Sample Chapter

Picacho Peak Mystery Sample Chapter

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy this sample chapter from my book Picacho Peak Mystery. I am interested in receiving your comments about the chapter or the book when you buy it. Please email me personally at mootzja@josephamootz.com.

--Joseph A. Mootz

Copyright © 2003 by Joseph A. Mootz

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Chapter 1

Josephine Dvorak wiped the sweat from her forehead as she waited for her husband Larry to climb over the heavy duty metal gate leading into Picacho Peak State Park. A sign on the gate indicated that the park, located forty miles northwest of Tucson, Arizona, was closed for the summer due to state budget cuts. The closure forced the couple to climb over the locked gate, but also saved them the normal six dollar entry fee.

"Are you sure it's not too hot to do this?" Josephine asked.

"I think we'll be all right," Larry said. He broke into a slow jog to try to catch up to his wife walking down the park's paved access road. "Two bottles of water each ought to be enough to keep us hydrated. How hot do you think it'll get?"

"The radio reported it might get into triple digits," Josephine said. "Its ten thirty now and it usually takes us two and a half hours to hike to the top and back, so we should return before the worst of it hits in the late afternoon. I wish we would have started a little earlier this morning."

"Well if you hadn't insisted on cataloging each and every box for the movers to pick up tomorrow, we may have gotten here a little earlier," Larry said.

"Sorry, honey," Josephine said. "You married an engineer remember? Everything has to be in its place before we move on to the next project."

Josephine thought about how they had stayed up late the night before packing their belongings for the move back to their hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They had a little trouble getting out of bed in the morning after staying up later than usual. When they finally did get up, they scurried around to prepare themselves for a hike to the top of Picacho Peak, their favorite mountain in the Tucson area. Picacho (pronounced pick-aw-cho), a Spanish word meaning "peak," was the name given to the sharp rock formation that jutted out of the top of the eastern edge of the mountain. The hike was planned as a way for the couple to say farewell to the Tucson area before leaving town the next day.

Josephine adjusted the elastic band she used to keep her medium-length dark brown hair in a ponytail behind her head. She pulled on her hair from behind tightly stretching the lightly freckled skin on her attractive face.
"Besides if your friend Jim, who you know I don't like, had not stopped us as we were pulling out of the driveway we would have saved half an hour," Josephine said.

"At least he gave us those two extra bottles of water," Larry replied. "That saved us from stopping at the store to pick up more."

As they reached the abandoned ranger station a quarter of a mile from the park entrance, they each stopped and took a long drink of water from their separate squeeze bottles. They craned their necks towards the massive saddle-shaped monolith before them and in unison said, "There she is." The eroded lava flow known as Picacho Peak towered more than fifteen hundred feet above them.

Josephine and Larry Dvorak had moved from Iowa to Marana, a suburb of Tucson, when Sungod Industries, an aerospace and defense contractor, offered Josephine a high-paying job as an Electrical Engineer five years earlier. At the time Josephine had just graduated from the University of Iowa and Larry was working odd jobs as a carpenter. They needed the money and had high hopes that the change in atmosphere would bring new life to their young marriage, which had been strained by financial difficulties and Larry's inconsistent employment.

The move rejuvenated their relationship. Josephine brought home a good salary and received great benefits with plenty of paid time off at Sungod. Larry found work as a carpenter building sets at a local western theme park and installing custom cabinets in houses for the burgeoning housing market in the area. Larry's flexible schedule and Sungod's four ten-hour day workweek allowed the couple to spend three uninterrupted days together every weekend. They spent many of those days hiking the desert trails in the Tucson area.

As they walked through the empty park towards the trailhead, they passed the empty Recreational Vehicle campground. Josephine thought about the heat again. Normally during the summer they traveled north to the White Mountains near Show Low or the Hualapai Mountains near Flagstaff to hike in a cooler atmosphere. They planned to stop by the White Mountains on the drive back to Cedar Rapids, but they could not resist one last look at the vast Sonoran Desert from top of their favorite peak.

