Partner In Crime (25 page)

Excusing herself, Joanna followed Detective Carbajal. She had visited this deserted, crumbling cavalry post with her father years earlier. D.H. Lathrop, an amateur historian, had explained to her how Pancho Villa had attacked Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. Camp Harry J. Jones in Naco, Arizona, named after a murdered Army guard, had been part of a network of military posts maintaining border security during the Mexican Revolution. With her father, Joanna had explored the adobe-walled stables and the fallen-down barracks. Now Jaime Carbajal led her toward what had once been the officers’ quarters. The house—a small, graffiti-marred wreck—was missing all its windows and doors.

“You’d better come inside and take a look,” the detective said. “And you’re going to need these.” Once again he handed her a mask, evidence-preserving Tyvek booties, and his much-used vial of Vicks.

“Dee Canfield?” Joanna asked. She paused on the small front porch long enough to apply the menthol and don the mask and booties. Meanwhile Jaime nodded grimly in answer to her question.

“Any sign of Warren Gibson?” the sheriff added.

“Not yet,” Jaime reported. “But we haven’t searched the whole place yet. There could be another body hidden in one of the other buildings. We just haven’t found it yet.”

Joanna nodded. “Has Frank called for extra deputies?”

“He has,” Jaime said. “Dispatch tells me two of them are on their way.”

Joanna nodded. “Good. We’ll give one of the deputies to you for the crime scene. The other we’ll send with Casey Ledford when she goes through Dee’s house and the gallery, assuming you did manage to pick up those search warrants,” she added.

Jaime nodded. “Dave’s on his way to pick them up.”

Long before Joanna stepped through the open doorway into the gloomy, dusty interior, and even through the barrier of menthol, her nostrils detected the unmistakably rank odor of human decomposition. A woman’s fully clad body lay on the sagging wooden floor of what had once been a kitchen. Joanna immediately recognized the distinctive hues of Dee Canfield’s tie-dyed smock. After maneuvering far enough around the body to have a complete view of the victim’s face, Joanna saw that the dead woman’s fleshy features were drawn up in a horrific grimace.

“Any signs of violence?”

Jaime shook his head. “No apparent bleeding or bruising as far as I can see.”

Joanna looked at him closely. “Are you thinking the same thing I am, that maybe we’re dealing with another poisoning?”

The detective nodded. “The thought did cross my mind.”

“Damn,” Joanna said.

She made her way outside.

Velma Verdugo was now seated in the front passenger seat of Frank’s Civvie while her two sons leaned against the front fender a few feet away. The chief deputy crouched before them. Holding a clipboard, he was asking questions and making notes.

Frank glanced over his shoulder as Joanna approached. “You boys may have seen Sheriff Brady a while ago,” he said, “but I doubt you were introduced. This is Eddie,” Frank explained to Joanna, indicating the taller of the two. “That one is Marcus.”

Joanna held out her hand, and the boys took turns shaking it.

“Here’s what we have so far,” Frank continued. “Eddie and Marcus told me that they discovered the body earlier in the day, probably between three and four this afternoon. Because their parents have declared this whole place off-limits, they didn’t want to let on about their discovery for fear of getting in trouble. They talked it over, though, and finally decided to tell anyway. Mrs. Verdugo found out about it around forty-five minutes ago. That’s when she called 911.”

Joanna turned to the boys herself. “Did either of you touch anything while you were inside?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” Eddie replied at once. “We were both too scared. Besides,” he added, “Marcus was about to puke because it smelled so bad and he’s such a sissy. We got out of there and ran home.”

“The woman whose body you found has been missing since Thursday,” Joanna told them. “It’s likely she’s been here since then. Did either of you see any unusual activity between then and now—any unusual vehicles? Any people who looked out of place and who maybe had no business being here?”

“
Nada,
” Eddie Verdugo answered.

“Me, either,” Marcus chirped.

Joanna turned to Velma. “What about you, Mrs. Verdugo?” she asked. “You must live nearby, don’t you?”

Velma nodded and pointed toward a mobile home parked on a lot a block or so away. “That’s where we live.”

“Did you notice any unusual activity?”

“No.”

Just then, a man dressed in a Border Patrol uniform passed through the checkpoint and strode toward them.

“Daddy,” Marcus cried. Darting away from Frank’s car, the boy broke into a run and raced to meet the new arrival. The man caught Marcus in midstep, lifted him off the ground, swung him around in a circle, and then hugged him close. It was only as they came nearer that Joanna recognized Gabe Verdugo, a Border Patrol officer she had encountered on previous occasions when her officers and those from the Border Patrol had been involved in joint operations.

“What’s going on?” Gabe Verdugo demanded. “Is everyone all right?”

While Frank explained what had happened, little Marcus clung like a burr to his father’s neck. Joanna guessed that if Velma expected someone to ream her boys out for their willful disobedience, she was out of luck as far as Gabe Verdugo was concerned.

Fortunately, Gabe, a law enforcement officer himself, knew what would be expected of his sons now that they had blundered into a homicide investigation.

“When will you want them to come in for the official interview?” he asked.

“Good question,” Joanna told him. “We’re one detective short at the moment. Right now Detective Carbajal has his hands full. We won’t be ready to talk to the boys anytime before Monday morning, when Detective Carpenter comes back.”

“Hey, great!” Eddie crowed, his face breaking into a wide grin. “If we go Monday morning, we’ll get to miss school.”

That was more than his mother could stand. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Velma Verdugo said fiercely. “The detectives can interview you during lunch.” Then, after a long moment, her troubled face collapsed into a smile. Seconds later, the entire Verdugo clan was laughing and hugging.

