Taken under Joanna's and Marianne's protective wings, Angie was making a new life for herself. Bartending for Bobo Jenkins was her first legitimate job. With Jeff Daniels' help, she had purchased her own car-a seventeen-year-old Oldsmobile Omega-which she actually knew how to drive. She owned her own little house, a two-bedroom, in what had once been company housing for Phelps Dodge miners. For topping on the cake, she also had a boyfriend-a real boyfriend-for the first time in her life. Baby-sitting on a moment's notice both for Jeff and Marianne and for Joanna was Angie's way of repaying her benefactors for all they had done for her and for all the many blessings in her new life.
"What can I do to help?" Joanna asked. "Who's going to look after Ruth when you have to go to work?"
"I already talked to Bobo about it," Angie said. Bobo Jenkins was the African-American owner of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Bisbee's famed Brewery Gulch, where Angie worked as a relief bartender. "He said I could take both today and tomorrow off. And I talked to Dennis. He says he'll come to town early on Friday so he can take over when my shift starts."
Angie had met Dennis Hacker, a British-born naturalist, through a mutual interest in bird-watching. Originally, Angie had been fascinated by his Audubon Society-funded project to reintroduce parrots into their former habitat in the Chiricahua and Peloncillo mountains of southeastern Arizona.
Knowing that the man had spent years living a hermitlike existence, Joanna had been concerned that Hacker's interest in the young woman didn't go far beyond her lush good looks. She had been reassured, however, by the fact that as time passed, Hacker continued to find any number of excuses for driving into Bisbee several times a week from his camp in the Peloncillos. She knew that the possibility of a blossoming romance between Angie and Dennis was anathema to some of the grizzled old-timers who frequented the Blue Moon. Having established what they considered to be squatters' rights around Angie, they regarded the lanky, blond Hacker as an unwelcome interloper, one who might very well carry Angie away with him.
Now, though, Joanna realized that the relationship between Angie and Hacker was verging on serious. "You mean Dennis would do that?" she asked. "He'd come baby-sit a two-year-old in your place?"
"Of course he would," Angie answered confidently. "Why wouldn't he?"
Why indeed? Most men wouldn't volunteer to do that on a bet, Joanna thought. She said, "So you don't need any help from me? With Ruth, I mean."
"Not right now. Marianne left me a list of ladies from the church who'd be willing to help out, but for the time being, I've got it handled."
Joanna glanced at her watch. "Did Marianne say what time they'd be doing the surgery?"
"This morning sometime," Angie responded. "That's all I know."
"I'll head into the office right away," Joanna said. "I'm hoping I’ll be able to slip up to Tucson a little later today. Which hospital?"
"University," Angie said.
Joanna swallowed hard. That was the same hospital in Tucson where Andy had been airlifted after he was shot-the place where he had died the next day. Joanna had never wanted to go back there; had never wanted to set foot in another one of their awful waiting rooms. But still, for Jeff and Marianne-for little Esther-she would. She didn't have any choice.
"I'll be there," she said. "As soon as I can get cut loose from the department."
Ignoring the dogs and without even bothering to go to the kitchen and start coffee, Joanna headed for the bathroom. With everything that had happened in Cochise County in the past two days, there would be plenty to do, plenty to stand in the way of her getting out of the department on time, to say nothing of early.
By a quarter to eight, she was at her desk, mowing through the stack of unanswered messages that had come in the previous afternoon. By five after eight, she had corralled Dick Voland and Frank Montoya into her office for the morning briefing.
"I guess you heard about Clyde Philips," she said as Frank settled into his chair.
Montoya nodded. "If he's dead and his shop's been cleaned out, I don't suppose we'll be buying sniper rifles from him, no matter what."
"When you talked to him, he didn't happen to mention how many of those things he had on hand, did he?"
Frowning, Frank considered a moment before he answered. "Now that you mention it, I believe he told me there were three individual weapons we could choose from, ones he had available for immediate delivery."
"Great," Joanna said. "That's just peachy."
Voland came in holding computer printouts of the previous day's incident reports. "So what all's happening, Dick?" she asked.
"Not too much. S and R's been up and out since six of the A.M.," the chief deputy replied. "Still no sign of Katrina Berridge. The evidence techs are on their way to the crime scene to pick up anything we may have missed last night. Detective Carbajal will meet them there and lead them in. Ernie is going up to Tucson to be on hand for the two autopsies. Dr. Daly has scheduled them back-to-back this morning, one right after the other."
Joanna didn't shirk from most law enforcement duties. One of the precepts of leading by example was that she didn't ask her officers to do things she herself wasn't prepared to do. The lone exception to that was standing by during autopsies. That was one official task she was more than happy to delegate to her detectives.
Joanna leaned back in her chair. "All right, then," she said. "Let's get started. We're having a tough time around here at the moment. Do we have any deputies we can spare from Patrol to augment Search and Rescue?"
Voland glowered at Frank Montoya. The Chief Deputy for Administration was charged with overseeing the budget. In that role, he had been conducting an unrelenting campaign to keep Dick Voland's Patrol Division pared to an absolute minimum.
"You're trying to get blood out of a turnip," Voland said. "Frank here has us running so close to the bone that I don't have anybody I can spare. And if I bring in off-duty officers, we'll he dealing with overtime all over again."
In these kinds of internal turf wars, Joanna often found herself agreeing with Frank and his budget considerations. This time, however, she had to come down in favor of Dick Voland's need for additional manpower.
"You're going to have to cut us a little slack here, Frank," she said. "Dick's going to have officers running two homicide investigations and conducting a search-and-rescue operation in addition to working our normal caseload. He has to have extra help. If that means overtime, that means overtime."
Frank nodded. "You're the boss," he said. "I'll see what I can do."
"Speaking of normal caseload," Joanna added, "what else went on overnight?"
"Not too much," Voland answered. "We had somebody-teenagers, most likely-shooting up road signs out on Moson Road."
"Road signs but no livestock and no people, right?" Joanna asked.
"Right," Voland replied. "Two speeders, a couple of DWIs, a reported runaway from out east of Huachuca City, and that's about it. Nothing serious."
"No illegals?"
"Hard as it is to believe, nobody picked up a single one last night."
"God," Joanna said. "What else? Any leads on that truck hijacking over by Bowie? Has anybody been in touch with Sheriff Trotter's office over in New Mexico?"
"I have," Frank volunteered. "No leads so far. The driver isn't exactly eager to talk about it. He's evidently married and doesn't want his wife to know that he stops along the road to pick up naked hitchhikers."
"That's hardly surprising," Joanna returned. "If I were in the wife's shoes, I wouldn't be any too thrilled, either." She addressed her next question to Frank. "How did the grievance hearings go?"