Rattlesnake Crossing (28 page)

And so that night, as Joanna Brady crawled into bed, she included any number of parents in her prayers—Ruben and Alicia Ramos along with Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea. Her own mother, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield, made the list, as did Joanna Lathrop Brady.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The alarm went off at six-thirty the next morning. Joanna punched it and decided to snooze for just a minute or two more. She woke up when the phone rang. "Are you coming in for the briefing or not?" Dick Voland growled. "With four people dead so far, you can pretty well figure things are a little hot around here this morning."

Joanna turned over and stared at the clock in total disbelief. Nine-thirty. She had slept three hours longer than she had intended. "I'll be right there," she said, scrambling out of bed as she spoke. "And yes, we definitely need that briefing."

Oversleeping was bad enough. Oversleeping when she was the boss was inexcusable.

As she threw on clothes and makeup, nothing went right. The first two pairs of pantyhose she put on both had runs. And no matter what she did in front of the mirror, it was going to be a bad-hair day. On her way to the Blazer, she noticed that Kiddo was in his corral, happily munching oats out of his feed trough. That meant that Clayton Rhodes, her handyman neighbor, had already stopped by that morning to do the chores and feed the animals.
Too bad he didn't wake me up at the same time,
she thought.

Driving to the justice center, she felt half sick and more than a little disoriented. Too many days in a row with far too much to do and not enough rest had taken their inevitable toll. Her already shaky sense of well-being went even further downhill when she encountered half a dozen media vehicles and out-of-town television remote-broadcasting vans parked in the driveway. Squeezed in among the vans was a small white Nissan bearing the
Bisbee Bee's
logo.

That's just what I need this morning, Joanna thought grimly, another dose of Marliss Shackleford.

Joanna threaded her way through the vehicles toward the rear parking lot. She pulled into her reserved slot, the one directly in front of the private entrance that opened straight into her corner office. Letting herself in via that solitary door, she felt a debt of gratitude—and not for the first time—to whoever had designed that entryway; it allowed her to come and go at times like this without having to deal with what was sure to be a media mob scene in the lobby.

On an almost daily basis, she tried to remind herself that the media were not the enemy, but saying that didn't necessarily make it so—not on mornings like this.

She picked up the phone as soon as she reached her desk. "Send in Deputies Voland and Montoya," she told Kristin. "And Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal."

"All at the same time?"

"You bet," Joanna said. "There's no reason to go over all this stuff more than once if we don't have to."

It took a few minutes for the four officers to assemble, dragging along both extra chairs and coffee. The mood in the room was grim as Joanna called the meeting to order by turning to Dick Voland. "Did Ruben Ramos turn in a missing-persons report on his son this morning?"

Voland nodded. "I've issued an APR on Frankie Ran and his VW bus."

"Good," Joanna said, turning to the others. "All right then,
guys,
here's the score—four people dead and one missing. It's time to get a handle on this thing. Where do we stand?"

As lead detective, Ernie Carpenter took the floor. "Jaime and I spent half the night trying to make connections between victims, trying to see where they come together, who knew who, that kind of thing. As far as we can tell, Rebecca Flowers, the girl up near Phoenix, isn't connected to anybody. Maricopa County faxed her autopsy results overnight. She was found weeks after she died, so there's no way tell an exact time of death, but they're estimating mid-April to first of May, two years ago. After that, there's nothing until this summer, when Ashley Brittany disappeared."

"Do we have an exact date on her disappearance?" Joanna asked.

"The last her parents heard from her was on the seta Sunday in July, when she called them at home in Van Nuys, California, and said she was going hiking. They didn't start to worry until the next Sunday came and went and she didn't call. Her camper and pickup were later found abandoned in Redington Pass, so that's where the search for her was concentrated. Because there was no sign of foul play, Pima County treated the incident as a missing hiker. They searched for her for days, but if you remember, that's about the time the rains were getting serious. Pima County finally abandoned the search a week or so later."

"But we do know that she had been working here in Cochise County," Joanna said.

All eyes in the room focused on Joanna. Ernie Carpenter's bushy eyebrows knitted together in a puzzled frown. "We do?" he asked.

