Dead Wrong (26 page)

“We’re on it,” Joanna said into
the radio. “Who else is in play here?”

“We’ve called DPS. They know of the
situation. They’ve got
cars headed that
way, but with children involved, they’re not going to lay
down any spike strips.”

“Right,” Joanna said. “What about
our guys?”

“Frank’s on his way, but he’s a
long way off.”

“Okay. We’ll do our best.”

She watched as the speedometer rose past
seventy-five miles per hour, past eighty, past eighty-five. The
interstate was chock-full of eighteen-wheelers. As Deputy Thomas
dodged between them, Joanna remembered how, on another occasion,
she had utilized truck drivers to slow down and help capture a
fleeing suspect.

“Hey, Larry,” Joanna said into the
radio. “How were you communicating with the RV
guy?”

“On his radio. Why?”

“If he’s still around, see if he can
send word to trucks up ahead to keep a lookout for the Caravan.
Once the drivers catch sight of him in their mirrors, have them
slow him down and keep him trapped behind them.”

“Good idea,” Kendrick responded.
“Hold on. I’ll see what I can do.” There was a
long pause before the dispatcher returned. “A couple of J. B.
Hunt drivers had him stuck in behind them, but one of them just
reported that the suspect turned off at exit 297. He’s headed
northbound on Mescal Road. Got that?”

Joanna looked at Deputy Thomas, who nodded grimly.
Exit 297 was coming up fast. They were in the wrong lane with a
long line of semis and oversized RVs to their right. At the last
possible moment, Thomas managed to dodge back into the right lane.
He veered onto the ramp with the rough-shoulder warning strips
whining beneath their speeding tires. By the time they hit the stop
sign at the bottom of the ramp, Joanna’s heart was in her
throat. Still, as bad as Thomas’s driving was, she had to
take
him at his word that he was better at that
than he would be wielding a gun.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Just keep after him,” she urged. And
to Larry Kendrick she said, “Okay. We’re on Mescal
heading north, too. Does everyone else know?”

“Yes.”

“And what are we looking at here?”

“The road’s paved for a mile or so,
then there’s a Y. The left-hand fork peters out at the
beginning foothills of the Rincons in about five miles or so. The
right-hand one takes you along the base of the Little Rincons and
dead-ends at Paige Canyon in about fifteen or so. Do you have a
visual on him yet?”

“Not so far,” Joanna said. “But
once the pavement ends, we should be able to see his dust. I doubt
there’s any other traffic out this way.”

When they reached the Y, Deputy Thomas stood on the
brakes hard enough that the seat belt clamped tight across
Joanna’s thighs and her and her oversize breasts. Far ahead
of them and to the right, a cloud of dust roiled into the air
behind a speeding vehicle.

“Okay,” Joanna said as the Yukon sped
forward once more. “We don’t see the vehicle, but we do
see the dust. What are the chances of calling in a helicopter on
this?”

“I was just talking to DPS about that. They
have one on the scene of a fatality wreck near Marana. Someone from
the state patrol will see if they can break away from there and get
back to me on it. Frank’s just now coming through Benson. So
is Jaime Carbajal, but in the meantime, you and Deputy Thomas are
pretty much on your own.”

“I already figured that out,” Joanna
said. “Where’s Detective Howell?”

“She stopped off at the rest stop to
interview the mother.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “I need the
names of those kids.”

“Hold on.” There was another long
pause.

Watching the cloud of dust rising skyward ahead of
them, Joanna tried to judge whether or not they were closing the
distance. The speedometer in the Yukon was hovering around
fifty-five miles per hour. On this washboarded gravel surface, that
was far too fast.

“Slow down,” she said. “If we
push him too hard, he’s liable to go off the road.”

Shaking his head, Thomas slowed to a slightly more
moderate but still dangerous fifty.

Larry Kendall came back on line. “Hannah and
Abel,” he said. “Hannah is four. Abel just turned
two.”

“Okay. Have Debbie find the mother a Kevlar
vest and bring her in this direction. If this thing turns into a
standoff, I want her on hand to talk to her kids.”

“Will do,” Larry replied.

