Partner In Crime

Seventeen

ABOUT THEN THE MAN IN THE SUIT charged across the yard to meet us. From the irate expression on the attorney’s face I doubted Burton Kimball would be nearly as tractable as Officer Rojas had been.

“All right, Sheriff Brady,” Kimball snapped. “As you can see, we did what you said. We’re out of the house. Now how about telling us what this is about? If the white powder in the box isn’t a drug, what is it?”

Joanna took one more deep breath before she answered. “I’m guessing it’ll turn out to be sodium azide,” she answered. “It’s a deadly poison. We have reason to believe Latisha Wall died as a result of sodium azide poisoning.”

“Never heard of it,” Kimball grunted.

“Not many people have,” Joanna agreed.

“What is it?”

“It’s the propellant used to deploy air bags in vehicles,” she explained. “Sodium azide is more toxic than cyanide. It has no known antidote.”

Bobo Jenkins spoke for the first time. “Did you say Shelley was poisoned?” he croaked. “How’s that possible?”

“We believe the fatal dose was placed in something she drank,” Joanna answered. “Most likely in her iced tea.”

“But how…” Bobo began. Then his face changed as he put it together. “The sweetener packets!” he exclaimed.

Joanna gave him a searching look. Finally, she nodded.

As I said, Bobo Jenkins was a big man. His arms and legs bulged with muscles. As the awfulness of the situation sank in, his knees seemed to buckle. He staggered unsteadily over to the porch steps and dropped down onto the topmost one.

“But I’m the one who put the sweetener in her tea,” he blurted out. “Two packets. That’s what Shelley always took in her iced tea. Two packets. Never any more; never any less. Does that mean I’m the one who killed her?”

“Enough, Bobo,” Burton Kimball interjected. “Don’t say anything more. Not another word.”

If Kimball’s stunned client heard his attorney’s objection, he paid no attention.

“And that’s what you think is here in my house right now, in the box in my laundry room?” Jenkins continued. “You think it’s the same thing? The same poison?”

By then, Kimball was practically beside himself. “Mr. Jenkins, please. No more. Sheriff Brady, you haven’t informed my client of his rights. I must ask that you refrain from asking any more questions, the answers to which may be prejudicial…”

Ignoring the lawyer, Joanna sat down on the porch step next to Bobo Jenkins. “Tell me about today,” she said quietly.

“Today?” He gave her an anguished look, as though not quite comprehending the question.

“Tell me everything that happened,” she urged. “Everything that led up to your finding the box.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Last night I couldn’t sleep.” He said. “I kept tossing and turning and thinking about…” He paused and swallowed hard before continuing. “… about what had happened. I couldn’t believe I’d lost Shelley just like that. I still can’t believe it. Sometimes it seems like it’s got to be some awful nightmare. Eventually, I’ll wake up and she won’t be gone.

“Anyway, after lying in bed for hours, I finally got up about three o’clock this morning. I dressed and went for a run. I ran all the way down to Warren and back. By the time I finished, the sun was just coming up. I showered and went to bed. I finally fell asleep after that and didn’t wake up until a little while ago. I went out to the kitchen to put on some coffee. While I waited for the coffee to finish, I decided to start a load of clothes. That’s when I found that box – a duct-taped box I’d never seen before – sitting there on top of the dryer. The flexible vent duct is connected to it.”

“Did you touch it?”

Jenkins shook his head. “Give me some credit. I’m smarter than that. The box has a window in the top that’s covered with plastic wrap. As soon as I saw the white powder in it, I called Mr. Kimball.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding? When Jaime Carbajal and Frank Montoya interviewed me yesterday morning, they didn’t give out any details, but I could tell from their questions that I was under suspicion – that they thought I was somehow responsible for Shelley’s death. Now I know why. You must have found my fingerprints on the sweetener packets, since I’m the one who poured them into her glass.”

Ignoring that, Joanna responded with yet another question. “When you saw the box, what did you think was in it?” she asked.

