Partner In Crime

After the previous day’s budget-cutting ordeal with the board of supervisors, Joanna knew that, from now on, she would have to curtail overtime wages.

Dave seemed to read her mind. “I know Casey and I weren’t scheduled to work today,” he said, “but there’s so much crime scene evidence to process, we thought you’d want us to get on it as soon as possible.”

I may, Joanna thought. Charles Neighbors may have other ideas.

“Next time, you’d better have the overtime authorized beforehand,” she said. “But I can see from your face that you’ve found something, and I’m guessing it’s not good news.”

Dave sighed. “You know Bobo Jenkins came by the department on Thursday afternoon to see Casey.”

Joanna nodded. “Right. I’m the one who told him we’d need his prints. Why?”

“Casey’s found Mr. Jenkins’s prints on the empty sweetener packets we pulled out of the trash at Latisha Wall’s place.”

“Of course they are,” Joanna agreed. “He told me he’d been to see her Wednesday evening. He also said he’d had a drink. If he had tea or coffee, it’s to be expected that his prints would show up on some of the sweetener packets.”

“The problem is,” Dave said, “they may be sweetener packets, but what’s in them isn’t sweetener.”

Joanna felt a familiar clutch in her gut. If the sweetener packets had been tampered with, it was likely Doc Winfield was right.

“You’re saying Latisha Wall really was poisoned?”

“All I’m saying right now, Sheriff Brady, is that some of the packets appear to have been tampered with,” Dave replied. “They were slit open and then carefully resealed. When Casey was straightening one of them so she could lift prints off the outside, she noticed white powder clinging to something tacky inside. You know how those little packets work. Usually the paper isn’t sticky at all. So we checked the other packets, including several of the supposedly unopened ones we took from the crime scene. Most of them are fine. Three of them aren’t.”

“Do you have the contents from those three unopened packets?”

Dave nodded.

“Any idea what it is?”

“None. I tried taking just a little whiff to see if there was any odor. I started feeling woozy. Whatever it is, it’s powerful stuff. I’ve put the remaining packets in stainless-steel containers.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “You’d better hustle whatever you’ve got up to the DPS satellite crime lab in Tucson. Get them working on it ASAP. If they give you any grief, have them call me personally, understand?”

Taking that for a dismissal, Dave Hollicker stood. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll get on it right away.”

“Wait,” Joanna added, holding up her hand. “One more thing. Does Jaime Carbajal know about this?”

Dave shook his head. “As I was coming over from the lab, he was already in the conference room with the occupied sign showing. A clerk told me he and Chief Deputy Montoya are conducting an interview. Rather than interrupt, I came to you instead.”

“Thanks, Dave,” she said. “I’ll take it from here. You get that stuff to the crime lab.”

Joanna sat at her desk for a few moments after Dave left her office. Naturally, a mere deputy would have been wary about interrupting an ongoing homicide interview. Under most circumstances, interrupting detectives at work didn’t seem like a good idea to Sheriff Joanna Brady, either. However, she was in possession of vital information that Jaime Carbajal needed to have now, while he was still interviewing Bobo Jenkins, rather than later, when it no longer mattered.

Hustling to the conference room door, Joanna ignored the occupied sign and let herself in. As she entered, she was greeted by the sound of raised voices.

“Don’t keep calling her Latisha Wall, Detective Carbajal,” Bobo Jenkins growled. “I’m telling you, I don’t know anyone by that name. The woman I knew was Rochelle Baxter. Shelley. She’s the one I came here to talk about.”

Joanna heard the overwrought man’s voice falter on the word “Shelley.” She winced at the audible hurt in that word. Bobo Jenkins was angry and grieving both. He sat still, his powerful arms folded across a massive chest. His jaws were clenched so tightly that the muscles in his cheeks twitched. Burton Kimball, seated next to his client, reached over and touched Bobo’s shoulder. The attorney was the first person in the room to notice Joanna’s arrival.

He stood and held out his hand. “Good morning, Sheriff Brady,” he said politely. “So glad you could join us.”

Joanna ignored Jaime’s impatient scowl and returned the greeting. Then she turned to her detective. “Could I speak to you for a moment, please, Detective Carbajal?” she asked, beckoning him toward the door.

Jaime rose at once and followed Joanna out into the lobby. “What’s going on in there?” she asked.

Jaime shrugged. “You heard some of it. Bobo insists he knows nothing about Rochelle Baxter’s other life. As you can see, he’s more than a little upset about it.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Joanna returned. “Someone he cared about is dead. It must seem to him as though we’re treating him more like a suspect than a witness. No wonder he’s upset. But that’s not why I called you out here, Jaime. Dave Hollicker and Casey Ledford have come up with something important.”

“What?”

“Several of the sweetener packets they removed from the crime scene appear to have been tampered with. They contain an unknown substance Dave is taking to the DPS crime lab in Tucson for analysis and identification. Not only that, Casey found Bobo Jenkins’s fingerprints on some of the tampered packets that were empty. When I talked to Bobo right after we found Latisha Wall’s body, Bobo told me he had been to her place the evening she died to have a drink.”

“In other words, if his prints are on the sweetener packets, why isn’t he dead, too?”

“Exactly,” Joanna said. “I thought you’d want to know about this as you go forward with the interview.”

Jaime nodded. “Thanks,” he said. With that, he turned and let himself back into the conference room.

Joanna stared at the closed door and thought about what kind of person would knowingly place a fatal dose of poison in someone else’s glass, especially when the unsuspecting victim was someone close – a lover, a friend. Joanna had thought Bobo Jenkins capable of striking out in anger, but that was vastly different from committing cold, premeditated murder.

Just thinking about it was enough to leave Joanna feeling chilled and sick at heart.

Nine

FOR THE NEXT TWO AND A HALF HOURS, Joanna waited impatiently for the Bobo Jenkins interview to come to an end. During that time, she would have welcomed Kristin’s waddling into her office to pile another load of correspondence onto her desk. Unfortunately, an hour into the process, her jungle of paperwork was entirely cleared away. All e-mails had been answered, all memos duly signed off on. Desperate to keep herself occupied, Joanna rummaged through a stack of previously unread issues of Law Enforcement Digest and the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association Newsletter, where she actually scanned several of the articles. By twelve-thirty she had been reduced to the rarely performed task of cleaning her desk.

When someone knocked on the doorjamb a while later, Joanna looked up eagerly, hoping for Jaime Carbajal or Frank Montoya. Instead, Lupe Alvarez, one of the public lobby receptionists, stood in the doorway.

“Yes?” Joanna said.

“There’s someone to see you, Sheriff Brady. Do you want me to bring him back?”

“Who is it?”

“He gave his name and showed me a badge. He’s Special Investigator Beaumont, J.P. Beaumont, from Seattle, Washington.”

So, she thought, Mr. J.P. Bird Dog has arrived.

No doubt the big-city cop who was here to screw up her investigation and look down his nose at her department would expect to find a small-town sheriff in a squalid office with her shirtsleeves rolled up and her feet