“You mean have the manufacturers put markers in it the way they do with explosives?”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose it’s possible, but I’m guessing the automobile industry would be dead-set against it.”
“Because they don’t want to admit the stuff is a potential problem?”
“You’ve got it,” Dave agreed.
“Great,” Joanna said. “It’s readily available, totally untraceable, and deadly.”
“And that’s what was in those tampered sweetener packets that Casey and I brought back from Latisha Wall’s place down in Naco. I’ve got the DPS crime lab’s printed analysis right here in my hand.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?” Joanna asked.
“Not yet. I’ve been cooling my heels around here all day waiting for test results. They dissolved some and ran it through an ion chromatograph. That’s what I have right now – a preliminary report and a tentative identification of sodium azide. They’ll do a confirmation test using mass spectrometry. The lab manager told me we won’t have tentative results on that for another day or so. Official results will take another week. The criminalist I talked to says they can use the same technique on vomit samples if Doc Winfield sends them along, but that takes up to two weeks longer. I thought you should be the first to know.”
“Thanks for calling,” Joanna said. “I’ll get on the horn and tell everyone else.”
“Do you want me to come by the office with this when I get back to Bisbee, or can it wait until tomorrow?”
Joanna thought about the board of supervisors meeting and the looming overtime issue. “No, since it’s just a preliminary copy, have the lab fax one to the department tonight. Nobody will be able to work on it before tomorrow or Monday anyway. Good work, Dave,” she added. “You and Casey deserve a lot of credit for being on top of this.”
“Thanks, boss,” he said, “but isn’t that what you pay us to do?”
Joanna heard the unmistakable pleasure in his voice at having been given a compliment. “You’re right,” she returned. “That’s exactly why we pay you the big bucks.”
By the time she hung up, Butch had gone over to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “I can hear it already,” he said. “They’re sucking you back into work, aren’t they?”
“Not really,” Joanna said. “But now that we know what killed Rochelle Baxter, I have to tell people. I’ll make some calls. It won’t take more than a few minutes.”
She went into the living room. Butch, tired of having the dining-room table constantly littered with work-related papers, had redesigned the living room. Eva Lou Brady’s little fifties-era telephone table had been replaced by a secondhand cherry secretary, where Joanna’s papers could be spread out and the hinged desk surface closed up over them when necessary.
Joanna retreated there and picked up the phone. The first call she made was to Jaime Carbajal.
When Jaime’s wife, Delcia, said, “Hold on, I’ll get him,” Joanna glanced guiltily at her watch. It was only a few minutes past four.
When Jaime came to the phone, he sounded out of breath. “Pepe and I were out doing batting practice,” he said. “Frank told me earlier about Sadie. Is Jenny okay?”
“She’s fine,” Joanna returned. “In fact, she’s handling it better than I am at this point, but tell me about the interview with Bobo Jenkins. How did it go?”
“No surprises there,” Jaime said. “Bobo insists he had nothing to do with what happened to Latisha Wall. He claims the two of them were in love and that he had no reason to harm her.”
“Did he mention being afraid that she was about to break up with him?”
“He said something about it, but he claimed things were fine between them when he left her place on Wednesday night. As far as I’m concerned, that remains to be seen.”
“Did you let him know we found his prints on the sweetener packets?”
“No. That’s a holdback. I didn’t want to say anything about that until I had a chance to talk to both Dave and Casey.”
“Makes sense,” Joanna said.
“Did you ask Bobo about Dee Canfield?”
“Affirmative. He claims the last time he saw her was in the gallery on Thursday morning. He said you were there at the same time. He says he has no idea what happened to her afterward, and he has no clue where she and Warren might have gone.”
“He’s right,” Joanna said. “I was there when he was. Now what’s the deal on the search warrant?”
“Not yet,” Jaime said. “I finally found out why the judge didn’t come home last night. Mrs. Moore ended up in TMC with an emergency appendectomy. I talked to their house sitter. She says Judge Moore is supposedly coming back to Bisbee tonight. The soonest I’ll be able to get the warrant and serve it will be later this evening.”
“That’ll have to do, then,” Joanna said. “If you want someone along when you serve it, check with Frank.”
“Will do,” Jaime said. “Now, what about Dave Hollicker?”
The detective listened in silence while Joanna told him what the crime scene investigator had learned. “Does Frank know about any of this?” Detective Carbajal asked.
“He’s my next call.”
She tried Frank’s home number and got no answer. Next she called the department.
“He’s in,” Lupe Alvarez told her. “But he’s got someone with him at the moment. That guy from Washington.”
“Have Chief Deputy Montoya call me when he’s done,” Joanna said. “I’m at home. Anything else I should know about now that I’m available?”
“Yes,” Lupe said. “You’ve had three calls from someone named Cornelia Lester. She says she’s…”
Joanna remembered the name from the next-of-kin contact sheet in Latisha Wall’s file. “I know who she is. Is she here in town?”
“Yes. She’s staying at the Copper Queen, room five-twelve.”
Joanna picked up a pen. “Do you have the number?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better give it to me, then,” Joanna said, once again dreading the thought of having to speak to yet another grieving relative. “I’ll call her back while I’m waiting to hear from Frank.”
Twelve
BY FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I was back at the Cochise County Justice Center. “I’m sorry, but Sheriff Brady has had a family emergency,” the same public lobby receptionist told me. “She’s not available at this time.”
“What about her second-in-command?” I asked.
“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his line at the moment. When he’s free, I’ll let him know you’re here.”
“And my name is-”
“I know,” she returned. “You’re Special Investigator Beaumont. I remember you from earlier.”
I wondered about that. Did she remember my name because she just happened to remember it, or had her boss passed the word that I was persona non grata? For the next ten minutes, I cooled my heels in the lobby. The longer I waited, the more I fumed. It wasn’t as though I was in a hurry or had anywhere else to go. It was the principle of the thing. So far, Sheriff Brady and her department had been something less than cooperative.
I found myself once again studying the picture montage in that glass display case. Joanna Brady may have been cute as a button when she was a little kid, dressed in a Brownie uniform and selling Girl Scout cookies like mad. Maybe she still was, but cute wasn’t working on me.
Eventually the secured door to the back offices opened and out walked a late-thirty-something Hispanic guy. He wore the same kind of uniform the sheriff had been wearing when I last saw her, although his was free of curves.