Jenkins shrugged. “I assumed it was cocaine. I figured someone was trying to frame me for dealing drugs or something worse.”

“But why would you think someone from my department placed it there?” Joanna asked.

He shook his head as though no explanation should have been necessary. “You’re not a black man considering running for public office in this country,” he said softly. “You’re not being paranoid if people really are out to get you.”

I had been listening to all of this and trying to keep my mouth shut. Now, though, I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents’ worth. “Look. If someone planted the box in Mr. Jenkins’s house, how was it done? Any sign of a break-in? It takes time to rip off a dryer duct and reconnect it.”

“I don’t lock my doors,” Bobo said. “I never have.”

Burton Kimball looked distinctly unhappy about the way the conversation was going, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Nobody paid any attention to him, least of all his client.

“You said you were making coffee,” Joanna mused thoughtfully. “What do you use in it?” she added.

It seemed like an off-the-wall question. At first I couldn’t see where she was going. Bobo Jenkins seemed puzzled as well. “What do you think? Coffee and water,” he said. “What else is there?”

“I mean, how do you take it?” Joanna asked. “Black, or with cream and sugar?”

“Sugar but no cream,” he said. “I’m lactose-intolerant.”

“Where do you keep your sugar?”

“In the fridge,” he said. “If I leave it out on the counter or table, I sometimes have problems with ants. Why?”

Then I understood. The white powder in the duct-taped box. It would have taken time, effort, and ingenuity to put sodium azide in sweetener packets. By comparison, putting a few spoonfuls of it into a sugar bowl would be simple – and just as deadly.

At that moment a deputy I didn’t know – an officer named Matt Raymond – hustled up the steps and into the yard. “What’s happening?” Joanna asked.

“Detective Carbajal says it’s confirmed. The abandoned car definitely belongs to Dee Canfield. It’s on a road that winds through the hills and ends up about half a mile east of here, on the far side of B-Hill.”

I had noticed a big whitewashed “B” on one of the hills as I drove into town for the first time. Now I realized that Bobo Jenkins’s home was on one of the flanks of that selfsame hill. Half a mile away wasn’t very far.

“Which way was the Pinto going when they found it?” Joanna asked. “In or out?”

“Out,” the deputy returned. “Detective Carbajal says it looks like the driver was attempting to turn the vehicle around so he could head back to the highway when he got hung up on a boulder. Broke the axle right in two.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Joanna said. “We’d better get the K-9 unit out there on the double.”

“Already done,” Officer Raymond said. “Deputy Gregovich and Spike are on their way.

Nodding, Joanna turned back to the attorney. “Look, Burton,” she said, “we’ve called in the Haz-Mat team. The fewer people we have hanging around when they get here, the better. How about if you take Mr. Jenkins and go someplace else for a while? Let me know where you are. Someone from the department will notify you when it’s safe for him to return home.”

“I’ll be only too happy to,” Kimball said, still sounding slightly miffed. “Come on, Bobo. Let’s get out of here. We wouldn’t want to be in anyone’s way.”

JOANNA BRADY WASN’T GOOD AT WAITING; she never had been. As the minutes ticked by, she paced back and forth in Bobo’s small terraced yard. If her suspicions proved correct, her jurisdiction had been plagued by two murders and an attempted homicide in less than a week. Right that minute, the only thing working in her favor was the fact that the supposed getaway car – Dee Canfield’s aging Pinto – had finally come to grief. Had it not been for that, Warren Gibson would have been long gone. Then again, with as much of a head start as he’d had, maybe he’d made good his escape after all.

It didn’t help that J.P. Beaumont sat on the porch staring at her and watching her every move as she anxiously paced the confines of the yard. The last thing she needed right then was an audience.

“Sit down,” he suggested. “Take a load off.”

But Joanna didn’t want to sit. She didn’t want to be patronized, either. “I’d rather stand,” she said.

Across the yard, Matt Raymond’s radio crackled to life.

