To Loretta, in memory of Randy.

Semper Fi.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

About the Author

By J. A. Jance

Read on for an extract from Second Watch

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

THE CAR stopped in the middle of a stretch of rough dirt road. In the silvery moonlight, the road was a light-colored ribbon cutting straight north through a forest of newly leafed mesquite trees. He had hoped to drive much farther before he stopped the car, but his study of Google Maps had let him down. This was a far more primitive road than he had been led to believe it would be. He had managed to pick his way around the boulder-littered crossings at the first two washes, but this one was impossible. The unfamiliar low-slung Passat wasn’t going to make it.

There was a noisy thumping from inside the trunk. That meant she was awake, and that was fine with him. He wanted her to be awake and aware. He wanted her to know what was happening and why. That was the whole point. Otherwise, it would be a lot like being struck by lightning. God reached out and got you and you had no idea what was coming. That wasn’t what this trip was about; wasn’t what he was about. For him this was far more personal.

He pressed the button on the key fob, opened the back hatch, and removed the blanket he had used to cover her. As soon as the blanket came off, she began to struggle. That was all right. They were far enough away from civilization that no matter what she did, it wouldn’t matter. No one would hear her. Out here in the cold night air of the Arizona desert, the two of them were entirely alone except for the occasional mournful cry of a coyote.

“Up and at ’em, sunshine,” he said. “You ready for a game of hide-and-seek?”

She shook her head desperately back and forth and made a whimpering noise that was probably some form of the word “please.” Through the duct tape, that was difficult to tell. Grabbing her by the underarms, he hauled her up and out of the vehicle and stood her upright, barefoot and swaying unsteadily, on the rough surface of the dirt road. She looked up at him. He could see the terror in her wide-eyed stare. He liked that. He had spent years anticipating this moment, and he didn’t want to rush it.

“I’m going to take off the gag,” he said. “You can scream your head off if you want. No one will hear you.”

He had watched enough forensic TV to know that the cops loved looking for DNA on pieces of duct tape, so he had no intention of leaving any of that behind. Ditto for the nylon tie straps he had used to secure her hands and feet. Those had ID numbers that could be traced back to certain retailers. He would take those with him as well. Ditto his brass.

When he peeled off the duct tape, she surprised him. She didn’t scream. “You don’t need to do this,” she said. “Please let me go. Please.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not how this is going to work. I’m going to let you loose now and give you a running start. Who knows? You may be able to run faster than I can shoot. Or maybe I’ll miss.”

“I can’t run,” she said. “I’m barefoot.”

“That’s your problem. If you want to live, you’ll run.”

When he pulled the box knife out of his pocket, she cringed away from him. That was fine. He liked the idea that she was afraid of being cut, but cutting wasn’t what he had in mind. Instead, he used the knife to slice through her restraints and then stuffed them in his pockets along with the duct tape.

“There you go,” he said. “I’ll give you to the count of ten. You run. I shoot. If I miss, you win. If I don’t miss?” He shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s the end of the story.”

“Please,” she begged again. “Please.”

She didn’t need to say any more than that. He knew what she wanted, and he had no intention of giving it to her.

“You’d better get started, because as of now, I’m counting. One!”

She hesitated for only a moment, then she wheeled and started off into the desert, back the way they had come. That surprised him. He had expected her to cross the wash and then stick to the road. That would have given him a clear shot. If she managed to duck into a nearby thicket of mesquite trees, he’d have to go trailing after her.

So he didn’t bother waiting until the count of ten. He got as far as four and then pulled the trigger. The first shot caught her in the leg. Stumbling forward, she fell to the ground as the second shot went over her head. She was still trying to get away, scrabbling forward on the rocky ground, dragging her crippled leg, when he came up behind her. He shot her three more times after that. The shots were meant more to maim than to kill. He had wanted her to suffer. If she died instantly, she missed the point. This was punishment, payback.

While she lay moaning on the ground, he went looking for his brass. He had shot her with a .380. He found all five casings and pocketed them as well.

Immediately after the first gunshot, a stark silence had fallen over the desert. Gradually, though, the night sounds returned. A nearby coyote howled, and another one off in the distance yipped a response. Far away he heard what sounded like a dog barking, but the barking stayed where it was without coming any closer. The shooter wasn’t especially worried about anyone hearing the gunfire. After all, it was three o’clock in the morning, and the killing ground was suitably remote.

He didn’t bother moving the body. For one thing, he didn’t want to bring any blood evidence back into the car with him. Besides, with the coyotes out and about, he was sure they would deal with the body in their own time-honored fashion.

She was still alive and breathing shallowly as he turned to walk away. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,” he said. “And it serves you right.”

ONE

LATE ON a Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Joanna Brady sat at her desk in the Cochise County Justice Center outside Bisbee, Arizona, and studied the duty roster her chief deputy, Tom Hadlock, had dropped off an hour earlier.

Her former chief deputy, Frank Montoya, had been lured away from her department with the offer of a new job—chief of police in nearby Sierra Vista. Looking for a replacement, Joanna had tapped her jail commander to step into the job. Tom was well qualified on paper, but he had found Frank’s tenure as chief deputy to be a tough act to follow.

When Frank had been Joanna’s second in command, he had handily juggled several sets of seemingly unrelated responsibilities—media relations, routine administrative chores, and information technology issues—with unflappable ease. Now, after more than a year in the position, Tom was finally growing into the job and had a far better handle on what needed to be done than he’d had in the beginning. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t quite up to Frank Montoya standards.

After months of struggle, Tom had finally tamed the duty roster monster, handing Joanna a flawlessly executed copy of the upcoming month’s schedule two days before she absolutely had to have it in hand. At this point, he was hard at work preparing a first go-down of the next year’s budget. Joanna knew that he had placed several calls to Frank asking for pointers on both the budget and IT concerns, and she was grateful Frank had been willing to help.

The one place where Tom was still sadly lacking was in media relations. Faced with a camera or a reporter, the former jail commander morphed from your basic macho tough guy into a spluttering, tongue-tied neophyte. Six months of participation in a Toastmasters group in Sierra Vista had helped some, but it would take lots more time and effort before Tom Hadlock would be fully at ease in front of a bank of microphones and cameras.

When the phone on Joanna’s desk rang, she glanced at her watch to check the time before picking it up. At home her husband, Butch Dixon, was battling a tough deadline for reviewing the copyedited manuscript of his latest crime novel. As a consequence, Joanna was on tap to pick up the kids. Her nearly sixteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, worked two hours a day after school as an aide in a local veterinarian’s office. With equal parts anticipation and dread, Joanna was looking forward to the day, coming all too soon, when Jenny would have a driver’s license of her own. Once that happened, driving her back and forth to work and school activities would no longer be a necessity.

Joanna and Butch’s two-year-old, Dennis, spent five hours each afternoon at a preschool that operated in conjunction with their church in Old Bisbee. Dennis was a gregarious kid. When the older members of what Joanna termed the “gang of four”—Jenny and the housekeeper’s two grandsons—had gone off to school in the fall, Dennis had been lost on his own. When a spot had opened up in the preschool program at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist, they had signed him up for a half day four days a week.

Joanna’s first thought was that the phone call would involve some hitch in picking up the kids. Or maybe Butch needed her to stop by the store to grab some last-minute item for dinner before she went home to High Lonesome Ranch. When she answered, however, it turned out that the call had nothing to do with the home front and everything to do with work.

“Jury’s back,” Kristin Gregovich said.

Kristin was Joanna’s secretary, and the returning jury in question was only a few steps away from Joanna’s office at the Cochise County Justice Center, a joint facility that housed not only the sheriff’s department and the jail, but also the Cochise County Superior Court offices and courtrooms. The case currently being tried there was one in which Joanna Brady had played a pivotal role.

More than a year earlier, an elderly woman named Philippa Brinson had gone AWOL from what was supposedly a state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s group home near the Cochise County town of Palominas. Sheriff Brady had been one of several officers who had responded to the original missing persons call on Ms. Brinson.

But Caring Friends had turned out to be a far worse can of worms than anyone expected. For one thing, arriving officers had been dumbfounded by the appallingly unsanitary conditions in what was supposed to be a healthcare facility. The kitchen had been a food handler’s nightmare, and they had found evidence that helpless residents had been routinely strapped to beds and chairs and left, trapped in their own bodily filth, for hours on end. A subsequent investigation had brought evidence to light that several Caring Friends patients had died as a result of serious infections that started out as bedsores.

It was while Joanna and her deputies were at the crime scene that they had been confronted by Alma DeLong, the owner of Caring Friends as well as several other Alzheimer’s treatment facilities. Outraged to find police officers on the premises, she had launched a physical attack against them and had been hauled off to jail in a Cochise County patrol car.

Hours later, Philippa Brinson had been found safe. Confined to a chair in her room, she had managed to use nail clippers to cut away her restraints. Out on the highway, she had hitched a ride into Bisbee and had made her way to the old high school building. To her way of thinking, she had been on her way to work in her old office, a place from which she had retired some thirty-five years earlier. After that misadventure, she was placed in the care of a niece and had gone off to a different facility—hopefully a better one—in Phoenix, while Joanna’s department had been left to clean up the mess revealed by Philippa’s brief disappearance.

Alma DeLong, arrogant and utterly unrepentant, had brought in high-powered attorneys to fight all the charges lodged against her. For years, Joanna had held a fairly low opinion of Arlee Jones, the local “good old boy” county attorney, and that antipathy went both ways. The county attorney didn’t approve of Joanna any more than she approved of him. Arlee was a political animal—well connected, smart, and lazy. Everyone knew that whenever possible, he preferred plea bargains to the work of actually going to trial.

When Arlee had offered Alma a plea bargain on a single count of negligent homicide that would have resulted in less than four years of jail time, Joanna hadn’t been happy, but Alma had turned that option down cold, choosing instead to take her chances with a judge and jury. Annoyed and galvanized, Arlee Jones had gone after Alma DeLong with a vengeance, charging the woman with three counts of second-degree homicide, which in terms of seriousness was two whole steps up the felony ladder from negligent homicide. DeLong was also charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

After more than a year of legal maneuvering and stalling on the defense’s part, the case had finally come to trial. Because Joanna had been a part of that initial investigation, she had been called to testify. She had spent a day and a half on the stand being grilled first by Arlee and later by Alma’s defense attorney. Now, a full day after beginning their deliberations, the jury was finally back.

Because Alma was a well-known Tucson-area businesswoman, the trial had attracted a good deal of media attention. Rather than throw Tom Hadlock up against what was likely to be a mob of reporters, Joanna ducked into the restroom long enough to check her hair and lipstick before leaving the office and walking across the breezeway to Judge Cameron Moore’s courtroom.

Once inside, Joanna slipped into an empty seat next to Bobby Fletcher. His mother, Inez, was one of the Caring Friends patients who had died. Bobby’s sister, Candace, had been more interested in winning a financial settlement than anything else. She had been notably absent throughout the criminal trial. Bobby, on the other hand, had been in the courtroom every single day, observing the testimony with avid interest. Bobby was a man with plenty of deficits in terms of social skills and education, and some criminal convictions of his own. When he had finally straightened up, Inez had taken him in and been his unwavering refuge. A guilty verdict wouldn’t bring his mother back from the grave, but it would go a long way toward giving her grieving son a measure of justice.

As the jury filed into the courtroom, Bobby said nothing. Looking for reassurance, he reached out and took Joanna’s hand.

“Madam Forewoman,” Judge Moore intoned. “Have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor.”

The piece of paper was passed to the judge. While the judge perused it, the defendant, flanked by her attorneys, rose to her feet.

“How do you find?”

“On the first count of homicide in the second degree, we find the defendant guilty.”

Bobby Fletcher shuddered and covered his face with his hands, sobbing silently as the jury forewoman continued: “On the second count of homicide in the second degree, we find the defendant guilty. On the third count of homicide in the second degree, we find the defendant guilty. On the charge of assaulting an officer of the law, we find the defendant innocent. On the charge of resisting arrest, we find the defendant guilty.”

The last two struck Joanna as incomprehensible hairsplitting. How could someone be innocent of physically assaulting an officer—something Joanna had witnessed with her own eyes—and at the same time be guilty of resisting arrest? But Bobby Fletcher had heard the single word he needed to hear. Alma DeLong was guilty of killing his mother. She had been free on bail. Now, once the judge granted the prosecutor’s request to rescind her bail, a deputy stepped forward to lead her across the parking lot to the county jail, where she would be held while awaiting sentencing.

Walking side by side, Joanna and Bobby Fletcher moved to the courtroom door, where Bobby came to a sudden stop. “I want to wait here and talk to Mr. Jones,” Bobby said. “I want to thank him.”

Not eager to face the media throng that was no doubt assembled outside, Joanna waited, too, but she was also amazed. Bobby had spent huge chunks of his adult life as a prison inmate. The idea of his having a cordial conversation with any prosecutor on the planet was pretty much unthinkable. But then, to Joanna’s astonishment, when Arlee Jones appeared, she found herself in for an even bigger shock. The county attorney approached Bobby Fletcher with his hand outstretched and a broad smile on his face.

“We got her,” the county attorney gloated, pumping Bobby’s hand with congratulatory enthusiasm. “We still have the sentencing process to get through, but one way or another, Alma DeLong is going to jail, starting today. Her bail may yet be reinstated, pending an appeal, but for now she’s a guest in your establishment, Sheriff Brady. Unfortunately, the accommodations there will be somewhat better than what her victims experienced at Caring Friends.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bobby Fletcher said.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Fletcher,” Arlee replied. “I’m not sure I ever mentioned this, but back when I was a kid, I used to deliver newspapers to your folks’ place over on Black Knob. Even when times were tough, your mom always made sure I got a tip when I came around collecting. Depending on whether it was winter or summer, she also offered me either hot chocolate or iced tea. Inez Fletcher was a good woman. Sending her killer to jail is the least I can do.”

The unguarded sincerity in that statement caused Arlee Jones to move up several notches in Joanna’s estimation. She usually dismissed Jones as being a pompous ass in a mostly empty suit. Now she momentarily reconsidered that opinion. And that was the thing that Alma DeLong hadn’t realized, either. Bisbee was a small town. The invisible spiderweb of connections running from one person and one family to the next was another reason Arlee Jones had tackled this case with unaccustomed zeal.

“So are you ready to talk to some reporters?” Jones asked.

“Who, me?” Bobby asked. A look of dismay spread across his face. “Are you kidding?”

