Dead to Rights

FOUR

By the time the Cochise County Coroner, Dr. George Winfield, showed up with his two assistants to collect the body, Joanna and Ernie Carpenter were standing beside Ernie’s van. Joanna had taken off her wet and filthy duster, shoes, and socks by then, but the socks had left an ugly gray high-water mark partway up her leg. It was possible that washing would dissolve the grime from her No Nonsense panty hose, but Joanna doubted it.

Before handing the body over to the coroner, Ernie had removed Bucky’s wallet. Because the wallet had been under the dead man’s body, it had been protected from the worst heat of the fire. Even so, Bucky Buckwalter’s collection of credit cards had melted together in their equally melted sleeves. Now, prying deformed hunks of plastic apart, Ernie was going through the contents one card and one soggy photo at a time, inventorying the contents and mumbling aloud to himself as he did so.

“I don’t understand,” Joanna said.

“What don’t you understand?” Carpenter asked, never removing his eyes from the task at hand.

“According to what I’ve read,” Joanna mused, “most of the time perpetrators set fires in hopes of concealing evidence of a crime. But this is a metal barn sitting on a concrete slab. There wasn’t enough fuel inside the barn to cause the building to collapse or even to burn up the corpse. Morgan must have known that, so what was the point? Why did he bother?”

Ernie stopped what he was doing long enough to fix her with an appraising stare. “Good question,” he said. “Damned good question. If you’re not careful, we may end up making a reasonably good homicide detective out of you yet.”

With that, Ernie returned to checking the contents of the wallet.

“It may be a good question, but you haven’t answered it,” Joanna insisted.

“And I’m not going to,” Detective Carpenter told her. “Remember, this is only the bare beginning of the investigation. Once I know what the answer is, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

Moving closer, Joanna observed Ernie’s painstaking handling of Bucky Buckwalter’s personal effects. Each time the detective removed some item from the wallet, he would examine it carefully and then place it in an evidence bag before making the proper notation on an inventory sheet attached to a clipboard. It was a tedious process, one that required more than two hands.

“Would you like me to help with that?” Joanna offered. “I could either take the stuff out of the wallet and you could list it, or we could do it the other way around.”

“Thanks,” Ernie said, handing her his pencil and clipboard. “That’ll speed things up.”

One by one Joanna listed the driver’s license as well as the other cards, photos, and pieces of paper. “He was carrying a little bit of cash on him,” the detective reported eventually. “I count three twenties, a ten, and six singles. Seventy-six bucks and a package of Trojans.”

“Trojans?” Joanna repeated. She heard the shock and surprise in her voice when she uttered the word, and she wondered if Ernie noticed.

“Sure,” he said with a short laugh. “As in condoms. These are the nineties, Sheriff Brady. Lots of men pack them around in their wallets these days. What’s wrong with that?”

Joanna considered for a long moment before she answered. “Nothing,” she said finally. “Except if Bucky Buckwalter had been behaving himself, he wouldn’t have needed them.”

Rocking back on his heels, Ernie Carpenter regarded Joanna Brady with a puzzled frown. “Do you know something I don’t know?” he asked.

Joanna nodded. “The Davis Insurance Agency sold the Buckwalters their health insurance several years ago. With all of Milo Davis’s health insurance clients, whenever there was a problem with a claim, I was the designated troubleshooter. It was my job to duke things out with the claims people, to help our clients make their way through the bureaucratic jungle.”

“So?” Ernie urged when Joanna paused and seemed disinclined to continue.

“Terry Buckwalter suffered from recurring ovarian cysts,” Joanna answered at last. “She finally had a complete hysterectomy up at University Medical Center in Tucson. This was three or four years ago. There was a huge mixup because the insurance company paid the anesthesiologist twice and didn’t pay the surgeon anything. It was a mess that took me months to sort out.”

That far into the story, Joanna stopped cold.

“Go on,” the detective urged.

