Downfall

by J. A. Jance

  “What about the boys?” Joanna asked. “Is it possible they were involved in some way?”

  Ernie shook his head. “I don’t think so. The kids look like innocent bystanders to me,” he said. “Because they took shelter in the Jeep during the storm, we went ahead and took their prints for elimination purposes. Just to be sure, Casey ran them through AFIS. Not surprisingly, nothing turned up on either of them.”

  Casey Ledford was the other member of Joanna’s CSI team—her resident fingerprint expert. With newly upgraded computer capability installed on all the patrol cars, it didn’t surprise Joanna to hear that the fingerprints of both boys had already been run through the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

  “What about the vics’?” Joanna asked.

  “Considering the decomp, those may or may not be retrievable. In any case, Dr. Baldwin prefers to take prints once she has the bodies back at the morgue.”

  “Her job, her rules,” Joanna conceded.

  “Hey, how about somebody giving us a hand here?” Ralph Whetson asked, coming into view while lugging a metal-framed stretcher designed to transport bodies.

  Ralph was Dr. Baldwin’s morgue assistant and a constant complainer. He dropped his load just inside the circle of light, as if carrying it another step was more than he could manage. Seconds later, someone else appeared behind him. The newcomer was Deputy Stock, also loaded down with a stretcher.

  “Hey, Jeremy,” Ernie called out, his tone stern and thunderous. “I thought I told you to take those boys back home to their mother.”

  “You did,” the deputy agreed. “I was on my way to do that very thing when I ran into Ralph here and Detective Howell. I could see that Ralph needed a hand. He was trying to carry both stretchers by himself and wasn’t making much progress. Deb offered to take charge of the boys so I could help Ralph with the stretchers.”

  Deb Howell was Joanna’s third homicide detective. She hadn’t been on call that night, but Joanna knew she was a self-starter. It was hardly surprising that she would turn up at the scene on her own.

  Ernie Carpenter, on the other hand, tended to be a bit of a grouch on occasion. From his point of view, orders weren’t something that could be casually handed off to someone else. Given that he was close to the top of the department’s pecking order, his grumbly bear persona meant that he wasn’t always on the best of terms with Joanna’s patrol deputies. Knowing this, she stepped in to smooth things over.

  “Good thinking,” she said. “Carrying those stretchers may be challenging now when they’re empty, but it’ll be a whole lot more difficult once they’re loaded. Seems to me we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Ernie favored her with a grudging nod. “Okay,” he said.

  Dr. Baldwin moved away from the bodies. “Glad you’re here, Ralph,” she said. “I think we’re ready to rock and roll. Let’s load ’em up and head ’em out.”

  CHAPTER 2

  JOANNA’S PREDICTION ABOUT THE LOADED STRETCHERS BEING unwieldy turned out to be one hundred percent accurate. In the end, everyone at the crime scene had to lend a hand—including Joanna and Kendra Baldwin herself. The rough terrain and the need to use flashlights made for slow going. Getting the two bodies across the still-running wash wasn’t easy, either. Once again Joanna’s boots filled with sand, making every step more painful than the last.

  Back at the makeshift parking lot, the first body was quickly loaded into the back of the ME’s Dodge Caravan. The problem was, the minivan was only equipped to carry one body at a time. That meant everything had to grind to a halt until an aid car, summoned from the city of Bisbee, arrived to transport the second one.

  While they waited, Joanna sank down on the Yukon’s running board long enough to catch her breath and empty her boots.

  While she was doing so, Kendra looked down at her with visible concern. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You didn’t overdo it, did you?”

  “You mean for someone in my delicate condition?” Joanna asked.

  Kendra smiled. “Well?”

  They were both women doing jobs that historically belonged to men, and they had established a natural camaraderie from the very beginning. Coming from Kendra, the comment felt like what it was—a joke—rather than a form of politically incorrect criticism.

  Joanna shook her head. “No, I’m fine. As far as the autopsies are concerned, what’s the game plan?”