“Yes, you,” Arlee said, placing a guiding hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “And I’m not kidding. As far as the people following this trial are concerned, you’re the living face of the victims. You’re the stand-in for every family that ever made the mistake of placing a loved one in a Caring Friends facility. You and the other families did so expecting that their father or mother or grandmother would be well cared for, even though we know now that that wasn’t the case.

“Having you speak to reporters tonight serves two purposes. It shows families that they can’t just drop their loved ones off at one of these places and then not monitor what goes on once the doors slam shut. They have to be vigilant. And it also serves to show people like Alma DeLong that if they deliver inadequate care, there will be consequences. Can you do that?”

“All right,” Bobby said uncertainly. “I guess.”

Witnessing this, Joanna felt her approval needle on Arlee Jones dip back down a bit. No doubt the man would make plenty of political hay from this incident. Having Bobby standing beside him during the press conference would provide a compelling segment on the evening news, and it would probably allow him to bank any number of sound bites that would work well the next time Arlee had to stand for election.

Joanna followed the two men out onto the covered outdoor breezeway. Content to be on the sidelines for a change, she stood next to Arlee Jones and listened in while a number of reporters piled on with a bombardment of questions. To Joanna’s surprise, Bobby Fletcher answered all of them in the unassuming but straightforward manner that had made him an effective prosecution witness during the trial. He hadn’t just dropped his mother off at the facility. He had seen the quality of care going down the tubes, and his attempts to rectify the situation had come to nothing.

All Joanna had to do was listen and smile and nod. The press conference ended without her having been asked a single question. That was exactly how she liked it, and her makeup had been on straight and her hair had been combed properly. Things didn’t get any better than that.

Once the press conference was over, however, a glance at her watch told Joanna she was running late. The day-care facility closed at six, and she had exactly five minutes of grace time to pick up Dennis. After that, she would begin accumulating late fines to the tune of twenty-six dollars for every additional five-minute period. Being late was not an option.

Joanna raced out through the back door of her office, jumped into her Yukon, and headed for Dr. Millicent Ross’s veterinary office in Bisbee’s Saginaw neighborhood, calling Jenny’s cell phone as she went.

“I’m on my way,” she told her daughter. “Meet me outside. Then I’ll drop you off at the church so you can go in and sign Dennis out. If I have to mess around with finding a parking place there, we’re not going to make it on time.”

As directed, Jenny stood by the entrance to the clinic’s driveway, leaning against a gatepost with one strap of her backpack flung over her shoulder. A stiff breeze blew in out of the north, and Jenny’s long ponytail fluttered like a blond flag in the turbulent air. Back in high school, Joanna had been a tiny redhead who had often been referred to as “cute.” Jenny, on the other hand, was beautiful in a tall, slender, blue-eyed way that would never be considered cute.

It came as no surprise to Joanna that Jenny, an accomplished horsewoman, would be a natural choice for the title of Bisbee High School’s rodeo queen at some point in the course of her four years of high school. The surprise had been in the timing. Joanna had expected it to happen later on. Being rodeo queen as a senior would have been just about right, but Jenny had won the crown as a mere junior, leaving Joanna as the mother of a rodeo queen somewhat earlier than she’d thought possible.

Once she had made the mistake of mentioning all of that to her own mother. Eleanor Lathrop Winfield had responded with a singular lack of sympathy.

“It’s one of those surprises that comes with being a parent, and you don’t even have time enough to dodge out of the way,” Eleanor had told her. “Besides, you’re better off as the youngish mother of a rodeo queen than being an underage grandmother.”

The implications in her mother’s statement were quite clear, as in, your daughter’s a fifteen-year-old rodeo queen. Mine was an unmarried, pregnant seventeen-year-old. Which do you prefer?

Guilty as charged, and that was pretty much the end of Joanna’s taking issue with the rodeo queen situation.

“Hey,” Joanna said as Jenny dropped her backpack on the floorboard, scrambled into the passenger seat, and fastened her seat belt. “How are things?”

“Good,” Jenny said.

“And work?”

“Okay.”

The older Jenny got the harder it became to get her to reply to any given question with something other than a single word.

“School?” Joanna ventured.

“School was weird.”

That was more than a one-word answer. It was long on worrisome implications but short on meaning. “What do you mean, weird?”

“When the buses were leaving this afternoon, the parking lot was full of cops.”

“Really?” Joanna asked. “How come? Did something happen? Was the school on lockdown?”

And if it was, she asked herself, why didn’t I know about it?

“Ms. Highsmith is missing or something.”

Debra Highsmith, the high school principal, was someone with whom Joanna had crossed swords several times, most notably when Joanna had been invited to speak at career day and was notified that, due to the school’s strict “zero tolerance of weapons” policy, she would need to leave both her Glock and her Taser at home. Joanna had gone to the school board and had succeeded in obtaining a waiver of that policy for trained police officers.

“Ms. Highsmith is missing?” Joanna asked.

Jenny shrugged and nodded. “She wasn’t at school this morning. When I took the homeroom attendance sheets down to the office, I heard Mrs. Holder talking to Mr. Howard about it—that Ms. Highsmith hadn’t come in and that it was odd that she hadn’t called to let anyone know. After that, I didn’t hear anything else until we were going out to the buses. That’s when all the cop cars showed up.”

Wondering what had happened but not wanting to grill her daughter, Joanna changed the subject. “How was driver’s ed?”

“Mr. Forte is having a hard time finding a stick-shift vehicle for me to practice on.”

Jenny had won her local rodeo crown, but there were other titles to conquer. If she intended to run for or win any of those, both Jenny and her horse, Kiddo, needed to attend the far-flung competitions, a reality which had underscored the fact that they needed suitable horse-hauling transportation.

With that in mind, Butch had gone on Craigslist and found a bargain-basement used dual-cab Toyota Tundra pickup complete with a heavy-duty towing package. It was a good enough deal that he had snapped it up on the spot. The only sticking point had to do with the fact that the Tundra came with a manual transmission, and all the vehicles used for Bisbee High School’s driver’s ed classes were automatics.

“If Butch finishes going over his copyediting, maybe he can take you out for a spin tomorrow since you don’t have school.”

“I’m working tomorrow,” Jenny said. “We’re planning to do the driving thing on Saturday.”

Faced with severe budget shortfalls, the school district had switched to four-day weeks, leaving the schools shuttered on Fridays and weekends. It cut down on utilities and transportation costs, but it left working parents scrambling for something to do with their kids each Friday when school was out and the parents still had to work. Joanna was fortunate. On those days when extra kids had to be accommodated at the church-run preschool and day care, Dennis was usually able to be at home with Butch. When Butch wasn’t available, they could call on Carol Sunderson, their part-time housekeeper, and her two grandsons.

Joanna pulled over to the curb, and Jenny dashed inside to get her brother. While she was gone, Joanna called Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s chief of police. She was still on hold when Jenny came out with Dennis in tow. As Jenny strapped her little brother into the car seat that was a permanent fixture in Joanna’s patrol car, Alvin finally came on the line.

“Sorry to make you wait so long,” Alvin said. “I’m busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.”

Like Arlee Jones, Alvin Bernard was a good old boy of a certain vintage. When Joanna was first elected sheriff, Alvin hadn’t exactly welcomed her to the local law enforcement community with open arms. Over time, however, they had buried the hatchet and learned to work together.

“What’s the deal with Debra Highsmith?” Joanna asked.

“Sorry, I suppose I should have given you a call about this,” Alvin said, “but it’s been crazy. When she didn’t show up at school this morning and didn’t call in, we sent out officers to do a welfare check. They found nothing—zip. Her purse was there, but her cell phone, car keys, and car are missing. And there’s a pair of shoes on the floor beside the door, as though she kicked them off as soon as she came inside. There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. It’s as though she went home after school yesterday afternoon and then both she and her vehicle simply vanished into thin air. We’ve checked with all the neighbors. No one admits to having seen or heard anything out of the ordinary with her or with her dog.”

“She’s got a dog?” Joanna asked.

“A big Doberman,” Alvin replied. “The neighbors tell us she’s only had him a couple of weeks, but he’s gone, too. Dog dishes and doggy doo-doo are everywhere. No dog, but with the car and keys gone, it’s unlikely that the woman’s on foot, and chances are the dog is with her. All the same, we’re searching the neighborhood in case she went out for a walk with the dog. It could be she suffered some kind of medical emergency and ended up in a ditch where no one can see her. Or else she’s in a hospital. I’ve got someone calling hospitals in the area just in case.”

“Where does she live?”

“Out in San Jose Estates, so there’s some distance between the houses. I’ve had uniforms out canvassing up and down the street. No one remembers seeing her out and about on foot or otherwise. However, we did find something pretty interesting.”

By then Joanna had put the Yukon in gear and was driving down Tombstone Canyon with Dennis jabbering happily in the backseat. His brand of nonstop talk was pretty much lost on everyone but his sister, who seemed to understand his every word. Neither of them appeared to be paying the slightest attention to Joanna’s side of the conversation.

“What’s that?”

“Remember when she gave you all that crap over her zero tolerance of weapons at school?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “I remember it well. Why?”

“I knew she had applied for and received a concealed-weapons permit. After her giving you so much grief about bringing a weapon to school, I guess I never thought she’d go the distance, but she did. Guess what we found in her purse? One of those two-inch Judge Public Defenders loaded with five four-ten shotgun shells.”

A Public Defender loaded with shotgun shells certainly wouldn’t have been Joanna’s first choice of weapon. It was designed to do serious damage, and it wasn’t something that lent itself to harmless practice shooting on a firing range.

“You’ve got to be kidding. She had one of those in her purse?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alvin said. “Big as life. Considering her very public attitude toward firearms, I thought you’d get a kick out of that.”

As far as Joanna was concerned, “kick” wasn’t exactly the word that came to mind.

“Sounds like she was worried about something,” Joanna said. “You don’t go around with a handgun in your purse, especially one loaded with shotgun shells, if you haven’t a care in the world.”

“Who has a gun in her purse?” Jenny asked.

If Jenny was tuning in, that meant that Joanna’s part of the conversation was over. “Keep me posted if you learn anything more,” she said. “I need to get my kids home to dinner.”

Alvin took the hint. “Okay,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

“You still didn’t say whose gun,” Jenny objected.

“Police business,” Joanna said.

In her family those two words carried a lot of weight, just as they had years earlier when her father had used them with Joanna. It was a conversational Do Not Cross line that was every bit as effective as a strip of yellow crime scene tape. It meant the subject was off-limits and any further discussion forbidden.

“I’m not a baby, you know,” Jenny complained.

“No, you’re not,” Joanna agreed. “Which means that you understand I’m not allowed to discuss an ongoing investigation with anyone.”

“I’ll bet you’ll discuss it with Dad,” Jenny said.

Joanna’s heart did a tiny flip. She and Butch Dixon had been married for years, but this was the first time she ever remembered hearing Jenny refer to him as “Dad” rather than “Butch.” Although the whole idea gladdened her heart, she didn’t want to screw it up by overreacting. Besides, there was always a chance that, in this case, Jenny was deliberately zinging her mother.

“What do you want to bet?” Joanna asked.

“Never mind,” Jenny said. “I didn’t want to know anyway.”

With that Jenny lapsed into a brooding silence that lasted the rest of the way home. Joanna tried not to take any of it too seriously. When it came to parenting teenagers, bouts of surly silence were par for the course. When they got to the house, Jenny grabbed her backpack, darted out of the car, and slammed her way into her bedroom before Joanna managed to drag Dennis and all his toddler gear into the house.

“What’s up with Jenny?” Butch asked.

From the complex aroma in the kitchen, Joanna could tell that dinner was all but cooked. Butch was busy setting the table.

“Nothing five years won’t fix,” Joanna said with a laugh.

“Oh, that,” Butch said, giving first her and then Dennis quick pecks on the cheek as they walked by. “Wash your hands, little man,” Butch added to Dennis. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

TWO

WHEN JOANNA Brady was first elected sheriff, she had dutifully followed in the footsteps of her father, who had once held the same position. Her own election had come about in the aftermath of the shooting death of her first husband, Andrew Roy Brady, who had been running for the office of sheriff when he was killed by a drug kingpin’s hit man. Friends of Andy’s had prevailed on Joanna to run in his stead. When she was elected, everyone had more or less written her off as a figurehead, sheriff in name only, but she had rejected those assumptions, making the effort to learn the job by sending herself off to the police academy.

In the process Joanna had surprised both her supporters and her critics; she had also surprised herself. She soon discovered that law enforcement fever ran in her veins. Being sheriff wasn’t just a job, it was her passion. Like her father, D. H. Lathrop, before her, she lived and breathed the job, working too many hours and bringing home mountains of paperwork to do in the evening at the dining room table. Before long she was living to work instead of working to live. Big difference.

She hadn’t anticipated falling in love again, and the idea of having another baby had never crossed her mind. Both of those had come as complete surprises. When first Butch Dixon and later Dennis came into her life, those two additions had caused a sudden reordering of Joanna’s priorities. Yes, her job was still important to her; yes, she still loved it; but now she made a conscious effort every day to maintain a balance between home and work.

A big part of achieving that balance had to do with the fact that, in their two-career family, Butch and Joanna were beyond lucky in having good help. A year or so earlier, Carol Sunderson and the two grandsons she was raising had been left homeless when an electrical fire had swept through their mobile home, taking the life of her invalid husband. At the time, Joanna’s old house on High Lonesome Ranch had been rented out and was left in terrible shape by departing tenants who had torn the place apart before they skipped town without paying the rent. In a stroke of enlightened self-interest, after fixing it up Joanna and Butch had offered the house to Carol at a reasonable rent while at the same time hiring her as part-time household help.

It had turned out to be a match made in heaven. Having Carol to backstop Butch with cooking, housework, and child care gave him more time to devote to his writing. Now that his third crime novel was due to be published in several months’ time, Carol’s capable presence made it feasible for him to go on a book tour—which his publisher definitely wanted him to do.

When dinner was over and the dishes done, Butch retreated to the office to finish reviewing his copyediting and Jenny shut herself up in her room to do homework, leaving Joanna to spend some one-on-one time with Dennis. They went out into the yard and turned on the yard light. Long after sunset, she and Dennis continued playing a rousing game of fetch with their two remaining dogs—Lucky, a deaf black Lab, and Lady, the shy Australian shepherd. The dogs didn’t tire of fetching and Dennis didn’t tire of throwing.

Jenny had taught Lucky to respond to sign language, and he was more her dog than he was anyone else’s. When they had first rescued Lady, Joanna was the only member of the family the dog would tolerate. Now, to everyone’s surprise, she had switched loyalties by taking Dennis under her wing as though he was her special charge. When Dennis was home, inside or outside, Lady literally dogged his heels wherever he went. She had even abandoned her special spot on Joanna’s side of the bed, choosing instead to sleep on the rug next to the trundle bed in Dennis’s room.

