Field of Bones: A Brady Novel of Suspense (Joanna Brady Mysteries)

by J. A. Jance

  The doctor had said that the pain meds might make her sleepy, but they didn’t—not for a long time. How could anyone sleep with all that noise going on? There were people talking and laughing out in the hallway, people rolling carts past her door, shoes squeaking on the polished tiles of the hallway floor. All that noise and all that light. There was blue sky showing outside her window—blue sky over what looked like a steep red mountain with a flat top.

  Gradually the pain meds worked. The noise faded. Latisha drifted off, awakening with a start sometime later. It took her a moment to get her bearings—to figure out where she was. The Boss was gone. She wasn’t in the basement anymore. And when she looked around the room, she found she wasn’t alone, either. A blond-haired woman was sitting on a chair near the foot of her bed. She didn’t seem to be a nurse—she wasn’t wearing a uniform, and she was reading from a Bible.

  “Who are you?” Latisha asked.

  “My name is Marianne Maculyea. I’m a chaplain. Sheriff Brady had to leave, but she asked me to check in on you.”

  “How is Garth?” Latisha asked. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s okay, out of surgery, and just down the hall,” Marianne said. “He asked me to give you this.”

  She handed over another one of Grandma Juanita’s meat-loaf sandwiches. That time Latisha ate the whole thing.

  Chapter 43

  COCHISE COUNTY, JOANNA’S JURISDICTION IN SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA, is a square that’s approximately eighty miles wide and eighty miles tall. The county line to the south is also the international border with Mexico, while the eastern county line is also the state line between Arizona and New Mexico.

  The total area amounts to a little more than 6,200 square miles, with a population of approximately 126,000. Next door in New Mexico, Hidalgo County covers 3,400 square miles, with a population of 4,300. Where Cochise County is square, Hidalgo is skinny and tall. On the far side of Hidalgo is Grant County, a similarly sized—3,900 square miles as opposed to 3,400—with a population of 28,000. In other words, the two counties in New Mexico combined add up to an area a thousand square miles larger than Cochise County with only a quarter of the population.

  That was the basic geography of the situation. Both Cochise County and Hidalgo County were located along the international border with Mexico and were beset with all the attendant complications of border security and lack thereof. Grant County’s southern border didn’t reach quite far enough to touch the Mexican border, but it was close enough to be affected by events and issues happening to the south.

  A year earlier the Police Our Borders folks had come calling on affected counties with their offers of “free” leased helicopters. Over in Cochise County, Joanna had turned them down out of budgetary concerns. In New Mexico, however, the people calling the shots for Hidalgo and Grant Counties had arrived at an entirely different conclusion.

  Hidalgo’s longtime sheriff, Randy Trotter, was a good old boy if ever there was one. Somewhere north of sixty, Trotter was cut from the same cloth as Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and billed himself as a “toes-up sheriff,” one who would die with his boots on, right along with his badge. Despite Trotter’s annoying “sheriff for life” bravado, his constituents loved him, and when it came time for reelection, he generally ran unopposed.

  With POB’s generous offer of relatively free helicopters on the table, Sheriff Trotter had joined forces with Grant County’s sheriff, Adam Yates, in an alliance under which the two counties shared the expense and reaped the benefit of having a single helicopter.

  That was why, as soon as Carol returned to collect Sage, burp her, and change her, Joanna immediately pulled out her phone and dialed Sheriff Trotter’s number. Much as she hated to admit it, today his shared POB helicopter might be just what was needed.

  “Why, Sheriff Brady,” he rumbled pleasantly when he came on the line. “How the heck are you, and did you ever get around to having that baby? The last time I saw you, you were big as a barn.”

  Randy Trotter was a lot of things, but politically correct wasn’t one of them. He was known for putting his lizard-skin Tony Lamas in his mouth, sometimes both of them at once. The encounter he mentioned had occurred in the course of a late-night poker game while both he and Joanna had been attending the annual conference of the Society of Southwestern Sheriffs in Las Cruces.

