She bent at the knees and lifted Cassidy’s torso over her shoulder, then used her leg muscles to slowly stand and balance herself. She took careful steps through the fine sand back to her jeep. In the intensity of the afternoon heat, each breath felt like fire, but she had to get Cassidy into air-conditioning until the medic arrived.
Josie stood at a trim five feet seven inches, but the walk to the car was slow. The heat magnified every movement, slowing every bodily function. Just as she started to worry the girl would not make it in time she saw the dust of an approaching car, then the unmistakable flash of Otto’s patrol lights.
Officer Otto Podowski was sixty years old, a large man with little tolerance for the desert heat. He drove his own jeep to where Josie had parked, then ran to her and took the young woman over his own shoulder, carrying her the last forty feet to Josie’s car.