It was fully dark before they finally went inside. Once Dennis was bathed and in bed, Joanna settled down with a book in the family room where the model trains on Butch’s train track were, for once, mercifully still. She was reading quietly when, well after nine, Butch finally emerged from his office.

“Done?” she inquired.

Nodding, he picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. “Mind if I turn on the news?”

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks for chasing after Denny tonight,” he said. “The manuscript needs to go out by FedEx tomorrow so it can be in New York on Monday. I needed to finish it tonight, especially since both kids will be home from school tomorrow. When they’re here, it’s almost impossible to work. Besides, Jenny and I have to schedule some stick-shift driving lessons over the weekend.”

“You’re fearless,” Joanna said. “By the way, Jenny gave you a promotion this afternoon. She actually called you Dad.”

“That is a promotion,” Butch agreed, “but why was she so grumpy at dinner? She barely said a word and seemed really out of sorts.”

“We had a disagreement coming home in the car,” Joanna said. “She overheard part of a conversation about a current investigation, and she was put out that I wouldn’t spill the beans about what was going on.”

“What investigation?” Butch asked.

The ten o’clock news was just coming on with a teaser about a missing high school principal. “If you watch the news,” Joanna said, “you’ll know exactly which investigation. You’ll also understand why I couldn’t discuss it with her.”

As expected, the story about the missing school principal was right there at the top of the news broadcast.

“Tonight, authorities in Bisbee are searching for Bisbee High School’s principal, Debra Highsmith, who went missing sometime last night,” the news anchor said. “When Ms. Highsmith failed to show up at work today, police officers were dispatched to her home to do a welfare check, but failed to find her. Our reporter Toni Avila is on the scene. What can you tell us, Toni?”

“According to a spokesman for the Bisbee Police Department, when officers were dispatched to Ms. Highsmith’s residence in Bisbee’s San Jose neighborhood, they found no evidence of a struggle or of foul play. Her vehicle, a white 2006 VW Passat with Arizona plate number AZU-657, is also missing. At this point, officers assisted by K-9 teams are doing a thorough search of the nearby area. They’re also checking with area hospitals to see if Ms. Highsmith may have suffered some kind of medical emergency. Anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts is urged to contact the Bisbee Police Department.”

“Let’s hope they’re able to find her,” the anchor said, “but it turns out Ms. Highsmith’s disappearance isn’t the only news from Bisbee today. What else is going on?”

“As many of our viewers realize, we’ve been doing daily coverage of the trial of Alma DeLong, a Tucson-area businesswoman who owned Caring Friends, a now-defunct organization that operated inpatient care for Alzheimer’s patients all over southern Arizona. Second-degree homicide charges were lodged against Ms. DeLong in the deaths of three people who died while being housed at the Caring Friends Palominas facility. After a weeklong trial in Cochise County Superior Court and after almost two days of deliberation, the jury returned their verdict late this afternoon. Ms. DeLong was found guilty on all three homicide charges and on the charge of resisting arrest. She was found innocent on a related charge of assaulting a police officer.

“Here’s what the son of one of the victims had to say after the verdict was rendered.”

The screen switched over to a view of Bobby Fletcher standing outside the courtroom door, flanked on one side by Arlee Jones and on the other by Joanna.

“Hey, why didn’t you tell us you were going to be on TV tonight?” Butch wanted to know.

“Because I didn’t know for sure that I was. Besides, it was a walk-on appearance only. No spoken lines.”

“And the case Jenny’s annoyed about is the one involving the missing principal?”

Joanna nodded. “That would be it, since Debra Highsmith happens to be Jenny’s principal.”

“Was that a live feed just now?” Butch asked.

“I think so. Why?”

“That means they still haven’t found her.”

“Evidently.”

“If it’s not your case, what’s the problem with talking to Jenny about it?”

“What if she ended up carrying tales to school about it? That could cause trouble down the road, especially if what happened to Debra Highsmith turns out to be something more serious than her just going out for a solitary evening drive.”

“The reporter made it sound like she might have landed in a hospital somewhere.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is,” Joanna said. “Debra Highsmith has never been one of my favorite people, but I’d hate to see something bad happen to her.”

A few minutes later, when the weather came on, Butch switched off the television set. “This is Arizona. The weather tomorrow is going to be just like the weather today. What say we go to bed?”

They did. Their bedroom door had a lock on it, and they made good use of same. Afterward, Joanna slept like a baby. When the rooster-crowing ring of her cell phone jarred her awake the next morning, it was full daylight and the clock on the nightstand said 6:47. When she saw Jenny’s number on the caller ID readout, Joanna assumed Butch had forgotten to unlock the bedroom door before they went to sleep.

“Mom, Mom,” Jenny sobbed into the phone. “You have to come quick. I just found Ms. Highsmith.”

Joanna sat up in bed, trying to get her head around what was going on. “You found her here?” she demanded. “At the house?”

“I’m not at the house!” Jenny replied indignantly. “I woke up early and decided to take Kiddo out for a ride before breakfast. I found Ms. Highsmith here, beside the road.”

“That’s a relief,” Joanna said. “Is she all right?”

“She’s not all right!” Jenny declared. “She’s dead. I think someone shot her.”

By the time Jenny finished that last sentence, Joanna was out of bed and scrambling into her clothes.

“You’re sure it’s her?” Joanna demanded.

“She’s still wearing her name badge. I can read, you know.”

“Where are you?” Joanna asked urgently, switching her phone to speaker. “Tell me exactly.”

“When Kiddo and I go out for an early-morning gallop, we always head up High Lonesome. We’re just this side of the third wash north of our house.”

High Lonesome Road runs north and south along the base of the Mule Mountains. On those rare occasions when it rains, rushing water comes flooding down out of the mountains to drain into the Sulphur Springs Valley. Wash beds that are only a few feet apart up on the mountainsides spread out like the spokes of a wheel at lower elevations. During those periodic deluges the gullies run wall to wall with roiling water, sometimes ten to fifteen feet deep. Once the floods are over and the water drains away, the sandy beds are often left littered with man-size boulders.

Faced with budget cuts, the county had finally quit blading the rocks out of the way, which left High Lonesome Road north of the High Lonesome Ranch impassable for through traffic. The washouts may have been hazardous to most vehicular traffic, but Joanna realized they presented no barrier for someone traveling on a speeding quarter horse.

“I’m getting dressed,” Joanna said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. You’re sure she’s dead?”

“Yes, Mom,” Jenny said. “I’m sure.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Joanna cautioned. “Especially don’t touch the body.”

Jenny’s earlier panic morphed into indignation. “Mom,” she said, “do you think I’m stupid or something? Besides, why would I touch it? It’s gross. There are flies and bugs. It smells awful.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “How’s the road?”

“Pretty bad. Her car is stuck in the first wash. At least I’m pretty sure it’s Ms. Highsmith’s car, and it’s blocking the road.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “I have four-wheel drive. That shouldn’t be a problem, but if it is and I can’t make it to where you are in the Yukon, I may have to walk. That could take a while.”

By then Joanna was on her way through the kitchen where Butch was overseeing Dennis’s breakfast.

“What’s up?” Butch asked as Joanna hurried past him.

“Jenny and Kiddo went out for a ride and found a body,” Joanna said. “I’ve got to go.”

“A body? Whose? Where?”

“She says it looks like Debra Highsmith. They’re up the road,” Joanna said. “Up High Lonesome.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No,” Joanna said. “You stay with Dennis. I’ll get some deputies out here. We’ll be fine.”

In the garage, Joanna put the Yukon in gear, backed out, and sped away up the driveway. At first she intended to get on the radio and call out the troops. Ultimately she changed her mind. She wanted to be on the scene in person and see the lay of the land before she ran up the flag for help. With Jenny involved, she wanted to have a clear idea of the challenges her people and the medical examiner’s crew would encounter in trying to reach the body.

As she approached the first wash, the road narrowed from two lanes to one. As she crested the hill, the Passat was completely hidden from view until she started down into the dip. The moment she saw the stranded vehicle, Joanna understood that Jenny was right. The vehicle had plowed into the sand and then had turned sideways where it had high-centered on an invisible boulder hidden under a thin layer of sand. The driver’s fruitless attempt to free it had torn up the surrounding sand, making a bad situation worse. Stopping short of the wash, Joanna climbed out of her SUV to survey the scene. She realized that if she attempted to drive around the Passat at low speed, even with four-wheel drive, there was a good chance the Yukon would end up stuck as well.

“I told you,” Jenny said.

Joanna looked up in time to see Jenny pull Kiddo out of a trot on the far side of the wash. “Come on,” she said. “We can ride double. It’ll be faster than walking.”

Avoiding the churned-up sand, Joanna crossed the wash. With Jenny’s help, Joanna managed to get a foot in the stirrup and clamber up onto Kiddo’s back, where she clung to Jenny’s waist. As soon as Joanna was onboard, Jenny urged Kiddo into a fast canter. Jenny was a capable rider; Joanna was not. As Kiddo raced along in the rocky roadway, Joanna clung to her daughter for dear life.

Joanna estimated that they covered the better part of a mile between the first wash and the next. After that, when the road became even rougher, Jenny slowed Kiddo to a walk. A mile later, Jenny pulled Kiddo to a halt and nodded toward something beside the road. It resembled a fully clothed rag doll lying in an awkward heap. Only on closer inspection did the heap resolve itself into a woman’s body.

Joanna slid off the horse. While Jenny remained on a restive Kiddo, Joanna moved toward the body. She stopped short several feet away and stood still, giving herself a chance to examine both the victim and the nearby surroundings.

The body of a woman, with her head twisted to one side, lay prone in a flat expanse of rocky dirt. The victim had been there long enough for carrion eaters to have made inroads on her facial features, leaving her unrecognizable. She was dressed in the kind of clothing someone might have worn to work—a dirt- and blood-stained white blouse and tailored navy blue jacket and skirt. A name badge, still pinned to the lapel of her jacket, identified her as DEBRA HIGHSMITH. Her bare feet showed the laddered remnants of a pair of panty hose. It looked as though she had been shot in the back. Joanna counted four different entrance wounds, one in her right leg and the others in her torso. She hadn’t died instantly, but Joanna knew she couldn’t have survived for long because there wasn’t much blood. What there was had turned brown in the sun.

After ascertaining there were no visible footprints that would be disturbed by her presence, Joanna stepped closer. That sudden movement sent a black cloud of flies milling skyward. The distinctive stench of decomposition was thick in the air. Fighting down her gag reflex, Joanna didn’t need a medical examiner to tell her Debra Highsmith had been dead for some time, probably more than a day.

“There’s not a lot of blood,” Jenny observed from the sidelines. “She must have died right away.”

Joanna gave her fifteen-year-old daughter an appraising look. Joanna had tried her best to protect Jenny from some of the grim realities of growing up in a law enforcement family, but clearly she’d been paying attention. Her astute observation warranted an acknowledgment.

“You’re right,” Joanna said. “Let’s hope she didn’t suffer too much.”

“Maybe not after she got shot,” Jenny said, “but what about before?”

That one rocked Joanna, too, because once again Jenny’s conclusion was on the money. There was enough visible bruising around the victim’s wrists and ankles to show that she had been restrained for some period of time before being shot. Given that, there was no way to tell what kind of damage might have been inflicted prior to shooting.

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “After.”

She plucked her phone out of the pocket of her uniform and punched the speed-dial combination that would take her to Dispatch. Larry Kendrick, her lead dispatcher, took the call.

“Good morning, Sheriff Brady,” he said, greeting her by name before she said a word. In the world of nearly universal caller ID that was hardly surprising. “What’s up?”

“I believe Jenny and I have found the body of that missing high school principal. I’ll need a full-court homicide call-out ASAP.”

Joanna’s homicide unit consisted of three detectives—Ernie Carpenter, Jaime Carbajal, and Deb Howell—as well as her two-person CSI unit, which included Casey Ledford, a fingerprint tech, and Dave Hollicker, her crime scene investigator. Ernie, the senior detective, was off on vacation, taking a Rhine River cruise with his wife, Rose. That left detectives Jaime Carbajal and Deb Howell to pick up the slack.

“Dave Hollicker and Jaime are already here at the department,” Larry said. “I’ll send them right out. As for Howell and Ledford? It’s Friday. You know what that means.”

Joanna did know what that meant. Both Deb Howell and Casey Ledford were single mothers of school-age children whose work lives were impacted by the school system’s four-day week. The two women were generally not scheduled to work on Fridays, and they wouldn’t be able to show up unless and until they were able to arrange for child care.

“Tell them to come as soon as they can,” Joanna said. “We’re about three miles north of my place on High Lonesome Road. The road’s a mess. Most of the way the road is wide enough for two cars, but it narrows down to one lane in the dips. Ms. Highsmith’s Passat is blocking the road at the first wash. We’ll need a tow truck to get it out of there. Pass the word that everyone will need four-wheel drive to get here.” Joanna paused and then added, “Oh, and I’ll want the K-9 unit, too.”

“You got it,” Larry said. “What about the M.E.? Are you going to call him or am I?”

In the old days, when Dr. George Winfield had been the Cochise County Medical Examiner, the call-out could have come from any number of people inside Joanna’s department. Unfortunately, George had fallen in love with Joanna’s mother, Eleanor, and she had packed him off into a retirement that now included an annual snow-bird migration back and forth between Arizona and Minnesota.

Both in public and in private, Joanna’s relationship with George Winfield had been businesslike and virtually trouble free even after he’d married Eleanor Lathrop. As sheriff and M.E., they had continued to work together with little difficulty. So it had come as something of a shock to Joanna and to other members of her department to discover that Doc Winfield’s replacement, Dr. Guy Machett, was anything but trouble free.

For one thing, Dr. Machett—never Doc Machett—insisted that everyone follow a strict chain-of-command hierarchy. If his services were required, he expected the call to come from Joanna herself and not from someone who reported to her.

“That’s my next call,” Joanna said.

“Good,” Larry said.

The relief in his voice spoke volumes. Larry had endured more than his share of Guy Machett temper tantrums. He didn’t need another one.

The clock in Joanna’s cell phone said 8:01 AM as she scrolled through her contact list to find Guy Machett’s number. He was nothing if not punctual, so she dialed his office number.

“Medical examiner’s office,” Madge Livingston drawled.

