Exit Wounds

‘About my delicate condition?” Joanna asked.

Frank nodded.

“Tell them I have no intention of dropping out of the race for sheriff. If daddies can be soldiers and sheriffs, so can mommies.”

“Do you think that’s the best way to couch it?” Frank asked. “With potential voters, I mean.”

“It may not be the best way,” Joanna told him. “But it’s my way, and you can quote me on that. If you’re going to be busy with a press conference, who’s going to back up Jaime Carbajal when he questions Edith Mossman?”

“I guess it’s up to you,” Frank said.

Joanna nodded. “Okay. Speaking of Edith Mossman, how’s she getting here from Sierra Vista? We’re not expecting her to catch a cab from there to Bisbee, are we?”

“No,” Frank said. “I believe one of Edith’s granddaughters-the one who lives here in town-is picking her up and bringing her to the department.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

When the briefing ended, Frank left her office and Kristin entered once more, bringing with her that day’s first load of correspondence. Joanna had managed to get a good start on dealing with the paper jungle when her intercom buzzed. “Sheriff Brady?”

Kristin said. “Mrs. Mossman is here.”

119

“She and Detective Carbajal are in the conference room?” Joanna asked.

“Right.”

“Okay,” Joanna said. “I’ll be right there.”

To reach the conference room, Joanna had to walk past Kristin’s desk and through a small reception area. Seated on the love seat, thumbing through an old copy of Arizona Highways, was a large woman with mousy brown hair who looked to be about Joanna’s age. She wore shorts, an oversize T-shirt, and thongs.

It was only midmorning, but already the office was heating up. Dressed in her uniform, Joanna couldn’t help but envy the other woman’s casual attire, but not the strained expression on her face. It was the despairing, empty look in the eyes that gave Joanna her first clue. She had seen that look far too many times before in the eyes of grieving survivors-the people left behind in the wake of violent and unexpected deaths. This had to be one of Carol Mossman’s sisters.

Joanna stopped in front of the love seat and held out her hand. “I’m Sheriff Brady,”

she said. “You must be Stella Adams.”

“Yes,” the woman murmured softly. “Yes, I am.”

“Please accept my condolences.”

Stella nodded. “Thank you,” she replied.

“And thank you for bringing your grandmother here for the interview. We’re a little shorthanded at the moment. Otherwise I would have sent one of my detectives to bring her into town.”

“It was no trouble,” Stella said.

Just then a young boy of fifteen or sixteen came sauntering down the hall. The crotch of his pants hung almost to his knees. So did the tail of his shirt. A scraggily thin bristle of goatee protruded from the bottom of his chin. Stella Adams gave the new

120

arrival a hard look. “There you are, Nathan,” she said. “What took you so long? I thought I told you to park the car and come right inside.”

Without glancing in Joanna’s direction, the boy slouched into a nearby chair. “Come on, Mom. Lay off. It’s hot. I drove all around looking for some shade to park in.”

“Mind your manners,” Stella growled at him. Then, to Joanna, she said. “This is my son, Nathan. Nathan, this is Sheriff Brady.”

Scowling, the boy stood up. “Hello,” he said grudgingly. “Glad to meetcha.” His handshake was limp. “Is there a Coke machine around here somewhere?” he asked.

“Just off the lobby,” Joanna told him.

Nathan turned to his mother, who was already fishing a handful of change out of her purse. “Come right back,” she admonished as he turned to go.

Joanna watched the transaction in silence. If Nathan was allowed to drive by himself, he had to be at least sixteen. And if Stella Adams was anywhere near Joanna’s age-somewhere in her early thirties-then she would have been only fourteen or fifteen when Nathan was born, years younger than Joanna herself had been when she gave birth to Jenny.

“He may not look like it,” Stella said to Joanna as her son walked away, “but Nathan’s a good kid. It’s hard to raise good kids these days.”

“Don’t I know it,” Joanna agreed. “Especially once they become teenagers. Now I’d better get going.”

She hurried into the conference room. “Good,” Jaime Carbajal said, reaching for the tape recorder once Joanna had taken a chair. “Now we can get started.”

Jaime began the interview. Edith answered his questions in to

121

a surprisingly steady voice, only occasionally biting back tears.

“Tell us about your granddaughter, Carol Mossman,” Jaime began.

“What do you want to know?”

“It’s always helpful to know as much about the victim as possible,” Jaime said gently.

“Carol didn’t have an easy life,” Edith said sadly.

“Why’s that?”

“She had to live with my son, for one thing,” Edith replied. “Carol’s mother, Cynthia, died in childbirth when Kelly was born. Carol was the oldest. She was ten at the time her mother took sick and twelve when Cynthia died in childbirth. A lot of the burden of taking care of her sisters fell on her. That’s a terrible responsibility for someone so young,” Edith added. “Terrible!”

“Where was this?” Jaime asked.

“In Mexico. Obregon,” Edith answered. “Eddie wasn’t much of a student. He never finished high school. He went to work for Phelps Dodge the minute he was old enough. Working underground, he made good money for a while. Then, in 1975, when PD closed down its mining operation, the company would have transferred him somewhere else. Instead, he quit and took his family to live in Mexico.”

“I know Phelps Dodge had operations in Cananea,” Jaime said. “But I don’t remember any neat Ciudad Obregon.”

“That’s because there aren’t any,” Edith replied shortly. “Eddie got himself mixed up with some cockamamy religious group called The Brethren. Their headquarters is on a ranch outside Obregon. Eddie and Cynthia took the three girls and went there because they could live on the ranch rent-free. I’m convinced that’s why Cynthia died, by the way. She had M.S. and never should have gotten pregnant that last time.

But if she’d

122

been in a hospital here in the States, being treated by a properly trained doctor, she might still be alive to this day.

“At the time, and for a long time afterward, I didn’t know any of this. Eddie and I don’t exactly get along, you see, and we didn’t stay in touch. Then, one day, out of the blue, a letter came from Carol-a postcard, really-asking if she and her sisters could come live with me. Just like that. And I said, ‘Of course. Whatever you need.’”

“When was that?” Joanna asked.

“When the girls came home?” Edith asked. Joanna nodded. “Seventeen years ago or so,”

Edith said. “Carol had just turned twenty. She told her sisters that she was bringing them home for a visit. Kelly didn’t want to come, and Carol couldn’t make her change her mind. Once they got here, the girls stayed with me and never went back.”

“What happened then?” Jaime asked.

“Well,” Edith said, “Grady was already gone by then, so I did what I could. The girls didn’t have much of an education-only a lick and a promise, so I saw to it that they all got GEDs. Andrea took to schooling like a duck to water. She got her AA degree from Cochise College in Sierra Vista and then went on to the U of A. She’s working on a Ph.D. in psychology and works as a secretary in the Chemistry Department. They give employees a good discount on tuition, you see.

“Stella wasn’t much of a student, but she had a baby to support, so she got a job waiting tables at PoFolks in Sierra Vista. That’s where she met Denny, her husband.

Couldn’t have met a nicer guy, as dependable as the day is long. He drives a FedEx truck. He and Stella got married when Nathan was three. Denny’s the only father little Nate has ever known.”

“And Carol?” Jaime asked.

123

A pained expression crossed Edith Mossman’s face. She shook her head sadly. “Carol never quite managed to cope,” she said. “She bounced from one bad job to another, and no matter where she lived, she always ended up taking in a pack of dogs. It’s hard to find a decent place to live when you have five or six or seven dogs living with you.”

“You mean she’s done this before-gathered up a bunch of stray dogs?”

Edith nodded. ‘And then she’d get evicted and the next thing I knew she’d have lost her job and she and the dogs would be living on the streets or in her car. That’s how come I finally let her move into Grady’s and my mobile. That way I could be sure that, no matter what kind of mess the place turned into, at least she’d have a roof over her head.”

“In other words,” Joanna said, “whenever Carol got into some kind of financial or legal difficulty, she came to you for help.”

“There wasn’t anyone else for her to turn to.”

“Including two weeks ago, when she received the citation about this latest batch of dogs?” Joanna asked.

“That’s right. And, like I said to you the other day, I told her I wouldn’t be able to help out until after the first of the month, when my social security check showed up. In the meantime, she called me from work one afternoon, and told me not to worry about it-that she’d made arrangements to get the money from someplace else.”

“Did she say where this money was supposed to come from?”

Edith shook her head. “No. At least not to me she didn’t.”

“So even though she told you she had the situation covered,”

T22

EXIT WOUNDS

Joanna said, “you came on out to her house with your checkbook at the ready anyway.

How come?”

“Because when Carol said she didn’t need the money anymore, I didn’t necessarily believe her,” Edith replied. “You see, she wasn’t a person who was always one hundred percent truthful. She was more than happy to tell lies when it suited her or when she was trying to save face. Carol may not have had much else going for her, but I’ll tell you this much-she did have her pride. When it comes to that, Carol was a Mossman through and through.”

So is pride what killed her? Joanna wondered. Being poor and proud can sometimes be a lethal combination.

124

The interview with Edith Mossman went on for sometime after that, but Joanna had a difficult time concentrating. Her early-morning English muffins had long since worn off. Her stomach was growling so loudly that she worried Edith might hear it.

The questions droned on and on. Did Carol have any enemies? No. Boyfriend? If Carol had a boyfriend, Edith knew nothing about it. How long had she worked in her present position? About six months. Had Carol had any, difficulties at work, either with supervisors, fellow employees, or customers? Not that she had mentioned to Edith.

Taken individually, the answers to all of Jaime’s questions seemed inconsequential.

Together, they formed a picture of who Carol Mossman was and who her associates had been. The hope was that one or another of those slender threads would help lead investigators to the killer. When Edith finally complained of fatigue, Jaime immediately offered to break for lunch.

125

“You mean there’s more?” Edith demanded. “What else can you possibly want to know?”

“We need to know everything,” Jaime told her. “Everything you can tell us.”

“It’ll have to wait, then,” Edith said. “I’ll go over to Stella’s house and take a little nap. I’m no spring chicken, you know. If I don’t get my rest, I’m the next best thing to worthless. Maybe, after that, I’ll feel up to talking some more. Right now I’m completely worn out.”

Me, too, Joanna thought.

“Sure thing,” Jaime said. “Later this afternoon will be fine.”

Twenty minutes later, Joanna slid into a booth at Daisy’s, across the table from where Marianne Maculyea was already sitting.

“How are you doing?” Marianne asked.

“Fine until I smelled the food,” Joanna said.

“Queasy?”

“You could say that.”

“Try the chicken noodle soup,” Marianne suggested. “When I was pregnant, chicken noodle was one of the few things that didn’t bounce back up the moment I swallowed it.”

“I take it you’ve forgiven me for not telling you first thing?” Joanna asked.

Marianne grinned at her. “Let’s just say I’m over it,” she said. “I’m thrilled to know jeffy is going to have someone to play with.”

“You may be over it, but I’m not,” Joanna said. “I’m still pissed at Marliss.”

Even as she said it, Joanna knew she was putting Marianne in a difficult situation, since Marliss Shackleford was also a member of the Reverend Maculyea’s flock at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.

126

“Don’t be,” Marianne advised. “Marliss was just doing her job. Or what she sees as doing her job.”

Daisy Maxwell, owner of Daisy’s Cafe, approached the booth with pad and pencil in hand, ready to take their order.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff Brady,” she said with a smile. “And congratulations. What’ll it be, now that you’re eating for two?”

Word is definitely out, Joanna thought.

“My friend here recommends the chicken noodle soup,” Joanna replied. “I guess I’m having that.”

“And you?” she asked Marianne.

Once again, Marianne favored Joanna with an impish grin. “Well,” she said, “since I’m not the one who’s expecting, I’ll have a hamburger. With fries!”

Forty-five minutes later, Joanna was back in her office when Ernie Carpenter knocked on the doorjamb. “Back from Tucson already?” she asked.

He nodded, came into the room, and eased his portly frame into one of the chairs.

“If the jail’s still under lockdown,” he said, “I think you can tell Tom Hadlock to ease up.”

“How come?” Joanna asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“Fran Daly’s preliminary conclusion is that Richard Osmond died of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.”

Joanna closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer of thanksgiving that George Winfield had wisely suggested bringing in an unbiased third-party medical examiner. The same information coming from Joanna’s own stepfather would have been far easier to view with skepticism.

“Undiagnosed?” she asked. “You mean Richard Osmond was that sick and no one had any idea?”

Ernie nodded. ‘According to Doc Daly, that’s the way pancreatic cancer works sometimes.

It’s like a time bomb that goes

127

off with zero advance warning. Even if doctors find it, Fran says there’s not that much that can be done about it.”

“What I want to know is whether or not we had any warning,” Joanna declared, emphasizing the first person plural pronoun. “Whether the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had any warning.”

“What do you mean?”

‘According to Frank, Richard Osmond has a child with a girlfriend whose father is a litigious kind of guy. Before Frank even finished doing the next-of-kin notification, Gabriel Gomez was already threatening us with a wrongful-death lawsuit. I want to know for sure that we’re covered on this, Ernie. I want you to check the jail records and find out if Osmond ever asked to go to the infirmary on a sick call or asked to see a doctor. I also want you to check with the two guys in his cell; what are their names again?”

Ernie hauled out a pad of paper and checked his notes. “Brad Calhoun and John Braxton,”

he supplied.

“I want you to see if Osmond ever complained to either one of them about not feeling well. I want those interviews conducted immediately, properly witnessed and recorded.

Understand?”

“Got it, boss,” Ernie replied. “What’s Jaime up to right now?”

“As far as I know, he’s waiting for Edith Mossman to wake up from her nap so he can finish doing her second interview. Maybe you can squeeze in talks with Braxton and Calhoun before that happens.”

Ernie nodded. “We’ll get right on it,” he said.

As Ernie rose to do her bidding, it occurred to Joanna that she owed this man, some twenty-five years her senior, the courtesy of personally informing him about what was going on.

128

“By the way, Ernie,” she said, “I’ll probably have Frank put out an official bulletin, but there’s something I need to tell you.”

“About the baby, you mean?” he asked.

Joanna nodded.

“Not to worry. Rose read me the article from the paper this morning. I should have mentioned it earlier. I guess congratulations are in order.”

Marliss strikes again, Joanna thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

Ernie frowned. “You’re not planning on quitting, are you?”

“No. Definitely not.”

A slow smile crossed Ernie Carpenter’s broad face. “Good,” he said. “Glad to hear it. I’m just getting used to working with you. It’d be a shame to lose you now.”

As soon as Ernie left her office, Joanna picked up her phone. “Frank,” she said, “I think we should send out a special department-wide bulletin as soon as possible.

We need to let people know what’s going on vis-a-vis my pregnancy.”

“I’m on it,” Frank told her. “I’ve got a rough draft almost ready to go.”

“You’re a mind reader,” Joanna said. “I’m free whenever you are.”

She was working on her never-ending pile of paperwork several minutes later when David Hollicker came rushing through her door. “What’s up?” she asked.

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“What?”

“NIBIN just got a hit on the Mossman casings.”

It took a moment for Joanna’s brain to sort the acronym into actual words-the National Integrated Ballistics Information

129

Network. Once the ballistics information was entered into the computer, it didn’t matter where the weapon was used next. A match was a match.

“Where?” Joanna demanded.

“In a double homicide near Road Forks,” Hollicker said. “In Hidalgo County, New Mexico.”

“What do you know so far?” Joanna asked.

“Just that there’s a match. When it comes to talking to other departments, I thought it might be better if someone other than a lowly CSI made the call.”

In less than a minute, Joanna was on the phone with Sheriff Randy Trotter in Lordsburg, New Mexico.

“I understand we have a joint ballistics hit,” Joanna said.

“So I hear,” Sheriff Trotter returned. “I was about to call you.”

“What’s the deal?” Joanna asked.

“Two Jane Does,” he told her. “One a white female, early forties, maybe. The other could be Hispanic. Mid-to-late twenties. They were found late yesterday afternoon, stripped naked and shot to death off the road between Road Forks and Rodeo.”

“Any possibility that the guy who reported it is the killer?” Joanna asked.

“I doubt it. He’s a history professor from the University of New Mexico. He’s devoting his summer to riding a bike to historical sites all over the state. The Circle Ranch is about ten miles north of Rodeo. There’s a well there along with a stock tank and a couple of trees. The professor had written permission from the rancher allowing him to camp there. He set up camp and then went off toward a stand of yucca, looking for a place to … well, relieve himself. He found the bodies about twenty 130

yards from the stock tank and called 911 from his cell phone. From the looks of the victims, they’d been out there for a while-a day or so, anyway.”

“What about autopsies?” Joanna asked.

“With tomorrow being the Fourth,” Trotter said, “we probably won’t have those before Monday at the earliest.”

“Monday,” Joanna echoed. “Can’t you do better than that?”

“Hey, our ME’s out of town. Went to a class reunion in Ames, Iowa. What do you expect?

Do you think I’m going to do them myself? I tried getting a pinch-hitter in from another county, but that costs money, and the budget doesn’t allow-“

“You don’t have to tell me about budget problems,” Joanna interrupted. “We’re dealing with one of our own. Whenever your ME gets around to doing the autopsies will be fine, but you’re saying there’s no identification?”

“That’s right. None. No purses. No ID. No clothing. No jewelry.”

“What about sexual assault?”

“No sign that we could see offhand, but again, we have to defer to the ME on that.

What’s the situation with your case?” Trotter asked.

Quickly Joanna related what she could about the Carol Mossman case.

“No suspects?” Trotter asked when she had finished.

“Not so far.”

For a moment there was silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m wondering if maybe we’re dealing with a serial killer,” Sheriff Trotter said at last. “Somebody who’s on the move and targeting women. The big question: Is this guy traveling east or west?”

“We’ll know that better when we have an approximate time 131

of death on your victims,” Joanna returned. “Depending on whether your victims died earlier or later than ours, we may be able to tell the general direction the killer’s heading. You haven’t heard about similar cases from any other jurisdictions that might be related, have you?”

“Not yet, but my detectives are checking.”

“I’ll have mine do the same,” Joanna said. “Have your guys work to the east; I’ll have mine work west.”

“Fair enough. No sense in duplication of effort,” Trotter said. Then, after a momentary pause, he added, “Do you think the guy would be be stupid enough to use the same kind of ammo three times in a row?”

“Beats me,” Joanna said. ‘Antique bullets made in 1917 are pretty distinctive.”

“I’ll say,” Trotter agreed. “Where the hell did they come from?”

“Good question. Maybe they were stolen from a firearms museum somewhere or from a collector. Who knows? Maybe the gun and the bullets are all the same age.”

“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Trotter asked.

Hollicker raised his hand. “I’ve already tried checking with Colt,” he said. “They had a warehouse fire years ago. Unfortunately, their records don’t go back this far.”

Joanna relayed that information to Sheriff Trotter. “What do you think about going public with some kind of warning?”

“I think we should,” Randy said.

“But what kind of warning can we give?” Joanna asked. “We’ve got no suspect. No vehicle.

Our victim was shot while standing inside the back door of her own home. Where yours were gunned down is anybody’s guess.”

“Well, then,” Sheriff Trotter replied, “the best we can do is to 132

tell women living or traveling alone to be on the lookout. Since the killer’s presumably already crossed at least one state line, we should be able to ask for help from the feds. If nothing else, they can help us with profiling.”

“But only if we have more to give them,” Joanna cautioned.

“When we have more to give them,” Trotter said. “Tell you what, Sheriff Brady. We have the crime scene photos, and we did pick up a few tire casts and a few footprints.

The casts are from big tires, probably from an SUV or a pickup truck. The footprints look to be about a size eight or so and our CSI says that whoever made them was carrying a pretty heavy load. How about if I package up copies of what we have here and courier all of it over to you with one of my deputies. Your guys can package up whatever you have on your end, and send it back to me. Trading copies back and forth won’t screw up any chains of evidence.”

