by J. A. Jance
Inside Joanna’s office, things weren’t much better. The thermostats at all county-owned facilities were now set at a budget/ energy-conscious 80 degrees—too warm to think or concentrate. She had a fan in her office, too, but she hated to use it because it tended to blow loose papers all over her desk—and there were always loose papers.
The radio, playing softly behind her desk, switched from music to bottom-of-the-hour news where the weather was a big concern. All of Arizona found itself in the grip of a severe drought and what was, even for July, a fierce heat wave. The radio reporter announced that flights in and out of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport had been grounded due to concerns that the heat-softened runways might be damaged by planes landing and taking off in the record-breaking 126-degree temperatures. The announcer’s running gag about its being a dry heat didn’t help Joanna’s frame of mind. Bisbee, situated two hundred miles southeast of Phoenix, was a couple of thousand feet higher than Phoenix and more than twenty degrees cooler, but that didn’t help, either. Deciding to ignore the weather, Joanna switched off the radio and returned to studying her calendar and its self-inflicted difficulties.
Months earlier, one of her least favorite deputies, Kenneth W. Galloway, had officially announced his intention to run against her. Bankrolled by a wife with a booming real estate business in Sierra Vista, Ken, Jr., had resigned from Joanna’s department within weeks of announcing his candidacy. Minus the burden of a regular job, Galloway had been on the stump ever since. He spent every day on the campaign trail, crisscrossing the county with door-belling efforts and public appearances.
And that was where he had Joanna at a disadvantage. With a department to run, she couldn’t afford to doorbell all day long. She had done her share of rubber-chicken banquets and pancake-breakfast speeches for local civic organizations, but she’d had to squeeze them in around her regular duties. Which was why she had said yes to appearing at all those various Fourth of July events. She’d be able to cross paths and shake hands with far more people at those holiday get-togethers than she would have been able to see under ordinary circumstances. But now, at the end of a long day, the prospect of keeping multiple far-flung commitments seemed nothing less than daunting. She wished she had said no more times than she had said yes.
The phone rang. Thinking Kristin would answer it, Joanna let it ring several times before she realized it was a quarter to six. Her secretary, Kristin Gregovich—a young working mother with both an eight-month-old baby girl and a baby-sitter waiting at home—punched out each afternoon at the stroke of five. Sighing, Joanna picked up the phone.
“Hi, Joey,” Butch Dixon said. “How’s it going?”
Just hearing her husband’s cheerful greeting lifted Joanna’s sagging spirits. “My head aches and my feet hurt,” she told him. “Other than that, I’m fine.”
“So it’s off to Sierra Vista?” he asked.
“That’s right,” she said, reading from the calendar notation. “Seven P.M., Karen Oldsby, Sierra Vista Tribune. Interview.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it,” Butch said.
“I’m not,” Joanna agreed. “It’s so hot in this office I could scream.”
“Couldn’t you do the interview by phone?”
“Ms. Oldsby prefers doing interviews in person, but while I’m driving out there I’ll turn the air-conditioning on full blast. That way, by the time I get there, I’ll have had a chance to cool off. Maybe I’ll feel better.”
“Do you want me to hold dinner for you?” he asked.
Other husbands might have suggested Joanna cancel the interview and come straight home. She appreciated the fact that Butch did no such thing. He understood as well as she did that politicking had to be done during off-duty hours, during what should have been considered family time. It was clear to her that it was Butch’s backstopping of her—his being at home, doing chores, cooking meals, and looking after Jenny—that made Joanna’s run for office possible. It had also given her a new understanding of and respect for her mother, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield, who, years earlier, had supplied the same kind of priceless but unpaid behind-the-scenes labor for Joanna’s deceased father, D. H. Lathrop, when he had run for and won the same office Joanna now held. However, Joanna’s newfound respect for her mother didn’t make the woman any less annoying.
“Joey?” Butch asked. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, embarrassed to have been caught woolgathering. “I’m here.”
“You never answered me about dinner.”