“What is it?” she demanded.

The deputy listened for a moment, holding one finger in the air. “It’s Detective Carbajal. He says the K-9 Unit has found two separate trails. One seems to head in this general direction. The other one heads back along the road and out to the highway.”

“Have them follow that one,” Joanna said at once. “Let’s try to see where the SOB went.”

When she glanced back at Beau once more, she noticed he had taken his packet of Xeroxed reports out of his coat pocket. He unfolded the pages, put on a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses, and began studying the pages, occasionally making notes.

At least he finally quit staring at me, Joanna thought as she checked her watch for the third time in as many minutes. At this rate, the hour-and-a-half wait for the arrival of the Haz-Mat team was going to take a very long time.

Several long minutes passed without a word being exchanged. Beaumont finally broke the lingering silence. “Could you do me a favor?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“It says here that Jack Brampton was incarcerated in the Gardendale Correctional Institute outside Elgin, Illinois.”

“Right.”

“I need to find out if that’s a state- or privately run facility.”

“Frank Montoya’s your guy,” Joanna said. She removed her cell phone from her pocket, punched up Frank’s direct number, and handed it over to Beau. He looked down at it in baffled silence, as though he had never seen a cell phone before in his life.

“The number’s already programmed in,” she told him impatiently. “All you have to do is hit ‘Send.’ “

Beaumont shot her another dubious look and then did as he was told. A moment later he was explaining to Chief Deputy Montoya what was needed.

Joanna glanced at her watch once more. Time was passing, but not nearly fast enough. She listened to Beau’s part of the conversation with only half an ear. The call had barely ended when another one came through. She took the phone from Beau’s hand and answered the call herself.

“What is it, Jaime?” she asked.

“Sorry, boss,” he said. “It’s a dead end. Spike led us right back here – to the highway. That’s where the trail stops. Brampton got into a vehicle and rode away.”

“Have Terry and Spike go back to the Pinto and try following the trail in the other direction,” she ordered. “I want to know where that one goes as well. In the meantime, send Casey out to Dee Canfield’s house. I’ll need Dave up here so he can handle the chain of custody on whatever evidence the Haz-Mat guys turn up.”

She ended the call. Beaumont had obviously been listening. “If the killer got in a car and rode away,” he said, “that probably means one of two things.”

“What would those be?” Joanna asked.

“Either Jack Brampton has an accomplice who came and picked him up, or else he hitched a ride with some poor innocent passerby who’s going to wind up being our next victim.”

“Great,” Joanna muttered. “Just what I want to hear.”

About that time the first member of the moon-suited Haz-Mat team came huffing up the stairs. “I’m Ron Workman, the team captain,” the leader announced to everyone in the small yard. “Who’s in charge here?”

Since Deputy Raymond’s was the only visible uniform, the question was addressed to him. The deputy nodded in Joanna’s direction and she stepped forward.

“I am, Mr. Workman. I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

The man gave Joanna a skeptical top-to-toe appraisal, from her grubby tennis shoes to the skirt, blouse, and blazer she had dressed in for church. He seemed less than thrilled at the idea that she was in charge.

Workman peered around the yard. “I was told we’d find a hazardous material situation here,” he said. “What is it, some kind of false alarm?”

By then three more moon-suited guys had crowded into Bobo Jenkins’s tiny front yard. They stood in a clump like a bunch of stranded astronauts waiting to see what would happen.

It would have been nice if Workman’s dismissive attitude hadn’t been quite so blatant. Joanna had dealt with similar reactions for years; they still irked her.

“It’s no false alarm,” she assured him crisply. “The hazardous material is inside the house. In the laundry room you’ll find a box we suspect contains sodium azide. The box is hooked up to the dryer vent.”

That got Mr. Workman’s attention. “Sodium azide?” he demanded. “My God, woman! Do you have any idea how dangerous that stuff can be?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Joanna said sweetly. “That’s why we called you.”

“Where is it?”