“Sounds good to me,” Joanna said. “When will your deputy be here?”

“Give me a couple of hours, but it won’t be late. Everybody who can is planning on taking tomorrow off.”

Lucky them, Joanna thought. If a serial killer was on the loose and stalking unsuspecting women in New Mexico and southern Arizona, many of Joanna’s people wouldn’t be enjoying a leisurely Fourth of July holiday.

“This is critical,” Joanna told Dave once she was off the phone. “Whoever this guy is, we’ve got to get him off the streets. I’m putting you in charge of making up the evidence packet we send over to Hidalgo County.”

“All right, Sheriff,” Dave said dubiously, “but I don’t know how much good it’s going to do. The killer never gained access to Carol Mossman’s residence. We have some tire casts and a couple of footprints, too, and Casey picked up one set of prints 133

from the doorknob on Carol Mossman’s front door, but that’s about it. Other than the things I just mentioned, the brass, and the bullets I dug out of the wall paneling, our crime scene stuff is pretty thin.”

“Ours may not be worth much,” Joanna pointed out, “but it’s possible Trotter’s people picked up something important. We’ll be better off sending everything we have, usable or not, in hopes of getting something good back from them.”

“Okay, Sheriff Brady. I’ll get right on it.”

As Dave walked out the door, Joanna’s private line rang. “Did you eat lunch?” Butch said.

“Yes.” Joanna was glad to hear his voice. Glad to have something bringing her back from a world in which serial killers traveled the countryside murdering whatever unfortunate women happened to cross their paths. “I had chicken noodle soup. Marianne had a burger and fries.”

“Did the soup stay put?” Butch asked.

“So far, so good. What’s up?”

“I’m calling to let you know you’re on your own for dinner.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Jenny and I are on our way to Tucson,” Butch said. “We’re hoping to make it to Western Warehouse before it closes.”

“How come? I don’t remember anybody saying anything about going to Tucson today.”

“That’s because it isn’t exactly a pre-planned trip,” Butch replied. “In fact, it came up just a couple of minutes ago, when I found Lucky under Jenny’s bed chewing up one of her cowboy boots.”

“It’s wrecked?” Joanna asked.

“Totaled. She’s got to have boots for the barrel race tomor 134

row, and her old pair is so small she can’t squeeze into them anymore. So we’re leaving right now. I’m going to put Lucky in the garage-in your garage-where there’s nothing else for him to chew up.” Butch paused. “How about that Marliss,” he said finally.

“You saw the article?”

“No, but I heard about it. One of Jenny’s friends called her.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “Couldn’t be better. Mother and I already had words about it.”

“How come?”

“I suggested maybe the leak came from her.”

“I doubt it,” Butch said. “Even if Eleanor had called Marliss the moment she left our house, I don’t see how she could have beaten the Bee’s press deadline.”

“You could be right,” Joanna agreed. “So someone else besides my mother might be the culprit.”

“You should probably apologize then,” Butch suggested.

“I will,” Joanna said. “When I get around to it. Now drive carefully,” she added.

“I will,” Butch returned, “but I have one more very important thing to say.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever you do, don’t bring home any more animals.”

“Right,” Joanna agreed with a laugh. “I promise.”

“And you be safe, too,” he told her.

Joanna let Butch hang up without mentioning that there were now two possibly related murder victims across the border in New Mexico. It was a glaring omission, and she wasn’t sure exactly whom it was she was trying to protect-Butch Dixon or Joanna Brady.

After the call ended, Joanna forced herself to turn her 135

attention to her desk. Wanting to leave it in some kind of reasonable order, Joanna tackled her daily grind of paperwork. Dealing with the constant barrage was much like the thankless task of doing housework-it could be completed on a temporary basis but it was never actually finished.

In the course of the late afternoon, she tried several times to check with the Double Cs. Unfortunately, her detectives remained in the conference room conducting back-to-back interviews. She was still sorting papers when Kristin called to say Deputy Roy Valentine of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department was waiting outside.

“Send him in,” Joanna said. “Tell Dave Hollicker that Deputy Valentine is here and ask him to come to my office with the Mossman packet. And please see if Frank and the Double Cs can join us as well.”

Deputy Valentine was young and seemed ill at ease as Kristin ushered him into Joanna’s office. She directed him to a chair by the small conference table at the back of the room. “If you don’t mind, Deputy Valentine, I’ve asked some of the others to join us as well.”

“Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

Once Valentine was seated, Joanna assembled enough chairs to go around. The others arrived one by one, and Joanna introduced them to Valentine. Only when they were all gathered did he undo the string fastener on the packet he carried and slide the collection of grisly crime scene photos onto the smooth surface of the cherry-wood table.

Four years earlier, the sight of pictures of bloodied corpses would have sent Joanna Brady scurrying for the nearest rest room. Today, even with her rebelliously queasy stomach giving her trouble, Joanna was able to gaze at the photos with the distant 136

passionate eyes of a professional. Just as Sheriff Trotter had said, the two female victims, lying on their backs, were both completely naked. The bloodstains on the bodies and apparent lack of same on the ground told their own complicated stories.

“This isn’t where they were shot, is it?” Joanna asked Deputy Valentine as she passed the first photo along to Ernie Carpenter.

The visiting deputy gave her a somewhat quizzical look before answering. “That’s right,” he said. “We think they were shot over by the stock tank. That’s where the brass was found, but we didn’t find much blood there. Sammy-that’s Sammy Soto, our CSI-says he thinks they were shot there and then dragged away from the stock tank to where they were found. If the guy on the bike hadn’t needed to take a dump-“

Embarrassed, Valentine broke off without finishing.

“But you don’t know that for sure?” Ernie asked.

“No. We didn’t find enough blood at the scene to place the shooting there for sure.

It’s a stock tank, you see,” Valentine explained. “A herd of cattle came through the scene to drink several times between the time the victims were shot and when the bodies were found. They stirred up the dirt around the stock tank pretty good.

We were damned lucky to find the brass and even a few footprints.”

“Is it possible they were inside a vehicle when they were shot?” Ernie asked. “That would explain the lack of blood at the stock tank, but the shooter would be left with a hell of a mess in whatever he was driving. Or maybe they were all in the stock tank skinny-dipping.”

Joanna knew Ernie Carpenter had just pulled Deputy Valentine’s leg. Valentine, on the other hand, had no idea. “I doubt that’s possible,” he objected with a frown.

137

Shaking his head, Ernie continued to ask questions. ‘Any tire tracks?”

Valentine shrugged. “Some. And we made casts of what there were, but we don’t know for sure the vehicle belonged to the killer. And, like I said, it’s a stock tank.

There were probably lots more tire tracks at some point, but by the time we got there, the cattle had obliterated all but that one set.”

“So we don’t know if the victims were inside or outside a vehicle when they were shot, but they are both naked. Any sign of sexual assault?”

“None that we could see. We won’t know for sure until after the autopsies.”

“Did your CSI say whether or not he thought the women were naked when they were shot?”

Valentine looked surprised. “He didn’t say. Why?”

Ernie shrugged. “This kind of deliberate posing and sexual assault usually go together.

Now when are those autopsies due again?”

“Sheriff Trotter already gave me the bad news on that,” Joanna interjected, answering before Deputy Valentine had a chance. “Because it’s a holiday weekend, Monday is the soonest their ME will be available.”

“Too bad,” Ernie said, shaking his head. “We’ll be losing a lot of precious time.”

He passed the first photo along and reached for another. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Those are the casings,” Deputy Valentine said. “Four of them. Two shots each. There seem to be prints on the casings but we haven’t had time to process them yet. Sheriff Trotter said we’ll get those to you as soon as possible.”

“Good,” Joanna said.

138

Together they sorted through one photo after another, twenty or so in all-photos taken before and after the bodies were removed from the scene, along with enlarged photos of shell casings with their telltale antique markings. Joanna was disappointed in the material. She had hoped for something definitive. Other than some footprints and the possibility of fingerprints, the New Mexico authorities didn’t have any more to go on in this case than Joanna’s people had in the Carol Mossman case. Even so, when they had finished with Deputy Valentine’s packet of photos, Dave Hollicker passed along the flimsy collection of Mossman material.

“I don’t think we’re dealing with a terribly sophisticated or organized perp,” Frank Montoya theorized as Valentine thumbed his way through the new set of crime scene photos. “If he was, he never would have left his brass lying around like that, to say nothing of brass with prints on it.”

“I agree,” Ernie said. “He may not be organized this minute, but at the rate he’s going, he won’t stay disorganized for long.”

“Right,” Jaime Carbajal added. “It could be he’s somebody who’s been thinking about killing people for a long time and he’s only just now started.”

“But he’s off to a big start,” Ernie said. “Right this minute the death toll stands at three. If he keeps up the pace, I’d hate to think how much damage he might do between now and Monday morning.”

“And he may not have started here,” Joanna put in. “Sheriff Trotter is having his people check points east looking for cases with similar MOs. I told him we’ll look west of here. If we can come up with any other recent cases that might be connected, we’d at least have some idea of what direction he’s going in.”

Valentine finished sorting through the Mossman material 139

and then stuffed it into the now empty folder he’d brought with him. “I’d better take this and head home,” he said.

“Sorry there’s not more,” Joanna told him.

“That’s okay. It’s better than nothing.”

“Well, guys,” Joanna said, turning to her officers once Deputy Valentine had left the room. “What do you think?”

“Sounds like we’ve got a big problem,” Jaime Carbajal said.

Ernie nodded. “The sooner we find this guy, the better. The trouble is, we spent a big chunk of today dealing with Richard Osmond when we should have been chasing Carol Mossman’s killer.”

Joanna nodded in agreement. “That’s what I think, too. This is too serious to let sit fallow over a three-day weekend. Overtime or not, we have to have people tracking on this tomorrow and Saturday both.”

“Count me in,” Jaime said.

“Wait a minute,” Ernie objected. “Don’t the Coyotes have a big game tomorrow?”

Jaime Carbajal coached a Little League team called the Copper Queen Coyotes. Pepe Carbajal, Jaime’s twelve-year-old son, was the Coyotes’ star pitcher.

“Yes,” Jaime said, “but not until mid-afternoon. Why?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Ernie said. “The Fourth of July is for kids. I’ll take your on-call. You spend the day with Delcia and Pepe. I’ll come in and work.”

“Thanks, Ernie,” Jaime said, “but phone me and keep me in the loop.”

“Don’t thank me,” Ernie added gruffly. “I’ll see to it that we even up eventually.”

Joanna appreciated the effortless way in which the two detectives sorted out the scheduling arrangements.

I

140

“Now tell me,” she said. “Did you finish the Calhoun and Braxton interviews?”

“Sure did,” Ernie said. “And it looks like we’re in the clear on those. Osmond never said a word to either one of his cell mates about not feeling well. We’ve got no notations of him asking to see a doctor or of his going to the infirmary, either.

I’m guessing the situation just snuck up on him. Took him by surprise same as it did everybody else. And, if you ask me, it’s a pretty good way to go. Not in jail, mind you, but to just lie down to take a nap like that and … poof… you’re out of there.”

“I have a feeling that Maria and Gabriel Gomez won’t necessarily share your benign view of the situation,” Joanna said. “You’ll have transcripts for me?”

Ernie nodded. “ASAP,” he said.

“And what about Edith Mossman? Did you find out anything more in talking to her this afternoon?”

“Not really,” Jaime Carbajal answered. “We’re making arrangements to interview the two sisters who live in the States-Stella, here in Bisbee, and Andrea, the one who lives in Tucson. Andrea is supposedly coming down to see Edith over the weekend.

I’ll try to interview her while she’s here. Since Stella lives in Bisbee, I can talk to her sometime next week if I don’t catch up with her sooner than that.”

“What about the sister who lives in Mexico?” Joanna asked.

“Kelly,” Jaime answered. “I asked Edith about whether or not she had let Kelly know what had happened. She said no, because

as far as she knows, there’s no phone service out to where they live. I spoke to an officer named Enrique Santos in the Ciudad Obregon Police Department. He knows about The Brethren-that’s what they call themselves. Santos agreed to send someone out there in person to notify Kelly and her father of Carol’s death 141

and to ask them to call me either here in the office or on my cell phone.”

“Good enough,” Joanna said. “Does that do it then?”

There were nods all around. “All right then. See you tomorrow.”

The Double Cs headed for the door. Jaime turned back from the doorway. ‘About the baby, boss. If it’s a boy, you’re going to name it after me, right?”

Joanna glanced at Frank. “I guess that means the bulletin went out?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Right, Jaime,” Joanna replied with a grin. “We’ll call him Carby short for Carbajal.”

She could hear Ernie and Jaime laughing as they made their way down the hall. Joanna turned back to Frank. “Remember, you’re on call tomorrow, too. I’m going to be all over God’s creation.”

“Don’t wear yourself out,” Frank cautioned.

Joanna shook her head. “I’m pregnant, Frank. That doesn’t turn me into some kind of invalid.”

“But you’re not Wonder Woman, either,” he told her.

Back at her desk, Joanna’s calendar lay open to July 4. Oh, yeah? she thought, glancing down through the jumbled notations of appointments to be kept. Prove it.

It was not yet dusk and still very hot when she drove up to the house on the expanded High Lonesome Ranch. Tigger came to greet the Crown Victoria. Lucky shot out of the garage the moment she opened that automatic door. Lady hung back until she was sure Joanna was alone, then she came crawling toward the car, groveling on the ground.

“Somebody really did mistreat you, didn’t they, girl,” Joanna said soothingly.

142

The dog’s tail wagged tentatively. Joanna had to coax her to come back into the cool interior of the rammed-earth house. She took off her weapons and put them away, then she stopped in the laundry room long enough to fill dog dishes. Butch had decreed that feeding the dogs in the garage would help cut down on the mess, so that’s what she did.

Once the three dogs had finished mowing through their food, Joanna let them outside.

Then she pushed the button that closed the automatic garage door. Back in the laundry room, she closed and locked the door to the garage as well. As she did so, she couldn’t help thinking about Carol Mossman. She, too, had closed and locked the doors to her home, thinking those barriers would somehow keep her safe and protect her dogs as well. But nothing could have been further from the truth. She had locked death inside her tumble-down mobile home rather than keeping it out.

Thoughtfully Joanna extracted the small notebook and stubby pencil she kept in her pocket. “Why were dogs inside?” she wrote.

Still pondering the question, she walked through the house. In the bedroom she changed into a T-shirt and shorts. Back in the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of lemonade from the fridge.

With Butch and Jenny both gone and with the dogs outside, the house was unnaturally quiet. Taking her glass with her, Joanna went into the family room and settled on the couch to watch the evening news. Peter Jennings had no more than opened his mouth when Joanna fell sound asleep. She was awakened much later by a chorus of barking dogs and the sound of the door opener operating on Butch’s garage. Except for the flickering light from the television set, the whole house was dark.

143

When Joanna switched on a lamp, she was astonished to discover it was almost nine o’clock. She had slept for nearly three hours.

The door from Butch’s garage opened, and all three dogs careened into the family room. Lady sidled up on the couch, where she cuddled next to Joanna.

“There you are,” Butch said as he and Jenny walked into the room. “When we didn’t see any lights, Jenny and I decided you still weren’t home.”

“I was tired and fell asleep,” Joanna said. “Did you get some boots?”

“We’re booted,” Butch replied. “What about dinner? We ate, did you?”

“Haven’t, but I will,” Joanna told him, heading for the kitchen. “I’m famished.”

“You’re feeling all right, then?” Butch asked.

She paused long enough to give him a kiss. “It’s called ‘morning sickness’ for good reason,” she told him.

He studied her face. “You look upset.”

“I suppose I am,” she agreed. ‘At least four people are dead so far. On three of them, we’re making very little progress.”

i43

I

144

Early the next morning, the smell of Butch’s coffee brewing in the kitchen sent Joanna scrambling out Of bed and into the bathroom. A miserable half hour later, when she finally dragged her body into the kitchen, Butch took one look at her pale face and shook his head. “You look like hell,” he told her.

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered. “I can tell you how much better that makes me feel.”

“Do you think it’s worth it?” he asked.

“Being pregnant?” she returned. “Ask me that again in a month or so when I’m no longer barfing my guts out.”

Butch came across the room to give her a gentle squeeze. “I have water on for tea.

Want some?

“This morning, tea doesn’t sound any better than coffee.” “If you’re not careful,”

he warned, “you’ll go into caffeine withdrawal, and then you’ll really be in trouble-headaches, mood swings …”

145

Joanna hitched her way up onto one of the barstools at the kitchen counter and then glowered at him. “I’m not having mood swings,” she retorted.

“Oh, really?” Butch said with a grin. “In the meantime, as requested, here are your English muffins, madame.”

After delivering her breakfast, Butch turned back to the cook top Using only one hand, he expertly cracked two eggs at a time into a heated frying pan. While Joanna watched, he deftly flipped the eggs in midair and then, after a few more seconds over the heat, slid the over-easy result, with yolks perfectly intact, onto a waiting plate. A former short-order cook, Butch Dixon was disturbingly adept in the kitchen, enough so that watching him at work made Joanna feel inadequate. She herself had attempted that midair egg-flipping trick on only one occasion-with disastrous results for both egg and cook top

“I wish I could come with you today,” Butch said thoughtfully, placing his own plate on the counter and settling on the stool next to Joanna’s. Worried about the state of her innards, Joanna kept a close eye on her remaining muffin.

“The problem is,” Butch continued, “I promised Faye that I’d help out at the booth.

She’s concerned that the girls will need some male-type extra muscle while they’re setting up.”

Faye Lambert was the leader of Jenny’s Girl Scout troop. The girls, working on raising money for their second annual end-of-summer trip to southern California, had made arrangements to sell sodas and candy bars during Bisbee’s Fourth of July parade and at the field-day events to be held later in the afternoon at Warren Ballpark.

“Jenny’s shift in the booth ends at noon,” Butch added. “That’ll give us plenty of time to come home, have lunch,

146

change clothes, load Kiddo into his trailer, and head for the fairgrounds in Douglas.”

“You don’t mind doing all this?” Joanna asked. “The booth, horse wrangling, and all that?”

Butch shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a cowboy and a dad. Now I’m getting some practice in both with Jenny. Sort of like a preview of coming attractions,” he added with a smile. “But tell me, Joey, are you sure you’ll be okay, driving all over hell and gone by yourself?”

Part of Joanna relished Butch’s husbandly concern, and part of her resented it. “I’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “I’m scheduled to be one of the lead vehicles in both parades. That means I’ll be done with each of those events with enough time to get to the next one. I may be a little squeezed hustling between the two picnics, but I should make it with no problem.”

“Did you say ‘squeezed’?” Butch asked. “I don’t think that quite covers it.”

When she went out to get in the Civvie, she discovered Butch had left an unopened package of saltine crackers on the roof of the car.

Smiling at his thoughtfulness, Joanna settled into the driver’s seat. As she drove toward the department in her dress uniform, she wondered how long she’d be able to fit into it. She stopped by the Motor Pool garage long enough to have her Crown Victoria gassed up and washed to get rid of the layer of fine red dust that was the natural shade of any vehicle making daily trips up and down the pavement-free road to High Lonesome Ranch.

She stopped by her office and checked with Dispatch to make sure nothing out of the ordinary needed her attention. Well before eleven she took her place as the second vehicle in Bisbee’s

147

Fourth of July parade, positioned directly behind the Bisbee High School marching band. The parade started fifteen minutes late and then took another forty-five minutes to make a leisurely circuit of Warren’s onlooker-lined streets. Immediately after reaching the Cole Avenue starting point, Joanna headed out of Bisbee. The fifteen-minute delay in the first parade’s starting time caused her to arrive in Sierra Vista too late to be at the front of the parade there. That meant she was even further behind schedule as she drove the twenty-plus miles from Sierra Vista to the first community picnic in Benson.

