“Five or six. Why?”
“Just wondering. By the way, Eva Lou invited us over for 197
meat loaf after church tomorrow. I told her I’d check with you first. I said I didn’t know if your tummy would tolerate meat loaf.”
“Sounds good right now,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jenny?”
“Off riding Kiddo,” Butch answered. “This afternoon she’s going swimming with Cassie, and she’s planning on spending the night.”
Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived a few miles away in a former KOA campground that her parents had rehabbed into a private RV park. The park, catering mostly to winter visitors, was underutilized in the summer, giving Cassie and Jenny a clear shot at the park’s swimming pool.
“So it’ll be just be the two of us for dinner tonight?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right. I might make something special then,” Butch added. “We haven’t exactly celebrated our new addition. Drive carefully, but don’t be late. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not starting dinner until I see the whites of your eyes.”
From High Lonesome Ranch, the most direct route to Lordsburg, New Mexico, was on Highway 80 through Douglas, Rodeo, and Road Forks. It also meant returning to Silver Creek. If time hadn’t been an issue, Joanna might have been tempted to drive the long way around, just to avoid revisiting the site of the deadly accident, but her dread proved to be mostly unfounded. By the time she arrived, few signs remained of the previous day’s horrors. The Highway Department had already sent out a crew to reposition the displaced Jersey barriers. A few scraps of yellow crime scene tape still lingered here and there, marking spots where the bodies of dead and injured had come to rest.
There may have been little to see, but, driving alone in her Crown Victoria, Joanna heard once again the frantic voice of the
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injured mother calling for her baby. It was a voice and a sound she would never forget, any more than she’d be able to wipe away the memory of carrying the terrible burden of that dead child up the embankment and into the waiting helicopter. Yesterday Eduardo Maldonado’s deadweight had been a burden for her arms and shoulders. Today he was a burden for her heart.
Snap out of it, she ordered herself when a blur of tears clouded her eyes. That was one job. This is another.
With intermittent radio traffic chattering in the background, Joanna forced herself to review everything she knew about the Carol Mossman case. If she could establish a definite connection between Carol’s death and the two murders in New Mexico, then perhaps there was something else at work here other than simply an opportunist killer targeting susceptible women.
She had crossed the border into New Mexico and was heading north when her cell phone rang. “Hi, Frank,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Jaime and I are on our way to University Medical Center in Tucson to do the interviews you wanted,” Frank Montoya answered. “How about you?”
“Between Rodeo and Road Forks on my way to Lordsburg. What’s up?”
“I thought you’d like to have a little of the inside scoop on the lady in charge of the Animal Welfare Experience folks. It occurred to me that it was too much of a coincidence that AWE would show up with all those sign-waving demonstrators within minutes of the time I had scheduled the press briefing.”
“Right,” Joanna agreed. “The timing was impeccable.”
“I wondered if someone had tipped them off about when the briefing was to happen, so I did some research.”
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“And?”
“Tamara Haynes and Marty Galloway were roommates together at Northern Arizona University.”
“Tamara and Ken Junior’s wife were roommates?” Joanna blurted. “Are you telling me that whole demonstration thing was nothing more than an election campaign stunt?”
“That’s how it looks, although maybe that’s not entirely true,” Frank said. ‘AWE
does exist. Nationally, it’s a legitimate organization, but the local group has surfaced just in the last few days. And there’s a good chance today’s demonstration was a put-up deal, aimed at garnering free publicity for them at your expense, to say nothing of boosting Ken Junior’s chances in the upcoming election.”
“In other words, Ken Junior isn’t above using Carol Mossman’s dogs as political fodder.”
“And neither is Tamara Haynes, who’s something else, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve taken a look at her rap sheet. During the week she teaches Women’s Studies courses at the Sierra Vista campus of Cochise College. On weekends, she’s a political activist. She’s been picked up twice for demonstrating at the Nevada Test Site, twice at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant at Gila Bend, and twice at demonstrations at the front gate at Fort Huachuca. So far, she’s got two disorderly conduct convictions and one interfering with a police officer-all of them with suspended sentences.”
“What do you think we should do about it?” Joanna asked after several moments of reflection.
“I’m not sure,” Frank began.
Suddenly her chief deputy’s voice disappeared into the ether.
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