As their mother shrieked at them and shook her finger in their faces, the two boys shrank away from her. Cowering just out of reach, they looked so thoroughly humiliated that Joanna felt sorry for them, just as she did for Velma. Joanna suspected that the woman’s shrill tirade had far more to do with her being frightened for her sons – over what might have happened to them – than it did with genuine anger.
“If you’d allow us to speak to them for a few minutes, Mrs. Verdugo,” Joanna said soothingly. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“It better not,” Velma returned. “Their daddy will be off work soon. Believe me, when Gabe gets here, he’ll do more than talk.”
Faced with the old wait-till-your-father-gets-home threat, the boys exchanged wary glances but they didn’t speak. The look that passed between them wasn’t lost on Joanna.
“I hope he won’t be too severe,” Joanna said. “It’s really fortunate for my investigators that Marcus and Eddie found the body when they did.”
Chief Deputy Montoya ambled over to where Joanna stood talking to the Verdugos. Taking in the situation, he winked at the boys and then began speaking to their mother in Spanish. Joanna had taken years of both high school and college Spanish, but the classes had left her something less than fluent. Nevertheless she was able to follow enough of what Frank was saying to realize he was simply expanding on much of what Joanna had said moments earlier and praising the two boys for reporting their find rather than concealing it.
Frank’s words seemed to have a calming effect on the agitated woman. Velma listened in silence. When he stopped speaking, she turned back to her sons. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut and with tears streaming down her face, she pounced on the two boys and then hugged them to her in a desperate embrace.
Jaime Carbajal appeared just then with his crime scene camera still in his hand. “Sorry for the interruption, Sheriff Brady. Could you please come with me?”
Excusing herself, Joanna followed Detective Carbajal. She had visited this deserted, crumbling cavalry post with her father years earlier. D.H. Lathrop, an amateur historian, had explained to her how Pancho Villa had attacked Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. Camp Harry J. Jones in Naco, Arizona, named after a murdered Army guard, had been part of a network of military posts maintaining border security during the Mexican Revolution. With her father, Joanna had explored the adobe-walled stables and the fallen-down barracks. Now Jaime Carbajal led her toward what had once been the officers’ quarters. The house – a small, graffiti-marred wreck – was missing all its windows and doors.
“You’d better come inside and take a look,” the detective said. “And you’re going to need these.” Once again he handed her a mask, evidence-preserving Tyvek booties, and his much-used vial of Vicks.
“Dee Canfield?” Joanna asked. She paused on the small front porch long enough to apply the menthol and don the mask and booties. Meanwhile Jaime nodded grimly in answer to her question.
“Any sign of Warren Gibson?” the sheriff added.
“Not yet,” Jaime reported. “But we haven’t searched the whole place yet. There could be another body hidden in one of the other buildings. We just haven’t found it yet.”
Joanna nodded. “Has Frank called for extra deputies?”
“He has,” Jaime said. “Dispatch tells me two of them are on their way.”
Joanna nodded. “Good. We’ll give one of the deputies to you for the crime scene. The other we’ll send with Casey Ledford when she goes through Dee’s house and the gallery, assuming you did manage to pick up those search warrants,” she added.
Jaime nodded. “Dave’s on his way to pick them up.”
Long before Joanna stepped through the open doorway into the gloomy, dusty interior, and even through the barrier of menthol, her nostrils detected the unmistakably rank odor of human decomposition. A woman’s fully clad body lay on the sagging wooden floor of what had once been a kitchen. Joanna immediately recognized the distinctive hues of Dee Canfield’s tie-dyed smock. After maneuvering far enough around the body to have a complete view of the victim’s face, Joanna saw that the dead woman’s fleshy features were drawn up in a horrific grimace.
“Any signs of violence?”
Jaime shook his head. “No apparent bleeding or bruising as far as I can see.”
Joanna looked at him closely. “Are you thinking the same thing I am, that maybe we’re dealing with another poisoning?”
The detective nodded. “The thought did cross my mind.”
“Damn,” Joanna said.
She made her way outside.
Velma Verdugo was now seated in the front passenger seat of Frank’s Civvie while her two sons leaned against the front fender a few feet away. The chief deputy crouched before them. Holding a clipboard, he was asking questions and making notes.
Frank glanced over his shoulder as Joanna approached. “You boys may have seen Sheriff Brady a while ago,” he said, “but I doubt you were introduced. This is Eddie,” Frank explained to Joanna, indicating the taller of the two. “That one is Marcus.”
Joanna held out her hand, and the boys took turns shaking it.
“Here’s what we have so far,” Frank continued. “Eddie and Marcus told me that they discovered the body earlier in the day, probably between three and four this afternoon. Because their parents have declared this whole place off-limits, they didn’t want to let on about their discovery for fear of getting in trouble. They talked it over, though, and finally decided to tell anyway. Mrs. Verdugo found out about it around forty-five minutes ago. That’s when she called 911.”
Joanna turned to the boys herself. “Did either of you touch anything while you were inside?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” Eddie replied at once. “We were both too scared. Besides,” he added, “Marcus was about to puke because it smelled so bad and he’s such a sissy. We got out of there and ran home.”
“The woman whose body you found has been missing since Thursday,” Joanna told them. “It’s likely she’s been here since then. Did either of you see any unusual activity between then and now – any unusual vehicles? Any people who looked out of place and who maybe had no business being here?”
“
“Me, either,” Marcus chirped.
Joanna turned to Velma. “What about you, Mrs. Verdugo?” she asked. “You must live nearby, don’t you?”
Velma nodded and pointed toward a mobile home parked on a lot a block or so away. “That’s where we live.”
“Did you notice any unusual activity?”
“No.”
Just then, a man dressed in a Border Patrol uniform passed through the checkpoint and strode toward them.
“Daddy,” Marcus cried. Darting away from Frank’s car, the boy broke into a run and raced to meet the new arrival. The man caught Marcus in midstep, lifted him off the ground, swung him around in a circle, and then hugged him close. It was only as they came nearer that Joanna recognized Gabe Verdugo, a Border Patrol officer she had encountered on previous occasions when her officers and those from the Border Patrol had been involved in joint operations.
“What’s going on?” Gabe Verdugo demanded. “Is everyone all right?”
While Frank explained what had happened, little Marcus clung like a burr to his father’s neck. Joanna guessed that if Velma expected someone to ream her boys out for their willful disobedience, she was out of luck as far as Gabe Verdugo was concerned.
Fortunately, Gabe, a law enforcement officer himself, knew what would be expected of his sons now that they had blundered into a homicide investigation.
“When will you want them to come in for the official interview?” he asked.
“Good question,” Joanna told him. “We’re one detective short at the moment. Right now Detective Carbajal has his hands full. We won’t be ready to talk to the boys anytime before Monday morning, when Detective Carpenter comes back.”
“Hey, great!” Eddie crowed, his face breaking into a wide grin. “If we go Monday morning, we’ll get to miss school.”