Driving with complete concentration, she was startled when her cell phone rang just shy of the junction at 1-10. The out-of-area number on the phone’s readout wasn’t one Joanna recognized.

“Sheriff Brady here,” she answered.

“Happy Fourth of July,” her brother’s cheerful voice boomed at her. “What are you up to?”

“On my way from a parade to the first of two picnics,” she told Bob Brundage. “From the second of two parades, actually. How about you?”

For most of her life, Joanna Brady had thought of herself as an only child. Slightly less than four years earlier, Joanna had discovered that her parents had had an earlier and previously unmentioned, out-of-wedlock child. The infant boy had been given up for adoption long before D. . Lathrop and Eleanor Matthews’s eventual marriage, and years before Joanna’s subsequent birth. Bob Brundage had come searching for his birth mother only after the deaths of both his adoptive parents. A career military man, Bob had arrived in Joanna’s life as a full bird colonel in the United States Army.

For some people, learning about a parent’s youthful 148

indiscretions can serve as a unifying experience between parent and child. It hadn’t worked that way for Joanna Brady and Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. Finding out about Bob Brundage’s existence had left Joanna feeling betrayed, and her lingering resentment stemmed from far more than Eleanor’s long silence about her own history.

For years Eleanor Lathrop had berated her daughter for being pregnant with Jenny at the time Joanna and Andy had married. The circumstances surrounding their shotgun wedding had given rise to years of never-ending criticism from Eleanor. Never once in all that time had Eleanor mentioned that there were similar skeletons in her own closet. That was what bothered Joanna the most-her mother’s blatant hypocrisy. Despite Joanna’s best efforts, she had yet to come to terms with the situation, and because she had not yet taken that first important step, forgiveness remained impossible.

“We’re in Hilton Head with Marcie’s folks,” Bob answered. “Just hanging out. July’s a good time to be as far away from D.C. as possible.”

In the course of the last few years, Joanna had seen her brother several times when he had come to Bisbee to visit with Eleanor. She and Bob weren’t close, but Joanna had to admit that he was a pretty sharp and likable .guy. Usually, when Joanna spoke to Bob Brundage, it was by phone, mostly on holidays and mostly on her home telephone line. The fact that he knew her cell phone number came as something of a surprise and made her slightly apprehensive.

“So what’s up?” she asked.

“I heard from Eleanor today,” Bob said casually.

By mutual agreement, when Joanna Brady and Bob Brundage spoke of their mother, both of them referred to Eleanor by

149

her given name. It was easier-a way of avoiding the emotional minefield of their shared-but-absent family history.

Suspicions confirmed, Joanna thought. No wonder you have this number.

“What about?” she asked innocently.

“Eleanor happened to mention that you and Butch are expecting,” Bob replied. “Congratulations.

I’ve never been an uncle before. Unless it’s a girl, that is. I suppose then I’ll end up being an aunt.”

It was an old joke, and Joanna wasn’t disposed to be amused. “We’ll be sure to let you know which one you turn out to be,” she returned.

“That is why I called, though,” Bob went on with all trace of joking around excised from his voice. “Eleanor wanted me to talk to you about this.”

“About what?”

‘About your being pregnant and running for sheriff at the same time.”

“I suppose she expects you to talk me out of it?” Joanna demanded. “She’s bringing you in because you’re her big gun. She’s convinced that as soon as you say the word, I’ll fold?”

“Something like that,” Bob admitted. “I tried to explain to her that this is none of my business.”

You’ve got that right, Joanna thought. So why are we having this conversation?

“But I did promise her that I’d call,” Bob continued. “I’m worried-“

“Don’t waste your breath,” Joanna interrupted, running out of patience. “Please don’t worry about me, Bob. I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, and I certainly don’t need you telling me what to do.”

150

“I meant I was worried about Eleanor,” Bob put in patiently.

“You don’t need to worry about her, either,” Joanna said. “She’s tough as nails.”

“But she seemed really upset.”

“Of course she’s upset,” Joanna fumed. “She’s always upset. She disapproves of everything I do. It’s been that way my whole life. Now that I’m pregnant, she wants me to pull out of the election, go home, put on an apron, and play housewife. That’s not me, Bob. It never has been me.”

“I don’t think she’s upset because you’re pregnant,” Bob said. ‘At least not totally so. It’s partially because you accused her of leaking the information to some reporter.

What’s her name?”

“Marliss,” Joanna said. “Marliss Shackleford. Maybe I was wrong about that, but Eleanor and Marliss have always been bosom buddies. Based on that, I can hardly be accused of leaping to conclusions.”

“I suppose not,” Bob agreed. “But I do think you need to take a look at this whole situation.”

By now Joanna had pulled into the parking lot at Benson High School and was sitting with the car parked but idling in order to keep the air-conditioning running. “What situation?” she asked.

“Eleanor’s jealous,” Bob answered.

“Jealous?” Joanna repeated. “Of me?”

“That’s right,” Bob Brundage said. “Think about it. Eleanor based her whole life on all those old rules, the ones she grew up with. I was born pre-women’s lib; you were born after. First, she lost me because, back then, being pregnant and unmarried just wasn’t done, not by good girls from good families.”

And what does that make me? Joanna wondered.

“Eleanor Matthews had a rebellious streak,” Bob continued, 151

“but society-in the form of her parents-ran roughshod over it. Her family made her conform and forced her to give me up for adoption. She told me once that losing me broke her heart, and I’m sure it’s true. From then on, she decided she was through with breaking rules. She set about conforming, and she did it up brown. When the sexual revolution came along, she ran in the opposite direction. While other women her age were out burning their bras, Eleanor decided to go home and stay there, looking after her husband and raising her daughter. Did you know that, at one time, Eleanor wanted to be a fashion model?”

Joanna was stunned by this astonishing revelation. To those growing up in the cultural backwater of Bisbee, Arizona, a career as a fashion model would have been beyond the realm of possibility.

“You’re kidding!” Joanna exclaimed. “Eleanor Lathrop a fashion model? You mean a real, honest-to-goodness fashion model, in someplace like New York?”

“Or Paris,” Bob added.

Joanna was unconvinced. “That’s a little far-fetched. It sounds about as likely as her wanting to grow up to be a stripper. Besides, she never mentioned a word about it to me.”

“She did to me,” Bob returned.

Naturally, Joanna thought bitterly. Of course, she told her fair-haired boy and not me …

“So what happened?” Joanna asked with more than a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“If she wanted to become a model so badly, why didn’t she do it?”

“Because, after she had me, her mother convinced her that models who had damaged their bodies with babies were all washed up in the fashion biz.”

“So she decided to become a housewife instead?”

152

“That’s right. She stifled her own career ambitions, first because of me and later because of her husband and you. But now, Joanna, take a look at what you’re doing.

It’s not just that you’re not following Eleanor’s blueprint for life. Instead, you’re designing a whole new ball game. Eleanor Matthews Lathrop had two children-you and me. It’s pretty clear to me that between the two of us we cost her everything.” Speak for yourself, Joanna thought.

But Bob continued. “You have one child, soon to be two, but you’re living in a whole new era. From Eleanor’s point of view, society is letting you off easy. can do whatever you want. You don’t have to pay the same kinds of prices Eleanor had to pay. As far as she’s concerned, you’re not having to give up anything.”

The cell phone next to Joanna’s ear was hot, but so was she. She sat there steaming, saying nothing but doing a slow burn. Bob Brundage had a hell of a lot of nerve analyzing what, if anything, Joanna Brady was having to give up.

“Joanna?” Bob asked at last. “Are you still there?” “I’m here,” Joanna said stiffly.

“Tell me something. Did you think all this up on your own, or did Eleanor ladle it to you one word at a time?”

“On my own,” Bob answered. “I swear, every word of it.” “So what are you then, some kind of psychologist?” “I have an advantage you don’t have,” Bob replied. “What’s that?” Joanna asked pointedly. “Age?” “That, too.” Bob’s reply to Joanna’s blunt question was pleasantly evasive. “But not just that,” he added. “I have the benefit of perspective, and perspective only comes with distance. You’re too close to see it.”

“As in too close to the forest?” “Something like that.”

153

Across the parking lot, Joanna could see the Benson mayor’s aide, Martha Rogers, checking her watch and glancing anxiously around the parking lot. A look at the clock on the dashboard told Joanna why. It was two minutes away from the time to introduce visiting dignitaries, one of whom was scheduled to be Joanna Brady, sheriff of Cochise County.

“You still haven’t said what you want me to do about it,” Joanna said to her brother.

“Just be aware of it, is all,” Bob said. ‘And cut Eleanor a little slack now and then.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to tell me to drop out of the race for sheriff?”

‘Are you nuts?” Bob asked with a chuckle. “I get all kinds of points around the Pentagon when I tell my coworkers that my kid sister is a sheriff out west in Arizona. They always want to know whether or not you carry a gun. And when I tell them you’re almost as good a shot as I am, they’re impressed.”

Joanna laughed, too. “Next time you’re out to visit,” she warned him, “you and I will do some target practice. We’ll see then who’s the better shot. Right now, I’ve gotta go. Someone’s looking for me. Tell Marcie for me.”

It was a thoughtful Joanna Brady who made her way through the parking lot toward the red-white-and-blue-festooned podium. Joanna had always despised what she had dismissed as Eleanor’s perpetual social climbing. Now she wondered how much those social-climbing tendencies had to do with Eleanor’s own thwarted ambitions-the hopes and dreams Eleanor Matthews had put aside in favor of marriage, motherhood, apple pie, and the American way. It was likely that her thwarted ambitions had determined the kind of mother Eleanor had turned out to be.

154

In Joanna’s opinion, she and her mother had been locked in a perpetual state of warfare that dated from the very beginning-from Joanna’s first conscious memories. Rather than supporting her daughter, Eleanor had always been the one standing in Joanna’s way, blocking her progress and attempting to turn Joanna into someone far different from who she really was. But maybe Bob was right. Maybe the constant bickering with her mother was an outgrowth of a simple case of mother/daughter jealousy. And if Bob was right about that, maybe he was correct in something else as well. Maybe Joanna Brady was too close to the situation-so close that she hadn’t had a clue it even existed.

Minutes later she was standing on a makeshift podium welcoming people to the Benson Community Fourth of July picnic. She kept her remarks short and nonpartisan, then she spent the next forty-five minutes working the crowd, shaking hands and doing what she could to drum up support for her campaign. Later, after the short ten-minute drive from Benson to St. David, she did the same thing again-a short speech followed by another session of glad-handing all around. Everywhere she went she was offered food, none of which appealed to her in the least.

After the St. David appearance, Joanna headed home. She sailed past the Cochise County Justice Center without even turning on the Ciwie’s directional signal. Had anything been wrong, someone would have summoned her. She took the relative silence of radio chatter to mean that even the crooks were taking a holiday. At the Double Adobe turnoff, however, she glanced at her watch. It was twenty after three. The barrel-racing competition would start after a four o’clock performance by Sierra Vista High School’s junior girl’s rodeo drill team. Joanna figured that would give her time enough to get out of her

155

dress uniform and into something a little more comfortable for sitting in the dusty stands at the fairgrounds. With that, she stepped on the brakes, and headed for High Lonesome Ranch where, in addition to changing clothes, she might be able to find something decent to eat.

It took Joanna a couple of minutes to negotiate the ecstatic dog greeting committee that met her at the front gate. Tigger was beside himself, and Lucky was so thrilled that he managed to pee on Joanna’s pant leg and dribble into her shoe. That meant the uniform would have to go to the cleaner’s after all. Lady showed even stronger signs of being happy to see her. Sadie’s loss was still a fresh memory, but it was a little easier to bear the bluetick’s absence now that there were other dogs to take the old hound’s place.

Once in the house, Joanna changed into jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt. She knew better than to brave the late-afternoon sun with her fair complexion and short sleeves. Finding a banana on the counter, she downed that along with a glass of ice-cold milk. Then, settling a straw Stetson on her head, she hurried outside and back into the now-roasting Ciwie. Butch had left a note saying that the Outback was in the garage if she wanted to take that, but she felt more at ease in the Crown Victoria.

That way, if duty called and her services were needed, she wouldn’t be driving in a vehicle without two-way radio capability.

Sticking strictly to the posted speed limits, Joanna arrived at the rodeo grounds just as the sixteen-member drill squad galloped into the arena. Shading the sun from her eyes, Joanna spotted Butch, Jim Bob, and Eva Lou Brady sitting high in the stands.

Excusing herself, Joanna made her way up to them. She was grateful to realize that their backs were to the sun.

156

Butch greeted her with a kiss. “Glad to see you,” he said.

Joanna settled into the seat beside him and actually let herself relax as she watched the end of the drill team’s performance.

Joanna couldn’t help but be impressed by the talented troop of elaborately costumed and synchronized riders as they galloped around the relatively confined space on swiftly moving horses.

Each rider carried a banner that stood out straight behind her, whipping in the wind. As horses and riders careened around the enclosure, Joanna held her breath. At every turn it seemed as though two or more of them were bound to crash into one another with disastrous results, but they never did. It made Joanna grateful that when Jenny’s turn came, there would be only one horse and one rider in the ring at a time.

As the drill team finished up and filed out to tumultuous applause, Joanna turned to Butch. “I thought Eleanor was going

to be here.”

“She called and canceled at the last minute,” Butch replied.

“She said she had a splitting headache.”

Eleanor’s got a headache, all right, Joanna thought. It has nothing at all to do with Jenny’s rodeo appearance and everything to do with me.

Eva Lou Brady reached over and squeezed Joanna’s knee. “Congratulations again, Joanna,”

5va Lou said. “Jim Bob and I are both so happy for you.”

Joanna looked at her former mother-in-law. For some inexplicable reason, her eyes filled with hot tears. Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady were and always had been the embodiment of unconditional love. They, too, might have come up with any number of excuses for not going to the hot fairgrounds, but they were in attendance that afternoon, interested and uncomplaining, to support Jenny’s foray into the world of rodeo riding.

156

157

When Joanna had announced her engagement to Butch Dixon, they had accepted her choice without a hint of disapproval. From the beginning, they had treated Butch with unfailing kindness and grace. And sitting there under the hot afternoon sun, Joanna knew, without question, that Jim Bob and Eva Lou would accept this new child-Joanna and Butch’s child-as though he or she were their own flesh-and-blood grandchild.

“Thank you,” Joanna murmured.

‘Are you nervous?” Eva Lou asked.

Joanna didn’t know if Eva Lou was asking about Jenny’s upcoming ride or about the pregnancy. She simply nodded yes.

As the first barrel racer pounded into the arena, Joanna’s attention was riveted.

The girl looked to be much older than Jenny, and the horse, a palomino, was utterly splendid. Leaning into the curves as one entity, horse and rider skidded around the three equally spaced barrels. Watching their seemingly breakneck pace, Joanna couldn’t help but hold her breath.

As the PA system broadcast the first rider’s time, Joanna’s cell phone rang. The distinctive rooster-crow ring echoed through a suddenly silenced grandstand. Joanna dived for her purse to stifle the noisy thing. With many nearby spectators glaring at her in disapproval, Joanna glanced at the readout. She recognized the number at once-Dispatch.

“Sheriff Brady here,” she said tersely into the phone. “What’s up?”

“I thought you’d want to know that we’ve got a serious rollover accident on Highway 80 out by Silver Creek,” Tica Romero answered. “A coyote-driven SUV with twenty or so undocumented aliens riding in it. We’ve got injured UDAs everywhere and at least two confirmed fatalities. Multiple units, ambulances, and an Air-Evac helicopter are all on the way.”

158

“What about Chief Deputy Montoya?”

“He’s at the site of a reported road-rage shooting west of Huachuca City. It’ll take him at least an hour to get to the other side of the county.”

“Fair enough,” Joanna told her. “I’m on my way.” God help me, I’m on my way!

She glanced up in time to see the second barrel racer charge into the arena. She hoped for a brief moment that it possibly might be Jenny, but of course, it wasn’t.

Butch looked at her questioningly.

“There’s been a multiple-fatality accident east of here on Highway 80,” she told him. “I’ve got to go.”

Butch nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Drive carefully. See you at home.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay long enough to watch Jenny ride?” Eva Lou asked, reaching out to stop Joanna. “It can’t be more than a few minutes before it’s her turn. Barrel racing doesn’t last all that long.”

“Sorry, Eva Lou,” she said. “Jenny will just have to understand.”

As Joanna threaded her way down through the grandstand, she hoped fervently what she said was true and that Jenny would indeed forgive her.

At the far end of the parking lot where she’d left the Civvie, Joanna paused long enough to open the trunk and slip on a Kevlar vest, then she vaulted into the front seat. In her glove box she fumbled blindly around until she located the spare spiral-bound notebook she kept there. Once she’d stuffed that into the pocket of her jeans, she turned the key in the ignition. She switched on her flashing lights the moment the engine started,

159

but she didn’t activate her siren until she was well away from the fairgrounds.

“Okay, Tica,” Joanna said into the radio as she turned onto Highway 80. “Tell me again what’s going on.”

“A Border Patrol unit in New Mexico saw an old CMC Suburban headed northbound toward Animas. He signaled the driver to stop, but the driver didn’t pull over. Instead, he jammed his foot on the gas and drove straight past. The Border Patrol went after the guy, but when the Suburban’s speed exceeded ninety miles per hour, the agent broke off pursuit. He notified the New Mexico Department of Public Safety. One of their officers headed down from I-10, expecting to intercept the fleeing vehicle, but before he could make contact, the Suburban had crossed into Arizona north of Rodeo. A unit from the Arizona Department of Public Safety had been called and was responding when word came of the crash.”

“Where exactly is it?”

“Silver Creek. The vehicle smashed through a Jersey barrier at a construction site and plowed into the wash. Hold on, Sheriff Brady,” Tica added. “I’ll have to get back to you.”

While she waited for Tica, Joanna thought about Silver Creek, a mostly dry, sandy creek bed that meandered through the Perilla Mountains. The community of Silver Creek may have been little more than a blip on even the best road map, but when it came to smuggling, the tiny community had a long and colorful history.

Joanna’s father, an amateur historian, had delighted in telling Joanna the story of how, in the early days, prior to Arizona’s statehood, Texas John Slaughter had once decoyed a Border Patrol detail to Silver Creek, telling them some notorious 160

smugglers were on their way through. While the hapless Border Patrol agents waited in vain for the nonexistent smugglers to appear, Slaughter himself brought a herd of illicit cattle across the line from his own ranch in Old Mexico. By the time the Border Patrol agents wised up and returned to Slaughter’s ranch, the illegal cattle were mingled in with and totally indistinguishable from Slaughter’s home herd in the States.

Years earlier, while Highway 80 had still been a main thoroughfare for cross-country traffic, Silver Creek had boasted a celebrated steakhouse. Since the completion of Interstate 10 forty miles north, both traffic and business had migrated there. For decades the old highway had been left to languish in neglect. The steakhouse, having opened and closed in various incarnations, was now permanently shuttered.

In the past several months, however, the Arizona Department of Transportation had embarked on an ambitious program to rehab Highway 80 between Douglas and the New Mexico border. A mile or two at a time, the roadway was being widened and straightened.

Decrepit bridges and worn-out culverts were being replaced and widened as well.

Approaching Silver Creek from the west, Joanna was surprised at how abruptly the relatively straight and flat roadway suddenly evolved into a series of steep dips and blind curves just as the orange road-construction signs began appearing on the shoulder. No wonder the speeding Suburban had come to grief.