  When Joanna was first elected, SOSS had been something of a no-girls-allowed type of organization. They had let her in, but not without some sidelong glances and more than a few derogatory comments. Gradually her determination to be a law-enforcement professional had earned her a kind of grudging respect, but what had finally brought them around and given her real acceptance in the group was her ability to play poker.

  Joanna had learned the game at her father’s knee and over her mother’s tight-lipped objections. D. H. Lathrop had been a wizard at Texas Hold’em, and he’d seen to it that his daughter was, too. The first couple of times she attended SOSS conferences, as the only woman there, she’d been self-conscious and out of her depth. She knew about the late-night poker parties—everyone did—but she wasn’t sure she’d be welcome and didn’t go. The games weren’t officially sponsored events with posted times and invitations, but they were always held in one of the sponsoring hotels’ larger suites. When ten o’clock at night rolled around, whoever wanted to play simply showed up.

  The first time Joanna crashed an SOSS poker party was at a conference in El Paso. By then she’d already gained a bit of a reputation for beating the socks off her fellow sheriffs back home in Arizona. When she took a seat at the table, Hector Morales, from Greenlee County, had nodded in her direction. After only one hand, he winked at her and then politely excused himself from the table. It was a good thing, too. She’d cleaned everybody else’s clock.

  She wasn’t snotty about being a winner, and she wasn’t a sore loser when the tables turned. That qualified her as one of the guys. And the fact that she didn’t take offense at every off-color remark didn’t hurt, either, something that was especially useful in dealing with Randy Trotter. In fact, in Las Cruces—big as a barn or not—she’d pretty much set the old guy back on his heels.

  “Yup,” Joanna said now. “Had her a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Eleanor Sage after my mother, but we call her Sage. She’s got red hair, and someday, when she grows up, she’ll probably want to be sheriff.”

  “So a chip off the old block, then,” Trotter observed. “Are you going to teach her to play poker?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Randy replied with a hearty laugh. “Good on you,” he said. “Now, to what do I owe the honor? I heard about that dump site over on your side of the Peloncillos. Does this have anything to do with that?”

  “It certainly does.”

  Not wanting to conduct confidential police business in the public square of a hospital waiting room, Joanna paced the parking lot as she briefed him about the case. By the time she finished, the phone was hot against her ear.

  “Okay, my dear,” Trotter said when she finished. “I’ve got some pretty good contacts over Road Forks way. Let me make a few calls and see what I can do. I’ll be in touch.”

  As Joanna approached the hospital entrance, she was dismayed to find that Marliss Shackleford had spotted her and was lying in wait.

  “What’s going on?” the reporter demanded. “I know one of your deputies was shot and has been transported here from Douglas by ambulance. I believe it’s Deputy Raymond from Elfrida. And there was something else happening as well—something about a woman or a girl—which makes me think this may all be connected to that crime scene over in the Peloncillos.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” Joanna said.

  “You and everybody else,” Marliss griped. “Nobody’s home out at the Justice Center. I already checked. Hadlock is out. Carpenter is out. There’s nothing coming through on my scanners, and no one seems to have any idea when they’ll be back. Now here you are, back in uniform and h
anging out at the hospital when you’re supposedly on maternity leave. Something screwy is going on here, Sheriff Brady, something big, and I want to know what it is.”

  “My department is currently involved in a major investigation,” Joanna told her. “I’m assuming Acting Sheriff Hadlock’s people are maintaining radio silence on account of people just like you. For the safety of my officers, I can tell you, Marliss, that anyone publishing premature information about that operation will be considered to be interfering with police business, which would be grounds for being banned from all future press briefings.”

  Marliss bridled at that. “That’s not fair,” she snapped. “You can’t do that. I’m just doing my job—following the story.”

  “And I’m doing mine,” Joanna countered. “It’s my department, after all, and I’m in charge. If it turns out that one of my officers has indeed been injured, you can rest assured that his name, the circumstances surrounding the incident, and the extent of his injuries won’t be released until Ernie Carpenter, our temporary Media Relations officer, is able to hold an official briefing. As for your finding me in uniform? I may be on maternity leave, but when one of my officers is injured in the line of duty, my place is at the hospital—no matter what.”

