by J. A. Jance
Joanna had decided against turning the chief deputy search over to a head-hunting search firm. Instead, after several months of deliberation, she had promoted from within. Tom Hadlock, her jail commander, who had a master’s degree in public administration, had seemed a reasonable choice. Two months into his new and greatly expanded role, however, Tom was still struggling, and so was Joanna. Tom may have had a university degree to his credit, but on the job he was stiff and inexperienced and lacking the easygoing confidence and competence that had made working with Frank such a pleasure.
Staring at a paper copy of the next month’s shift schedule that had finally made it to Joanna’s desk a day later than it should have been, she shook her head regretfully and recalled the words to that old Bob Dylan song: “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
Of course, Frank wasn’t completely gone. He had asked her to stand up with him and be his “best man”-Joanna liked to think of it as “best person”-at the wedding that was scheduled to happen on Saturday morning of this very week. Joanna had been honored to accept, but the hoopla surrounding the wedding and Joanna’s expected participation in all of it added more complications to a week that was already busy even before Larry Kendrick’s Monday morning phone call.
Joanna signed off on the scheduling paperwork and had started making progress on her mound of correspondence when her direct line rang again. This time the caller was Ernie.
“Sorry to bother you, boss,” Ernie said. “Natalie finally corralled the dog-a Doberman-looking mutt-and hauled him out of the way so someone could check on the guy. He’s dead, all right. Looks to me like he’s been that way for some time-several hours at least.”
“Have you called the M.E.?” Joanna asked.
“You know Dr. Machett,” Ernie said sourly. “Remember? We’re not allowed to call him directly. I talked to Madge Livingston. She said she’d send him a text message and that he’d call when he can. I guess she’s not allowed to call him directly, either. Makes me miss the hell out of Doc Winfield.”
Joanna missed him, too. Dr. George Winfield, the previous Cochise County medical examiner and, coincidentally, Joanna’s stepfather, had announced his retirement at almost the same time Frank Montoya had given Joanna his notice. Giddy as a pair of teenagers, George and her mother, Eleanor, had headed off on their first snowbird adventure in a newly purchased but used motor home. They were currently gearing up for their second summer’s worth of RVing. In the meantime, Joanna couldn’t help feeling that she had been left holding the bag.
Losing two valued members of her team-George Winfield and Frank Montoya-at once had come as a severe body blow to Joanna’s administration, and the constant readjustment uproar inside her department since then had left her reeling. For months, Joanna’s officers had been plagued by having to work with a series of contract M.E.s who had filled in on a temporary basis. A month earlier, the Board of Supervisors had finally gotten around to hiring George’s permanent replacement. They had given the M.E. nod to Dr. Guy Machett, a newcomer to Cochise County, and to Arizona as well, who had earned both his medical degree and his pathology specialty from Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Machett was energetic and smart, but he seemed overly impressed with himself along with his high-blown credentials. He often prefaced derogatory remarks about southeastern Arizona with the words “Where I come from…,” to which Joanna often wanted to reply, “So why don’t you go back there?”
Two weeks earlier, in the aftermath of a tragic automobile accident, Joanna had seen Dr. Machett interact with grieving family members of a young man who had died as a result of a single-vehicle rollover. In dealing with the parents, Machett had exhibited zero amounts of charm and even less empathy. As Joanna had told her husband, Butch, after that uncomfortable encounter, “Guy Machett has the bedside manner of your basic bullfrog.” Butch had laughed off her comment, but as far as Joanna was concerned, the situation with Dr. Machett was no laughing matter.
For one thing, he had insisted on establishing an official “chain of command” style of operation. When George Winfield had been running the show, Joanna’s detectives had been allowed unlimited access to him. They had been encouraged to contact the M.E. directly whenever they judged that the situation warranted his involvement. Not so with Dr. Machett. As far as he was concerned, lowly homicide detectives, people Machett deemed to be somehow beneath him, had to “go through channels”-which is to say through Joanna or through his office-in order to contact him or summon him to a crime scene. And he had made it clear that no one, under any circumstances, was to refer to him as Doc. He was Dr. Machett, thank you very much.