Joanna nodded. "I talked to Alton Hosfield yesterday," she said. "I ran into him on the road as I was leaving for Tucson. He called her the oleander lady and said he threw her off the Triple C. He said something about her wanting to chop down his grandmother's seventy-five-year-old oleander."

"All right," Ernie said, scribbling a note to himself. "Alton Hosfield. We'll check that out. If Ashley Brittany had been to the Triple C, chances are she went to the other ranches in the area as well—Rattlesnake Crossing, Martin Scorsby's pecan orchard. Right there along the river, there are a dozen big spreads plus God knows how many individual houses. If Brittany was doing an agricultural survey of some kind, we're going to have to talk to all of 'em. Even with the addition of those two guys from Pima County, that could take weeks."

"You'd better get started, then," Dick Voland told him. "What about using patrol deputies to help out?" Joanna asked. "Can you spare any for this?"

The Chief Deputy for Operations glowered at the Chief Deputy for Administration. "That depends on whether or not Mr. Purse Strings can turn loose some payroll."

Joanna smiled. "You'll find the money, right, Frank?"

"Right," he said.

"Go on, Ernie."

"Chronologically, Clyde Philips is next, but in terms of effort, I think we need to go directly to Katrina Berridge. For one thing, we need to interview all the people who are currently staying at Rattlesnake Crossing. According to Crow Woman, this session ends on Sunday morning. That means most of the visitors who were there on the day the Berridge woman disappeared will soon be heading back home—to Germany, mostly. So if we're going to interview them and find out what they know, we need to do it ASAP. Clyde Philips' neighbors in Pomerene are going to be around for a whole lot longer than the foreigners are."

Joanna nodded. "So you'll do the Rattlesnake Crossing interviews first and the others later."

"Right," Ernie said.. "We'll be starting on those first thing this morning."

"Maybe not first thing," Joanna remarked. "Where do you and Jaime stand on paperwork?"

"Look, Sheriff Brady," Ernie said, "Jaime and I have spent the better part of the last two days crawling on our hands and knees all over the San Pedro Valley. When do you think either one of us has had time to finalize our reports? They're done in rough form, but they're not ready to turn in—at least mine's not."

"This is going to be a complicated, high-profile set of cases," Joanna said. "Our work here is going to be in for all kinds of public and judicial scrutiny. I want the reporting process kept up-to-date. I want the last two days' reports completed and on my desk before you leave the department this morning," she concluded.

Ernie Carpenter wasn't accustomed to going head-to-head with Joanna. "With all due respect," he said, "I think it's more important to get on with the interviewing process than it is to finish up a bunch of worthless reports that nobody ever reads."

"Most of the time I'd agree with you, but not this time. You're going to have to humor me on this one, Ernie," Joanna stated firmly. "I said I want those reports, and I mean it."

The two detectives exchanged disgusted glances. "All right," Ernie agreed, leaning back in his chair and folding his massive arms across his chest. He didn't say, "It's on your head." He didn't have to.

"Who's next?" Joanna asked. "Jaime?"

"Well, like Ernie said, Maricopa County sent down the Flowers autopsy. Doc Daly was busy overnight, too." Jaime Carbajal picked up two file folders and waved them in the air. "She faxed us the autopsy results on both Ashley Brittany and Clyde Philips. I imagine she'll get around to Katrina Berridge sometime today. When the doc and I were working the Philips crime scene, she told me that, just from looking at him, she suspected Philips had AIDS."

"That's right," Joanna said, "And since we were operating on a mistaken assumption of suicide, how well did you have the evidence techs go over Clyde Philips' house?" Joanna asked.

"Maybe not all that well," Jaime admitted. "There was a lot going on that day."

"So have them do it today. I want every inch of the house dusted for prints, and the gun shop, too."

"All right," Jaime said.

"We'll also need a search warrant for Frankie Ramos' mobile home. Have the evidence techs go over that one as well." Joanna turned to Frank Montoya. "What's going on with you?"

"One way or another, it looks like we've got a serial-killer feeding frenzy going on in Cochise County. What am I supposed to tell that army of reporters outside in the conference room?"