The four small bottles of water they brought with them did not seem like they would be enough to get them to the top of the peak and back, but Josephine believed her body could survive two and a half hours of sun without failing. She felt fit and trim and had made the hike without struggle at least twice a year for the previous five years. Of course they usually hiked in the fall and spring when the air was cooler. The hot July sun beat down on her bare arms and head as she walked along the black asphalt road.

It was Larry's idea to move back to Iowa after five years in the Tucson area. He received an offer to help build sets for a new amusement park in Cedar Rapids. Similar to the park he worked on in the Tucson area, the small park in Cedar Rapids would celebrate the history of the local area.

Josephine had yet to start seriously looking for new employment. She wanted to take some time off. Although she had not mentioned it to Larry, she recently started feeling a maternal instinct that caused her to wonder if the time was right for them to start a family. Her best friend recently took a year off from Sungod to have a child. Since then Josephine began to notice infants and toddlers everywhere she went. It stirred something inside her. She wanted to wait to see how well Larry could provide for them in the long-term.

The couple left the asphalt road at the empty trailhead parking lot and began walking along the dirt trail. The trailhead was marked by a dark brown rectangular sign with white lettering that read,

"HUNTER TRAIL
TO THE TOP OF THE PEAK."
A smaller square sign sporting the same color scheme read,
"HUNTER TRAIL - 2.1 MILES
* STAY ON THE TRAIL * CARRY OUT TRASH
* CARRY ADEQUATE WATER - 2 LITERS RECOMMENDED
* NO HIKING AFTER DARK * NO CAMPING
* TRAVEL AT YOUR OWN RISK
* TRAIL BEYOND SADDLE IS PRIMITIVE
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 10,
INEXPERIENCED HIKERS, OR DOGS!
CAUTION - DUE TO HEAVY RAINS, PORTIONS
OF THIS TRAIL ARE WASHED OUT. CONTACT
RANGER FOR MORE INFORMATION."

"I think we are each short about a liter of water," Josephine said as she sat down on the rock wall separating the trail from the parking lot. She wiped the sweat from her brow, took a drink of water and stared up at the mountain ahead of her.

The mountain looked exactly like a giant saddle. A large saddle-horn-shaped peak pointed to her left as she examined the formation from the north. The sharp peak then gently sloped westward to a curved bottom and then back up to a round ridge. Several smaller triangular shaped peaks trailed off to the west of the saddle-shaped mountain, but Josephine had only one goal in mind. She was determined to reach the saddle-horn, the highest point on the peak.

Below the saddle-shaped ridgeline, sheer cliffs of pink and black stone protected the highest peak on the mountain from any direct assault. The cliffs were a few hundred feet tall themselves and led down to steep slopes covered with vegetation typical of the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the desert in southern Arizona was not a barren wasteland. The Sonoran Desert area surrounding the Picacho Peak formation was covered with a rich variety of vegetation. The steep slopes were covered with palo verde trees with olive colored branches and thin needles, chain fruit cholla with long dangerously sharp needles jutting out from all directions on egg-shaped fruit linked together to form branches, prickly pear cacti with flat pancake shaped leaves covered with sharp needles, dark red fishhook barrel cacti with curved flat needles, light green ribbed giant saguaro cacti with closely spaced clusters of three inch long sharp needles, long thin ocotillo with thorny stems spreading in every direction and reaching twenty feet into the sky, and many stemmed creosote bushes with tiny green leaves and small yellow flowers.

Thinking of what lay ahead of her on the trail, Josephine knew that the path she was on led up the steep slopes to the base of the cliffs circled around under the western ridge of the saddle-shaped peak and then descended a few hundred feet down the south side of the mountain. She knew that on the south side of the mountain, the trail would take her on a journey to the east up several small steep cliffs to the top of the peak.

"I'll conserve my water so you will have some if you run out," Larry said wiping his forehead. "Let me have your bottle and I'll pour some of mine into it." He grabbed the quarter full bottle from his wife and poured some of his water into her bottle.

"Don't do me any favors," Josephine said as she took her bottle back.