Despite his apparent arrogance, Joanna couldn’t help but wonder if it was possible that he was putting on a front. For one thing, although he was several years older than Joanna, he was relatively new and untried as far as doing the job was concerned. And he didn’t have the foggiest idea about the importance of winning friends and influencing people. In fact, in the course of a few short weeks, he had managed to create a whole cheering section of people who were actively rooting for the man to fall flat on his face.
“But Machett is on his way to the crime scene?” Joanna asked.
“Beats the hell out of me,” Ernie replied. “According to Madge, he’ll get back to me. I take that to mean he’ll get back to me eventually-when he’s damned good and ready.”
“What do you think we have?” Joanna asked, changing the subject away from Dr. Machett’s all-too-obvious shortcomings and back to the victim.
“The guy who called it in thought it was an ATV accident. Now that I’ve seen it, I’d have to say from the tracks that it looks more like a hit-and-run,” Ernie said. “Or else maybe a hit, hit, hit-and-run. I think the dead guy was run down deliberately, and whoever did it is long gone. It looks to me like he was run over several different times by the same vehicle, or maybe once each by several separate vehicles.”
“ATVs?” Joanna asked.
“I’d say we’re looking for something bigger than that,” Ernie replied. “And I don’t know how many. One for sure, but maybe more.”
“What about having CSI make casts of the tracks?” she asked. “Surely you’d be able to tell the number of vehicles from the number of tracks.”
“Sorry, boss, no can do,” Ernie said. “These are sand dunes.”
“Sand dunes?” Joanna repeated. Driving to California, she remembered being impressed by the glorious red sand dunes west of Yuma along I-8. She had lived in Cochise County all her life. The idea that there might be sand dunes much closer to home came as something of a shock. “I didn’t know we had any of those,” she said.
“You do now,” Ernie told her. “And believe me, tracks that are left in sand like what’s here aren’t remotely castable.”
“What about identification?”
“None on the body,” he said, “at least none that we’ve found so far.”
“What about the dog? Does it have tags?”
“Maybe so. He was wearing a collar and it looks like he has tags, but no one can get close enough to read them. Natalie’s working on him now, trying to get him into her truck. Once she does that, maybe she’ll be able to tell us something. When I get off the phone with you, I’ll ask her.”
“All right then,” Joanna said. “I’m on my way.”
“Good,” Ernie said. “I’m glad to hear it. Dave Hollicker is headed here as well.”
Most of the time, Joanna’s CSI unit was a two-person team made up of Dave and Casey Ledford, Joanna’s latent fingerprint tech. Unfortunately, Casey was currently out of town attending a training conference on the latest upgrades in AFIS-the nationwide Automated Fingerprint Identification System. With Casey unavailable, Dave Hollicker was reduced to being a one-man show.
Joanna put down her phone and donned her Kevlar vest, then opened the door to her office and spoke to her secretary, Kristin Gregovich.
“How long will you be gone?” Kristin wanted to k
now.
“It’s a crime scene,” Joanna told her. “I’ll be back eventually; I just don’t know when.”
Relieved to have an excuse to leave her paperwork jungle behind, Joanna hurried out her private back entrance and into her Crown Victoria parked a few steps from her door. A few minutes later, she was driving east on U.S. Highway 80, heading for Double Adobe, Elfrida, and ultimately Bowie.
Joanna’s jurisdiction, Cochise County, was an eighty-square-mile block of territory as large as Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. On the south it was bordered by Mexico and on the east by New Mexico. Her office in the Justice Center was in the lower right-hand corner of the county. The crime scene was seventy miles straight north of there-except she couldn’t drive straight north. The roads didn’t run that way.