By now Mescal Road was rising abruptly into the
foothills. As it wound back and forth, the dust cloud was still
visible but only intermittently. Carefully Joanna removed
Thomas’s standard-issue Colt .223 semiautomatic rifle out of
its holder. She was more comfortable with her Glock, but with the
possibility that the suspect might grab one of the children and
flee, she wanted the rifle available if needed.

“Is this thing clean?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Thomas replied.
“How much longer?”

Looking at him, Joanna noted beads of sweat
streaking down the side of his face and the back of his neck,
soaking his collar.
The man was scared to
death, she realized, and rightly so. She was scared, too, but she
didn’t dare show it, not with Deputy Thomas looking to her
for confidence and direction.

“Not long,” she assured him.
“According to Dispatch, the road should end in another seven
or eight miles. I doubt the suspect has any idea that’s going
to happen, and it’ll be a rude awakening for him. When the
road does end, one of two things will happen. He’ll either
abandon the kids and take off on his own, or he’ll grab one
or both of the kids and try using them as human shields.
It’ll be one or the other,” she added grimly.
“There won’t be any middle ground.”

“So what do we do?”

“We get as close as we can. If he takes off
without the kids, I’ll use either your rifle or my Glock to
bring him down.”

“And if he uses the kids?”

Joanna took a deep breath. “In that
case,” she said, “we play it by ear.”

“Sheriff Brady,” Larry Kendrick cut in.
“DPS reports that their helicopter is on its way, but
it’s probably a good forty-five minutes out.”

Too little too late,
Joanna thought, but she didn’t say so.

“Great,” she said into the mike.
“I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”

The Yukon rounded a sharp turn and almost smashed
into the Caravan, which was now stopped and sitting perpendicular
to the roadway. On the far side of the vehicle, Joanna saw someone
struggling to remove a flailing child from the backseat.

“Stop!” Joanna ordered. “Now. Hit
the ground and stay low. I’ll try to take him out.”

Joanna was out of the Yukon and onto the shoulder
before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. The impact took her
breath away for a moment, but not her focus.
She heaved herself over on her bulging belly. Abandoning the Glock,
she aimed the semiautomatic beneath the parked minivan’s
dusty undercarriage. From inside the van she could hear children
wailing. As the struggle continued, Joanna realized one of the kids
was desperately battling being forcibly removed from a car
seat.

“No! No! No!” came the scream.
“Let me go! Let me go! Go away!!! I want my mommy! I want my
mommy!”

All Joanna could see was tennis-shoe-clad feet
topped by a pair of jeans. Then a gym bag appeared beside the feet.
It occurred to Joanna that the suspect had dropped the bag in order
to use both hands in his attempt to grasp the struggling child.
According to officially mandated procedures, Joanna should have
issued a verbal warning to the suspect at that point—she
should have shouted at him and warned him to freeze. But not with
the child’s life hanging in the balance.

Knowing that the minivan’s sheet-metal body
wouldn’t adequately protect the children from flying bullets,
Joanna nonetheless carefully sighted in on one of the moving tennis
shoes, aiming slightly above the shoe itself to account for the
bullet’s trajectory. With a heartfelt prayer on her lips, she
pulled the trigger.

There was a screech of pain as the bullet smashed
into the man’s ankle. The unexpected blow forced the suspect
backward and sent him sprawling onto the ground, where he lay for a
moment, bellowing with a combination of rage and pain. Then, with a
purposeful roar, he flopped over on his belly and scrambled toward
the fallen gym bag. Instinctively, Joanna knew she couldn’t
let him reach it.

“Stop right there,” she ordered. When
he didn’t, she shot again. This time the bullet kicked up a
cloud of dirt and gravel inches from his face. Even at that
distance she knew who he was
from Frank
Montoya’s mug shot. She had been right. The carjacker was
none other than Antonio Zavala.

Howling in pain once more, he stopped and lay
still.