Forty years of smoking unfiltered Camels had left Madge with a throaty voice that might have been sexy if it hadn’t been punctuated by periodic fits of coughing. A sixty-something peroxide blonde, Madge had worked for county government all her adult life, moving from one department to another because no one had balls enough to put her out to pasture. Madge’s last remotion, one that had moved her out of the county office complex, had landed her in the M.E.’s office. Like Joanna, Madge had gotten along just fine with Doc Winfield. Her relationship with Dr. Machett was something less than smooth sailing.

Dr. Machett was a man with a very high opinion of himself, someone who felt he was doing the world a favor by sharing his vast knowledge and abilities with the lowly folks in Cochise County. Unfortunately, there weren’t many other people who agreed with that assessment.

“Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Is he in?”

“I believe he’s on the other line,” Madge said. “Can you hold?”

In the old days, Joanna would have passed the information along to Madge with no further muss or fuss because Madge would have informed George of the situation. These days it didn’t work that way, and both Joanna and Madge knew it.

“Sure,” Joanna said. “I’ll hold.”

While she waited, Joanna tried to imagine what had been going on when Debra Highsmith was gunned down. There was no way to tell where the victim had been standing in relation to her killer. As far as addresses were concerned, High Lonesome Road was a fine place to live—Joanna had lived there with Andy and she lived there now with Butch—but it struck Joanna as a hard place to die. It had been true for Andrew Roy Brady and it was equally true for Debra Highsmith.

“Who’s calling?” Guy Machett asked when he came on the line.

Madge Livingston knew very well who was on the phone. Not telling her boss who was calling was his secretary’s way of getting a little of her own back.

“Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “We’ve located a body on High Lonesome Road.”

“Where the hell is High Lonesome Road?” he demanded. “Sounds like it’s out in the sticks somewhere.”

“It is. It’s just down the road from where I live,” Joanna told him, “also on High Lonesome Road. Take Highway 80 east from Bisbee and take the turnoff to Elfrida. Turn left almost immediately. That’s High Lonesome Road. Come north three miles. You’ll probably need four-wheel drive to get here.”

“Is that how you got there?” Machett asked.

“No,” Joanna said quite truthfully while at the same time trying not to betray the grin that had suddenly tweaked her face. “I came on horseback.”

THREE

JOANNA’S NEXT call was to Bisbee’s chief of police. “We found Debra Highsmith’s body,” she said without preamble.

“You’re sure it’s her?” Alvin Bernard asked.

Joanna sighed. “Yes, I am.”

“Where?” Chief Bernard wanted to know. “When?”

“My daughter went out for an early-morning ride and found the body on High Lonesome Road, about three miles north of our place. I’m no medical examiner, but I’d say she’s been dead for more than a day.”

“How?” Alvin asked.

He seemed to be stuck in the world of one-word questions.

“I counted at least three gunshot entrance wounds in her back and one in her leg. I’d say he used the leg shot to bring her down and then finished her off execution style.”

“Ugly,” Alvin said.

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “Very, but since this looks like a joint case, I’m calling to see if you want to send out a detective.”

“Due to budget cuts, I’ve got only one investigator to my name, Matt Keller. He does the whole nine yards—property, homicide, whatever. I’ll be glad to send him along.”

“Does he have a four-wheel-drive vehicle?”

“Are you kidding? This is Bisbee,” Chief Bernard said. “We don’t have four-wheel-drive anything.”

“The road out here is rough. You might want to send Keller down to the Justice Center so he can hitch a ride out to the crime scene with Jaime Carbajal. I’ll tell him to wait until Matt shows up.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Bernard said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

After calling Larry Kendrick back with a request that Jaime wait for Detective Keller, Joanna turned to her daughter. Jenny and Kiddo were standing on the far side of the wash, where Kiddo was contentedly munching on several carrots Jenny had brought along in her pocket.

“Are you okay?” Joanna asked.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Jenny said. “I mean, I’ve seen something dead before.”

“Someone,” Joanna corrected, “and so have I. But to see someone shot like this? It’s still upsetting.”

“Even for you?”

“Even for me.”

Jenny took a bite out of a carrot and passed the remainder to Kiddo. Joanna managed to keep from asking if Jenny had washed the carrots before sticking them in her pocket.

“How did the bad guy leave?” Jenny asked. “If his getaway car was stuck in the wash, where did he go?”

“He must have left on foot,” Joanna said.

That made it possible that the killer had walked right past High Lonesome Ranch. Not a comforting thought, but Joanna needed to know for sure.

“That’s why I called for the K-9 unit,” Joanna continued. “Terry and Spike might be able to pick up his trail and at least give us an idea of which direction he went.”

“What if he walked by our house?”

Not for the first time, Joanna was forced to consider the mysterious workings of DNA. Jenny seemed to have a mental GPS that was following her mother’s every thought, spoken or unspoken.

“If he had come anywhere near the house, I’m sure Lady would have raised a fuss, and just because Lucky happens to be deaf doesn’t mean he isn’t up to the job. If someone posed a threat to you or anyone else in the family, I have a feeling that big black lug of yours would tear the bad guy limb from limb.”

Jenny nodded. “Probably,” she said.

“Speaking of dogs,” Joanna said. “Did you see any dog prints around here?”

Jenny shook her head. “Why?”

“I understand Ms. Highsmith had a dog.”

“Giles,” Jenny said. “That’s the name of her dog.”

“You knew Ms. Highsmith’s dog?”

“I only saw him one time. His first owner, a guy out at Fort Huachuca, was being deployed and had to get rid of him—free to a good home. Ms. Highsmith brought him to the clinic for a checkup, to update his shots, and to have him chipped. He’s a Doberman. He looks fierce, but he’s a good dog.”

Joanna spent a few minutes looking but could find no visible dog prints. She had the sick feeling that if Debra Highsmith was dead, so was her dog.

Finally, Joanna turned back to Jenny. “You and Kiddo should probably head home,” Joanna said. “The crime scene team will be here soon.”

“Won’t somebody need to interview me?” Jenny asked. “I mean, on TV the cops always interview the person who finds the body. The person calling it in usually turns out to be some kind of suspect or something.”

“The person who finds the body usually isn’t my daughter,” Joanna responded. “If anyone besides me needs to interview you, I’ll send them by the house.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, but she clearly wasn’t happy about it. She turned away from Joanna, put a foot in the stirrup, and then vaulted easily up into the saddle. She was doing exactly what Joanna had asked her to do, yet somehow it felt like a rebuke.

“I’m your mother,” Joanna said. “I’m only trying to protect you.”

“I’m almost grown up,” Jenny said, with a defiant toss of her blond hair. “You can’t always protect me, you know.”

With that, she touched her heels to Kiddo’s flanks, and they raced off down the road, leaving Joanna standing in the cloud of dust kicked up by the departing horse’s galloping hooves. With a sigh, Joanna pulled out her cell phone and called home.

“Incoming,” she said, when Butch answered. “Jenny’s on her way home and she’s bent out of shape again. She thinks I’m being unreasonable for sending her home instead of having her hang around here to be interviewed by one of my detectives.”

“Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me,” Butch said.

“Maybe you can convince her of that. In the meantime, I’m waiting for my crime scene team to show up. Debra Highsmith’s vehicle is stuck in the first wash and blocking the road. It’ll have to be towed out of the way before anyone else can get here. I’m not sure how long that’s going to take.”

“I guess I should have packed you a lunch.”

“Too late for that,” Joanna said. “I’ll stop off and grab something on my way to the office. In the meantime, rather than inadvertently messing up some evidence, I’m walking back to the first wash. Since no one can get in or out for the time being except on foot, I’m deeming the crime scene secure.”

“You’re walking?” Butch asked.

“Yes, the Yukon is on the far side of the first wash.”

“How did you get from there to the body?”

“Jenny gave me a ride on Kiddo. The fact that she didn’t offer me a ride back gives you some idea of how mad she is.”

“Sometimes parenthood sucks,” Butch said, “but since she bestowed the honorary title of dad on me yesterday, I guess I’d better see what I can do to calm the troubled waters once she gets home.”

“Thanks, Butch,” Joanna said, and she meant it.

Call waiting buzzed. “Phone call,” she said. She clicked over to find Deb Howell on the line.

“I’m stuck on the far side of the first wash,” Deb said. “No sign of the tow truck so far.”

“I’m coming that way on foot,” Joanna said. “I’ll be there when I can, but how did you make it there so fast? I thought you’d be the last to arrive.”

“If I’d had to track down a babysitter, I probably would have been, but Maury’s here today and tomorrow. Ben and I were supposed to go ATVing with him today. Now Maury and Ben are going without me.”

A year earlier Maury Robbins, a 911 operator in Tucson, had called in a homicide that had occurred at Action Trail Adventures, a combination RV/all-terrain vehicle park north of Bowie in the far-northeast corner of Cochise County. During that investigation, Maury had exhibited more than a passing interest in Deb Howell, one of the detectives on the case. When Ernie Carpenter had mentioned as much, Deb had replied with an immediate denial, insisting that it was all about work. In the months since, however, Ernie’s assessment had been proved correct. Deb Howell and Maury Robbins were now a romantic item. Although he still lived in Tucson, he spent many of his days off in Bisbee, parking his Jayco pop-up camper at the RV park in Old Bisbee, a few blocks from the home on Brewery Gulch that Deb shared with her son.

The news that Deb trusted the man enough to let Ben go ATVing with him alone struck Joanna as significant, but she didn’t make any comment to that effect.

“What’s going on?” Deb asked. “Larry said something about your finding a body.”

“I didn’t find it; Jenny did,” Joanna replied, “and it’s not just any body. It’s Debra Highsmith, the missing high school principal. Jenny found her near the third wash, which is about two miles north of your current location.”

“The high school principal?” Deb asked.

“That’s the one. So this will be a joint investigation,” Joanna explained. “Chief of Police Bernard is sending Matt Keller, his only detective. Due to budget cuts, the city had to lay off all their forensics folks. Fortunately, we’ve still got ours. So we’ll be handling all the crime scene and forensic lines of inquiry. And since you’re the first to arrive, you’ll be lead investigator.”

Deb was the greenest of Joanna’s three detectives. With a high-profile school principal involved, Debra Highsmith’s murder was bound to garner plenty of publicity. Someone else might have opted for a more senior investigator, but Joanna thought that leading the charge on this one might help give Deb some much-needed street cred. In order for Detective Howell to carry her weight inside the department, people on the outside needed to know that she was capable of doing the job. This case was her chance to prove it.

“The tow truck’s here,” Deb reported.

“Crap,” Joanna said. “I was hoping Casey Ledford would show up first. Ask the driver to hold off until Casey has a chance to dust the doors and door handles as well as the steering wheel, gearshift, and emergency-brake handle for prints.”

Deb was off the line for a moment. In the background Joanna could hear her negotiating with the tow truck driver. Eventually she came back on the phone.

“He’s not happy about it, but I told him this is a homicide investigation. He’ll wait. I didn’t exactly give him a choice.”

“Good,” Joanna said. As far as Sheriff Brady was concerned, in dealing with the tow truck driver, Detective Howell had just passed her first test in being lead investigator.

“While you’re waiting, you might have a look around the general area,” Joanna said.

“Isn’t this still a long way from the actual crime scene?”

“Yes, but it looked to me like whoever was driving the Passat spent some time and effort trying to get it out of the sand. While he was concentrating on that, he might have inadvertently dropped something that would help us identify him.”

“You believe the killer was leaving the scene when the car got hung up?”

“Yes,” Joanna replied.

“Where’d he go from here and how did he do it—on foot?”

Joanna didn’t bother pointing out Deb’s sexist assumption that the killer was male, because she shared the same opinion.

“Terry Gregovich and Spike are on their way,” Joanna said. “If he did walk away, I’m hoping Spike and Terry will be able to pick up the scent.”

“Your place is the closest one to where the car is,” Deb said. “Do you think he might have gone there?”

“I doubt it. At least I hope not,” Joanna said. “Still, you might have a uniformed deputy stop by Carol Sunderson’s place and ours and take a look around the outbuildings just in case he did head there and hunker down for the night.” The idea that an unsuspecting Jenny could have walked into the tack room that morning and come face-to-face with a killer was chilling.

“I’ll get right on it,” Deb said. “Casey just showed up. And the M.E. I need to go.”

“I’m almost there,” Joanna said. “I can see the tow truck.”

By the time she finished that last sentence, Detective Howell was long gone. Joanna trudged on. It was only a little past eight, but she felt as if she’d been up for hours. This was April, and the Arizona sun was giving a clear warning that summer was coming. She was hot, dusty, sweaty, and thirsty. She had a bottle of water in the back of her Yukon. Right at that moment, Joanna needed the water bottle in her hand, not in her vehicle.

She crossed the wash in time to hear Guy Machett berating Deb Howell.

“How long is this going to take? You mean we can’t even get near the body until she finishes taking fingerprints?”

“The body is a good two miles from here,” Deb responded. “If you want to walk that far, fine. Otherwise we’ll have to wait until Casey finishes lifting whatever prints she can find.”

“This is ridiculous,” Machett replied. “You can’t expect me to stand around here twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing for who knows how long. Where’s Sheriff Brady?”

“I’m right here, Dr. Machett,” Joanna said, slipping through the knot of investigators. “And Detective Howell is simply following my orders. We believe this vehicle was driven by the killer, and we need to make every effort to gather any available information before the vehicle is moved.”

“That could take hours.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Ms. Ledford won’t be dusting the entire vehicle. She’ll work on the parts that might be disturbed by the process of getting the Passat pulled out of the sand and loaded onto the tow truck. The remaining investigation will be conducted in the garage at the county’s impound facility.”

“It’s still damned inconvenient to expect me to show up and wait.”

Joanna felt like saying that he was getting paid for waiting, but she didn’t. There were too many people around. She didn’t want to provoke a firefight that might become fodder for public consumption. A year earlier, Joanna’s rivalry with the head of the county health department had made a splash in the local media. She didn’t need a similar situation between her department and the M.E.’s office showing up on the evening news.

“As Detective Howell told you, the body’s about two miles north of here,” she said. “I just walked it. If you want to go on ahead and start the process, we can bring your vehicle and equipment along once the road is clear.”

Given a choice between walking or waiting, Guy Machett didn’t take long to make up his mind. “I’ll wait,” he said. “Who is this person again?”

“I believe her name is Debra Highsmith. She’s the principal at the high school. The high school secretary reported her missing yesterday morning.”

“Married?”

“Not that I know of,” Joanna answered.

“I suppose I should call the school district office and try to get a handle on next of kin.”

Joanna was pretty sure Deb Howell had already made a call like that, but she let the M.E. make his own. Guy Machett was touchy enough under the best of circumstances. He would no doubt go ballistic if he thought someone was making investigative inroads inside the boundaries of what he considered his bureaucratic territory.