Larry poured a little water on his left hand and then ran the hand through his thick black neatly trimmed hair. He set the bottle on the ground and rubbed his face with both hands. He had not shaved that morning and his square jaw was covered with light stubble. His blue-gray eyes surveyed the area around him as he removed the hands from his face. The bright sun lit up the vast desert within the park boundaries.

Josephine stood up and walked forward on the trail. She felt irritable and her bladder felt bloated in the hot sun. She tried to focus her mind on her hiking. She wanted to record in her memory the powerful feeling that grew inside her as she hiked the peak.

Larry fell in behind his wife with a smile. He found her very attractive when she was mad at him. He watched her long tan legs propel her up the trail. He felt good about the decision to move back to Iowa. He loved the mild weather of the Tucson area from October through May, but the summer heat in July and August made him irritable.

The trail immediately started up a steep incline through the Sonoran Desert landscape. The tread of the trail consisted of light loose gravel on a cement-hard rock floor. Football-sized sharp jagged rocks lined both sides of the single-lane path. Railroad ties were used as stair-steps along the trail to slow erosion caused by hikers' boots and rain from violent thunderstorms during the monsoon season.

The travelers passed silently by the flowering yellow creosote bushes and dried grass lining the trail. The trail tread changed from loose gravel to solid volcanic rock. A chest high steel cable rail appeared along the side of trail to help the hikers maintain their balance as they climbed up steep sharp rocks. A twelve foot tall palo verde tree marked the change in the dynamics of the trail.

Josephine stopped under the shade of the olive green colored limbs of the tree and took another drink of water as she looked to the north back down the path she had traveled. Her husband soon joined her and faced the same direction. They stared across the State Park grounds to the Picacho Mountain Range shining in the harsh sunlight a few miles to the north. The triangular shaped mountains stood like pyramids in the desert against a blue sky backdrop. The mountain range stood a few thousand feet above the desert floor at its highest peak and stretched for several miles to the north.

Larry took the lead up the trail. He felt the sweat soak through his light short-sleeved T-shirt and wondered if Josephine was right about the amount of water they brought with them. He could feel the pressure on his feet building as they longed to escape his tight hiking boots. The two hikers each left a half-full bottle of water, a dry T-shirt and comfortable footwear in their vehicle for when they returned from the hike. With his shirt already soaked and the pressure building up in his shoes, Larry was anxious to get the hike over with and change into the dry shirt and comfortable sandals he had left in the vehicle he had driven to the park.

He was well aware that he and Josephine were not following the recommended guidelines for hiking in the desert. They routinely violated those recommendations in the past and had always got away with it. He knew that the experts recommended a hat, long-sleeved shirt, long pants, plenty of sunscreen and a pint of water per hour. He also knew that both he and Josephine were young and healthy and surely would not perish in a few short hours even in the scorching sun.

Larry's lightweight hiking boots scraped over the dark gray lava rock as he made his way up the trail. His right hand lightly grazed along the steel cable rail for balance as his powerful legs propelled him forward. He thought about how nice it would be to feel moisture in the air again back in Iowa. Arizonans liked to brag about their "dry heat" but it took its toll on his skin. He could feel the skin on his arms and face drying and crackling as the hot summer sun beat down on it.

A giant saguaro cactus cast its shadow across the trail and Larry stopped in its shade for a drink. Josephine soon joined him. The pale green giant succulent seemed to take on the form of a massive human being with a thirty inch in diameter trunk over thirty feet tall and giant arms raised in the universal sign of surrender.

The sturdy trunk tempted Larry to stretch out his arm to lean against it for support. The closely spaced clusters of three inch long needles along the saguaro's ribs prevented him from doing so. Although both the giant saguaro and barrel cacti he saw around him contained reservoirs of water, it was just a fable that the cacti could be easily tapped for their liquid resources. He knew that if their lives depended on it, and he hoped they did not, they would not be able to get water from the desert on this day except for what they had brought with them.

Turning to look back down the trail they had traveled the two hikers could see the outline of the park's asphalt road as it carved a meandering path through the surrounding desert vegetation. The park road was void of traffic due to the park closure. Traffic on the interstate highway just outside of the park, however, zoomed through the hot desert at its usual pace.

