Joanna had finished loading the dishwasher and was just adding soap when Butch came back into the kitchen. “That took a while,” she said.
“I know. I have a rug shampooer out in the garage. I took a crack at the upholstery in your car. It helped some, but it’s not going to solve the whole problem. Unfortunately it had a chance to really soak in.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out Joanna’s badge. “This looks like the real McCoy. It wouldn’t happen to be yours, would it?”
Drying her hands, Joanna look the badge and returned it to the leather carrying case in her purse. Once she did that, she walked over to Butch and gave the base of’ his neck a nuzzling kiss. In the process his hand bumped against the elbow that had swatted up against the cholla. She winced.
“What’s the matter?” Butch asked. “Are you hurt?”
“A little.”
She rolled up her sleeve and looked. Her elbow was punctured by more than a dozen tiny pinpricks, all of them red and sore. “What happened?” Butch asked
“I had a run-in with a batch of cholla,” she told him.
Shaking his head, Butch reached into a drawer and brought out a tube of Neosporin. “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story,” he said.
For the next forty-five minutes, she told him everything, starting with finding Alice Rogers’ body and ending with Junior. When Joanna finished, Butch leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “What’s it going to take to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna admitted. “I’ve never encountered a case quite like this before.”
“I have,” Butch said grimly. “Two years ago the family of one of my athletes took off out of town while Brad was away at Special Olympics. When the games were over and we tried to take him home, no one was there. One of the neighbors told us they’d packed up and left on vacation. In a way, you can understand it. It’s got to be a terrible strain for the family members. For caregivers it’s a never-ending, lifetime’s worth of responsibility, with no hope and no respite. Still, abandoning ship like that is unforgivable. At least, that’s how it seemed to me then, and it still does.
“But I’ll bet the same thing that happened with Brad will happen with junior. Somebody is going to notice that Junior isn’t at home anymore, and they’ll start asking questions. In the meantime, we’re going to have to look after him, that’s all.”
“You mean that, don’t you,” Joanna said. “The ‘we’ part, I mean.”
“Yes,” Butch said. “If we don’t, who’s going to? And if you and Jenny and I all take a crack at this thing together, it won’t be that big a problem. I’m sure Jeff Daniels will help out, and maybe even Marianne, if she’s able.”
“Did you hear from them today?” Joanna asked. “Has she turned in her resignation?”
“Not yet. According to Jeff, she’s talking about maybe seeing a doctor. Talking, but she hasn’t made an appointment yet. Jeff is afraid that if he pushes too hard, she’ll give up on the idea of going at all.”
Butch paused and grinned. “That’s the trouble with women,” he said. “They’re totally unpredictable. You can never tell what will happen when you push.”
They had been sitting at the kitchen table. Now Joanna stood up and walked over to Butch’s chair. Taking his face in both hands, she leaned down and kissed him again squarely on the lips.
“That’s right,” she said. “Women are totally unpredictable.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
As far as Joanna was concerned, Tuesday morning’s briefing was more three-ring circus than anything else. Every officer came to the meeting bringing his own particular piece of the puzzle. The problem was, in addition to business as usual, there were far too many puzzles and not nearly enough people.
Frank Montoya, cut loose from Tombstone for the morning, came tapping on Joanna’s back-door entrance, the private one that bypassed the main lobby and led directly into her office. “What’s going on out there?” he demanded. “The lot is parked full of media vans. Don’t tell me Clete Rogers’ mother’s death merits this kind of full-court press.”
“They’re here about Oak Vista Estates,” Dick Voland said. “That’s the current local hot button.”
“What’s happening at Oak Vista?” Frank asked. “Why don’t I know anything about it?”
“Because you’re so damn busy gallivanting around Tombstone that you aren’t tending to business here at home.” Before Frank could respond, Joanna came to his defense.
“Lay off, Dick,” she said. “Give the man a break. He’s spent the last two days tied up on the Alice Rogers homicide. I’m sure you can bring him up to speed on Oak Vista. In fact, while you’re at it, why don’t you tell us all.”
She glanced around her office. Since the waiting reporters were currently stashed in the staff briefing room, the morning briefing itself had been bounced into Joanna’s private office. Usually Joanna, Dick Voland, and Frank Montoya were the only attendees. This morning they had been joined by Detectives Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal. In the far corner of the room sat Deputy Terry Gregovich. Peacefully sleeping at his feet lay Spike.
“I suppose you know all about the Monkey Wrench Gang,” Voland said.
Frank nodded. “You mean those enviro-nuts from Tucson who used to go around the state trying to put developers out of business?”
“Forget ‘used to’,” Dick Voland said. “They’re back, or at least we’ve got ourselves a group that could be a carbon copy. Not only are they back, but they’re here-in our very own Cochise County. They’ve been raising hell at Mark Childers’ newest development, Oak Vista Estates. Just last week the contractor started clearing the area, the back side of which butts up against Forest Service land at the base of the Huachucas.
“The developer’s no slouch. He has all his ducks in a row on this one. He’s properly permitted and has submitted all his environmental studies, but that doesn’t mean diddly to some people. Twenty or so of them showed up yesterday afternoon armed with rocks and clubs and a whole bunch of tools which, from what we’ve been able to discover, they planned to use to take apart or disable Childers’ fleet of bulldozers, front-end loaders, and dump trucks.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank Montoya said. “I remember now, Mark Childers is one of the movers and shakers out in Sierra Vista.”
“Right,” Dick Voland said. “As a matter of fact, he turned up at the board of supervisors meeting yesterday morning. At that point, all that had happened was what went on Friday, when the demonstrators formed a human chain to keep him from unloading equipment. Yesterday at the meeting, all he was worrying about was construction delays and wanting to know what we were going to do to protect him and his equipment. After what went down later on in the afternoon, my guess now is he’s mad as hell.
“It turns out some of Childers’ opposition came to the meeting as well. They wanted to know who it was who approved the project in the first place. Actually, for a board of supervisors meeting, it was pretty entertaining since they were the ones in the hot seat for a change.”
“So, what happened?” Joanna asked.
“Nothing. Don’t forget, those folks are politicians, every last one of them. It didn’t take long for them to read the writing on the wall. Since a lot of people are obviously unhappy about the Oak Vista project, the board took about half a minute to pass the buck. They’re blaming the whole mess on the head of Planning and Zoning-Planning and Guessing, if you ask me. Looks like Lewis Flores is going to be elected scapegoat. He isn’t going to like taking it in the shorts. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he ends up handing in his resignation over the deal.”