  Kendra looked at her watch, some kind of electronic device that glowed in the dark. “It’s almost nine,” she said. “By the time we get the bodies back to the morgue, it’ll be too late to start processing them tonight, but I should be able to collect fingerprints. If I get decent prints, I’ll shoot a copy of them over to you so your people will have access to them sooner rather than later. I’ll also take dental X-rays and ship those along as well, in case dental records work better than prints.”

  Joanna gave the ME a weary smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Once were done here, I’ll be going back to the office while Ernie and Jaime go interview the two Padilla boys. Deb Howell wasn’t supposed to be on duty tonight. I hate to run up the overtime, but once Deb dropped off the two boys, I asked her to start working on finding Desirée’s next of kin. Pima County property-tax rolls say that the address listed on Desirée’s driver’s license belongs to one Roberta Wilburton.”

  “Mother/daughter maybe?” Kendra asked.

  “Or maybe two sisters,” Joanna answered. “We’ll know soon enough. Deb is on her way to Tucson to speak with Roberta right now.”

  “And all the while Detective Howell is driving to Tucson, she’s getting overtime, but you’re not, right?” Kendra observed.

  “You should know,” Joanna said, nodding in agreement. “Neither do you.”

  “Which is another reason I won’t be doing those autopsies tonight—to hold the line on staff overtime. Let’s say we’ll set the first one for tomorrow at nine A.M. In the meantime, what’s the deal with the crime scene?”

  “Both the crime scene and the campsite are mostly cordoned off,” Joanna replied. “Dave Hollicker will have the Jeep hauled to our impound lot at the Justice Center. I believe a tow truck is en route. I’ve also made arrangements for one of my on-duty deputies to stay at the campsite overnight. Tomorrow my CSIs will come in, dismantle it, and take everything into evidence.”

  “Speaking of evidence,” Kendra said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a cell phone wrapped in a clear evidence bag. “When we separated the two bodies, I found this caught between them, and I’m sure that’s the only thing that kept it from being smashed to pieces. The problem is, the battery is discharged. It’s dead as a doornail.”

  Joanna held up the bag and peered at the phone. “It’s the same model as mine,” she said. “I have a charger in the car, but without a pass code, I doubt that charging it will do us any good.”

  Back at the Yukon, Joanna donned a pair of latex gloves and plugged in the charger. Still inside the evidence bag, the phone came to life with a flashed warning of very low battery life. As expected, a six-number security code was required to access it.

  “Do you happen to have Desirée’s date of birth?” Joanna asked.

  Kendra consulted her notes. “Yes, I do. June sixth, 1990. Why?”

  Using the point of a stylus she dug out of her purse, Joanna carefully keyed in the number 060690, and the phone lit up immediately. She went first to the recent calls and found seven in a row from “Mom,” all of which had come in the course of the day and had gone unanswered since Desirée was already dead. There was a string of messages, too. No doubt all those calls and messages had contributed to draining the battery.

  In the contacts list, Joanna located the ICE category—In Case of Emergency. The top name on the list was Roberta Wilburton along with the same 520 phone number she had found in the recent-calls list. The listing, however, also contained an address: 587 North Fourth Avenue, Tucson, AZ.

  Knowing her phone most likely woul
dn’t function any better than Jaime’s had, Joanna climbed inside her Yukon and used the radio to be patched through to Detective Howell. “Is the address you found for Roberta Wilburton at 587 North Fourth?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Deb answered. “It sure is. How did you learn that?”

  “Dr. Baldwin located a cell phone that belonged to Desirée Wilburton, and I managed to unlock it. Roberta Wilburton’s name was at the top of the list with the same phone number as the one listed in recent calls under ‘Mom.’”

  “Good to know,” Deb responded. “I’m just passing the Sonoita turnoff on I-10. I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve had a chance to speak to the woman. Anything else of interest?”

  “Nothing more just now. We’ll need to study everything that’s on the phone, but not until after we have a properly sworn warrant in hand. In the meantime, an ambulance just arrived to help transport the second body.”