By the time the remaining members of Joanna’s team were assembled, Casey Ledford had finished lifting the prints that were in danger of being disturbed by the towing process. At the tow truck driver’s request, she shifted the Passat into neutral. There was no need to release the emergency brake. It hadn’t been set. Then they all stood and watched as the Passat was winched out of the wash and loaded onto a flatbed truck.

Once the roadway was cleared, however, the wash still wasn’t passable. Not wanting to risk having another vehicle stuck in the torn-up sand, Joanna had Dave Hollicker lay down two tracks of interlocking plastic pavers that created a solid enough surface across the churned sand that even the M.E.’s front-wheel-drive minivan could cross the wash with no difficulty. In the meantime, Terry Gregovich and his German shepherd, Spike, had been searching the surrounding area in ever-widening circles.

“Hey, boss,” Terry called. “Come look. I think we found something. I’ve got a set of footprints heading that way.”

Unfortunately, the direction in which he was pointing was also the same direction they had all come from—down High Lonesome Road and directly past the ranch.

Clearly reading the concerned expression on Joanna’s face, Deb offered welcome reassurance. “I’ve already got uniformed deputies on their way to check out all the outbuildings at your place and at Carol Sunderson’s.”

“Thank you.”

Joanna stared down at the faint remains of a shoe print left in a patch of dust along the shoulder of the road. “Good spotting,” she told Terry. “When Dave is done with the pavers, I’ll have him come check it out. This one doesn’t look well-enough defined for a plaster cast to work, but he can at least take some measurements.”

“You want us to try following the trail?” Terry asked.

“Please,” Joanna said. “If you come across any better prints, let Dave know so he can try to get plaster casts.”

As Joanna turned back north toward the wash and the collection of vehicles, she spotted a vulture drifting in ever narrowing circles on the air currents far above them. There was little question about the carrion eater’s target.

“We’d better get a move on,” she said. “Otherwise the buzzards will be back there before we are.”

“Dr. Machett would not be pleased,” Deb said.

“No,” Joanna agreed. “It would give him one more thing to complain about.”

And blame on me. She thought that last sentence, but she didn’t say it aloud.

Detective Jaime Carbajal arrived on the scene. He drove up to the vehicles collected at the wash, then pulled a U-turn and came back.

“Dave has the pavers in place,” he said. “Time to head out.”

The second wash, with a bed of mostly undisturbed sand, was far easier to cross than the one that had been blocked by the stalled car and torn up by the towing process. Minutes after crossing the first one the caravan of official vehicles, led by Dave Hollicker’s aging Tahoe and with Dr. Machett’s far newer minivan second in line, arrived at the actual crime scene. Everyone else waited while Dave and the still-disgruntled M.E. walked toward the body. Joanna might have followed them, but her phone rang just then.

“Two of your deputies just gave our place a clean bill of health,” Butch said. “They’re headed for Carol’s place next. You’re not overreacting, are you? Do you really think a guy who had killed someone would be dumb enough to stop off at the sheriff’s place on his way out of Dodge?”

“Nobody ever said crooks are smart,” Joanna said. “The K-9 unit is trying to follow the trail. It seems to lead straight south on High Lonesome.”

“Okay, then,” Butch replied. “I’ll tell Jenny that the next time she decides to go out for an early-morning ride, she needs to wake me so I can walk down to the barn with her.”

The idea that their kids might need that kind of protection in order to be safe in their own backyard was beyond disturbing.

“Sad but true,” Joanna agreed. “I need to go. I’ll stop back by the house when we finish up here.”

Joanna and her people stayed out of the way while Dr. Machett completed his preliminary examination of the body and while the M.E. and his recently hired assistant loaded the bagged remains. As Dr. Machett’s minivan drove off in a cloud of dust, Joanna caught sight of an arriving vehicle, which pulled aside to let them pass. Due to the remote location of the crime scene, Joanna hadn’t posted a deputy to secure it. When the white RAV4 stopped beside her, Joanna realized that had been a serious oversight on her part.

The new arrival turned out to be one of Sheriff Brady’s least favorite people, none other than Marliss Shackleford. A woman of indeterminate years, Marliss was a longtime employee of the local paper, the Bisbee Bee. Her signature column, “Bisbee Buzzings,” was more of a gossip column than anything else, one that served up the paper’s bread and butter, a plethora of local names. In recent years, however, the economic reality of running a small paper had caught up with the Bee. Marliss still wrote her column, but she was also the paper’s sole reporter, covering everything but sports, which were handled on a part-time basis by a retired BHS football coach.

Joanna was not happy about any reporters showing up at a still-active crime scene. That went double for Marliss, who maintained a close personal friendship with Joanna’s mother and who was married to Richard Voland, a local private eye who had once been Joanna’s chief deputy. Neither of those relationships did a thing to endear Marliss to Joanna.

As the reporter’s vehicle slowed, Joanna stepped forward to cut her off, motioning for her to roll down the window.

“This is a crime scene,” she said brusquely. “You need to move along.”

Instead, the reporter shifted her Toyota into park, switched off the ignition, and stepped out of the car with her iPad in hand. Marliss was dressed in a brightly chartreuse pantsuit. Her brassy mane of recently frosted curls glowed in the sunlight. The combination of the green pantsuit and the aggressively blond hair put Joanna in mind of an ear of corn. She allowed herself a mental smile but didn’t indulge in a physical one.

“Is it true you’ve found Debra Highsmith’s body?” Marliss demanded.

What Joanna needed right then was to have her chief deputy on hand to run media relations interference. Unfortunately it was after nine on a Friday. That meant Tom Hadlock was already on his way to monitor that week’s regular meeting of the county board of supervisors.

Marliss’s arrival at the crime scene and her premature knowledge of the victim’s name meant that she had somehow obtained access to unauthorized information about both the crime scene and the victim’s identity. That left Joanna to draw the disconcerting conclusion that either she had a leak inside her own department or Guy Machett had one in his. While hoping for the latter, Joanna made an effort to maintain her game face.

“Come on, Marliss,” she said. “You know the drill. No comment at this time. We don’t release any information about the victim until we’ve made a positive ID and until we’ve notified the next of kin. Once we do that, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

Marliss wasn’t dissuaded.

“Right,” she muttered. “Along with everyone else. This is a big story, Joanna.” In a piece of gamesmanship of her own, the reporter deliberately avoided the use of Joanna’s official title. “A big local story. You can’t expect me to sit on a scoop like this indefinitely.”

Marliss had been divorced for a long time when she scored big by marrying a man a decade and a half younger than she was. Since then she had invested in any number of “image-enhancing” procedures. In the harsh sunlight, when her lips shifted into a pout, glimpses of her history of cosmetic changes showed through her carefully applied makeup, making it clear that she was far older than a first impression might have indicated.

“It’s exactly what I expect,” Joanna replied firmly. “We’ll have a press briefing maybe later on today. In the meantime, I’d like to know where you’re getting your information.”

“Have you ever heard of freedom of the press?” Marliss shot back. “I’m a reporter, and I’m under no obligation to reveal my confidential sources.”

“True,” Joanna said, “but you also don’t get preferential treatment.”

“I don’t have to not publish something I know just on your say-so.”

“What you think you know,” Joanna corrected. “And you’re right. You’re welcome to publish whatever you want. Putting something about a victim in your paper prior to our notifying the family would be reprehensible, but it wouldn’t be against the law. You should leave now.”

Marliss’s cheeks glowed with fury and her Botoxed lips pulled into a sneer, but she kept her tone civil. “Very well,” she said. “I’m leaving.” She reached out to open the door on the RAV4. Then she stopped and turned back to Joanna. “By the way,” she said, “how’s Jenny doing these days?”

It was an out-of-the-blue question. As far as Joanna knew, Jenny’s only meetings with Marliss had occurred mostly during coffee hours after Sunday services at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, although she supposed Jenny could have encountered Marliss when she was out with Joanna’s mother.

“Jenny’s fine,” Joanna answered.

“Good,” Marliss replied with a smile that was as unsettling as it was insincere. “Glad to hear it.”

Once in the SUV, she slammed it into gear, made a quick U-turn, and then took off, leaving Joanna standing there in a cloud of gravel and dust. She looked down at the grimy uniform she had put on clean only a couple of hours earlier. She’d have to shower and change before she showed up at the office.

FOUR

JOANNA SENT Deb Howell off to start tracking down the victim’s next of kin while Jaime, Dave, and several uniformed officers stayed at the crime scene conducting a systematic search of the area. Unfortunately, they came up empty-handed. The killer had evidently picked up all his brass. In spots where there might have been footprints, there was evidence that the ground had been swept clean. Dave was able to make casts of one set of tire tracks, but it seemed likely that they would match the tires on Debra Highsmith’s vehicle, which had now been hauled off to the department’s impound lot.

The only conclusion to be drawn from this was that the perpetrator was someone who was careful enough to cover his tracks—literally.

By the time Joanna finally got back home to High Lonesome Ranch to shower and change, she was famished and hoping for breakfast, but Butch had Dennis in his car seat, and the two of them were just pulling out of the garage.

“I’m on my way to FedEx first,” Butch said. “You probably don’t remember, but it’s Friday, when kids get all-they-can-eat tacos for three bucks at Daisy’s. Jeff and his kids and Dennis and I are meeting there for lunch, then we’re going to the park. Care to join us? I already know the park excursion is out, but you still need to eat.”

Jeff was Jeff Daniels, the stay-at-home husband of Marianne Maculyea, the pastor of their church. Marianne and Joanna were lifelong friends. Now their husbands and kids were friends as well. Jeff and Marianne’s daughter, Ruth, now nine, was an adoptee from China. Their biological son, Jeffy, had arrived as something of a surprise some time after they had adopted Ruth. Because of the long friendship between Joanna and Marianne, Jeffy’s full name was Jeffrey Andrew in honor of Joanna’s first husband, Andrew Roy Brady. Jeffy was more than a year older than Dennis. Despite the age difference, they were great pals.

“You’re sure I won’t be horning in on your guy time?” Joanna asked.

“Hardly,” Butch said with a laugh.

“All right, then,” Joanna said. “Order a machaca chimichanga for me, and I’ll be there once I get cleaned up.”

Twenty minutes later, showered, newly made up, and dressed in a fresh uniform, Joanna arrived at the restaurant, where she was astonished to see her former mother-in-law, Eva Lou Brady, stationed at the hostess stand and handing out menus.

“What are you doing here?” Joanna wanted to know.

“Jim Bob and I came in for an early lunch,” Eva Lou explained. “Junior was here when we got here, but there was some kind of problem. He got upset about something—really agitated. Daisy had to call Moe to come take him home. This is the week that Daisy’s is serving lunch to that whole out-of-town Plein Air painting group in the back room every day. With Junior off the floor, I could see they were really under the gun, so I offered to fill in. I told Daisy that if Junior can figure out how to make change, hand out menus, and bus tables, so can I.”

Years earlier, Junior Dowdle, a developmentally disabled man in his midforties, had been abandoned by his caregivers at an arts festival in Saint David. Realizing the man was incapable of caring for himself, Joanna had brought him back to Bisbee with her. Eventually the owners of Daisy’s Café, Moe and Daisy Maxwell, had taken him in. Later, they had gone to court to become Junior’s official guardians. In the years since, Junior had become a fixture at the restaurant and in the community, greeting people with his constant smile and perpetually cheerful attitude, conducting customers to tables, and then handing out menus.

As for Plein Air? Once Bisbee stopped being a copper-mining town, it had morphed into an arts community and tourist attraction. Three years earlier, Maggie Oliphant, a relatively new arrival in town, had decided it was time to make a difference. The well-to-do widow of a retired army officer, she had spent years living on post at Fort Huachuca. After her husband’s death, she had returned to southeastern Arizona, but she had decided against living in Sierra Vista. She had wanted a new life that was different from her old one. She had settled in Bisbee, and seeing a need, she had decided to fill it.

Living the vagabond life first as an army brat and later as an army spouse, Maggie had found art to be her salvation. It had done the same for her two daughters. When she returned to Bisbee, she found that things had changed from the time when her girls were attending school. When loss of revenue caused the school board to make budget cuts, art was an easy target. So not only was art out of the curriculum, Bisbee’s school-age kids were also at loose ends on those school-free Fridays.

Maggie Oliphant’s favorite credo was “If it is to be, it is up to me,” and she lived by those words. She had established the Bisbee Art League and had raised enough money to rent a suite of rooms in the once abandoned and now repurposed Horace Mann School, where, on Fridays, qualified art teachers taught pottery making and charcoal drawing along with pastels and oil painting. When Maggie needed money to pay the rent or pay the teachers, she found it by writing grants or raised it by holding fund-raisers.

One of her fund-raising ideas consisted of bringing people to town to participate in weeklong hands-on workshops or, as Butch Dixon liked to call them, writers’ conferences with no writing. She managed to cajole name-brand painters, potters, and sculptors into teaching what she termed “master classes.” On the Saturday night of each weeklong workshop there was a celebratory dinner and one-man show for the workshop’s lead artist. On the Sunday afternoon at the end of each conference week, there was an end-of-conference reception where guests were encouraged to purchase work done by the various participants during the week, with the art league receiving a commission from every sale.

Of all the workshops offered, the Plein Air master classes held in April of each year were by far the most popular. This year’s Plein Air session was being led by M. L. Coleman, a well-respected Sedona landscape artist with an international following. Maggie considered Michael Coleman a big enough catch that she had gone to the trouble of creating a Saturday-night gala in his honor. The event, including both a one-man show and an auction, was booked for the clubhouse of Rob Roy Links, in Palominas, with art collectors from all over Arizona expected to attend.

During the conferences, workshop participants stayed at local lodging establishments that, depending on their financial situation, ranged from economical rooms in private homes to upscale B and Bs. When the light was right—in the early mornings and late afternoons—attendees spread out around town to do their individual painting wherever they chose. During the middle of the day, they gathered in one of the foundation’s repurposed junior high school classrooms where the session’s moderator conducted workshop-style classes. At lunchtime, the fifteen Plein Air painters as well as their spouses and significant others gathered at Daisy’s to eat and chat. The back room at Daisy’s was the only place in town large enough to accommodate a group of thirty on a daily basis.

Having Junior blow a gasket in the midst of Plein Air week had obviously created a problem.

“I hope whatever’s going on with Junior isn’t serious,” Joanna said.

“That’s what I hope, too,” Eva Lou agreed, “but Moe and Daisy were both clearly upset.”