“Freeze,” Joanna shouted, and then,
over her shoulder to Deputy Thomas, “Take him.” Joanna
sprang to her feet with an ungainly but adrenaline-fueled agility
that surprised even her. Once upright, she darted forward and
around the van with the rifle still at the ready. As she ran, she
heard a distinctive click. Mistaking the sound for a handgun
hitting on an empty chamber, she momentarily ducked for cover. But
instead of a shot, the next sound Joanna heard was the low-throated
rumble of the minivan’s rear passenger door. Somehow, one of
the resourceful children inside the van had pushed a button and
shut the door. The next click was actually the sound of the van
being locked from the inside.

That’s one smart
kid!
Joanna thought gratefully.

“You shot me, you bitch!” Zavala
groaned, writhing on the ground. “I’m hurt. I’m
bleeding. I’m gonna lose my foot.”

“If you move again, you’re going to
lose your life,” she told him. “Face on the ground;
hands over your head.” Deputy Thomas materialized at her
side. “Cuff him,” she added.

As Deputy Thomas complied, Joanna kept him covered,
all the while edging closer to the fallen and half-open gym bag.
When she saw the semiautomatic lying just inside the bag, a cold
chill ran down her body. With a quick kick, she sent the bag a good
fifteen feet away from Tony Zavala.

Furiously she turned on the now-cuffed prisoner.
Seeing the gun had brought home the grave danger they’d all
been in. It was then she knew for sure that shooting first and
warning later had been the right decision—her only possible
decision. It was also when she realized that for Zavala’s
well-being as well as her own, she needed to stay away from
him.

“Here,” she said, handing Deputy Thomas
his rifle. “I’ll go check on the kids.”

Behind her the terrified children in the van were
still screaming their lungs out. Oblivious to the racket, Joanna
hurried to the Grand Caravan and knocked on the front passenger
window. Inside the screaming stopped abruptly. The little girl, now
in the driver’s seat, knowledgeably switched the switch that
unlocked the door, allowing Joanna to wrestle it open.

Behind her Zavala continued to screech, “My
foot! My foot. You shot the hell out of my foot.”

“Shut up!” Joanna snapped. “Or
I’ll shoot you again. Put a tourniquet on his leg, Thomas. Do
what you can to stop the bleeding. If he keeps blabbing, put one on
his mouth, too!”

Inside the van, the little boy, his face wet with
tears, remained strapped in his car seat while his sister huddled
next to the door on the driver’s side. “Are you all
right?” Joanna asked.

The little girl, her eyes huge, nodded slowly.

“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said.
“Are you Hannah?”

The girl nodded. “Who’s he?”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said.
“We’ve got him. He can’t hurt you now.”

“Did you really shoot him?”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “I did. He
was trying to take you away. I didn’t have any
choice.”

“Did he hurt our mommy? Where’s
she?”

That last question was enough to galvanize Joanna
to action. Somewhere back down Mescal Road, Hannah and Abel’s
mother was living in a world of terrible uncertainty.

“Your mommy’s on her way here right
now,” Joanna said. “But come on. Let’s go see if
we can talk to her.”

The car-seat fasteners that had so baffled Antonio
Zavala let
go easily under Joanna’s
practiced hand. Moments later, she was carrying Abel and leading
Hannah back to Deputy Thomas’s Yukon.

“Dispatch?” Joanna said into the
radio.

“Sheriff Brady! Are you all right?”

“Yes. The suspect is wounded but in
custody.”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “You’d
better send one.”

“Where do you want him taken to?”

“Maybe the Copper Queen on Bisbee, but
we’ll let the EMTs make that call,” Joanna said.
“I shot him in the foot, but it looks like he’s hurt
pretty bad. As soon as the ambulance crew decides where to take
him, let the jail commander know. Tom Hadlock will need to post a
guard wherever Zavala goes. In the meantime, please patch me
through to Debbie Howell’s vehicle. I have two very brave
children here with me. Their names are Hannah and Abel. They want
to talk to their mother.”

F
or
the next several minutes Joanna was completely engrossed in helping
the children talk to their ecstatically relieved mother over the
Yukon’s police radio. Busy as she was with that, she scarcely
noticed Frank Montoya’s arrival or the noisy DPS helicopter
hovering overhead.

