Dead Wrong

Chapter 18

For the next several minutes Joanna was completely engrossed in helping the children talk to their ecstatically relieved mother over the Yukon‘s police radio. Busy as she was with that, she scarcely noticed Frank Montoya’s arrival or the noisy DPS helicopter hovering overhead.

“Do you want me to wave off the helicopter?” Frank asked finally.

Joanna nodded. “Tell them they can go. We don’t need them. I’ve called for an ambulance to take Zavala to the Copper Queen.”

Frank walked away to do her bidding. He returned with Jaime Carbajal in tow. “I’m here, Sheriff Brady. Should I start interviewing the children?”

“Not yet,” she said. “We’ll wait until their mother gets here. It shouldn’t be too long.”

“They’re both okay?” Jaime asked. “The kids are fine.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m fine, too,” she told him, but that wasn’t entirely the case. Joanna knew that, in the aftermath of her use of force, some other outside agency would have to be called in to investigate the incident. She would need to be interviewed, and so would Deputy Thomas. Dealing with that investigation would siphon time and energy from her already staff-deprived department. There were bound to be plenty of tough questions about her not having issued a verbal warning before pulling the trigger.

She pointed Jaime toward the place where the gym bag had come to rest. “That’s Zavala’s bag. There’s a semiautomatic weapon inside,” she said. “We’ll need photos.”

“Understood,” Jaime said.

Joanna turned to Frank Montoya. “Have you asked the Department of Public Safety to send their investigators?”

Frank nodded. “Two of them are on their way from Tucson right now.”

“Good call,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Are you putting yourself on administrative leave?” Frank asked.

“No, I’m not,” she declared. “Now where the hell is that scumbag?”

“He’s in the back of Deputy Thomas’s Yukon, waiting for the ambulance. Rick put a tourniquet on his leg and has his foot elevated.”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“The foot took a lot of damage. Your bullet nailed him right in the ankle. I don’t think he’s going to be walking on it anytime soon. Good shot, by the way.”

Joanna gave Frank a wan smile. “Thanks,” she said. “It was the best I could do under the circumstances.”

When they reached the Yukon, Deputy Thomas, with the sweat stains drying on his collar, stood to one side, keeping a wary eye on Antonio Zavala.

“Good job, Rick,” Joanna said, stopping long enough to shake his hand. “And great driving.”

Thomas nodded modestly, acknowledging her compliment.

“Did Frank tell you that we’ll both have to be interviewed by DPS? It’ll be a third-party deadly force investigation.”

“What choice did you have?” Thomas objected. “What were we supposed to do, let him grab the kid and run off with her?”

“Welcome to the world of post-incident second-guessing, Deputy Thomas,” she told him. “Just tell the investigators what happened. It’ll be fine.”

Having done her best to reassure her young deputy, Joanna went over to the Yukon and pulled open the back door. Antonio Zavala had been quiet for several minutes, but as soon as he saw her, he resumed his tirade.

“I want a lawyer!” he demanded. “You shot me with no warning, and it hurts like hell. That’s police brutality.”

“What kind of warning did you give the people you shot?” she asked.

Zavala quieted again. He answered her question with nothing but a hard-edged stare.

“How badly do you suppose they hurt before they died?”

Again Zavala didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Why am I just sitting here? Aren’t you supposed to be taking me to a hospital or something? Are you just going to leave me here to bleed to death?”

“Believe me,” Joanna said, “I wouldn’t be that lucky. I’ve called for an ambulance, and it’ll get here when it gets here. But what’s the matter, Tony? You can’t stand a little pain or the sight of blood? When it comes to beating up women and committing murder and terrorizing little kids, you’re a regular tough guy. But a little pain turns you into a crybaby? A cool macho dude like you should be ashamed of yourself. Now tell me, why’d you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?” he retorted belligerently. “I don’t have to tell you nothing. I know my rights. I already asked for a lawyer.”