Both hikers listened to the sound of the traffic passing by. On the opposite side of the interstate, the couple could see the Central Arizona Project canal running parallel to the highway along the foothills of the Picacho Mountain Range. The canal ran from the Colorado River on the western Arizona border to Tucson in southeastern Arizona. It provided water for municipalities and agriculture along its three hundred fifty mile journey.

"How is your water holding out?" Larry asked.

"Well I am three quarters of the way through the first bottle and we have not even reached the saddle yet," Josephine said.

"We will be up in the shade of the cliffs pretty soon," Larry said. "Maybe that will help."

Josephine started up the rocky trail without replying. The pink walls of the cliffs faded to light brown as she approached them. She entered a wide but shallow cave at the base of the cliff and sat down on a boulder. She slowly drained the last of the water out of her bottle and handed the empty container to Larry as he approached. Larry swapped the empty bottle for a full one in his fanny pack and handed it to Josephine.

"Nice and cool in here," he said as he took a swig from his still half full bottle.

"Not bad," replied Josephine. "I think we can make it all right if we take it easy. We should be in the shade until we get to the south side and start the big climb."

"Hey, what's that?" Larry said. He pointed towards a parking lot outside the park a few hundred feet down the road from where they had left their silver Sport Utility Vehicle. He reached inside his fanny pack and retrieved his binoculars. "Looks like some kind of water tanker leaving the Indian trading post over there. I thought that place went out of business a few years ago."

"Let me see," Josephine said as she reached for the binoculars. "It's painted all white with no identification. We could sure use some of that water if that's what's inside of it." She watched the truck cross under the interstate and then she handed the binoculars back to her husband.

"It looked like the kind of tanker truck the developers use to keep the dust down when they are clearing land to put up houses," Larry said. "I think farmers might use them when they are plowing their fields also."

"He was probably called out to provide some water and got lost or was given some bad directions," Josephine said. "There aren't too many housing developments going up in this area, but there is a lot of farmland."

She stood up on her feet, stretched her legs and arms, and then continued her ascent up the trail. Larry fell in behind her.

The two hikers walked east on the relatively flat portion of the trail in the shade along the base of the cliffs. A switchback at the eastern edge of the cliffs reversed the direction of the travelers and increased the incline of the path by a few degrees. The pair reached the saddle of the mountain and sat down on the small wooden bench overlooking the vast expanse of desert to the north and south. They had completed about half of their journey in elevation and were sitting in the middle of the saddle that separated the saddle-shaped peak above them from the lesser peaks below them to the west. They sat for a few minutes without speaking and sipped sparingly from their water bottles.

Josephine stood up and walked to the south side of the saddle towards the ledge overlooking the desert below. From eight hundred feet above the desert floor, she felt like she was looking down from an airplane soon after takeoff. She drew her eyes along the slowly declining ridges to the west that made up the Picacho Peak land formation. The desert floor seemed to turn red, then dirty yellow and then hazy purple as it trailed off to the blue sky horizon dozens of miles in the distance.

It displeased her to think that after climbing over halfway in elevation to the top of the peak, she would now be forced to lose a third of that elevation in climbing down the south side. The peak was formed in such a way that only the most worthy opponent could attain its heights. Josephine became more determined than ever to conquer her monolithic adversary.

She walked to the edge of the trail where the steep downhill incline began, turned to face her husband who was now close behind her, grabbed the steel cable rails on each side of the trail, and then methodically climbed backwards down several hundred feet on the steep rocky path. The path curved in underneath the cliffs so that beige colored solid rock hung a few feet above Josephine's head. The cliffs provided much needed protection from the sun and Josephine could feel her body temperature diminish and her energy rise as she made her way down the path. The two travelers passed palo verde trees, saguaros and brown grass growing out of solid rock as they made their way to the bottom of the trail.

"Now we begin," Josephine said when she reached the bottom of the steep incline. She swallowed a swig of water from her bottle and walked around the corner of the rocky cliff into the bright sunshine on the south side of the peak.