Along the highway, she was glad to see the signs of spring-the bright greens of newly leafed mesquite and the carpet of bright yellow flowers that lined either side of the roadway. Lost in thought, she had driven only a few miles when her phone rang.
“Sheriff Brady here,” she said.
“I found Bowie on my GPS,” Guy Machett said without preamble or greeting. “I can make it there just fine, but where the hell is the crime scene?”
His attitude grated on Joanna as much as his words did. He pronounced Bowie the outlander way, Bowie as in bow tie as opposed to the approved southeastern Arizona pronunciation.
“It’s pronounced boo-ee,” she told him.
“That’s not how it’s spelled in my BlackBerry,” he returned.
And obviously your BlackBerry couldn’t be wrong, Joanna thought to herself. “But it is how people around here say it,” she told him. And it’s how you’ll pronounce it, too, if you don’t want the locals laughing at you.
“The crime scene is northeast of there,” she said. “Some GPS receivers don’t cover those rural roads and areas very well.”
“I was scheduled to be at a continuing ed conference in Tucson all day today,” Machett said. “It bugs the hell out of me to miss it, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“If you’re leaving Tucson now, you should arrive in about an hour then,” Joanna said. “That’s about the time I’ll get there as well. Call me. I’ll help guide you in.”
“Make that three hours,” Machett grumbled. “They can’t expect me to drive around in that god-awful van wherever I go. I had to drive to Tucson in my personal vehicle. That means I’ll have to drive all the way back to Bisbee and pick up the van before I come to the crime scene.”
George didn’t mind driving around in the M.E.’s van, Joanna thought.
“What about Bobby?” she asked. “Couldn’t he drive the van over and meet you there?”
Bobby Short had spent the last two years working as George Winfield’s full-time assistant.
“Bobby quit,” Machett said, sounding offended. “Just like that. He came into my office last Friday morning. He told me he had two weeks of vacation coming. Said he was taking them both and that he wouldn’t be back. More’s the pity. He wasn’t a trained M.E. tech by any means, but I could have used him for some of the heavy lifting. The one I’d really like to see quit is Madge Livingston. She’s a joke.”
Bobby Short hadn’t been particularly long in the brains department, but he had been a cheerful, willing worker in a difficult job. Joanna had no idea what Machett had said or done that had provoked Bobby enough to quit his job, but apparently he had. Madge, the M.E. office’s other full-time employee, who served as both secretary and clerk, had been a fixture in the Cochise County administrative staff hierarchy for as long as Joanna could remember. She was an opinionated peroxide blonde who smoked unfiltered Camels out by the morgue’s Dumpsters and rode her Harley to work. George Winfield had gotten along with her just fine, but then George could get along with almost anyone, including Joanna Brady’s difficult mother, Eleanor.
Joanna understood that Madge wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but she was anything but a joke. If Guy Machett went after her, he would do so at his own peril-sort of like moving a big rock and uncovering a nest of baby rattlesnakes hidden underneath.
Joanna could have warned him about all that, but she didn’t. “I’ll see you at the crime scene then,” she said. “Whenever you get there.”
“Why are you going?” Machett asked.
She understood the implication. What he meant was that, as sheriff, she was far too important to show up at a run-of-the-mill crime scene.
I do it because it’s part of my job, Joanna thought. “It’s a possible homicide,” she explained.
“Don’t you trust your detectives to handle it?” he asked.
“I trust my detectives implicitly,” she returned. “But we do the job together.”
“That may be fine as far as you’re concerned,” he said. “If you’ve got nothing better to do and don’t mind showing up in person, bully for you. It’s a waste of valuable time and training for me to be expected to make a personal appearance whenever some hick from Cochise County decides to croak out in the middle of nowhere. I fully intend to get myself some decent help to handle situations like this, and it won’t be some untrained gofer, either.”