Joanna shook her head. “That’s all. The problem is, that’s confidential information. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

Thoughtfully Carpenter dropped the condoms into a glassine bag. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s interesting information and probably not that important in the long run. If I do end up needing to have official corroboration, though, I can certainly find it out from other sources.” Ernie paused. “That’s the way it is in small-town law enforcement,” he added. “Lots of people know things about other people’s business.”

Joanna nodded, but still she felt guilty for betraying a confidence, for giving out information without having a proper authorization to do so. Turning away from him, Joanna studied the intensely turquoise sky above the rust-colored man-made mesa of the tailings dump. If she was hoping for guidance in that vast expanse of blue, she found none-only more disturbing questions.

“Does that mean Bucky was having an affair?” she asked.

Carpenter shrugged. “Maybe. Either that, or he was hoping to or seeing professionals. Whichever, it does throw a somewhat different light on the situation. And it opens us up to the idea that things around here might he somewhat more complicated than they look.”

Joanna thought about that as Carpenter stowed his collection of glassine bags in a scarred but ample briefcase. In the aftermath of Andy’s death, there had been some question about whether or not he had been having an affair, too. Even though those suspicions had eventually proved groundless, Joanna knew from personal experience how much the unwarranted allegations had bothered her-how much additional and needless hurt they had added to her pain. The same thing could happen to Terry Buckwalter if unfounded hints of Bucky’s infidelity were tossed around during the investigation into the veterinarian’s death.

“What if Terry doesn’t know anything about the possibility that her husband was messing around on her?” Joanna asked.

Carpenter seemed unconcerned. “She’s bound to find out eventually,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” Joanna returned. “I’d hate to think that someone in my department was responsible for telling her.”

“As in ignorance is bliss?” Ernie asked.

“No,” Joanna returned. “Not bliss. It’s just that sometimes being allowed to believe a lie is less painful than knowing the truth.”

Ernie gave Joanna a searching look. “You don’t want me to tell her?”

“Right,” Joanna replied. “Not if it isn’t necessary. Remember what happened with Andy?”

Ernie Carpenter was one of the homicide detectives who come to Joanna’s house to question her, bringing with him those unfounded and hurtful rumors.

Ernie Carpenter looked down and examined his feet. “A good cop was dead,” he said huskily. “In what had been made to look like a suicide. Maybe I was a little overzealous, but it was my job to figure out what had happened. I’ve been sorry about that ever since.”

Joanna nodded. “Me, too,” she said. “And if there’s any way to keep that kind of ugliness from happening to some other human being, I’d like to. You’re a homicide detective, Ernie. I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m just asking you to go a little easy on Terry Buckwalter. Don’t tear her heart up in little pieces and step on them, not if you don’t need to. If Hal Morgan turns out to be our killer, then there’ll be no need to bring any of this up, will there? No need to mention the condoms at all.”

At least Ernie Carpenter did Joanna the courtesy of considering for a moment before he replied. “Like I said before, Sheriff Brady, this is a small town. If Bucky Buckwalter was screwing around behind Terry’s back, there’ll be plenty of other people besides me who’ll be willing to tell her so. The fact is, maybe she already knows.”

“That’s different from having the information come from you or from someone in my department,” Joanna returned. “All I’m saying is if it isn’t necessary to the case, don’t bring it up. Do I have your word on that?”

Ernie Carpenter shook his grizzled head. “I can’t promise it won’t come up,” he said at last. “But I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks, Detective Carpenter,” Joanna said. “Your best is good enough for me.”

By three o’clock, the crime-scene investigation was pretty well complete. Ernie had retreated into the clinic’s restroom to change back into his street clothes, and Joanna was about to head back to the department. Just as she was climbing into the Blazer, Terry Buckwalter’s mottled white T-Bird bounced over the cattle guard and stopped just inside the clinic compound.

