Casey Ledford raised her hand. “May I speak to that? To the sweetener packets?”
Joanna nodded and all eyes went to the fingerprint tech. “Dave and I examined the crime scene evidence from Latisha Wall’s kitchen. It’s true Mr. Jenkins’s fingerprints are on the sweetener packets. They are. But the physical evidence – the way the fingerprints are layered on the glass and bottle – would indicate that Ms. Wall drank iced tea and Mr. Jenkins had the beer.”
“See there?” Jaime said. “What did I tell you? He poured the sweetener in her tea and then sat right there and watched her drink it. What a hell of a nice guy! And then, on the Dee Canfield part of the equation, we know Bobo was adamantly opposed to her plan to go through with the show despite Latisha Wall’s death. Sheriff Brady, you witnessed some of that yourself on Thursday morning at the gallery.”
“You’re right about that,” Joanna conceded. “Bobo Jenkins was at the gallery, and he was very upset. Do we have any idea where he was or what he was doing between three and five on Thursday afternoon?”
“He claims he was at home and alone the entire afternoon,” Jaime answered. “That’s in the transcript of the interview Frank and I did with him on Saturday morning. He told us he stayed home all day, trying to come to grips with what had happened. Of course,” the detective added, “at the time we spoke to him, we were only aware of the Latisha Wall incident. We had no idea Dee Canfield was also dead, so there was no reason to check on his whereabouts or movements the day after what we assumed to be a single homicide.”
“Did he come right out and actually
Jaime scanned through the transcript. “Here it is, right here. Yes, that’s what he said, but I’ll go uptown a little later. I’ll talk to Bobo’s neighbors and see what they have to say.”
“All right,” Joanna said. “You do that.” Then she turned to Chief Deputy Montoya. “In the meantime, Frank, while you’re dealing with the phone factory, have a go at Bobo’s phone records as well. If he happened to be on the phone making calls between three and four o’clock Thursday afternoon, that would tend to corroborate his story even if no one was there with him at the time.”
That intrigued me. Just because Bobo Jenkins was a suspect in one homicide, Joanna Brady wasn’t giving her people carte blanche to turn him automatically into prime-suspect material in the second death as well. In other words, rather than looking for the quickest way to clear cases, Sheriff Brady was prepared to take the time and make the effort to find out what had really happened. I liked that about her. Respected it.
As Joanna Brady fired off one question after another, I felt as though I had been transported back to the fishbowl at Seattle PD with Captain Larry Powell popping questions left and right to see if his detectives were making any progress or doing something to earn their keep.
I sat up straighter and paid closer attention because I was beginning to suspect that perhaps Sheriff Joanna Brady was my kind of cop after all.
JOANNA LOOKED DOWN AT THE CHECKLIST she had scribbled off in advance of the meeting. “So,” she said, crossing off another item. “With the next-of-kin notification out of the way, what does Doc Winfield say about scheduling the autopsy?”
“He’ll do it first thing tomorrow, and he’ll give me a call beforehand,” Jaime Carbajal replied. “The good news is that Ernie will be back on duty tomorrow morning. Once he’s back on board, maybe I can have him handle the Verdugo boys’ interviews. At least I’ll have some help covering the bases.”
“Or Mr. Beaumont could help out,” Joanna suggested quietly. With Jaime looking mutinous, she moved to lessen the tension. “Hey, Frank,” she added. “Next time Ernie asks for a whole week off, let him know he’s not allowed to leave town until after he checks with our upcoming homicide scheduler.”
They all laughed at that, even Jaime. The atmosphere in the room relaxed noticeably.
“All right,” she said. “Now for our chemistry lesson.”
WE SPENT THE NEXT HALF hour hearing all about something called sodium azide. Joanna had mentioned it prior to the meeting. Rather than show my ignorance, I had said nothing. It turns out that as far as sodium azide is concerned, ignorance is bliss. Just hearing about the stuff was enough to scare the crap out of me.
Frank Montoya had tracked down an Internet article that explained how various poisons, sodium azide included, present. An ingested poison often exhibits a delayed reaction. The victim isn’t affected until the substance is absorbed into the bloodstream. Inhaled sodium azide goes into the lungs and directly into the blood, where its molecules bond with oxygen molecules and render the oxygen unusable.
The information in Frank’s article was already more than I wanted to know, but it did explain the time lag between when Latisha Wall drank her tea and her death sometime later. What Dave Hollicker had to say about sodium azide’s ready availability was horrifying.
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, minutes into his lecture. “You’re saying this stuff – this incredibly dangerous stuff that isn’t even illegal – can be found in damned near every two-car garage in America?”
“That’s right,” Hollicker agreed blandly. “Those canisters are in every car with air bags.”
“So the next kid who gets pissed off at his English teacher in Podunk, USA, can slip some of it into her coffee and knock her off just like that? This is nuts, totally nuts! And nobody’s doing anything about it?”
“Not so far,” Dave Hollicker said. “According to what I’ve learned, there’s currently no plan to regulate sodium azide in any way or even to add a marker substance.”
About that time there was a knock on the conference room door. “Come in,” Joanna called.
Lupe Alvarez stuck her head inside. “Rick Orting, the dispatcher for the city of Bisbee just called, Sheriff Brady. Someone from Phelps Dodge is reporting finding an abandoned multicolored Pinto.”
A charge of excitement surged around the room. “Where is it?” Joanna demanded.
“Between the end of Wood Canyon and Old Bisbee,” Lupe replied. “It’s on one of those company roads, the ones that go out to PD’s new drilling sites north of Lavender Pit. The Pinto’s rear axle is broken. A day-shift watchman found it a little while ago when he was out doing his rounds.”
“Thanks, Lupe,” Joanna said, then turned back to her team of investigators. “Okay, Jaime. You, Casey, and Dave get on this right away.” Without another word, the three of them hustled out of the room.
“What about me, boss?” Frank Montoya asked.
“Even if you’re dealing with second-stringers, you stay here and keep after the phone stuff. We need that information.”
“And me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re with me.”
“Why?”
“So I can keep an eye on you. You’re part of this investigation, but I don’t want to spend the entire afternoon giving you directions and guiding you from one place to another.”
“I have a map…” I began.
“Forget it. Just go get in the car.”
“Yours or mine?”
The disparaging look she gave me told me the question was unworthy of being dignified with an answer. “Come on,” she said.
Rather than going out through the public lobby, Joanna hustled me first to her private office and then out a door that led directly into the parking lot. I started toward the Crown Victoria I knew to be hers.
“Not that one,” she said, stopping me. “We’ll take the Blazer.”
We walked two rows into the parking lot, where she climbed into the driver’s seat of an SUV that had definitely seen better days – from a physical-beauty point of view. However, a powerful engine sprang to life the moment she turned the key in the ignition. The term “ugly but honest!” came to mind.
We drove into town and back toward Old Bisbee. At the far end of the huge layered hole in the ground she explained was Lavender Pit we came to a spot where a group of cop cars, lights flashing, had converged alongside the road. Some of the vehicles were marked city of bisbee; others, sheriff’s department. They were grouped around the entrance to a freshly graded dirt road that led off between the red-rock hills.
We were pulling over to check things out when a call came in over the radio. “Sheriff Brady?”
“Yes, Tica,” she responded. “What is it?”
“I have Burton Kimball on the phone. He needs to talk to you right away.”
Joanna sighed. “Look, Tica. I’m really busy at the moment…”
“He says it’s urgent,” Tica insisted. “Is it all right if I patch him through?”
