Exit Wounds

by J. A. Jance

  Andy, Joanna’s first husband, had been a deputy sheriff campaigning for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down by a drug dealer’s hit man. Despite Joanna’s own lack of law enforcement experience, she had been asked to run for office in his place. To everyone’s surprise, including her own, she had been elected by a wide margin in what her detractors called a “sympathy” vote. Those same naysayers had expected her to confine herself to administrative duties only. Instead, in the course of those first few treacherous months in office, she had sent herself off to take police academy training and had made it her business to be personally involved in the process of fighting crime at its most basic and gut-wrenching level. Her active personal involvement in each of her department’s homicide cases had gone a long way toward winning her the grudging respect and cooperation of the career police officers under her supervision.

  She came to the grim task of homicide investigation with the clear knowledge that every murder affected far more than a single victim. The dead were already beyond help. As someone whose husband had died as a result of violent crime, Joanna was focused on helping to bring closure and comfort to those who were left behind. It was far more than just a job for her. It was a mission—and a calling.

  When Joanna arrived at the address, she went in through an open gate and then followed a gravel track until she reached a run-down fourteen-by-seventy mobile home baking in the full heat of the late-afternoon sun. A covered wooden porch had been tacked onto the front of the mobile. Off to one side was a lean-to carport with a dark green Datsun 710 station wagon parked under its sagging roof. Whatever else might have happened here, attempted car theft most likely wasn’t part of the program. A chain-link fence separated the mobile and shed from the surrounding desert.

  Joanna tucked her Blazer in amid the collection of other official vehicles, identifying each and taking informal attendance. Manny Ruiz’s pickup with its cage-laden bed blocked the opening to the carport. Parked nearby were two Ford Econoline vans belonging to Detective Carpenter and Crime Scene Investigator Dave Hollicker, who was already busily casting tire tracks. Casey Ledford’s aging but dependable Taurus was parked directly behind the vans. The medical examiner’s van was notable by its absence. The only officer visible other than Dave Hollicker was Manny Ruiz. With his head resting on his arms, the Animal Control officer leaned heavily on his pickup’s hood.

  As Joanna approached, Manny straightened up. Joanna noticed at once that he looked uncommonly pale. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’ve seen gut-shot animals before,” he murmured. “But never a person.” He broke off.

  You get used to it, Joanna thought. “It’s pretty bad then?” she asked.

  Ruiz nodded. “It’s bad, all right. She must’ve been right in front of the back door when she got hit. There’s blood everywhere and a trail of it through the kitchen and into the living room like she was dragging herself along on her belly. I think she musta been trying to get to the phone to call for help. She never made it.”

  Concerned over Manny’s unnatural pallor, Joanna took him by the arm. “Come back and sit with me in the Blazer for a minute,” she said. “You don’t have any animals stuck in your truck, do you?”

  Ruiz shook his head. “Nope. This was my first stop of the day. I was afraid I’d be bringing all of Carol Mossman’s dogs back to the pound with me. I wanted to have plenty of room. Even starting out empty, I figured it would still take two trips.”

  Once Manny Ruiz was seated in the Blazer, Joanna handed him a bottle of water. He drank half of it without pausing for breath.

  “And the dogs?” Joanna asked.

  “Heat,” Manny replied. “If the cooler’d been turned on, the dogs would probably be okay. If they got thirsty, they could have drunk water out of the toilet. And if they’d gotten hungry enough, they could’ve…” He left the sentence go unfinished. Joanna saw where he was headed with that bit of speculation. With an effort she managed to prevent her own mind from completing the image.

  Manny took another drink. Polishing off the contents of the bottle with his second gulp, he handed the empty back to Joanna. They were sitting in the front seat of her Blazer with the doors open and the radio chattering in the background. The radio was silent for the space of a moment or two. Suddenly, Manny sat up straight. “Did you hear that?” he demanded.

  “Hear what?” Joanna asked, thinking she had missed an important radio transmission.

