Dead Wrong

Chapter 8

Joanna had barely returned to her office when an almost giddy Debbie Howell bounded into the room. “Look,” she said, waving a fistful of papers in the air. “The woman in Brad Evans’s pictures. I finally talked to a Fry’s checkout clerk who was able to look at the pictures and give me the woman’s name-Leslie Markham. I came back to the office, Googled the name, and found her! Here she is. She and her husband, Rory Markham, own a real estate company out in Sierra Vista. I downloaded this from their website.”

Joanna took the proffered pieces of paper. While she read through them, Debbie, too excited to sit, paced the floor. Rory Markham, Real Estate Group, LLC, was a brokerage specializing in “fine homes and ranches.” Rory, who was evidently both owner and broker of the firm, was a tanned, silver-haired gentleman who looked to be in his late fifties. Just under the company name was a color photo of Mr. Markham with a radiantly smiling Leslie standing at his side. Leslie’s photo turned up a second time among the head shots of salespeople working for the company. In the associates section her caption read: “Leslie Tazewell Markham.”

“Looks like she started out as an associate and ended up marrying the boss,” Joanna said.

Debbie nodded. “I believe it’s called marrying up.”

“In every sense of the word,” Joanna added. “She looks like she’s barely mid-twenties and he’s what, early fifties?”

“At least,” Debbie agreed. “He could be even older than that.” Joanna remembered what Ted Chapman had said- something to the effect that younger women only threw themselves at older men if money was involved. From the looks of the man in the picture it appeared that there couldn’t be more than a couple of years of difference in age between Rory Markham and Bradley Evans. So maybe Leslie Markham had a thing for older men.

“Do Jaime and Ernie know about this?” Joanna asked. “Not yet,” Debbie said. “I came straight here to tell you.”

“I’m glad to know about it, but they’re your partners on this,” Joanna reminded her. “Whatever you know, they need to know.”

“Right,” Debbie said. “I’ll see if I can locate them.” She left Joanna’s office, taking the website information on Rory Markham Real Estate with her when she went. Within minutes Debbie was back, bringing the Double Cs with her.

“Look who I found,” she said. “They were just pulling into the parking lot.”

Ernie was scanning the Leslie Markham info as he followed Debbie into Joanna’s office. “Well,” he said, tossing the papers on the small conference table in one corner of the room, “this is all very interesting. Now that we know who she is, the question has to be: Is she a victim here or is she the perpetrator?”

“Maybe she’s both,” Joanna suggested.

“What do you mean?” Ernie asked.

“First, tell me. What did you find out down in Douglas?”

“Nothing bad,” Jaime admitted. “All the guys at the prison, the ones Brad Evans was working with on a regular basis, thought he was a great guy. For one thing, he evidently learned to speak Spanish-fluent Spanish-while he was in prison. So when he was counseling the guys, he could do it in English or Spanish, which isn’t nearly as common as you’d think. And he’s evidently stayed in touch with a couple of the guys who were local after they were released. They told us that they saw him at AA meetings, in Douglas and in Agua Prieta. But none of them mentioned Brad having a girlfriend. Nobody hinted that he might be gay or anything like that. It’s just that if he had relationships with women, he never told anyone.”

“Did anyone mention a pen-pal situation?” Joanna asked.

“Nope.”

“So here we are then,” Joanna said. “What we know is that, for whatever reason, Brad Evans was definitely interested in Leslie Markham-a happily and possibly recently married woman. Let’s suppose for a minute that she and Brad did have a relationship of some kind, one that none of his friends happen to know anything about. Maybe it was over as far as she was concerned, but Brad was still hanging on.”

“I see where you’re going with this,” Ernie said. “Somehow she gets wind that Brad Evans is still sniffing around. Leslie doesn’t want to rock the boat with her husband, this Markham guy, so she takes Evans out of the picture permanently.”

“Which makes her a possible stalking victim and a possible homicide suspect,” Joanna returned. “Like I said earlier-maybe she’s both.”

“For right now, we’d better take the victim option,” Jaime said. “If we even acknowledge that she could be a suspect-”

“Exactly,” Joanna said. “First let’s try to find out everything we can about the woman. Then tomorrow, maybe you can go talk to her.”