“It’s good of you to help out,” Joanna said, giving Eva Lou a quick hug on her way past.

The fact that Eva Lou had taken it upon herself to step in and help out was typical. Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady were good people who, in the aftermath of their son’s death, had continued to treat Joanna more like a daughter than a daughter-in-law. When their son’s widow had married again, they had welcomed Butch Dixon into their lives, and they were as much Dennis’s grandparents as were Joanna’s mother, Eleanor, and her husband, George Winfield.

“It’s a shame about that poor Ms. Highsmith,” Eva Lou said as she escorted Joanna toward the corner booth.

Joanna stopped in midstride. “What about her?” she asked.

Eva Lou seemed flustered. “Well, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Who told you that?” Joanna wanted to know.

She and Alvin Bernard had agreed that her department would be handling all media relations dealing with the Highsmith homicide. At this point, no official information about the homicide victim’s identity had been released, at least not as far as Joanna knew.

“Those kids over there,” Eva Lou said, nodding toward a booth where four high-school-age kids were huddled together, their attention focused on a cell phone that they were passing around.

“You’re sure they mentioned Ms. Highsmith by name?” Joanna asked.

“Absolutely. When I came up to the table, they were all staring at one of those little cell phone things, talking and laughing and pointing at a picture. At first I couldn’t make out what was on the screen, but finally I did. It looked like one of those crime scene stories on TV.

“About that time, one of them—the tall, lanky, string-bean guy in the corner next to the wall—was downright gleeful,” Eva Lou replied. “I heard him say something like, ‘Way to go, Ms. Highsmith! The wicked witch is dead!’ Considering the woman was their principal, I thought that was in very bad taste. One of the two girls—the one with the long, dark hair—was saying that maybe the school board would end up having to cancel school for the rest of the year.”

Eva Lou had been leading Joanna on a trajectory that would have taken her directly to the corner booth where Jeff Daniels, Butch, and the three kids, now joined by Joanna’s former father-in-law, Jim Bob Brady, had all settled in for lunch. Instead, Joanna again stopped short.

“They were looking at a picture?” she asked.

Eva Lou nodded. “On one of those little iPhone kind of things. When I walked up to the table the tall kid again—the one in the corner—tried to cover the screen, but it didn’t work. Ever since my cataract surgery, my distance vision is perfect.”

“Maybe I should go ask them about it,” Joanna suggested.

“Maybe so,” Eva Lou agreed.

Veering off in another direction, Joanna dodged away before Dennis saw her coming. She hurried toward the booth where the group of teenagers seemed to be preparing to leave. Joanna stopped in front of their booth and then pulled over an extra chair from a nearby table, effectively blocking their exit.

“I’m Sheriff Brady,” she said. “Good morning, or is it afternoon already? Mind if I join you?”

She recognized at least three of the kids. Two of them—Tiffany Brazile and Dena Carothers—were on the cheerleading squad. Billy Stout was a big man on campus, a key player in every sport. The other boy, tall and skinny, was someone Joanna didn’t know. Faced with her uniformed presence, the four teenagers exchanged guilty glances. The expressions on their faces said they did mind having Joanna join them, but none of them had nerve enough to say so. Without waiting for an invitation Joanna sat down.

“I understand that a little while ago, you were overheard discussing one of our ongoing investigations—the disappearance of Ms. Debra Highsmith. Do you mind sharing whatever information you might have?”

“We don’t really know anything,” Tiffany said too quickly. “We were just looking at a picture on Facebook. It’s no big deal.”

“Excuse me, but it is a big deal,” Joanna corrected. “You seem to be in possession of details concerning the investigation that have not yet been released to the public. I need to know exactly what you know about my case and how you came to have that information.”

“What if we don’t want to tell you?” The speaker was the boy in the corner.

“This is a homicide investigation,” Joanna said flatly. “So far this is simply an informal conversation. If you would prefer something more official, I could always throw all of you in the back of a couple of patrol cars and take you on a field trip out to the Justice Center. In that case, we’d be having this discussion in one or two of my department’s interview rooms. Your call.”

“If I ended up in jail, my parents would kill me!” Tiffany exclaimed. “Go ahead, Marty. Show her the picture.”

“My parents would do the same thing,” Dena said. “Show it to her.”

Shaking his head, the boy named Marty pulled an iPhone out of his shirt pocket. After scrolling through several pages, he handed the device over to Joanna. She recognized both the scene and the subject—Debra Highsmith, lying dead, struck down by a hail of gunfire on the rock-strewn shoulder of High Lonesome Road.

Sheriff Brady prided herself on her ability to maintain a poker face, but it took a superhuman effort for her to keep her facial features utterly neutral in the face of that damning photo. She knew that photo could have come from only one source—her daughter, Jenny.

“You believe this to be …?” Joanna prompted.

“That’s Ms. Highsmith, our principal,” Dena said quickly. “That’s her hair, and she’s wearing her favorite suit. She wore it to school every week.”

Joanna turned her unblinking gaze on the owner of the iPhone. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”

“Marty. Martin Pembroke. My dad’s the new doctor at the hospital.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Marty,” Joanna said without offering her hand. “My source tells me you weren’t exactly overwhelmed with grief when you learned Ms. Highsmith might be dead. My source says that you seemed downright gleeful and said something to the effect that the wicked witch is dead.”

“She was a witch,” Marty said.

“I’m assuming that means she wasn’t one of your faves,” Joanna said.

These kids already knew Debra Highsmith was dead. There was no point in Joanna’s trying to maintain otherwise, so she didn’t bother.

“Earlier this year she suspended me for ten days for no reason,” Marty Pembroke grumbled. “If my father hadn’t appealed to the school board, I wouldn’t have been able to make up the work and might not have been able to graduate with my class.”

“Well, boo-hoo-hoo,” Joanna said, making zero effort to tone down the sarcasm. “You claim she suspended you for no reason? Really?”

“It was all because some jerk put a can of beer in my locker. The beer wasn’t even mine. It was one of my friends’ idea of a joke. She blew it all out of proportion.”

“Excuse me,” Joanna pointed out, “but being a minor in possession of alcohol is against the law.” She passed the phone back to him. “Saying you were suspended for no reason isn’t exactly being fair to Ms. Highsmith. It turns out there was a reason for your suspension—and a valid one at that. As for having a beer at school? That certainly compounds an already difficult issue. Did you mention to Ms. Highsmith that you thought someone else had put it there?”

“No,” Marty said. “What do you think I am, some kind of snitch?”

“There you are,” Joanna said agreeably. “You didn’t rat out your pals, and you’re the one who got suspended. Fair enough. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Still, does a ten-day suspension warrant being glad someone is dead?”

“All we were doing here was talking, and just because I said it doesn’t mean I meant it,” Marty muttered. “Besides, all any of us know about what happened is what we saw in the picture—just her body lying there.”

The intervening conversation had given Joanna a chance to get a grip on herself. It didn’t matter whose Facebook site had the photo on it; Joanna knew the origin of the original. It had to have come from either the killer or Jenny. Unfortunately, between those two options, Jennifer Ann Brady as the source of the photo seemed the more likely, although Joanna wasn’t aware that her daughter even had a Facebook page.

“Tell me about Facebook,” she said. “Where is that photo posted? Whose account?”

“We don’t have to tell you that,” Marty Pembroke replied. “Isn’t that like freedom of speech or something?”

“If you won’t tell her, I will,” Dena said. Obviously Marty’s reluctance to be a snitch didn’t extend to Dena. “It’s Anne Marie Mayfield’s page. She’s the one who posted it. She didn’t like Ms. Highsmith, either. Neither did I.”

“What was your beef with her?” Joanna asked.

“She sent us both home to change clothes,” Dena replied. “She said Anne Marie’s skirt was too short, and my neckline was too low. It’s like she turned into the fashion police or something. She probably would have been happier if we’d all had to wear uniforms to school.”

“Sounds to me like she was doing her job,” Joanna said.

The four kids in the booth, exchanging a set of disparaging looks, remained duly unimpressed.

With the conversation seemingly at an end, Joanna pulled out a pen and a notebook that she opened to a fresh page. “I’ll need your names and phone numbers,” she said.

Dena had struck Joanna as being the weakest link, so she handed the writing equipment to her. Without a word, she wrote down the required information and passed it along. Since Dena had complied without objection, so did everyone else.

When they finished and handed the pen and notebook back, Joanna stood up and returned her chair to the other table. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of business cards.

“You’re all welcome to go now,” she said, passing one card to each of the young people in the booth. “You should expect to hear from one of my investigators sometime in the very near future, and if you happen to stumble across any information that might be helpful, please feel free to call.”

As Joanna turned away from the booth, the idea that any of them would call her for any reason at all seemed more than unlikely.

Again she headed for the corner booth. From the sloppy debris field littering the table, Joanna gathered that lunch was mostly over. As she walked up, Butch looked at her and grinned.

“Without that layer of red dust, you clean up very well,” he told her, “but is something wrong? You look upset.”

“Yes, something’s wrong,” Joanna answered stiffly. “I am upset, and I’m here to tell you, Jennifer Ann Brady is in deep caca!”

“What’s caca?” Dennis asked, smiling up at his mother over a last fistful of taco.

“Mommy will tell you later,” Butch assured their son.

Joanna knew she’d just been thrown under the bus. Since she was the one who had used the term, that was only fair.

“What did Jenny do?” Butch asked.

Joanna shook her head. “I’d better not talk about it right now. Obviously, little pitchers have big ears. Am I too late for lunch?”

Butch moved over far enough so Joanna could sit down next to him. He passed her a glass of iced tea. “This is yours,” he said. “Your chimichanga is ready, but I told Daisy to keep it under the salamander until you got here. She’ll bring it out in a minute.”

“After we have our ice cream, we’re going to the park,” Jeff said. “Can you come, too?”

“No,” Joanna told him. “I have to go to work.”

Daisy Maxwell arrived at the table, personally delivering a platter with Joanna’s steaming chimichanga on it. Daisy set the plate down in front of Joanna and then started away from the table without saying a word. Her customary smile was missing in action. Seams of worry lined her face.

“I’m sorry to hear Junior is under the weather,” Joanna said. “Let him know we’re sending him get-well wishes.”

Daisy paused long enough to nod her thanks. “I’ll tell him,” she said, but clearly Joanna’s words had done little to lighten the woman’s burden of worry as she marched back to the kitchen.

Joanna pushed a fork into the chimichanga’s crusty tortilla shell, letting some of the steam leak out into the air. She wished she could let some of the steam out of her head at the same time.

“You heard about Junior, then?” Butch asked.

Joanna was grateful he had changed the subject. “Just what Eva Lou said.”

“I’ve been noticing it for the last few weeks,” Jim Bob told them. “It used to be whenever Eva Lou and I came in, he greeted us by name. Now he acts as though he’s never seen us before. This morning, the people next to us asked him for water. He said he’d bring it. When the guy reminded him—and that’s all he did and not even in a mean way—Junior went ballistic. It was out of character and completely over the top. Daisy had to come out of the kitchen and talk him down. He was so upset that she had to take him back to the kitchen with her. When the next set of customers came in, Eva Lou decided it was time to help out.”

“She’s doing a fine job of it, too,” Jeff Daniels added.

Their waitress came by, checking to see if any additional tacos were needed. Fortunately all three of the kids had reached their taco limit. By the time they were done with their single servings of ice cream, Joanna had gobbled down half of her chimichanga and had the rest of it boxed up to take back to the office.

“In other words,” Butch said, when she stood up to leave, doggie bag in hand, “we shouldn’t be surprised if you’re late for dinner.”

On a day that had started out with a homicide investigation, that was a good guess. Joanna was grateful that he didn’t say anything more than that, something that might have turned their private discussion into fodder for the local gossip mills, which were already operating at full capacity.

She leaned down and gave him a kiss, picking up the collection of checks on the table as she did so and making the move before either Jeff Daniels or Jim Bob could object.

“See you when you get home,” Butch said. “Are you going to stop by the clinic to see Jenny?”

Joanna nodded.

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Butch said. “Whatever it is, she probably didn’t do it on purpose.”

FIVE

IT TOOK a while to exit the restaurant. Joanna was leaving at the same time the thirty diners from the back room were paying for their lunches, separate checks all around. A man in his sixties, dressed in a red flannel shirt topped by a brown vest, seemed to be in charge. He hustled around trying to hurry the process.

Eva Lou was a willing worker, but that kind of crush was more than she could handle. Eventually Daisy herself had to emerge from the kitchen and take charge of the cash register.

Most of the participants seemed to be much the same age as their leader, fifties to sixties or even older. They were all chatting away, discussing their plans for the afternoon and evening. One of them who seemed to be several decades younger than his fellows gave Joanna a sidelong look through a pair of fashionable wire-framed glasses.

She had been on the receiving end of looks like that numerous times. Usually the look was followed by a rude comment that had something to do with the unlikelihood of women being qualified to serve as sheriffs. She often responded to those folks with a flip comment about getting her badge out of a Cracker Jack box and her uniform from a costume shop. This time, before she had a chance to say a word, he nodded at her and smiled.

“Nice hair,” he said. The man was the last customer in the Plein Air line. He had short reddish hair and a matching well-trimmed beard. His unexpected compliment took Joanna by surprise, and she found herself blushing.

“Thanks,” she said. “Yours isn’t bad, either.”

“Yes,” he agreed with a grin. “Redheads rule.”

He left then, allowing Joanna to step forward with her several checks in hand.

“How was your lunch?” Daisy asked.

“Better than the rest of my morning,” Joanna said. “It sounds like yours wasn’t all smooth sailing, either.”

“I’ve been happy to have the extra business this week,” Daisy said, “but I think that’s what pushed Junior over the edge. He’s used to all the regulars, but couldn’t handle so many strangers.”

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Joanna asked.

Daisy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. His doctor says he believes it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s not that unusual in cases like Junior’s.”

Daisy’s eyes filled with sudden tears as she punched the numbers into the register. Joanna wanted to offer some kind of comfort, but as two additional customers stepped into line behind her, she kept quiet rather than risk upsetting Daisy even more.

Back in her dust-covered Yukon, Joanna put the vehicle in gear, backed out of the parking lot, and headed for Dr. Millicent Ross’s veterinary clinic in Bisbee’s Saginaw neighborhood.

In the early fifties, before the opening of Lavender Pit, clusters of frame houses that had dotted the hillsides and canyons of Upper Lowell, Lower Bisbee, and Jiggerville had stood in the way. One at a time, the houses were pried off their foundations, loaded onto axles, and then trucked through town, where they were attached to new foundations that had been dug on lots that had formerly been company-owned land in neighborhoods that would ultimately come to be known as Bakerville and Saginaw.