Deputy Dave Hollicker had been stationed at the clinic’s entrance all afternoon, telling whoever tried to turn into the parking lot-potential clients and gawkers alike-that they would have to come back some other time.

As soon as Deputy Hollicker waved the T-Bird to a stop, Joanna headed in that direction. Dave wasn’t a bad guy, but he had all the subtlety of a baseball bat. Joanna didn’t want him to be the one who told Terry Buckwalter that her husband was dead.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Dick Voland had issued orders that no information was to be released by anyone other than Frank Montoya, the public information officer. Dave Hollicker was exceptionally good about obeying orders.

When Joanna reached the T-Bird, a frowning Terry Buckwalter peered up at her in frustration. “What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “This is my property-my business-but your jackass deputy here won’t let me in, and he won’t tell me what’s going on, either.”

“It’s all right, Deputy Hollicker,” Joanna said. “Let her through. I’ll take over from here.”

They moved forward that way, with Terry Buckwalter driving the T-Bird as Joanna walked alongside. Terry left the driver’s window rolled down so they could speak as they went.

Not knowing where to begin, Joanna took a deep, steadying. breath. “There’s been a fire,” she said.

“I know that,” Terry replied impatiently. “A fire in the barn. Somebody who knows I golf at Rob Roy in the afternoons called out there and spoke to Esther Thomas, the lady who runs the restaurant. Esther sent Tom out on the course to find me and let me know. I can see the barn from here. From the way it sounded, I expected it to he a complete loss, but it doesn’t look that bad. So what’s the problem? Why all the fuss?”

She glanced off in the direction of the barn. “I’ve told Bucky a thousand times not to smoke in the barn, but he never listens to me.” Parking in the empty space next to Bebe Noonan’s Honda, Terry jammed down on the emergency brake and then stepped out of the car, leaving the door open and the keys in the ignition.

“Terry,” Joanna said. “The fire had nothing to do with cigarettes. It may have been arson.”

“Arson,” Terry repeated with a puzzled frown. “Why would anyone want to do that? And what does Bucky think about all this?”

“I’m afraid things are much worse than they look. About Bucky…”

“What about him? Where is he?”

Joanna remembered hearing her father, D. H. Lathrop, and her late husband, Andy-both of them police officers-say that the worst part of being a cop was having to deliver death notifications. After little more than two months in office, Sheriff Joanna Brady already knew from personal experience that the same thing applied to her. Delivering that wrenching news was the worst duty possible.

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Terry, but your husband is dead.”

As soon as Joanna uttered the words, Terry Buckwalter’s knees seemed to collapse beneath her. Her breath came out in a gasp, and her well-tanned face turned pale and her lips stark-white, as she sank back down into the driver’s seat of the car.

Seeing Terry’s reaction, Joanna immediately began railing at herself for botching the job. Stingily there must have been some better way to deliver the news than simply saying, “Your husband is dead.” Wasn’t there something else she might have said, something gentler that would have cushioned the blow? Couldn’t she have found some softer words that would have blunted the impact of that starkly life-changing reality?

“Dead?” Terry repeated, as though in a daze and n t quite capable of grasping the word. “You’re saying Bucky is dead?”

Joanna nodded. “The firefighters found him in the back of the barn when they went inside to douse the flames.”

Terry Buckwalter leaned back against the headrest of the seat, momentarily closing her eyes. Joanna expected that any moment a torrent of tears would start, but that didn’t happen.

“How can that be?” Terry murmured. “He was fine when I left at noon. What happened?”

“We won’t know for sure about that until after the autopsy.”

The word “autopsy” seemed to be a catalyst. Terry grasped the steering wheel with both hands and pulled her-self up straight. Since she still hadn’t taken the keys out of the ignition, a hollow bell-like tone was bonging out some internal warning signal. The racket was driving Joanna crazy, but Terry Buckwalter seemed oblivious to it.

“Why an autopsy?” she asked.