“Sorry. No, don’t bother keeping anything warm. If I’m hungry, I’ll grab something on my way to Sierra Vista. Otherwise, I’ll dig through the fridge when I get home.”
“Or have a bowl of Malt-o-Meal,” Butch said, making no effort to mask his disapproval. For years Butch Dixon had run a Phoenix-area restaurant—the Roundhouse Bar and Grill in downtown Peoria. He had hired cooks, but he was also a respectable short-order cook in his own right. Joanna’s propensity for coming home late and having a bowl of cereal or cocoa and toast for a supper drove him nuts.
“Drive carefully,” he said. “See you when you get here.”
“I will,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
In the aftermath of the Twin Towers tragedy, where so many police and fire officers had died, those were words they exchanged without fail every single day. They said the words, and they meant them.
Joanna put down the phone and then scrounged around under her desk for the pair of low heels she had kicked off in the course of the afternoon. Her feet squawked in protest as she tried to slip the shoes back on. Was it possible her feet had grown a full size in a matter of hours? Shaking her head, Joanna limped over to the mirror on the back of the door and did a quick hair and makeup check. Her short red hair would need to be cut soon, and there were deep shadows under her bright green eyes.
I’m a mess, she thought grimly. And, with my luck, they’ll probably want a photo. After all, the possibility of having her picture taken for the paper was the reason she had chosen to wear a skirt and blazer that morning rather than her uniform. She had wanted to look businesslike and not too official. But that was also before she had put in a full day and then some in her anything but cool office at the Cochise County Justice Center.
Joanna had picked up her purse and was on her way to the door when her phone rang again. She hurried back to her desk to answer. “Sheriff Brady.”
“Oh, good,” dispatcher Tica Romero said. “You’re still there. I was afraid you’d already left the office.”
“Why?” Joanna said. “What’s up?”
“Manny Ruiz is on the line,” Tica said. “He’s out near the San Pedro and needs assistance. I’m sending him some backup, but I thought you’d want to talk to—”
“Put him through,” Joanna said.
Early in the year, the head of Cochise County Animal Control had left the county to take a better-paying job elsewhere. Struggling to come to terms with an out-of-balance budget, the board of supervisors had decided against replacing her. Instead, they had folded the Cochise County Animal Control unit into Joanna’s department. Now, in addition to her law enforcement duties, Sheriff Brady was responsible for running the local pound as well. Fortunately, the core members of the Animal Control unit had stayed on when their supervisor left. Joanna may have been less than thrilled with her additional responsibilities, but at least she was supervising a group of people who knew what they were doing.
“What is it, Manny?” she asked when Animal Control Officer Ruiz came on the line.
“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff Brady,” Ruiz said. “I’m out off the Charleston Road. You know, where Graveyard Gulch runs into the San Pedro? I came out to check on that hoarder, Carol Mossman. You remember her, don’t you? The one with all those dogs? I gave her a citation two weeks ago. But they’re dead, Sheriff Brady. All dead.”
Manuel Ruiz was usually a very slow talker, known for a p
onderous delivery that tended to hold back far more information than it passed along. This time his words tumbled over themselves in a rush.
Joanna did indeed remember Carol Mossman. In the last six months, thirty-seven rabid skunks and three rabid coyotes had been found inside the boundaries of Cochise and Santa Cruz counties. As a result a rabies quarantine was now in effect in those two adjoining southern Arizona jurisdictions. Carol Mossman had come to the attention of Animal Control due to complaints that her loose dogs had been chasing some of her neighbor’s horses.
Two weeks earlier, Manny Ruiz had driven out to the Mossman place expecting to find one or two unlicensed and unvaccinated dogs. Instead he had discovered a total of eighteen, most of them confined to a dog-crate-lined straw-bale shed out behind a run-down mobile home. The crates had been shaded by a makeshift roof constructed of discarded lumber and delaminating cast-off doors. When Carol Mossman had been unable to produce valid vaccination records for any of her animals, Officer Ruiz had issued a citation. Yesterday had marked the end of her two-week compliance period. Today he had returned to see if the animals had now been properly licensed.