“Did you have any luck tracking down whoever bought primer over the weekend?” Ernie asked Debbie.

She shook her head. “I spent all day on this.”

“That’s all right,” Ernie said. “Tomorrow will be plenty of time to do that.”

For a change Joanna left the office right at five. Dinner at the Rob Roy was good-at least the food was. Margaret was off on another tirade, but Joanna, taking Butch’s advice, simply tuned her mother-in-law out. Instead, Joanna found herself thinking about Bradley Evans-a convicted murderer and a murder victim as well, a man whose life in prison and out of it seemed to be a complete contradiction. The people who knew him best-like Ted Chapman, for instance-seemed to have thought very highly of him. On the surface it appeared that he had lived an almost monastic life.

But somewhere along the line Brad Evans had met up with someone who hadn’t liked him nearly as well as other people did. This unknown person had disliked Evans enough not just to kill him but to mutilate his body as well.

How much do you have to hate someone, Joanna wondered, to systematically remove their fingers?

“Well,” Margaret Dixon asked impatiently, “what do you think?”

Joanna’s attention returned to the dinner table in time to find the other four people seated there staring at her and waiting for an answer. Butch, seeing what must have been a totally blank look on her face, came to her rescue.

“Dessert,” he said quickly. “What do you think about dessert?”

Joanna actually didn’t want dessert. Caught off guard, though, she ordered some anyway. “I’ll have the creme brulee,” she answered at once. Which was why, when midnight rolled around, she was wide awake, tossing and turning and suffering from a terrible case of indigestion.

Not wanting to disturb Butch, she and Lady abandoned the bedroom. For a while, Joanna and the dog sat on the couch in the living room. Finally, though, recognizing that this was a time when she’d have a bit of privacy, Joanna headed for her office. Butch had carried through on his promise to lock the door, but the key was hidden beneath one of his prized O-gauge model train engines displayed on a nearby shelf.

Joanna let herself into the office, where she found Butch’s laptop in the middle of her desk. No doubt he had used the office as a refuge from his parents during the course of the previous day.

Putting the computer aside, Joanna focused on the boxes stacked along the wall. One by one, she lifted them. It wasn’t necessary to open them in order to discern which ones held knickknacks. Those were all fairly light. The boxes at the bottom of the stack were too heavy to lift. Slicing open the top one, she found that the box was chock-full of books.

Some of them were old history texts. D. H. Lathrop had been a self-taught history buff. She remembered him regaling her with stories of the Old West, and it didn’t surprise Joanna in the least to find a collection of history books among her father’s treasured possessions. And there were several outdated law enforcement manuals as well. D. H. Lathrop had left off formal schooling without completing high school. When he had wanted to switch from mining to law enforcement, signing up for a college degree in criminal justice hadn’t been an option. Instead, he had pored over the textbooks and manuals on his own, using what he learned there to bootstrap himself out of a dead-end job as a miner into the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.

He may have started out there as a deputy, but he had worked his way up through the ranks until eventually he had been elected sheriff. Just seeing the books he had used to accomplish that transformation gave Joanna a whole new sense of her father’s single-minded struggle to better himself.

Joanna found the diaries in the second of the two heavy boxes. When she picked up the first of the leather-bound volumes, she did so almost reverently. Two dates-March 26, 1964, to June 8, 1969-were inscribed in indelible black ink on the front cover of the book and repeated again, in the same hand, on the spine. It took Joanna’s breath away to think that the small volume in her hand contained five years of her father’s life-five years she knew nothing about. At the time D. H. Lathrop had been writing in this diary, his daughter, Joanna, hadn’t been born.

She opened the first page. It was yellow and brittle to the touch, but her father’s distinctive handwriting leaped out at her.

“Work,” the entry dated March 1964 read. “I hate it. I hate working in the mine. I hate being dirty. I hate the dust and the dark. Fell in a stope today. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but I promised Ellie…”

Joanna stopped cold, allowing the word to sink into her consciousness. Ellie! Her father had called her mother that. So did George Winfield. Two very different men with the same wife who used the same affectionate nickname.

“… that I would support her until death do us part. And I will. A promise is a promise.”