Reaching across Terry, Joanna tried to extricate the key, hill it wouldn’t pull free from the ignition. The gesture was enough to let Terry know what Joanna was trying to do. She silenced the ringing bell herself by removing the key with the aid of some hidden steering-column-mounted release.

“Who ordered it?” Terry asked again. “Don’t I have any say lit that?”

“No, you don’t,” Joanna explained. “The autopsy was authorized by Ernie Carpenter. He’s the homicide investigator on the case.”

“Homicide. You’re saying Bucky was murdered?”

Joanna nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s tentative, of course, but that’s the direction the investigation is taking at this time.”

Joanna was still waiting for Terry’s shock to wear off and for the tears to start. For a moment or two it seemed as though they might, but then Terry turned away from Joanna. She pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Hal Morgan’s six-year-old maroon-colored Buick Century.

“It was him, then, wasn’t it,” she said softly. “It has to be him.”

“Hal Morgan?” Joanna asked.

Terry nodded.

“It could be,” Joanna allowed, “but of course we don’t know that for sure. Not yet. The investigation is just now getting underway.”

Without a word, Terry Buckwalter reached into the pocket of her leather bomber jacket and pulled out a scrap of paper, which she handed out the open door to Joanna.

“What’s this?” Joanna asked.

“Read it,” Terry answered. “Hal Morgan said he would kill Bucky, and now he has.”

“Hal Morgan threatened Bucky? Where? When? Nobody told me that this morning.”

“It wasn’t today,” Terry said. “It was last year. In Phoenix. At the courthouse. I saw him once in the hallway outside the courtroom.”

“Wait did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Terry answered. “He gave me that note. Read it.”

Carefully Joanna began opening a tiny piece of paper that had been folded and refolded until it was smaller than an ordinary shirt button. Once unfolded, the scrap of paper was little more than an inch square.

The message itself, written in tiny script and in fading lead pencil, contained what amounted to two words. “Exodus 21:12.”

Joanna studied the note for a moment and then looked back at Terry Buckwalter’s pale face. “Hal Morgan threatened Bucky with a Bible verse?”

Terry nodded. “Yes.”

“What does it say? Offhand, I don’t remember which verse this one is.”

“I didn’t know it either,” Terry said. “Not at first. I looked it up that night in the Gideon Bible in my hotel room.” Closing her eyes, she recited the words from memory. “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.”

“And you kept it?” Joanna asked. “The note, I mean?”

“Yes,” Terry said. “I put it in my makeup case and then I forgot about it. Until this morning. When I was putting on my makeup, I saw it again and I remembered. With Hal Morgan stationed right outside the clinic gates and carrying his ‘wicket sign, I could hardly forget.”

“Why did you put it in your pocket today?” Joanna asked.

“What?” Terry asked. She seemed to have traveled far away.

“You said you’ve had the note in your makeup kit for months, but today you’re carrying it around in your pocket,” Joanna said. “Why is that?”

Terry shrugged. “I meant to talk to Bucky about it.”

“You meant to, but you didn’t?”

Terry shook her head. “I never had a chance. By the time I came over to the clinic from the house, Bucky was already out in the parking lot raising hell. You were there, so you know what that was like. And when we went inside, we got so busy that I never had another opportunity.”

“I’ll need to keep this,” Joanna said, nodding toward the note. “I’ll have to give it to Detective Carpenter.”

“I understand,” Terry said. “It’s all right.”

Carefully refolding the scrap of paper, Joanna dropped it into her own pocket. When she looked down at Terry, the woman was still sitting there with both hands on the steering wheel, staring dry-eyed out through the T-Bird’s bug-spattered windshield.

“Are you all right, Terry?” Joanna asked, concerned that the other woman was going into shock. “Is there someone I can call to come stay here with you?”

