With that, she turned away from the Yukon and slammed the door shut behind her. Frank Montoya caught up with her as she walked away. “With DPS due here any minute,” he cautioned, “you might want to downplay those kinds of inflammatory comments.”
“What?” Joanna demanded. “Calling a dirtbag a dirtbag?”
“No. Saying you wish you’d killed him. Zavala’s already screaming police brutality and asking for a lawyer. Claims you shot him with no warning.”
Joanna was outraged. “So what? He’s a triple murderer who was trying to drag a screaming kid out of a car so he could use her as a hostage. I’m supposed to handle him with kid gloves and observe all the politically correct niceties? Give me a break.”
“Still…” Frank began.
Just then Debbie Howell arrived with the children’s tearful mother in tow. After gathering Hannah and Abel into a grateful hug and kissing them, Chantal Little turned to Joanna.
“Are you the one who rescued them?” she asked.
Joanna nodded. “I’m Sheriff Brady. Deputy Thomas here and I were the ones on the scene, but believe me, little Hannah was doing her very best to save herself.”
Chantal put down the children. She enveloped first Deputy Thomas and then Joanna in impassioned hugs. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said tearfully.
“You already did,” Joanna told her. “Believe me, the look on your face is thanks enough.”
The next several hours flew past in a blur of activity. By the time the ambulance arrived to transport Antonio Zavala, it had to make its way through a throng of media cams which had appeared out of nowhere and now lined both sides of Mescal Road. Joanna dealt with the EMTs, who overrode Joanna’s Copper Queen Hospital call, telling her that, due to the nature of Zavala’s injuries, they had no choice but to transport him to University Medical Center. Since Jeannine Phillips was in that same facility, Joanna immediately started making arrangements to post a twenty-four-hour guard on Antonio Zavala’s room there.
While Frank handled multiplying media concerns, Debbie Howell and Jaime Carbajal took statements from both Chantal Little and her children. Eventually the two detectives left-Jaime to return to the crime scene at Roostercomb Ranch and Debbie to go to Tucson to make a next-of-kin notification to Lupe Melendez’s family.
Through all this two DPS investigators were also on the scene. Detectives Dave Newton and Roger Unger needed to take their own statements from Chantal and the children. They also took possession of the semiautomatic rifle Joanna had used during the incident and then painstakingly searched and photographed both the Dodge Caravan and Deputy Thomas’s Yukon.
By then it was mid-afternoon and quickly turning chilly. “The kids are tired and hungry,” Chantal complained to Joanna. “Are those two detectives ever going to let us go? I talked to my parents in Tucson over an hour ago. My mom offered to come get us, but I told her the van isn’t wrecked or anything. Couldn’t I just take it and go?”
Joanna was tired and hungry, too. She sympathized, but she shook her head. “Your minivan may not be wrecked, Mrs. Little, but it’ll need to be processed for evidence. Your parents live in Tucson?”
Chantal nodded. “My dad’s scheduled for triple bypass surgery on Monday.”
“Let me see what I can do,” Joanna told her.
She went looking for the two DPS investigators and found them off to the side of the road, comparing notes. Newton, the older and clearly senior of the two, seemed annoyed by the interruption.
“Look, Sheriff Brady, these things can’t be rushed. We’re working as fast as we can.”
“But does it all have to be done here?” Joanna asked. “Everybody’s cold and hungry, especially those two little kids.”
“I suppose we could finish up at the office in Tucson,” Newton replied grudgingly. “But we’ll need to tow both these vehicles.”
“Why?” Joanna demanded.
“For evidence.”
“What evidence? The Dodge? Yes, that makes sense. That’s the vehicle Zavala drove, but he was never anywhere near my deputy’s Yukon. There’s no need to impound that.”
“Sheriff Brady…” Newton began.
“Here’s the deal,” Joanna interrupted. “You’re unreasonably detaining a mother and two children who have already been through hell today. They have family members in Tucson who are anxiously awaiting them. It happens that there are still plenty of reporters around who will be glad to pass on the information that you kept these people here for no good reason. I suggest you release the Yukon so Deputy Thomas here can drive Mrs. Little and her children into town. After that we can all meet up at your office so you can interview Deputy Thomas and me. How does that sound?”
Joanna doubted that Detective Newton came around due solely to her powers of persuasion. What really made the argument for her was Newton‘s need to avoid any adverse publicity.
Frowning, he capitulated. “I suppose that could work,” he said reluctantly.
By the time Chantal Little and the children were belted into the Yukon, a DPS-dispatched tow truck had come to collect the minivan. As the Yukon drove away, picking its way between media vans and emergency vehicles, Frank came back to Joanna.
“Care for a ride?” he asked.
“Thanks,” Joanna said. “It looks like we need to pay a visit to the DPS office in Tucson, but I’m going to need to eat something along the way. I’m starved.”
Once back on the highway and with a reliable cell-phone signal, Joanna called home. “I’m on my way to Tucson,” she told Butch. “There was a bit of an incident…”
Her feeble attempt at minimizing was immediately blown out of the water.
“You mean the big shoot-out west of Benson?” Butch asked. “The one with the carjacker who kidnapped those two kids? I already heard about it. It’s been on the news all afternoon. Don’t tell me you were involved.”
“Actually I was,” Joanna admitted. For the next several minutes she gave Butch a brief overview of all that had happened.
“But are you all right?” he asked when she finished.
“Yes.”
“And the kids are all right, too?”
“Yes.”
“Good work, then. When will you be home?”
“After the use-of-deadly-force interviews with DPS in Tucson. Frank’s driving me there. He’ll bring me home when we’re finished.”
“Something’s terribly wrong with this picture,” Butch objected. “You save two kids and wing a triple murderer, but you’re the one who’s being investigated? It makes no sense.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said, smiling at his obvious outrage.
“For what?”
“For understanding.”
“You’re welcome. See you when you get here. I’m not holding dinner.”
By then Frank was turning off the freeway at an exit on the far outskirts of Tucson. At the Triple T Truck Stop, Joanna had ordered her hot roast beef sandwich and was studying her swollen ankles when her phone rang. The caller turned out to be Dr. Millicent Ross.
“This is a very bad scene, Joanna,” the vet said.
“How bad?”
“You were right. The dogs that were chained in the yard were so vicious even I couldn’t get near them,” Millicent said. “I had to tranquilize them first and put them down.”
“How many?”
“Ten.”
Joanna closed her eyes. Ten dead dogs would be a public relations disaster. No one would be the least bit interested in the fact that the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had dealt with three human murders and saved the lives of two innocent children that same day. All media attention would be focused on the poor unfortunate dogs whose lives had been lost.
“What about the puppies?”