  “Do you want me to call you tonight or wait until morning?” Deb asked.

  “Call tonight,” Joanna answered. “I’m planning on going back to the office for a while. I’ll be awake.”

  Again using the stylus, Joanna turned off the phone, removed the charger, and then offered the phone—still in the evidence bag—to Kendra. “Do you want to take this to Ernie or should I?” she asked.

  “I’ll take charge of it,” Kendra said. “In the interest of maintaining the chain of evidence, I’d best be the one who hands it over.”

  Joanna nodded. “Fair enough,” she said.

  Standing beside the Yukon, Joanna watched the activity unfolding around her as the second body—she was unsure which one—was loaded into a newly arrived ambulance. Thinking she’d use the relative quiet to update Butch on what was going on, she pulled out her phone. Only when Joanna saw that she had no bars and no service did she remember that Jaime had had to climb partway up Geronimo before he had a signal.

  Tom Hadlock turned up about then. “Do you want me to drive you back home or are you going to drive yourself?” he asked. “Deputy Stock is about the head out. I can catch a ride back to the department with him. Tica tells me media calls are already coming in, and I should be there to handle them.”

  Tica Romero was Joanna’s nighttime dispatcher.

  “Good thinking,” Joanna said. “I’m going to hang around here until the Jeep is towed, then I’ll come there, too.”

  After Tom left with Deputy Stock, Joanna went to the back of the Yukon and rummaged through the box of just-in-case clothing she kept there, retrieving a pair of dry socks and tennis shoes. She had just finished changing out of her still-sodden boots when the tow truck arrived. The driver, Mel Jackson, was an old-timer in coveralls with the stub of a cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth. He got out and surveyed both the wash and the vehicle stranded on the far side of it. Water still ran, but not quite as furiously as it had before. As the sand gradually settled out, the bed of the wash would rise. In the meantime, the two abrupt edges remained, with no gradual way in or out.

  “So near and yet so far,” Jackson muttered, speaking around his cigar. “If I go off that sheer drop-off, my truck’ll land in that sand, come to a dead stop, and won’t ever get up the other side. Since I can’t get at the Jeep from here, I’ll have to come around the long way, past the rifle range.”

  Joanna knew better than to argue the point. “You and Dave do whatever you have to do.”

  Mel and Dave Hollicker set off at once. With Deputy Ruiz on hand to oversee the Jeep until they returned and then remain at the crime scene overnight, Joanna headed for the Yukon, intent on going back to the department, when another vehicle arrived on the scene—an all-too-familiar white Toyota RAV4. It pulled in next to her and stopped. The driver darted out onto the ground, leaving the Toyota’s engine running and the headlights on. The high beams backlit the wild mane of hair that could belong to only one person, Joanna’s least favorite reporter—Marliss Shackleford.

  “You’ve got no business being here,” Joanna told the new arrival abruptly. “Chief Deputy Hadlock is on his way back to the department, where he’ll be preparing for a press briefing early tomorrow morning. If you’re looking for information, that’s where you need to be.”

  “But can’t you tell me something tonight—a little something that will give me a head start on everybody else?” Marliss wheedled. “It’s the least you can do since I’ve gone to all the trouble of coming out here. That should count for something.”

  It counts for your being a total pain in the ass, Joanna thought, but she did her best to keep a civil tongue in her head. “You know the drill, Marliss. Details of the incident will be released once the bodies have been identified and next-of-kin notifications have been made. No information will be provided before that time.”

  “So you are confirming that there are at least two victims, then?” Marliss asked.

  Joanna hadn’t meant to acknowledge that. Now, not wanting to give away anything more, she didn’t respond one way or the other.

  “Where are they?” Marliss persisted.

  “The victims are on their way to the morgue,” Joanna said. “A vehicle belonging to one of them is about to be towed back to the department, and that’s where I’m going, too.”

  “But didn’t I meet a tow truck just now? It was going out as I was coming in?”