  With that, Joanna marched into the hospital. She found Juanita Raymond and Marianne seated together in the waiting room.

  “How is he?”

  “They just took him into the recovery room,” Juanita said. “He lost a lot of blood. They had to give him two transfusions, but he’s going to be okay.”

  “Thank God,” Joanna murmured.

  “Thank God indeed,” Marianne agreed. She gave Joanna a searching look. “Are you okay?”

  Joanna wasn’t okay, but only a good friend would have caught it. She scanned the waiting room. “There’s a lot going on,” she said, “and with Marliss nosing around, I can’t afford to be caught talking about any of it in public.”

  “Go do what you need to do,” Marianne said. “I’ll stay here with Juanita and Garth.”

  “And with Latisha, too,” Joanna said. “Maybe you could call Deb. I believe Latisha’s parents are flying into Tucson. Deb has their contact numbers. Maybe you could call and see if we can be of any assistance.”

  “Will do,” Marianne said. “Go home and don’t worry.”

  Not worrying was something far easier said than done.

  Chapter 44

  WITH THE TARGETS IN THE WIND, THE EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM switched out of arrest mode and focused instead on crime-scene investigation. Now they would proceed with executing the search warrants, but because of the need to document and preserve evidence that part of the operation had to be conducted under the direct supervision of Dave Hollicker and Casey Ledford.

  After hours of tension, the guys on the team were glad to push the Pause button. While everybody else was letting off steam and waiting for the CSIs, a bummed Tom walked away from the group, sat down in the chair under the cottonwood tree, and pulled out the satphone. The Ardmores had given them the slip. As near as he could tell, Deputy Raymond Garth had been shot right around 5:00 A.M. It was now 10:30—more than five hours later. The brothers Ardmore could be in Texas by now, or almost to California. Maybe Deb was right and someone spotting them at an inspection station or weigh station offered the best chance of catching them.

  In the meantime the next piece of the investigation was obviously in Road Forks. In New Mexico. If it had been a hot-pursuit situation, Tom could have hopped into the Yukon, lit up his lights, and gone barreling across the state line. Only problem was, it wasn’t a hot pursuit at all. Instead of calling Joanna to tell her they’d blown it, he got on the horn to Randy Trotter’s office in Lordsburg.

  It turned out that the woman who answered the phone was also the sheriff’s secretary. “He’s not in,” she said when Tom identified himself. “I’m Connie, his secretary. I might be able to reach him by radio, though. Does this have anything to do with the situation out at Road Forks?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Sure do. We’ve got a deputy over there right now, talking to Arlene.”

  “Who’s Arlene?”

  “A waitress at the truck stop. She said Jimmy Ardmore turned up there for breakfast long about eight o’clock this morning. According to their security footage, he drove out headed westbound shortly after nine.”

  Tom swore under his breath. That was less than two hours ago. A two-hour head start was a big improvement over a five-hour head start, but it could still put the westbound Peterbilt well into Arizona.

  “We were going to post an APB, but somebody from your office beat us to the punch. All the same, Sheriff Trotter and Donnie are in the helicopter right now, having a little look-see.”

  “Who’s Donnie?”

  “That would be Donald Dunkerson, our pilot. Can I have Sheriff Trotter call you at the number I’ve got on the screen?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

  “Thomas Hadlock—Tom. I’m acting sheriff here in Cochise County.”

  “That’s right, your sheriff just had her baby, didn’t she? Okay, I’ll let him know.”

  Dave and Casey showed up and went to work. While Casey made plaster casts of the tire tracks next to the garage, Tom and the Double C’s trailed behind Dave to observe as he processed the scene.

  In the interest of preserving evidence and wanting to be able to secure the property again after the search, Dave used a heavy-duty bolt cutter to slice through Arthur Ardmore’s collection of padlocks. The three smaller houses showed no sign of human habitation and merited little attention. The one with the picket fence was a different story.