“And you’ll have a lawyer, but in the meantime, let me tell you something,” Joanna said. “You beat up my officer Jeannine Phillips because you thought you could get away with it. And you murdered Lupe because she decided she could do better than hang around with a loser like you. Poor Lupe. Clarence and Billy O’Dwyer weren’t much, but they must have looked like giants compared to a punk like you. And so you murdered all three of them in cold blood-Lupe and Billy and Clarence, too.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Oh, we’ll prove it all right,” Joanna returned. “I just have one problem with you, Mr. Zavala. I only shot you in the foot. I wish to hell I’d hit you someplace vital, because dirtbags like you aren’t worth the time or money it’s going to take to sew you back up or put you away for the rest of your useless life!”

With that, she turned away from the Yukon and slammed the door shut behind her. Frank Montoya caught up with her as she walked away. “With DPS due here any minute,” he cautioned, “you might want to downplay those kinds of inflammatory comments.”

“What?” Joanna demanded. “Calling a dirtbag a dirtbag?”

“No. Saying you wish you’d killed him. Zavala’s already screaming police brutality and asking for a lawyer. Claims you shot him with no warning.”

Joanna was outraged. “So what? He’s a triple murderer who was trying to drag a screaming kid out of a car so he could use her as a hostage. I’m supposed to handle him with kid gloves and observe all the politically correct niceties? Give me a break.”

“Still…” Frank began.

Just then Debbie Howell arrived with the children’s tearful mother in tow. After gathering Hannah and Abel into a grateful hug and kissing them, Chantal Little turned to Joanna.

“Are you the one who rescued them?” she asked.

Joanna nodded. “I’m Sheriff Brady. Deputy Thomas here and I were the ones on the scene, but believe me, little Hannah was doing her very best to save herself.”

Chantal put down the children. She enveloped first Deputy Thomas and then Joanna in impassioned hugs. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said tearfully.

“You already did,” Joanna told her. “Believe me, the look on your face is thanks enough.”

The next several hours flew past in a blur of activity. By the time the ambulance arrived to transport Antonio Zavala, it had to make its way through a throng of media cams which had appeared out of nowhere and now lined both sides of Mescal Road. Joanna dealt with the EMTs, who overrode Joanna’s Copper Queen Hospital call, telling her that, due to the nature of Zavala’s injuries, they had no choice but to transport him to University Medical Center. Since Jeannine Phillips was in that same facility, Joanna immediately started making arrangements to post a twenty-four-hour guard on Antonio Zavala’s room there.

While Frank handled multiplying media concerns, Debbie Howell and Jaime Carbajal took statements from both Chantal Little and her children. Eventually the two detectives left-Jaime to return to the crime scene at Roostercomb Ranch and Debbie to go to Tucson to make a next-of-kin notification to Lupe Melendez’s family.

Through all this two DPS investigators were also on the scene. Detectives Dave Newton and Roger Unger needed to take their own statements from Chantal and the children. They also took possession of the semiautomatic rifle Joanna had used during the incident and then painstakingly searched and photographed both the Dodge Caravan and Deputy Thomas’s Yukon.

By then it was mid-afternoon and quickly turning chilly. “The kids are tired and hungry,” Chantal complained to Joanna. “Are those two detectives ever going to let us go? I talked to my parents in Tucson over an hour ago. My mom offered to come get us, but I told her the van isn’t wrecked or anything. Couldn’t I just take it and go?”

Joanna was tired and hungry, too. She sympathized, but she shook her head. “Your minivan may not be wrecked, Mrs. Little, but it’ll need to be processed for evidence. Your parents live in Tucson?”

Chantal nodded. “My dad’s scheduled for triple bypass surgery on Monday.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Joanna told her.

She went looking for the two DPS investigators and found them off to the side of the road, comparing notes. Newton, the older and clearly senior of the two, seemed annoyed by the interruption.

“Look, Sheriff Brady, these things can’t be rushed. We’re working as fast as we can.”

