Anything else going on?”
“Not much,” Frank told her. “I had three deputies patrolling that northeast sector last night. Nothing at all turned up in San Simon. As far as anyone could tell, there was no unusual traffic coming and going from Roostercomb Ranch. The whole area was dead as can be. With that in mind, I’m thinking we should probably drop the increased surveillance. After all, Patrol is stretched so thin…”
“No,” Joanna said. “Leave it as is again tonight. Maybe Sunday is when the O’Dwyers do their thing.”
“Maybe,” Frank agreed grudgingly. “But I doubt it. I can’t help wondering if Jeannine has her facts straight.”
“Let’s give it another day,” Joanna said. “And pray the rest of the county doesn’t go haywire in the meantime. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“We’ll see,” Frank said ominously. “We’ll know more about that come tomorrow, when the reports are in and it’s time for the morning briefing.”
Chapter 6
On her way out the door on Monday morning, Joanna was surprised to find a stack of boxes sitting against the wall of her garage. The stack created a barrier that made it impossible for Jenny to climb into the passenger’s seat of the Crown Victoria without having to go all the way around the back of the vehicle.
“What’s all this?” Joanna asked Butch, who had just come in from feeding the animals.
“I have no idea,” he replied. “George dropped them off yesterday afternoon when he and your mother came to dinner. According to him, they’re getting ready for a big churchwide garage sale. Eleanor sent over some boxes of things she thought you should have.”
“Great,” Joanna muttered. “How like her. That way she doesn’t have to get rid of it and we do.”
“Want me to attempt a first sort?” Butch asked. “Good morning,” Margaret Dixon called.
The rammed-earth house Butch had designed and helped build consisted of two wings, each with its own separate garage. Margaret, who had entered through Butch’s garage, had wandered through the whole house before finding them.
“Anybody home?” she asked. “I sure hope there’s coffee. I could have made it out in the RV but I decided to come inside instead. Have you already eaten?”
Joanna nodded. “Jenny and I have,” she said. “I’m on my way to work. I promised to drop her off at school on the way.”
Grumbling under his breath, Butch walked Joanna to her car. “I wish I was going to work,” he said.
Joanna smiled sympathetically. “Don’t bother doing any sorting,” she said, giving Butch a good-bye peck on the cheek. “I think you’re going to have your hands full as it is.”
“So do I,” he agreed.
“Some people are a real pain,” Jenny said, settling into the corner of the Crown Victoria.
“Margaret Dixon isn’t a very happy person,” Joanna said.
“But why does she think we should have put Lucky to sleep?”
Joanna sighed. “I have no idea,” she said.
“How long are they gonna stay?”
“Probably until the baby is born,” Joanna said.
“Well, could you please hurry up and have it then?” Jenny demanded. “I want them to take their RV and go home.”
“Believe me,” Joanna assured her. “I’ll do my best.”
At the morning briefing, Frank Montoya wasn’t any happier than Jenny had been, but his ill humor had nothing to do with an irksome stepgrandmother.
“Last night was the wrong time to have three cars in San Simon, especially since our people didn’t spot anything out of line,” he grumbled. “In the meantime, Border Patrol came up with at least a hundred and fifty UDAs who were all on foot and making a run for it east of Douglas. They called us for backup. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anybody to send.”
Joanna shook her head. The unending stream of undocumented aliens spilling across the international border was one of Arizona‘s-and especially Cochise County’s-most intractable law enforcement problems. Each year at least half a million UDAs were being apprehended just in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector. Of that number, at least 25,000 a month were picked up after crossing into the United States along Cochise County‘s eighty-mile-long border with Mexico. Border Patrol employment numbers were way up, but there were never enough officers to stem the tide.
“How many did they catch?”
“Most,” Frank said. “But there’s no way to know how many got away.”
“With those kinds of numbers, an additional three deputies probably wouldn’t have made much difference,” Joanna said.
“It would have helped,” Frank replied.
But Joanna could see her chief deputy had a point. “It stands to reason that the O’Dwyers would be operating on weekends rather than during the week,” she said.
“So I can pull the extra patrols for tonight?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “We’ll revisit this later in the week. Now, what about the Bradley Evans homicide? Have we made any progress on that?”
Frank shuffled through the briefing papers. “Not much. Casey Ledford is down in Douglas.”
“Dusting Evans’s apartment?” Joanna asked.
Frank nodded.
“Still no sign of the vehicle?”
“Nope,” Frank answered. “If I was the perpetrator, I’d probably take it up to Tucson and leave it parked in plain sight somewhere where no one is going to pay any attention.”
“You’ve alerted Tucson PD to be on the lookout?” Joanna asked.
“You bet.”
There was a knock on the conference-room door, and Deputy Debra Howell entered the room. “Sarge told me you wanted to see me?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Have a seat.”
“Is something wrong?” Debbie asked.
“Nothing at all,” Joanna assured her. “But we’re thinking about making some changes. I understand you’ve been studying for the detective exam?”
“Yes,” Debbie said. “I have.”
“Chief Deputy Montoya and I were wondering if you’d like to spend some time working as a detective for the next week or two with the understanding that the promotion is provisional until such time as you take and pass the exam?”
Debbie Howell flushed with apparent pleasure. “That would be great,” she said. “But how come? What’s going on?”
Joanna had hoped that Ernie might have mentioned his medical situation to his protegee, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Since he hadn’t confided in Debbie, Joanna didn’t tell her, either.
“It won’t come as any surprise that we’re chronically short-handed, and we need to add some depth to our investigation team. We’re dealing with an unsolved homicide at a time when one of our homicide guys may be having to take some time off. You’re the one we want to tap-if you’re interested, that is. But homicide investigators don’t punch time clocks the same way deputies do, Debbie,” Joanna warned. “They work long hours and can be called out anytime, day or night. Will that be a problem?”
“Because of Bennie, you mean?” Debbie asked.
Benjamin was Debbie’s five-year-old son. Joanna nodded, and Debbie grinned.
“If you’d asked me that question two weeks ago, it would have been a big problem,” she admitted. “But last week my sister’s jerk of a husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. He took off and left Katy and the