  “Hold up, guys,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “There’s dust everywhere, and I can see two distinct sets of footprints, one coming and one going. When whoever it was went in, he was barefoot. Coming out, he was wearing shoes. I’ll be right back.”

  Donning booties, Tom and the two detectives waited outside. “Here’s the deal,” Dave said when he returned. “The guy who came in the front door went straight to the closet, grabbed a pair of shoes, and went right back out. He knew what he wanted and where to go to get it.”

  Stepping inside, Tom, carefully avoiding the tracks in the dust, was struck by the utter emptiness of the place. It was like walking into a haunted house. If Arthur Ardmore had ever lived here, he didn’t live here anymore.

  “Come take a look at this,” Dave said, snapping photos over by an old-fashioned Formica-topped kitchen table.

  An old copy of an Arizona Highways magazine, dating from May two years earlier, lay on the gritty tabletop. Barely visible through a thick layer of grayish dust was an address label bearing the name Arthur Ardmore. Beside the magazine was an empty coffee mug with a stain in the bottom suggesting that the cup had been dirty but empty when it was abandoned. Nearby sat a French-press coffeemaker with moldy coffee grounds inside, but so much time had passed in the dry heat of the abandoned house that even the mold had died.

  Ernie looked at the table and shook his head. “If Arthur gets up from the breakfast table, walks away, and never comes back, what does that tell us?”

  “That he didn’t know he was leaving,” Jaime offered. “And since we’ve got no blood in here and no sign of a struggle, if something happened to him, it didn’t happen here.”

  “But it did happen,” Tom said, uttering aloud what everyone else was already thinking. “And I believe that means we’re a whole lot closer to identifying the human skull Jack Carver dragged home—the one with a bullet hole in it. Instead of being on the lookout for two suspects, I say we’re down to only one—James Ardmore.”

  When Dave was done with the house for the time being, they trooped over to the garage, where Casey was just finishing up making the plaster casts of the tire tracks. The side entrance to the garage was the only door in the place without a padlock, and it was the only one where they had to deploy Deputy Creighton a
nd his battering ram.

  Pushing past the shattered door, Dave stopped cold. “What the hell? Come take a look at what we’ve got here.”

  Inside the garage a dozen red gas cans were lined up against the side walls. “Full or empty?” Tom asked.

  They were all wearing gloves, but Ernie was the one who walked over to the line of cans and hefted them one after another. “Full,” he said. “They’re all full—every last one of them. This much gas means we’re dealing with a firebug who was probably planning on burning the joint down.”

  “So why didn’t he?” Jaime asked.

  “Ran out of time, maybe?” Ernie asked.

  “Maybe,” Tom said. “Let’s go tackle that jail.”

  They’d known from what Garth had reported to them earlier that the brick building would be the crux of the matter and require the most attention, and that was why Dave had suggested they leave that one for last.

  Because of the blackout curtains, the room was pitch-dark when Dave entered. Groping for a light switch, he tripped and fell. Tom, following behind, managed to locate the switch. When the light came on, they discovered that Dave had fallen over an unopened twenty-five-pound bag of dog food lying on the floor next to the door. Garth had reported that the girls imprisoned in the basement had survived on kibble. That unopened bag of dog food sent its own chilling message. Latisha, the last of the four, had somehow managed to escape, but the presence of that fresh dog-food bag suggested that James Ardmore had been planning to invite more guests into his private version of hell.

  As Dave focused his camera on the horrifically stained mattress, Tom Hadlock stopped at the top of the wooden stairs that led to the stark dungeon. When he flipped the light switch, a single barren bulb lit up the bleak space below. Everything he saw testified to suffering and deprivation, from the four bare mattresses lying on the earthen floor to the various lengths of chain attached to the walls with eye bolts. And then there was the freezer, an old-fashioned chest-style freezer with an open padlock still dangling from a hasp on the lid. That one spoke of death.