“Do you want me to wave off the
helicopter?” Frank asked finally.

Joanna nodded. “Tell them they can go. We
don’t need them. I’ve called for an ambulance to take
Zavala to the Copper Queen.”

Frank walked away to do her bidding. He returned
with Jaime Carbajal in tow. “I’m here, Sheriff Brady.
Should I start interviewing the children?”

“Not yet,” she said. “We’ll
wait until their mother gets here. It shouldn’t be too
long.”

“They’re both okay?” Jaime
asked.

“The kids are fine.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m fine, too,” she told him,
but that wasn’t entirely the case. Joanna knew that, in the
aftermath of her use of force, some other outside agency would have
to be called in to investigate the incident. She would need to be
interviewed, and so would Deputy Thomas. Dealing with that
investigation would siphon time and energy from her already
staff-deprived department. There were bound to be plenty of tough
questions about her not having issued a verbal warning before
pulling the trigger.

She pointed Jaime toward the place where the gym
bag had come to rest. “That’s Zavala’s bag.
There’s a semiautomatic weapon inside,” she said.
“We’ll need photos.”

“Understood,” Jaime said.

Joanna turned to Frank Montoya. “Have you
asked the Department of Public Safety to send their
investigators?”

Frank nodded. “Two of them are on their way
from Tucson right now.”

“Good call,” she said.
“Thanks.”

“Are you putting yourself on administrative
leave?” Frank asked.

“No, I’m not,” she declared.
“Now where the hell is that scumbag?”

“He’s in the back of Deputy
Thomas’s Yukon, waiting for the ambulance. Rick put a
tourniquet on his leg and has his foot elevated.”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“The foot took a lot of damage. Your bullet
nailed him right in the ankle. I don’t think he’s going
to be walking on it anytime soon. Good shot, by the way.”

Joanna gave Frank a wan smile.
“Thanks,” she said. “It was the best I could do
under the circumstances.”

When they reached the Yukon, Deputy Thomas, with
the sweat stains drying on his collar, stood to one side, keeping a
wary eye on Antonio Zavala.

“Good job, Rick,” Joanna said, stopping
long enough to shake his hand. “And great driving.”

Thomas nodded modestly, acknowledging her
compliment.

“Did Frank tell you that we’ll both
have to be interviewed by DPS? It’ll be a third-party deadly
force investigation.”

“What choice did you have?” Thomas
objected. “What were we supposed to do, let him grab the kid
and run off with her?”

“Welcome to the world of post-incident
second-guessing, Deputy Thomas,” she told him. “Just
tell the investigators what happened. It’ll be
fine.”

Having done her best to reassure her young deputy,
Joanna went over to the Yukon and pulled open the back door.
Antonio Zavala had been quiet for several minutes, but as soon as
he saw her, he resumed his tirade.

“I want a lawyer!” he demanded.
“You shot me with no warning, and it hurts like hell.
That’s police brutality.”

“What kind of warning did you give the people
you shot?” she asked.

Zavala quieted again. He answered her question with
nothing but a hard-edged stare.

“How badly do you suppose they hurt before
they died?”

Again Zavala didn’t answer her question.
Instead, he asked one of his own. “Why am I just sitting
here? Aren’t you supposed to be taking me to a hospital or
something? Are you just going to leave me here to bleed to
death?”

“Believe me,” Joanna said, “I
wouldn’t be that lucky. I’ve called for an ambulance,
and it’ll get here when it gets here. But what’s the
matter, Tony? You can’t stand a little pain or the sight
of blood? When it comes to beating up women and
committing murder and terrorizing little kids, you’re a
regular tough guy. But a little pain turns you into a crybaby? A
cool macho dude like you should be ashamed of yourself. Now tell
me, why’d you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?” he retorted
belligerently. “I don’t have to tell you nothing. I
know my rights. I already asked for a lawyer.”