Stony-eyed, Terry shook her head and climbed out of the car, shutting the door firmly behind her. “No,” she said. “I don’t need anyone right now. In fact, I should go in and check on the animals, especially on the post-ops. And Tigger, too,” she added. “If Bucky didn’t get around to pulling out those quills, I’ll have to call Dr. Wade down in Douglas and see if he can come help out.”

With that, Terry Buckwalter hurried into the parking lot. A thunderstruck Joanna Brady watched her go. Nothing could have prepared her for Terry’s reaction, or rather, the lack thereof, to news of her husband’s death. It was almost as though Joanna had told her that Rocky had been called out of town for a few days on some reasonably urgent but nun Iife threatening emergency.

Just then Ernie Carpenter, once again wearing his natty suit, emerged from the rest room, lugging his suitcase. “What’s going on?” he asked, examining Joanna’s face. “Has something happened?”

Joanna nodded. “Terry Buckwalter came home a few minutes ago. Someone called the golf course and told her about the fire. I just now informed her that Bucky’s dead.”

“Oh,” Ernie said. “If she’s here, maybe I can talk to her for a few minutes right now. It’ll save me having to make another trip later.”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Joanna asked.

Carpenter’s steel-gray beetle brows knitted themselves into a frown. “Look, Sheriff Brady, I gave you my word. When I interview Mrs. Buckwalter, if it doesn’t look like it’s necessary, I won’t say a word about the condoms. You don’t need to come along and check up on me.”

“It’s not that,” Joanna said.

Still looking at the clinic door through which Terry Buck-waiter had disappeared, Joanna reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded note. “Before you talk to her, there are two things you need to know. Number one, this note is one that Hal Morgan gave Terry Buckwalter in the hallway of the Maricopa County Courthouse last year. She considers it to be a death threat, and so do I.”

Unfolding the note, Ernie Carpenter held it at arm’s length. “What’s it say? I confess I’m not up on my Bible verses this afternoon.”

“The gist of it is pretty much an eye for an eye and all that jazz.”

“I see.” Ernie dropped the note into his pocket. “I believe you said two things.”

“Forget what I said about not telling Terry Buckwalter about the condoms,” Joanna answered. “My guess is she already knows.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Women’s intuition,” Joanna answered.

“In a homicide investigation, women’s intuition doesn’t count for much,” Carpenter observed. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“When I told her, she didn’t cry,” Joanna said.

“Didn’t cry?” Carpenter asked.

Joanna shook her head. “Not at all. Not a single tear. It was almost as though she already knew she had lost him. After that, finding out he was dead didn’t really matter.”

A look of intense interest washed across Detective Carpenter’s face. “Did she say anything?” he asked.

“No,” Joanna answered. “It’s more what she didn’t say. At first she looked stunned. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. Instead, a minute or so later, she walked into the clinic to go look after the animals.”

Ernie considered Joanna’s answer for a moment. “Different strokes for different folks,” he said. “Not everybody re-acts to this kind of news in exactly the same way.”

“Maybe so,” Joanna agreed. “I can tell you this, though, from personal experience. Within five minutes of hearing Andy was dead, the last thing in the world I thought of was doing my job.”

“What did you think about?” Ernie Carpenter asked.

Joanna’s eyes filled with tears. Four and a half months after the fact, tears could still sneak up on her and catch her unawares. “That I would never see him again,” she managed. “That I’d never be able to talk with him or laugh with him. That we would never eat another meal together or sleep in the same bed.”

Ernie Carpenter listened gravely and then he nodded. “Maybe Terry Buckwalter isn’t quite as sad to lose Bucky as you were to lose Andy, Sheriff Brady. Andy was a quality type of guy. Bucky was… “ The detective paused and shrugged. “Well, Bucky was Bucky,” he finished at last. “From what I hear, that wasn’t all good.”

He waited long enough for Joanna to dry her own tears. “Do you still want to come with me while I talk to her?” Joanna nodded.

“Come on then. I really meant what I said a little while ago. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make a respectable homicide investigator out of you yet. Women’s intuition and all.”