“But doesn’t Kristin do that?”
“Kristin just had a baby,” Joanna said. “Until she’s back on the job, we’ll be counting on you.”
“All right,” Sylvia said, backing up and scuttling toward the hallway. “I’ll take it back to the mail room and sort it there.”
“No,” Joanna said. “That won’t do. Use Kristin’s desk. And if the phone rings while you’re there, you’ll have to answer it.”
“But…” Sylvia began.
“Please,” Joanna insisted. “I need your help.”
Nodding, Sylvia pushed the cart closer to Kristin’s desk. Joanna didn’t want to spook the young woman further by looking over her shoulder as she set about doing an unfamiliar task. Spying a copy of The Bisbee Bee near the top of the pile, Joanna grabbed it, then retreated to her office and closed the door.
WITH THE NEW UNIDENTIFIED number in hand, I left the conference room and went looking for Frank Montoya. The desk outside Sheriff Brady’s office was almost buried under stacks of paper. Seated there was a young woman I hadn’t seen before. When I asked if Chief Deputy Montoya was in, she didn’t answer. Instead, she ducked her head and pointed.
When I entered the chief deputy’s office, Frank was on the phone patiently explaining to an out-of-town reporter that, until the dead suspect’s relatives had been contacted, he was unable to release any further information.
“How’s it going?” he asked, when the call finally ended.
I handed him a sheet of paper on which I had written the unidentified number, the next cog in my telephone Tinkertoy trail. “Can you find out whose phone number this is?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “It may take a few minutes.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll be in the conference room.”
THE HEADLINE JOANNA SOUGHT was in the right-hand bottom corner of the Bee’s front page:
DEPUTY KENNETH GALLOWAY
OPPOSES SHERIFF BRADY
“Crime rates may be down in the rest of the country,” Cochise County Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Galloway declared yesterday while throwing his hat into the ring in the race for sheriff. “But here, on Sheriff Joanna Brady’s watch, it seems to be going in the opposite direction.”
Citing increased numbers of undocumented aliens who are flooding into the county, Galloway says sheriff’s deputies are often outgunned and outnumbered. “We don’t have the manpower to deal with UDAs and with our regular law enforcement responsibilities as well. Sheriff Brady hasn’t done enough to increase staffing to deal with this ever-growing problem.”
That was as far as Joanna could bear to read. Increased staffing simply wasn’t possible in the face of lower tax receipts and across-the-board budget cuts. It was easy for someone outside the process to point a finger and call her incompetent, but Ken Junior wasn’t the one who had to face up to the board of supervisors and try to balance the budget. She tossed the paper aside.
She had already decided she would run again. With the next election still more than a year away, she hadn’t wanted to start campaigning quite so early. But if Kenneth Galloway was already out on the stump, she would be forced to follow suit. That meant organizing a committee, raising funds, and doing appearances, all while doing her job.
For several minutes she sat brooding, wondering where she’d find the time and energy to do both. Gradually, though, her thoughts shifted. She was mentally back at Chico’s and analyzing the conversation she and Beau had shared there. She recalled the man’s painful admission about how Anne Rowland Corley had conned him and others; about how the real miscarriage of justice hadn’t been in confining a twelve-year-old to a mental institution but in releasing her years later.
Joanna had dropped the offending copy of The Bisbee Bee on top of the serial-killer piece from the Denver Post. Now she unearthed the article and scanned the timeline sidebar that had accompanied the feature article. It showed when the child Anne Rowland had been shipped off to Phoenix and when she had been released.
With a growing sense of purpose, Joanna picked up the phone and dialed Frank Montoya’s office. When he didn’t answer, she tried Dispatch. “Where’s the chief deputy?” she asked. “Is he still out at Palominas?”
“No,” Tica Romero said. “I think he’s out in the lobby talking to some reporters. Want me to interrupt?”
“Never mind,” Joanna said. Her next call was to Ernie Carpenter. “When did Bill Woodruff disappear?” she asked when he answered.
“Who?”
“Bill Woodruff. You remember him. He used to be the Cochise County Coroner.”
“Oh, that Bill Woodruff,” Ernie said. “Sure, I remember him. That’s a long time ago. I was a brand-new detective back then. Woodruff went fishing down at Guyamas and never came back.”
“That’s what I remember, too, because Dad was sheriff,” Joanna said. “But wasn’t there something about Woodruff having a ‘side dish’ somewhere down across the line in Old Mexico?”
“Sounds familiar,” Ernie allowed.
“Do you remember any of the details?”
“Like I said, it’s been a long time,” Ernie said.
“Yes,” Joanna said. “It has. Thanks.”
She hurried to the office door. Sylvia Roark was still pulling envelopes out of the cart. “How are you doing?” Joanna asked.
“Okay,” Sylvia mumbled.
“Not on the mail,” Joanna corrected. “I mean, how are you doing on the microfiche project?”
“I can’t do anything on it if I’m here,” Sylvia sputtered. “I thought you said I should-”
“Not right now,” Joanna said quickly. “I don’t mean today. I mean in general. How far have you gotten?”
“Only the mid-eighties, I guess,” Sylvia said. “I’m working backward, and it takes time, you know. I can work on it only an hour or two a day, but I’m doing the best-”
Without waiting for Sylvia to finish, Joanna headed for the mail room. Tucked into a far corner sat the clumsy old microfiche machine next to its multiple-drawered file. Pulling out the one marked “1979 – 1981,” Joanna settled herself in front of the screen and went to work.
I SAT IN THE CONFERENCE room twiddling my thumbs for the next twenty minutes. Finally Frank Montoya showed up. Wordlessly he handed me back the piece of paper on which I had scribbled the unknown telephone number. “Who’s Francine Connors?” he asked.
“The Washington State Attorney General’s wife,” I told him. “Why?”
“I’d say the man has a problem then,” Frank Montoya replied. “The cell phone in question is registered to her.”
Frank exited the room, leaving me feeling as though he had poured a bucket of cold water down my back. Ross Connors had been looking for a leak in his department and among his trusted advisers. It was clear to me now that the problem had been far closer to him – in his own home! Francine Connors had been carrying on a long-distance relationship with the husband of one of her friends. In the process, she had not simply betrayed her husband, she had also helped murder Latisha Wall.
I popped my head back out of the conference room. Chief Deputy Montoya had not yet made it to his office. “Hey, Frank,” I called. “One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to need a log on that one, too.”
“No kidding,” he replied. “I’ve already ordered it. I’ll bring it to you as soon as I can.”
While waiting, I struggled with my conscience, wondering what to do. Under the circumstances, nothing seemed clear-cut. Was my first responsibility to my boss? Did I have an obligation to call Ross Connors and tell him my as yet unproved suspicions? But if I did that, wasn’t I dodging my responsibilities to Latisha Wall? Most of my adult life has been spent tracking killers. If Francine Connors had betrayed a protected witness’s whereabouts, then she was as guilty of Latisha Wall’s murder as the man who had poisoned her.