An ambulance came barreling into sight in Joanna’s rearview mirror. She pulled over to let it pass, then sped up and kept pace behind it. She hated to think of the dead and wounded scattered across the desert floor in the searing afternoon heat. Driving in air-conditioned comfort, she found it easy to ignore how hot it was outside, but with temperatures hovering in the low

161

hundreds, the injured were as likely to die of heat and dehydration as they were of their injuries.

And so, since there was nothing else to do as she drove, Joanna Brady went ahead and prayed. “Please, God,” she whispered aloud. “Be with those poor people. Comfort the injured and the dying, and guide all those who would help. Amen.”

162

was just after five when Joanna, still driving behind the ambulance, rounded the last curve and saw a clutch of first-responder emergency vehicles lining the road.

From where she was, though, the accident scene itself remained invisible. The sun had dipped behind the tall cliffs that topped the rugged Perilla Mountains, casting the whole area into shadow. Joanna parked her Ciwie and then hurried to a spot where a shattered wall of Jersey barriers spilled down the rocky cliffs onto the baked-sand floor of Silver Creek.

It wasn’t until Joanna was standing directly over the newly constructed culverts that she was finally able to see the smashed SUV Looking like the work of a suicide bomber and crushed beyond recognition, the Suburban lay upside down in the midst of what appeared to be a scatter of brightly colored rags. It took several moments for Joanna’s mind to come to terms with the awful reality. Those scattered bits of colored cloth weren’t rags at all-they were pieces of clothing with dead and injured people

163

still inside them. Uniformed officers-some of them EMTs-and a few concerned civilians crouched here and there, offering aid to the victims, some of whom moaned and whimpered softly while others shrieked in agony. A few of the victims, lying still as death, had either been abandoned as beyond help or were as yet untended and uncomforted.

Rushing back to the Ciwie, Joanna grabbed one of the several jugs of bottled water she kept there. Then she plunged down the rocky bank toward the nearest victim. This isn’t an accident scene, she told herself grimly. It’s a damned war zone!

The first person Joanna reached was a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties.

A streak of bright red blood dribbled from one corner of his mouth and disappeared into the equally red bandanna he wore around his neck. His pencil-thin mustache was neatly trimmed, even though his dusty, threadbare shoes and the rank odor of sweat told her that in his effort to cross the border, he must have walked across miles of scorching desert.

Kneeling beside him, Joanna picked up his limp arm and felt for a pulse. Finding none, she let his wrist drop back to the ground. Knowing there was nothing she could do for him, she rose and moved on to someone else. This one was an older man in his fifties or sixties, with his left leg crumpled unnaturally under the right one. The skin on one whole half of his face had been scraped away, leaving behind a raw, seeping wound.

His eyes fluttered open as soon as she touched his hand. “Agua, par favor,” he whispered weakly. “Agua.”

She helped him raise his head and then held the bottle of water to his parched lips.

He gulped a long drink and then sank back gratefully. “Gracias,” he murmured.

“Don’t move,” she told him in her awkward textbook Spanish. “It’s your leg.”

164

He nodded and motioned her to move on. “The others,” he said. “Help the others.”

With a screech of its siren, yet another invisible ambulance arrived on the roadway above her. A new team of EMTs scrambled down the bank carrying a stretcher and cases of equipment. “Over here,” she shouted, waving at them. “This man needs help.”

As Joanna stood up to move out of their way, Deputy Debbie Howell, who had been the first Cochise County deputy on the scene, appeared at Joanna’s elbow. “How bad is it, Deb?” Joanna asked.

Deputy Howell’s face was grim. “Five dead so far. We’ve counted twenty-three injured and several of those are critical. The Air-Evac helicopter should be here soon. We’ve alerted hospitals in Douglas, Willcox, Bisbee, and Tucson.”

Joanna was dumbfounded. “You’re telling me there were twenty-eight people crammed in that SUV?”

Debbie nodded. “Twenty-nine, counting the driver.”

“Where is he?” Joanna demanded. “Dead, I hope?”

Debbie Howell shook her head. “No such luck. He’s evidently the only one who was wearing a seat belt. As far as we can tell, he isn’t here.”

“You mean he took off?” Joanna demanded.

“Exactly.”

“Call Dispatch,” Joanna ordered. “Tell them to get the K-9 unit out here on the double.

That man’s a killer, and I want him found!”

“Right away, Sheriff Brady,” Deputy Howell answered. She turned and headed back toward the roadway.

“Wait a minute,” Joanna called after her. “Who’s in charge?”

Debbie nodded impatiently toward a group of uniformed 165

officers who stood near the damaged Suburban. Joanna recognized one Department of Public Safety uniform and three from Border Patrol. “Beats me,” she said. “It looks like those guys got here first, but with any kind of luck, you’re the one in charge.”

Joanna hurried over to the officers, most of whom she knew personally. When she had first arrived on the scene, the other officers had been scattered among the victims, checking them out and, in some cases, administering whatever aid they could. Now, though, with the arrival of several more EMTs, the four uniformed men stood wrangling among themselves, arguing about how best to proceed with the investigation. Jurisdictional considerations aside, Sheriff Joanna Brady outranked them all, and the accident was on her turf.

“What’s going on, gentlemen?” she asked.

She was answered by Officer Bill O’Dea of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

“Oh, hello, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “We’re discussing who pays.”

“Who pays?” Joanna repeated.

“For the medical care,” O’Dea answered. “For the dispatched ambulances, the air ambulance, everything. Ed Coffer here of the Border Patrol was first on the scene.”

Ed Coffer nodded in agreement but said nothing.

“UDAs are a Border Patrol problem,” O’Dea continued. “I talked to my captain on the radio. He says Border Patrol needs to step up and take responsibility for this situation.”

The momentary anger Joanna had felt toward the missing SUV driver now coalesced and focused in laserlike fashion on that invisible captain who, far removed from the bloodied and broken bodies, was interested only in protecting his department’s bottom line.

“This is everybody’s problem,” Joanna snapped. “People are 166

hurt. How about if we take care of the victims first and worry about the medical bills afterward? Since the driver took off, I’ve got a K-9 unit on the way. Does anyone know which way he went?”

More than happy to let Joanna take charge, the other officers breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Somebody said he took off in that direction,” O’Dea told her, pointing to the left of the roadway.

“I want that man caught,” Joanna declared. “Bill, how about driving up the road a mile or so to look for him. My guess is that sooner or later he’ll be back on the highway trying to hitch a ride.”

“Yes, ma’am,” O’Dea responded. “Will do.” He set off for his waiting patrol car at a fast trot.

Behind her, a woman screamed out in a torrent desperate Spanish. “jDonde estd nino?

M nino … mi nino … jDonde estd mi niiio?”

Joanna turned toward the EMT, who was fitting the woman with a back and neck brace.

“Did she say something about a baby?”

The medic nodded grimly. “That’s right. She’s looking for her baby.”

Joanna turned at once to the three remaining Border Patrol officers. “Has anyone seen a baby around here?”

The three officers looked blankly from one to another, shrugging and shaking their heads. “Not so far,” Ed Coffer said.

“If she says there’s a baby, there’s a baby,” Joanna growled at them. “How about if you three go look for him?”

As the Border Patrol agents set off, Joanna once again scanned the scene in time to see the man with the broken leg and flayed face being strapped to a stretcher and then carried up the

167

steep embankment. Then, for the first time, Joanna noticed a middle-aged Anglo woman in shorts and sandals sitting on a nearby rock. With her face buried in bloodied hands, she was sobbing uncontrollably.

Joanna hurried up to her. “Excuse me,” Joanna said. “Are you hurt?”

When the woman removed her hands, her face, too, was stained with blood, but it was the vacant expression in her eyes that provided an answer all its own.

“Who, me?” the woman replied dazedly. “No, I’m not hurt. I’m fine, but I’ve never seen someone die before. I was holding him-that man over there.” She pointed at the still and bloodied form of yet another man.

Little more than a boy, really, Joanna thought. A teenager.

“I asked him if he was okay.” Her body shook as though she had just emerged from a pool of icy water. “But just then he stopped breathing,” the woman continued. “I learned about giving mouth-to-mouth years ago. I tried to help him. I did my best, really I did, but there was so much blood coming out of his mouth … You’ve gotta believe me, I tried, but… but he died anyway. I’ve never felt so … useless.”

She broke off into another fit of sobs.

Joanna crouched down next to the woman and put an arm around her shoulders. “You did what you could,” she said. “Nobody can fault you for that.”

The woman nodded vaguely, but she didn’t stop crying. Or shaking.

“Would you like a drink?” Joanna asked, offering her the water. While the woman stopped weeping long enough to gulp some water, Joanna realized that although this innocent passerby wasn’t physically injured, she, too, was wounded.

168

“You should probably use some of the water to wash off,” she suggested as the woman finished drinking.

The woman looked down in amazement at her bloodied clothing and hands. Using the remaining water, she began to sluice off. “Your face, too,” Joanna added.

As the woman doused herself with water, Joanna pulled the notebook and pencil out of her pocket. “You saw the accident?” she asked gently.

The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I was right behind it, by only a minute or so. When I came around the curve and saw it, the dust was still flying. I couldn’t believe it. That idiot had passed me a mile or so back, out while we were still on the flat. I was doing seventy. He came tearing up behind me like I was standing still and almost ran me off the road. He must have been doing ninety when he went flying past. Then when he hit the first set of curves, I don’t think he even slowed down.

At least I never saw any brake lights.”

Finished with the water, the woman looked questioningly at Joanna’s notebook. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself,” Joanna said. “My name’s Brady. Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County. When the call came in, I was at a rodeo waiting to see my daughter’s first barrel race. Who are you?”

“Suzanne Blake,” the woman answered.

‘Are you from around here?”

Suzanne shook her head. “From Douglas originally, but I live in Las Cruces now,”

she said. “My folks still live in Douglas. I come down once a month to check on them.”

“You’ll need to be interviewed,” Joanna told her. “So if you could give me your parents’

names and numbers …”

169

For the next several minutes Joanna gathered Suzanne Blake’s pertinent information, including the exact time of the accident and where and when she had been passed by the speeding Suburban. “If you want to continue on your way,” Joanna said as she returned her notebook to her pocket, “one of my investigators will be in touch with you tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Suzanne said. ‘And you’re right, I should go. I called my parents when I left Cruces. My father knows exactly how long it takes to drive from my house to his. He timed it with a stopwatch once. He’ll be worried sick.”

As a still shaken Suzanne Blake tottered off, Joanna glanced around at what were now several teams of EMTs from various jurisdictions who were busy carting loaded stretchers back up to the roadway. An Air-Evac helicopter, returning after its first run, hovered overhead, looking for a place to land and receive the next load of injured patients.

Joanna had no idea how much time had passed since her own arrival on the scene, but now the sun was definitely setting. It was still hot, but in the increasingly dark shadow of the mountains it was already noticeably cooler.

The K-9 unit arrived and sought Joanna out. “We’re here, Sheriff Brady,” Terry Gregovich announced. “Now what can Spike and I do to help?”

“Find the asshole driver who caused this mess,” Joanna ordered. “According to witnesses, he was wearing a seat belt, so he wasn’t ejected along with everyone else. I’m told he took off into the desert, and I want him found.”

Nodding, Terry headed for the wrecked Suburban with Spike. Not wanting to interfere with their work, Joanna let them go. Instead, she walked to the far end of the debris field, hoping

170

that, by looking at the trajectory the vehicle had followed through the Jersey barriers, she would gain a better understanding of exactly how and why the accident had occurred.

As she turned around to examine the scene, her eye was drawn to a splotch of white barely visible beneath a nearby mesquite tree. She hurried over and was appalled to see a child lying there-the wounded woman’s missing baby. Pushing her way through the mesquite, Joanna saw that the toddler wore a diaper and nothing else. One look at the unnaturally still body and at the blood pooled around the back of his dark-haired head was enough to tell Joanna that he was probably beyond help. Dropping to her knees, she felt for a pulse, but there was nothing-not even the smallest flutter.

For a few moments, Joanna wavered in a maelstrom of indecision. The boy was dead.

In terms of crime scene investigation procedure, dead victims are to be left where they’re found until the scene can be properly documented-measured, photographed, and recorded-before being packed off to the icy chill of a morgue.

But the desperate cries of the injured woman as she had called for her missing child still echoed in Joanna’s heart. Dead or alive, that mother wanted her child-needed her child-to be with her. As a police officer, Joanna was obliged to leave the dead baby where he was. As a woman and mother, she wanted to return him to his mother.

A fierce skirmish shook Joanna’s very soul. In the end, motherhood won out.

Gently, Joanna lifted the limp child. With one arm supporting the boy’s bloodied head, she carried his still body through the rocky underbrush and stumbled with him up the steep embankment.

“Where’s the woman with the baby?” she demanded of the 171

first EMT she saw. He gave her a blank shrug and a dismissive look that made Joanna wish she were still wearing her uniform. And her badge. She went on to the next EMT

and to the next and to the one after that. Finally she found a medic she had never seen before but who at least knew what she meant.

“Oh, her! the medic said. “I think she took off in that last helicopter. They’re taking her to Bisbee.”

“Call them back,” Joanna said.

“But, lady …”

“My name’s Brady,” Joanna snarled back at him. “Sheriff Joanna Brady, and I said call them back! Do it now!”

The EMT backed warily away from her and reached for his radio. After his summons, the helicopter was back within minutes. By then Joanna’s shoulders ached from the strain of holding the lifeless form, but she was unwilling to relinquish her burden to anyone else. When the door of the helicopter flew open, she alone carried the little boy through the sand and grit raised by the whirling blades. With muddied tears streaming down her own face, she handed her precious burden over to his mother’s outstretched arms and then fled from the helicopter. She didn’t want to be within earshot when the mother learned her baby was dead.

But at least, Joanna thought as she darted once more through the whirling sea of dirt and grit, at least she can hold him one last time. At least she can say goodbye.

Moments later Joanna found herself leaning heavily against the front fender of the nearest ambulance, barfing into a clump of sun-dried verbena that had grown up along the edge of the pavement. Somehow she knew that this wave of sour banana nausea had nothing at all to do with her own baby. She was still heaving when someone laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

172

“Joanna?” Frank Montoya asked. ‘Are you all right?”

She wiped her mouth on her shirttail. “Not really,” she managed. “You wouldn’t happen to have any water on you, would you? Mine’s all gone.”

Her chief deputy disappeared and returned a moment later with a bottle of water.

“The blood on your arm looks pretty bad,” he said. “Are you hurt?”

Joanna looked down at her bloodied arm and thought about Suzanne Blake. “My heart’s hurt,” she said softly. “There was a two-year-old baby in that car, Frank. A baby whose mother was willing to risk death for both of them to bring him here. They came on the Fourth of July, for God’s sake! I’m sure she thought she was giving her son a chance at a better life. Instead, she’s hurt and he’s dead.”

Frank nodded. “Somebody told me there were five dead.”

“Six,” Joanna corrected. “Counting the baby.”

Frank studied her face for a long moment. “Look, Joanna,” he said at last, “my car’s right over there. Maybe you’d better come sit down for a couple of minutes.”

Any other time, Joanna Brady might have argued the point. With a docility that surprised them both, she allowed herself to be guided to Frank’s Crown Victoria and placed in the rider’s seat while he stood outside.

“I talked to Officer O’Dea of DPS a couple of minutes ago,” Frank told her. “I met up with him on my way here. He said to tell you that so far there’s no sign of the driver.”

“That figures, but we’ll find him,” Joanna declared. “Terry and Spike are out combing the desert for him right this minute.”

Frank nodded in agreement. “Jaime and Ernie just pulled up,” he added. “I’ll go see if they have what they need.”

173

“I’ll come, too,” Joanna said.

“I don’t think so,” Frank said. “Not right now. Sit tight for a couple of minutes.”

“But…”

“Nobody’s keeping score, boss,” Frank told her. “Lighten up. Give yourself a break.”

Joanna nodded. “All right,” she agreed.

She sat in the car and leaned her head against the seat back, but when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the little boy lying in the dirt with his shattered skull oozing blood. Minutes later, and against Frank’s advice, she was down in the dry bed of Silver Creek watching Jaime Carbajal shoot crime scene photos. The bodies of five of the victims remained where they had fallen. The sixth one was missing, but Joanna refused to feel any sense of guilt about that. When the time came, she led jaim and Ernie Carpenter to the clump of mesquite where she had found the dead child.

“Was the boy alive when you found him?” Ernie Carpenter asked, his pen poised over his own notebook.

Joanna looked her investigator straight in the eye. “Would I have moved him if he hadn’t been?”

Ernie’s thick eyebrows knotted into a frown, but he said nothing. Joanna was grateful he was willing to let it go at that. It helped that George Winfield came scrambling down the bank into the creek bed just then. His timely arrival provided Joanna with a welcome change of focus.

He glanced around the scene and shook his head. “Hell of a way to get out of Ellie’s annual fireworks party,” he said. “Where do we start?”

Joanna was still at the crime scene forty-five minutes later, when Deputy Howell came to announce that the K-9 unit had

174

just radioed in for assistance. Deputy Gregovich and Spike had located the driver, who, in a futile effort to escape the dog, had fallen down a cliff and injured his ankle.

“Too bad he didn’t break his neck and save us all a hell of a lot of trouble,” Joanna told Debbie Howell. “Take a team of EMTs and go get him, but don’t bring him back here. If he comes too close, I’m as likely to shoot him as look at him.”

Five more hours passed before Joanna finally crawled back into her Civvie and headed home, having missed her evening appearance in Willcox. She was drained and tired and, surprisingly, hungry. She let herself into the darkened house and stopped off in the kitchen long enough to make herself some hot chocolate-not the instant stuff where you add hot water and stir. No, she hauled out a saucepan and made the old-fashioned kind. The recipe, learned at her father’s knee, came complete with canned milk, chocolate syrup, salt, sugar, and vanilla. She was just sprinkling sugar and cinnamon onto a piece of buttered toast when a bathrobe-clad Butch appeared in the kitchen.

“How was it?” he asked, pouring the remaining half cup of cocoa for himself.

“Bad,” Joanna told him. “A speeding Suburban full of UDAs turned over at Silver Creek east of Douglas. The department of public safety investigator estimates the guy was doing at least eighty when he slammed through the Jersey barrier at a construction site. Six dead, including a two-year-old boy. Twenty-some injured, some of them critical.”

“Six dead and twenty-some injuries,” Butch repeated. “How many people were in the car?”

“Thirty.”

Easing himself onto a stool beside her, Butch whistled. “They must have been stacked inside like cordwood.”

175

Joanna nodded. “They were,” she said dully. “The driver was wearing a seat belt.

Naturally the son of a bitch walked away unscathed.”

“How are you, Joey?” Butch asked after a pause.

He knew her well enough to ask. Joanna didn’t dodge the question. “Not so good,”

she admitted, biting her lip. “I’m the one who found the baby.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That had to be pretty rough.”

“It was. He couldn’t have been more than two, Butch. And he ended up dead in a clump of mesquite with the back of his head bashed in.”

Joanna’s voice quivered audibly as she spoke. Butch reached over, put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her over so she was leaning against his chest.

“That’s not all.”

“What else?”

“I’m a sworn police officer, but I deliberately disturbed evidence at a crime scene.”

Butch’s carefully placed his empty cup on the granite-tiled surface of the counter.

“You did what?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“The boy was dead when I found him, Butch,” Joanna confessed. “I know I should have left him where he was, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I picked him up and carried him to his mother. She was in a helicopter on her way to the hospital in Bis-bee, but I called it back. I gave her the boy’s body-so she could hold him one more time, so she could say goodbye. I know I shouldn’t have, Butch, but with all the other bodies lying everywhere, I didn’t think it would hurt …”

Joanna’s voice trailed off into a stifled sob. Butch pulled her close and let her weep into the shoulder of his terry-cloth robe.

