“That’s exactly why I want Marliss to be one of the first to know,” Joanna responded.
“It’ll be one of her biggest scoops ever in “Bisbee Buzzings.’ Knowing Marliss is solidly in Ken Junior’s corner, people are bound to read the column and talk about it for days afterward. I figure, if the voters know about the baby in 59
advance and elect me anyway, then no one will be able to complain about it later on. And if I lose? Then I lose. I’ll go back to selling insurance—although that wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“I take it you and Butch have talked this through?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right, then,” Frank said. “If you two are okay with it, then I’ve got no complaints.”
He picked up his stack of papers. “Sorry I wasn’t there to help out last night,”
he added.
“Don’t apologize, Frank,” Joanna told him with a smile. “You get to have some time off, and so do I. Now, what more do you have for me this morning?”
For the next twenty minutes or so they went over routine departmental business, including the previous day’s incidents reports. They ended with a discussion of the Mossman homicide.
“Ernie Carpenter will be at the autopsy later this morning,” Frank said. “Jaime Carbajal will start canvassing the neighborhood around Carol Mossman’s place and talking to her supervisor and coworkers. He’ll also be organizing an inch-by-inch search of the property. Dave Hollicker believes that since the shots were fired through a locked door, there’s a good chance the killer never made it inside Carol Mossman’s place.
That means any physical evidence left behind by the killer would most likely be outside the trailer rather than inside it.”
Joanna nodded. “This whole thing offends me,” she said, her green eyes flashing in sudden outrage. “Most people, including Carol’s own grandmother, might consider that rundown trailer little more than a hovel, but it was Carol Mossman’s home, Frank—her place of refuge. She and her animals were inside it, unarmed and defenseless, when somebody blew her away and killed all her dogs in the process. It’s true that, in trying to help all those strays, Carol Mossman may have broken some of the 60
dog-ownership statutes, but at the time she was killed, she and her dogs weren’t hurting anybody.” “No, they weren’t,” Frank agreed.
“I was on the scene last night. We were all working and doing our jobs. This morning, I realize it was like it was all business as usual. It would be all too easy to write Carol off as some kind of weirdo who was somehow responsible for what happened to her, but if the Carol Mossmans of this world aren’t safe in their own homes, nobody else is, either. I want whoever did this caught!”
By the time Joanna paused, Frank Montoya seemed a little taken aback by the strength of her emotion on the subject. “I see what you mean,” he said. “So what’s the next step?”
“Have Jaime contact that Explorer troop out on post at Fort Huachuca to see if they can help with the foreign-object search.” “Will do,” Frank said.
“And we should probably get the Double C’s in here to update us sometime this afternoon.”
The term Double C’s was departmental shorthand for the two homicide detectives, Carbajal and Carpenter.
“Okay,” Frank agreed. “Anything else?” Joanna asked.
The chief deputy looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Well, there is one more thing,”
he said.
“What’s that?” “It’s about the dog.” “What dog?”
“The one you took from Carol Mossmans home last night.” “It’s not a dog, Frank.”
Joanna responded. “It’s a puppy—a cute little fuzzy black puppy 61
“Jeannine Phillips has lodged a formal complaint.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wish I were,” Frank said regretfully. “She says you confiscated the dog yourself rather than following established procedures.”
“Frank, the puppy’s mother was dead. Lucky was practically starving to death.”
“Lucky. You mean you’ve named him?”
“Yes, I’ve named him. He’s not a dog, Frank. He’s a baby-barely weaned, if that.
Somehow he was left alone when all the other dogs got locked inside the trailer with Carol Mossman’s body. It’s a wonder he was still alive. I brought him home. Butch fed him bread and milk and then went straight out to buy Puppy Chow. What’s wrong with that? What was I supposed to do, ship him off to the pound so they could keep him for however long they keep animals before they put them down?”
“And how long is that?” Frank asked.
Joanna shrugged. “I don’t know for sure—a couple of weeks. A month, maybe.”
“You should probably know,” Frank put in mildly, “the correct answer is actually seventy-two hours.”
Joanna was shocked. “That’s all?” she demanded. “You mean, from the time the animals are picked up?”
“That’s right. If they’re not claimed by an owner or adopted by the end of seventy-two hours, they’re out of there.”
“As in put to sleep.”
“Right.”
“That’s awful. I was sure they had longer than that.”
“I thought so, too, boss, but I checked the statute just this morning. If you care about animals at all, and if those are the
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kinds of conditions Animal Control is working under, maybe that’s part of the reason Jeannine Phillips is so pissed off all the time. I sure as hell would be.”
“Do you think she’ll take her complaints to Ken Junior?” Joanna asked.
“If she’s in a mood to make trouble, what do you think?” Joanna thought about that.
Finally she said, “If I end up losing this election, will it be because I’m pregnant or because I took in an orphaned puppy?”
Frank Montoya grinned and shook his head. “Anybody’s guess,” he said.
After the chief deputy sauntered out of her office, Joanna sat staring out into the lobby through the open doorway. She thought about the scene in her kitchen earlier that morning, when Tigger met Lucky for the first time. Jenny had put Tigger on a “Wait” command at the door to the kitchen. But the word wait meant nothing to the puppy. He had scampered across the room and, despite Tigger’s bared teeth, had leaped up and licked the big dog’s face. Offended, Tigger had grabbed the puppy by the scruff of the neck and put him down, where he lay stock-still on the floor with his paws straight up in the air. Only the tiniest tip of his tail had moved-a twitch rather than a wag.
After several seconds, Tigger had let his captive go. Lucky had jumped up and gone racing around the room, his tiny claws clicking on the tile floor as he skidded around the corners. Each time he returned to Tigger, the older dog had growled and bared his teeth again, but he made no further move to attack the little interloper. The scene was so comical that Jenny had giggled with delight. Butch and Joanna, too, had laughed aloud. And now, because she had taken in the little rascal to give him a good
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home, Joanna was suddenly in the doghouse with her Animal Control officers.
Making up her mind, Joanna punched her intercom button.
“Yes, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin Gregovich answered.
“I’m going out for a while,” Joanna said.
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna replied. “I’m on my way out to Animal Control. You might call ahead and see if Officer Phillips is there. Let her know I’m coming to see her.”
The several miles between the Justice Center and the Animal Control compound on the far side of Tin Town gave Joanna plenty of time to think about her upcoming meeting.
And the more she thought about it, the more she suspected Jeannine Phillips was in the right and she was wrong. After all, police officers investigating crime scenes were charged with collecting evidence connected to whatever crime had occurred. At the same time, they were prohibited from taking any items not thought to be part of the criminal investigation.