Dead Wrong

Chapter 6

On her way out the door on Monday morning, Joanna was surprised to find a stack of boxes sitting against the wall of her garage. The stack created a barrier that made it impossible for Jenny to climb into the passenger’s seat of the Crown Victoria without having to go all the way around the back of the vehicle.

“What’s all this?” Joanna asked Butch, who had just come in from feeding the animals.

“I have no idea,” he replied. “George dropped them off yesterday afternoon when he and your mother came to dinner. According to him, they’re getting ready for a big churchwide garage sale. Eleanor sent over some boxes of things she thought you should have.”

“Great,” Joanna muttered. “How like her. That way she doesn’t have to get rid of it and we do.”

“Want me to attempt a first sort?” Butch asked. “Good morning,” Margaret Dixon called.

The rammed-earth house Butch had designed and helped build consisted of two wings, each with its own separate garage. Margaret, who had entered through Butch’s garage, had wandered through the whole house before finding them.

“Anybody home?” she asked. “I sure hope there’s coffee. I could have made it out in the RV but I decided to come inside instead. Have you already eaten?”

Joanna nodded. “Jenny and I have,” she said. “I’m on my way to work. I promised to drop her off at school on the way.”

Grumbling under his breath, Butch walked Joanna to her car. “I wish I was going to work,” he said.

Joanna smiled sympathetically. “Don’t bother doing any sorting,” she said, giving Butch a good-bye peck on the cheek. “I think you’re going to have your hands full as it is.”

“So do I,” he agreed.

“Some people are a real pain,” Jenny said, settling into the corner of the Crown Victoria.

“Margaret Dixon isn’t a very happy person,” Joanna said.

“But why does she think we should have put Lucky to sleep?”

Joanna sighed. “I have no idea,” she said.

“How long are they gonna stay?”

“Probably until the baby is born,” Joanna said.

“Well, could you please hurry up and have it then?” Jenny demanded. “I want them to take their RV and go home.”

“Believe me,” Joanna assured her. “I’ll do my best.”

At the morning briefing, Frank Montoya wasn’t any happier than Jenny had been, but his ill humor had nothing to do with an irksome stepgrandmother.

“Last night was the wrong time to have three cars in San Simon, especially since our people didn’t spot anything out of line,” he grumbled. “In the meantime, Border Patrol came up with at least a hundred and fifty UDAs who were all on foot and making a run for it east of Douglas. They called us for backup. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anybody to send.”

Joanna shook her head. The unending stream of undocumented aliens spilling across the international border was one of Arizona‘s-and especially Cochise County’s-most intractable law enforcement problems. Each year at least half a million UDAs were being apprehended just in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector. Of that number, at least 25,000 a month were picked up after crossing into the United States along Cochise County‘s eighty-mile-long border with Mexico. Border Patrol employment numbers were way up, but there were never enough officers to stem the tide.

“How many did they catch?”

“Most,” Frank said. “But there’s no way to know how many got away.”

“With those kinds of numbers, an additional three deputies probably wouldn’t have made much difference,” Joanna said.

“It would have helped,” Frank replied.

But Joanna could see her chief deputy had a point. “It stands to reason that the O’Dwyers would be operating on weekends rather than during the week,” she said.

“So I can pull the extra patrols for tonight?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “We’ll revisit this later in the week. Now, what about the Bradley Evans homicide? Have we made any progress on that?”

Frank shuffled through the briefing papers. “Not much. Casey Ledford is down in Douglas.”

“Dusting Evans’s apartment?” Joanna asked.

Frank nodded.

“Still no sign of the vehicle?”

“Nope,” Frank answered. “If I was the perpetrator, I’d probably take it up to Tucson and leave it parked in plain sight somewhere where no one is going to pay any attention.”

“You’ve alerted Tucson PD to be on the lookout?” Joanna asked.

“You bet.”

There was a knock on the conference-room door, and Deputy Debra Howell entered the room. “Sarge told me you wanted to see me?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Have a seat.”

“Is something wrong?” Debbie asked.

“Nothing at all,” Joanna assured her. “But we’re thinking about making some changes. I understand you’ve been studying for the detective exam?”

