“But they had Alice’s identification along with her address. They could have gone to her place and taken it apart. Was there any sign of stolen goods in the car, anything that might be traceable back to Alice’s house in Tombstone?”
“Not that I know of,” Frank said.
“Here’s my position then,” Joanna said. “The murder may not have taken place in Cochise County, but it’s possible that a burglary did. And until we see how all these dots are connected-Alice’s death, the ransacking of her house, and the sudden disappearance of her boyfriend, our department is involved. Is that clear?”
There were nods all around the room. “I’ll be in touch with Fran Daly’s office and let her know that we’re still in the game and need to be apprised of the postmortem results.” She turned to Jaime Carbajal. “What’s happening with the crime scene crews?”
“As I told you last night, there were fingerprints all over the place at Alice’s house. We’ve collected a ton of them. It’s going to take time to process them and feed them into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. What’s interesting, though, is the fact that while Alice’s house is full of prints, we’ve hardly found any in the mobile home at Outlaw Mountain. We’ve dusted the whole place and haven’t come up with more than one or two partials. There aren’t any on the light switches or doorknobs or on the cans of soda in the refrigerator. How does that strike you?”
“Odd,” Joanna said.
Jaime nodded. “It’s odd, all right. Ernie suggested that I have them check the wall above the toilet in case the guy leans there when he’s taking a leak.”
“Right,” Joanna said, hoping to forestall a blush. “Good thinking.”
“We’ll make sure that gets done today,” Jaime continued. “The dresser drawers and closets are all empty. That means Farley Adams packed his bags and left, but before he took off, he must have raced through his house wiping every possible surface clean of fingerprints.”
“Sounds like somebody with something to hide,” Joanna suggested.
“That’s what we thought,” Jaime agreed. “So Ernie and I will be taking the crew back out there again this morning. Maybe in the clear light of day, we’ll find something we missed last night.”
“What about papers?” Joanna asked. “Did you happen to stumble across anything that looked like a marriage license?”
“A marriage license?” Jaime asked.
Joanna nodded. “Susan Jenkins thinks Farley Adams was about to marry her mother in a phony ruse to lay hands on Alice’s money.”
“So there is money then?” Ernie asked.
“Some, but I don’t know how much. I have Alice Rogers’ attorney’s name out in Sierra Vista. Hogan, Dena Hogan. My thinking is if Farley figured he already had the money bagged, there must have been a reason. Either he and Alice had already tied the knot, or else she had rewritten her will in his favor.”
Ernie frowned, once again beetling his thick eyebrows together until they formed a single rope-wide track across his forehead. “It sounds like you’re saying Farley may be responsible for her murder instead of those kids in the lockup down in Nogales.”
“What I’m saying is that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. I’m not prepared to accept Pima County’s slam-dunk clear until some of the strange stuff in our jurisdiction gets straightened out. That includes checking with Alice Rogers’ attorney. You or Ernie can go talk to her. Or, if you guys are too busy with the crime scene investigators, I can handle Ms. Hogan myself.”
“As far as I’m concerned, have a ball,” Ernie said. “Jaime and I already have more than enough to do.”
Avoiding looking at the burgeoning stack of mail Kristin had piled on her desk, Joanna added Dena Hogan’s name to her To-Do list.
“Anything else?” Joanna asked.
“Not from us,” Ernie said.
“All right then, you and Jaime go ahead and get with the program.”
The two detectives stood up as one. “Wait a minute,” Jaime Carbajal said. “What about that weird guy from Saint David, the one who was with you last night when you stopped by Alice Rogers’ place? Whatever happened to him? Did you locate his family?”
“What guy?” Dick Voland asked.
Caught being less than candid with her subordinates, Joanna blushed to the roots of her bright red hair. She had thought about mentioning Junior’s situation to the briefing as a whole but had decided against it-right up until Jaime’s awkward question brought the issue out into the open.
“I guess I just haven’t gotten around to telling you,” Joanna replied. “His moue is Junior. He’s developmentally disabled, his family evidently drove off and left him behind when they finished up with the Holy Trinity Arts and Crafts Fair over in Saint David.”
“Where’s this Junior now?” Voland demanded. “You didn’t take him home with you, did you?”
“No,” Joanna replied. “I didn’t. He’s staying with a friend of mine, someone who’s had experience with people like Junior.”
“Whoever he is, he’d better have experience,” Voland growled. “If anything happens to that guy while he’s in our custody, our ass will be grass. His family may not have wanted him last Sunday, but if he croaks out while we’re in charge of him, you can bet they’ll hit us with a million-dollar lawsuit so fast it’ll make our heads spin.”
“Nothing is going to happen to him,” Joanna declared firmly.
“Who says, and how are you going to go about finding his family?”
“I don’t know yet,” Joanna admitted. “I still haven’t decided.”
“Let me remind you, Sheriff Brady,” Voland said. “We’re in the business of law enforcement, not social service. Considering what’s gone on around here the last few days, we’ve got our hands plenty full playing cops and robbers without going out of our way to collect lost retards and drag them home.”
Joanna sent her chief deputy a frosty glance. She was accustomed to that kind of comment from Voland. In the privacy of the morning briefing, where only she and Frank Montoya were present, she cut the man some slack. In front of her two homicide detectives, it was absolutely unacceptable.
“The proper term is developmentally disabled, Deputy Voland, not retard,” Joanna told him. “We’re not calling Junior that in this office-not to his face and not behind his back, either. And don’t think for a minute this is some kind of mindless acquiescence to political correctness. It’s called common decency. Is that clear?”
Voland backed down. “It’s clear all right,” he said.
Joanna turned back to the detectives. “You go on now. If we need your help on the Junior situation, I’ll let you know.” As soon as the two detectives let themselves out of the office, Joanna zeroed in on Voland once again. “Don’t pull that kind of stunt again, Dick. Understand?”
He nodded glumly. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“And now,” Joanna continued, “do either of you have any bright ideas about how to locate Junior’s family?”
“Not me,” Voland said.
“Frank?”
“You’ve checked his clothing for ID?”
“Right,” Joanna said, “and found nothing. It looks suspiciously as though all the labels have been deliberately removed.”
“So you’re suggesting that whoever left him in Saint David did it on purpose, that they don’t want to be found.”
“Right.”
Frank tapped a thoughtful finger on his forehead. “Maybe we should take a lesson from that television show, ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ Let’s try to spread the word on this. Maybe we could even hit the wire services. We’ll show Junior’s picture, tell where he was found, and all that. If we make a big enough splash, maybe someone will recognize him.”
“That might work,” Joanna concluded after a moment’s thought. “Any ideas about how to go about it?”