  But Manny Ruiz had already vaulted out of the Blazer. Rumbling along with the gait of an upright grizzly bear, he charged past the mobile home and headed for the river. Once Joanna was outside the car, she heard what he had heard—the unmistakably mournful cry of a bereft puppy. Running to keep up, Joanna followed Manny around the trailer to the jury-rigged hut where Carol Mossman had confined her pack of dogs.

  The building was exactly as Manuel Ruiz had described it in his initial report. It was approximately the size of a two-car garage. Walls of straw bales covered with a thin veneer of stucco rose from the ground to a height of about ten feet, at which point the builder ran out of money, patience, or both. The roof consisted of a shaky collection of two-by-fours held up by several interior four-by-four upright posts. On top of the skeleton of two-by-fours lay a collection of scavenged lumber and doors, all of which would have toppled down at the first hint of a monsoon-driven wind.

  While Joanna paused long enough to examine the exterior of the building, Manny Ruiz disappeared inside. He emerged a moment later cradling a tiny ball of black fluff in one of his massive fists. “Look here,” he announced. “Here’s one little guy that made it.” He passed the whimpering puppy to Joanna. “And I’ll bet he’s starved,” Manny continued. “I’ve got some milk in my thermos. If you’ll hold on to him for a minute, I’ll go get it.”

  Joanna was still holding the puppy when Dr. George Winfield, the Cochise County Medical Examiner and Joanna’s relatively new stepfather, showed up behind her. “Looks like a single survivor was pulled from the wreckage,” he observed, peering over her shoulder for a closer look at the squeaking ball of fur still squirming fitfully in Joanna’s hands.

  “He wasn’t in the wreckage,” Joanna said. “If he had been, he’d be dead by now, too, right along with the others. Somehow he ended up being left in the shed when all the other dogs went inside the trailer.”

  “Lucky for him,” George said.

  And for us, Joanna thought. Crime scenes were usually places of utter desolation, yet here was a little life-affirming miracle, a scrap of hope. She clutched the puppy more tightly and cradled him to her breast.

  About then Manny Ruiz showed back up with his thermos. He poured some milk into the cup of the thermos, then he gently removed the puppy from Joanna’s grip and held its nose to the milk, which it lapped up hungrily. The puppy may not have been old enough to be weaned, but with his mother likely numbered among the dead dogs inside the mobile home, he was weaned now.

  The puppy drank until he seemed ready to pop. He would have drunk more, but Manny took the cup away and poured out what was left. “That’s enough, little fella,” he said. “You drink any more right now, you’ll make yourself sick.”

  Manuel Ruiz put the puppy down on the ground, where it staggered around in circles for a moment or two, then dropped onto Manny’s booted foot and fell sound asleep. The heavyset officer stared down at the puppy with a look of such tender concern on his face that Joanna was almost embarrassed to have seen it. Somehow she had fallen victim to the kind of stereotypical thinking that assumes Animal Control officers don’t like animals. Clearly that wasn’t the case with Officer Ruiz.

  “He is a cute little guy,” Doc Winfield agreed. “And I could stand here watching him sleep all day, but I’d better go have a look at my victim. Your detectives will be pissed at me for holding up the show.”

  He strode off, leaving Joanna and Manny looking down at the puppy. “He’s so little, I hate to take him to the pound,” Manny said thoughtfully.
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  Joanna looked at the contented wad of sleeping puppy. It was months now since Jenny’s bluetick hound, Sadie, had succumbed to cancer. Neither Joanna nor Butch had brought up the subject of getting another dog, and Jenny had seemed content to divide her time and attention between Kiddo, her horse, and her remaining dog, Tigger, a comical half pit-bull, half golden-retriever mutt. Now, though, seeing this homeless puppy, Joanna knew this was the right dog at the right time.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Joanna said, reaching down and plucking the sleeping puppy off Manny Ruiz’s boot. “Lucky’s going home with me.”

  Two

  Finished making his tire- and footprint casts, Dave Hollicker had disappeared into the mobile home while Joanna spoke to Manny. Now, as the CSI emerged once more, Joanna went to meet him. Dave’s face was flushed and his clothing was soaked with sweat.

