by J. A. Jance
Kristin had to think about Joanna’s comment for a moment. She wasn’t sure how to take it-as a compliment or as something else. “Thank you,” she said stiffly after a pause. “I think.”
Joanna went back into her office, collected her purse and her To-Do list, and then headed for the car. She had arrived at the Justice Complex too late to stop by Motor Pool before the morning briefing. She had parked the Crown Victoria in her usual place. Now, the sun had spent two hours shining in through the window and onto the urine-soaked front seat. When Joanna opened the car door, the odor inside the vehicle was almost overpowering. Not wanting to leave the onerous job of moving the car to someone else, she got in and drove straight to the garage.
When Joanna walked into the cavelike service bays, at first she thought no one was there. “Anybody home?” she called.
About then she caught sight of a pair of work boots sticking out from under the midsection of the jail’s utility van. Seconds later, Danny Garner, chief mechanic in charge of Cochise County Sheriff’s Department Motor Pool, rolled out from ruder the van on a creeper. “Morning, Sheriff. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a little problem with my Crown Victoria.”
“Not another water hose.”
“Not a hose,” Joanna told him, “but it is a water problem.”
When Joanna left the garage a few minutes later, one of the jail trustees, armed with an upholstery shampooer, was already scrubbing away at the front seat. Joanna returned to the back parking lot and collected her Blazer. Heading for Sierra Vista, she had thirty minutes to organize her thoughts.
Other people claimed to see things in their mind’s eye. Joanna exercised her mind’s ear. Driving west on Highway 92, she rehearsed possible conversations with both Mark Childers, Oak Vista’s developer, and with Dena Hogan, Alice Rogers’ attorney. She wanted to let Childers know that members of her department would do what they could to protect his property and equipment while, at the same time, trying not to interfere with private citizens’ rights to assembly and free speech. That meant that Joanna’s people would be walking a tightrope between Childers’ interests and those of the demonstrators. She also wanted to let him know that she wasn’t about to be cowed by a cozy romantic relationship between him and a member of the board of supervisors.
As far as Dena Hogan was concerned, Joanna wondered how she could encourage the attorney’s cooperation. She would have to finesse her way into the needed information and find out about Alice Rogers’ newly written will or lack of same. Not only that, discovering a few pertinent details about Alice’s financial situation would give everyone concerned a better idea of what the stakes were.
That was how far she had gone in her thinking process as she drove across the San Pedro at Palominas, where a blazing column of golden-leafed cottonwoods followed a meandering path through unexpectedly lush green river-bottom farmland in the middle of an otherwise parched desert.
Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed Fran Daly’s office in Tucson. One of the things Joanna appreciated about Fran’s down-to-earth way of doing business was that she usually answered her own calls.
“Daly here,” the assistant medical examiner growled into the phone in her gravelly smoker’s voice.
“It’s Joanna-Joanna Brady.”
“Should have known,” Dr. Daly grunted. “You must operate on radar. I only finished the autopsy ten minutes ago. Detective Hemming was here during, but I haven’t talked to Detective Lazier yet. He’s going to be pissed as all hell when he finds out I talked to you before I talked to him.”
“Tough,” Joanna said. “Then again, on second thought, maybe you shouldn’t tell him.”
“There are some really good people working for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” Fran Daly told her. “Hank Lazier just doesn’t happen to be one of them. He and I have gone nose-to-nose on several different occasions. But since I believe in picking my fights and this one doesn’t seem worth it, I probably won’t-tell him, that is.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said. “That’ll make your life easier, and it should help Ernie Carpenter, too.”
“Ernie. Isn’t he the detective who was at the crime scene yesterday?” Fran asked.
“He’s the one,” Joanna replied. “He’s also the same investigator Detective Lazier banned from attending Alice Rogers’ autopsy this morning.”
“Banned?” Fran repeated, “You mean Hank Lazier told someone he couldn’t come to my morgue?”
“That’s right.”