“Around back. A uniformed officer is standing by at the back door-”

Not waiting for her to finish, Workman motioned to his team. “All right, guys. Let’s get moving.”

“Stop,” Joanna barked. “That’s not all.”

A moment earlier, Workman had been prepared to write the whole thing off as a false alarm. Now he scowled impatiently at the delay. “What then?” he asked.

“Your team is to remove and examine all open food containers, including the contents of all sugar, flour, and salt containers. We’ve had one homicide due to sodium azide poisoning and suspect we may have another. In the first case, the poison was concealed in sweetener packets. My concern is that here it may have been used to contaminate other foodstuffs. So, although this is primarily a hazardous-materials operation, it’s also a crime scene investigation. I want photographs and a properly documented evidence log.”

“I was told no one here was hurt,” Workman objected. “In fact, I asked the dispatcher specifically, and he said-”

“You’re right, no one is hurt here,” Joanna corrected. “Not at this location, but only because we got lucky. Let me remind you, however, Mr. Workman, that two other people are dead. If you find any trace of sodium azide in the food inside the house, that adds one count of attempted murder as well.”

“All right, all right!” Workman conceded grudgingly. “I get the picture.” He turned once again to his waiting crew. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Move it.”

One by one, the Haz-Mat team disappeared into the house.

“Good work,” Beaumont said after they left.

Joanna turned on him. “What do you mean?”

He grinned at her. “You know exactly what I mean. You chewed that poor guy up and spit him out. He never even saw it coming.”

The next thing Joanna Brady knew, she was grinning, too.

“Something’s bothering me,” he said, when the lighthearted moment had passed.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone that was very nearly a duplicate of her own. “How come yours works and mine doesn’t?” he asked.

“Oh, that,” she says. “It’s a Dual-NAM phone.”

“What’s that?”

“Two numbers and two cell-phone providers. I got tired of all the dropped calls. Now I’m hooked into the system down in Naco, Sonora, as well. They have a stronger signal…”

“Is that why I keep ending up with the recording in Spanish?”

“Right,” she said. “And you’re going to keep on getting it until you’re on the other side of the Mule Mountains.”

Shaking his head, Beau pocketed his phone. “Sorry I asked,” he said.

SOMETIME LATER, THE FIRST OF THE HAZ-MAT crew members emerged from the house carrying several tightly closed stainless-steel containers. It was an hour after that when the last of them, Ron Workman, stepped out onto the porch. Divested of his moon suit, he stopped in front of Joanna and handed over an evidence log as well as a fanfold of Polaroid prints.

“Whoever your guy is, he knows what he’s doing,” Workman told Joanna as she studied the pictures.

“What makes you say that?”

“If he hadn’t known something about sodium azide, he’d most likely be lying dead in there, too, since just breathing this stuff can kill you.” Dave Hollicker was standing nearby. Remembering her crime scene investigator was lucky to be alive, Joanna shot him a meaningful glance. Dave nodded and said nothing.

Workman continued. “He jury-rigged himself a laminar-flow fume hood. Attached a cooling fan from a computer to one side and cut a hole big enough for his hands in the other. With his hands inside, the two openings would be almost the same. He also cut holes into the top and made Saran Wrap windows so he could work with his hands inside the box and still see what he was doing. Then he sealed all the seams with duct tape. And – voilà. There you have it – the same kind of equipment we use when we’re working with hazardous materials in the lab, except ours sets the state back a bundle of money. What your guy used was crude but effective.”

“And portable,” Joanna added.

“That, too,” Workman agreed. “Whenever he was working with it, he would have connected it to an outside vent.”

“It’s hooked to the dryer vent so he wouldn’t end up breathing it himself.”

“Right.”

“Did you dust for prints?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet,” Workman told her. “When we get back to the lab, we’ll dust the box and the food containers we took, but for the rest…”

“That’s all right,” Joanna said. “My people will handle it. How much sodium azide did you find in there?”

“In the box?”

She nodded.

