“Off riding Kiddo,” Butch answered. “This afternoon she’s going swimming with Cassie, and she’s planning on spending the night.”
Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived a few miles away in a former KOA campground that her parents had rehabbed into a private RV park. The park, catering mostly to winter visitors, was underutilized in the summer, giving Cassie and Jenny a clear shot at the park’s swimming pool.
“So it’ll be just be the two of us for dinner tonight?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right. I might make something special then,” Butch added. “We haven’t exactly celebrated our new addition. Drive carefully, but don’t be late. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not starting dinner until I see the whites of your eyes.”
From High Lonesome Ranch, the most direct route to Lordsburg, New Mexico, was on Highway 80 through Douglas, Rodeo, and Road Forks. It also meant returning to Silver Creek. If time hadn’t been an issue, Joanna might have been tempted to drive the long way around, just to avoid revisiting the site of the deadly accident, but her dread proved to be mostly unfounded. By the time she arrived, few signs remained of the previous day’s horrors. The Highway Department had already sent out a crew to reposition the displaced Jersey barriers. A few scraps of yellow crime scene tape still lingered here and there, marking spots where the bodies of dead and injured had come to rest.
There may have been little to see, but, driving alone in her Crown Victoria, Joanna heard once again the frantic voice of the
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injured mother calling for her baby. It was a voice and a sound she would never forget, any more than she’d be able to wipe away the memory of carrying the terrible burden of that dead child up the embankment and into the waiting helicopter. Yesterday Eduardo Maldonado’s deadweight had been a burden for her arms and shoulders. Today he was a burden for her heart.
Snap out of it, she ordered herself when a blur of tears clouded her eyes. That was one job. This is another.
With intermittent radio traffic chattering in the background, Joanna forced herself to review everything she knew about the Carol Mossman case. If she could establish a definite connection between Carol’s death and the two murders in New Mexico, then perhaps there was something else at work here other than simply an opportunist killer targeting susceptible women.
She had crossed the border into New Mexico and was heading north when her cell phone rang. “Hi, Frank,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Jaime and I are on our way to University Medical Center in Tucson to do the interviews you wanted,” Frank Montoya answered. “How about you?”
“Between Rodeo and Road Forks on my way to Lordsburg. What’s up?”
“I thought you’d like to have a little of the inside scoop on the lady in charge of the Animal Welfare Experience folks. It occurred to me that it was too much of a coincidence that AWE would show up with all those sign-waving demonstrators within minutes of the time I had scheduled the press briefing.”
“Right,” Joanna agreed. “The timing was impeccable.”
“I wondered if someone had tipped them off about when the briefing was to happen, so I did some research.”
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“And?”
“Tamara Haynes and Marty Galloway were roommates together at Northern Arizona University.”
“Tamara and Ken Junior’s wife were roommates?” Joanna blurted. “Are you telling me that whole demonstration thing was nothing more than an election campaign stunt?”
“That’s how it looks, although maybe that’s not entirely true,” Frank said. ‘AWE
does exist. Nationally, it’s a legitimate organization, but the local group has surfaced just in the last few days. And there’s a good chance today’s demonstration was a put-up deal, aimed at garnering free publicity for them at your expense, to say nothing of boosting Ken Junior’s chances in the upcoming election.”
“In other words, Ken Junior isn’t above using Carol Mossman’s dogs as political fodder.”
“And neither is Tamara Haynes, who’s something else, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve taken a look at her rap sheet. During the week she teaches Women’s Studies courses at the Sierra Vista campus of Cochise College. On weekends, she’s a political activist. She’s been picked up twice for demonstrating at the Nevada Test Site, twice at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant at Gila Bend, and twice at demonstrations at the front gate at Fort Huachuca. So far, she’s got two disorderly conduct convictions and one interfering with a police officer-all of them with suspended sentences.”
“What do you think we should do about it?” Joanna asked after several moments of reflection.
“I’m not sure,” Frank began.
Suddenly her chief deputy’s voice disappeared into the ether.
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Then there was nothing. Frustrated, Joanna checked her phone and saw that she had crossed into a no-service zone. She tossed the phone down in disgust.
There was no sense in wondering how Tamara Haynes and AWE had hooked themselves up to Frank Montoya’s press briefing. Ken Galloway no longer worked inside the department but he still had plenty of friends there. Looking for the leak would serve no useful purpose.
Joanna was offended to think her opponent would stoop so low as to use Carol Mossman’s dead dogs to make political hay.
Which is exactly why Ken Galloway isn’t worthy of being sheriff, Joanna told herself determinedly. And it’s why, baby or no baby-Eleanor or no Eleanor-I’m staying the course, and I’m going to win!
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The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department was located in a single-story cinder-block building in Lordsburg’s small downtown area. Hard-to-come-by tax money had been spent on the new jail and communications center two blocks away, but Randy Trotter’s humble two-phone-line office reminded Joanna of her father’s old office. When D. . Lathrop had been the sheriff of Cochise County, his department -office, jail, and all-had been located behind barred windows in the art deco courthouse up in old Bisbee. That, too, had been a two-phone-line office. Here, though, the iron bars with their brightly painted Zia symbols were more decorative than utilitarian.
Sheriff Trotter, carrying a cup of steaming coffee, emerged from a back room and greeted Joanna. In his late forties, Trotter had the bowlegged, scrawny, sunbaked look of a man whose preferred mode of transportation remained a horse and saddle.
Joanna remembered hearing from someone that Sheriff Trotter’s 202
family had once lived in the Bisbee area, but they had left there before he was born.
Long before Joanna was born, too, for that matter.
“Coffee?” he asked, offering Joanna a stained mug full of thick, brackish brew.
Just the smell of it was enough to make her queasy all over again. “No, thanks,”
she said, shaking her head. “I’m off coffee at the moment.”
“You’re not one of those anti-coffee health nuts, I hope.”
Joanna thought about her answer for a moment. “Not anti-coffee,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
Trotter was old enough that he hailed from a time when women in law enforcement had been anything but commonplace and pregnant women had been rarer still. Joanna expected some kind of comment. All she got right then was a raised eyebrow. “Water, then?”
he asked. “Or a soda?”
“Water would be great.”
“Come on into my office,” he said. “The place isn’t much, but it works for me. Have a chair.”
Joanna followed him into his private office, where the wooden desk and creaky chair reminded her even more of her father’s old digs. Randy Trotter walked into the adjacent room and removed a bottle of water from a small refrigerator. He handed it over as Joanna sat down on a battered and lumpy brown leather chair that seemed to swallow her whole body.
“Sorry about that,” Randy apologized. “When push came to shove, there was money enough for a new refrigerator or a new chair. The fridge won.” He glanced at his watch.