“Yes,” Debbie said. “I have.”

“Chief Deputy Montoya and I were wondering if you’d like to spend some time working as a detective for the next week or two with the understanding that the promotion is provisional until such time as you take and pass the exam?”

Debbie Howell flushed with apparent pleasure. “That would be great,” she said. “But how come? What’s going on?”

Joanna had hoped that Ernie might have mentioned his medical situation to his protegee, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Since he hadn’t confided in Debbie, Joanna didn’t tell her, either.

“It won’t come as any surprise that we’re chronically short-handed, and we need to add some depth to our investigation team. We’re dealing with an unsolved homicide at a time when one of our homicide guys may be having to take some time off. You’re the one we want to tap-if you’re interested, that is. But homicide investigators don’t punch time clocks the same way deputies do, Debbie,” Joanna warned. “They work long hours and can be called out anytime, day or night. Will that be a problem?”

“Because of Bennie, you mean?” Debbie asked.

Benjamin was Debbie’s five-year-old son. Joanna nodded, and Debbie grinned.

“If you’d asked me that question two weeks ago, it would have been a big problem,” she admitted. “But last week my sister’s jerk of a husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. He took off and left Katy and the two kids high and dry. Rather than staying in Phoenix and paying rent she couldn’t afford, Katy decided to come back home to Bisbee. She and the kids are staying with me right now until the dust settles and until she can find a job. In other words, working late won’t be a problem as long as Bennie’s aunt and cousins are here. When do you want me to start?”

“Today,” Joanna said. “You’ll be working plainclothes, so you’d better go home and change. Then track down Jaime and Ernie so they can bring you up to speed.”

Joanna and Frank went on with their meeting. The last of the briefing papers was a single-page report from Animal Control. Eighteen dogs, twenty-one cats, and an eight-foot-long python were currently in the Cochise County Pound.

“A python?” Joanna repeated. “Where did that come from?”

“Sunrise Apartments in Sierra Vista,” Frank replied. “A cleaning crew went into a recently vacated apartment and found the snake hiding in a closet. Sierra Vista Animal Control refused to have anything to do with it. They called us, so Jeannine Phillips and Manny Ruiz went out and collected it.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “So now we’re stuck with a python?”

“For the time being,” Frank said. “They’re trying to locate the former owner. They’re also trying to find someplace that will take him in.”

“I know about Greyhound Rescue and Golden Retriever Rescue,” Joanna said. “There’s even that wiener-dog rescue up in Phoenix, but I’ve never heard of Python Rescue, have you?”

“Actually, I have,” Frank said. “I was checking on the Internet just before I came in here. There are several python rescues listed. The problem is, there are more pythons looking to be rescued than there are people willing to take them in, so I’m guessing we could be stuck with this guy for a very long time.”

“What do pythons eat?” Joanna asked.

“Mice, I think,” Frank answered. “Live mice.”

Joanna groaned. “Great. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

After another tap on the conference-room door, Kristin Gregovich entered the room. “What’s up?” Joanna asked.

“Sergeant Winston Brown from Huachuca City PD is on the line,” Kristin said. She picked up the conference-room phone and handed it to Joanna. “They think they’ve found our missing pickup truck.”

“This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “You think you’ve found Bradley Evans’s missing vehicle? How and where?”

“Where is right on Huachuca City‘s main drag,” Winnie Brown told her. “The last couple of years we’ve been making a concerted effort to get rid of all our local eyesores. Periodically we go around and ticket all the ’For Sale by Owner‘ cars that are left on vacant lots inside the city limits. We had your APB for a red F-100. Since this one was gray-primer gray-nobody really gave it a second thought. But the bed of the truck is red, and when our officer ran the plates, they belonged to a ’96 VW Passat. That’s when we knew we had a problem. We tried calling the number listed on the For Sale sign on the dash. It’s not a valid number. No surprises there.”

“Where is it again?” Joanna asked.

“Corner of Highway 90 and Pershing,” he said.

“Has anyone been inside it?”

“It’s locked,” Winnie Brown told her. “If you want me to, I’m sure someone could get inside…”

“No,” Joanna said quickly. “It may be a crime scene. No one is to handle it inside or out. Understand?”

