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“Yes,” Joanna said, “I am at the moment. Why?”
“Well,” Tamara returned, her voice dripping contempt, “we’re here to serve notice that the members of AWE hold you personally responsible for the deaths of all those poor animals out by the San Pedro. If you and your department had simply responded to the situation in a more efficient and timely fashion, none of those unfortunate dogs would have died.”
With great effort Joanna kept her response reasonably civil. “Those dogs died in their owner’s overheated mobile home-a home with no electricity and no air-conditioning,”
she added. “They died after their owner was murdered, shot to death by an unknown assailant through a locked back door. If anyone is responsible for the deaths of those animals, it’s Carol Mossman’s killer. And that’s what my department is doing right now-searching for her murderer.”
But Tamara Haynes wasn’t someone whose opinion could be easily swayed by the presentation of mere facts. She grew shriller, making sure her voice carried beyond the front line of demonstrators. “If you and your people in Animal Control had been doing the job properly, Sheriff Brady, Carol Mossman never would have had the opportunity to amass that many animals in the first place.”
“That’s right,” one of the men shouted, waving his hand-lettered sign in the air.
“Way to go, Tammy. You tell her!”
Joanna’s temper edged up another notch. Her voice, unlike Tamara Haynes’s, actually decreased in volume. “Ms. Haynes, I’m in charge of a department that handles public safety for an area eighty miles wide and eighty miles long. A total of one hundred thirty people report to me. Four of them are in Animal Control.
‘As I’m sure you know, Animal Control officers enforce 186
ordinances having to do with animal licensing. They collect stray and injured animals.
They supervise animal adoptions and attend to the ones they’ve impounded. They respond to calls involving wildlife, which sometimes include marauding javelinas as well as human encounters with rabid skunks and coyotes. When Game and Fish officers aren’t available, my people are responsible for trapping and relocating rattlesnakes and other wildlife that pose threats to public safety.
“In other words, Ms. Haynes, Animal Control has its hands full. My Animal Control officers are doing an excellent job despite limited resources and severe budget cuts.
If you really care about animal welfare, Ms. Haynes, you and your sign-wielding friends here should be out at the pound volunteering your time shoveling doggie-doodoo and arranging adoptions instead of staging a protest on my doorstep. Now, if you’ll excuse me-“
“So that’s it?” Tammy Haynes objected before Joanna could step back inside the building.
“You’re just going to give us a line of excuses and that’s the end of it?”
“I’m not giving you excuses,” Joanna said tightly. “I’m giving you a dose of reality.
In case you’ve been too busy being an animal activist to notice, seven human beings have died in Cochise County in the past several days, including a two-year-old boy who died in a senseless automobile accident, to say nothing of the owner of those seventeen dogs who was murdered in the sanctity of her own home. You’re going to have to pardon me, Ms. Haynes, if I put those dead dogs on a back burner in favor of attending to my other duties.
“It’s Saturday morning. You’re here because you want to be, and so are my people.
Paid or not, I expect most of my investigators will be on duty today, working hard to solve the cases I just
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mentioned to you. Protest all you like, but we have a job to do here. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll go to work.”
“What about us?”
Tamara Haynes sounded like a petulant child. “What about you?” Joanna returned. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you wish and as long as there’s no disruption of traffic in or out of the building.”
“We have every right to be here,” Tammy Haynes whined. “I’ll have you know this is a peaceful protest.”
“Good,” Joanna returned, “I’m glad to hear it. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep it that way.”
With that, Joanna turned away. Most of her part of the discussion had been conducted in a voice so low that only the nearest of the protesters had heard what she said.
As she let herself back into the building, a new outburst of jeering rose up from the crowd. Frank Montoya was waiting just inside the door.
“They don’t sound happy,” he observed as the closing door stifled the noise. “What the hell is that all about?”
“They’re pissed about Carol Mossman’s dead dogs.”
“They’re that upset about the dogs?”
“Right,” Joanna said. “I don’t think any of them noticed that Carol Mossman also died. For some reason, that’s beside the point.”
“How long are they going to be here?” Frank asked.
“Most likely until hell freezes over. Why?”
“Because what happened last night at Silver Creek has happened three other times in the past year and a half,” Montoya returned. “Each incident has resulted in up to a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of unreimbursed medical costs to nearby hospitals, putting a further burden on overtaxed trauma care all over the state.”