176

“It’s okay, Joey,” he said soothingly. “It’s okay. It sounds like this was one of those times when you had two choices, both of them right and both of them wrong.

You did what you had to do.”

Butch and Joanna sat that way for several minutes. Finally Butch pushed her away.

“With all this going on,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll have to go into the office tomorrow, right?”

Sniffling, Joanna nodded. “Probably.”

“Well, then, come on. It’s late. We’d better go to bed and try to get some sleep.”

Taking Joanna by the hand, Butch led her into the bedroom. It wasn’t until she was lying in bed next to Butch that she finally thought to question him about the results of Jenny’s barrel-racing performance.

“She did all right,” Butch answered.

‘All right?” Joanna asked.

“Jenny didn’t bring home a ribbon, if that’s what you mean,” Butch said. “But she was out there making the effort. She and Kiddo did a good job, but remember, it was also their first time out. Not only that. Jenny was by far the youngest competitor in the bunch. Don’t worry. She can hold her head up.”

“Was she upset that I wasn’t there?”

“I don’t think so,” Butch said. “Jenny knows you have a job to do, Joey. We both do.”

“I wanted to be there. I meant to be there.”

“I know you did, but allow me to let you in on a little secret. You can’t be in two places at once. Now hush up and go to sleep.”

Within seconds, Butch had turned over onto his side and was snoring softly. With the day’s events taken into consideration, Joanna expected to lie awake, tossing and turning, but she didn’t. Within minutes she, too, was sound asleep.

177

In her dream, the SUV driver was on his knees, cowering in front of her. She was holding a gun in her hand. Not one of her little Clocks, but her father’s old .357-magnum.

“Please, lady,” the guy begged. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It was an accident.

I was just doing my job.”

“Those people didn’t have a chance,” she told him scornfully. ‘And neither do you.”

With that she pulled the trigger and the back of his skull exploded. He fell onto his back. As a pool of blood spread out beneath him, Joanna turned and walked away, still carrying the .357.

178

The horror of the nightmare woke her up. Shaken, Joanna reached across the bed, hoping to find Butch Dixon’s comforting presence, but he wasn’t there. His side of the bed was empty. With one hand over her mouth to stave off the retching, she piled out of bed. By then, Lady knew the drill and was smart enough to scramble out of the way as Joanna once again raced for the bathroom to deal with that day’s worth of morning sickness.

She was still pale and shaken when she made her way into the kitchen. “How long is this going to last?” Butch asked as he handed her a mug of tea.

Joanna shrugged. “Last time I was fine for the first month, sick as a dog for the second, and fine again after that-except for drinking or smelling coffee.” That was when she noticed that the coffeepot next to the sink was empty. “No coffee for you this morning, either?”

He held up a stainless-steel covered mug. “Iced,” he 179

answered. “Made from yesterday’s coffee. I thought if you didn’t have to smell me making it, maybe you wouldn’t get sick. Obviously that didn’t work.”

“It was nice of you to try,” she said, smiling wanly.

“Maybe I should start marking off days on the calendar,” Butch said. ‘And how long do you go on eating mostly peanut butter? It’s not what I call a balanced diet.”

“No,” Joanna agreed, “but I’m sure I won’t starve.”

“Lucky chewed up another one of Jenny’s boots yesterday,” Butch mentioned in passing.

“Not one of the new ones!”

“Yes, one of the new ones. And the right one, just like the other pair. If he’d chewed up the left-hand one, she’d still have two boots to work with even if they weren’t a pair. I tried to explain to her that, with a puppy in the house, she can’t leave anything lying around untended. I don’t think she got the message.”

“Will she this time?” Joanna asked.

Butch shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Especially if this pair of boots comes out of her own pocket.” He came over and settled onto the stool next to Joanna’s. “By the way,” he said, “your mother called late last night.”

“What about?”

“I’m not sure. She said she was looking for George and wondered if you were home.”

“That wasn’t it,” Joanna said. “I’m guessing she really wanted to find out if her calling out the big gun had any effect on me.”

“What big gun?” Butch asked.

Joanna told Butch about Bob Brundage’s call. Butch listened to the story in thoughtful silence and shook his head when she finished. “Eleanor just doesn’t get it,” he said.

“Get what?”

180

“The idea that you’re all grown up and able to make your own decisions.”

“You’re right,” Joanna said. “And I doubt she ever will.”

An hour later, when Joanna drove into the Justice Center parking lot, she noticed an Arizona DPS van that was parked in front of the gate to the razor-wire-surrounded impound lot where the wrecked remains of the Suburban had been hauled and deposited for inspection. It had been decided the night before that this would be a joint-operation investigation, and Joanna was glad to see someone from the Department of Public Safety was already on the job. So was Dave Hollicker.

“Finding anything important?” Joanna asked as she joined the two clipboard-carrying officers who were conferring earnestly just to the left of the Suburban’s smashed driver’s-side fender.

“This is Sheriff Brady,” Dave said, seeing her for the first time. ‘And this is Sergeant Steve Little of the DPS.”

“Glad to meet you, Sheriff Brady,” Sergeant Little said. “The biggest question in my mind is why this old crate was still on the road in the first place. No way it should have been doing ninety miles an hour. The brakes are shot. The shock absorbers are rusted out, and, with as many people as he had in there, the vehicle was grossly overloaded.”

“Who’s it registered to?” Joanna asked.

‘A guy in Tucson who says he sold it last week to a Hispanic guy who paid him a thousand bucks in cash and said he needed it for his landscaping business. He used it for landscaping, all right. Turned it into a bulldozer.”

“Do we have any idea who ‘he’ is?” Joanna asked.

Dave Hollicker shook his head. “No idea. The driver was carrying a fake ID and a fake driver’s license. He won’t answer

181

any questions, but he’s asking for a court-appointed lawyer. Says he wants to be deported back to Mexico.”

Joanna thought for a moment of the dead and bloodied baby she had cradled in her arms. “That driver’s not going home anytime soon,” she declared determinedly. “Not if I can help it.”

Leaving the impound lot in her Ciwie, Joanna was surprised at the number of vehicles pulling into the Justice Center parking lot. On Saturdays, when court wasn’t in session, the public parking area at the front of the complex was usually deserted. Last in the line of arriving vehicles was a battered Camry. A magnetic sign bearing the Bisbee Bee’s distinctive logo was plastered on the driver’s door.

As passengers began spilling out onto the hot pavement, Joanna assumed they had nothing to do with her and headed for her reserved and shaded parking place behind the building.

Inside her office, she used her phone to call Lupe Alvarez at the reception desk in the public office.

“What’s going on out front, Lupe?” Joanna asked. “Did someone schedule some kind of tour or activity that I don’t know about?”

“Beats me,” Lupe replied. “From here all I can see is a bunch of people milling around in the parking lot, lots of them waving signs. It must be some kind of demonstration.”

“What do the signs say?” Joanna asked.

“One of them said A-W-E,” Lupe returned. ‘Any idea what that means?”

‘AWE? Not the slightest,” Joanna answered. “What about the people? Do any of them look familiar?”

“No, but most of their backs are to me right now. They seem to be posing for photos in front of the door. Right, I just saw a flash, so someone did take a picture.”

182

“Why don’t you give Chief Deputy Montoya a call,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe he knows something about this.”

“Right away, Sheriff Brady.”

Joanna put down her phone. While she waited for Lupe to call back, she turned on her computer to check her e-mail inbox. She had twenty-seven new messages, most of them offering her ways to earn money by working at home, or quick fixes for the latest computer virus. One by one she deleted those without even opening them. She was down to the last eleven seemingly real messages when her phone rang again.

“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his way in,” Lupe reported. “It’ll take him about twenty minutes to get here. He’s scheduled a ten o’clock press briefing, so maybe some of the vehicles are reporters coming for that, but he doesn’t have a clue about a demonstration.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “Well, then, since he’s not here and I am, I’d better go out and see what’s happening.”

Since it was Saturday and Joanna had planned on spending the entire day in the office, she had come to work wearing jeans and a wrinkled but comfy linen blazer. If a newspaper photographer was outside snapping pictures, it was likely that a less-than-wonderful photo of Sheriff Brady would end up appearing in print.

Eleanor Lathrop was nowhere around, but Joanna had a fair idea of how their next conversation would go. “How could you possibly go to work dressed like that,” her mother would ask, “looking like something the cat dragged in? What about that nice uniform you wore in the Fourth of July parade?”

Walking toward the door, Joanna smiled grimly to herself, imagining the reaction if she came right out and told Eleanor

183

that the uniform was out of commission due to an encounter with puppy pee. An answer like that wouldn’t be well received.

Opening the front door, Joanna stepped out onto the shaded veranda where a shorts-clad blonde with short-cropped hair was speaking earnestly to Kevin Dawson. Kevin, the Bisbee Bee’s ace reporter and photographer, was also, by some strange coincidence, the son of the newspaper’s publisher and editor in chief.

As the door closed behind Joanna, one of the nearest sign-wielding demonstrators spotted her. “There she is,” he shouted to the others, pointing in her direction.

“That’s Sheriff Brady.”

Interviewer and interviewee turned to face Joanna while a series of boos and catcalls erupted from the group of demonstrators gradually coalescing at the foot of the stairs.

As they moved closer, Joanna managed to catch a glimpse of some of the Signs. SHAME ON SHERIFF BRADY, Said One. CCSD UNFAIR TO

animals, announced several others.

Animals? Joanna wondered in confusion. What animals?

Considering the events of the night before, she more than half expected the demonstrators outside to be human rights activists protesting the maze of conflicting international policies that had resulted in the terrible human carnage at Silver Creek. In fact, considering the dead boy whose bloodied body Joanna had held in her arms, Sheriff Brady herself might have been sorely tempted to join such a protest.

Then she saw another sign that clinched it. seventeen too MANY.

That’s when Joanna tumbled. The people in the parking lot weren’t the least bit concerned about dead and injured illegal immigrants. Callous about human casualties, the jeering group of protesters on the doorstep of the Cochise Justice Center had 184

come to express their outrage over the heat-related deaths of Carol Mossman’s dogs.

Joanna stifled an inward groan. “Who’s in charge here?” she asked.

The woman with the short-cropped blond hair who looked to be about Joanna’s age gave Sheriff Brady a scathing look. “I am,” she announced crisply.

A man with a video camera on his shoulder shoved his way through the crowd and pushed a microphone in Joanna’s face.

“And you are?” Joanna asked, ignoring the cameraman.

“Tamara Haynes,” the woman replied. “That’s H-A-Y, not H-A-I,” she added for the reporter’s benefit as he dutifully took notes.

“May I help you?” Joanna asked.

Her question was drowned out by a new series of jeering catcalls. Despite her best intentions, Joanna felt her temper revving up.

Her second question was far less welcoming. “Who exactly are you?” she demanded.

‘And what are you doing here?”

“I already told you,” the woman replied. “My name is Tamara Haynes.” A diamond tongue-stud glittered as she spoke. Her ears were pierced a dozen times over. Her belly button, visible on a bare midriff, sported its own set of piercings, and her upper arms and shoulders were covered with a series of tattoos.

“I’m the local chapter president for AWE.”

“Which is?” Joanna prodded.

‘A-W-E,” Tamara said. When Joanna exhibited no sign of recognition, the woman added, ‘Animal Welfare Experience.”

‘And you’re here because … ?”

“You’re in charge of Cochise Animal Control, are you not?” Tamara Haynes asked.

185

“Yes,” Joanna said, “I am at the moment. Why?”

“Well,” Tamara returned, her voice dripping contempt, “we’re here to serve notice that the members of AWE hold you personally responsible for the deaths of all those poor animals out by the San Pedro. If you and your department had simply responded to the situation in a more efficient and timely fashion, none of those unfortunate dogs would have died.”

With great effort Joanna kept her response reasonably civil. “Those dogs died in their owner’s overheated mobile home-a home with no electricity and no air-conditioning,”

she added. “They died after their owner was murdered, shot to death by an unknown assailant through a locked back door. If anyone is responsible for the deaths of those animals, it’s Carol Mossman’s killer. And that’s what my department is doing right now-searching for her murderer.”

But Tamara Haynes wasn’t someone whose opinion could be easily swayed by the presentation of mere facts. She grew shriller, making sure her voice carried beyond the front line of demonstrators. “If you and your people in Animal Control had been doing the job properly, Sheriff Brady, Carol Mossman never would have had the opportunity to amass that many animals in the first place.”

“That’s right,” one of the men shouted, waving his hand-lettered sign in the air.

“Way to go, Tammy. You tell her!”

Joanna’s temper edged up another notch. Her voice, unlike Tamara Haynes’s, actually decreased in volume. “Ms. Haynes, I’m in charge of a department that handles public safety for an area eighty miles wide and eighty miles long. A total of one hundred thirty people report to me. Four of them are in Animal Control.

‘As I’m sure you know, Animal Control officers enforce 186

ordinances having to do with animal licensing. They collect stray and injured animals.

They supervise animal adoptions and attend to the ones they’ve impounded. They respond to calls involving wildlife, which sometimes include marauding javelinas as well as human encounters with rabid skunks and coyotes. When Game and Fish officers aren’t available, my people are responsible for trapping and relocating rattlesnakes and other wildlife that pose threats to public safety.

“In other words, Ms. Haynes, Animal Control has its hands full. My Animal Control officers are doing an excellent job despite limited resources and severe budget cuts.

If you really care about animal welfare, Ms. Haynes, you and your sign-wielding friends here should be out at the pound volunteering your time shoveling doggie-doodoo and arranging adoptions instead of staging a protest on my doorstep. Now, if you’ll excuse me-“

“So that’s it?” Tammy Haynes objected before Joanna could step back inside the building.

“You’re just going to give us a line of excuses and that’s the end of it?”

“I’m not giving you excuses,” Joanna said tightly. “I’m giving you a dose of reality.

In case you’ve been too busy being an animal activist to notice, seven human beings have died in Cochise County in the past several days, including a two-year-old boy who died in a senseless automobile accident, to say nothing of the owner of those seventeen dogs who was murdered in the sanctity of her own home. You’re going to have to pardon me, Ms. Haynes, if I put those dead dogs on a back burner in favor of attending to my other duties.

“It’s Saturday morning. You’re here because you want to be, and so are my people.

Paid or not, I expect most of my investigators will be on duty today, working hard to solve the cases I just

187

mentioned to you. Protest all you like, but we have a job to do here. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll go to work.”

“What about us?”

Tamara Haynes sounded like a petulant child. “What about you?” Joanna returned. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you wish and as long as there’s no disruption of traffic in or out of the building.”

“We have every right to be here,” Tammy Haynes whined. “I’ll have you know this is a peaceful protest.”

“Good,” Joanna returned, “I’m glad to hear it. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep it that way.”

With that, Joanna turned away. Most of her part of the discussion had been conducted in a voice so low that only the nearest of the protesters had heard what she said.

As she let herself back into the building, a new outburst of jeering rose up from the crowd. Frank Montoya was waiting just inside the door.

“They don’t sound happy,” he observed as the closing door stifled the noise. “What the hell is that all about?”

“They’re pissed about Carol Mossman’s dead dogs.”

“They’re that upset about the dogs?”

“Right,” Joanna said. “I don’t think any of them noticed that Carol Mossman also died. For some reason, that’s beside the point.”

“How long are they going to be here?” Frank asked.

“Most likely until hell freezes over. Why?”

“Because what happened last night at Silver Creek has happened three other times in the past year and a half,” Montoya returned. “Each incident has resulted in up to a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of unreimbursed medical costs to nearby hospitals, putting a further burden on overtaxed trauma care all over the state.”

188

“So you’re telling me there’s a lot of statewide interest in this case.”

Frank nodded grimly. “I’ve scheduled a press briefing for later this morning. In a little over an hour the place will be crawling with reporters and photographers.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “The press will get their money’s worth this morning-a twofer-a press briefing and an animal rights protest.” She turned from Frank Montoya to the receptionist’s desk. “Lupe,” she said, “do you still have that Out of Order sign we had to put up on the rest room door two weeks ago?”

Lupe frowned. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “But as far as I know, Sheriff Brady, the rest room’s fine now-“

“No,” Joanna said, “I don’t believe it is. I believe someone mentioned to me that they heard a strange gurgling sound in one of the drains, so until we can get a plumber in here to check it out on Monday, I’m declaring the public rest room off limits.

If the reporters or anyone else with legitimate business here needs to use the facilities, direct them to employee rest rooms. Everyone else, especially the demonstrators outside, are out of luck.”

A smile of comprehension passed over Lupe’s face as she went searching for the sign.

Meanwhile Joanna walked over to the Coke machine in the rest room alcove and calmly pulled the plug on the soda machine. “Oops,” she said. “I think this is on the blink, too.”

Following her, Frank shook his head. ‘Are you sure antagonizing them is a good idea?”

“Probably not, but ask me if I’m enjoying it.”

“But, Joanna …” Frank began.

“Look,” she said, “those people have their noses out of joint because of the -way Animal Control handled the Mossman case,

190

but as far as I’m concerned, Officers Ruiz and Phillips went by the book on that one. True, they’re shorthanded at the moment. We all are, and budget constraints keep me from adding any more officers-not to Animal Control and not to Patrol, either.

Should I beef up Animal Control by sidelining regular deputies into Animal Control?

Not on your life, not when we’re inundated with everything else. And if those people in the parking lot think coming out here and waving signs and yelling at me is going to change my mind on that, they’re nuts.”

Joanna and Frank had walked into Joanna’s office. Closing the door behind them, Frank tried to reason with her. “But is locking them out of the rest rooms a good idea?”

It wasn’t lost on Joanna that the public-contact section of her police academy training was where she had earned some of her lowest marks. Years into the job, she realized that anger management was still one of her biggest challenges.

“If their only choice is to go pee behind a bush, maybe they’ll pack it in and go home,” she said. “If they were out there protesting the death of that two-year-old, I might feel differently about it. In fact, I’d probably be out in the parking lot waving my own sign. But those yahoos don’t have the foggiest idea about what we do here, and the sooner they leave, the better.”

“This is an election year,” Frank reminded her.

“I’m well aware of that,” Joanna returned. “But I’m not going to change my mind.”

“So be it,” Frank said, giving up. “I guess I’ll go get ready for that briefing.”

Frank left then, and Joanna turned to her desk. With everything on her plate, it would have been easy for her to feel totally overwhelmed that morning, but she didn’t.

Somehow the

189

J. A. Jance

confrontation with the protesters had cleared Joanna’s head and renewed her sense of purpose. She had a job to do, and she set about doing it.

As reports and information came across her desk, she sorted them into three separate piles. One stack was for the Richard Osmond case. Another was for Carol Mossman and the two murdered women in New Mexico. The third stack was for the vehicular homicide incident at Silver Creek.

Osmond and Mossman, Joanna thought. Sitting side by side, the two names were spookily similar, and yet there was real irony in how the two people had died. Osmond, a jail inmate who could easily have been the victim of jailhouse violence, had actually died peacefully and of natural causes in his sleep, while Carol Mossman had been gunned down in the privacy-and presumed safety-of her own home.

How come nobody’s protesting that? Joanna wondered.

Jaime Carbajal came in a few minutes after Frank’s departure and handed Joanna a computer-generated printout. “What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a tentative list of last night’s victims,” he said. “The ones with hospital notations are still hospitalized, or were the last time we heard. Several of the less seriously wounded have already been released.”

“To whom?” Joanna asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If they were released, who took charge of them? Does Border Patrol have them in custody?”