“What a jackass!” Dr. Daly muttered.
Smiling to herself, Joanna knew that just like the Little Engine That Could, she had succeeded in finding another way over the mountain. Lazier had been hell-bent on shutting Cochise County’s investigators out of the loop. Joanna had managed to open another channel.
“What did you find?” she asked, returning to postmortem results.
“Did you ever hang out with football players much?” Fran responded.
Joanna wished she could point out to Dr. Daly-as she often did with Jenny-that it wasn’t polite to answer a question with a question. “No,” she said. “I can’t say that I ever did.”
“I don’t suppose Alice Rogers did, either,” Fran continued. “But the bruises I found on her back, just over the kidneys, are consistent with the kinds of injuries you’d see in an emergency room on a Saturday morning after a hard-fought football game on Friday night. We’re talking about bruises that would show up on someone’s body after they were tackled from be-hind. That’s the first thing I noticed-the bruising. And not just on the victim’s back, either. There are definite fingertip-type bruises around her wrist-her right wrist. There’s some additional bruising there as well that isn’t obviously related to the handprints.” Fran paused. “Wait just a minute, will you?”
Joanna expected Dr. Daly to go off the line, perhaps to take another call. Instead, she heard a rustle of paper and then, a moment later, the telltale click of a cigarette lighter. “There now,” Fran said, inhaling deeply, “that’s better. Where was I?”
“Bruising to the wrist.”
“Right. So I’m thinking somebody knocked her down and then grabbed her by the wrist, which, considering the cholla spines in the back of her hands, was probably a little tricky.”
“In other words, her attacker should have some cholla puncture wounds of his own.”
“His or her,” Fran Daly said. “Whichever. Most of the cholla puncture wounds are on her back, although there were also quite a few on her legs, arms, and both hands.”
“Anything else?”
“She was drunk,” Fran answered. “Point one-eight. And something else.”
“What’s that?”
“She was clutching a vial in one hand-an empty insulin bottle. Which makes me wonder if maybe that extra bruise on the inside of her wrist might have been caused by a needle-an injection.”
“An insulin shot then,” Joanna murmured. “You’re saying Alice Rogers was diabetic?”
“Insulin isn’t usually injected in arms,” Fran Daly told her. “Since it’s self-injected, it usually goes in the thighs. With long-term insulin use then, there’s damage to the fat tissue in the legs-a puckering where the fat cells die due to repeated injections. I examined Alice Rogers’ legs. There was no evidence consistent with long-term use. If she was on insulin, she hadn’t been for long. We can find out for sure, once we locate her personal physician.”
“Diabetics don’t usually drink, do they?” Joanna asked. “Alcohol?” Fran Daly asked. “It’s not recommended.”
“I talked to her daughter,” Joanna said. “Susan Jenkins said her mother came to dinner on Saturday and that they had drinks before dinner and wine with the meal. It doesn’t seem likely that a daughter, knowing her mother had diabetes, would serve drinks.”
“Unless the daughter wanted to kill her,” Fran put in.
“There is that,” Joanna conceded. “But what if Alice didn’t have diabetes? What happens to s
omeone with normal insulin when they’re given extra?”
“It depends on how much extra, what the person’s physical condition is, and any number of variables.”
“And if the person was already drunk?”
“Well,” Daly said. “Again, it depends on how much insulin is administered. A hundred units of insulin or so, given to someone as drunk as Alice Rogers was, might cause her to pass out, but she’d wake up hours later and be fine, except for a hang-over, that is. With five or six hundred units, though, it could very well be lethal. In this case it might not have taken nearly that much, especially since there was already so much booze in her system, she was probably in shock from falling in the cactus, and she had almost no protection from the cold. I believe she passed out and her blood pressure dropped too low to sustain life. Whatever the cause, she died of heart failure. Still, I’m betting on insulin. If it’s there, you can be sure we’ll find it.”
“What do you use, a blood test?” Joanna asked.
“A serum test, not blood.”
