“Right away, Sheriff Brady.”
Joanna put down her phone. While she waited for Lupe to call back, she turned on her computer to check her e-mail inbox. She had twenty-seven new messages, most of them offering her ways to earn money by working at home, or quick fixes for the latest computer virus. One by one she deleted those without even opening them. She was down to the last eleven seemingly real messages when her phone rang again.
“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his way in,” Lupe reported. “It’ll take him about twenty minutes to get here. He’s scheduled a ten o’clock press briefing, so maybe some of the vehicles are reporters coming for that, but he doesn’t have a clue about a demonstration.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “Well, then, since he’s not here and I am, I’d better go out and see what’s happening.”
Since it was Saturday and Joanna had planned on spending the entire day in the office, she had come to work wearing jeans and a wrinkled but comfy linen blazer. If a newspaper photographer was outside snapping pictures, it was likely that a less-than-wonderful photo of Sheriff Brady would end up appearing in print.
Eleanor Lathrop was nowhere around, but Joanna had a fair idea of how their next conversation would go. “How could you possibly go to work dressed like that,” her mother would ask, “looking like something the cat dragged in? What about that nice uniform you wore in the Fourth of July parade?”
Walking toward the door, Joanna smiled grimly to herself, imagining the reaction if she came right out and told Eleanor
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that the uniform was out of commission due to an encounter with puppy pee. An answer like that wouldn’t be well received.
Opening the front door, Joanna stepped out onto the shaded veranda where a shorts-clad blonde with short- cropped hair was speaking earnestly to Kevin Dawson. Kevin, the Bisbee Bee’s ace reporter and photographer, was also, by some strange coincidence, the son of the newspaper’s publisher and editor in chief.
As the door closed behind Joanna, one of the nearest sign-wielding demonstrators spotted her. “There she is,” he shouted to the others, pointing in her direction.
“That’s Sheriff Brady.”
Interviewer and interviewee turned to face Joanna while a series of boos and catcalls erupted from the group of demonstrators gradually coalescing at the foot of the stairs.
As they moved closer, Joanna managed to catch a glimpse of some of the Signs. SHAME ON SHERIFF BRADY, Said One. CCSD UNFAIR TO
animals, announced several others.
Animals? Joanna wondered in confusion. What animals?
Considering the events of the night before, she more than half expected the demonstrators outside to be human rights activists protesting the maze of conflicting international policies that had resulted in the terrible human carnage at Silver Creek. In fact, considering the dead boy whose bloodied body Joanna had held in her arms, Sheriff Brady herself might have been sorely tempted to join such a protest.
Then she saw another sign that clinched it. seventeen too MANY.
That’s when Joanna tumbled. The people in the parking lot weren’t the least bit concerned about dead and injured illegal immigrants. Callous about human casualties, the jeering group of protesters on the doorstep of the Cochise Justice Center had 184
come to express their outrage over the heat-related deaths of Carol Mossman’s dogs.
Joanna stifled an inward groan. “Who’s in charge here?” she asked.
The woman with the short-cropped blond hair who looked to be about Joanna’s age gave Sheriff Brady a scathing look. “I am,” she announced crisply.
A man with a video camera on his shoulder shoved his way through the crowd and pushed a microphone in Joanna’s face.
“And you are?” Joanna asked, ignoring the cameraman.
“Tamara Haynes,” the woman replied. “That’s H-A-Y, not H-A-I,” she added for the reporter’s benefit as he dutifully took notes.
“May I help you?” Joanna asked.
Her question was drowned out by a new series of jeering catcalls. Despite her best intentions, Joanna felt her temper revving up.
Her second question was far less welcoming. “Who exactly are you?” she demanded.
‘And what are you doing here?”
“I already told you,” the woman replied. “My name is Tamara Haynes.” A diamond tongue-stud glittered as she spoke. Her ears were pierced a dozen times over. Her belly button, visible on a bare midriff, sported its own set of piercings, and her upper arms and shoulders were covered with a series of tattoos.
“I’m the local chapter president for AWE.”
“Which is?” Joanna prodded.
‘A-W-E,” Tamara said. When Joanna exhibited no sign of recognition, the woman added, ‘Animal Welfare Experience.”
‘And you’re here because … ?”
“You’re in charge of Cochise Animal Control, are you not?” Tamara Haynes asked.