“Gotcha,” Winnie Brown said.

“As soon as I can make arrangements,” Joanna continued, “I’ll dispatch a tow truck to retrieve it.”

“Okay,” Brown responded. “I’ll tell the officers on the scene that the sheriff is sending someone to pick it up.” •

Joanna looked at Frank, who was already in motion, gathering his papers and heading for the door. “I’ll make arrangements for the tow,” he said. “I’ll also track down Jaime and Ernie and let them know. Maybe Debbie can meet up with them out in Huachuca City and hit the ground running.”

With a crew of perfectly competent people collecting the homicide victim’s vehicle, there was no need for Joanna to go traipsing off to Huachuca City to bird-dog the process. Instead, she went into her office, where she found the morning’s mail stacked high on her desk. Just looking at it made her sigh. According to the latest figures from the FBI, national violent crime figures were down. Paperwork, on the other hand, seemed to be way, way up.

Twenty minutes later, when her phone rang, a truculent Jeannine Phillips was on the phone. “Well?” she said. “What did they find?”

“In San Simon?” Joanna asked. “Nothing. We had three cars stationed in and around there both Saturday and Sunday nights. There wasn’t a sign of trouble or suspicious activities. Unfortunately, with everything else that’s going on, we’re just not going to be able to maintain that level of surveillance.”

“So that’s it, then?” Jeannine responded curtly. “We’re just going to give the O’Dwyers a pass and let things go until the next dead dog shows up?”

“The next one?” Joanna said. “Did the one at the vet’s office die, then?”

“No,” Jeannine replied. “No, thanks to Mil-to Dr. Ross, he’s going to pull through.”

“And how about Monty Python?” Joanna joked.

“He’s all right, too,” Jeannine said. “Manny and I had to rig up special accommodations for him. We lined the inside of one of the kennels with Plexiglas and then hooked up lights so the damned thing wouldn’t be too cold. Since the owner went off and left both the snake and no forwarding address, I’m working on locating a snake rescue organization of some kind.”

So’s Frank Montoya, Joanna thought.

“The problem is, they’re mostly out of state. I’m concerned about transportation issues.”

“Keep looking,” Joanna advised.

All in all, it was a quiet day at the Cochise County Justice Center. Food deliveries had resumed and everything in the jail seemed to be running smoothly for a change. At noon she met Butch and his parents at Daisy’s Cafe for lunch. Margaret’s attitude toward Junior Dowdle was not unlike her attitude toward Lucky. Maybe he didn’t need to be put out of his misery, but people had no business letting him out in public like that. Didn’t they know that seeing him might upset some of their customers?

Toying with her food, Joanna wondered how the Dixons would react if this grandchild of theirs-the rowdy baby on the verge of entering the world-turned out to be less than perfect. Nothing in Joanna’s medical chart had indicated anything of the kind, but still… What if she ended up with a baby who suffered from some kind of birth defect? Would Margaret and Don Dixon reject the child and think that it should be put out of its misery?

“What’s wrong?” Butch asked as he walked Joanna to her car after lunch. “You look upset.”

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“I know my mother’s a handful,” he said. “The way she talked about Junior! I wanted to wring her neck. Try not to let her get you down.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Joanna returned.

“That’s a lot harder,” Butch said.

Joanna arrived back at the department in time to see Bradley Evans’s freshly primer-coated pickup truck deposited inside the garage at the near end of the impound yard. When Casey Led-ford, Cochise County‘s latent fingerprint expert, emerged from her lab to begin dusting the outside of the truck, Joanna walked over to join her. First she looked in through the window and was disappointed to see nothing out of line. They might have found Bradley Evans’s truck, but the interior of that was no more a crime scene than his apartment had been.

“You’ve already collected prints from down in Douglas?” Joanna asked.

Casey nodded. “And it was just like Ernie and Jaime predicted it would be. I found lots of the victim’s prints and a few that belong to his landlady. If there’s been anyone else in Mr. Evans’s apartment at some time in the distant past, it’s long enough ago that they left no trace or else they wore gloves.”

“What’s the program here?” Joanna inquired.