And there it was. Joanna had always known that much about her parents’ relationship-that her mother had married someone who had been considered beneath her and that Eleanor had never, not for one day, allowed her husband to forget that fact. Regardless, though, Eleanor hadn’t bolted. She had married D. H. Lathrop for better or for worse. She may have been disappointed. There may have been far more “worse” days than “better,” and her husband may not have measured up to Eleanor’s lofty expectations, but she had stuck with him, too.

For the very first time, it occurred to Joanna that in reading her father’s version of his life, she might be doing her mother a disservice-that if she read the diaries she might come away with too much information about both of them.

Eleanor isn’t perfect, Joanna thought. But maybe neither was he.

Closing the book, Joanna threw it down. Then she took out the others-fifteen of them in all-and arranged them in chronological order across her desk. At volume eight, the format suddenly changed. The handsome leather-bound volumes were replaced with reddish cloth-bound books, with only the word “Journal” stamped on the front, with a blank space provided where her father had dutifully inked in the dates.

Joanna was lost in thought when Butch appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing?” he asked.

She jumped. “You startled me,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you, so Lady and I came in here.”

“Your father’s books?” Butch asked.

Joanna nodded. “His diaries and some other books as well.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Keep them,” Joanna answered.

“I know that. I guess, I meant, where are you going to keep them? My mother isn’t the only one who might pay your office an unauthorized visit. Your mother wouldn’t be above doing some snooping, either.”

In the end, they stowed all of the books in the bottom drawer of Joanna’s file cabinet. And because bending over was too cumbersome for Joanna, Butch was the one who actually put them away.

“This is silly, you know,” she said. “After all, it’s our house.”

Butch straightened up and looked at her. “How much luck have you had changing your mother’s behavior?” he asked.

“None.”

“Same thing with my mother,” he said. “So let’s just deal with it-and keep the door locked. Now come to bed. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow.”

Joanna had just stepped out of the shower a little past seven the next morning when Butch tapped on the bathroom door, reached in, and handed her the telephone.

“It’s Jeannine Phillips,” Tica Romero said when Joanna answered.

“What about her?”

“Her damaged truck was found abandoned in the westbound rest area at Texas Canyon,” Tica said.

There was a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of Joanna’s stomach. Texas Canyon was only a matter of miles away from San Simon and from Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer’s Rooster-comb Ranch.

“What do you mean, damaged?” Joanna demanded. “Is it wrecked?”

“Somebody put a rock through the passenger window. Officer Phillips is nowhere to be found.”

“When’s the last time someone heard from her?”

“She radioed in to Dispatch at midnight to say that everything was fine and she was going off shift.”

“Did she give her location at that time?”

“No.”

“Has someone secured the vehicle?” Joanna asked.

“Yes. Deputy Raymond is on the scene.”

“Tell him to hold the fort. Then call everyone else-Dave Hollicker, Casey Ledford, and Chief Montoya. Tell them to meet me at the scene.”

“What about Homicide?” Tica asked tentatively. “Should I call them?”

Tica’s question confirmed Joanna’s own worst fears-that Jeannine Phillips wasn’t just missing; that she could already be dead. “Yes, them, too,” she said at last. “The Double Cs along with Debbie Howell.”

Butch came into the bedroom while Joanna was getting dressed. “What’s going on?” he asked. “It sounded serious.”

“It is,” Joanna said. “I’m on my way to Texas Canyon.” When she finished explaining the situation, Butch headed for the kitchen. “You can’t afford to go through a day like this on an empty stomach,” he said. “I’ll fix you a traveler.”

Don and Margaret Dixon were at the table eating bacon and eggs when Joanna stepped into the kitchen, briefcase in one hand and car keys in the other.

“Aren’t you going to have some breakfast?” Margaret asked Joanna on her way past. “After Butch went to all this trouble…”

“She is having breakfast, Mom,” Butch corrected. “I made her order to go.”

He followed Joanna out to the garage. Once she was settled into the Crown Victoria with her seat belt buckled, Butch reached in through the open car door. He handed her an open Zip-loc container with two peanut-buttered English muffins inside it and an insulated thermos cup filled with freshly brewed tea.

“Be careful,” he said, kissing her good-bye. “Be really, really careful.”

“I will,” she said.