“And you’ll have a lawyer, but in the
meantime, let me tell you something,” Joanna said. “You
beat up my officer Jeannine Phillips because you thought you could
get away with it. And you murdered Lupe because she decided she
could do better than hang around with a loser like you. Poor Lupe.
Clarence and Billy O’Dwyer weren’t much, but they must
have looked like giants compared to a punk like you. And so you
murdered all three of them in cold blood—Lupe and Billy and
Clarence, too.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Oh, we’ll prove it all right,”
Joanna returned. “I just have one problem with you, Mr.
Zavala. I only shot you in the foot. I wish to hell I’d hit
you someplace vital, because dirtbags like you aren’t worth
the time or money it’s going to take to sew you back up or
put you away for the rest of your useless life!”

With that, she turned away from the Yukon and
slammed the door shut behind her. Frank Montoya caught up with her
as she walked away. “With DPS due here any minute,” he
cautioned, “you might want to downplay those kinds of
inflammatory comments.”

“What?” Joanna demanded. “Calling
a dirtbag a dirtbag?”

“No. Saying you wish you’d killed him.
Zavala’s already screaming police brutality and asking for a
lawyer. Claims you shot him with no warning.”

Joanna was outraged. “So what? He’s a
triple murderer who was trying to drag a screaming kid out of a car
so he could use
her as a hostage. I’m
supposed to handle him with kid gloves and observe all the
politically correct niceties? Give me a break.”

“Still…” Frank began.

Just then Debbie Howell arrived with the
children’s tearful mother in tow. After gathering Hannah and
Abel into a grateful hug and kissing them, Chantal Little turned to
Joanna.

“Are you the one who rescued them?” she
asked.

Joanna nodded. “I’m Sheriff Brady.
Deputy Thomas here and I were the ones on the scene, but believe
me, little Hannah was doing her very best to save
herself.”

Chantal put down the children. She enveloped first
Deputy Thomas and then Joanna in impassioned hugs. “I
don’t know how to thank you,” she said tearfully.

“You already did,” Joanna told her.
“Believe me, the look on your face is thanks
enough.”

The next several hours flew past in a blur of
activity. By the time the ambulance arrived to transport Antonio
Zavala, it had to make its way through a throng of media cams which
had appeared out of nowhere and now lined both sides of Mescal
Road. Joanna dealt with the EMTs, who overrode Joanna’s
Copper Queen Hospital call, telling her that, due to the nature of
Zavala’s injuries, they had no choice but to transport him to
University Medical Center. Since Jeannine Phillips was in that same
facility, Joanna immediately started making arrangements to post a
twenty-four-hour guard on Antonio Zavala’s room there.

While Frank handled multiplying media concerns,
Debbie Howell and Jaime Carbajal took statements from both Chantal
Little and her children. Eventually the two detectives
left—Jaime to return to the crime scene at Roostercomb Ranch
and Debbie to go to Tucson to make a next-of-kin notification to
Lupe Melendez’s family.

Through all this two DPS investigators were also on
the scene. Detectives Dave Newton and Roger Unger needed to take
their own statements from Chantal and the children. They also took
possession of the semiautomatic rifle Joanna had used during the
incident and then painstakingly searched and photographed both the
Dodge Caravan and Deputy Thomas’s Yukon.

By then it was mid-afternoon and quickly turning
chilly. “The kids are tired and hungry,” Chantal
complained to Joanna. “Are those two detectives ever going to
let us go? I talked to my parents in Tucson over an hour ago. My
mom offered to come get us, but I told her the van isn’t
wrecked or anything. Couldn’t I just take it and
go?”

Joanna was tired and hungry, too. She sympathized,
but she shook her head. “Your minivan may not be wrecked,
Mrs. Little, but it’ll need to be processed for evidence.
Your parents live in Tucson?”

Chantal nodded. “My dad’s scheduled for
triple bypass surgery on Monday.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Joanna told
her.

She went looking for the two DPS investigators and
found them off to the side of the road, comparing notes. Newton,
the older and clearly senior of the two, seemed annoyed by the
interruption.

“Look, Sheriff Brady, these things
can’t be rushed. We’re working as fast as we
can.”

“But does it all have to be done here?”
Joanna asked. “Everybody’s cold and hungry, especially
those two little kids.”