“The dogs are all dead?” Joanna asked, trying to clarify what Manny Ruiz had said. “Are you telling me she chose euthanasia over licensing?”
“I don’t think she chose anything,” Manny replied. “I think she’s inside the trailer along with all her dogs. I looked in through one of the living room windows. There are dead dogs everywhere and no sign of movement. The door’s locked from the inside, and there’s a bunch of waist-high bullet holes punched through the back door. In the living room I can see a foot, sticking out from behind the couch, but I can’t tell if whoever’s there is alive or not. Should I break in to check on her, or what?”
Joanna closed her eyes. If Carol Mossman was already dead, then it was important not to disturb the crime scene. If, however, there was the smallest chance the woman was still alive, saving an injured woman’s life automatically took precedence over preserving evidence.
“Is there another door?” Joanna asked.
“Yeah, the front door. I already checked. It’s locked, too.”
“Open it if you can,” Joanna said. “Break it down if you have to. If Carol Mossman’s still alive, call for an ambulance. If she’s dead, don’t touch anything.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Manny Ruiz said.
“Call right back and let me know what you find out,” Joanna added. “I’ll wait here until I hear from you.”
As soon as she ended the call, Joanna dredged her calendar out of her purse. She had been scheduled to meet Karen Oldsby at the Tribune office on Fry Boulevard at 7 P.M. Whether or not Carol Mossman was dead, what had happened at her mobile home constituted a more compelling demand on Sheriff Joanna Brady’s time than a newspaper interview.
Joanna dialed the phone number she had scrawled in the calendar next to Karen Oldsby’s name. When a canned, computer-generated voice mail announcement came on, it gave the dialed telephone number only. There was no way for Joanna to tell whether she had dialed the reporter’s home or office number. She left a brief message anyway.
“Karen. Sheriff Brady here. There’s been a possible homicide out near the San Pedro. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to make our appointment this evening. Please call my office tomorrow and reschedule.”
Ducking into the coat closet just inside her back door, Joanna ditched her heels and changed into jeans, a T-shirt, white socks, and tennis shoes. She was finishing tying the second shoelace when the phone rang again.
“She’s dead,” Manuel Ruiz announced flatly when Joanna answered. “Shot in the belly.”
“And the dogs?”
“They’re all dead, too,” he replied. “I counted seventeen in all. The place was like a goddamned oven. No air-conditioning. The windows were open, but the mobile was sitting in direct sun most of the day. Must be at least a hundred and twenty inside. I’m sure that’s what killed the dogs. Heat prostration. Dogs can’t take it, you know. Coop ’em up inside a hot building like that or in a car, and it kills ’em every time.”
The dead woman may have been Joanna’s problem, but the dead dogs were Manny Ruiz’s primary concern.
“Are you back in your vehicle?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Wait right there,” Joanna told him. “I’m on my way.”
After putting the phone down, Joanna stared at it for an indecisive moment, then picked it back up and dialed Tica’s number.
“Officer Ruiz told you what’s up?” Joanna asked.
“Yes.”
“So who all’s heading to the scene?”
“Detective Carpenter’s on call tonight,” Tica replied, naming Joanna’s lead homicide detective. “Dave Hollicker’s on his way. So is Casey Ledford.”
With her investigative team—a detective, her crime scene investigator, and her latent fingerprint tech—all en route, Joanna nodded. “What about Doc Winfield?” she asked.
“The ME will be heading out in a couple of minutes,” Tica replied.
“Good,” Sheriff Brady said. “So am I.”
Grabbing her purse, Joanna hurried outside. As she stepped through the door, late-afternoon heat hit her like a physical blow. Her shiny Crown Victoria was parked in a shaded spot right outside her private back-door entrance, but knowing she was headed for a less than perfect road, Joanna bypassed that vehicle. Instead, she vaulted into her much dented but entirely trustworthy four-wheel-drive Blazer. As soon as she started the engine, she turned on the air-conditioning as well, although for the first several minutes the only thing blowing through the vents was nothing but more overheated air.