“I talked it over with the Double Cs,” Casey said. “The game plan is for me to go over the outside first, but I don’t think that’s going to be particularly helpful.”

“Why not?”

“The truck has been sitting on that vacant lot for a number of days. Some of the prints may belong to whoever came by and looked at the truck thinking they might want to buy it. It could take a very long time, if it’s even possible, to eliminate the ones that aren’t connected to the crime. Once I finish on the outside, Dave Hollicker will pop the lock. Then he and I will go through the interior together, dusting for prints and collecting whatever trace evidence there is to be found.”

“With any luck there should be some,” Joanna said. “I’m pretty certain that the last person who drove this vehicle wasn’t Bradley Evans.”

Back in her office, Joanna tried to focus on the paperwork littering her desk, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of malaise that had crept over her during lunch. Finally, late in the afternoon, she called her best friend and pastor, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea.

“Are you okay?” Marianne asked. “You sound a little down.”

Joanna and Marianne’s friendship went all the way back to seventh grade. There was very little they didn’t know about each other’s lives.

“Prenatal blues, I guess,” Joanna admitted.

“That’s to be expected,” Marianne said. “I was a complete fruitcake the week before Jeffy was born. I almost drove Jeff crazy. What’s going on?”

“Jeffy was perfect,” Joanna said. “He is perfect. But what if he hadn’t been?”

Marianne took a deep breath. “Has Dr. Lee said there might be a problem? Did something show up in an ultrasound?”

“No. It’s not that. It’s just that…”

“It’s just what?”

“Butch’s parents are here,” Joanna said.

“You mentioned that yesterday at church,” Marianne said. “And it explains a lot. Margaret Dixon won’t win any Ms. Congeniality awards. What’s she up to now?”

“She told Jenny that Lucky should have been put out of his misery, and at lunch, you should have seen her with Junior. What if the baby’s born with some serious problem?”

Marianne Maculyea had more than a little experience in that regard. After years of trying to conceive, she and her husband, Jeff Daniels, had adopted twin baby girls from China-Esther Elaine and Ruth Rachel. Ruth was now a lively first grader, but Esther had been born with a congenital heart defect and had died within days of receiving a heart transplant.

“You cope,” Marianne said simply. “You do the best you can, and you cope. You ignore the people who choose not to be in your corner, including your bitchy mother-in-law.”

Her outspoken comment made Joanna laugh. “But you have no strong opinions about Margaret Dixon.”

“Some people require strong opinions,” Marianne returned. “When do you see Dr. Lee again?”

“Tomorrow,” Joanna said. “That’s my last scheduled prenatal exam.”

“He’s the one you should talk to about this,” Marianne advised. “Not me, not Butch, and certainly not Margaret Dixon.”

“Will do,” Joanna said. She hung up the phone feeling infinitely better.

Late in the afternoon Joanna went back out to the impound lot, where both Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker were still hard at work. “Finding anything?” she asked.

“Look at this,” Dave said. He held up an evidence bag. Peering through it, Joanna was able to see a single thread.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I found it hung up on the tailgate latch,” Dave said. “I won’t know until I do my analysis, but I’m guessing it’ll be from the tarp I already have in the lab, the one Bradley Evans’s body was wrapped in. I noticed there was a tear in it when I did my preliminary exam. But the big thing is the Luminol.”

“You got a hit?”

“You bet,” Dave said. “Take a look at this.” He switched off the overhead light. Peering under the camper shell, Joanna saw several thin lines of bright blue in the bed of the truck.

“Someone made a real effort to clean up the mess, but they didn’t do a good enough job in the cracks where the sections join together. Without more tests, I can’t say for sure that what we found in those cracks is blood, or if it’s human blood or even if it’s Bradley Evans’s blood. We’ll find that out later.”

“But you’re saying that the back of the truck might actually turn out to be the crime scene?” Joanna asked.

“It’s possible,” Dave replied. “Or maybe not. It all depends. I didn’t find any visible spatter patterns, but it’s conceivable the killer managed to wash them away. I think it’s likely that the truck was only used for transporting the body.”

“Did you find anything else?” Joanna asked.

Dave grinned. “As a matter of fact, we did,” he boasted.

