The rammed-earth house Butch had designed and helped build consisted of two wings, each with its own separate garage. Margaret, who had entered through Butch’s garage, had wandered through the whole house before finding them.
“Anybody home?” she asked. “I sure hope there’s coffee. I could have made it out in the RV but I decided to come inside instead. Have you already eaten?”
Joanna nodded. “Jenny and I have,” she said. “I’m on my way to work. I promised to drop her off at school on the way.”
Grumbling under his breath, Butch walked Joanna to her car. “I wish I was going to work,” he said.
Joanna smiled sympathetically. “Don’t bother doing any sorting,” she said, giving Butch a good-bye peck on the cheek. “I think you’re going to have your hands full as it is.”
“So do I,” he agreed.
“Some people are a real pain,” Jenny said, settling into the corner of the Crown Victoria.
“Margaret Dixon isn’t a very happy person,” Joanna said.
“But why does she think we should have put Lucky to sleep?”
Joanna sighed. “I have no idea,” she said.
“How long are they gonna stay?”
“Probably until the baby is born,” Joanna said.
“Well, could you please hurry up and have it then?” Jenny demanded. “I want them to take their RV and go home.”
“Believe me,” Joanna assured her. “I’ll do my best.”
At the morning briefing, Frank Montoya wasn’t any happier than Jenny had been, but his ill humor had nothing to do with an irksome stepgrandmother.
“Last night was the wrong time to have three cars in San Simon, especially since our people didn’t spot anything out of line,” he grumbled. “In the meantime, Border Patrol came up with at least a hundred and fifty UDAs who were all on foot and making a run for it east of Douglas. They called us for backup. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anybody to send.”
Joanna shook her head. The unending stream of undocumented aliens spilling across the international border was one of Arizona‘s-and especially Cochise County’s-most intractable law enforcement problems. Each year at least half a million UDAs were being apprehended just in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector. Of that number, at least 25,000 a month were picked up after crossing into the United States along Cochise County‘s eighty-mile-long border with Mexico. Border Patrol employment numbers were way up, but there were never enough officers to stem the tide.
“How many did they catch?”
“Most,” Frank said. “But there’s no way to know how many got away.”
“With those kinds of numbers, an additional three deputies probably wouldn’t have made much difference,” Joanna said.
“It would have helped,” Frank replied.
But Joanna could see her chief deputy had a point. “It stands to reason that the O’Dwyers would be operating on weekends rather than during the week,” she said.
“So I can pull the extra patrols for tonight?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “We’ll revisit this later in the week. Now, what about the Bradley Evans homicide? Have we made any progress on that?”
Frank shuffled through the briefing papers. “Not much. Casey Ledford is down in Douglas.”
“Dusting Evans’s apartment?” Joanna asked.
Frank nodded.
“Still no sign of the vehicle?”
“Nope,” Frank answered. “If I was the perpetrator, I’d probably take it up to Tucson and leave it parked in plain sight somewhere where no one is going to pay any attention.”
“You’ve alerted Tucson PD to be on the lookout?” Joanna asked.
“You bet.”
There was a knock on the conference-room door, and Deputy Debra Howell entered the room. “Sarge told me you wanted to see me?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Have a seat.”
“Is something wrong?” Debbie asked.
“Nothing at all,” Joanna assured her. “But we’re thinking about making some changes. I understand you’ve been studying for the detective exam?”
“Yes,” Debbie said. “I have.”
“Chief Deputy Montoya and I were wondering if you’d like to spend some time working as a detective for the next week or two with the understanding that the promotion is provisional until such time as you take and pass the exam?”
Debbie Howell flushed with apparent pleasure. “That would be great,” she said. “But how come? What’s going on?”
Joanna had hoped that Ernie might have mentioned his medical situation to his protegee, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Since he hadn’t confided in Debbie, Joanna didn’t tell her, either.
“It won’t come as any surprise that we’re chronically short-handed, and we need to add some depth to our investigation team. We’re dealing with an unsolved homicide at a time when one of our homicide guys may be having to take some time off. You’re the one we want to tap-if you’re interested, that is. But homicide investigators don’t punch time clocks the same way deputies do, Debbie,” Joanna warned. “They work long hours and can be called out anytime, day or night. Will that be a problem?”
“Because of Bennie, you mean?” Debbie asked.
Benjamin was Debbie’s five-year-old son. Joanna nodded, and Debbie grinned.
“If you’d asked me that question two weeks ago, it would have been a big problem,” she admitted. “But last week my sister’s jerk of a husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. He took off and left Katy and the two kids high and dry. Rather than staying in Phoenix and paying rent she couldn’t afford, Katy decided to come back home to Bisbee. She and the kids are staying with me right now until the dust settles and until she can find a job. In other words, working late won’t be a problem as long as Bennie’s aunt and cousins are here. When do you want me to start?”
“Today,” Joanna said. “You’ll be working plainclothes, so you’d better go home and change. Then track down Jaime and Ernie so they can bring you up to speed.”
Joanna and Frank went on with their meeting. The last of the briefing papers was a single-page report from Animal Control. Eighteen dogs, twenty-one cats, and an eight-foot-long python were currently in the Cochise County Pound.
“A python?” Joanna repeated. “Where did that come from?”
“Sunrise Apartments in Sierra Vista,” Frank replied. “A cleaning crew went into a recently vacated apartment and found the snake hiding in a closet. Sierra Vista Animal Control refused to have anything to do with it. They called us, so Jeannine Phillips and Manny Ruiz went out and collected it.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “So now we’re stuck with a python?”
“For the time being,” Frank said. “They’re trying to locate the former owner. They’re also trying to find someplace that will take him in.”
“I know about Greyhound Rescue and Golden Retriever Rescue,” Joanna said. “There’s even that wiener-dog rescue up in Phoenix, but I’ve never heard of Python Rescue, have you?”
“Actually, I have,” Frank said. “I was checking on the Internet just before I came in here. There are several python rescues listed. The problem is, there are more pythons looking to be rescued than there are people willing to take them in, so I’m guessing we could be stuck with this guy for a very long time.”
“What do pythons eat?” Joanna asked.
“Mice, I think,” Frank answered. “Live mice.”
Joanna groaned. “Great. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
After another tap on the conference-room door, Kristin Gregovich entered the room. “What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“Sergeant Winston Brown from Huachuca City PD is on the line,” Kristin said. She picked up the conference-room phone and handed it to Joanna. “They think they’ve found our missing pickup truck.”
“This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “You think you’ve found Bradley Evans’s missing vehicle? How and where?”
“Where is right on Huachuca City‘s main drag,” Winnie Brown told her. “The last couple of years we’ve been making a concerted effort to get rid of all our local eyesores. Periodically we go around and ticket all the ’For Sale by Owner‘ cars that are left on vacant lots inside the city limits. We had your APB for a red F-100. Since this one was gray-primer gray-nobody really gave it a second thought. But the bed of the truck is red, and when our officer ran the plates, they belonged to a ’96 VW Passat. That’s when we knew we had a problem. We tried calling the number listed on the For Sale sign on the dash. It’s not a valid number. No surprises there.”