Dead Wrong (17 page)

Joanna turned to Detective Carbajal. “You and
Debbie will head up to Tucson?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “As
soon as we get the info from Tucson, we’re on our way. Should
we go by the hospital while we’re there?” he added.
“Is Jeannine in any shape to be interviewed?”

“I doubt it,” Joanna returned.
“But since you’re going to be in Tucson anyway, you
could just as well check and see. Millicent will be able to say
whether or not Jeannine can handle visitors or
questions.”

“Millicent?” Jaime said.
“Millicent who?”

“Millicent Ross, the vet. She and Jeannine
are together.”

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “As in
partners?”

“As in,” Joanna returned.

Jaime made a note. “What about the Bradley
Evans investigation?” he asked. “Are we dropping it for
the time being, or what?”

“Something has to give,” Joanna said.
“With Ernie gone, we’re way too shorthanded to do
everything. As far as I can tell, no one other than Ted Chapman is
particularly upset over Evans’s death, which means no one is
going to be pressuring us to solve that case. Jeannine Phillips, on
the other hand, is one of our own. She was in the process of
investigating possible criminal activity when she was
attacked.”

“In other words,” Jaime said,
“we’re pulling out all the stops.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s right,”
she said.

Around the table Joanna’s grim-faced team of
investigators nodded in solemn agreement.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.
When no one volunteered anything, Joanna nodded. “All right
then, you guys,” she told them. “Go get
’em.”

The investigators hustled out of the conference
room, leaving Joanna and Frank alone. “What are we going to
do about Jeannine’s position?” Frank asked.

“Fill it,” Joanna said.

“A temporary fix or a permanent
one?”

“Temporary for now,” Joanna said.
“Check with the part-timers. Maybe one of them will be able
to work full-time for the
next little while,
but if Jeannine’s injuries are as severe as Millicent said,
she may never be able to come back.”

“That’s tragic!” Frank
exclaimed.

Joanna nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.
I know you’re working on checking phones and credit-card
charges on Bradley Evans, but if you have any spare time, see what
you can find out about the O’Dwyers. I have a general idea of
what they’ve been up to the past few years, but we need
specifics. If they sicced that gang of thugs on Jeannine because
she was too close to something, I want to find out what that
something is.”

“Will do, boss,” Frank told her.

The remainder of their morning briefing took the
better part of an hour. After that, Joanna went into her office and
dived into the paperwork. It was close to one when the phone rang.
“Are you ready for lunch?” Butch asked. “Dad
heard it’s pasty day at Daisy’s Café. I called and
they still have a few left. I put three of them on hold. One each
for Mom and Dad and another for the two of us to split.”

“Sounds great,” Joanna said.
“I’ll be right there.”

Cornish pasties—meat pies filled with cooked
beef, rutabagas, and other vegetables—had migrated from
Cornwall, England, to Bisbee, Arizona, along with the miners who
had hailed from there. Because pasties were readily portable,
miners had taken them underground in lunch pails. Most mining
operations in and around Bisbee had been shut down for decades, but
the foods the miners had brought with them from all over the world
remained part of Bisbee’s traditional fare. Don Dixon had
been astonished to find pasties available in southeastern Arizona
on a previous visit and had been thrilled to find that the ones
served at Daisy’s compared very favorably with the ones he
remembered finding in Upper Michigan.

Junior Dowdle met Joanna at the door. “I want
to see the baby,” he said with his customary grin.

“So do I,” Joanna said.

“When?”

“Soon now,” she said. “I
hope.”

Junior led her to the table where Butch and his
parents were already seated.

“Is he always here?” Margaret asked
with a frown and a nod in Junior’s direction as he walked
away from the table. “He’s so weird.”

“He’s not weird, Mom,” Butch
explained. “Junior may be developmentally disabled, but
he’s far less weird than a lot of so-called normal people
around here.”

“Still,” Margaret insisted. “It
seems to me that having someone like him hanging around all the
time would be bad for business.”