  “Mel couldn’t cross the wash here,” Joanna said, gesturing with her Maglite. “He’s having to go the long way around.”

  “I understand all this happened over on Geronimo,” Marliss said, looking first at the hillock looming in the background and then peering down into the sandy wash. “How did you get them out?”

  “We carried them,” Joanna answered. “On stretchers.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to use a helicopter for that kind of operation?” Marliss asked.

  Joanna recognized the seemingly innocent question as a minefield the moment she heard it. An organization focused on law enforcement issues along the Mexican border had offered the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department a grant that would have paid the entire cost of leasing and operating a helicopter for the period of a year. On the face of it, it was a very generous gesture, but Joanna had turned it down. Accepting it would have been a lot like taking in a free-to-good-home long-legged colt without having any understanding about the long-term implications of caring for and feeding a full-grown horse.

  Yes, having the helicopter available tonight would have made retrieving the bodies a much simpler procedure, but after years of running the department, Joanna understood that once the people of Cochise County became accustomed to the idea that the sheriff’s department had a helicopter at its disposal, they would expect that availability to continue from one year to the next. The problem was, once the grant ran out, there was no way Joanna’s budget could afford such a luxury item without having to take a substantial hit in terms of the number of officers on duty at any given time.

  Unfortunately, Donald Hubble, Joanna’s opponent in the current reelection cycle had made “revisiting the helicopter decision” a major part of his program and the centerpiece of each campaign speech, although whenever he brought up the subject, he conveniently failed to acknowledge the ongoing budget problems operating the helicopter would entail.

  “Since we don’t currently have a helicopter, there’s no point in debating that issue,” Joanna replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  But Marliss wasn’t finished. “Considering what happened, I’m a little surprised to see you working tonight.”

  “You’re referring to what happened to my mother and George, I suppose?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “What makes you think either one of them would expect me to turn my back on a serious incident like this? My mother would expect me to do the job the people of Cochise County elected me to do, and so would George—George probably even more so. And now, as I said earlier, I have business to attend to.”

  With that, Joanna climbed into the Yukon, pul
led a U-turn, and then drove off, leaving a frustrated Marliss Shackleford standing alone in the desert. Halfway back to town, once Joanna reconnected with the cell-phone network, a whole series of message announcements arrived. Not wanting to hang around long enough for another encounter with Marliss, Joanna continued to drive without stopping to look at any of the incoming messages, but when Butch called, she answered.

  “How are things?” he asked.

  “I’m on my way back to the office. Two dead females. No sign of a weapon. No immediate signs of wounds on either victim other than what you might expect from falling off a cliff onto a pile of boulders. Could be either a suicide pact or else homicide/suicide. Dr. Baldwin has the first autopsy scheduled for nine A.M. tomorrow. We’ve got a tentative ID on one of the victims, and Detective Howell is off to Tucson to speak to someone we believe to be that victim’s mother.”

  “I take it I shouldn’t wait up,” Butch said resignedly.

  “Correct,” Joanna replied. “The media barrage is already under way, and I expect Tom will need some backup.”

  “You know my thoughts on that score.”

  And Joanna did know his thoughts, chapter and verse. Butch firmly believed that Tom Hadlock was incapable of ever growing into the job of chief deputy, especially when it came to handling media relations. Sometimes Joanna thought so as well.

  “I know,” she agreed, “but one crisis at a time, please.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Don’t stay at the office too late. The last few days have been hell on wheels. You need your rest.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Got it. Good night.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 3

  DUE TO GEORGE AND ELEANOR’S SUDDEN DEATHS, JOANNA HAD now been out of the office for a solid week. During the years she’d been sheriff, she’d taken a day or two off here and there, but the only times she’d been away for extended periods of time had been when she and Butch had gone on their honeymoon and when Dennis was born. Both times, Frank Montoya had been her chief deputy, and he had carried the load with no difficulty, which probably accounted for why the city of Sierra Vista had lured him away from the sheriff’s department to be their chief of police.