The existing turn of the century buildings in those neighborhoods, many of them framed Victorian wanna-bes with modest gingerbreading and tin roofs, were loaded onto wheeled axles and then relocated. Company-paid movers trucked them three or four miles south and east of their original locations, where they were reinstalled on company land in newly created neighborhoods called Bakerville and Saginaw.
All her life Joanna had heard stories about one of the Jiggerville old-timers, Melvin Kitteridge. Local legend had it that Kitteridge, a mean-spirited, wily old codger, had nursed a long-standing grudge against the then duly-elected mayor of Bisbee. Offended by the idea of having his residence trans-planted inside the city limits, Kitteridge had raised such a furor that the company had finally agreed to place his house on company property just outside the city limits. To this day, some forty years later, that property remained under the county’s jurisdiction.
According to local gossip, Kitteridge had gone on to devil the city fathers by having the remains of both a gas station and another garage transported to the same site. For years the two not-quite-connected buildings functioned as a low-brow antique store, with Kitteridge living in his relocated house which, although on the same property, faced another street farther off the highway.
When Melvin Kitteridge died at age ninety-one, his heirs had been only too happy to unload the whole shebang at bargain-basement prices. Dr. Amos Buckwalter was the purchaser. Bucky Buckwalter had worked construction for years before earning enough money to attend college. He and his energetic but exceedingly young wife, Terry, had hauled out our truckloads of junk and then remodeled what was left, transforming the separate shells of garage and service station into a single building to serve as a clinic for small animals. Thirty yards away, across an expanse of red-graveled parking lot, they added a barn and corral for use with some of their larger patients.
Joanna remembered Bucky telling her once that if he’d had any inkling the mines would close down for good in the early seventies, he would have chosen somewhere else to set up his fledgling practice rather than coming back home. By the time the shutdown ax fell, however, Bucky and Terry Buckwalter were already committed, and they stayed on.
As Joanna approached the Buckwalter Animal Clinic, she saw several cars parked along the shoulder on either side of the road, including one of her department’s newly acquired Crown Victorias. Switching on the flashers on her Blazer, Joanna pulled in behind the other vehicles. Once parked, she noticed someone-a man-carrying a protest sign of some kind and marching back and forth in front of the cattle guard that led to the clinic’s grounds. One of the cars parked across the highway carried a magnetic sign that said
Kevin’s presence meant that whatever was happening in front of the Buckwalter Animal Clinic had been deemed newsworthy. That was worrisome to Joanna Brady, since one of her younger and most inexperienced deputies, Lance Pakin, was standing in the center of the camera’s range, along with the unidentified protester. Unfortunately, Frank Montoya, Chief Deputy for Administration-the guy who doubled as Joanna’s official public information officer-was nowhere in sight.
Stepping out of the stopped Blazer, Joanna walked toward the action just in time to see Dr. Bucky Buckwalter himself erupt out the door to the clinic and storm across the parking lot. His face was livid with anger.
“I want this man off my property,” he shouted, waving a fist in the protester’s direction. “He’s been here two days in a row now, and I want him gone.”
All the while Kevin Dawson’s camera finger continued to click away.
Still unable to see the sign the unidentified man held over his shoulder, Joanna’s first thought was that he was most likely one of those radical vegetarian/animal rights activists, some of whom found Dr. Buckwalter’s involvement in the beef industry offensive. In the past few years, Bucky’s modestly lucrative specialization in performing artificial insemination procedures on beef cattle had been the subject of more than one “cows-are- people-too” type of protest.
Bucky didn’t stop his advance until he and the other man were almost face-to-face, although the guy with the sign stood a good head taller than the diminutive vet. To compensate for his size, Doc Buckwalter customarily wore a pair of Tony Lama boots complete with two-inch heels, but even they didn’t help very much in this instance. Had the two men squared off physically right then, Joanna doubted it would have been much of a contest. Dr. Buckwalter, however, appeared not to notice the disparity in their relative sizes. Or, if he did, it had no muting impact on his seething anger.
“This is private property,” he raged. “Like I said on the phone,” he added, turning to Deputy Pakin. “Either get him out of here or arrest him for trespassing.”
“I’m on the right-of-way side of the fence,” the other man returned calmly, gesturing with his sign in a way that, de-pending on your point of view, might have been considered brandishing. “I’m here exercising my right of free speech and passing out some literature, Dr. Buckwalter. You can’t stop me from doing that.”
“I’m afraid that’s true, Doc,” Deputy Pakin said, speaking respectfully and sounding genuinely conciliatory toward both sides. “As long as Mr. Morgan here stays on this side of the cattle guard and fence, he’s on public property. Since he isn’t disrupting traffic, there’s not much we can do. Why don’t you just go on inside and let him be?”
“He may not be disrupting traffic, but he’s certainly disturbing my business,” Anus Buckwalter complained. “He was here half the night with his damned candlelight vigil. Now he’s interfering with my customers.”
“I haven’t done anything to your customers,” the other man returned. “All I’ve done is offer them one of my brochures.”
“Like hell,” Bucky replied.
Not wanting the potentially volatile situation to deteriorate any further, Joanna chose that moment to step into the fray. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said calmly. “What seems to be the problem here?”
“Sheriff Brady.” Deputy Pakin’s face brightened considerably with the arrival of some backup. “Mr. Morgan, here, and Doc Buckwalter seem to be having a little disagreement… “
“It’s hardly a little disagreement,” the man with the sign interrupted. “Dr. Amos Buckwalter killed my wife. He could just as well have murdered her in cold blood. Now he’s back home with his life and his business intact, while Bonnie’s life is over. Mine, too, for that matter.”
That was when Joanna finally caught sight of the sign. “Point 28,” it said. “A license to kill.” From there it took only a second to realize what was going on. Joanna wasn’t entirely sure of the date, but she did remember the incident.
Early the previous year-maybe as far back as January or February-Bucky Buckwalter had gone off to an annual veterinarians’ gathering being held at the convention center in downtown Phoenix. Smashed to the gills after partying too much, he had smashed his pickup into a woman crossing a street at an intersection. She had been killed on impact. Point two-eight was what he’d blown into the Breathalyzer two hours after the incident. That long after the incident, his blood alcohol level had still been almost three times the.10 that Arizona law deems legally drunk.
“Look, Morgan,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry as hell about your wife. But I’ve paid my debt to society-spent my two months baking in an unairconditioned tent at the Maricopa County Jail. I went through six weeks of court-ordered in-patient treatment. Now I’m attending court-ordered AA meetings and doing my community service. My new truck had to go back and I’ve had to mortgage my clinic just to pay the fine, the lawyers, and the treatment. What else do you want from me?”
“Bucky,” Terry Buckwalter called from the door to the clinic. “What’s going on out there?”
If Doc Buckwalter heard his wife call to him, he didn’t acknowledge it. He and the other man had eyes and ears solely for one another.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” Morgan returned. “You may have paid the state, but you haven’t paid me. Bonnie’s gone. What about her? What about me? What about our life together?”
“The court ordered me to pay a fine and to get treatment. I’ve done that,” Bucky Buckwalter replied stiffly. “If you want to take me to civil court, fine. Go ahead. That’s up to you. In the meantime, I’ve got a business to run, Mr. Morgan, so why don’t you get the hell out of here and let me do it? And if you so much as set one foot on my property, I swear I’ll have you arrested.”
With that, Dr. Amos Buckwalter turned his back on the group and stalked off toward the building’s entrance where his wife still stood waiting for him. When the man with the sign made as if to follow, Joanna stepped in and stopped him. “Excuse me, Mr. Morgan. Maybe we should talk about this.”