She downed the muffins before she even reached Highway 80. Once there, she turned on her lights and siren and drove like hell, fuming as she went. After all, Joanna had called off the dogfight-ring surveillance, and she had ordered-ordered!-Jeannine Phillips to stay away from San Simon and the O’Dwyers. Now Joanna’s department, shorthanded and strained to the breaking point, would have to turn away from an ongoing murder investigation and from the Border Patrol’s request for additional assistance to deal with Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer.

The first order of business, though, was to find Jeannine Phillips. Joanna reached for her radio and was patched through to Frank Montoya.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“On the far side of the Divide.” Frank’s home in Old Bisbee put him a good seven or eight miles ahead of her.

“Have you put out an APB on Jeannine?” she asked.

“Tica is handling that,” he said. “I’m sure it’s been issued by now, but I doubt it’ll do much good. We have no idea what kind of vehicle she might be traveling in or even if she’s in a vehicle.

And if she was dumped out in the desert somewhere, it could be months before we find the body.“

“Or years,” Joanna added.

“Do you think she was still working the O’Dwyer angle?” Frank asked.

“Probably,” Joanna said. “I told her to drop it, but it’s pretty clear she didn’t.”

Joanna’s cell phone chirped the distinctive cockadoodle rooster crow that amounted to a ring. “Gotta go,” Joanna told him.

“Sheriff Brady?” someone said.

“Yes.”

“It’s Millicent Ross. I hope you don’t mind my calling you on your cell phone. I had the number in my files.”

“No,” Joanna said. “I don’t mind. What’s up?”

“Well…” Dr. Ross hesitated before saying in a rush, “Jean-nine didn’t come home last night.”

Joanna heard the words and grappled with what they might mean. Were Jeannine and the vet living together? Why hadn’t Joanna known that?

“I’m up so early every day that when she comes in off night shift, I don’t even hear her,” Millicent continued. “But when she wasn’t home this morning when I woke up, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if I should call in and report her missing or what. And then I decided I’d call you and ask your advice. I mean, if anyone would know what to do, it would be the sheriff, right?”

“You and Jeannine are roommates?” Joanna asked.

Millicent Ross hesitated. “We’re actually a little more than roommates,” she admitted. “In fact, we’re a lot more than roommates, but we haven’t exactly advertised it. Bisbee’s such a small place and all. Once gossip gets going, it can be vicious.”

Joanna took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Millicent. Jeannine is missing.”

“Missing,” Millicent Ross echoed. “What do you mean, missing?”

“I mean her truck was found over in Texas Canyon, but she’s not in it. The last time anyone heard from her was when she radioed in to the department at the end of her shift. Did you hear from her last night?”

But Millicent didn’t seem capable of hearing or acknowledging the question. “How can she be missing?” she demanded. “Where would she go?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Joanna said patiently. “Did she say anything to you about where she was going or what she might be doing?”

“She was still upset about the dogfights,” Millicent answered after a pause. “She traded shifts with Manny so she could go up to San Simon and keep an eye on the O’Dwyers. That’s what she said to me-that she was going to keep an eye on them.”

She must have done more than that, Joanna thought.

“Do you really think they’d hurt her?” Millicent asked.

Joanna heard the growing concern in the woman’s voice.

“We don’t know,” Joanna answered. “All we know for certain is that she’s missing.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

Probably, Joanna thought.

“She may be,” Joanna said. “It’s possible.”

There was a long pause after that. Joanna heard Millicent draw a long breath. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in my coming there,” she said finally. “I’d probably just be in the way.”

“You’re right,” Joanna said. “There’ll be a whole crew of people on the scene, and you would be in the way. But I’ll call you the moment we learn anything.”

“All right then,” Millicent agreed. “I have animals that need to be attended to and appointments that are due in. But please call me. Please.”

“I will,” Joanna promised, ending the call.

When she came through the tunnel at the top of the Divide, she saw the great expanse of bright blue sky spread out in front of her. That spot on Highway 80 was a particular favorite of hers. It was a place where the slightly upward elevation of the road, combined with the abrupt drop of the Mule Mountains, gave Joanna the sensation of being able to fly off the edge of the earth. Today, though, with Jeannine’s possible fate weighing heavily on her heart, Joanna felt instead as though she were falling into an abyss.