For years now, Joanna’s department’s hiring practices had suffered under the county’s notorious cost-containment policy of NNP-no new personnel-and it was still very much in effect. It was only through using one of Frank Montoya’s creative budgetary sleights of hand that she’d been able to add on Natalie Wilson as her new Animal Control officer. NNP allowed for replacement of lost employees. That meant Guy Machett would be able to hire someone to take over Bobby Short’s position, but she doubted he’d be able to add anyone else. Picking a fight with Madge Livingston was one thing. Taking on the Board of Supervisors over hiring issues would be downright foolhardy.
Good luck with that, Joanna thought.
“See you when you get there then. As I said, when you get as far as Bowie,” she added, forcefully pronouncing the word in the manner she regarded as the right way, “call me again. Either I’ll guide you from there or one of my deputies will.” With that, she ended the call.
Rolling north through the Sulphur Springs Valley toward Willcox, Joanna was left thinking about what an overbearing jerk Machett was and about how much she missed working with George Winfield on a day-to-day basis. They had been thrown together as M.E. and sheriff long before George had married Joanna’s mother, and afterward as well. Rather than appreciating George’s close working relationship with her daughter, Eleanor Lathrop had been jealous of it, but she’d been even more jealous of George’s job itself. Now that he was retired, the two of them were able to spend time off by themselves, traveling in the used Newell Coach they’d purchased. It was clear enough that this new Eleanor was happier and more contented than the mother Joanna had known all her life. It didn’t seem fair, however, that Eleanor’s new-found happiness came with the unfortunate trade-off that left Joanna working with Dr. Guy Machett.
Despite Joanna’s confidence about her own ability to locate the crime scene, she was forced to make two false starts after leaving Bowie before she finally pulled up at the wrought-iron gate that marked the main entrance to Action Trail Adventures. She stopped her Crown Victoria and rolled down her window. The entry gate was wide open. Just beyond her window stood a post equipped with both a telephone receiver and a keypad. On the first section of barbed-wire fence to the right of the gate was a hand-painted sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. CALL FOR ADMITTANCE. The fence post nearest the gate held the tangled remains of what might have been a surveillance camera. Fifty yards or so away from the gate sat a decrepit, dusty Airstream trailer with an equally disreputable F-150 pickup parked nearby.
“Looks like somebody tore that camera out by its roots,” someone said.
Joanna turned away from the trailer in time to see Natalie Wilson walking toward her. The ACO wasn’t any bigger than Joanna’s own five-foot-one frame, but she was tough as nails. Natalie had spent
a couple of years on the professional rodeo circuit and had applied to work for Animal Control after turning in her spurs and saddle. Next to her, walking docilely on a leash, was an enormous dog-a Doberman, apparently. Once they were within a few feet of the car, the dog spotted Joanna through the window. He lunged at her, barking. Remembering what Ernie had said about the dead man’s vicious dog keeping investigators at bay, Joanna drew back in alarm.
“Quiet, Miller,” Natalie ordered, yanking back on the leash. “Sit!”
Without a moment’s hesitation the dog complied. He stopped barking and sat, still keeping a close eye on Joanna. It was enough of a threat that she made no move to open the door.
“This is the dead guy’s dog?” she asked.
Natalie nodded. “That’s right.”
“Ernie told me he’s dangerous. What’s he doing out of your truck? Shouldn’t he be on his way to the pound?”
“I called Jeannine and asked about that,” Natalie answered. “She checked. Miller’s not a stray. His tags and shots are all current and in order, and this is where he lives. Since he hasn’t set foot outside the property line, we’ve got no call to take him into custody. Jeannine said for me to stay here with him. We’re hoping one of the dead guy’s relatives will come forward and take him.”
“But Ernie said-”
“That Miller was vicious?” Natalie asked. “That’s a laugh. The poor thing was scared to death. He was also hungry and thirsty. Not only that, someone had killed his owner and taken a potshot at him as well. Fortunately the bullet only grazed the top of his shoulder. He should probably see a vet, but Jeannine is hoping that whoever takes him will handle that.”