As far as Joanna was concerned, this was all ancient history—almost as lost on her as the fact that townspeople in Bisbee had once sheltered in mines when Apaches had threatened to ride through town causing trouble. Joanna remembered seeing photos of the houses being moved, but that was all. By now, those houses had been in place on their “new” lots long enough that mature trees and bushes had grown up around them.

On arriving in town Dr. Millicent Ross had bought two adjoining houses in a part of Saginaw that fronted on the highway. She lived in one with her partner, Jeannine Philips, who was head of Joanna’s Animal Control unit. The other housed Millicent’s veterinary clinic as well as a pet boarding and day-care facility. Jenny worked at the boarding area—feeding and walking animals who were either recuperating from procedures or being boarded. Her shifts ran for two hours a day after school, for several hours on Fridays, and sometimes on weekends as well, if working didn’t conflict with a scheduled rodeo. Jenny’s work for the clinic was ostensibly done on a volunteer basis, but Dr. Ross had assured her that once Jenny was ready to go off to college and vet school, there would be a college fund awaiting her in exchange for her hours of work.

Joanna and Butch had regarded this unorthodox arrangement as a win-win situation all the way around. Through her own efforts, Jenny was making a very real down payment on her college education, and she was far too busy with work and school to get into any trouble. Up to now, that is.

Joanna pulled into the small parking lot in front of the clinic. A chain-link fence surrounded a yard between the clinic and Dr. Ross’s home. Through the chain-link mesh, Joanna could see Jenny walking a placid pit bull who seemed totally unconcerned about the plastic surgical cone fastened around his broad neck. Joanna used a self-locking gate to let herself into the tree-shaded yard. Only up close did she see the straight line of stitches going down the dog’s right rear leg.

“Hi, Mom,” Jenny said. “This is Prince. He got out of his yard and got hit by a car. Dr. Ross had to install rods and pins in his leg to put it back together. He’s really doing good.”

“He’s doing well.” Joanna corrected her daughter’s grammar automatically. “I’m glad to hear that, but it’s not why I’m here. You’re in trouble, young lady.”

Jenny frowned. “I am?”

“Yes, you certainly are.”

“How come?”

“Because you took an unauthorized photo of Ms. Highsmith this morning before I got to the crime scene. What did you use, your cell phone?”

Jenny nodded, her blue eyes wide. “I did,” she replied, “but I only sent it to Cassie.”

Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived in a decommissioned KOA campground near Double Adobe that her parents had turned into a mobile-home park.

“She may be the only person you sent it to, but Cassie must have passed it along to someone else. Now it’s all over the Internet. Someone, one of the students from the high school, has even posted it on her Facebook page. I saw that one with my own eyes. Because of the photo Marliss Shackleford is threatening to write an article identifying the homicide victim without bothering to wait for a next-of-kin notification, something my detectives have not yet been able to accomplish.”

Jenny’s bright blue eyes widened even more. A flush of embarrassment flamed the skin of her cheeks and neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for that to happen.”

“I can understand that this isn’t at all what you intended,” Joanna conceded, “but it’s what has happened, and it’s serious, Jenny—terribly serious. What if this is how Ms. Highsmith’s family members find out about her death—because some uncaring idiot posted a gory picture of her body on the Internet?”

To Joanna’s astonishment, Jenny sank to the ground. She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chest, sobbing inconsolably. With a grateful sigh, Prince, the wide-load butterball pit bull, sank down beside her. Resting his muzzle on his front paws, he closed his eyes contentedly.

“I just wanted to get her back,” Jenny said. “That’s all.”

“Get who back?” Joanna asked. “What are we talking about?”

“Cassie. It’s like we’re not even friends anymore,” Jenny hiccuped through her tears. “She’s going to be a cheerleader next year, and she thinks that makes her a really big deal. She has all kinds of new friends. The only time I even get to see her is in class or on the bus on our way to school. I thought if I sent her that picture, she’d feel like I was giving her some special inside information and that we’d be friends again. Instead, she did this. How could she?”

Crouching next to her devastated daughter, Joanna came face-to-face with her own culpability, served up with a huge helping of motherly guilt. How long had Jenny and Cassie been on the outs? As Jenny’s mother, how had Joanna not known about this crisis that was tearing away at her daughter’s well-being? How could she have left Jenny to make her way through such a painful loss on her own?

With all that in mind, the idea of Jenny’s taking and sending the photo was still wrong, but it was certainly more understandable.

Quieter now but still sniffling, Jenny mumbled, “Am I grounded then? Are you going to take my cell phone away?”

Joanna and Jenny’s birth father, Andy, had never been on quite the same page when it came to disciplining Jenny. With Butch, Joanna had found a partner who was a master at presenting a united front.

“We’ll need to talk it over with Dad,” Joanna said.

The day before, Jenny was the one who had first used the term “Dad” to refer to Butch. This was the first time Joanna tried it. To her surprise Jenny voiced no objection.

“Okay,” she said, drying her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m really sorry, Mom. Honest.”

Joanna patted her daughter’s shoulder. “I know,” she said consolingly. “Sometimes that’s the only way to get smarter—to learn from our mistakes. We’re a law enforcement family, Jenny. That makes us different. That’s why I didn’t discuss the Highsmith situation with you yesterday. I didn’t want you to mention the case to friends and classmates. Some of the things that are discussed around our dinner table are things you shouldn’t talk about with anyone outside our immediate family.”

“You mean like it’s privileged information or something?” Jenny asked. “Like what clients tell their lawyers?”

“Not exactly like that,” Joanna said. “There isn’t a legal requirement that I not tell you about Ms. Highsmith. It’s more a matter of discretion.”

“You mean like using common sense.”

“Yes,” Joanna replied.

Jenny stood up and dusted off her jeans.

“I’m sorry about you and Cassie,” Joanna said. “I wish you had told me.”

Jenny bit her lip. “It started last fall, after she made the JV cheerleading squad. I kept thinking it would get better. It’s like she’s fine when we’re on the bus going to school, but once we get there, she acts like I’m invisible. It hurts my feelings, Mom. I can’t help it.”

Joanna remembered all too well her own struggles in high school. First it had been because the kids were wary of being friends with the sheriff’s daughter. Then, after her father was killed by a drunk driver, Joanna had been considered the odd kid out because her father was dead. It was like people thought being without a father was somehow contagious. Her social situation in high school was one of the things that had made an “older man,” Andy, so attractive to her. Through it all, even in the face of a hurried “have-to” wedding, Marianne Maculyea had been Joanna’s true-blue loyal friend. Was then; still was. Unfortunately, Jenny’s friend Cassie wasn’t made of the same stuff.

“Of course it hurts your feelings,” Joanna agreed. “Have you talked about it with Butch?” She couldn’t quite justify playing the “Dad” card twice in the same conversation.

Jenny shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d notice.”

Joanna smiled at her daughter. “We didn’t,” she said. “You’re probably giving us way too much credit. We’ll talk about it tonight. All of us together.”

“Except Dennis.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “Except Dennis.”

Bored with what must have seemed like endless prattle, Prince continued to sleep, snoring soundly. Pit bulls may have had a reputation for being scary and fierce; Prince was anything but.

“You’d better get that big guy up and back inside,” Joanna added, nodding toward the snoozing dog. “Dr. Ross is going to be wondering what became of you.”

As Jenny and Prince meandered back inside, Joanna returned to the Yukon. She had handled the Jenny situation to the best of her ability, but there were still outstanding issues on that score, not the least of which was making sure Debra Highsmith’s family was notified in a timely fashion. That included getting the jump on whatever story Marliss Shackleford was getting ready to publish.

Joanna was in the Yukon and had already turned the key in the ignition when she remembered Marliss’s unusual question about Jenny that morning while Joanna had still been at the crime scene. Even that early on, the reporter must have had a good idea that Jenny was the source of the photo. So where was she getting her information?

Removing the key and picking up the doggie bag from Daisy’s, Joanna hurried back into the yard just as Jenny came outside again. This time she had a miniature long-haired dachshund on a leash. Prince had outweighed this tiny thing ten times over, but this dog was clearly ten times the trouble. She went into a paroxysm of barking, each bark lifting her stiff little legs off the ground.

“Quiet, Heidi,” Jenny ordered, jerking on the leash.

Heidi paid no attention. Jenny looked uncomfortable, as though she was afraid Joanna was going to give her more grief. Instead, Joanna handed her daughter the doggie bag.

“I only ate half my chimichanga at lunch,” she said. “I brought you the rest.”

Jenny’s face brightened. Bean and cheese chimichangas were her second-favorite food, right after pepperoni pizza. “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t have time to pack a lunch.”

“Wouldn’t want you to starve,” Joanna told her with a smile, “but I have one other question. What time did you send the photo to Cassie?”

Jenny shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was while Kiddo and I were waiting for you. Why?”

“I was just wondering. Can you check your call history?”

With Heidi still barking her head off, Jenny put down the bag, just out of the dog’s reach, and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. With a one-handed dexterity that amazed her mother, she scrolled through her calls. “Seven sixteen,” she said at last. “That’s when I sent it.”

“Okay,” Joanna said. “Thanks.”

Walking back to the Yukon a second time, Joanna pulled out the notebook and located the page where the four kids from Daisy’s had listed their names and phone numbers. She found Dena’s name as well as her numbers. Dena had listed both her home phone number and her cell. Joanna called the latter.

“It’s Sheriff Brady,” she announced when Dena answered. “I’m wondering if you could do me a favor. You’re one of Anne Marie Mayfield’s Facebook friends, right?”

“Right.”

“Could you please access her Facebook page and see if you can tell me what time the photo was posted?”

As a law enforcement officer, Joanna was painfully aware of the problems with cyberpredators stalking the Internet to find likely victims. She and Butch had installed the latest and greatest parental controls on their home computer system for just that reason. The situation with Jenny and the crime scene photo taught her that there was as much of a problem with information going out as there was with bad guys trying to get in. Besides, by using her cell phone to take and send the picture, Jenny had cleverly outmaneuvered them. The parental controls were on her computer, not her phone. That would have to change.

It took the better part of a minute, but finally Dena came back on the line. “Eight ten,” she said. “That’s what it says.”

In other words, Joanna thought, it took a little less than an hour to get from Jenny to Cassie and from Cassie to the whole school!

“You’re not going to be calling my parents, are you?” Dena asked. “They’ll be really upset if I get called in to talk to a detective.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said reassuringly. “Before this is over, we’ll probably be talking to everyone at the school.”

That was a little white lie. Joanna didn’t have the man- or womanpower to interview everyone at Bisbee High School, but knowing how the school social networking system worked, she had effectively put everyone on notice that she intended to do so. With any kind of luck, that little bit of intimidation would be enough to smoke out some useful information.

This time, when she started the car, she drove away from Dr. Ross’s clinic and headed for the Justice Center, dialing Deb Howell’s number as she went.

“Detective Howell here.”

“Any luck with the next-of-kin situation?”

“Sorry, boss,” Deb said. “I’ve run into a brick wall. As far as I can tell, Deb Highsmith doesn’t have any next of kin. The contact listed with the Department of Licensing is Abby Holder.”

“Mrs. Holder?” Joanna repeated. “That old battle-ax who’s the secretary at the high school?”

“One and the same,” Deb replied. “I’m on my way to see her now. I have to say, that woman absolutely terrified me when I was going to school. I never saw her in any color but black.”

“She had the same effect on me,” Joanna said, stifling a chuckle when she remembered how the kids at Daisy’s had expressed similar kinds of fear about Debra Highsmith. “Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be when you’re in high school?” she asked. “If the kids aren’t scared to death of the principal and the people in the principal’s office, something’s wrong. It’s a control issue. It’s been that way forever. Is Abby Holder at school today?”

“I already checked,” Deb said. “The kids are out of school for the weekend and so are the staff members. I’m headed to her house.”

Joanna had a choice. If she went to the office where she could tackle the day’s paperwork, she would also be a sitting duck for anyone Marliss Shackleford happened to send her way. If Joanna was out on an interview with Deb Howell, she would be a moving target rather than a stationary one.

“Mind if I tag along?”

“I’d love to have you come along,” Deb said. “She lives at 2828 Hazzard.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

SIX

ABIGAIL HOLDER was a few years younger than Joanna’s mother. It was mostly through Eleanor Lathrop Winfield that Joanna knew some of Abby’s history. She had grown up on the Vista, an upscale neighborhood in Bisbee’s Warren neighborhood, one that had long been home to the town’s white-collar elite—the mine supervisors along with a selection of judges, doctors, and lawyers.

Growing up and walking to school from her parents’ far-lower-class home on Campbell, Joanna had been jealous of the people who lived on the Vista. The large, mostly brick houses with shady front porches and yards usually required the regular attention of a gardener. The houses on East Vista and West Vista faced each other across a block-wide, five-block-long expanse of park that had once been the neighborhood’s centerpiece. Joanna had heard that the park had once been a grassy oasis, complete with a bandstand and huge trees. The bandstand and trees were both gone now, and the lush grass had been allowed to go to weedy ruin due to the prohibitive costs of watering and mowing it.

Hazzard was the last street in Bisbee’s Warren neighborhood, a final outpost of civilization before town gave way to desert. When Joanna pulled up in front of Abby Holder’s small frame house on Hazzard, it was clear that this one was very different from the brick-clad mansion where she had grown up. The ramshackle wooden structure was built on a terrace, several steep steps above street level. A concrete wheelchair ramp zigzagged across the small front yard up to the terrace, and then again up onto a tiny front porch. In the early afternoon, the porch still offered some shade, but as the sun went down in the west, Joanna knew the shade would disappear. In the summer, the setting sun would turn the front room of the house into a virtual oven.

Joanna parked out front, just behind Detective Howell’s Tahoe. Together the two of them walked up the wheelchair ramp. When they reached the front door, Deb, ID in hand, stepped up to the door and rang the old-fashioned doorbell. From somewhere deep inside the house a tuneless jangle announced their presence.

Moments later the door cracked open and Abby Holder peered outside at them. “Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”

“I’m Detective Howell with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department,” Deb explained, “and this is Sheriff Brady.”

In response, Abby opened the door wider. For the first time ever, she wasn’t wearing all black. She was dressed in a faded red-and-gray Bisbee High School tracksuit, complete with the school’s familiar Puma logo. Drab gray hair was pulled back in a tight French twist. She wore no makeup, however, and the grim expression that had petrified generations of schoolchildren was firmly in place.

