She passed Frank the microphone and then waited for him to translate before she continued.
“At this point it’s probably cooler outside than it is inside. We’re willing to let people outside, but only if we can have some assurances that there won’t be any difficulty.”
Again she waited while Frank translated. “Once we have additional personnel in place, we’ll be moving you out into the rec yards where we plan to have ice, water, and towels. We’ll let you out. We’ll do it in an orderly, careful fashion, but let me warn you—if there’s any trouble, and I mean at the first sign of trouble—heat or no heat, you go back inside under full lockdown.”
By the time Tom Hadlock returned to his office, Frank had finished translating the last segment of Joanna’s announcement. “The kitchen will have the water and ice out there within the next fifteen minutes,” Hadlock reported.
“It’ll take more time than that to get our people here,” Frank said.
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Wait on the ice, and don’t start 79
emptying the units until we have backup on the scene, Tom. Frank will let you know when they’re here.”
“Fair enough,” Hadlock replied. “You say the word, and we’ll start moving ‘em out.”
“Did you call Sammy Cotton?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, ma’am. He says if we need him, he can be here with a crew at five-oh-five.”
“Now that we’ve called Mr. Blair’s bluff, that probably won’t be necessary,” Joanna said. “Anchor Air Conditioning has had a trouble-free ride up to now. I’m guessing Mr. Blair isn’t going to want to screw that up.”
Joanna and Frank left the jail complex and headed back across the parking lot. “Mind if I ask you a question?” Joanna said.
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of someone named Ada Lovelace?” Joanna asked.
“You mean that smart lady who’s the mother of all computers?” Frank returned. “Sure, I know about her. Why?”
“Never mind,” Joanna said irritably, chagrined that her male staff knew far more about this female computer pioneer than she did. “Forget it,” she told Frank. “I’m going home for lunch. Hopefully I’ll be back before it’s time to move the prisoners outside. Tell the Double C’s that I still want to touch base with them later on this afternoon. Before five o’clock today, I want to know exactly where we stand on the Mossman case.”
“Will do,” Frank said, “but I need to warn you. Word is out about all those dead dogs. I’m afraid we’re going to take a hit on that subject once it’s in the papers.”
“What else is new?” Joanna asked.
Back in her office, Joanna found her devoted but as-yet-81
unnamed dog waiting just inside the door. The animal sprang to her feet and greeted Joanna as though the two of them were old friends. Looking at the dog, Joanna shook her head. “Maybe I’d better call Butch and give him a heads-up about you, old girl.”
She picked up her phone and dialed High Lonesome Ranch. “Would you happen to have a couple peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches lying around if I were in a mood to come home for lunch?” she asked when Butch answered.
“If you’ll give me ten minutes, I can probably do better than that.”
“Good. I’ll be there. How’s Lucky doing?” Joanna asked.
“Fine. At least I guess he’s fine. I’ve hardly seen him. He’s been with Jenny all morning. They’re evidently bonding. The good news is that so far Tigger hasn’t bitten the little guy’s head off.”
“I had to go by Animal Control this morning …” she began.
Somehow Butch Dixon knew instinctively where she was going. “No,” he said at once.
“You didn’t. Not another one.”
“I had to,” Joanna said. “She’s such a sweet little thing. And her time was almost up. By tomorrow morning, if no one took her, they’d have put her down. Wait till you see her.”
“Well, all right then,” Butch said. “I suppose that makes us even.”
“Even?” Joanna asked. “What do you mean?”
“I invited your mother and George over for dinner tonight. I thought it would be better if the two of us were together when we drop the big news that we’re pregnant.”
Joanna thought about that for a few seconds. “Right,” she agreed at last. “I guess that does make us even.”
An hour later she was back from lunch with the dog once more stowed under her desk when Kristin came to tell her the
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EXIT WOUNDS
extra deputies had been deployed in and around the jail complex. Unbidden, the dog emerged from her cave and greeted Kristin with effusive tail-wagging.
“I thought you were going to leave her at home this afternoon.”
“So did I,” Joanna said ruefully. “But as soon as she saw Butch, she started jumping and bucking so hard, I could barely hold on to her leash. With him there, I would have had to bodily drag her into the house, so I ended up leaving her in the garage all through lunch. Jeannine Phillips warned me that the dog doesn’t like men, but this is more than not liking. You should have seen her, Kristin. The poor thing was scared to death.”
“What are you going to do?” Kristin asked. “Take her back to the pound?”
“I offered to, but Butch said no. He says he’ll figure out a way around her, but he thought it would be better for everybody concerned if I brought her back to work this afternoon. So I did. Obviously the dog is fine with you, Kristin, but you should probably let Frank, Jaime, and Ernie know she’s here so they don’t barge in unexpectedly.”
“I’ll tell them,” Kristin said. “By the way, Tom Hadlock said to tell you that the guy from Anchor called. They’ve hired Sammy Cotton’s crew to come work on the air-conditioning.
They’ll be here by three this afternoon.”
“Good enough,” Joanna said. “Sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
She hurried outside. She and Chief Deputy Montoya watched as the prisoners were allowed out of their cells and into the sun-drenched, razor-wire-surrounded rec yard, which, at this time of day, was at least partially shaded from direct sunlight by the jail itself. The inmates, apparently grateful to be allowed out 82
of their oven like cells, helped themselves to paper cups of ice water and then moved in an orderly fashion into the long narrow sliver of shade beside the building or sat on the covered concrete picnic tables that lined the yard.
“The prisoners will be fine,” Joanna said. “They have some shade. It’s the detention officers and extra deputies I feel sorry for. None of them have any shade at all.
Let’s make sure they have plenty of water, too. I’d hate to protect the prisoners and lose one of our deputies to heatstroke.”
“I’ll have Tom Hadlock take care of it right away.”
It wasn’t long before the blazing sun drove Joanna herself back into the relative cool of her office. With the dog curled contentedly at her feet, Joanna spent the next two hours dealing with routine paperwork. At three-thirty, her phone rang.
“Detectives Carbajal and Carpenter are here,” Kristin announced. “I told them you’d see them in the conference room.”
“Right. By the way, any sign of the air-conditioning crew?”
“They’ve been here for almost an hour now,” Kristin said.
“Great,” Joanna replied. “Sometimes it pays to be the squeaky wheel.”
Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were already in the conference room. Frank Montoya arrived at the same time Joanna did. “Okay, guys,” Joanna said. “What do we have so far?”
“Doc Winfield says Carol Mossman was struck by two bullets—one in the gut and one in the shoulder. The wound to the midsection was the one that actually killed her.
She bled to death,” Ernie Carpenter added. “No surprises there. All the shots, including the ones that missed the victim, were fired into the back door of her mobile home.