“And how long does that take?”
“Two weeks, about. The thing is, without the presence of the vial, we wouldn’t generally bother with an insulin test at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. An insulin test isn’t part of standard autopsy protocols. And that’s what’s so odd. It’s as though the killer went out of his way to leave a calling card.”
“Can batches of insulin be traced?” Joanna asked.
“Certainly. I’ll get right on it.”
“So where does this leave Detective Lazier and the joyriders he’s planning on bringing back from Nogales?”
Fran Daly laughed. “Up a creek, if you ask me. This doesn’t square with a bunch of gangster-wanna-bes. People who hot-wire cars don’t go around armed with needles full of insulin. They use guns. Insulin is a prescription medication. For punks like that, nine-millimeter automatics are probably a whole lot easier to come by than insulin is.”
Joanna heard another phone ringing in the background of Doc Daly’s office. “Hold on a sec,” Fran said. “I need to take this call.” She came back on the line moments later. “Guess who?” she asked with a laugh. “None other than Hank Lazier himself. When he hears what I have to say, he’s not going to be a happy camper.”
“He didn’t strike me as being that happy to begin with,” Joanna said.
Fran allowed herself another deep-throated chuckle, which was followed by a spasm of coughing. “Do you want a copy of my results?”
“Please,” Joanna said. “Fax them along to Detective Carpenter.”
“Will do.”
She had ended the call but had not yet put down the phone when it rang in her hand. Shaking her head, Joanna Brady momentarily longed for the good old days when telephones were in houses and offices but not in cars. It wasn’t so very long ago when she had been able to drive around southeastern Arizona without holding a cell phone to her ear.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Joanna,” George Winfield said. “I lope I’m not dragging you away from something important.”
George Winfield, Cochise County’s medical examiner, had been Joanna’s stepfather for some time now, but her first supposition was that there was some official reason for the call. Perhaps there was some case-some other homicide she knew nothing about-that needed her immediate attention.
“No,” she said. “I’m just driving from point A to point B. What’s up?”
George Winfield paused before he answered. “It’s about your mother,” he said.
George most often referred to Eleanor Lathrop Winfield as Ellie, a loving nickname that had once been the private pre-serve of Joanna’s father. The fact that George didn’t use that name now, or even the more formal Eleanor, worried Joanna. The term “your mother” had a peculiarly ominous ring to it. In response, an orange warning light switched on in the back of Joanna’s head.
“Is something the matter with her?” she asked. “Is Mother sick or something? Has she been hurt?”
“Not exactly.” George said the words with such studied reluctance that Joanna’s grip tightened on the steering wheel.
“George, for God’s sake, tell me! What is it?”
“She’s upset.”
“Mother is always upset,” Joanna countered in exasperation. “What is it this time?”
“It’s you,” George said. “You and Butch.”
Not that again, Joanna thought. She took a deep, steadying breath. “What Butch and I do is none of Mother’s business,” she said. “I thought I made that clear when I talked to her yesterday.”
“Well, yes,” George said. “I suppose you did make it clear. She was quite disturbed about that conversation last night. In fact, alter the Bodlemers left, we stayed up most of the night talking about IL”
“Put Mother on the phone,” Joanna said. “Let me talk to her.”
“I can’t do that,” George returned. “I’m calling from the office.”
“Hang up, then,” Joanna said. “I’ll call her at home.”
“You can’t do that, either. She isn’t there.”
“Where is she?”
“That’s why I’m calling you right now-to let you know what’s happening… where she is… where she’s going.” George’s voice, small and apologetic, was totally lacking the vitality of his usually booming, businesslike tone.
“So tell me, George!” Joanna barked. “Where is she going?”
“To Butch Dixon’s house.”
Joanna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “She went where?”
“You heard me. She told me this morning over breakfast that she was going to go see Butch and ask him whether or not his intentions are honorable. I did my best to talk her out of it, Joanna, but I just couldn’t make her listen to reason. I tried calling her again just a few minutes ago, but she’s not home, which makes me think she’s already on her way. That’s when I decided to go ahead and call you-to give you a little advance warning.”