“Look at this.” He produced another evidence bag. Inside Joanna saw a small yellow-and-black disposable camera with a coating of black fingerprint powder clinging to it.

“This was wedged in under the passenger’s side of the seat. There are twenty-four shots per camera. Only sixteen of them have been exposed. Casey lifted plenty of prints. Her preliminary determination is that the prints on the camera belong to the victim.”

“Which may mean Bradley Evans is the only person who used it,” Joanna theorized.

Dave nodded. “And he stuffed it under the seat in hopes of making sure no one saw either the camera or what it was he was taking pictures of. I talked to Jaime a little while ago. He’s still out in Huachuca City trying to find out exactly when the pickup showed up on the lot and who may have put it there. The Double Cs are sending Debbie Howell here to pick up the camera. She’s going to take it to that One Hour Photo Shop out in Sierra Vista.”

Obviously Debbie Howell was spending her first day in Homicide as Jaime and Ernie’s gofer-in-chief.

“Good,” Joanna said. “The sooner we see what’s on those photos, the better.”

Wanting to spell Butch, Joanna left work early that afternoon. When she got home, though, the house was quiet. Butch was seated at the kitchen table with his laptop open in front of him while tantalizing cooking aromas wafted around him.

“Where is everybody?” Joanna asked, kissing the smooth top of his bald head.

“Jenny and the dogs are hiding out in her room, and I don’t blame them a bit,” Butch said. “If I thought I could get away with it, I’d be there, too. As for my parents? They’re out in the RV watching Fox News.”

“In the RV?” Joanna asked. “Why not in the living room?”

“Because Dad likes watching on his flat-screen TV and he prefers using his own clicker.”

“But what kind of reception do they get?”

“Didn’t you notice the satellite TV antenna up on top of their rig? I went out earlier today and watched Dad locate the satellite. And don’t think I’m not grateful. It gave me a couple of hours of peace and quiet. God knows I was ready for some of that. Believe it or not, I even managed to get some work done. I couldn’t very well work in front of them. Somehow I never picked up on how much my mother despises mysteries. Did you know that about her?”

“She may have mentioned something to that effect,” Joanna answered diplomatically. “But that’s one person’s opinion. Obviously the people who handed over that check have other ideas, and so do I. Now what’s for dinner? I’m starved.”

Butch patted her bulging belly affectionately. “You’re always starved these days,” he said. “We’re having two of my father’s favorites-roasted Cornish game hen and baked acorn squash with a side of coleslaw.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No,” Butch said, turning back to his computer. “Everything’s under control. We’ll eat about six-thirty”

“In that case, I think I’ll go into the office for a little while. I need to work on my thank-you notes from the baby shower. Did you see all the great stuff we got?”

“It’s great stuff, all right,” Butch agreed, “but about your office-”

Butch’s warning came too late. Joanna was already standing in the middle of the room and staring at the mound of boxes- the same boxes that had been impeding traffic in the garage earlier that morning, which were now piled in front of her built-in bookcases. The blockade made it all but impossible for her to reach the chair behind her desk.

“What are these doing here?” she demanded.

“In case you haven’t noticed, my mother is an incredible busybody,” Butch said. “When I was growing up, she was forever going through my stuff. I finally started leaving things I didn’t want her to see at a friend’s house. This morning she was all over me, wondering what was in the boxes. When I told her where the boxes came from, she was hot to trot to go through them. I told her I was sure you’d rather do that yourself. When she insisted that someone in your condition shouldn’t be lifting heavy boxes, I finally moved them in here to keep them out of her reach. I put today’s mail in here, too, for the same reason.”

“You think she’d go through that?” Joanna asked.

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Butch replied. “The good thing about your office is that we can always lock the door if need be. Come to think of it, I’ll probably lock my computer in here, too, when I’m not using it.”

“Poor baby,” Joanna said and meant it.

For the next hour Joanna sat at the desk in her now-crowded home office and dutifully wrote thank-you notes exactly as Eleanor would have wanted her daughter to do. It was funny, in a way, to think that both she and Butch had survived being raised by very similar and extremely autocratic mothers. It went a long way to explaining why the two of them got along so well.

