'Clyde Philips, that gun dealer Frank was telling us about earlier this morning. I went by his house in Pomerene to see if he might have any idea who would be shooting up Alton Hosfield's Triple C with a fifty-caliber sniper rifle. The trouble is, Philips was already dead when I got here-dead in his bed.'
'You're saying somebody killed him?' Voland asked.
'I don't know for sure. He had a garbage bag fastened around his neck, so it could be a homicide or a suicide, either one.'
'Have you notified Doc Winfield yet?' Voland asked. As of the first of July, Dr. George Winfield, former Cochise County Coroner, had taken on the revised title of Cochise County Medical Examiner. And as of several months prior to that, by virtue of marrying the widowed Eleanor Lathrop, he had assumed the role of stepfather to Sheriff Joanna Brady. Under ordinary circumstances, Joanna's call to 9-1-1 would have been followed immediately by a call to Doc Winfield. Right that minute, however, the pair of newlyweds was out of town.
'He's away, remember?' Joanna said. 'On his honeymoon.'
'Oh, that's right. The cruise to Alaska. I keep forgetting. So I guess somebody needs to call Pima County and have them send in a pinch hitter.'
'Bingo,' Joanna said. 'That was the arrangement. I was hoping we'd manage to skate through without needing to do that. Since we haven't, I'd like you to make the call. I'm stuck here in Pomerene for the duration, waiting for the EMTs to haul the victim's injured ex-wife out of the crawl space under the house.'
'So what is it, then?' Voland asked. 'Some kind of domestic?'
'I'm not sure what it is, although I don't think DV is too likely,' Joanna told him. 'Anyway, once you
'You want me to stop off and pick up a warrant?'
'That's right.'
'Okay, then,' Voland replied. 'I'll be there as soon as I can.”
Just as Joanna ended the call, Clyde Philips' front door opened. First one and then another of the firemen emerged. For more than a minute the two stood conferring, studying the door. The old-fashioned door was narrower than expected, and working Belle Philips' stretcher out through it was no easy task. It took several minutes of back-and-forthing before the EMTs finally managed to squeeze the heavily laden stretcher out onto the porch. As they loaded the gurney into the waiting ambulance, one of the firemen, red-faced and mopping grimy sweat from his brow, came over to where Joanna was standing. 'How do you guys do it?' he demanded.
'Do what?' she asked.
'Stand the smell,' he replied. 'Do you get used to it, or what?'
Joanna shook her head. 'I don't think anybody ever gets used to it.'
The fireman shuddered. 'Well, give me a fire any day of the week. In fact, give me two or three.'
Just then the ambulance started to move. With siren blaring, it made a quick U-turn and started back up Rimrock. 'Where are they taking her?' Joanna asked.
' University Medical Center in Tucson,' the fireman replied. 'One of the EMTs said he thought she probably broke both her hip and her shoulder. Although I'd say broken bones are the least of her problems.'
'What's the matter?' Joanna asked, giving him a searching look. 'You think she has internal injuries as well?'
The fireman-the name embroidered on his shirt pocket said 'Lt. Spaulding'-shook his head. 'Somebody said the dead guy was her husband, right?'
'Ex-husband,' Joanna replied.
'So if she's the killer, her bones'll be the least of her troubles.'
Moments before, Dick Voland had instantly assumed Clyde Philips' death had something to do with domestic violence. Now Lt. Spaulding was making the same assumption. 'What makes you say that?' Joanna asked.
Spaulding shrugged. 'Isn't that the way it usually works? Somebody gets murdered and the killer turns out to be either the wife or the husband, or the ex-wife or ex-husband.'
Closing her eyes, Joanna recalled Belle Philips' inane chatter as she headed into the bedroom, as well as her desperate attempts to awaken her presumably sleeping former husband. Was it conceivable that Belle Philips was that accomplished an actress? Could she possibly have murdered Clyde herself and then put on a such a flawless performance when it came to finding his body a day or so later? As far as Joanna was concerned, it didn't seem likely, but still those preconceived notions-backed by statistics-carried a lot of weight. There could be little doubt that when it came time for a homicide investigation, Belle Philips would be a prime suspect.
'Ex-wives do kill ex-husbands on occasion,' Joanna conceded, 'but I'm not at all sure that's what happened here.'
Spaulding shrugged once more. 'I read a lot of true crime-just for entertainment. And I watch those forensics shows on The Learning Channel. It's kind of a hobby of mine. That's how I know about some of this stuff. I hope we didn't do too much damage to your crime scene, Sheriff Brady. We had a hell of a time lifting her up and out of there.'
'I'm sure it'll be fine,' Joanna assured him.
'I guess we'll be on our way, then,' he said. 'It looks to me as though the boys have pretty much gathered up all the equipment. I have to keep on their cases to pick up all their stuff-the bandage wrappers, plastic bags, and packaging. Otherwise they just rip 'em and leave 'em.”
Once the firemen had taken their trucks and left, Joanna made her way back inside the house. She moved gingerly now, careful not to touch anything, even though she knew it was far too late for that. Despite her reassuring comment to Spaulding, she saw at once that damage to the crime scene was considerable.
For one thing, the entire floor, from the bedroom out through the front door, was covered with literally dozens of grimy footprints-hers included-left behind by dirt that had come up from the crawl space on the soles of shoes and on the firemen's heavy-duty boots. If Clyde Philips had been murdered, and if the murderer had left behind some trace evidence of a footprint, it would be gone now, obliterated by everyone else's tracks.
Standing in the doorway to the bedroom, fighting off the all-pervasive odor, Joanna was shocked to see that the hole in the floor was much larger than it had been when she left. At first she thought that maybe the firemen had used saws to enlarge the hole in order to facilitate maneuvering the stretcher through it. On closer examination of the jagged-edged break, she realized that more of the floor had given way under the combined weight of several firemen and the two EMTs. What was even more disturbing was the fact that the new breakage in the termite- infested wood had occurred at almost the same spot where Joanna herself had climbed in and out of the crawl space.
Seeing it now, Joanna realized how very near she had come to falling. Wanting to get to the injured woman, she had crawled down after her without taking the time to call for backup or even to notify 9-1-1. Had the floor collapsed under her then, both she and Belle might have been trapped in the crawl space for hours before anyone noticed or came to help. Joanna had a cell phone, but she had left it plugged in in the Blazer when she and Belle had gone into the house.
She was still berating herself for her stupidity when Detective Carbajal showed up behind her. 'Jesus Christ!' he exclaimed, peering over her shoulder. 'It looks like a war zone in here. What happened? Did somebody blow the place apart with a stick or two of dynamite?'
'Termites, not dynamite,' Joanna answered. 'What you see is the case of the collapsing bed. Once it broke, it went right through the floor, taking two people along with it.'
Jaime grinned. 'How old were these people?' he asked. 'If the bed broke, they must have been getting it on.'
Gradually Joanna had become accustomed to crime-scene black humor. That was one of the tools homicide cops used to maintain their sanity. In spite of herself, she smiled.
'It wasn't like that,' she explained. 'Clyde Philips was already dead when Belle Philips, his ex-wife, tried to get on the bed with him. She's not exactly a lightweight. Having both of them on the bed was more than the frame or the floor could handle. She went right through the floor with him and got hurt pretty bad in the process. The firemen just finished lifting her out a few minutes ago.'
'That's where all the footprints came from?' Jaime asked. 'From the firemen?'
