For the first time in weeks, Jenny snuggled close and let her mother wrap one arm around her.
“Who was that lady?” she asked.
“A woman from town,” Joanna answered, pulling Jenny closer. “Her name is Linda Kimball.”
“What did she want?”
“She’s worried about her husband. She’s afraid he’s going to say he did something he didn’t do, just to keep someone else from getting in trouble.”
“But why did she come here?” Jenny asked.
“I guess she came to talk to me because she didn’t want to talk to Ernie Carpenter. There were things she had to say that were upsetting to her; things she wanted to talk over with another woman instead of with a man.”
“She wanted a woman detective instead of a man?” Jenny asked.
Joanna smiled. “So far Cochise County doesn’t have any women detectives.”
“But they do have a woman sheriff,” Jenny commented thoughtfully.
“That’s right,” Joanna agreed. “Cochise County does have one of those.”
Jenny nodded and then got up. “It’s late. I’d better go to bed. Good night, Mom.” Jenny leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek.
“Sleep tight,” Joanna managed to reply.
She was glad Jenny didn’t turn and look back at her from the bedroom door, glad she didn’t see that her mother’s eyes had filled with tears of gratitude. Which were very nice for a change….
IT WAS ten o’clock before Joanna sat down at the dining room table to look at the stack of mail Kristin Marsten had dumped on her desk early that afternoon.
One of the first pieces of paper Joanna picked up happened to be her own typed statement-the one concerning the election-night traffic incident, the one she had gone to the Justice Center to sign on Wednesday morning. That seemed so long ago now-so much had happened in between-as to be almost ancient history. To say nothing of unnecessary.
Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s chief of police, had left Joanna a message earlier that afternoon telling her that a decision had been made to cite Holly Patterson for driving without a license and negligent driving rather than vehicular assault. Joanna didn’t care to contemplate why the decision had been made that particular way, or how it could have been made at all in view of the fact that her own statement had never been taken into consideration by the investigators, but she decided that wasn’t her problem. She tossed the statement aside and went back to the mail.
As Sue Rolles had indicated, Martin Sanders letter of resignation was concealed in among all the rest, sandwiched between an inner-office memo listing the jail menus for the following week and a notice of the next board of supervisors meeting, which, as a county administrator, Joanna would now be required to attend. She read through the letter of resignation twice. It said very little, only that for personal reasons he was resigning immediately. For the next week and a half, he would be taking the remainder of his accrued vacation.
“Thanks a lot, Martin,” she muttered, “maybe I can do you a favor sometime.”
She took out her calendar and made a note of the supervisors’ meeting. On the bottom of that notice, someone had hand-changed the routing crossing out R. Voland and replacing his name with J. Brady.
At the very bottom of the stack was one of those eagle decorated overnight mail packages that bore a Washington, D.C postmark and no return address. Joanna tore it open.
Inside she found a full-color catalog called Women Officers’ Mandatory Accessories and Notions of Santa Monica, California. WOMAN. Cute. In it she found pictures of stunning women with no subcutaneous fat and flawless teeth and nails. They looked as though they had never done a day’s work in their lives, but they were all outfitted in everything from female-proportioned Kevlar vests to lightweight weapons and listening devices. Most of the latter seemed designed to be concealed and carried on various female foundation garments.
None of the price tags could be considered cheap, but Joanna conceded that the possibility of a comfortable Kevlar vest might be an important, lifesaving investment.
In addition to the catalog, Adam York’s CARE package contained two other items. One was a well-worn, doggeared copy of a clearly outdated book. Entitled Officer Down, Code Three and written by someone named Pierce Brooks, the blue volume wasn’t a book Joanna had ever seen or heard of before. The ragged dustcover, complete with a picture of 1970s-era cops, showed its age, as did the original publication date of 1975.
Puzzled as to why Adam York had sent her the book, but putting it aside for a moment, Joanna picked up the last item-Adam York’s DEA business card with a hand-scrawled note of congratulations on the back. She dialed the number listed on the card. After a strange series of clicks, the phone finally rang, and Adam York himself answered.
“At this hour of the night, I was expecting an answering machine,” Joanna said with a laugh.
“You got lucky. Through the wonders of phone factory engineers, you can dial me in Tucson and speak to me in D.C. Isn’t technology wonderful?”
“D.C” Joanna echoed. “That’s East Coast time, so it really is late. Sorry.”
“Time’s relative. What’s up?”
“I called to thank you for the package. I can see that a proportioned-to-fit vest is definitely in order. The one I wore today is way too long for my ribs. It rubs me raw in all the wrong places, But why the book?”
“It’s used as a manual in police-officer-safety courses. Before you go take that class in Peoria, I want you to sit down and read the whole thing from cover to cover. It’s important.”
“All right. I’ll do it, just as soon as things settle down a little bit around here.”
“Do it sooner than that,” Adam York growled.
“Until you get some training, you’re an accident waiting to happen. Now, how was your first full day?”
“Let’s see now, two homicides, one old, one new-and one of my chief supervisors gave notice, but he’s on vacation for the duration. Other than that, I guess it was a pretty normal day.”
“They didn’t give you much time to get your sea legs, did they?”
“I’ll manage,” Joanna said, “but I do have a question for you. What, if anything, do you know about ex-cons from Russia?”
Adam York’s voice suddenly turned serious. “Me, personally? Not that much. What do you want to know?”
“I’ve evidently got one living right here in Cochise County,” Joanna said. “His name is Yuri Malakov. He’s been here for some time as an apparently law-abiding citizen, but he’s romantically involved with the daughter of one of my two victims.”
“What makes you think he’s a Russian ex-con?”
“He is from Russia, for one thing. I already knew that about him, but this morning I happened to see him without his shirt. He has tattoos all over his upper body, mostly a cowboys and Indians motif. ‘Cowboy Sam’ is the only thing on it that’s written in English well enough so I could make it out.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean, what else?”
“I mean what else can you remember about the tattoos?”
“There were a couple of rattlesnakes, a hang man’s noose, a rodeo rider, and, I think, a rose. There may have been some other things, but I don’t necessarily remember them. Why? What’s so important about that?”
“With all the problems we’ve been having with the Russian mafia, somebody over at the FBI is a known expert at decoding Russian prison tattoos,” Adam York answered shortly. “Let me check this out with him and see what he has to say. I’ll also get in touch with some guys I know at INS.”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” Joanna said. “My guys already tried it that way from this end and were told hands off. So if you nose around about him, don’t say I sent you.”
“And don’t you go wandering into any dark alleys with this character,” Adam York warned. “Those Russian mafiosi are dangerous as hell. And if he’s walking around wearing a hangman’s noose on his chest, you can pretty well figure he didn’t get sent up for stealing chicken feed.”