Dinner turned out to be more of the same, with Margaret monopolizing every avenue of conversation. Knowing that Butch had been stuck with his mother all day, Joanna did her best to run interference for him. She was cheerful. She asked focused questions. And she kept Margaret rambling away. With Margaret’s having downed a predinner cocktail or two, that wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t until dessert when Margaret finally managed to get under Joanna’s skin.

“I guess I didn’t realize your father used to be a sheriff,” Margaret said with a smile. “I’m sure Butch must have told me, but it didn’t sink in. Is that why you wanted to be involved in law enforcement?”

Joanna wasn’t sure where Margaret was going. Joanna had grown accustomed to these kinds of unwelcome questions out on the campaign trail, but she didn’t expect them to crop up at her own dining-room table.

“I didn’t really want it,” Joanna answered warily. “It simply happened.”

“Are you saying you were elected to office by accident?” Margaret asked incredulously. “How is that possible? I was under the impression that election campaigns are a lot more complicated than that.”

Joanna remembered how, in the painful aftermath of Andy’s funeral, she had been asked to run for office in his stead. She had agreed-not because her father had been sheriff once or because Andy had wanted to be, but because it was something she actually wanted to do.

“I wasn’t elected to an office,” she said. “I was elected to do a job, and it’s a job I do willingly every single day.”

She would have said more, but the phone rang, and Jenny hurried to answer it. “It’s for you, Mom,” Jenny said. “Somebody from work.”

Taking the phone from her daughter’s hand, Joanna returned to the relative privacy of the far end of the living room before she answered. An excited Debbie Howell was on the phone, calling from Sierra Vista.

“What’s up?” Joanna asked.

“I’m looking at the photos,” Debbie Howell said breathlessly. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“Bradley Evans was stalking someone.”

“Stalking?” Joanna repeated. “Who? And how can you be sure?”

“A woman,” Debbie returned. “A dark-haired Anglo woman, a brunette. Looks to be in her late twenties. She’s wearing what looks like a wedding ring. There are several pictures of her walking in a mall and several others of her pushing a shopping cart through a parking lot. Two more show her getting into a vehicle-a blue sedan. I can’t be sure of the make or model.”

“Does the woman know she’s being photographed?”

“I doubt it,” Debbie returned. “It doesn’t look like she does. In fact, I’d say she’s totally oblivious.”

“Is there any way to identify who she is?” Joanna asked.

“Not that I can tell. There’s no visible license plate, if that’s what you mean.”

“Can you tell where the pictures are taken? I mean, are they from Sierra Vista or maybe somewhere else you recognize? And what about the Double Cs? Have they seen the photos?”

“Not yet. They’re coming here to meet me right now to take a look. Ernie wanted me to let you know what’s going on.”

“Thanks, Debbie,” Joanna said. “I appreciate being kept in the loop. So how’s your first day been?”

“Terrific, Sheriff Brady. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been so far, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Thanks for giving me a chance.”

Joanna hung up the phone feeling guilty that it had been Ernie Carpenter rather than Sheriff Joanna Brady who had opened the door on Debbie Howell’s new opportunity.

And then she thought about Bradley Evans. Was it true that he had been a stalker? That idea certainly didn’t square with what Ted Chapman had told her about the man. But now Joanna wondered. If he had been following an unsuspecting young woman around and snapping pictures of her without her knowledge or consent, then perhaps he had been on his way to reverting to the behavior that had put him in prison in the first place.

When Joanna returned to the dining room, the table had been cleared and Jenny was serving dessert-rhubarb pie topped with generous scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Joanna resumed her place, and Margaret looked at her questioningly. Clearly she was dying of curiosity about the phone call, but she couldn’t bring herself to come straight out and ask. In that moment, Joanna understood Margaret Dixon perfectly. She was every bit as nosy as Butch had said she was, but a lifetime’s worth of dealing with Eleanor-of constantly battling and frustrating her own mother-had left Joanna Brady uniquely prepared to deal with the Margaret Dixons of the world.

“No biggie,” Joanna said, sending a casual smile in her mother-in-law’s direction. “You know how it is-same old, same old.”