“But does it all have to be done here?” Joanna asked. “Everybody’s cold and hungry, especially those two little kids.”

“I suppose we could finish up at the office in Tucson,” Newton replied grudgingly. “But we’ll need to tow both these vehicles.”

“Why?” Joanna demanded.

“For evidence.”

“What evidence? The Dodge? Yes, that makes sense. That’s the vehicle Zavala drove, but he was never anywhere near my deputy’s Yukon. There’s no need to impound that.”

“Sheriff Brady…” Newton began.

“Here’s the deal,” Joanna interrupted. “You’re unreasonably detaining a mother and two children who have already been through hell today. They have family members in Tucson who are anxiously awaiting them. It happens that there are still plenty of reporters around who will be glad to pass on the information that you kept these people here for no good reason. I suggest you release the Yukon so Deputy Thomas here can drive Mrs. Little and her children into town. After that we can all meet up at your office so you can interview Deputy Thomas and me. How does that sound?”

Joanna doubted that Detective Newton came around due solely to her powers of persuasion. What really made the argument for her was Newton‘s need to avoid any adverse publicity.

Frowning, he capitulated. “I suppose that could work,” he said reluctantly.

By the time Chantal Little and the children were belted into the Yukon, a DPS-dispatched tow truck had come to collect the minivan. As the Yukon drove away, picking its way between media vans and emergency vehicles, Frank came back to Joanna.

“Care for a ride?” he asked.

“Thanks,” Joanna said. “It looks like we need to pay a visit to the DPS office in Tucson, but I’m going to need to eat something along the way. I’m starved.”

Once back on the highway and with a reliable cell-phone signal, Joanna called home. “I’m on my way to Tucson,” she told Butch. “There was a bit of an incident…”

Her feeble attempt at minimizing was immediately blown out of the water.

“You mean the big shoot-out west of Benson?” Butch asked. “The one with the carjacker who kidnapped those two kids? I already heard about it. It’s been on the news all afternoon. Don’t tell me you were involved.”

“Actually I was,” Joanna admitted. For the next several minutes she gave Butch a brief overview of all that had happened.

“But are you all right?” he asked when she finished.

“Yes.”

“And the kids are all right, too?”

“Yes.”

“Good work, then. When will you be home?”

“After the use-of-deadly-force interviews with DPS in Tucson. Frank’s driving me there. He’ll bring me home when we’re finished.”

“Something’s terribly wrong with this picture,” Butch objected. “You save two kids and wing a triple murderer, but you’re the one who’s being investigated? It makes no sense.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, smiling at his obvious outrage.

“For what?”

“For understanding.”

“You’re welcome. See you when you get here. I’m not holding dinner.”

By then Frank was turning off the freeway at an exit on the far outskirts of Tucson. At the Triple T Truck Stop, Joanna had ordered her hot roast beef sandwich and was studying her swollen ankles when her phone rang. The caller turned out to be Dr. Millicent Ross.

“This is a very bad scene, Joanna,” the vet said.

“How bad?”

“You were right. The dogs that were chained in the yard were so vicious even I couldn’t get near them,” Millicent said. “I had to tranquilize them first and put them down.”

“How many?”

“Ten.”

Joanna closed her eyes. Ten dead dogs would be a public relations disaster. No one would be the least bit interested in the fact that the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had dealt with three human murders and saved the lives of two innocent children that same day. All media attention would be focused on the poor unfortunate dogs whose lives had been lost.

“What about the puppies?”

“They’re in bad shape, too,” Millicent said. “So are the bitches. They’re sick, filthy, covered with fleas and ticks, and practically starving. But the worst thing about it is, they’re really a pack of wild animals. They’ve had absolutely no socialization.”

“Does that mean you’re going to have to put them down, too?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe not,” Millicent said. “I just had an idea.”

