“Lucky chewed up another one of Jenny’s boots yesterday,” Butch mentioned in passing.
“Not one of the new ones!”
“Yes, one of the new ones. And the right one, just like the other pair. If he’d chewed up the left-hand one, she’d still have two boots to work with even if they weren’t a pair. I tried to explain to her that, with a puppy in the house, she can’t leave anything lying around untended. I don’t think she got the message.”
“Will she this time?” Joanna asked.
Butch shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Especially if this pair of boots comes out of her own pocket.” He came over and settled onto the stool next to Joanna’s. “By the way,” he said, “your mother called late last night.”
“What about?”
“I’m not sure. She said she was looking for George and wondered if you were home.”
“That wasn’t it,” Joanna said. “I’m guessing she really wanted to find out if her calling out the big gun had any effect on me.”
“What big gun?” Butch asked.
Joanna told Butch about Bob Brundage’s call. Butch listened to the story in thoughtful silence and shook his head when she finished. “Eleanor just doesn’t get it,” he said.
“Get what?”
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“The idea that you’re all grown up and able to make your own decisions.”
“You’re right,” Joanna said. “And I doubt she ever will.”
An hour later, when Joanna drove into the Justice Center parking lot, she noticed an Arizona DPS van that was parked in front of the gate to the razor-wire-surrounded impound lot where the wrecked remains of the Suburban had been hauled and deposited for inspection. It had been decided the night before that this would be a joint- operation investigation, and Joanna was glad to see someone from the Department of Public Safety was already on the job. So was Dave Hollicker.
“Finding anything important?” Joanna asked as she joined the two clipboard-carrying officers who were conferring earnestly just to the left of the Suburban’s smashed driver’s-side fender.
“This is Sheriff Brady,” Dave said, seeing her for the first time. ‘And this is Sergeant Steve Little of the DPS.”
“Glad to meet you, Sheriff Brady,” Sergeant Little said. “The biggest question in my mind is why this old crate was still on the road in the first place. No way it should have been doing ninety miles an hour. The brakes are shot. The shock absorbers are rusted out, and, with as many people as he had in there, the vehicle was grossly overloaded.”
“Who’s it registered to?” Joanna asked.
‘A guy in Tucson who says he sold it last week to a Hispanic guy who paid him a thousand bucks in cash and said he needed it for his landscaping business. He used it for landscaping, all right. Turned it into a bulldozer.”
“Do we have any idea who ‘he’ is?” Joanna asked.
Dave Hollicker shook his head. “No idea. The driver was carrying a fake ID and a fake driver’s license. He won’t answer
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any questions, but he’s asking for a court-appointed lawyer. Says he wants to be deported back to Mexico.”
Joanna thought for a moment of the dead and bloodied baby she had cradled in her arms. “That driver’s not going home anytime soon,” she declared determinedly. “Not if I can help it.”
Leaving the impound lot in her Ciwie, Joanna was surprised at the number of vehicles pulling into the Justice Center parking lot. On Saturdays, when court wasn’t in session, the public parking area at the front of the complex was usually deserted. Last in the line of arriving vehicles was a battered Camry. A magnetic sign bearing the Bisbee Bee’s distinctive logo was plastered on the driver’s door.
As passengers began spilling out onto the hot pavement, Joanna assumed they had nothing to do with her and headed for her reserved and shaded parking place behind the building.
Inside her office, she used her phone to call Lupe Alvarez at the reception desk in the public office.
“What’s going on out front, Lupe?” Joanna asked. “Did someone schedule some kind of tour or activity that I don’t know about?”
“Beats me,” Lupe replied. “From here all I can see is a bunch of people milling around in the parking lot, lots of them waving signs. It must be some kind of demonstration.”
“What do the signs say?” Joanna asked.
“One of them said A-W-E,” Lupe returned. ‘Any idea what that means?”
‘AWE? Not the slightest,” Joanna answered. “What about the people? Do any of them look familiar?”
“No, but most of their backs are to me right now. They seem to be posing for photos in front of the door. Right, I just saw a flash, so someone did take a picture.”
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“Why don’t you give Chief Deputy Montoya a call,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe he knows something about this.”