“He isn’t hanging around,” Butch
said. “He actually
works
here—as in making a contribution.”

Seeing Butch’s temper fraying, Joanna tried
to smooth things over. “He’s really very
nice.”

Junior returned with a glass of water, which he
placed in front of Joanna. “Yes,” he said, thumping his
chest while looking directly at Margaret Dixon. “Nice, not
deaf.” And then he stalked off.

As Junior walked away that time, Joanna was
gratified to see Margaret blush to the roots of her peroxided hair.
Junior Dowdle had nailed her. It was about time someone did.

“Are you ready to order?” Daisy Maxwell
asked.

They ordered and ate, but lunch wasn’t a
complete success. Joanna, Butch, and Don downed their pasties with
gusto. Margaret picked at hers.

“I doubt Mom will be eager to come back here
anytime soon,” Butch said to Joanna as he walked her to her
car.

“You’re right,” Joanna agreed.
“But I wouldn’t have missed it for the
world.”

Butch grinned. “Me either.”

B
ack
at the Justice Center, Joanna was disappointed not to hear anything
from Debbie Howell and Jaime Carbajal. While waiting for word, she
returned to the drudgery of paperwork. She was lost in
concentration when Ted Chapman showed up an hour later.

“Any progress?” he asked.

He was asking for progress in the Bradley Evans
case. Joanna was reluctant to tell him that the Jeannine Phillips
assault case had knocked his friend’s down a notch as far as
priority was concerned.

“Not much,” she answered.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’ve located the person he
was stalking,” Joanna said. “That is, we know who she
is, but no one’s had a chance to interview her
yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re shorthanded, Ted,”
Joanna returned. “Ernie’s off for the next several
days. We’ve got another important case that we’re
working on up near San Simon. But believe me, she will be
interviewed.”

“Oh,” Ted said. “All right. I
just wanted to let you know that Brad’s funeral is tomorrow
at one o’clock in the afternoon. It’ll be held at the
Papago Unit at the prison down in Douglas. People who want to
attend need to be on the guest list for security
reasons. Do you think any of the detectives on the
case will want to go?”

Joanna knew Ernie was out and Debbie and Jaime
would be busy with the Phillips case. Frank would have his hands
full all morning with the board of supervisors meeting. That left
only one person available.

“Put me on the list,” she said.
“I’ll be there.”

“Thanks,” Ted said. He started to
leave. As he turned, Joanna noticed the name badge clipped to his
shirt pocket—a name badge that came complete with a photo
ID.

“Do the jail ministry guys down in Douglas
wear the same kind of name badge?” she asked.

Ted looked down at his. “Sure,” he
said. “Why?”

“Do you think you could get someone from
there to fax me a copy of Bradley Evans’s ID
photo?”

“Probably,” he said. “I’ll
see what I can do.”

He left. Joanna went back to work, but her mind
wandered. She kept going back to what she had said to Ted. Yes,
Debbie had located Leslie Markham, the woman who had been Bradley
Evans’s stalking target. That had happened day before
yesterday. More than twenty-four hours had passed without anyone
interviewing the woman. Regardless of what else was going on in
Joanna’s department, it was inexcusable to allow an important
lead to lie fallow for that long this early in an
investigation.

A few minutes later, when Kristin came into her
office carrying a faxed copy of Bradley Evans’s ID photo,
Joanna made up her mind. She rummaged through the mess on her desk
until she located an interoffice envelope containing her copies of
the prints from the camera found in Bradley Evans’s vehicle.
The same envelope also contained a mug shot of Bradley Evans that
dated from his original arrest back in 1978. There was some
re
semblance between the young man in the mug
shot and the guy in the ID photo, but clearly the years spent in
prison hadn’t been kind to him.

With all the photos now collected in the same
envelope, Joanna stuffed it into her briefcase. Then she jotted
down the address of Rory Markham Real Estate Group, told Kristin
she was on her way to Sierra Vista, and left the office. As she
drove, she was honest enough to realize that the main reason she
was going was to get away from the paper jungle on her desk, even
though she knew that leaving it for another day would only make
matters worse.