“Thanks, George,” Joanna said, meaning it. “I’m going to hang up and call Butch.”
As she punched Butch Dixon’s number into the keypad, Joanna tried to unravel the hard knot of anxiety that was forming in her gut. After all, it hadn’t been that many minutes ago when she had called Butch from her office. How much damage could have been done in such a short period of time?
“Butch?” she breathed in relief when he came on the phone. “Thank God you’re there. George just called me. He says my mother’s on her way over to see you.”
“She’s already here.”
Joanna felt sick. “I’m calling too late then. She’s already done it.”
“Done what?”
“Asked if your intentions are honorable. My mother’s pushy, but still, I can’t believe she’d do such a thing. Butch, I’m sorry…”
“You’re in luck,” Butch said. “She just drove up, but she hasn’t made it into the house yet. She’s still outside. She and Marliss Shackleford met up at the end of the driveway. Marliss was pulling away as your mother arrived. They’re still out there chewing the fat-chatting away like long-lost buddies.”
“No,” Joanna moaned. “Say it isn’t so.”
“Well,” Butch said, “it is, but don’t sound so upset. I didn’t let Marliss in, and I won’t let your mother in, either, if you don’t want me to. Although, I have to say, I don’t have a problem with seeing her.”
“You don’t?”
“Not at all. Because my intentions are honorable, you see. Completely. What about yours?”
“Mine?” Joanna stammered stupidly.
“Yes, yours,” Butch said. “We can either go on having what they call a totally meaningless relationship-which, I have to tell you, isn’t half bad. Or we can get married. If you’ll have me, that is.”
“Wait a minute. You’re asking me to marry you?” Joanna returned. “On the telephone?”
“Well, I admit it’s not the best possible a
rrangement, lint it seems like I’d better do it now. Otherwise, your mother will do it for me.”
“Butch. I don’t know what to say.”
On the other end of the phone, Joanna heard a doorbell chime.
“Say yes,” he urged.
“But you promised. You told me you wouldn’t push.”
“That was before your mother rang my doorbell. So, will you or won’t you?” The doorbell chimed again. “Well?” he pressed.
Joanna took a deep breath. “Yes, dammit. All right. I will.”
“Good answer. Good answer,” Butch said. “Now I’ve gotta run and answer the door. Otherwise Junior will beat me to that.”
Butch Dixon hung up then. Twenty miles away, across the San Pedro Valley, Joanna Brady stared at her cell phone in stunned silence.
CHAPTER TEN
For the next several minutes, Joanna was so thunderstruck by what had happened that she barely saw where she was going. How could it be? Butch had asked her to marry him and she hadn’t said no. She hadn’t said “I need to think it over.” She had simply said yes. And not even very graciously at that.
She wanted to call him back, to say something-anything, but she couldn’t do that. Not with her mother there! Her mother! How dare she! And yet… Try as she might, Joanna couldn’t be angry with Eleanor Lathrop Winfield right then. She was happy in a way she had never thought to be happy again. Giddy, almost.
When Joanna was growing up, a place called Nicksville-little more than a bar and a couple of scattered mobile homes-had been civilization’s last visible outpost along Highway 92 between Sierra Vista and the cutoff to Coronado Pass. The isolated mountain pass overlooked the route Coronado and his men once followed as they came north in search of the Seven Cities of Gold. Nicksville was where Joanna finally came to her senses. She realized then that she had overshot the turnoff to Mark Childers’ Oak Vista Estates without even noticing.
Laughing now, Joanna made a U-turn in the bar’s parking lot and headed back the way she had come. On the way she made a conscious effort to put her life-changing phone call to Butch aside. She was going to Oak Vista on business-on police business. She understood how vitally important it was for her to keep her mind on the job. Inattentive cops too often become dead cops.