A few miles later, she had another thought. Once again she radioed in and asked to be put through to Animal Control. Manny Ruiz took the call.

“You’ve heard?” she asked.

“Tica called me,” he said. “Any news?”

“Not yet.”

“What are we going to do about the workload?” Manny asked. “With Jeannine and me splitting the burden, it’s still not easy. Our part-time clerk is fine, but she can’t run the office and look after the animals, too. And if I’m taking care of the animals, who’s going to be out in the field? I can’t handle this place all by myself.”

“No, you can’t,” Joanna agreed. “Let me see what I can do to get you some temporary help until we know how things stand.”

Her next call was to her former in-laws. Jim Bob Brady answered the phone. “I need a favor,” Joanna said.

“Name it,” Jim Bob returned.

When she finished explaining the situation, Jim Bob was all business. “I’ll be glad to do what I can,” he said. “And Eva Lou will, too. She’s great with animals. We’ll go out to the pound right now and find out what’s needed.”

“How is Eva Lou with snakes?” Joanna asked.

“Did you say snakes?” Jim Bob asked.

“Yes, one of the impounded animals happens to be an abandoned python.”

“Well,” Jim Bob said thoughtfully, “I may have to take care of that one. But don’t worry about it. I’m sure Manny Ruiz will be able to tell us whatever it is he needs us to do.”

Joanna hung up the phone thankful that Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady continued to be far more supportive and helpful than Margaret and Don Dixon would ever be.

When she finally got out of her car, the rest area was already teeming with activity. In fact, she was the last person from her department to arrive on the scene.

Stamping his feet against the frosty morning chill, Frank Montoya hurried over to meet her. “What have we got?” she asked.

Frank shook his head grimly. “Come take a look,” he said.

Jeannine’s Animal Control truck was parked at the far end of the parking area. Approaching it from the driver’s side, nothing seemed amiss. But the passenger-side window, out of view from passing vehicles, was completely missing. Joanna had to stand on tiptoe to peer inside. A bloodied rock the size of a basketball lay on the passenger seat. The police radio had been pulled from its console. It lay, its wire dangling loose, on the floorboard along with a clipboard, a single shoe, and other debris.

“What’s that?” Joanna asked, pointing. “A nightscope?”

“That’s right,” Frank said. “She must have been using that inside the vehicle when her attacker surprised her, probably by heaving that rock through the window. She never had time to call for help, but from the looks of things, she put up a hell of a fight.”

Everything around Joanna-Jeannine’s shoe in the footwell, the bloodied rock on the seat, the bare mesquite branches beyond the truck, and the looming, bubble-shaped rocks of Texas Canyon-stood out in a kind of stark relief that reminded Joanna of photos observed through her old View-Master. The idea that one of her officers had been attacked and perhaps murdered left Joanna sick at heart but furious and utterly focused.

“Did it happen here?” she asked.

“No,” Frank said. “Whoever did it drove the truck here after the attack.”

“Because they didn’t want us to identify a crime scene?” Joanna asked.

“That would be my guess,” Frank said. “They also took off and left the engine running. It’s out of gas.”

“So whoever abandoned it did so in a hell of a hurry,” Joanna said.

Frank nodded. “Being in a hurry breeds mistakes. With any luck, maybe we’ll find that they left a little something behind- something we can use to find them. Once Jaime finishes taking his photos, Casey will start dusting for prints.”

“Any witnesses?”

“It was called in at six forty-five a.m. by a maintenance guy who stops by early to service the rest rooms. He saw the truck and thought it was unusual for the vehicle to be here with no sign of an officer present. Ernie Carpenter is interviewing him right now. Some of the long-haul drivers may have been parked here overnight. Debbie is checking with them to see if any of them noticed something out of line.”

With nothing much else to do, Joanna stood on the sidelines while her people worked. It was only half an hour later when the first of the Tucson-based television news vans, its top bristling with antennas, arrived on the scene. Most of the time Frank handled the media types. Since he was conferring with the crime scene investigators, Joanna stepped forward to head off a swift-footed female news reporter who was followed by a cameraman.

“Sorry,” Joanna said. “No unauthorized personnel beyond this point.”