Pausing for traffic at the entrance to the Justice Center, Joanna searched the sky for some sign of the few stray clouds that had poked their puny tops over the edge of the horizon earlier in the day. Now those wisps of cloud had disappeared entirely, leaving behind not so much as a single drop of moisture. Cochise County old-timers swore the rainy season always started on the Fourth of July, usually just in time to drown out the municipal fireworks display. If that was going to be the case this year, weather conditions would have to change drastically in the course of the next few days. Joanna Brady didn’t hold out much hope. The summer monsoon rains would come when they were damned good and ready and not a day before.
Convinced she’d encounter less traffic by going through Tombstone, Joanna headed in that direction. As she drove, her mind began sifting through the officers at her disposal and considered what additional assets she’d need at the crime scene. She clicked on her radio.
“Which deputies from Patrol are en route to the crime scene?”
“Raymond and Howell,” Tica Romero replied.
“According to Manny, we’ve got seventeen dead dogs to handle,” Joanna said. “That being the case, we’d better call out Jeannine Phillips, too.”
Jeannine Phillips was Joanna’s second full-time Animal Control officer. “We’re going to need another pair of hands. Tell her to bring along the Animal Control equivalent of body bags. We’ll need a bunch of those.”
Joanna dreaded what would happen when word of the canine fatalities leaked out. Arizona was a state where it was legal for unrestrained children to ride as passengers in the back of moving pickup trucks, but it was against the law to have an unrestrained dog riding there. Obviously the dog lobby was far more powerful than whoever was supposed to be looking out for little kids. Joanna was convinced that the deaths of seventeen dogs would create far more outrage than Carol Mossman’s apparent murder. And, since the deaths had occurred in Joanna’s jurisdiction and on her watch, she suspected that any public outrage would be aimed squarely in her direction.
As the miles ticked by, she tried to remember the exact sequence of events in which she had first been made aware of the Mossman situation and what actions she should have or could have taken to prevent this from happening. Manny Ruiz’s initial report had shown up in a mid-June morning briefing
.
“What’s a hoarder?” she had asked Chief Deputy Frank Montoya.
“Jeannine tells me they’re people who are a couple of bubbles out of plumb,” Frank replied. “As long as their lives are going along normally, they’re fine, but once they go off the tracks, they start ‘saving’ animals. They usually mean well, but they often end up taking in far more animals than they can care for properly.”
“And they don’t have them vaccinated,” Joanna offered.
“Because they don’t take them to see vets,” Frank added. “With that many dogs, it’s too expensive. Same thing goes for buying decent food.”
Joanna had skimmed down Manny Ruiz’s report. “It says here that the dogs seem to be well cared for.”
Frank nodded. “And when he went by that day, none of the dogs were loose. They were all in their crates in a shed. That’s why Manny issued a citation rather than taking the dogs into custody.”
“And gave her two weeks to comply,” Joanna added.
Which she probably didn’t do, Joanna thought.
As she left Tombstone on the Charleston Road and headed west, the glare of the setting sun was blinding. Even with the help of her visor and sunglasses, it was almost impossible to see oncoming traffic.
She crossed the spindly bridge across the San Pedro River—the same river Cortés had followed north in search of the Seven Cities of Gold—and turned right. She knew from Manuel Ruiz’s previous report that Carol Mossman’s single-wide mobile home was about half a mile north of the intersection. As soon as she turned off, she could see the clutch of vehicles that meant some, if not all, of her officers had already arrived.
Slowing the Blazer, Joanna steeled herself for what was to come. Crime scene investigation wasn’t one of her favorite things. As sheriff, she certainly wasn’t required to be a part of every homicide investigation. Nonetheless, ever since taking over the helm of the department, she had insisted on being present and accounted for each time a homicide had occurred inside her sixty-four-hundred-square-mile jurisdiction.