“I suppose we could finish up at the office
in Tucson,” Newton replied grudgingly. “But we’ll
need to tow both these vehicles.”

“Why?” Joanna demanded.

“For evidence.”

“What evidence? The Dodge? Yes, that makes
sense. That’s the vehicle Zavala drove, but he was never
anywhere near my deputy’s Yukon. There’s no need to
impound that.”

“Sheriff Brady…” Newton
began.

“Here’s the deal,” Joanna
interrupted. “You’re unreasonably detaining a mother
and two children who have already been through hell today. They
have family members in Tucson who are anxiously awaiting them. It
happens that there are still plenty of reporters around who will be
glad to pass on the information that you kept these people here for
no good reason. I suggest you release the Yukon so Deputy Thomas
here can drive Mrs. Little and her children into town. After that
we can all meet up at your office so you can interview Deputy
Thomas and me. How does that sound?”

Joanna doubted that Detective Newton came around
due solely to her powers of persuasion. What really made the
argument for her was Newton’s need to avoid any adverse
publicity.

Frowning, he capitulated. “I suppose that
could work,” he said reluctantly.

By the time Chantal Little and the children were
belted into the Yukon, a DPS-dispatched tow truck had come to
collect the minivan. As the Yukon drove away, picking its way
between media vans and emergency vehicles, Frank came back to
Joanna.

“Care for a ride?” he asked.

“Thanks,” Joanna said. “It looks
like we need to pay a visit to the DPS office in Tucson, but
I’m going to need to eat something along the way. I’m
starved.”

Once back on the highway and with a reliable
cell-phone signal, Joanna called home. “I’m on my way
to Tucson,” she told Butch. “There was a bit of an
incident…”

Her feeble attempt at minimizing was immediately
blown out of the water.

“You mean the big shoot-out west of
Benson?” Butch asked. “The one with the carjacker who
kidnapped those two kids? I already heard about it. It’s been
on the news all afternoon. Don’t tell me you were
involved.”

“Actually, I was,” Joanna admitted. For
the next several minutes she gave Butch a brief overview of all
that had happened.

“But are you all right?” he asked when
she finished.

“Yes.”

“And the kids are all right, too?”

“Yes.”

“Good work, then. When will you be
home?”

“After the use-of-deadly-force interviews
with DPS in Tucson. Frank’s driving me there. He’ll
bring me home when we’re finished.”

“Something’s terribly wrong with this
picture,” Butch objected. “You save two kids and wing a
triple murderer, but you’re the one who’s being
investigated? It makes no sense.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, smiling at
his obvious outrage.

“For what?”

“For understanding.”

“You’re welcome. See you when you get
here. I’m not holding dinner.”

By then Frank was turning off the freeway at an
exit on the far outskirts of Tucson. At the Triple T Truck Stop,
Joanna had ordered her hot roast beef sandwich and was studying her
swollen ankles when her phone rang. The caller turned out to be Dr.
Millicent Ross.

“This is a very bad scene, Joanna,” the
vet said.

“How bad?”

“You were right. The dogs that were chained
in the yard were so vicious even I couldn’t get near
them,” Millicent said. “I had to tranquilize them first
and put them down.”

“How many?”

“Ten.”

Joanna closed her eyes. Ten dead dogs would be a
public relations disaster. No one would be the least bit interested
in the fact that the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had
dealt with three human murders and saved the lives of two innocent
children that same day. All media attention would be focused on the
poor unfortunate dogs whose lives had been lost.

“What about the puppies?”

“They’re in bad shape, too,”
Millicent said. “So are the bitches. They’re sick,
filthy, covered with fleas and ticks, and practically starving. But
the worst thing about it is, they’re really a pack of wild
animals. They’ve had absolutely no socialization.”

“Does that mean you’re going to have to
put them down, too?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe not,” Millicent said. “I
just had an idea.”

“Dr. Ross, we don’t have the manpower
or the facilities to take on that many—”

“Hear me out,” Millicent interrupted.
“I’ve been reading about how various prisons around the
country have been using prisoners to care for abused and abandoned
animals as a way of turning around the prisoners’ lives and
the animals’ lives as well.”