  “What’s up?” Joanna asked.

  “It’s hotter’n hell in there,” he said, wiping his streaming forehead. “No electricity, so there’s no air-conditioning, and we’re losing the light. Doc Winfield’s wondering if you have an extra trouble light with you. And where’d you get that cute little puppy?”

  The puppy, cradled in Joanna’s arm, was still fast asleep. Stuffing the sleeping animal inside her shirt, Joanna fumbled the Blazer keys out of her pocket and handed them over. “Manny found him out in the shed,” she explained. “There’s a trouble light in the back of the Blazer. Doc Winfield is welcome to it, but what’s the matter with the electricity? Can’t you replace a fuse or pull a breaker and get the cooler running again?”

  Dave shook his head. “We’ve placed a call to the power company. They told us the juice is turned off due to lack of payment. We’ve requested that they switch it back on as soon as possible, but they don’t seem to be in any particular hurry.”

  Two more patrol cars and a second Animal Control vehicle drove up. “That’ll be Deputies Raymond and Howell,” Dave said. “What do you want them to do?”

  “The shots came through the back door, right?”

  Hollicker nodded.

  “And you’ve done all the footprints?”

  “All I could find.”

  “While it’s still light enough, then, have Raymond and Howell start a preliminary foreign-object search,” Joanna said.

  “Will do.”

  Jeannine Phillips walked into the yard lugging a large box.

  Dave started away, then turned back to the two Animal Control officers. “Doc Winfield also said that he’d like you to remove those dead dogs as soon as possible. There are dog dishes and dead dogs everywhere. The ME needs them out of the way. Since there’s so little room to work in, maybe one of you could go inside and ferry the dogs as far as the door. Remember, though, this is a crime scene. Whoever goes inside needs to wear booties and sign in on the crime scene diary.”

  “I’ll go,” Manny offered. Wordlessly Jeannine handed him the box with its load of large plastic bags.

  During the next half hour, Joanna watched as Manny carted one heavily laden bag after another to the door, where he passed the burden along to Jeannine, who then hauled it out to the waiting trucks. It offended the dog lover in Joanna to see all those dead animals carted off like so much unwanted garbage. Mentally keeping track of the number of trips, Joanna was doubly conscious of the tiny heart of the contentedly sleeping puppy beating a feather-light tattoo against her lower ribs.

  Which one of those black bags holds Lucky’s mother? she wondered. And how come he’s still alive when all the other dogs are dead?

  Jeannine Phillips was a strapping young woman who had once, as a junior in high school, gone out for boys’ football. Bisbee High School’s football coach had let her try out for the Pumas’ JV team, but a broken leg during a pre-season workout session had put an end to her football-playing ambitions. It had also left her with a slight but permanent limp. After only a year or so of junior college, she had started working Animal Control on a part-time basis and had never left. Now the situation was reversed, however. She worked full-time for Animal Control and was a part-time student at the University of Arizona’s satellite campus in Sierra Vista, where she was within twenty or so units of completing her bachelor’s degree.

  Clearly the situation that afternoon offended Jeannine Phillips every bit as much as it did Joanna Brady.

  “This never should have happened,” Jeannine grumbled as she returned to collect yet another bag. “If we weren’t so damn shorthanded, maybe one of us could have gotten back out here earlier to check on things. Maybe all these dogs wouldn’t be dead now.”

  On her best days Jeannine Phillips was a naturally taciturn loner. On occasion she was downright surly. This time, as far as Joanna was concerned, the woman’s complaint and attitude were both entirely understandable, and although Joanna tried not to take the criticism personally, she knew some of it was justified. With all the other demands on her time, Sheriff Brady was too busy to give Animal Control the kind of attention it deserved. It was hardly surprising that they viewed themselves as unwelcome stepchildren inside Joanna’s department.