“Plenty,” Workman answered grimly. “More than I wanted to see. If your suspicions about the sugar and flour are correct, he had enough to do some real damage.”

“How long will it take you to find out about the sugar and flour?” she asked.

“Not long,” he said with a shrug. “A day or two. I’ll be in touch as soon as we finish the analysis.”

Joanna wanted to grab the man by his shoulders and give him a shake. She wanted to flood Workman with the same kind of urgency she felt, but he didn’t have people in his jurisdiction dying right and left. He didn’t have some nutcase walking around his town carrying God knew how much more sodium azide. But Joanna understood she had already pushed him just getting him to create the evidence log. If she said much more, it would likely slow the process rather than speed it up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll do your best.”

I GOT A KICK OUT OF WATCHING it go down. It occurred to me while Sheriff Brady was nailing Ron Workman’s feet to the floor that even though the Haz-Mat squad leader was a good twenty years younger than Harry I. Ball, the two men were cut from the same cloth.

Most people are under the mistaken impression that sexism is limited to old farts like Harry and me. They think one of these days all of the old guys will die off, sort of like the dinosaurs did, and the problem will disappear from the face of the planet. I have bad news for those folks. Since Ron Workman wasn’t a day over thirty-five, they probably shouldn’t look for it to happen anytime soon.

The Haz-Mat guys and Deputy Hollicker were packing up to leave when Joanna’s cell phone rang again. She answered and then handed it over to me. “For you,” she said.

“I’ve got two things to tell you,” Frank Montoya reported excitedly. “Number one: I checked on that Gardendale Correctional Institute you asked me about. It’s private, not public, owned and operated by UPPI.”

“And the other?”

“I’ve finally managed to get a hold of some of the phone records we need. I started with the pay phones down by the post office, and I’ve found something very interesting. There are three long-distance calls that were placed from one of those phones to Winnetka, Illinois, on Thursday. One was at eleven-twenty. The second was at three forty-six, the third at three-fifty. The first two went to the offices of a law firm named Maddern, Maddern, and Peek. The last one was to the residence of someone named Louis F. Maddern, the Third. That call lasted for close to ten minutes. Does the name ‘Maddern’ ring a bell?”

“Not to me,” I told him, jotting the information into my notebook. “Never heard of the guy or the law firm, either one.”

“It could be nothing,” Frank was saying. “Since Brampton is evidently from Illinois, it could be Maddern is a friend or a relative. But still, the timing…”

I was doing some dot-connecting. Frank Montoya was right. The timing of the calls was critical. Vital, even. One had been placed in the morning, probably shortly after the end of the donnybrook at Castle Rock Galley. The second two had been placed within minutes of Brampton’s finding out he was about to be fingerprinted in regard to the Latisha Wall homicide. If he’d had something to do with her death – if he was in any way responsible – he might have been operating in a state of near panic about then. Everyone pretends that detectives solve cases by virtue of pure skill and dogged determination. The truth is, we usually catch crooks because they make stupid mistakes.

“This is good stuff,” I told him. “Thanks.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Frank replied.

I started to hand the phone back to Joanna, then changed my mind. “Could you check on one more thing?” I asked.

“What’s that?” Frank returned.

“UPPI and the state of Washington are currently involved in some upcoming litigation. How about checking to see if a company named Maddern, Maddern, and Peek is representing in that case.”

“Sure thing,” Frank said. “I’ll see what I can do.” I heard someone speaking to Montoya in the background. When he returned to the radio mike, his voice crackled with new urgency. “Have the Haz-Mat guys left yet?” he demanded.

I looked around. The yard was empty. While we talked, Joanna had evidently followed Ron Workman and his crew back down to the street. “I’m not sure,” I told him. “If they’re not already gone, they’re packing up to leave. Why?”

“Somebody’d better grab them before they do,” Frank Montoya returned. “Casey Ledford just radioed in from Dee Dee Canfield’s house out in Huachuca Terraces. She says there are clear signs of a struggle in the living room, and there are traces of a white powder on the furniture and in the rugs. She’s evacuated the place and is awaiting Haz-Mat assistance.”