The hikers traversed the rocky trail eastward over several ridges. The trail was cut into solid gray stone and the travelers proceeded carefully knowing a single misstep would send them sliding down the sharp rocky slope. They passed more giant saguaros spaced at intervals of fifteen to twenty feet along the trail.

Larry looked out across the desert floor to the southwestern horizon. The gray and green irregularly shaped desert floor below him turned to yellow and dark green rectangular farmland. The farm fields faded into a succession of five or more mountain ranges on the horizon.

The closest mountain range included the mountain appropriately named Ragged Top, approximately twenty miles away. Larry knew that behind Ragged Top, which was at least as distinctly shaped and mystical in appearance as Picacho Peak, stood the Silverbell Mountains which reflected a dirty reddish hue in the bright sunlight and was made up of smooth round peaks. The range behind the Silverbells started to fade from red to blue in color with craggy peaks standing much higher on the horizon. A bluish haze obfuscated the succeeding ranges as they faded into the bright blue sky.

Larry knew that the most difficult portion of the trail lay ahead, but he thought that if they could just reach the top and have some water left, the return trip would be easy going. He felt protective of Josephine even though in a lot of ways she was stronger and more capable than he. He felt that he had let her down in some ways by not being as financially successful or ambitious as he should have been in the past. He hoped that the opportunity to get in on the ground floor in the development of the amusement park in Iowa would change all that. If things worked out right, he thought, Josephine could stay home for a few years and they could start a family. He wanted to wait until he really got started on the project before bringing up the subject with her.

Josephine continued in the lead as the couple made their way up a steep incline using the steel cable rail for leverage. Josephine pulled herself up with the cable in her right hand and used her left hand to steady herself on the rough-hewn gray and red rock as she climbed. The cable zigzagged its way up thirty feet in elevation over a forty foot span in distance. Josephine leaned against the yellow colored cliffs at the top and took another drink while she waited for Larry to make the climb.

"Are you doing all right?" Larry asked. Josephine reached out to help pull him up onto the ledge. Both husband and wife breathed heavily from the exertion.

"I'm fine," Josephine replied in between breaths. "Maybe a little light-headed. I might be hyperventilating a little. I did not think the heat would have this much affect on me."

"Let's take a break in the shade up ahead," Larry said as he pointed to a small overhang ahead on the trail. The two moved into the shade and squatted down on their haunches.

"What do you think?" Larry asked. "Are we going to make it?"

Josephine looked at her water bottle which was a little more than a third full. "When this bottle is empty, I think we should turn back," she said. "How much do you have left?"

"I am just emptying, my first bottle," Larry replied as he put the empty bottle in his fanny pack and pulled out the last full bottle. "I think we will be all right if we have half this bottle left when we get to the top. The way back should be easy."

"I've got to pee," Josephine said. "This water is going right through me for some reason." She walked behind a rock formation out of Larry's view.

"Me too," Larry said as he walked a few feet off the trail to relieve himself under a palo verde tree.

A few minutes later, Josephine said, "I am ready. Why don't you take the lead?"

The trail ran along the sharp triangular outcroppings of the cliffs, which were now colored with various shades of red and black. The narrow path led the travelers around a corner such that they faced north and stared at a sheer wall of lava rock forty feet high. A steel cable marked the trail halfway up the wall and then turned towards the right along a ledge and around the corner of the cliff. A length of wire fencing ran along the ledge to protect hikers from falling to their death.

"I'll let you go first on this one," Larry said to Josephine. Josephine grabbed the steel cable with her right hand and began pulling herself up the cliff. Larry followed close behind gently nudging her with his hands.
"Hey, what are you doing down there?" Josephine said.

"Just helping you along," replied Larry. As he reached the ledge he grabbed Josephine's shoulders, turned her face towards him and kissed her passionately on the mouth. After a moment, they both turned to look down the sheer cliff to the desert floor over a thousand feet below.

"I will miss this view," Larry said.

"Is it better than the one you had coming up the cliff?" asked Josephine.

"Not half as good," Larry said and then he kissed her again.