“Dr. Ross, we don’t have the manpower or the facilities to take on that many-”

“Hear me out,” Millicent interrupted. “I’ve been reading about how various prisons around the country have been using prisoners to care for abused and abandoned animals as a way of turning around the prisoners’ lives and the animals’ lives as well.”

“What are you proposing?”

“I’m suggesting that we talk to the inmates in the Cochise County Jail. I’ll be glad to do it if you want me to. We’ll let them know what the problem is and that the only chance these dogs have to survive is if they can be cared for and nurtured back to health so that they can be placed in adoptive homes. I’ll also be glad to help out with this,” Millicent added. “I can come to the jail and show the inmates how to feed the puppies as well as how to handle, care for, and train them.”

“You’re suggesting turning my jail into an extension of the dog pound?” Joanna demanded.

“A temporary rehab facility,” Millicent said. “After all, desperate times call for desperate measures. Temporary and entirely voluntary. Only inmates who genuinely want to be involved should be allowed to participate. Each one would be given responsibility for a single dog. If an inmate breaks any rules-any rules at all-their dog would be taken away. I can’t help but think that having one person fostering each animal would be good for the individual dogs because what these animals need is personal attention. I’m guessing that being responsible for raising and training a puppy would be good for your inmates, too.”

Across the table, Frank was watching Joanna with one eyebrow raised inquisitively. She held the phone away from her ear and explained to her chief deputy what was going on.

“Do it,” Frank said immediately.

“Do it?” Joanna repeated. “Are you kidding?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not. Think about it. Putting down even vicious dogs is political suicide. Saving poor puppies is a PR dream- everybody’s best bet for a touchy-feely feature. It’ll turn you into a folk hero. Look at the guy up in Maricopa County. When the health department condemned one of his jails as ‘unfit for human habitation,” he stuck his inmates in tents and turned the air-conditioned ex-jail into an animal shelter. You’d be doing him one better, since both the dogs and the inmates would be inside.

“And think about the results Ted Chapman has been getting with some of these guys,” Frank continued. “Sometimes expecting inmates to do the right thing makes them do exactly that.”

“But what about the mess?” Joanna objected. “These are puppies, after all. Once the health department gets wind of the-”

“Dr. Ross is right,” Frank interjected. “Cleaning up the messes puppies make is part of the responsibility of taking care of them.”

The waitress showed up with their food just then. “Let me think about this,” she said into the phone. “Frank Montoya and I will talk it over, then I’ll call you back.”

“I think it’ll work,” Frank said.

Joanna dug into a mound of gravy-smothered mashed potatoes that accompanied her sandwich. “But how?” she asked.

“Let’s get Tom Hadlock on the speaker phone,” Frank suggested. “Since this would affect his operation and his people, let’s see what the jail commander thinks.”

To Joanna’s amazement, once Frank explained it, even Tom Hadlock was amenable to the idea. “It wouldn’t be permanent, of course,” he said. “How long does it take to get puppies ready for adoption? Six weeks or so?”

“About that,” Joanna agreed. “Maybe longer for the sick ones.”

“So it’s not forever. I think it’s an interesting idea,” Hadlock added after a moment’s reflection, “especially considering the sticky situation we had here last week. Having a group of bad-boy puppies around for a while might help to resolve some of the tension that’s built up in the jail. I agree, of course, that participation would have to be on a totally voluntary basis. If there are prisoners around who don’t want to have anything to do with the program, we’ll move them into separate units from the ones who do. What kind of equipment do you think we’ll need?”

Joanna thought about Jenny’s deaf black Lab puppy. Lucky had come into the family as a demonically possessed chewer who had mangled his way through one of Jenny’s cowboy boots after another-and only one boot per pair-until he’d finally grown up enough to stop being called Destructo Dog. How many inmate shoes would be chewed up in the process of socializing almost wild puppies? She thought about the messes of housebreaking and the knocked-over food and water dishes.

“Lots,” Joanna said finally. “Bowls, beds, food, you name it. I can’t see how we can afford to take this on.”