Before the call even ended, I was thundering down the stairs, looking for Joanna Brady. Ron Workman was shaking her hand and about to get into his truck when I caught up with them. I gave her Frank’s message, which she immediately passed along to Ron. He took the news of this additional Haz-Mat site with all the eye-rolling good grace of a fifth grader who’s just been told the principal has canceled recess.

“Where’s this one?” he demanded.

“A few miles from here,” Joanna said. “You’ll get there faster if I lead the way.”

With that, Joanna Brady struck off up the street toward the parked Blazer. Since I was currently without wheels of my own, I jogged along. If where we were going was “a few” miles away, I had no intention of walking.

Riding through town, I was struck by the general junkiness of the place. Homes and businesses alike seemed to have collections of old cars, washing machines, refrigerators, and other rusty equipment that defied identification moldering around them. Evidently the city of Bisbee wasn’t big on litter patrol.

The route we took around the traffic circle and out of town was familiar. We’d gone that way the day before when I had followed Joanna’s Crown Vic to Naco. This time, though, we blew straight through that critical intersection. Half a mile later, we turned left into a little subdivision of humble-looking late-fifties bungalows, complete with what looked distinctly like another hazardous material – asbestos siding.

Dee Canfield’s house was the most beat-up place on the block. A seven-foot-tall chicken, made of soldered-together scrap metal and too tall to fit under the low-slung front porch’s overhang, stood sentry in the middle of a weed-clogged front yard.

Joanna parked on the street. While she hurried off to confer with her deputies and the Haz-Mat guys once again, I stayed put. I didn’t have the patience or the inclination to go hang around another crime scene. Playing fifth wheel and staying out of the way of the people who are doing useful work doesn’t suit me.

That’s how come I was still in the car and half-dozing when the radio call came in from Frank Montoya.

“Sheriff Brady,” he asked. “Can you put Beaumont on?”

I picked up the radio. “I’m here,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Maddern, Maddern, and Peek may not be representing UPPI in Washington State, but they are in several other jurisdictions – Missouri, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, to be exact. The law firm UPPI is using in Washington is actually McRainey and Dobbs. They’re located in a place called Bellevue.”

My heartbeat quickened. It may have been entirely circumstantial, but here was a connection – a real connection – between Latisha Wall’s killer and UPPI. I could hardly wait to tell Ross Connors that I was making progress.

“Thanks, Frank,” I said. “Thanks a lot. I’ll let Sheriff Brady know right away.”

But before I did that, I picked up my cell phone. Without thinking, I dialed the attorney general’s cell phone number, only to discover I had once again been captured by that Spanish-speaking babe from Old Mexico.

“Damn!” I exclaimed, whacking the phone on the dashboard in utter frustration. What’s the point in packing the damned thing if it doesn’t work most of the time?

Climbing out of the car, I went looking for Joanna Brady.

“What now?” she asked when I interrupted her yet again. I was going to ask to borrow her phone, but she looked so harried that I simply passed along what Frank Montoya had told me. “I need to get back up to the hotel,” I added. “I want to call my boss and let him know what’s happened.”

“Sure,” Joanna said. “Go ahead.” With that, she turned once again to her officers.

“But I don’t have a car,” I objected.

Shaking her head, she reached in her pocket and found a set of keys, which she tossed over to me. I caught them in midair. “Go get your Kia,” she said. “Leave my Blazer at the department. You can leave the keys at the front desk.”

“But how will you get back?” I asked.

“Don’t worry. Somebody here will give me a ride when we finish up.” With that Joanna turned away and returned to her huddle with Workman, Hollicker, and the others.

I didn’t fault her for rudeness. Cops working crime scenes don’t have time to observe all the Miss Manners rules of polite behavior. Joanna Brady was working a crime scene and, as it turned out, so was I.