The wire-fence-guarded ledge ran to the eastern corner of the cliff and then turned north again. Josephine climbed over two large jagged boulders into a scene which was now familiar to her after so many hikes up the peak.

The cliffs below the saddle-shaped peak were only a few dozen feet high. They formed a semi-circle with its opening towards the south. Saguaro cacti and young palo verde trees dotted the steep gravelly slopes below the cliffs. The trail followed the base of the cliffs around the western end of the semi-circle to the northern end in the shade. At that point two steel cable rails ran up a twenty five foot sheer cliff to the ledge above. The couple followed the trail around and then sat down on a boulder near the cables.

"I always liked this part of the trail the best," Larry said.

He took a swig of water from the still nearly full bottle and noticed that Josephine's bottle still had some water left. He noted the change in colors of the cliffs from dirty red on the southwestern end to almost purple on the northeastern end.

Josephine pulled herself up the twenty five foot jagged cliff first. Larry soon followed and both stood in the bright sunshine breathing heavily for a moment before proceeding on. The trail followed a steep incline to the north past creosote bushes and fishhook barrel cacti. The travelers crossed another ledge with a wire fence protecting them from a fall of fifty feet or more.

At last the weary hikers reached the middle portion of the saddle-shaped peak. They looked westward towards the butt end of the saddle below them. A single lane dirt path ran from the middle of the saddle to the minor peak to the west. The two hikers then turned their attention to the trail running east to the horn of the saddle-shaped peak. They knew that they were very close to their destination.

"Guess what? I am out of water and I have to pee again," Josephine said. She stepped behind a saguaro for a few minutes and then returned to the trail.

"I still have over two-thirds of mine left," Larry said. "Do you want to press on? We are almost there."
"Let's do it," Josephine said.

The couple struggled up the steep single lane trail and past switchbacks that criss-crossed over the surface of the peak. Except for the trail ahead of them, nothing for miles around equaled their height above the desert floor. They could clearly make out the park road and interstate highway as the trail meandered to the northern edge of the precipice. Within a few minutes they reached the pinnacle of the peak.

A large jagged black boulder sat on the northeastern corner of the flat rectangular fifty square foot area at the top of the peak. A row of small gray jagged boulders ran down the center of the area. Josephine walked to the east end of the jagged rocks and sank down with her back against the end boulder.

"Are you all right?" Larry asked. He pushed his half empty bottle to her lips. After a swallow of water, Josephine wiped the sweat from her brow and shook her head in the affirmative.

Larry looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the afternoon. It took them over two and a half hours to climb the peak in the hot sun. On a cooler day it would take half that long. Larry stood up and took in the scenery around him for the last time.

Large square farm fields spread out fifteen hundred feet below him from the northeast to the southeast around the interstate exit that led to the small town known as Red Rock. The fields were alternately colored dark brown, golden, and dark green depending on whether they were freshly plowed, had wheat ready to harvest, or were covered with healthy cotton plants. On the eastern horizon Larry could see the Tortolita Mountains near his home in Marana. Past the Tortolita's, the massive Santa Catalina Mountains stood as guardians over the city of Tucson and the surrounding area. The Tucson Mountains on the western edge of the city were also visible from the peak.

Larry turned his gaze towards the direction of the Picacho Mountain Range across the interstate to the north. A white speck on the desert floor between the interstate and the mountain range caught his eye. He retrieved his binoculars from his fanny pack and zoomed in on the speck.

A white unmarked water tanker came into focus. It looked like the tanker they had earlier observed leaving the Indian trading post and crossing under the interstate near the park entrance. A green hose ran from the back end of the truck over a chain-link fence and into the Central Arizona Project canal. Larry scanned his binoculars towards the front of the truck and saw a man wearing a green camouflage outfit staring back at him with his own set of binoculars. Larry jerked the binoculars away from his eyes and then slowly brought them back into focus. He scanned the area around the truck and saw a similarly dressed man with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

"Let's get out of here," Larry said as he turned back towards Josephine.

Josephine was laying on her back on the jagged rocks. At her husband's command she struggled to sit up straight. Larry gently lifted his wife to a sitting position and held the nearly empty bottle of water to her lips.