Something’s got to
give,
she told herself sternly. And then, as if she had
heard it yesterday, she remembered the advice her boss, Milo Davis,
had given her years ago when she was working in his insurance
agency. “You’ve got to stop majoring in the
minors,” he had told her. “Don’t get sidetracked
by the little stuff. Do the important stuff first.”

That was good advice then, and
it’s good advice now,
she told herself.
Tomorrow’s the day you start running the paperwork
instead of letting the paperwork run you.

When Joanna had first arrived at the department as
its duly elected sheriff, Kristin had been more than a little
hostile. She had also been very young. Joanna had been accustomed
to managing an insurance office. In the beginning it had been
easier for her simply to do the work herself than to give Kristin
more responsibility while, at the same time, making sure things
were done right. But now she was on a much better footing with
Kristin, and it was time to teach her the difference between what
really needed to land on Joanna’s desk and what
didn’t.

When it comes time to sort
tomorrow morning’s mail,
Joanna
vowed,
Kristin and I will do it
together. We’ll sort the new stuff as well as what’s
already on my desk. Once we finish…

Her reverie was interrupted by the baby suddenly
launching a drop kick into her lowest rib hard enough to make her
Kevlar vest rise and fall. The kicks came along sporadically when
she was in the office or out in public, where she mostly managed to
ignore them. This time, though, she was alone in a vehicle, and the
baby’s movements made her feel incredibly happy. He or she
was alive and kicking in the middle of the afternoon. Maybe that
meant the child would arrive with an inborn knowledge of the
difference between day and night. Having a baby that slept through
the night from the beginning would be an incredible blessing. Of
course, the opposite was always possible.

Joanna was still thinking about the baby when she
arrived at Rory Markham Real Estate Group on Fry Boulevard just
west of Highway 92. The building had once housed a local fast-food
establishment before it succumbed to the competition from too many
nationally owned franchises. Someone had spent time and money
trying to take away the distinctive Tacos to Go aura, but somehow
the lowbrow image still lingered. The website had made the place
sound far more upscale than the company’s physical presence
warranted.

Trying to brush off this negative first impression,
Joanna went inside. “I’d like to see Mrs.
Markham,” Joanna said, handing her card to the
receptionist.

The receptionist studied the card for a long
moment. “Can I tell her what this is about?” she
asked.

Joanna smiled. “It’s personal,”
she said.

The clerk went away and returned a few moments
later followed by Leslie Markham. Joanna’s first impression
was that she
was familiar; that Joanna had met
her somewhere before—perhaps at one of the many campaign
functions she had attended prior to the election.

The photos Joanna had seen of Leslie Tazewell
Markham—Bradley Evans’s stealthily captured images or
the promotional ones downloaded from the Internet—had not
done the woman justice. Leslie was an attractive brunette with lush
wavy hair that surrounded a fine-boned face. Her complexion was
flawless, and the blue eyes she turned on Joanna were disarmingly
direct. Still, there was an air of sadness about her, something
that her upscale business attitude and attire didn’t quite
conceal.

“Sheriff Brady?” she asked, holding out
her hand. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, I did,” Joanna said. “Is
there somewhere we could talk privately?”

Leslie turned back to the receptionist. “Is
anyone in the conference room, Fran?”

“No, it’s free,” Fran said,
casting a suspicious glance in Joanna’s direction.

Leslie led the way into a small conference room.
“What’s this all about?” she asked. “Is
there a problem?”

Joanna reached into her briefcase, pulled out
Bradley Evans’s ID photo, and slid it across the table.
“Does this man look familiar?”

Leslie picked up the picture, studied it closely,
and then handed it back. “No,” she said. “I
don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Who is
he?”

“Maybe he came through your office here
looking to buy a house,” Joanna suggested.

“Then he must have spoken to someone besides
me,” Leslie replied. “I remember all my clients. I
don’t recognize him.”

Listening as Leslie spoke and watching her
reactions, Joanna believed she was telling the truth.