Joanna Brady understood that, too. Something awful had happened. Like Jenny finding the body at camp, the Verdugo boys, while just being kids, had stumbled unwittingly into a homicide. Their lives had been touched by an evil that had left them all feeling vulnerable and scared. But now, while that vulnerability was still fresh, there was much to be thankful for in just being alive. In that situation, even a mother’s fierce anger could be cause for celebration.

“Sheriff Brady?” Deputy Howell said, announcing her arrival. “They told us to report to you or Chief Deputy Montoya.”

Joanna turned away from the people clustered around Frank Montoya’s Civvie to greet the two uniformed officers who had just arrived on the scene. Although Joanna was glad to see Deputy Debra Howell, she was less than thrilled when she realized the second deputy was Kenneth Galloway.

“What should we do?” Debra asked.

“We’ve got another homicide,” Joanna told them. “I want you to work with Detective Carbajal and Dave Hollicker on the crime scene investigation here, Deputy Howell. Deputy Galloway, you’ll be assisting Casey Ledford.”

“Doing what?” Ken Junior asked.

It wasn’t outright insubordination, but it was close—more in tone of voice than anything else.

“Whatever Casey needs,” Joanna told him. “From keeping the evidence log to lifting prints. She’s over there talking with Detective Carbajal. Ask her.”

Galloway walked away, muttering something unintelligible under his breath. “What’s wrong with him?” Frank Montoya asked.

“I’m not sure,” Joanna said. “But I suspect Deputy Galloway has a few issues about working with women.”

Within minutes, the medical examiner arrived. While Detective Carbajal led Doc Winfield to the body, Deputies Howell and Hollicker were sent to search other nearby buildings for a second possible victim. Meanwhile, Joanna and Frank Montoya consulted with Casey Ledford while Galloway lounged in the background.

“What do we know about the missing boyfriend?” the fingerprint tech asked. “How long has he been around?”

“According to Jaime, he’s been in town for several months,” Frank responded. “Working for and living with Dee Canfield most of the time. The DMV tells me that no one named Warren Gibson currently holds a valid Arizona driver’s license, and I haven’t been able to find any other official record of him, either.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “We have search warrants for both Dee Canfield’s house and her gallery, but let’s check the gallery first. There may be employment records or something else there that’ll make it possible for us to find out more about Warren Gibson. Something’s out of whack here.”

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG
for me to figure out that Marliss Shackleford hadn’t agreed to talk to me because she’d been charmed by my boyish good looks and overwhelming charm. She was after something. No, make that someone. She was out to get the goods on Sheriff Joanna Brady.

We retreated from the lobby to the bar. I had O’Doul’s. Marliss had a tall gin and tonic.

“I should have thought you’d be more interested in hanging around a homicide crime scene than in talking to me,” I said for openers.

Marliss gave me a flirtatious smile. She was fortyish and not all that bad looking. She had what my old partner, Sue Danielson, once referred to as big hair. Ash blond and crinkly, it stood out from her head like a massive halo.

“That’s the reporter’s job,” she explained. “Like my card says, I’m a columnist. I write a thrice-weekly piece called “Bisbee Buzzings.” The paper is called the
Bee,
you see,” she added, as if she thought me a bit dim. “
The Bisbee Bee
.”

I have a long-term, not-so-cordial relationship with a man named Maxwell Cole who’s a columnist for the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
. Marliss Shackleford didn’t know it, but being in the same league with Max wasn’t the best kind of third-party referral.

“As I understand it, you’re a detective.”

“Used to be,” I told her. “Now I’m a special investigator with the Washington State Attorney’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. That’s spelled S-H-I-T,” I added helpfully.

Marliss Shackleford’s face changed. She looked shocked. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what my unit is called, the Special Homicide Investigation Team.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “But since this is a family newspaper, we’ll probably have to write the whole thing out.” She fumbled to an uneasy stop and then started over. “And you’re here in Bisbee because . . .”

“Why do you think I’m here?” I asked in return.

She shrugged. “I presume it’s because of the woman who died down in Naco on Wednesday night. I’ve learned that her real name was Latisha Wall. I’ve also been told she was in the Washington State Witness Protection Program.”

Marliss obviously had sources inside the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. I wondered who those sources might be. Rather than asking, though, I simply raised my bottle of O’Doul’s and clinked it on her glass.

“See there?” I said. “Since you already know so much about it, I don’t understand why you need to talk to me at all.”

“All right,” she admitted, dropping her ploy of fake innocence for the moment. “I know who you are and where you’re from, but I still don’t know why you’re here. Is it because your boss . . . ?”

“Ross Connors,” I supplied. “He’s the Washington State Attorney General.”

“Are you here because Mr. Connors has no faith in Sheriff Brady’s ability to bring this case to a successful conclusion?”

Marliss Shackleford waited for my answer with her pen poised over a small notebook and with her eyes sparkling in anticipation, like a cat ready to spring on some poor unsuspecting sparrow. She clearly wanted me to say that I thought Sheriff Joanna Brady was incompetent. And, much as I might have liked to—much as I thought Joanna Brady to be an arrogant little twit—I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was incapable of saying so to a reporter, much less to a newspaper columnist.

“From what I can see,” I told her guardedly, “Sheriff Brady is doing a credible job, especially since her department is so short-handed. She seems to have only one detective on the job, and he’s having to deal with two separate homicides. Her plate is pretty full.”

Marliss’s eager expression faded to disappointment. She put down her pen. “Ernie’s on vacation,” she told me unnecessarily.

“Ernie?” I asked.

“Ernie Carpenter. He’s the sheriff’s department’s other detective. He and his wife, Rose, are off on an anniversary trip—their thirtieth.”

Bully for them,
I thought.
God spare me from living in a small town.

“So you think the county investigators are doing a good job?” Marliss continued.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“And your function is?”

“I’m here as an observer,” I told her. “An interested observer; nothing more.”