“Well, if it isn’t Sheriff Brady,” Fran Daly drawled, dropping a man-sized equipment case onto the ground between them. “Long time no see,” she added, wiping her hands on the worn leg of her jeans before proffering one of them in greeting. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Fran was a tough-talking chain-smoker who had, during the previous summer, worked on a series of homicides with Joanna’s department. When George Winfield, the Cochise County medical examiner, had taken off for Alaska on a honeymoon cruise, the board of supervisors had opted to contract with a neighboring county for whatever forensic services might be necessary in Winfield’s absence. Fran Daly, the assistant medical examiner for Pima County, had been drafted into service. At the time the arrangement was made, no one could possibly have anticipated that during the two weeks Dr. Winfield was out of the county, Joanna’s department would unmask Cochise County’s first-ever serial killer, uncovering the remains of several brutally mutilated victims along the way.
Joanna’s first encounter with the pinch-hitting Dr. Daly had been anything but cordial or smooth. The sheriff and the ME had first butted heads at a crime scene where a termite-infested floor had threatened to collapse beneath them at any time. Gradually, though, as one after another of the Cascabel Kid’s tortured victims came to light, the two women had achieved an uncommon level of mutual respect. In the process Joanna had seen beyond Fran Daly’s gruff and overbearing manner to the consummate professional underneath.
“How’s it going, Fran?”
Dr. Daly grinned. Reaching into the pocket of her Western shirt, Fran pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She shook a Camel loose from the pack and then lit it by striking a match across the huge silver-and-turquoise buckle on her leather belt.
“Can’t complain,” she said, blowing a plume of smoke. “Of course, I’m overworked and underpaid, but then what else is new? By the way, what are you doing here? From what the dispatcher told me on the phone, I was under the impression that the victim was found well within Pima County boundaries. Or has Cochise County annexed this portion of Houghton Road and nobody’s gotten around to telling me?”
“This is Pima County, all right,” Joanna said with a short laugh. “But if the victim turns out to be who we think she is, she disappeared from her home in Tombstone sometime Saturday night. The Border Patrol down in Nogales stopped her vehicle when four juveniles tried to take it across the border Sunday evening. So, depending on where you say death occurred, this may turn out to be our case or yours. If it happens to come to us, I don’t want to be last in line when it comes to information.”
Fran Daly nodded. “Fair enough,” she said. “Do you have detectives here then?”
“Not yet, but they will be. One of my homicide guys, Detective Carpenter, is on his way from Bisbee even as we speak. For the moment Frank Montoya, my chief deputy, and I are the only ones here. Unfortunately the victim’s son, His Honor Mayor Clete Rogers of Tombstone, is also on his way.”
“What for?”
Joanna shrugged. “Who knows? I told him he’s got no business here, but the mayor isn’t big on taking other people’s advice. He’s also an elected official who thinks his office gives him carte blanche to do any damned thing he wants.”
“In other words,” Fran said, “the man’s an arrogant son of a bitch.”
“You could say that.” Joanna grinned in reply. “But please don’t let on that I’m the one who told you so.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Fran said.
Just then a uniformed Pima County deputy emerged from a thick stand of cholla, trotted across a shallow dip, and approached Fran Daly. “Howdy, Dr. Daly. Want me to give you a hand with that?” he asked, nodding toward the equipment case.
“No, thanks, Sergeant Mallory. I’m used to lugging this crap around. I can handle it by myself. Do you happen to know Joanna Brady here? She’s the sheriff down in Cochise County.”
Claude Mallory was tall, rangy, square-jawed, and thick-necked. He might have been good-looking had it not been for the fact that his eyes were set far too close together. He favored Joanna with an appraising glance that seemed to imply: What the hell is she doing here?
“We’re not sure who gets this one,” Fran Daly explained in answer to Mallory’s unasked question. “It could be ours; it could be theirs. In any case, Sheriff Brady and her people will be on the scene, and they’re to be allowed the same access as officers from Pima County.”
Mallory nodded. “It’s gonna be pretty crowded,” he said.
Fran Daly shrugged. “The more the merrier,” she said.
Mallory started away from them. “The body’s over this way. If you’ll both just follow me.”
But Fran Daly was not yet done with her smoke. “How long before that detective of yours gets here, Sheriff Brady?” she asked.
“I sent for him as I was leaving Tombstone,” Joanna re-turned. “If Detective Carpenter left the office right then, he can’t be more than twenty minutes behind me.”
Fran nodded. “All right. I’ll go on up to the scene, get set up, and snap a few pictures. I won’t do anything critical, though, until after Carpenter gets here-just as long as he’s not too slow about it. By the time I finish taking photographs, he’ll probably be here. In the meantime, Sergeant Mallory, are you the officer in charge?”
“At the moment. The two detectives are up with the body.”
“According to Sheriff Brady, a man who’s the son of our suspected victim is on his way here from Tombstone. What did you say his name is again, Sheriff Brady?”
“Rogers,” Joanna replied. “Cletus Rogers.”
“Right. Rogers. You got that, Sergeant Mallory? When Cletus Rogers shows up here, you’re not to let him through. I don’t want any civilians blundering through my crime scene. You let Mr. Rogers know that if he’s planning on doing an identification of the body, he’ll need to come to the morgue in Tucson after it’s been transported.”
“Gotcha, Doc,” Mallory agreed. “I’ll handle it.”
“Good.” With that, Fran Daly ground out her cigarette butt on the pavement. Then she picked it up and dropped it into a small rectangular box of the red-and-white Altoid variety. Only when the box was closed and shoved into her hip pocket did she once again heave her equipment case off the ground.
“Now then,” she demanded of Sergeant Mallory. “Where is it we’re going?”
“This way. It’s not far, but the cactus grows so thick you can’t see inside it.”
As Claude Mallory and Fran Daly walked away, Joanna started to follow them. She went as far as the ditch and then stopped. Fran was dressed in proper crime scene attire-a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and snakeskin cowboy boots. Joanna was in high heels, a silk blouse, and a cotton-knit blazer and skirt. One glance at the thick grove of spiny cactus convinced her that what she had worn into the office that morning-clothing that would have been entirely appropriate for an appearance at a board of supervisors meeting-wasn’t going to cut it at a cholla-studded crime scene.
Remembering her mother’s old adage about an ounce of prevention, Joanna retreated to the trunk of the Crown Victoria and dug into the small suitcase of “just-in-case” clothes she kept packed at all times.
She extracted jeans and a worn pair of tennis shoes as well as an ankle-length cotton duster straight out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. After changing, she was just starting to cross the ditch when a battered Ford F-100 pickup pulled up beside her. It screeched to a halt with Clete Rogers at the wheel. Parking half-on and half-off the road, he rammed the pickup into neutral and jumped out.