"Tell them as little as humanly possible," Dick Voland advised.

Frank ignored him. "Do we let them know that we've made definite links with three of the four and tentative links with the fourth? And what about this Frankie Ramos thing? I'm afraid if we let that out, we'll have a case of mass hysteria on our hands. People will be seeing serial killers under every prickly pear."

"Considering the way things are going," Dick Voland observed, "they wouldn't be far from wrong."

Ernie spoke up. "We're sure Ramos is connected?"

Now it was Joanna's turn to provide information. "Clyde Philips owned the mobile home where Frankie Ramos was living. Frankie also helped out in Clyde's gun shop. But I suspect there was more to their relationship than either of those things."

"More?" Ernie asked.

Joanna took a deep breath. "I talked to Belle Philips last night," she said. "She divorced Clyde because he liked boys instead of women."

The room fell absolutely silent. Ernie was the first to speak. "You think the two of them—Clyde and Frankie—were . . . involved?"

Joanna nodded.

"But didn't Doc Daly's autopsy confirm that Clyde Philips had AIDS?"

Joanna nodded again. "And if Frankie found out about it, or if he had discovered that he, too, was infected, that could certainly provide a powerful motive as far as Clyde's death is concerned."

There were nods all around. Dick Voland frowned. "Jaime, didn't you say that Doc Daly had already figured out the AIDS angle right there at the scene?"

Carbajal nodded.

"How'd she do that?"

"There were lesions on his body that she recognized."

Voland sighed. "I guess the woman's a lot smarter than she sounded the first time I talked to her on the phone. Speaking of Dr. Daly, though, what's the deal with her? Are her charges going to us or to somebody else?"

"Comes out of the medical examiner's budget," Drank Montoya said. "The board of supervisors authorized all that before Doc Winfield ever left town. Of course, at the time, nobody anticipated that there was going to be quite such a rush on her services, but ..."

"Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that," Voland said. "At least the Patrol budget isn't going to have to take it in the shorts when it comes to paying the bill. That's what I've been worried about."

They all laughed at that, and the mood in the room improved immeasurably. For a change, bickering about budget constraints was a bright spot in the morning's proceedings, rather than a drag. But after that one bit of levity, they came right back to the task at hand.

"Getting back to the press conference . . ." Frank began.

"Dick's right," Joanna said. "Give them the names and background of each of the victims, but for right now it might be best if you didn't say much more than that. The investigation is continuing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know the old song and dance."

Frank Montoya grinned. "I'm a whole lot better at it now than I used to be."

Joanna looked around the room. "So, we're all on track for today?" The officers nodded. "Any other unfinished business?"

Voland raised his hand, holding up a fistful of computerized incident reports. "Another would-be naked-lady truck hijacking. It happened about midnight last night over by San Simon. This one was reported by a lady trucker who didn't stop. Once again, though, by the time a deputy showed up, the supposed hitchhiker was long gone. This time she was traveling east to west, just inside the Arizona/New Mexico border. It seems to me, if we're going to catch these guys, maybe the department should lease a truck, have a deputy drive, and have another one in the sleeper. We could have them spend a day or two driving back and forth between Tucson and Lordsburg. Let's say the truck stops for the hitchhiker. Then when the accomplice shows up, the guy in the sleeper is there to arrest him. What do you think?"

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Joanna said.

"Sounds expensive," Frank Montoya said.

On that final note, the meeting broke up. Frank was the last to leave the room. Joanna stopped him before he made it into the reception area. "Pull the door shut again for a minute," she said. "I need you to do something for me."

"What's that?"

"As soon as Ernie and Jaime turn in their reports, I'm going to have Kristin make copies of everything they've given me, including the autopsies. Once I have all that pulled together, I want you to fax it to the profilers at the FBI. But this morning, before you even go talk to the reporters, I want you to contact the Profiling Unit and let them know the stuff will be coming. That way, maybe they can have someone on standby ready to handle it. I also want you to tell them that any further communications about these cases should come directly to me, either by discreet calls on my cell phone or on my private line. I don't want calls from them going through the switchboard."