“Why? What’s the big hurry?”
“I have someone here in my office. I think he can shed light on this morning’s case.”
“You’d better hurry, then,” George said. “It’s Friday, and your mother is expecting guests for dinner. If you make me late again, Ellie will have my ears.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “This won’t take long.” When she put down the phone, Ted Chapman was staring at her. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, Ted,” Joanna said slowly, “but I’m afraid I may have some bad news for you. Early this morning a Border Patrol officer found an unidentified homicide victim out along Border Road. It sounds to me as though there’s a lot of similarity between him and your Mr. Evans. Reddish-blond hair. Fifty-something. Homemade tattoo on his upper left arm that says ‘One day at a time.”“
“You want me to see if I can identify him?” Ted asked.
Joanna nodded. “Yes, if you don’t mind. Identifying the victim would be a big help to our investigation. Without knowing who he is, we’re pretty much dead in the water.”
It took Ted a moment to come to grips with what Joanna had said. Finally he nodded. “Of course,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be glad to.”
Ted sat quietly in the passenger seat of Joanna’s Crown Victoria as she drove the several miles from the Cochise County Justice Center, through town to Old Bisbee, and then up the winding curves of Tombstone Canyon to the failed low-cost mortuary George Winfield had converted into a state-of-the-art morgue.
On the way Joanna considered calling Ernie and Jaime at home to let them know what was up. In the end she decided against it. If Ted did manage to make a positive ID, there would be plenty of time to send out for reinforcements.
George was waiting in the doorway and looking pointedly at his watch when Joanna pulled in and parked under the covered portico.
“This is Ted Chapman,” Joanna announced once she and Ted were both out of the car. “He’s head of our jail ministry. One of his colleagues from the Arizona State Prison Complex down in Douglas has gone missing. I’m thinking perhaps…”
“Of course,” George said gravely, taking Ted Chapman by the arm. “Right this way.”
George led them into a velvet-lined room that, in the building’s mortuary days, had been a private family viewing room. As part of the county morgue it now served a grimmer but similar purpose. Joanna stood at Ted’s side while George went into the next room, retrieved the body, and then opened the curtain.
When he removed the sheet to reveal the dead man’s face, Ted swayed as though his knees were about to give way beneath him. Taking him by the elbow, Joanna eased him onto a nearby chair.
“It is him,” Ted whispered hoarsely. “It’s Brad.”
She turned back to signal George to shut the curtain, but he had already done so. She gave Ted a few minutes to regain his composure. “Thank you, Ted. Does Mr. Evans have any next of kin?”
“Probably,” Ted said. “But I have no idea who they are or how to contact them.”
“My detectives are going to need to talk to you as soon as possible,” Joanna told him. “Now that we have an ID, they’ll be able to start making progress on the case. If I call them back in, would you mind talking to them?”
“Tonight?”
Unlike Joanna, Ted Chapman wasn’t a cop. He didn’t grasp the urgency of getting on the killer’s trail while it was still warm.
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Tonight. Right now.”
“All right,” Ted said. “But I’ll need to call my wife and let her know what’s going on.”
While Ted used his cell phone to explain the situation to Ginny Chapman, Joanna used hers to call Jenny.
“When will you be home?” Jenny asked. “What’s for dinner?”
“You’re probably on your own for dinner,” Joanna returned. “Something’s come up here at work. I may have to stay late.”
“With Butch gone, I thought we’d get to have a girls’ night, just the two of us, the way things used to be.” Jenny sounded genuinely disappointed.
“I thought so, too, sweetie,” Joanna said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Jenny replied hotly. “You’re not sorry at all.”
With that, she hung up, leaving her mother listening to the empty hum of the phone line.
Chapter 3
On her way back to the Justice Center, Joanna called the Double Cs about interviewing Ted Chapman. Ernie wasn’t home and didn’t answer his cell. “You caught me in the middle of dinner,” Jaime said. “I’ll be there in a few”
“Any idea where Ernie is?” Joanna asked. “Tucson,” Jaime answered. “He told me before we left work that he and Rose were going there for a meeting of some kind.”
“For someone who claims to hate driving back and forth to Tucson, it seems like he’s been doing that a lot lately.”
“Yes, it does,” Jaime agreed, but he didn’t say anything more than that, and Joanna didn’t press it.
Joanna could see that Ted was shaken by what had happened to his friend, but he was eager to be of assistance in whatever way possible. While they waited for Jaime to show up for the interview, Ted called one of the jail ministry administrators.
“Hey, Rich,” he said. “Ted Chapman here. Sorry to call you at home like this, but I have some bad news about one of your guys-Brad Evans. He’s been killed-murdered.”
Joanna waited during a long pause while the unexpected news was assimilated.
“It happened along Border Road,” Ted continued. “Someone found the body early this morning. I just identified it, but the sheriff’s department is trying to locate next of kin, and I was wondering… Sure, sure. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be great. What’s the phone number here?”
Joanna reeled it off.
“All right,” Ted said into the phone. “Call this number when you have the information. If I’m not here, ask for Sheriff Brady.”
Having put that in process, Joanna and Ted went into the conference room to await Jaime Carbajal’s arrival. The young detective came bearing gifts-a grocery-bag care package that included paper plates and plastic silverware as well as several bean-and-green-chili burritos wrapped in tinfoil and still warm to the touch.
“You didn’t eat, did you, boss?” Jaime asked.
“Not since lunch,” Joanna answered.
“That’s what Delcia thought,” he said with a grin. “She claims pregnant women need to keep up their strength. How about you, Ted? Hungry?”
“Not really,” he said, but once Joanna’s first burrito was unwrapped he succumbed and had one anyway. Joanna plowed gratefully into hers. Until she took that first bite, she had been unaware of how close she had been to running on empty.
As Jaime sat down at the table, Joanna pushed him the piece of paper on which she had jotted down Bradley Evans’s name as well as the address of his apartment in Douglas.
“I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, Ted,” Jaime ventured. “What can you tell us about him?”
Ted Chapman took a deep breath. “I’ve known Brad for a long time,” he said. “Before I broke away to start the Cochise Jail Ministry, I spent years working for the Arizona State Prison Ministry. Ginny’s parents were from Douglas, and she wanted to live closer to them, so when there was an opening in Douglas, I transferred down here from Florence. Brad was already there when I arrived.
“Most convicts are con artists one way or the other. They’re like politicians. They’ll say anything to suck you into believing that their version of things is the gospel. Brad wasn’t like that. He was always a straight shooter, but tough enough that no one messed with him.”