  As for Jeannine Phillips, she had more grounds for dissatisfaction on that score than all of her compatriots put together. When the previous head of Animal Control had resigned the position, Jeannine should have been the logical choice for promotion. After all, she had worked in the unit longer than anyone else. She knew the procedures and understood how things were supposed to work. Now, with Joanna’s time and attention often focused elsewhere, Jeannine had been forced to assume the unenviable position of unofficial acting manager. As such, she supervised the unit’s day-to-day activities without the added credibility of an official title or any additional pay to compensate her for the extra work.

  “I was under the impression it was handled properly,” Joanna offered. “Manny told me when he came here earlier today, it was at the end of Carol Mossman’s two-week compliance period.”

  “Right,” Jeannine muttered. “But if we’d been doing the job we should have been doing, we would have known about this woman a long time ago. Maybe we could have done something to correct the situation long before she had a chance to work herself all the way up to eighteen dogs.”

  There was no arguing with that. Just then, Manny emerged carrying one last bag. He paused next to Joanna. “This is it, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “If you want to go in, it’s clear now.”

  Manny trudged away toward his truck, still wearing his crime scene booties. Steeling her heart for whatever gruesome sight awaited her inside the overheated mobile home, Joanne went looking for a pair of booties of her own. Before she could put them on, however, a cab drove down the gravel driveway and stopped in front of the gate in the chain-link fence. Moments later, the driver hopped out of the cab, opened the back door, and reached in to help his passenger exit.

  While Joanna watched, a pint-size white-haired woman, moving with the aid of a walker, emerged from the backseat. Impatiently shaking off the cabdriver’s helping hand, she headed straight for Manny Ruiz, who had just finished loading the final bag into his truck.

  “You can’t take Carol’s dogs away!” she shrieked at the Animal Control officer. Her walker get hung up briefly on a clump of dried grass. For a moment Joanna feared the woman would pitch forward over the handlebars and land on her head. Instead, she righted herself and resumed her tirade.

  “Do you hear me, young man? You can’t.” A moment later she had closed the distance between them. Parking her walker directly in front of the startled Manuel Ruiz, she glared up at him and shook a tiny fist in his face.

  “You let those dogs out of that truck right this minute!” she ordered. “Whatever the fine is, I’ll pay it. I have my checkbook right here.” Leaning on the walker with one hand, she seized a purse out of the basket on the handlebars and flailed that at him as well. Fortunately for all concerned, Manny dodged out of the way before the purse connected with his chin.

  Joanna hurried over to the melee. “Please, ma’a
m,” she said. “Officer Ruiz is just doing his job.”

  The woman abandoned her attack on Manny Ruiz and rounded on Joanna instead. “His job?” she demanded. “Just because Carol doesn’t make enough money to pay expensive vet bills is no reason to come take her pets away. What a heartless, mean-spirited thing to do. She loves those dogs, you see. Loves them and needs them.”

  “You know Carol Mossman, then?” Joanna asked.

  “Know her!” the woman snorted. “Of course I know her! Why wouldn’t I? She’s my granddaughter, isn’t she?” The old lady glowered at Joanna through narrowed eyes. “And who are you?” she demanded. “Another one of these glorified dogcatchers?”

  “Hey, lady,” the cabdriver called. “How long do you think you’ll be? My dispatcher wants to know when I’ll be back in Sierra Vista.”

  Now the woman turned her considerable ire on him. “You just hold your horses, young man,” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m busy? It’s going to take however long it takes. I already told you I’ll pay for you to hold the cab, so hold it!” She turned back to Joanna. “Now who did you say you are again?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to say,” Joanna said, removing her ID wallet from her hip pocket. “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady. These are my two Animal Control officers, Jeannine Phillips and Manuel Ruiz.”

  The woman glanced briefly at Joanna’s ID and then handed it back. “Since when is the sheriff in charge of the dog pound?” she demanded. “I should think, as sheriff, you’d have far more important things to do. And since when does it take this many people to pick up a few dogs? But as long as you’re here, maybe you can help me get them to let Carol’s dogs loose. As I tried to explain to this officer here, I’ve come with my checkbook. However much the fine is, I’m willing to pay it.”