“I doubt it,” Jaime returned. “INS doesn’t want to get dinged for anybody’s hospital bill. If they’re taken into custody, that’s what’ll happen.”

Joanna recalled the officers she had heard arguing the IT

191

previous evening. Joanna had thought the medical-bill buck-passing had been limited to that one Department of Public Safety captain. Clearly the problem was far more widespread than that.

“So Border Patrol just let them go?”

“That’s right. That way the hospitals don’t get paid, and the illegals are granted free entry to disappear into the wilds of the good of’ U.S. of A.”

“What about the driver? You’d better not be telling me that somebody turned him loose.”

“Don’t worry, boss. We’ve got him and his bill both. He’s in the Copper Queen Hospital.

I’ve been assured that they’ll only release him into our custody.”

“Fair enough,” Joanna said. “If I have to, I’ll pay his bill out of my own pocket.

That guy’s going to jail.”

She studied the list Jaime had given her until she located the name of a woman. Maria Elena Maldonado had also been admitted to the Copper Queen Hospital. Then she cross-referenced that name with the list of fatalities. Finally she found a name that matched-Eduardo Xavier Maldonado.

“Eduardo?” Joanna asked. “That’s the name of the little boy who died?”

Jaime nodded.

“What about the mother? Is she going to be all right?”

“I talked to Dr. Lee about her,” Jaime answered. “Her internal injuries are more extensive than they thought. She’ll be transferred to TMC for more surgery later on this afternoon.”

“Is she going to make it?”

Jaime shrugged. “With the injuries she has, the doc tells me her chances are about fifty-fifty,” he said.

“What about the other victims?” Joanna asked. “How serious are their injuries?”

192

“Five of them are still in ICUs.”

Joanna went back to studying the list. “What are your plans for the day, Jaime, and what’s Ernie up to?”

“Ernie’s back out at Silver Creek working with the DPS accident site investigation team. They’ll be interviewing locals who were on the scene. As for me, the woman you interviewed, Suzanne Blake, is due to show up any minute. After I talk to her, I’m not sure what I’ll do next.”

Joanna put down the two separate lists. “Here’s the deal, Jaime,” she said. “It sounds as though, as soon as these patients are well enough, INS will let them walk out of hospitals free as birds, just like they did the others. When you’re finished with the Blake interview and after Frank finishes with his press conference, I want the two of you to hit the trail. I want you to find and interview as many of those hospitalized UDAs as possible. Explain to them that we need their help so we can find the coyotes who did this. I want to put those guys out of business before any more people die.

Wherever possible, I want taped sworn statements.”

“I don’t understand,” Jaime objected. “What’s the point of doing interviews, boss?

As you said, once the injured UDAs are released from treatment, they’ll disappear.

None of them will stick around long enough to testify against the driver.”

“Of course they won’t,” Joanna returned. “That’s why I want you to interview them now-today!”

“But if they’re not here to testify at the trial, the tapes won’t be admissible.”

“True,” Joanna agreed. ‘And much as I’d like to nail that bastard, getting the driver isn’t the point. He’s a little fish and entirely expendable by both sides. I’m after somebody bigger

193

than he is, Jaime. I want the people running this ring-the ones making the big bucks.”

“How do you plan to catch them?”

“The driver’s scared to death. That’s why he won’t give his real name. He knows he killed all those people. I’m hoping we can use those statements to put the squeeze on the driver’s cojones long enough for him to lead us to someone higher up the chain of command.”

“I suppose it could work,” Jaime conceded doubtfully, “but if his lawyer gets wind of it-“

Joanna refused to be dissuaded. “We won’t find out if we don’t try,” she said, cutting Jaime off in mid-objection and abruptly changing the subject. “Now, tell me about the autopsies on the Silver Creek victims. Any idea when those will happen?”

“Monday,” the detective told her. “Doc Winfield says he’ll schedule them pretty much back-to-back.”

Detective Carbajal left a few minutes later, and Joanna spent the remainder of the morning mowing through a mountain of incoming reports and evidence. The results of the SUV driver’s routine Breathalyzer check came back negative. That was no surprise.

Driving drunk had never been an issue. Driving crazy was. A preliminary on-site analysis by DPS officers indicated that the Suburban had been traveling in excess of eighty miles per hour when it crashed through the Jersey barrier. That report would later be verified and/or fine-tuned by a computerized analysis.

A while later a faxed copy of Dr. Fran Daly’s preliminary autopsy results on Richard Osmond appeared on Joanna’s desk. That, along with the interviews Ernie and Jaime had conducted with each of Osmond’s current and previous cell mates, indicated that Osmond had died of natural causes resulting from a 194

previously undiagnosed and untreated form of cancer. The evidence appeared to exonerate Joanna Brady’s department from all blame with regard to Osmond’s death, but she knew that what seemed cut-and-dried to her would become far more murky in the hands of an attorney bent on pursuing a wrongful-death claim.

She was still considering that thorny issue when her phone rang.

“Sheriff Trotter here,” her caller said. “I’m not surprised to hear you’re hard at work this morning, Sheriff Brady. Me, too. If our guys had been a little quicker on the draw, that mess at Silver Creek would have happened on my turf instead of yours. Sorry about that.”

“Sure you’re sorry,” Joanna returned. “And the word ‘mess’ doesn’t come close to covering what happened out there.”

“I know, and I know, too, that you’ve got your hands full today, and I’m about to add to it by sending more trouble your way.”

“How’s that?”

“For one thing, we’ve got tentative IDs on our two Jane Does. Their names are Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega, freelance television journalists from L.A. Diego Ortega, Carmen’s brother, is a pilot. He’s flying into Lordsburg later on today to give us a positive ID.”

“Television journalists?” Joanna asked.

“That’s right. Pamela was the on-screen talent. Carmen ran the camera and tech stuff.

They worked with a production company called Fandango Productions that sells in-depth pieces to outfits that specialize in female-oriented programming. You might know who they are, but since I never watch that kind of stuff, I hadn’t ever heard of them.”

194

Joanna liked Randy Trotter and had worked with him on numerous occasions. Even so, she couldn’t help being slightly irked by his automatic assumptions about her.

“I’m not big on watching TV of any kind,” she told him. “I don’t have time, so I don’t know them either.”

Sheriff Trotter hurried on. ‘According to the brother, Carmen and Pamela won some big cable award a year or so ago for a piece they did on the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. They were going to Tucson to do a new series of interviews.”

Joanna thought about what Edith Mossman had said about Carol Mossman’s shaky finances-about how she had first asked her grandmother for financial help in having her dogs vaccinated.

Later she had told Edith that help was no longer necessary -that she had somehow come up with another way of laying her hands on the money.

“Does the production team pay for interviews?” Joanna asked.

“Pay?” Trotter repeated.

“You know,” Joanna said. “Like the tabloids do. Do they buy exclusive rights to people’s stories?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Trotter replied, “but the brother might.”

“What time is Diego Ortega due in Lordsburg?” Joanna asked.

“Sometime around two,” Sheriff Trotter said. “Why?”

Joanna looked at her watch and considered her options.

“Tell you what,” she said. “My investigators are all up to their ears in work this morning, but all I’m doing is clearing paperwork. If I leave right now, I should be able to be in Lordsburg by the time Mr. Ortega arrives.”

“Thought you might want to have someone on hand to talk 195

to him,” Trotter agreed. “I sure as hell would if I were in your shoes.”

As soon as she got off the phone with Sheriff Trotter, Joanna left word with Lupe Alvarez about where she was going. After stopping at the Motor Pool long enough to gas up, she headed out of the Justice Center compound. Demonstrators still milled in the parking lot and a few of them rapped on the windows of her Ciwie as she drove past.

Peaceful, all right, she thought as she goosed the Crown Victoria forward and left the demonstrators behind. Two miles down Highway 80, she realized that the ratty clothing that had been inappropriate for her newspaper photo wasn’t going to work any better for a next-of-kin interview, either. Rather than driving by the Double Adobe turnoff, she headed home to High Lonesome Ranch to change.

Butch was sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop open in front of him when Joanna walked in the back door. “You’re home early,” he remarked. “What happened?”

“I need a change of clothes,” she explained. “I’m on my way to Lordsburg to interview a next of kin. My in-office grubbies aren’t going to hack it.” She disappeared into the bedroom and emerged minutes later wearing a summer-weight khaki uniform. “The dress one has to go to the cleaners,” she told Butch. “Lucky peed on it.”

“Great,” Butch said. “Whose next of kin?”

“Randy Trotter has a tentative ID on the two women killed north of Rodeo. The brother of one of them is flying into Lordsburg this afternoon.”

“When will you be back?” Butch asked.

“Five or six. Why?”

“Just wondering. By the way, Eva Lou invited us over for 197

meat loaf after church tomorrow. I told her I’d check with you first. I said I didn’t know if your tummy would tolerate meat loaf.”

“Sounds good right now,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jenny?”

“Off riding Kiddo,” Butch answered. “This afternoon she’s going swimming with Cassie, and she’s planning on spending the night.”

Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived a few miles away in a former KOA campground that her parents had rehabbed into a private RV park. The park, catering mostly to winter visitors, was underutilized in the summer, giving Cassie and Jenny a clear shot at the park’s swimming pool.

“So it’ll be just be the two of us for dinner tonight?” Joanna asked.

“That’s right. I might make something special then,” Butch added. “We haven’t exactly celebrated our new addition. Drive carefully, but don’t be late. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not starting dinner until I see the whites of your eyes.”

From High Lonesome Ranch, the most direct route to Lordsburg, New Mexico, was on Highway 80 through Douglas, Rodeo, and Road Forks. It also meant returning to Silver Creek. If time hadn’t been an issue, Joanna might have been tempted to drive the long way around, just to avoid revisiting the site of the deadly accident, but her dread proved to be mostly unfounded. By the time she arrived, few signs remained of the previous day’s horrors. The Highway Department had already sent out a crew to reposition the displaced Jersey barriers. A few scraps of yellow crime scene tape still lingered here and there, marking spots where the bodies of dead and injured had come to rest.

There may have been little to see, but, driving alone in her Crown Victoria, Joanna heard once again the frantic voice of the

198

injured mother calling for her baby. It was a voice and a sound she would never forget, any more than she’d be able to wipe away the memory of carrying the terrible burden of that dead child up the embankment and into the waiting helicopter. Yesterday Eduardo Maldonado’s deadweight had been a burden for her arms and shoulders. Today he was a burden for her heart.

Snap out of it, she ordered herself when a blur of tears clouded her eyes. That was one job. This is another.

With intermittent radio traffic chattering in the background, Joanna forced herself to review everything she knew about the Carol Mossman case. If she could establish a definite connection between Carol’s death and the two murders in New Mexico, then perhaps there was something else at work here other than simply an opportunist killer targeting susceptible women.

She had crossed the border into New Mexico and was heading north when her cell phone rang. “Hi, Frank,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Jaime and I are on our way to University Medical Center in Tucson to do the interviews you wanted,” Frank Montoya answered. “How about you?”

“Between Rodeo and Road Forks on my way to Lordsburg. What’s up?”

“I thought you’d like to have a little of the inside scoop on the lady in charge of the Animal Welfare Experience folks. It occurred to me that it was too much of a coincidence that AWE would show up with all those sign-waving demonstrators within minutes of the time I had scheduled the press briefing.”

“Right,” Joanna agreed. “The timing was impeccable.”

“I wondered if someone had tipped them off about when the briefing was to happen, so I did some research.”

199

“And?”

“Tamara Haynes and Marty Galloway were roommates together at Northern Arizona University.”

“Tamara and Ken Junior’s wife were roommates?” Joanna blurted. “Are you telling me that whole demonstration thing was nothing more than an election campaign stunt?”

“That’s how it looks, although maybe that’s not entirely true,” Frank said. ‘AWE

does exist. Nationally, it’s a legitimate organization, but the local group has surfaced just in the last few days. And there’s a good chance today’s demonstration was a put-up deal, aimed at garnering free publicity for them at your expense, to say nothing of boosting Ken Junior’s chances in the upcoming election.”

“In other words, Ken Junior isn’t above using Carol Mossman’s dogs as political fodder.”

“And neither is Tamara Haynes, who’s something else, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve taken a look at her rap sheet. During the week she teaches Women’s Studies courses at the Sierra Vista campus of Cochise College. On weekends, she’s a political activist. She’s been picked up twice for demonstrating at the Nevada Test Site, twice at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant at Gila Bend, and twice at demonstrations at the front gate at Fort Huachuca. So far, she’s got two disorderly conduct convictions and one interfering with a police officer-all of them with suspended sentences.”

“What do you think we should do about it?” Joanna asked after several moments of reflection.

“I’m not sure,” Frank began.

Suddenly her chief deputy’s voice disappeared into the ether.

200

Then there was nothing. Frustrated, Joanna checked her phone and saw that she had crossed into a no-service zone. She tossed the phone down in disgust.

There was no sense in wondering how Tamara Haynes and AWE had hooked themselves up to Frank Montoya’s press briefing. Ken Galloway no longer worked inside the department but he still had plenty of friends there. Looking for the leak would serve no useful purpose.

Joanna was offended to think her opponent would stoop so low as to use Carol Mossman’s dead dogs to make political hay.

Which is exactly why Ken Galloway isn’t worthy of being sheriff, Joanna told herself determinedly. And it’s why, baby or no baby-Eleanor or no Eleanor-I’m staying the course, and I’m going to win!

201

The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department was located in a single-story cinder-block building in Lordsburg’s small downtown area. Hard-to-come-by tax money had been spent on the new jail and communications center two blocks away, but Randy Trotter’s humble two-phone-line office reminded Joanna of her father’s old office. When D. . Lathrop had been the sheriff of Cochise County, his department -office, jail, and all-had been located behind barred windows in the art deco courthouse up in old Bisbee. That, too, had been a two-phone-line office. Here, though, the iron bars with their brightly painted Zia symbols were more decorative than utilitarian.

Sheriff Trotter, carrying a cup of steaming coffee, emerged from a back room and greeted Joanna. In his late forties, Trotter had the bowlegged, scrawny, sunbaked look of a man whose preferred mode of transportation remained a horse and saddle.

Joanna remembered hearing from someone that Sheriff Trotter’s 202

family had once lived in the Bisbee area, but they had left there before he was born.

Long before Joanna was born, too, for that matter.

“Coffee?” he asked, offering Joanna a stained mug full of thick, brackish brew.

Just the smell of it was enough to make her queasy all over again. “No, thanks,”

she said, shaking her head. “I’m off coffee at the moment.”

“You’re not one of those anti-coffee health nuts, I hope.”

Joanna thought about her answer for a moment. “Not anti-coffee,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Trotter was old enough that he hailed from a time when women in law enforcement had been anything but commonplace and pregnant women had been rarer still. Joanna expected some kind of comment. All she got right then was a raised eyebrow. “Water, then?”

he asked. “Or a soda?”

“Water would be great.”

“Come on into my office,” he said. “The place isn’t much, but it works for me. Have a chair.”

Joanna followed him into his private office, where the wooden desk and creaky chair reminded her even more of her father’s old digs. Randy Trotter walked into the adjacent room and removed a bottle of water from a small refrigerator. He handed it over as Joanna sat down on a battered and lumpy brown leather chair that seemed to swallow her whole body.

“Sorry about that,” Randy apologized. “When push came to shove, there was money enough for a new refrigerator or a new chair. The fridge won.” He glanced at his watch.

“Johnny Cruikshank, my homicide detective, is out at the airport now. As soon as Mr. Ortega’s plane lands, Johnny will bring him here to the office. Then, once we make arrangements, we’ll take him to the

203

morgue-what we call the morgue, anyway. It’s really nothing more than a couple of rooms the county leases from a local funeral chapel.”

Sipping her water, Joanna nodded. “Fine,” she said.

Trotter eyed her curiously. “If you’re pregnant, are you still going to run?”

‘Absolutely.”

“Do people well … you know …” He paused awkwardly.

“You mean, do they know I’m pregnant?” It was Sheriff Trotter’s turn to nod. “They do,” Joanna continued. “You know how small towns work. I haven’t had my first prenatal checkup yet, but the pregnancy is already hot news in the local paper.”

“So how’s it going then?” he asked, studying her over the rim of his coffee cup.

“My pregnancy or the reelection campaign?”

“Reelection.” He grinned.

Thinking about the demonstrators banging on her car windows and doors as she drove through the Justice Center parking lot, Joanna decided to underplay her hand. “All right, I guess,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “Yours?”

‘About the same,” he agreed. “I just wish politics weren’t so dirty. You think about that poor guy out in Kentucky, the one who was allegedly gunned down by one of his opponent’s henchmen a while ago …” He paused. “I mean, when one candidate for sheriff puts out a contract on the other guy’s life, it kind of defeats the whole idea of law and order, wouldn’t you say? Makes you wonder if it’s worth the time, effort, and trouble.”

Joanna nodded. You’ve got that right, she thought.

“I think I’ve heard, but remind me,” Trotter continued. “What’s the name of the guy who’s running against you?”

“Galloway,” Joanna answered. “Kenneth Galloway.”

204

“That’s what I thought,” Sheriff Trotter said. “Is he one of the oldjiggerville Galloways?”

That brought Joanna up short. Jiggerville was a Bisbee neighborhood that had been dismantled in the early 1950s to make way for Lavender Pit. One by one, houses from places like Jiggerville and Upper Lowell had been removed from their foundations, loaded onto axles, and then trucked to other locations in newly created subdivisions around town. Joanna had heard her father talk about those old parts of town, but for Joanna herself they were pieces of local history and lore rather than places rooted in actual memory.

“I think Ken’s from Saginaw,” she said.

“Right,” Trotter agreed. “That’s where Phelps Dodge put the Galloway house when they moved it. And, from what I’ve heard, Ken’s pretty much a chip off all those old Galloway blocks.”

Joanna looked at Sheriff Trotter in surprise. “You know Ken Junior then?” she asked.

“Not directly, but I know of him and of his family by reputation, if nothing else,”

he added. “There was a whole clan of Galloways living in Jiggerville back when my grandparents lived there. Grandpa Trotter was a shift boss-a jigger-in the mines in Bisbee, and Jiggerville was the residential area where most of the shift bosses lived. My dad used to tell stories about living there as a kid-about exploring caves, getting in all kinds of hot water, and pole-vaulting all over God’s creation on agave sticks.

“Dad is one of those old-time, Andy Griffith-type storytellers,” Trotter continued.

“The wonderful thing about his stories is that he never edits out any of the bad stuff he did, including all the scraps and scrapes. And I remember that when 205

ever someone named Galloway showed up in one of Dad’s stories, you could bet he’d be tough as nails and mean as hell.”

Joanna gave a wan smile. “Sounds like Ken’s right in there with the rest of them,”

she said.

Randy Trotter grinned. “That’s something Grandpa Trotter always used to say. ‘The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree!”

It seemed strange for Joanna to be sitting a hundred miles away from Bisbee and hearing about her town’s history.

“According to my father,” Randy continued, “Jiggerville was paradise on earth and the Garden of Eden all rolled into one. It was full of shade trees and fruit trees and lush gardens because back then people could still use the mineral-rich water they pumped out of the mines. There was a trolley stop and a play-field where Dad and his pals played pickup games of baseball and football. Dad said when they had to leave there to move to Lordsburg, he hated it.”

“Why’d he leave?”

“His mother, Grandma Trotter, came from Lordsburg originally. When her mother, my Great-Grandma Clementine Case, took sick, Grandma and Grandpa came back here to look after her. Grandpa had worked in the mines for quite a while, but he got on with Southern Pacific-Sufferin’ Pacific, as he called it-and he worked there until he retired. They built a house next door to Clementine’s. That’s where my dad and uncles were raised. Now, with my mother gone and my father retired from teaching, he lives in Clementine’s House, as we call it. My wife and I live next door.”

