“Where is it again?” Joanna asked.
“Corner of Highway 90 and Pershing,” he said.
“Has anyone been inside it?”
“It’s locked,” Winnie Brown told her. “If you want me to, I’m sure someone could get inside…”
“No,” Joanna said quickly. “It may be a crime scene. No one is to handle it inside or out. Understand?”
“Gotcha,” Winnie Brown said.
“As soon as I can make arrangements,” Joanna continued, “I’ll dispatch a tow truck to retrieve it.”
“Okay,” Brown responded. “I’ll tell the officers on the scene that the sheriff is sending someone to pick it up.” •
Joanna looked at Frank, who was already in motion, gathering his papers and heading for the door. “I’ll make arrangements for the tow,” he said. “I’ll also track down Jaime and Ernie and let them know. Maybe Debbie can meet up with them out in Huachuca City and hit the ground running.”
With a crew of perfectly competent people collecting the homicide victim’s vehicle, there was no need for Joanna to go traipsing off to Huachuca City to bird-dog the process. Instead, she went into her office, where she found the morning’s mail stacked high on her desk. Just looking at it made her sigh. According to the latest figures from the FBI, national violent crime figures were down. Paperwork, on the other hand, seemed to be way, way up.
Twenty minutes later, when her phone rang, a truculent Jeannine Phillips was on the phone. “Well?” she said. “What did they find?”
“In San Simon?” Joanna asked. “Nothing. We had three cars stationed in and around there both Saturday and Sunday nights. There wasn’t a sign of trouble or suspicious activities. Unfortunately, with everything else that’s going on, we’re just not going to be able to maintain that level of surveillance.”
“So that’s it, then?” Jeannine responded curtly. “We’re just going to give the O’Dwyers a pass and let things go until the next dead dog shows up?”
“The next one?” Joanna said. “Did the one at the vet’s office die, then?”
“No,” Jeannine replied. “No, thanks to Mil-to Dr. Ross, he’s going to pull through.”
“And how about Monty Python?” Joanna joked.
“He’s all right, too,” Jeannine said. “Manny and I had to rig up special accommodations for him. We lined the inside of one of the kennels with Plexiglas and then hooked up lights so the damned thing wouldn’t be too cold. Since the owner went off and left both the snake and no forwarding address, I’m working on locating a snake rescue organization of some kind.”
So’s Frank Montoya, Joanna thought.
“The problem is, they’re mostly out of state. I’m concerned about transportation issues.”
“Keep looking,” Joanna advised.
All in all, it was a quiet day at the Cochise County Justice Center. Food deliveries had resumed and everything in the jail seemed to be running smoothly for a change. At noon she met Butch and his parents at Daisy’s Cafe for lunch. Margaret’s attitude toward Junior Dowdle was not unlike her attitude toward Lucky. Maybe he didn’t need to be put out of his misery, but people had no business letting him out in public like that. Didn’t they know that seeing him might upset some of their customers?
Toying with her food, Joanna wondered how the Dixons would react if this grandchild of theirs-the rowdy baby on the verge of entering the world-turned out to be less than perfect. Nothing in Joanna’s medical chart had indicated anything of the kind, but still… What if she ended up with a baby who suffered from some kind of birth defect? Would Margaret and Don Dixon reject the child and think that it should be put out of its misery?
“What’s wrong?” Butch asked as he walked Joanna to her car after lunch. “You look upset.”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“I know my mother’s a handful,” he said. “The way she talked about Junior! I wanted to wring her neck. Try not to let her get you down.”
“I won’t if you won’t,” Joanna returned.
“That’s a lot harder,” Butch said.
Joanna arrived back at the department in time to see Bradley Evans’s freshly primer-coated pickup truck deposited inside the garage at the near end of the impound yard. When Casey Led-ford, Cochise County‘s latent fingerprint expert, emerged from her lab to begin dusting the outside of the truck, Joanna walked over to join her. First she looked in through the window and was disappointed to see nothing out of line. They might have found Bradley Evans’s truck, but the interior of that was no more a crime scene than his apartment had been.
“You’ve already collected prints from down in Douglas?” Joanna asked.
Casey nodded. “And it was just like Ernie and Jaime predicted it would be. I found lots of the victim’s prints and a few that belong to his landlady. If there’s been anyone else in Mr. Evans’s apartment at some time in the distant past, it’s long enough ago that they left no trace or else they wore gloves.”
“What’s the program here?” Joanna inquired.
“I talked it over with the Double Cs,” Casey said. “The game plan is for me to go over the outside first, but I don’t think that’s going to be particularly helpful.”
“Why not?”
“The truck has been sitting on that vacant lot for a number of days. Some of the prints may belong to whoever came by and looked at the truck thinking they might want to buy it. It could take a very long time, if it’s even possible, to eliminate the ones that aren’t connected to the crime. Once I finish on the outside, Dave Hollicker will pop the lock. Then he and I will go through the interior together, dusting for prints and collecting whatever trace evidence there is to be found.”
“With any luck there should be some,” Joanna said. “I’m pretty certain that the last person who drove this vehicle wasn’t Bradley Evans.”
Back in her office, Joanna tried to focus on the paperwork littering her desk, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of malaise that had crept over her during lunch. Finally, late in the afternoon, she called her best friend and pastor, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea.
“Are you okay?” Marianne asked. “You sound a little down.”
Joanna and Marianne’s friendship went all the way back to seventh grade. There was very little they didn’t know about each other’s lives.
“Prenatal blues, I guess,” Joanna admitted.
“That’s to be expected,” Marianne said. “I was a complete fruitcake the week before Jeffy was born. I almost drove Jeff crazy. What’s going on?”
“Jeffy was perfect,” Joanna said. “He is perfect. But what if he hadn’t been?”
Marianne took a deep breath. “Has Dr. Lee said there might be a problem? Did something show up in an ultrasound?”
“No. It’s not that. It’s just that…”
“It’s just what?”
“Butch’s parents are here,” Joanna said.
“You mentioned that yesterday at church,” Marianne said. “And it explains a lot. Margaret Dixon won’t win any Ms. Congeniality awards. What’s she up to now?”
“She told Jenny that Lucky should have been put out of his misery, and at lunch, you should have seen her with Junior. What if the baby’s born with some serious problem?”
Marianne Maculyea had more than a little experience in that regard. After years of trying to conceive, she and her husband, Jeff Daniels, had adopted twin baby girls from China-Esther Elaine and Ruth Rachel. Ruth was now a lively first grader, but Esther had been born with a congenital heart defect and had died within days of receiving a heart transplant.