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room like she was dragging herself along on her belly. I think she musta been trying to get to the phone to call for help. She never made it.”
Concerned over Manny’s unnatural pallor, Joanna took him by the arm. “Come back and sit with me in the Blazer for a minute,” she said. “You don’t have any animals stuck in your truck, do you?”
Ruiz shook his head. “Nope. This was my first stop of the day. I was afraid I’d be bringing all of Carol Mossman’s dogs back to the pound with me. I wanted to have plenty of room. Even starting out empty, I figured it would still take two trips.”
Once Manny Ruiz was seated in the Blazer, Joanna handed him a bottle of water. He drank half of it without pausing for breath.
“And the dogs?” Joanna asked.
“Heat,” Manny replied. “If the cooler’d been turned on, the dogs would probably be okay. If they got thirsty, they could have drunk water out of the toilet. And if they’d gotten hungry enough, they could’ve …” He left the sentence go unfinished.
Joanna saw where he was headed with that bit of speculation. With an effort she managed to prevent her own mind from completing the image.
Manny took another drink. Polishing off the contents of the bottle with his second gulp, he handed the empty back to Joanna. They were sitting in the front seat of her Blazer with the doors open and the radio chattering in the background. The radio was silent for the space of a moment or two. Suddenly, Manny sat up straight. “Did you hear that?” he demanded.
“Hear what?” Joanna asked, thinking she had missed an important radio transmission.
But Manny Ruiz had already vaulted out of the Blazer.
25
Rumbling along with the gait of an upright grizzly bear, he charged past the mobile home and headed for the river. Once Joanna was outside the car, she heard what he had heard—the unmistakably mournful cry of a bereft puppy. Running to keep up, Joanna followed Manny around the trailer to the jury-rigged hut where Carol Mossman had confined her pack of dogs.
The building was exactly as Manuel Ruiz had described it in his initial report. It was approximately the size of a two-car garage. Walls of straw bales covered with a thin veneer of stucco rose from the ground to a height of about ten feet, at which point the builder ran out of money, patience, or both. The roof consisted of a shaky collection of two-by-fours held up by several interior four-by-four upright posts.
On top of the skeleton of two-by-fours lay a collection of scavenged lumber and doors, all of which would have toppled down at the first hint of a monsoon-driven wind.
While Joanna paused long enough to examine the exterior of the building, Manny Ruiz disappeared inside. He emerged a moment later cradling a tiny ball of black fluff in one of his massive fists. “Look here,” he announced. “Here’s one little guy that made it.” He passed the whimpering puppy to Joanna. “And I’ll bet he’s starved,”
Manny continued. “I’ve got some milk in my thermos. If you’ll hold on to him for a minute, I’ll go get it.”
Joanna was still holding the puppy when Dr. George Winfield, the Cochise County Medical Examiner and Joanna’s relatively new stepfather, showed up behind her. “Looks like a single survivor was pulled from the wreckage,” he observed, peering over her shoulder for a closer look at the squeaking ball of fur still squirming fitfully in Joanna’s hands.
“He wasn’t in the wreckage,” Joanna said. “If he had been, he’d be dead by now, too, right along with the others. Somehow
26
he ended up being left in the shed when all the other dogs went inside the trailer.”
“Lucky for him,” George said.
And for us, Joanna thought. Crime scenes were usually places of utter desolation, yet here was a little life-affirming miracle, a scrap of hope. She clutched the puppy more tightly and cradled him to her breast.
About then Manny Ruiz showed back up with his thermos. He poured some milk into the cup of the thermos, then he gently removed the puppy from Joanna’s grip and held its nose to the milk, which it lapped up hungrily. The puppy may not have been old enough to be weaned, but with his mother likely numbered among the dead dogs inside the mobile home, he was weaned now.
The puppy drank until he seemed ready to pop. He would have drunk more, but Manny took the cup away and poured out what was left. “That’s enough, little fella,” he said. “You drink any more right now, you’ll make yourself sick.”
Manuel Ruiz put the puppy down on the ground, where it staggered around in circles for a moment or two, then dropped onto Manny’s booted foot and fell sound asleep.
The heavyset officer stared down at the puppy with a look of such tender concern on his face that Joanna was almost embarrassed to have seen it. Somehow she had fallen victim to the kind of stereotypical thinking that assumes Animal Control officers don’t like animals. Clearly that wasn’t the case with Officer Ruiz.
“He is a cute little guy,” Doc Winfield agreed. “And I could stand here watching him sleep all day, but I’d better go have a look at my victim. Your detectives will be pissed at me for holding up the show.”
He strode off, leaving Joanna and Manny looking down at 27
the puppy. “He’s so little, I hate to take him to the pound,” Manny said thoughtfully.
Joanna looked at the contented wad of sleeping puppy. It was months now since Jenny’s blue tick hound, Sadie, had succumbed to cancer. Neither Joanna nor Butch had brought up the subject of getting another dog, and Jenny had seemed content to divide her time and attention between Kiddo, her horse, and her remaining dog, Tigger, a comical half pit-bull, half golden-retriever mutt. Now, though, seeing this homeless puppy, Joanna knew this was the right dog at the right time.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joanna said, reaching down and plucking the sleeping puppy off Manny Ruiz’s boot. “Lucky’s going home with me.”
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Finished making his tire-and footprint casts, Dave Hollicker had disappeared into the mobile home while Joanna spoke to Manny. Now, as the CS1 emerged once more, Joanna went to meet him. Dave’s face was flushed and his clothing was soaked with sweat.
“What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“It’s hotter’n hell in there,” he said, wiping his streaming forehead. “No electricity, so there’s no air-conditioning, and we’re losing the light. Doc Winfield’s wondering if you have an extra trouble light with you. And where’d you get that cute little puppy?”
The puppy, cradled in Joanna’s arm, was still fast asleep. Stuffing the sleeping animal inside her shirt, Joanna tumbled the Blazer keys out of her pocket and handed them over. “Manny found him out in the shed,” she explained. “There’s a trouble light in the back of the Blazer. Doc Winfield is welcome to it, but 29
what’s the matter with the electricity? Can’t you replace a fuse or pull a breaker and get the cooler running again?”
Dave shook his head. “We’ve placed a call to the power company. They told us the juice is turned off due to lack of payment. We’ve requested that they switch it back on as soon as possible, but they don’t seem to be in any particular hurry.”
Two more patrol cars and a second Animal Control vehicle drove up. “That’ll be Deputies Raymond and Howell,” Dave said. “What do you want them to do?”
“The shots came through the back door, right?”
Hollicker nodded.
“And you’ve done all the footprints?”
“All I could find.”
“While it’s still light enough, then, have Raymond and Howell start a preliminary foreign-object search,” Joanna said.
“Will do.”
Jeannine Phillips walked into the yard lugging a large box.
Dave started away, then turned back to the two Animal Control officers. “Doc Winfield also said that he’d like you to remove those dead dogs as soon as possible. There are dog dishes and dead dogs everywhere. The ME needs them out of the way. Since there’s so little room to work in, maybe one of you could go inside and ferry the dogs as far as the door. Remember, though, this is a crime scene. Whoever goes inside needs to wear booties and sign in on the crime scene diary.”