“Your father taught school?”

“That’s right. He taught social studies and coached football 206

and basketball right here in Lordsburg. Grandpa said he wanted his sons to work with their brains instead of their brawn, so he made sure they all went to college. It worked, too. Came out with a college professor, a high school principal, and my dad.

Then there’s the black sheep of the family, my Uncle Ned. He owns the Ford dealership up in Silver City and probably makes as much money as the other three put together.”

Just then the outside door opened, and two people walked in-a man and a woman. The man was short and dark but fine-featured and handsome. Despite the heat, he wore a starched white shirt and a carefully knotted tie under an expensive lightweight blue silk blazer and exquisitely tailored camel-colored slacks. On his feet were a pair of hand-tooled snakeskin cowboy boots that Joanna estimated could easily have set him back five hundred bucks.

The woman, two or three inches taller than Joanna, was pushing forty and good-looking.

Her hair was pulled back in a long smooth ponytail. She wore dangling silver-and-turquoise earrings. Silver rings, heavy with chunks of turquoise, decorated several of her fingers. She was dressed far more casually than the man in what looked like freshly pressed Levi’s topped by a cowboy shirt and a Western-cut jacket. She might have been modeling Western attire if it hadn’t been for her boots. Unlike the man’s highly polished snakeskin footwear, the woman’s worn Judson’s bore the dusty sheen and telltale marks of someone accustomed to working in barns and corrals and dealing with the business end of horses and cattle.

Randy Trotter stood to greet the new arrivals. “You must be Mr. Ortega,” he said, holding out his hand. “It’s very good of you to come all this way on such short notice.

And this is Sheriff Joanna Brady,” he added, gesturing in Joanna’s direction. “She’s 207

from Cochise County, Arizona, our neighboring county to the west.”

Mr. Ortega shook hands first with Sheriff Trotter and then with Joanna. “Glad to meet you,” Diego Ortega said gravely.

Randy Trotter continued with the introductions. “And this is Detective Cruikshank, Sheriff Brady.”

Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to Joanna that Detective Johnny Cruikshank was a woman rather than a man. The two women sized each other up briefly. Then, after nodding in Joanna’s direction, Detective Cruikshank retreated into the other room and returned pushing two additional desk chairs in front of her.

“We won’t be able to get into the morgue for another half hour,” she explained. “Dr.

Lawrence didn’t want to pay any more overtime than absolutely necessary. He told me not to call Bobby Lopez to let us in until after Mr. Ortega was here.”

“Is Bobby on his way?” Sheriff Trotter asked.

Johnny nodded. “Yes, but he’s out at the ranch. He says it’ll take him that long to get here.”

“Thanks for bringing the chairs, then,” Randy said to his detective. “I guess we should all take a load oft.”

“It was very kind of you to send Miss Cruikshank to pick me up,” Diego Ortega said, settling himself onto one of the two rolling chairs and carefully easing the knees of his trousers so as to avoid bagging them and spoiling the crease.

“Under the circumstances, it’s the least we can do,” Trotter returned.

“My coming was an absolute necessity,” Diego Ortega replied with a grim smile. “Otherwise, my mother would have killed me. Carmen’s her baby-the youngest. And yesterday was Mom’s birthday. Carmen travels a lot. At times Mama may not 208 JTT

$

J. A. Jance

hear from her for weeks on end, but when it came to birthdays, no matter where she was, Carmen was always the first to call, usually first thing in the morning.

“By noon yesterday, when Carmen still hadn’t called, Mama was worried. By six o’clock last night she was frantic and on the phone to my brother, Carlos, who happens to be a lieutenant with the LAPD. He’s the one who entered the missing-persons report.

Even though it was a holiday, someone from LAPD got through to Fandango Productions.

They told us Carmen and Pamela were in Arizona. They also said Carmen and Pamela were expecting to interview Carol Mossman-“

“Who’s also been murdered,” Joanna put in.

Diego Ortega nodded. “So I’ve been told,” he replied. “Once we knew Carol Mossman was dead, it was the weapon connection Sheriff Trotter told me about that brought me here. I told Mama I’d fly out today and make sure, one way or the other. I think not knowing is harder on her than knowing will be. And since I fly my own plane, I didn’t have to mess around with airline schedules. Flying into someplace this small …”

Joanna knew that Lordsburg, New Mexico, like Bisbee, Arizona, was a long way off the map for any regularly scheduled flights. The two cities’ tiny municipal airports were good for little else than serving as bases of operations for local general aviation enthusiasts.

“Tell me about Fandango Productions,” Joanna said.

Diego Ortega studied Joanna appraisingly. “It’s a woman-owned and -operated outfit,”

he explained. “It’s run by the well-connected daughters of several old-time television producers. They sell original material to cable channels like Oxygen and Lifetime.

That’s where Carmen and Pamela met. A year or so

209

ago, they were assigned to do a story together on pedophile priests. They met at work, and they’ve been partners ever since.”

“In life and work?” Johnny Cruikshank asked.

Diego Ortega nodded. “That was pretty tough for my mother to accept at first. She’s pushing seventy, and she’s pretty old-fashioned about things like that. But when she finally realized Carmen was happier living with Pamela than she’d ever been in her whole life, Mama just sort of got over it. We all did.”

“I know from Carol Mossman’s grandmother that Carol was always short of cash,” Joanna said. “So did Fandango Productions pay for the interview with her?”

“That’s how we first learned Carol Mossman’s name,” Diego replied. “It was on a check requisition that Pamela put in prior to their leaving for Arizona-a check for five thousand dollars. Pamela had the check in her possession when they came to Arizona.

As I understand it, the check wasn’t found with the bodies, but as far as anyone knows, it has yet to be cashed.”

Joanna Brady let her breath out. That was why she had come to Lordsburg-to find out if there was some other connection, beyond the ballistics report, between the New Mexico victims and the homicide in her jurisdiction. With Diego Ortega’s revelation about the existence of the missing check, that possible connection moved from theory to reality.

“Do you know where your sister and Pamela Davis were staying?” Joanna asked.

“The Willows Inn in Sierra Vista,” Ortega answered. “I talked to Candace Leigh, the CFO from Fandango about that. She was kind enough to check the transaction records on their company credit cards. They checked into The Willows on Sunday night and booked the room for a whole week. Although they

211

haven’t been seen back at the hotel since Tuesday morning, the hotel clerk said no one was particularly worried about them since it appeared the room continued to be occupied with luggage, clothing, and the like. When they checked in, they said they were working on a story and would be in and out. The last credit card transaction is dinner Monday night at a place called The Brite Spot. They had breakfast at the hotel on Tuesday morning. After that, nothing.”

“We’ll need records of all phone calls made from their hotel room,” Johnny Cruikshank said. “I’m assuming they both have cell phones?”

Diego nodded.

“We’ll need those records, too,” the detective added.

Diego Ortega nodded. “Of course,” he replied. “Ms. Leigh may not have all the information you need at her fingertips, but she’ll be able to find someone who will.” When he gave Johnny Cruikshank a list of Candace Leigh’s telephone numbers, Joanna jotted them down as well.

“What kind of stories did they work on?”

“Pam and Carmen more or less specialized in children’s sexual-abuse cases-that and child pornography. It was something they both had in common.”

“Child pornography?” Randy Trgtter asked.

“No, no. Sexual abuse. Carmen was victimized by a parish priest when she was a little girl, although we didn’t find out about it until much later. And Pamela was abused, too, by an older relative, I think. An uncle, maybe, or perhaps a cousin. I don’t know the details. But that’s why, when they were assigned to work the pedophile priest story, they really clicked together. On any number of levels.”

2IO

U

212

Randy Trotter looked at Joanna. “Do you have any information that Carol Mossman was involved in that kind of thing?”

“Not really,” Joanna replied. “I know she had a troubled family life and that, as an adult, she had a hard time keeping it together. Periodically her grandmother would have to pitch in and help out. At the time Carol Mossman was murdered, she was living rent-free in her grandmother’s mobile home.”

“Hey,” Detective Cruikshank objected, “I live rent-free in a place my grandmother owns. What’s wrong with that?”

The last thing Joanna wanted to do was offend the detective. “Nothing,” Joanna said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

She was saved by the ringing of a telephone. Randy Trotter reached over to answer it. “Sure enough, Bobby,” he said. “We’ll finish up here and be at the morgue in ten minutes or so. Thanks for coming all the way into town for this. It’s a big help.”

It was only a matter of blocks from Randy Trotter’s office to the morgue. After a short discussion, they decided to walk. A hot, dusty wind blew in their faces, but off to the south Joanna spotted a bank of clouds building on the horizon. The summer rains had missed Bisbee’s Fourth of July fireworks display, and so had Joanna Brady; but it looked as though the monsoons might come-sooner rather than later.

The Hidalgo County Morgue consisted of two rooms carved out of a basement corner of the Lordsburg Funeral Home. “Hello, Bobby,” Sheriff Trotter said to the middle-aged man waiting just inside the front door. “This is Mr. Diego Ortega. We believe he knows both victims. One of them is believed to be Mr. Ortega’s sister.”

Bobby Lopez nodded gravely. “Are you ready?” he asked.

211

J. A. Jance

“Yes,” Diego said softly, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”

Bobby Lopez opened a door to usher them into an interior room. Joanna hung back.

“Are you coming?” Randy asked.

Joanna shook her head. “Identifying victims isn’t a spectator sport,” she said. “And Mr. Ortega doesn’t need an audience. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait right here.”

“Good thinking,” Randy said. “I believe I’ll join you.”

Detective Cruikshank and Diego Ortega, looking decidedly pale, were back in the lobby in less than a minute. “It’s them,” Diego said shakily. “It’s Carmen and Pam. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he added, taking a cell phone from his pocket, “I need to call my mother. From the descriptions, we were pretty sure, but she’s back home in Garden Grove hoping against hope that we were wrong.”

He turned back to Bobby Lopez. ‘Any idea when the bodies will be released so my mother can start planning a funeral?”

The ME’s assistant shook his head. “Dr. Lawrence will perform the autopsies on Monday.

It’ll be several days after that.”

“I understand,” Diego said. Holding the phone to his ear, he stepped outside. Joanna and the others stayed where they were.

“We’ll need the other victim’s next of kin as well, Sheriff Trotter,” Bobby Lopez said.

“Right,” Randy said. “We’ll try to get it for you.”

Diego remained outside for several long minutes. Joanna was more than happy to be out of earshot. It was bad enough to have seen the despair on Diego’s face as he emerged from the morgue’s back room. She didn’t want to bear witness to the phone call that would finally shatter all of a grieving mother’s hopes and dreams for her daughter.

213

When Mr. Ortega returned to the waiting room, he seemed to have regained control.

‘All right,” he said. “What next?”

“We’ll need to gather some more information, if you don’t mind,” Johnny Cruikshank said. “There’s a little coffee shop just around the corner. Maybe we could go there and talk.”

Esther’s Diner was a long, dingy place with a counter on one side and a string of booths on the other. At mid-afternoon on a Saturday, the place was virtually deserted.

Even so, Johnny led them to a booth in the far corner. With no peanut butter anywhere on the menu, Joanna settled on ordering a tuna sandwich. Johnny Cruikshank ordered key lime pie, while Randy Trotter and Diego Ortega had coffee.

“Please tell us about your sister,” Johnny urged Diego once their gum-chewing waitress had departed with her order pad.

Diego’s eyes dimmed with tears. “She was always such a cute little kid,” he said.

“She was what my mother called an afterthought-one of those babies that come along when women think their childbearing days are over. My brothers and I were all in high school or college when Carmen was born. My parents were good Catholics. They wanted to have a whole bunch of kids, but after I showed up, Mama had several miscarriages in a row. The doctor told her she’d never have another child, but he was wrong. When Mama was forty-two, along came Carmen.

“When she was born, things were different from the way they had been when the rest of us were little. For one thing, Dad was making good money by then. We older kids always had to make do with secondhand clothes and hand-me-downs. But then we were all boys, so that made a difference, too. Everything Carmen got was brand-new, from her crib to her clothing.

214

“The truth is, I think my brothers and I all resented her a little -thought she was spoiled rotten. And she was, too, but it wasn’t her fault. Dad and Mama just worshiped her and wanted her to have the very best. Which is how Carmen ended up going to St.

Ambrose, a private Catholic school, while all the rest of us went to public schools.

One of the parish priests at St. Ambrose is the one who molested her.”

“But she didn’t tell the family about it right away,” Johnny Cruikshank put in.

“Of course not,” Diego agreed. “That’s not the way child abuse works. When it came time for Carmen to go to high school, Mama and Dad were ready to enroll her in another private high school, but she wasn’t having any of it. She wouldn’t go. In fact, she absolutely refused. About that same time, she stopped going to church, too. She wouldn’t attend mass or go to confession. It broke my mother’s heart. But Mama’s never been one to take something like that lying down. She insisted that they go to counseling.

That’s when she first learned that Carmen was … well… different.”

“You mean that she was a lesbian?” Johnny asked.

Diego nodded. “It’s also where Carmen first told our mother about what had happened to her all those years ago when she was in second grade. Mama was furious. She went to the bishop and found out that the priest had been transferred to another parish-one right here in New Mexico, I think.”

“Right,” Randy Trotter said. “It’s common knowledge that for a long time the Catholic Church used New Mexico as the dumping ground of choice for pedophile priests.”

“Sure enough, the priest was still up to his old tricks,” Diego Ortega continued.

“Mama hired a lawyer and took her case first to the bishop and then to the cardinal.

I think she would have

215

gone all the way to Rome itself, except the Church settled. It was one of the early settlements, the ones that came complete with a nondisclosure agreement. In other words, they paid, but the terms of the deal kept all parties from revealing the amount of the settlement or even that a settlement existed.”

“Hush money,” Joanna murmured.

Diego nodded again. Their food order came then. Joanna’s tuna sandwich was surprisingly good, but she had to edge herself into the far corner of the booth to keep from smelling everyone else’s coffee.

“The settlement was large enough that it paid for Carmen’s education, with some left over, but Mama always said it wasn’t enough. She’s convinced the abuse Carmen suffered is what made her turn out the way she is. I don’t think that’s true, and neither does …” He paused and took a deep breath. “Neither did Carmen,” he corrected.

“She told me once that she always knew she was different. But Mama’s set in her ways, and none of us are about to try convincing her otherwise.”

Joanna nodded. “Good plan,” she said.

“So, anyway,” Diego continued, “when Fandango wanted to do a piece about the pedophile priest scandal, Carmen went knocking on their door and begged them to let her work on it. She had done some other freelance work for them prior to that. They hired her for the project and teamed her up with Pamela. Carmen told me that when she and Pam met, it was love at first sight for both of them.”

“Tell us about Pamela Davis,” Johnny Cruikshank urged. She had finished her key lime pie and was taking detailed notes.

“Her father, Herman Davis, was an executive for one of the big studios,” Diego Ortega said. “Herman died of a stroke years ago, but I understand he was one of the off-screen movers and

216

shakers behind launching that first Star Trek series. Her mother, Monica Davis, is in her eighties now. In her heyday, before she married Herman, she made a decent living as a bit actress in B-movies.”

“Do you know how we can get in touch with her?”

Diego nodded. “She lives in an assisted-living facility in Burbank. It’s called Hidden Hills, and it’s exclusively for movie and television folk. I can get you the number if you want, but I’m not sure it’ll do you any good. She’s an Alzheimer’s patient, and she’s pretty well out of it. If you contact her, she probably won’t know who you’re talking about.”

“But the facility may have a list of other people-other relatives of Pam’s-who should be notified,” Johnny persisted. ‘And don’t worry about the number. I’m sure I can get it from directory assistance.”

“Did Ms. Leigh say what kind of a story Pam and your sister were working on here?”

Joanna asked. “Not more pedophile priests, I hope.”

“Bigamy,” Diego Ortega answered.

“Bigamy?” Johnny Cruikshank demanded.

“They spent the better part of two weeks up in northern Arizona, in both Page and Kingman. Ms. Leigh said they made several trips to a place called the Arizona Strip investigating a breakaway Mormon group called The Brethren. From what I understand, The Brethren practice bigamy quite openly.”

What Joanna Brady knew about the Arizona Strip came from Arizona Sheriffs’ Association meetings where Mojave County Sheriff Aubrey Drake had complained at length about trying to enforce the law-any kind of law-in the part of his jurisdiction that lay north of the Colorado River. Relatively inaccessible, it was a haven for people who had a penchant for wide

217

open spaces and a lack of law enforcement oversight. It was an open secret that bigamy was practiced among some of the reclusive people living on ranches in and around some of the more remote communities.

“They’re not,” Johnny Cruikshank announced abruptly.

“Not what?” asked Sheriff Trotter, looking at his detective with a puzzled frown.

“The bigamists aren’t real Mormons any more than the 9/11 terrorists are real Muslims.

They’re jerks who’ve decided to use religion to justify any kind of outrageous behavior.”

Not even the dim lighting of Esther’s Diner concealed the two angry red splotches that had suddenly appeared in Johnny Cruikshank’s tanned cheeks. So she’s a Mormon, Joanna realized.

Joanna turned her attention to Diego Ortega. “I’ve heard of The Brethren,” she said.

“Edith Mossman, Carol’s grandmother, mentioned that her son Eddie, Carol’s father, belonged to a group by that name.”

Diego Ortega’s eyes hardened. “Have you talked to him yet?”

“No,” Joanna said. “We’ve been trying to contact him, but as far as I know, he’s still in Mexico.”

“If I were you, I’d do more than just contact him,” Ortega said.

“Why?”

“Because,” he replied, “Carol Leigh told me that Carmen and Pam made contact with a second group, one that calls itself God’s Angels. It’s made up of women who have escaped from bigamy situations. The whole purpose of God’s Angels is to help other women do the same thing-escape. Within two days of making contact with that group, Pam received a threatening e-mail that she forwarded to Candace Leigh at Fandango Productions.”

“Do you have any idea what it said?” Joanna asked.

218

Diego reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I can do better than that,” he said. “I can show you. Look.”

He unfolded the paper and placed it on the table. The message was short: “Leave my daughters alone” was all it said. It was signed Edward Mossman.

‘At the time, no one at Fandango took it seriously, not even Carmen and Pam,” he said quietly. “Nobody believed it was a death threat. Unfortunately, now we know it was.”

219

An hour later, when Joanna finally emerged from Esther’s, she found herself in the strange half-darkness of a full-fledged dust storm. The humidity had shot up, making the heat that much worse. Off to the south, but far closer now, thunder rumbled in unseen clouds. It was the oncoming storm that had finally brought the joint interview with Diego Ortega to a halt. He was hoping to take off and fly north far enough to escape the brunt of the wind and rain.

“Are you sure you want to head home in this?” Randy Trotter asked as he walked Joanna back to her Ciwie.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Most of the culverts on Highway 80 have been replaced.

And usually there’s not that much runoff from the first summer storm.”

Famous last words. The rain hit just as she turned off I-10 onto Highway 80 at Road Forks. The wind-driven rain had so much dust mixed in with it that the water turned to blinding

220

mud on her windshield. For the better part of an hour she crept along at twenty and thirty miles per hour. By the time she finally made it as far as Rodeo, the roadside ditches and dips were beginning to run. The storm let up for a while, then returned with renewed vigor about the time she hit the curves at Silver Creek. One after another, the newly replaced culverts were running with deep reddish-brown, foam-flecked water, spreading from one sandy bank to another. The place where the speeding Suburban had crashed off the road and landed upside down was totally underwater.

Joanna breathed a quick prayer of thanksgiving. If that accident had happened tonight rather than last night, she thought, those people would have drowned. It could have taken months just to find the bodies.