“Why don’t I talk to Dr. Ross and get back to you?” Tom Hadlock returned. “Maybe between the two of us we can get a better handle on everything that’s involved.”

“Go ahead,” Joanna agreed at last. “It looks like I’m outvoted on this one.”

After that, Joanna managed to choke down only a few more halfhearted forkfuls of food. Finally, giving up, she laid her knife and fork across her plate.

“What’s the matter?” Frank asked. “Food’s no good?”

Joanna shook her head. “I guess it’s all starting to hit me. Three people are dead, two little kids could have been, and one man has been shot, yet here we are focused on saving a bunch of dogs. It doesn’t seem right.”

“The dogs are in jeopardy because the people were killed,” Frank returned. “And we all know they weren’t nice people to begin with. Our department is in charge of cleaning up a problem someone else created, so don’t go around giving yourself a hard time feeling guilty about it. What you should be doing is patting yourself on the back. If it hadn’t been for you and Deputy Thomas, one or both of those kids might be dead right now.”

“You’re going to have to keep reminding me of that,” she told him.

After leaving the Triple T, Frank drove directly to the DPS office on South Tucson Boulevard. Deputy Thomas was leaving the building as Joanna entered.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I did like you said, Sheriff Brady. I told them the truth.”

“That’s all you needed to do.”

“But I’m not sure they believed me. Especially the part about you shooting him under the car.”

“Maybe they’ll like it better if they hear the same thing from me,” Joanna said.

Newton and Unger were waiting for Joanna inside a small interview room. For the better part of an hour they shot one question after another in her direction. Most of the questions were straightforward enough: How had the incident begun? When had Deputy Thomas taken up the chase? As Thomas had warned, everything moved along smoothly until they reached the part about the shooting incident itself. When Joanna explained how that had gone down, Detective Newton’s disbelief was clear.

“You and Deputy Thomas expect us to believe that you supposedly jumped out of his vehicle, threw yourself flat on the ground, and then shot the suspect by aiming under the parked Dodge Caravan?” Newton asked.

“Yes. That’s what happened.”

“That would have taken a hell of a good shot.”

“I am a good shot,” Joanna returned.

“In your condition?”

Joanna felt her temper rising. In the present situation, that wasn’t a good thing. “What do you mean, ”my condition‘? You mean because I’m pregnant, Detective Newton? Are you under the impression that pregnant women are incapable of“ shooting, or are you objecting to my being able to shoot from a prone position?”

“Well, yes,” Newton admitted sheepishly “That does seem highly unlikely.”

“I’ll tell you what, Detective Newton,” she said quietly. “Let’s you and I take a trip out to your target range. We’ll both use semiautomatic rifles. I’ll lie on my stomach. You lie on a soccer ball. We’ll see which one of us can hit a moving target. Twice.”

“I didn’t mean to imply…” Newton began.

“Yes, you did,” Joanna returned sharply. “I’ve been patient. I’ve answered all your questions. I’m assuming Deputy Thomas’s story and mine jibe, because that’s what happened. Now, unless you have something substantial to add, I’m done. All things considered, it’s been a pretty big day-for someone in my condition.”

“Sure, Sheriff Brady,” Detective Unger put in quickly. “If we need anything else, we’ll call.”

“You do that.”

“This doesn’t mean our investigation is over,” Detective Newton growled.

“It is for tonight,” she told him. She knew she had nailed the man with her soccer-ball comment and she had not the slightest doubt that, if push came to shove, she could outshoot him.

Getting to her feet, Joanna stalked from the room. In the lobby, Frank was talking on his cell phone, pacing back and forth. “Oh, wait,” he said. “Here she is. If we leave right now, we can be there in a little over an hour, Mr. Oxhill. You’re sure that won’t be too late? Okay. Fine.”

“What’s that all about?”

“He’s the manager of the Target in Sierra Vista.”