The woman stopped and then held up her ID. Isabel Duarte was with KGUN-9 News, but Joanna recognized her on sight without having to check her identification. She was young- barely out of college-and the newest member on the news team, but Joanna had seen her before out on the campaign trail as well as on the air.

“Sheriff Brady?” Isabel asked. “We heard that one of your deputies is missing. Is that true?”

The lens of the video cam was already focused on Joanna with its red light showing. “Not a deputy,” she corrected. “One of my ACOs.”

Isabel looked puzzled. “ACO?”

“Animal control officer,” Joanna explained. “Her vehicle was found abandoned here a little over an hour ago, and yes, she is missing. Chief Deputy Montoya, my media relations officer, won’t be making any further statements until later. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Joanna started back toward her team of investigators, but Isabel didn’t take the hint. Instead, she followed right on Joanna’s heels. “Did you say a female officer? How old is she? Anglo? Hispanic?”

Shaking her head and trying to keep her temper in check, Joanna turned back to the pushy reporter. She was gratified to see that the cameraman had stayed behind.

“Look, Ms. Duarte,” Joanna said. “I appreciate that you have a job to do, but so do we. As I just told you, my department won’t have any further comment until later in the day. We’re all very busy right now.”

“Please, Sheriff Brady,” Isabel insisted. “Tell me how old she is.”

“How old? Early thirties.”

“Anglo?”

“Yes, but I’m not releasing the name, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“I just came from University Medical Center,” Isabel Duarte replied. “About three o’clock this morning, an unconscious Anglo female-badly beaten-was dropped off at the entrance to the Trauma Unit. Two men in a pickup truck went running into the hospital, screaming for help. Neither of them spoke any English. The clerk I talked to said she was sure they were illegals. They claimed that they didn’t know the woman; that they had found her lying naked along the side of the road and brought her to the hospital because they were afraid she was going to die. They had transported her, wrapped in blankets, in a camper shell on the back of a pickup. A third man was in the camper with her. When the attendants took the woman inside, the three guys in the pickup took off.”

Was it possible that the unidentified woman was actually Jeannine Phillips? “Early thirties?” Joanna asked. “Anglo?”

Isabel nodded. “Stocky build. She was in surgery when I left. The hospital was giving out information in hopes of identifying her.”

“Do you have the phone number?” Joanna asked.

In answer, Isabel simply opened her cell phone, punched it a couple of times, and then handed it over. Moments later, Joanna was speaking to UMC’s information officer. “This is Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady. One of my female officers has gone missing, and I’m wondering if the woman who was dropped off there earlier…”

In the course of the next minute and a half, with Isabel Duarte looking on, Joanna was passed from one staff member to another. Finally she found herself speaking to Dr. Grant Waller.

“I’m given to understand you may be acquainted with our unidentified patient?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Joanna said. “One of my ACOs disappeared after the close of her shift last night. I was wondering if…”

“The woman who was brought here early this morning has come through surgery,” Dr. Waller replied. “She’s currently in grave but stable condition.”

“Is she going to be all right?” Joanna asked.

The doctor’s tone shifted and became more distant. “Due to privacy constraints,” he said, “I’m unable to tell you any more about the severity of the patient’s injuries, but I will say that if she had arrived at our emergency room even twenty minutes later than she did, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Joanna had been holding her breath. Now she let it out.

“It would be helpful, however,” Dr. Waller continued, “if we knew who she is. The emergency surgery had to go forward when it did, signed authorization or no, in order to save her life. But in order to treat her other injuries… Would it be possible for you to stop by to see if you can identify her?”

Joanna was already striding in the direction of her team of investigators, with Isabel Duarte hurrying along behind her. “I’m on the far side of Benson right now,” she said. “With any luck, I can be at the hospital in a little more than half an hour.”

“Good,” Dr. Waller said. “Just check in at the desk in the lobby. I’ll send someone right down to bring you to ICU.”

Joanna closed the phone and handed it back to Isabel. For the first time in her life, she felt like hugging a member of the media. “Thank you,” she said. “Give me your card. I’ll see that you get an exclusive on this.”

“You won’t have to worry about finding us,” Isabel Duarte declared. “Larry and I will be right on your heels.”