Partner In Crime

Joanna unlocked the Eagle, and they both climbed in. “Dr. Ross asked if we wanted to bring Sadie home to bury her,” Jenny said. “I told her no. There’ve been too many funerals. I didn’t want another one. That’s okay with you, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Jenny, sweetie, whatever you decide,” Joanna said. “It’s entirely up to you.”

“Okay, then,” Jenny said. She settled back in the car seat and closed her eyes. “Will you tell the Gs?” she asked.

“Yes,” Joanna said. “I’ll be glad to,” although “glad” wasn’t at all the right word.

Several times on the drive home, Joanna had to brush unbidden tears out of her own eyes. Sadie had been a beloved family pet. But it was more than just losing Sadie. Joanna was losing her daughter as well, losing her baby. Because Jenny must have known what was coming when she went racing back into the house to get Sadie’s blanket. Even then, she was thinking about Sadie first – putting the dog’s comfort and well-being before her own.

No, Jenny wasn’t Joanna’s baby anymore. She was a thoughtful, caring, wonderful, surprisingly mature person who put others’ needs ahead of her own. She could probably give me lessons, Joanna thought bleakly. And grateful as she was for all that – for the kind of human being Jennifer Ann Brady was becoming, there was a tiny corner of Joanna’s heart that wanted to turn back the clock so Jenny could once again be the cute, cuddly little girl she had been before.

Once out of the car at home, Tigger raced around the Eagle several times, sniffing eagerly. “He’s looking for her, isn’t he?” Jenny said.

Joanna nodded. “Yes. I suppose he is.”

Jenny called the dog to her and knelt down to hug his neck. “Come on, boy,” she said finally. “Let’s go get Kiddo. We’ll go for a ride.”

Alone, Joanna went into the house. While Jenny was with Dr. Ross, she had called in to the department to let Frank and Dispatch both know what was going on, that she would be out of radio, phone, and pager contact for the next little while. When she picked up the phone, the broken beeping of the dial tone announced that there were messages waiting. For a change she didn’t bother checking them. Instead, she dialed her former in-laws’ number.

“How terrible for Jenny,” Eva Lou Brady said when she heard the news. “Do you want Jim Bob and me to come out and spend some time with her? We’d be glad to.”

“No,” Joanna said, “that’s not necessary. She’s handling it amazingly well. She’s out saddling up Kiddo right now. A long ride will do both her and Tigger a world of good.”

“Sounds just like her daddy,” Eva Lou offered. “That’s the way Andy always was, too. Whenever there was a crisis, he’d go off by himself to think things over and come to terms with whatever it was. Don’t you worry about Jenny, Joanna.” Eva Lou added. “She’s one tough little cookie. She’ll be fine.”

Joanna’s next call was to her own mother. “Oh, dear,” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield said. “Is Jenny all right?”

“She’s fine,” Joanna said.

“That’s the problem with having dogs,” Eleanor went on with barely a pause. “You just get used to them and before you know it, they get old and die on you. Of course, Jenny can always get another one. Heaven knows there are enough unwanted dogs in this world, although why you’d want to have two, I can’t imagine.”

Joanna Brady closed her eyes and wished her mother could somehow be different than she was.

“I just heard Butch drive up,” Joanna said. “Have to go.”

“All right,” Eleanor said. “You let Jenny know I’m thinking about her.”

You may be thinking about her, Joanna thought grimly, but we’re all better off with her not knowing what you’re thinking.

Butch came into the house and dropped his keys on the counter. “I thought we’d bring Sadie home and bury her somewhere out here on the ranch, but Dr. Ross said Jenny didn’t want us to. So I let it go. What do you think?”

“Jenny told me she was tired of funerals.”

“You can hardly blame her for that,” Butch replied. “Where is she?”

“Out riding,” Joanna told him. “She took Tigger along. I thought it was probably the best thing for both of them.”

Butch nodded. They were standing in the kitchen with their arms wrapped around each other when the phone rang.

“Don’t answer,” Butch said. “Let it go to voice mail.”

“I’d better not,” Joanna said, pulling away. “I’ve been unavailable all afternoon. It could be important.”

She plucked the cordless phone off the counter. “Brady/ Dixon residence,” she said.

“Sheriff Brady?” Dave Hollicker asked. He sounded excited.

“Hi, Dave,” she told him. “How’s it going? Are you back from Tucson already?”

“No, I’m still here. At the crime lab. But I’ve got something for you.”

“What?”

“Ever hear of sodium azide?”

“Never. What is it?”

“It’s the propellant they use in cars to make air bags work. It ignites, and the resulting explosion inflates the bag.”

“So?”

“It’s a white, odorless compound that resembles salt. Or sweetener. And it dissolves readily in liquids.”

Joanna felt her pulse quicken. “I suppose it’s also poisonous?” she asked.

“Very,” Dave agreed. “More poisonous than cyanide.”

“And tasteless?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dave answered. “And I don’t know how you’d find out for sure. Who’d be willing to taste it, and how would they tell us what they’d found out after they died? But since it evidently ended up in Rochelle Baxter’s iced tea and since she emptied the glass without noticing, we pretty much have to assume it’s tasteless.”

“If sodium azide is that deadly, how come she didn’t die right away?”

“Ingested poisons don’t work until they’re assimilated into the bloodstream. If you breathe it in, it can kill almost instantly. I’m lucky I just got woozy when I did. Otherwise, you’d be having another Fallen Officer funeral in a day or two,” Dave went on.

“Thank God,” Joanna said. “But tell me, where would somebody get this awful stuff?”

“That’s the really bad news,” Dave Hollicker replied. “The answer is, almost anywhere. It’s not a controlled substance, so you could buy a whole barrel of it if you wanted. You could also rip the air bags out of your car and claim somebody stole them. Or else you could go to your local junkyard. If a car wrecks and the air bags are deployed, it’s not a problem. Once the air bag inflates, what’s left after the sodium azide oxidizes is totally harmless. It’s the undeployed air bags with their canisters of unused sodium azide that are the problem.”

“Don’t junkyards strip the air bags out and sell them?” Joanna objected. “My understanding is that they can be parted out and reused.”

“That’s how everybody assumed it would work,” Dave said. “In actual practice, it’s not that simple. People don’t want to ride around in a vehicle where their life and the lives of their loved ones depend on the effectiveness of somebody else’s secondhand air bag. And, if death or injury occurs in a vehicle fitted with a used air bag, there’s always a potential liability problem. All of which leaves this country with millions of unrecycled air bags sitting in junkyards everywhere.”

“The sodium azide is loose, then?” Joanna asked.

“No. It comes in little aluminum canisters about the size of tuna-fish cans. I’m guessing there are stacks of dozens of those little hummers sitting on used-parts shelves in junkyards in Cochise County alone.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna objected. “You’ve told me this is a deadly poison. Do you mean somebody could just walk in off the street and pick a can of it off a shelf?”

“You ever been to a junkyard, boss?” Dave Hollicker asked.

“Not recently.”

“Well, that’s pretty much how they work. Around here, junkyards are long on self-service.”

“Can sodium azide be traced?”