Still rankled by Newton‘s remarks, Joanna answered impatiently as they headed for Frank’s car. “I remember who he is. What does he want?”

“I told you he called earlier and said the primer had been purchased with cash.”

“Yes, I remember that, too.”

“He evidently spent all afternoon worrying about it until he finally realized something. Even though there was no credit-card trail, he did have the product numbers. He decided to try going through cash-register records to see if he could find out exactly when the purchase was made. And he did. He wants us to come look at the store security tapes. He believes he has photos of a woman making the actual purchase.”

Suddenly Joanna’s annoyance with Detective Newton dissipated and she was no longer the least bit tired. “Let’s go then,” she said, scrambling into Frank’s Crown Victoria. “Let’s not just stand around jawing about it.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Frank added, as they headed back to the freeway. “I’ve got some other good news. Tom Hadlock and Millicent Ross have been talking. He’s gone through the jail and talked to the inmates and ended up with four more volunteers than he had puppies. He and I talked it over. He’s going to use four trustees as a work group to help with all the extra dogs that will be staying at the pound right now while we’re so short-handed. And Millicent has tracked down some deep-pockets pitbull-rescue guy who’s agreed to underwrite whatever equipment or additional expenses we have to run up in order to make this thing work.

“Millicent says she’ll stow as many dogs and puppies as she can at her clinic tonight. Tomorrow morning she’ll go to Tucson armed with the guy’s credit-card number and purchase whatever equipment we need-beds, dishes, puppy food, toys, bowls, collars, leashes. We’ll bring the dogs to the jail tomorrow afternoon after she gets back.”

“Leashes?” Joanna asked. “Did you say leashes? We just had a major fight at the jail last week-a fight with homemade weapons. Are you telling me that now we’re going to issue leashes to our inmates?”

“We can’t have the dogs there without leashes,” Frank said. “There wouldn’t be any way to control them. And I think it’s going to work. According to Tom, the inmates are so excited you’d think it was Christmas.”

When Frank and Joanna arrived at the Target store in Sierra Vista, Manfred Oxhill was waiting just inside the front door. He turned out to be a tall African-American man with a ready smile and an accent that suggested a Caribbean heritage.

“I’m so glad to meet you,” he said. “Right this way.”

They followed him through a door marked “Employees Only,” up a narrow set of stairs, past what was clearly an employee breakroom and into a warren of offices that lined one whole end of the store. Beyond a door marked “Security,” they squeezed themselves into a room that included one wall lined with monitors and another lined with recording equipment. Manfred Oxhill introduced them to the lone operator in the room, then gave the man a piece of paper covered with a series of handwritten scribbles. Within a matter of minutes, Joanna was staring at a screen where customers, totally oblivious to the watching cameras panning back and forth across the scene, casually went about their business.

“There!” Manfred Oxhill said, pointing at one of the monitors. “That’s register sixteen and this should be the right time- two fifty-two p.m. on 02:25:2005.”

Joanna stepped closer to the monitor. At first all she could see was a back view of a woman standing in front of the cash register. Only when she turned and looked nervously from side to side did Joanna recognize her-Dolores Mattias, Aileen Houlihan’s caregiver. Joanna’s heartbeat quickened in her breast as she watched the cashier put one can of primer after another into a series of plastic bags and then hand them over.

“I’ll be damned,” Joanna exclaimed.

“Who is it?” Frank asked.

“Dolores Mattias,” she said. “I met her this morning.” Joanna turned to Manfred Oxhill. “Can we have a copy of this tape?”

“Of course,” he said. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll bring a new tape from downstairs.”

“What does this mean?” Frank asked.

They had been so caught up with other events and concerns all afternoon and evening that Joanna hadn’t had either the time or the energy to tell Frank what she had learned during her earlier trip to the Triple H.

“Aileen Houlihan may be bedridden with Huntington’s disease,” Joanna said, “but I’m betting she’s still calling the shots.”