Once she was inside radio range she checked in with Dispatch. “How are things?”

“This is a major storm,” Tica replied. “Two cars washed away in the dips between Double Adobe and Elfrida. Everyone’s safe, but we still have units on the scene, including Chief Deputy Montoya.”

“I’m almost home,” Joanna told her. “Have Frank call me when he finishes up out there.”

It was still raining when she finally reached High Lonesome Ranch. Water more than a foot deep partially covered the road that led to their old house. If she had been going there, she would have had to abandon the car and walk. As it was, she was able to drive to the new house with no difficulty. When she finally pulled into the garage, the door from the laundry room opened and three dogs shot out, followed immediately by Butch.

“I’m really glad to see you,” he said. “I was worried. How was it?”

220

.JhJ

221

“The drive was wet,” she told him as she divested herself of her weapons and locked them away. “But I’m glad I went. We’ve got a positive ID on the two New Mexico victims and a definite connection between them and Carol Mossman. How was your day?”

“I made real progress,” Butch replied. “I was sitting on the couch in the living room when the first clap of thunder rolled overhead. Lady was over under the dining room table, but as soon as she heard the thunder, she came streaking out of there and landed in my lap. She was so petrified, I ended up holding her for the better part of an hour.”

Joanna laughed. “Does that mean you and Lady are friends now?” She laughed.

Butch shook his head. “I think it means any port in a storm. The funny thing is, Lucky slept right through the worst of the thunder. Is it possible he’s deaf?”

“Deaf?”

Butch nodded. “He comes when he’s called, but that may be because he’s mimicking what the other dogs do.”

Joanna thought about it. “I wonder if that’s how he ended up being left behind at Carol Mossman’s house. Maybe when she called the other dogs, he wasn’t with them.”

Butch grinned. “As you said, lucky for him. But how do you go about training a deaf dog?”

“Sign language, maybe?” Joanna asked.

“Remind me to check with Dr. Ross and see what she says,” Butch said thoughtfully.

“Where’s Jen?”

“At Cassie’s, remember? I thought I told you that she’s staying the night. I called to make sure they were out of the pool as soon as the thunder and lightning started.

The big news of the

222

day is that one of the girls from school is planning a slumber party that’s supposed to be the social event of the summer. Both Jenny and Cassie are hoping for invitations.”

“What about parental supervision?” Joanna asked.

“How about if we don’t worry about that just yet,” Butch advised. “First let’s see if Jenny’s invited or not.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hungry?” Butch asked.

“Not very. I had a tuna sandwich a while ago. Why? What’s for dinner?”

“Roast-beef hash,” Butch answered.

“In that case, the tuna sandwich was hours ago and I’m starved.”

“By the way,” Butch added, “Dr. Lee called today. Tommy said that his feelings are permanently hurt that he had to read all about your pregnancy in the Bee. He wants to know when you’re going to show up at his office for your first prenatal checkup.”

Dr. Thomas Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant, had come to Bis-bee right out of medical school.

He had planned to stay long enough to pay off his student loans. Ten years later, he was still there. Joanna had known him first as patient to doctor, but through his friendship with Jeff and Marianne Maculyea he had become friends with Joanna and Butch as well. Tommy Lee was also an exceptional cook who had set out to teach his group of new friends the fundamentals of Chinese cooking, which they were all still learning.

“What did you tell him?”

“That you’ll call for an appointment next week.”

“Fair enough.” Joanna went into the bedroom and slipped into shorts and a T-shirt.

More comfortable now, she returned to the kitchen. ‘Anything else?” she asked.

223

“Nothing much. You remember we’re having dinner with Jim Bob and Eva Lou after church tomorrow?”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she said. “I had forgotten all about that.”

After dinner Joanna and Butch enjoyed a quiet evening together. Joanna Brady reveled in just watching TV, while several of Butch’s O-gauge trains chugged around and around the room on the shelf that had been built for them just over the tops of the windows and doors. Frank Montoya never called her, and for a change Joanna resisted calling him. If there was nothing that pressing demanding her attention, she was better off lying low. And tomorrow or the next day would be time enough to write up her reports and pass along to her investigators the information she had gleaned from her trip to New Mexico. The past few days had been hell for her department. She figured they all needed a bit of a break.

At nine-thirty, though, the phone rang. It was late enough that Joanna was tempted not to answer, but when she saw the call was coming from Jeannine Phillips of Animal Control, Joanna took it.

“What’s up?” she asked, worried that some of the AWE activists had decided to picket the Animal Control offices.

“How’s Blue Eyes?” Jeannine asked.

“You mean Lady?” Joanna returned. “Jenny renamed her, and she’s settling in fine.

She’s great with the other dogs, and she’s even starting to accept Butch.”

“Good,” Jeannine said awkwardly. “That’s good.”

There was a long pause. “Is that all you wanted?” Joanna asked. “To check on the dog?”

“Well, not really.”

“What then?”

224

Jeannine took a deep breath. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “For what you said about us-about Animal Control. It was nice. When I saw it on the news, I felt like … well … like somebody had finally noticed what we’re doing here. And how.”

“You’re welcome, Jeannine,” Joanna said. “You are doing a good job.”

There was another strained pause. It seemed as though there was something else Jeannine Phillips wanted to say, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

“It’s about hoarders,” Jeannine said. “We used to call them collectors. Now we call them hoarders. What exactly do you know about them?”

Joanna gathered her thoughts. ‘As I understand it, it’s a kind of mental disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that causes people-women, mostly-to gather animals in hopes of taking care of them, of protecting them. The disorder can be controlled with medication and it comes back without it.”

“But do you know what causes it?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Not really.”

“The women almost always have one thing in common,” Jeannine Phillips said.

“Really. What’s that?”

There was another long pause. “They almost always have a history of childhood sexual abuse.”

For a moment Joanna had nothing to say.

“If I didn’t have this job, Sheriff Brady, I’d be one, too,” Jeannine added softly.

“In fact, I guess I am one. It’s just that I don’t take the animals here to my own place. It’s why I do what I do, Sheriff Brady. But it’s important for me to know that you think I do a good job anyway, and I wanted to say thank you.”

I

225

“You’re welcome, Jeannine,” Joanna murmured as she put down the phone.

“Who was that?” Butch asked. “Not an emergency, I hope.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Believe it or not, it was someone calling to say thank you.”

Joanna and Butch went to bed early that night. Butch went right to sleep. Joanna lay awake for a long time, thinking about what Jeannine Phillips had said and what she had left unspoken.

Having been saved from the thunder and lightning by Butch, Lady was ready to switch her loyalties. For the first time the dog curled up on Butch’s side of the bed rather than on Joanna’s, which made it easier the next morning when it was time for Joanna’s daily hand-over-mouth race to the bathroom.

“Didn’t take as long this morning,” Butch observed when she came into the kitchen for her single cup of tea.

“Maybe I’m getting used to it,” Joanna returned.

After breakfast, Butch and Joanna stopped by Cassie’s house to pick Jenny up and take her along to church. On the way into town Joanna was amazed to notice that less than twenty-four hours after that first drenching downpour, the long-bare stalks of ocotillo were already showing a hint of green as a new crop of round leaves poked out of what, for months, had seemed to be nothing more than a bundle of dried thorn-covered sticks. In another day, six-inch-long clumps of red tube-shaped flowers-the kind of flowers hummingbirds loved-would pop out along the top of each of those newly leafed branches.

“That’s why I love ocotillos so much,” Joanna said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because it takes so little rain and time for them to spring back to life. It always seems like a miracle to me.”

226

“I feel the same way about you,” Butch said.

She smiled, took his hand, and squeezed it.

When they stepped out of the Subaru in the parking lot at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, the sky overhead was a brilliant washed-clean azure with a few puffy white clouds perched on top of the surrounding red-and-gray hills. But with the onset of the rainy season, the humidity was also on the rise-so much for Arizona’s supposedly dry heat.

Church that morning was warm and awkward, too. Marliss Shackleford was there, front and center, along with her fiance, Richard Voland, a man who had once been Joanna Brady’s chief deputy and whose resignation she had been forced to engineer and accept.

Out of law enforcement, he now worked as one of Cochise County’s few private investigators.

Marliss Shackleford and Richard Voland had been engaged for some period of time with no hint of whether or when they would take the plunge and marry. During the time of sharing, however, Marliss ended all speculation by standing up and announcing that they had recited their marriage vows in a private ceremony on Saturday of the previous week and that the wedding cake to be served during the social hour after church would be part of an informal reception.

Sitting several pews back, Joanna was stunned by this news. Her ongoing difficulties with Marliss and the complications surrounding Richard Voland’s resignation made her relationship with the bridal couple strained, to say the least. She resented the idea that she was being coerced into attending a surprise wedding reception.

All through Marianne Maculyea’s sermon, Joanna stewed about the upcoming social hour and made up her mind to leave as soon as the last hymn was sung. That plan was 227

foiled by Jenny’s disappearing into the basement for cake and punch before Joanna had a chance to stop her.

Taking Butch’s arm, she allowed herself to be led into the social hall with about as much enthusiasm as a prisoner being led to execution. A beaming Marliss, with Richard Voland at her side, waited at the door, greeting each new arrival.

As Joanna approached, Marliss leaned over and whispered in Joanna’s ear, “Love is lovelier the second time around-but then I guess you and Eleanor already figured that out.”

Marliss’s first husband and high school sweetheart, Bradley Shackleford, had been out of the picture almost as long as Joanna could remember. Under her cloud of unruly and newly frosted curls, Marliss looked so undeniably happy that Joanna couldn’t help but soften a little.

“Yes, we did, Marliss,” Joanna agreed. “Congratulations to both of you.”

Wandering through the social hall with paper cups of punch in their hands, Joanna and Butch were the recipients of their own greetings and well-wishes. Regardless of how they had learned of Joanna’s pregnancy, everyone there made some comment about the news. Finished with her punch, Joanna was standing to one side of the room and waiting for Butch to finish a conversation with Jeff Daniels when Richard Voland sidled up next to her.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Joanna looked at him warily. Everyone knew that, in the aftermath of his divorce, Voland had fallen victim to drinking too much, but no one other than Butch knew that the real reason behind Richard Voland’s resignation from the sheriff’s department had been his unrequited crush on Joanna Brady. She had seen him occasionally since then in social settings. Basking

228

in this new romance with Marliss, Voland appeared to have overcome his personal demons and his feelings about Joanna, too, but she was nonetheless leery of spending too much time in his presence.

‘All right,” she said. “And you?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he replied. “Business is picking up a little, and you know Marliss. She keeps me hopping.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “I’m sure she does.”

“There is one thing we don’t agree about, though,” Voland added.

“What’s that?”

“You.”

“Richard …” Joanna began as a blush started forming at the base of her neck. “Really, I-“

‘About the election,” Voland added quickly. “Marliss is anything but unbiased when it comes to Ken Junior, and I think she’s wrong. Pregnant or not, you really are the best man for the job.”

Across the room, Marliss noticed Joanna and Richard Voland standing together. Tossing her mane of curls, she caught her husband’s eye and summoned him with a come-hither finger. Joanna’s blush, which had started for one reason, finished for another.

“Thank you, Richard,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”

Butch appeared at her side half a minute later. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Joanna said gratefully. “More than ready.”

‘And what was that all about-the thing with Richard Voland?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied, “but I think he just gave me one of the biggest compliments of my life.”

Once Joanna and Butch had retrieved Jenny from the puzzle 229

and-game corner where she’d been involved in a killer game of Chinese checkers, they headed for Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady’s duplex on Oliver Circle. As Jim Bob welcomed them inside, the whole house was filled with the delectable aroma of Eva Lou’s old-fashioned meat loaf.

Butch and Joanna’s former father-in-law went out to Jim Bob’s workshop to discuss one of the older man’s woodworking projects, while Joanna and Jenny ventured into Eva Lou’s undisputed domain, the kitchen. “Anything I can do to help?”

Her face red with exertion, Eva Lou was energetically mashing potatoes. “Not a thing.

Joanna, you sit down and relax. Jenny, do you mind setting the table?”

Without argument, both mother and daughter did as they were told. While Jenny pulled out plates and silverware and carried them into the dining room, Joanna sat at the kitchen table and gratefully kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She sighed with relief as she wiggled her liberated toes.

“What does your mother have to say about all this?” Eva Lou asked.

“She’s not exactly thrilled,” Joanna allowed.

Eva Lou laughed. “No, I don’t suppose she is, but what about you?”

“I’m thrilled, and so is Butch.”

“That’s all that matters then, isn’t it?” Eva Lou asked. “I learned a long time ago that if you spend your whole life worrying about what other people think, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

Just like Eleanor, Joanna thought. Worrying about other people’s opinions and not doing anything on her own.

“How come I can’t have you for a mother?” she asked.

Eva Lou looked at her and smiled. “Well, you do,” she said.

230

“I’m just another mother. Now when exactly is this baby due? You and Butch aren’t the only ones with plans to make. Jim Bob and I have some things we want to do, too.”

That afternoon, Eva Lou’s down-home cooking hit the spot-meat loaf, mashed potatoes, fried okra, and freshly made biscuits, followed by fresh peach pie. As soon as dinner was over, Jenny retreated to the spare bedroom which was her special domain at the Brady household. As Butch, Eva Lou, and Jim Bob sipped their coffee, conversation turned to work.

Before Andy’s death, Jim Bob Brady had always expressed more than a passing interest in whatever cases his son, the deputy sheriff, had been involved in. Now that same curiosity was focused on Joanna’s cases, and she was happy to oblige. She had found that sometimes, in the process of explaining a case to a law enforcement outsider, she was able to gain a new perspective on it herself.

With regard to the Mossman/Ortega/Davis murders, Jim Bob homed in on the ammunition.

“The casings all come with the same stamp?” he asked.

Joanna nodded. “Initial for Springfield, Massachusetts, and ‘seventeen’ for 1917.

So we know where it came from, and obviously it still works. The question is, where has it been all this time?”

Jim Bob frowned. A faraway look came into his eyes. “I wonder,” he said.

“Wonder what?”

“You know what was going on around here in 1917, don’t you?”

“World War One?” Joanna offered tentatively.

Jim Bob shook his head. “No, that was over in Europe. Around here, the big news that year was the Bisbee Deportation.”

231

“I remember now,” Joanna said. “Something about union activists being run out of town on a rail.”

“In boxcars, actually,” Jim Bob corrected. ‘A bunch of company-organized vigilantes rousted over a thousand men out of bed at gunpoint, marched them down to the Warren Ballpark, and then loaded them into boxcars that left the men standing for hours ankle-deep in manure. After some back-andforthing, they finally dropped them off in the desert near Columbus, New Mexico, before the U.S. Cavalry finally showed up to take charge of them. Some came back eventually, but others never did.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Butch observed.

“Sure thing,” Jim Bob said, nodding sagely. “When I went to work in the mines after the Korean War, the Deportation was still big news around here. Back then, considering whatever company you were keeping, if you came down on the wrong side of the Deportation, you were likely to get your ass kicked.”

“Jim Bob,” Eva Lou admonished, “watch your language. Jenny might hear.”

Joanna could picture Jenny lying on the floor, with her eyes closed and the earphones to her Walkman clapped to her ears.

There’s a good chance the language on the CD is a lot worse than that, Joanna thought.

Joanna had heard pieces of the story all her life. Butch, hearing about the Bisbee Deportation for the first time, listened with avid interest. “So if the vigilantes were company men …”

“Deputized by Sheriff Wheeler,” Jim Bob interjected.

“… who were the deportees?”

“Where’s that book of mine?” Jim Bob asked. “Bisbee Seventeen, it’s called. That tells the whole thing.”

“It’s out in the garage,” Eva Lou replied. “Along with all the 232

J. A. Jance

other books you boxed up because you were going to build a new bookshelf, remember?”

Jim Bob grimaced. “Wobblies,” he said, in answer to Butch’s question. “The IWW. International Workers of the World. They called a strike in July of 1917. According to the company honchos, they were undermining the war effort. The real problem was, the IWW recruited minority members. Back then, Mexicans weren’t allowed to work underground, and they received less pay. Same goes for the European immigrants. They were allowed to work underground, but they were limited to lower-paying jobs. Now it sounds like the IWW

had the right idea, but back then what they were proposing must have been pretty outrageous.”

He stopped then and slammed his open palm on the table with enough force to make the cups and saucers rattle. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure it is.”

“What’s it?” Joanna asked.

“The ammunition. The weapons. All of the vigilantes were armed with guns the company bought and paid for. In fact, a couple of people were actually shot and killed in the process of the roundup, but afterward everybody turned their weapons back in, and most of ‘em ended up stored in a safe up in the old General Office in Bisbee.”

“The ammunition, too?” Joanna asked.

“I think so,” Jim Bob replied.

“So where’s that arms cache now? Is it still there?”

“No. Somebody opened the safe and found them when Phelps Dodge was shutting down its Bisbee operation in the mid-seventies. They just divvied the stuff up among the people who worked there. Whoever wanted some, gathered up a gun or two and took them home.”

Joanna’s mind was already blazing on ahead. She had spent 233

part of the night thinking about what Diego Ortega had said about the bigamy-practicing group called The Brethren, the same group Edith Mossman had mentioned several days earlier with regard to her estranged son, Eddie. It was also the group Pam Davis and Carmen Ortega had been investigating. Was it possible Eddie Mossman had murdered his own daughter in order to keep her from telling her story, whatever it was, in front of a camera?

Joanna put down her napkin. “Excuse me,” she said. “But I need to go make a phone call.” And she went outside on the Bradys’ front porch to do it.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, tall columns of cumulus clouds were rising over the hill with its distinctively heart-shaped top that generations of Bisbee kids had called Geronimo. With any luck, there would be another late-afternoon thunderstorm today, and the summer rainy season would be well under way. But right that minute, Joanna’s mind wasn’t on the weather.

She reached Frank Montoya at his newly purchased home in Old Bisbee. “What’s up, boss?” he asked when he heard Joanna’s voice.

Briefly she summarized what she had learned from her trip to Lordsburg the day before as well as what she’d just discovered about the Bisbee Deportation from Jim Bob Brady.

“What do you want me to do?” Frank asked.

“We need to know whether or not Eddie Mossman had access to any of those weapons.

If he worked in PD’s General Office, it’s possible he was given some of them.”

“That was a long time ago,” Frank said dubiously.

“Twenty-five years, at least,” Joanna agreed.

“So finding out could be tough. The people who worked there are likely to be in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. It

2.33

234

doesn’t sound likely that some old coot in a nursing home would let himself out and then start plugging people with a weapon that’s older than he is.”

“What about a son or a son-in-law?” Joanna suggested. “Or maybe even a grandson?”

Frank thought about that. “Still,” he said, “I’d say the odds aren’t good.”

“How many people would have been working there?” Joanna asked. “Thirty-five? Forty?

Once we have the names, we’ll at least have a place to start, and it could be, when we start talking to them, one of them might be able to tell us something we need to know.”

‘All right,” Frank agreed finally. “I’ll contact PD headquarters in Phoenix first thing tomorrow morning to see if I can track any of this down, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Do we know if the cops in Obregon had any luck contacting Mr. Mossman about his daughter’s death?”

“I’ll check on that, too,” Frank said.

“How did the interviews go in Tucson?” Joanna asked.

All right, I guess,” Frank replied. At least we have some. Whether what we have will be enough to put the squeeze on the driver, I don’t know.”

And the little boy’s mother?” Joanna asked.

“We never had a chance to talk to her,” he said. “She had undergone surgery for a ruptured spleen and other internal injuries. The doctor says that it’s going to be touch-and-go for her for the next several days. She may not make it.”

“With her baby dead, she may not want to make it,” Joanna observed.