As the door closed behind Joanna, one of the nearest sign-wielding demonstrators spotted her. “There she is,” he shouted to the others, pointing in her direction.
“That’s Sheriff Brady.”
Interviewer and interviewee turned to face Joanna while a series of boos and catcalls erupted from the group of demonstrators gradually coalescing at the foot of the stairs.
As they moved closer, Joanna managed to catch a glimpse of some of the Signs. SHAME ON SHERIFF BRADY, Said One. CCSD UNFAIR TO
animals, announced several others.
Animals? Joanna wondered in confusion. What animals?
Considering the events of the night before, she more than half expected the demonstrators outside to be human rights activists protesting the maze of conflicting international policies that had resulted in the terrible human carnage at Silver Creek. In fact, considering the dead boy whose bloodied body Joanna had held in her arms, Sheriff Brady herself might have been sorely tempted to join such a protest.
Then she saw another sign that clinched it. seventeen too MANY.
That’s when Joanna tumbled. The people in the parking lot weren’t the least bit concerned about dead and injured illegal immigrants. Callous about human casualties, the jeering group of protesters on the doorstep of the Cochise Justice Center had 184
come to express their outrage over the heat-related deaths of Carol Mossman’s dogs.
Joanna stifled an inward groan. “Who’s in charge here?” she asked.
The woman with the short-cropped blond hair who looked to be about Joanna’s age gave Sheriff Brady a scathing look. “I am,” she announced crisply.
A man with a video camera on his shoulder shoved his way through the crowd and pushed a microphone in Joanna’s face.
“And you are?” Joanna asked, ignoring the cameraman.
“Tamara Haynes,” the woman replied. “That’s H-A-Y, not H-A-I,” she added for the reporter’s benefit as he dutifully took notes.
“May I help you?” Joanna asked.
Her question was drowned out by a new series of jeering catcalls. Despite her best intentions, Joanna felt her temper revving up.
Her second question was far less welcoming. “Who exactly are you?” she demanded.
‘And what are you doing here?”
“I already told you,” the woman replied. “My name is Tamara Haynes.” A diamond tongue-stud glittered as she spoke. Her ears were pierced a dozen times over. Her belly button, visible on a bare midriff, sported its own set of piercings, and her upper arms and shoulders were covered with a series of tattoos.
“I’m the local chapter president for AWE.”
“Which is?” Joanna prodded.
‘A-W-E,” Tamara said. When Joanna exhibited no sign of recognition, the woman added, ‘Animal Welfare Experience.”
‘And you’re here because … ?”
“You’re in charge of Cochise Animal Control, are you not?” Tamara Haynes asked.
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“Yes,” Joanna said, “I am at the moment. Why?”
“Well,” Tamara returned, her voice dripping contempt, “we’re here to serve notice that the members of AWE hold you personally responsible for the deaths of all those poor animals out by the San Pedro. If you and your department had simply responded to the situation in a more efficient and timely fashion, none of those unfortunate dogs would have died.”
With great effort Joanna kept her response reasonably civil. “Those dogs died in their owner’s overheated mobile home-a home with no electricity and no air-conditioning,”
she added. “They died after their owner was murdered, shot to death by an unknown assailant through a locked back door. If anyone is responsible for the deaths of those animals, it’s Carol Mossman’s killer. And that’s what my department is doing right now-searching for her murderer.”
But Tamara Haynes wasn’t someone whose opinion could be easily swayed by the presentation of mere facts. She grew shriller, making sure her voice carried beyond the front line of demonstrators. “If you and your people in Animal Control had been doing the job properly, Sheriff Brady, Carol Mossman never would have had the opportunity to amass that many animals in the first place.”
“That’s right,” one of the men shouted, waving his hand-lettered sign in the air.
“Way to go, Tammy. You tell her!”
Joanna’s temper edged up another notch. Her voice, unlike Tamara Haynes’s, actually decreased in volume. “Ms. Haynes, I’m in charge of a department that handles public safety for an area eighty miles wide and eighty miles long. A total of one hundred thirty people report to me. Four of them are in Animal Control.
‘As I’m sure you know, Animal Control officers enforce 186
ordinances having to do with animal licensing. They collect stray and injured animals.
They supervise animal adoptions and attend to the ones they’ve impounded. They respond to calls involving wildlife, which sometimes include marauding javelinas as well as human encounters with rabid skunks and coyotes. When Game and Fish officers aren’t available, my people are responsible for trapping and relocating rattlesnakes and other wildlife that pose threats to public safety.
“In other words, Ms. Haynes, Animal Control has its hands full. My Animal Control officers are doing an excellent job despite limited resources and severe budget cuts.
If you really care about animal welfare, Ms. Haynes, you and your sign-wielding friends here should be out at the pound volunteering your time shoveling doggie-doodoo and arranging adoptions instead of staging a protest on my doorstep. Now, if you’ll excuse me-“
“So that’s it?” Tammy Haynes objected before Joanna could step back inside the building.
“You’re just going to give us a line of excuses and that’s the end of it?”
“I’m not giving you excuses,” Joanna said tightly. “I’m giving you a dose of reality.
In case you’ve been too busy being an animal activist to notice, seven human beings have died in Cochise County in the past several days, including a two-year-old boy who died in a senseless automobile accident, to say nothing of the owner of those seventeen dogs who was murdered in the sanctity of her own home. You’re going to have to pardon me, Ms. Haynes, if I put those dead dogs on a back burner in favor of attending to my other duties.
“It’s Saturday morning. You’re here because you want to be, and so are my people.
Paid or not, I expect most of my investigators will be on duty today, working hard to solve the cases I just
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mentioned to you. Protest all you like, but we have a job to do here. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll go to work.”
“What about us?”
Tamara Haynes sounded like a petulant child. “What about you?” Joanna returned. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you wish and as long as there’s no disruption of traffic in or out of the building.”
“We have every right to be here,” Tammy Haynes whined. “I’ll have you know this is a peaceful protest.”
“Good,” Joanna returned, “I’m glad to hear it. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep it that way.”
With that, Joanna turned away. Most of her part of the discussion had been conducted in a voice so low that only the nearest of the protesters had heard what she said.
As she let herself back into the building, a new outburst of jeering rose up from the crowd. Frank Montoya was waiting just inside the door.
“They don’t sound happy,” he observed as the closing door stifled the noise. “What the hell is that all about?”
“They’re pissed about Carol Mossman’s dead dogs.”
“They’re that upset about the dogs?”
“Right,” Joanna said. “I don’t think any of them noticed that Carol Mossman also died. For some reason, that’s beside the point.”