The formal introductions were interrupted by an aggrieved voice, calling from somewhere inside the house, “What’s going on? Are we having company? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Abby turned away from the door. “It’s about school, Mother,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Pulling the inside door shut behind her, Abby Holder stepped out through the screen door and onto the porch. “This is about Ms. Highsmith, right?” Abby asked as she studied Detective Howell’s ID. “I already heard you found her body. One of the teachers called me.”

“Yes, and that’s why we’re here,” Deb continued. “At the Department of Licensing, you’re listed as her next of kin. You’re not related, are you?”

“No, not at all,” Abby replied.

“Close friends, then?” Deb asked.

Abby shook her head. “Not really, although we worked together every day for several years. When she told me she was going to put me down as her emergency contact, I was a little taken aback—uncomfortable, really—but she said there was no one else.”

“No relatives of any kind?” Joanna asked.

“None that I know of. That’s what she told me, anyway. That she was an only child, that her parents died in a car accident years ago, and that she wasn’t close to any of her cousins. I wondered about it at the time, if maybe she was in the witness protection program or something. I didn’t ask her that, of course. I just wondered about it.”

“When did she list you as her emergency contact?” Deb asked. “Was this a recent development?”

“Oh, no,” Abby answered. “It happened when she first got here and was filling out all her paperwork.”

“Did she ever mention where she was from?”

“Back east somewhere,” Abby replied. “From one of those tiny states—Vermont or New Hampshire or Connecticut. I can never keep those straight in my head.”

“I believe there’s a life insurance rider on your group insurance policy,” Joanna said.

That was a lie. Joanna didn’t believe it was true; she knew it was true. For years before she ran for and was elected to the office of sheriff, Joanna had worked for the Davis Insurance Agency. She had handled the paperwork on the transaction when her boss, Milo Davis, had won the bid to handle the school’s group insurance program.

“Yes,” Abby agreed. “There are some differences in coverage for certified as opposed to noncertified personnel, but we all have a life insurance benefit.”

“Do you have any idea who she might have named as the beneficiary on that?”

“No idea whatsoever,” Abby answered. “You’d have to check with the school district office for that information, or there might be something about that in her files at school.”

“What about a cell phone?” Deb asked.

Joanna knew that no cell phone had been found at the crime scene or at the victim’s home. She also knew that cell phone records might lead them to people who were part of Debra Highsmith’s social circle but weren’t necessarily known to the people with whom she worked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you happen to know the number?”

Abby reeled it off from memory. Deb punched the number into her cell phone and tried dialing it. Unsurprisingly, it went straight to voice mail.

Just then there were several sharp raps on the closed door behind Abby. The blows were hard enough that the three stair-step windowpanes jiggled in their mahogany frames, threatening to come loose.

“I know you’re still out there, Abigail,” her mother said imperiously. “It’s very low class to be standing outside conducting business on the front porch. Are you out there talking about me?”

Abby flushed with embarrassment. “I’ll be right there, Mother.” Then she turned back to Deb Howell and Joanna. “My mother has a few security issues. I have a caregiver who usually stops by several times a day to check on her when I’m at work, but when I’m here, Mother doesn’t like having me out of her sight. If you don’t mind coming inside …”

Abby allowed her voice to trail off before she finished her less than enthusiastic invitation. It was plain to see that she wasn’t eager to welcome them into her home. As the daughter of a sometimes difficult mother, Joanna understood the woman’s reluctance. In public, Abby Holder appeared to be totally in control. It had to be difficult for her to be treated with such open contempt at home.

The polite thing for Joanna and Detective Howell to do would have been to walk away and let Abby Holder deal with her mother’s issues in private, but this was a homicide investigation. As someone who had worked with the victim day in and day out for years, Abby Holder might well have insights into the workings of Debra Highsmith’s life that no one else could provide.

There was another series of raps on the closed door. “Abigail? Are you still there?”

“We don’t mind at all, do we, Deb?” Joanna said with a bright smile. “Any information you can give us at this stage would be a huge help.”

Reluctantly, Abby opened the door and allowed them to enter. Just inside the door a tiny woman sat hunched in a wheelchair. She gripped a colorful cane in one hand and was clearly within seconds of staging another assault on the door, whose marred surface already gave clear evidence of several previous blows. The woman appeared to be afflicted with a severe widow’s hump, one that left her face permanently pointing into her lap. Thin gray hair did little to conceal the balding spot on the top of her head.

“It’s about time you came inside,” she complained, peering up at them sideways due to an inability to raise her head. “You told me you were going to make some tea. I’m still waiting.”

Looking at her, Joanna was reminded of a time when, as a little girl, she had climbed into a cottonwood tree to spy on a nest of newly hatched crows. Joanna had gotten only the smallest peek at the naked, angry, and demanding little things before an infuriated mama crow had shown up on the scene to drive the interloper away. Abby Holder’s mother wasn’t naked, but she had angry and demanding down to a science.

Abby gestured Joanna and Deb into the living room. “Could I interest you in some tea?”

“Please,” Joanna said, accepting for both of them. “That would be great.”

While Abby retreated into what must have been the kitchen, Joanna and Deb seated themselves side by side on a chintz sofa. The living room was small and crowded with too much oversize furniture. There were two large easy chairs that matched the sofa. A huge glass-fronted buffet was shoved up against one wall with a flat-screen television perched on top of that. On the muted screen the cast members of some afternoon soap opera were going through their paces. Every available inch of wall space was covered with framed artwork—notably oversize desert landscapes done in vivid oils.

To Joanna’s way of thinking, none of the colorful furnishings in the crowded room quite squared with plain-Jane Abby Holder who always dressed in black or gray, whose hair was always pulled back into an old-fashioned, simple French twist, and whose face never showed a single hint of makeup. The furniture seemed far more in keeping with Abby’s mother, who was dressed in a vivid orange muumuu and whose thin lips and cheeks were garishly colored with bright red lipstick and rouge.

Despite the limited floor space in the room, Abby’s mother propelled her hand-powered chair through the maze of furnishings with practiced ease.

“I’m Elizabeth Stevens, Abigail’s mother,” she announced. “I can’t imagine what possessed her to go rushing off without bothering to properly introduce us. Who are you? What are you doing here? Not selling something, I hope. Maybe you’re a pair of those Bible-thumping missionaries? They’re forever showing up on the front porch and ringing our doorbell. I’ve told Abby a hundred times not to let them inside. You’re not some of those, are you?”

“No,” Deb said with a laugh. “Definitely not. I’m Detective Deb Howell, and this is Sheriff Brady.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot we have a lady sheriff these days,” Elizabeth said. “Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t imagine that a woman could do as good a job of running the sheriff’s department as a man would, and you still haven’t mentioned what you’re doing here or what it is you’re after.”

Joanna knew that Abby Holder was a few years younger than her own mother. That meant that Elizabeth was somewhere in her eighties or even nineties. Somewhere along the way, she had decided to turn off her self-editing applications. She would say whatever came into her head and let the chips fall where they may. Not wanting to divulge the purpose of their visit, Joanna made a gentle stab at changing the subject.

“Have you lived here long?” she asked.

“Longer than I ever wanted,” Elizabeth shot back. “I’m afraid Abby made this bed. Now we both have to lie in it.”

Out of Elizabeth’s line of vision, Abby had come into the room and was collecting a set of cups and saucers from the buffet.

“Mother!” she exclaimed. “Please! Give it a rest.”

“Well, it’s true,” Elizabeth sniffed. “If you hadn’t gone against your father’s wishes and married that Freddy Holder, we wouldn’t have to live in this dump.”

It was easy to see that this was a long-established pattern, with Elizabeth Stevens bullying her daughter and with Abby taking it. This time, maybe for the first time ever, Abby seemed prepared to fight back, countering fire with fire.

“If Daddy hadn’t made such spectacularly bad investments,” she said, “you wouldn’t have had to sell the big house on the Vista and come slumming with me.”

Elizabeth seemed both astonished and dismayed by her daughter’s response. All the natural color drained from her face, leaving only the bright red clownlike layer of rouge glowing on otherwise stark white cheeks.

“I won’t have you speaking about your father in such a disrespectful manner,” she declared.

Abby didn’t back off. “I won’t have you speaking disrespectfully about Fred, either,” she returned. “He and I found this place together, and he paid for it with his life. Just remember, if it weren’t for your being able to come here to live with me, you and all your furniture would have been out on the street. How about a little gratitude for a change?”

“Well,” Elizabeth huffed. “I never!”

With that, she spun her chair into a sudden about-face and sped from the room.

“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” Abby said. “Most of the time I just let what she says wash over me. Today I couldn’t.”

I don’t blame you a bit, Joanna thought. She said aloud, “Fred was your husband?”

Abby nodded. “My father was the superintendent of the mines. Fred’s father was an underground miner. That’s all Fred ever wanted to be, too—a miner, just like his dad, Daniel. Fred knew he wasn’t cut out for college; his grades weren’t good enough, but he knew that working underground he’d be able to support us. Naturally my parents despised him. They thought I could do far better in the matrimony department than marrying some guy who worked underground. They did everything they could think of to break us up. I know my father told the guys at the company employment office that Fred wasn’t miner material, but I figured out a way around it.”

“What was that?” Joanna asked.

“I told Fred we should pretend that we had caved. I came home from a date one night in April, crying my heart out. I told my parents that I had broken up with him, and it worked like a charm. They were thrilled. Two things happened after that. Suddenly—magically—Fred was no longer persona non grata in the employment department. The strike was over by then. Fred got a job working underground, and I set about signing up for the fall semester in Flagstaff.

“Back then, it was still called the Northern Arizona Teacher’s College. It wasn’t even a university. My mother was in her element, though, shopping like crazy to get me properly decked out to go off to school in the fall, but I fooled them. Two weeks after high school graduation, on the day I turned eighteen, Fred and I eloped. We got married in Lordsburg. Fred had already moved out of his parents’ place and rented this one. When we moved in here, my parents had a conniption fit. My father officially disowned me. He never spoke to me again, not even when Fred died a few months later.”

“He died?” Joanna asked.

Abby nodded.

“What happened?”

“He died in a mining accident less than two months after we got married. The stope he was in collapsed. The other miners managed to dig him out, but it was too late. He was already dead. Fred’s parents were always as good as gold to me, right up until they both died. All of which made the way my parents acted that much worse. My parents didn’t even bother coming to the funeral.

“With Fred gone, I was completely on my own. I had taken typing and shorthand in high school. Luckily I managed to get hired as the school secretary at Greenway Elementary School. My father wasn’t speaking to me at the time, and he wasn’t on the school board, either, but for all I know he might have helped engineer my being offered the job so I’d at least be self-supporting. A few months later, when Fred’s life insurance paid off, I went to my landlord and offered to buy this place. Paid cash for it. I’ve been here ever since.”

“How long has your mother been living with you?” Joanna asked.

“Six years now,” Abby said. “When my father retired from Phelps Dodge, my mother signed the paperwork saying it was all right for him to take a lump-sum distribution instead of a pension. The trouble was, he got all caught up in day trading and lost the money.”

“He lost all of it?”

Abby nodded. “He used creative money-managing techniques to keep my mother from finding out how bad things were, but once he died and was no longer able to juggle things around, his financial house of cards finally collapsed. That’s when my mother discovered she was destitute. The house on the Vista, the one Mother had lived in all her married life, was mortgaged to the hilt. Since there was no pension, all she had coming in were the Social Security checks that came to her as my father’s widow. The bank was foreclosing on the house. They were going to throw her and all her worldly goods out into the street, so I took her in.”

“Under the circumstances, you did more than most people would have,” Joanna said.

Abby shrugged. “She’s my mother. What else could I do? I had planned on retiring in the next year or two. Now, with Mother living here and with my hours cut back to just four days a week, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

From the kitchen the shrill whistle of a boiling teakettle demanded attention. Stacking the cups, saucers, plates, and teapot onto a tray, Abby hurried into the kitchen to tend to it.

“If I had been in her shoes, I think I would have told my mother to piss off,” Deb Howell muttered.

Joanna nodded. “No one would have blamed you, either.”

“I always thought people who lived on the Vista had perfect lives,” Deb added thoughtfully. “This sounds anything but perfect.”

That had been Joanna’s perception, too. She’d had no idea of the steep price that someone like Abby, one of the seemingly privileged few, might have paid living as a virtual prisoner, first as a victim of her parents’ demanding expectations and later as the target of their unrelenting disapproval. It pained Joanna to think that all the time she and the other kids had secretly made fun of Abby Holder’s perpetually grim outlook on the world, the poor woman had been coming to work, day after day and year after year, with a permanently broken heart, mourning the loss of both the love of her life and the love of her parents. Generations of schoolkids had mistaken that sadness for anger.

By the time Abby returned from the kitchen, Joanna Brady regarded her with a whole new respect.

She came into the living room carrying a tray laden with tea makings, including a plate of carefully trimmed, triangular cucumber sandwiches. She set the tray down on the coffee table in front of Joanna and Deb.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” she said, “I’ll take something in to my mother.”

She dosed a cup of tea with cream and sugar, took it and a plate holding three sandwiches with her, and went off in the same direction in which her mother had departed. She returned a few moments later. If she’d had to endure another tirade from her mother in the meantime, it didn’t show on her face or in her actions. She sat down and served tea in a fashion that not even her highly critical mother could have faulted.

“I don’t believe I ever said a proper thank-you to your father, Sheriff Brady,” Abby said quietly as she passed Joanna a delicate bone china cup and saucer. The cup was filled to the brim with fragrant tea. It took real concentration on Joanna’s part to keep from slopping some of it into the saucer at this unexpected turn in the conversation.

“Thanked him for what?” Joanna asked.

“For digging Fred out of the stope the day he died,” Abby answered. “Your father was one of the crew of miners who pulled him out of the muck and tried to revive him. Of all those guys, your father was the only one who had balls enough to come to Fred’s funeral. Everyone else was so afraid of what my father might do that they didn’t dare show up.

“As a consequence, it was a very small funeral,” Abby continued. “Your mother came, too, by the way, but it was your father whose job was on the line. Your parents were a little older than I was, but back then we were all relatively young. I was barely out of high school and already a widow. I didn’t really understand the risk your father ran by going against my father’s wishes, and I never made a point of telling your father how much it meant to me. I’m thanking you because I never thanked him.”

It wasn’t the first time in Joanna Brady’s years in law enforcement that she had heard stories about her late father, D. H. Lathrop, being a stand-up kind of guy. She could count on one hand, however, the number of times her mother, Eleanor, had been mentioned in that regard. Now she wondered if being at odds with the superintendent of the local mining branch, the town’s major employer, might have had something to do with her father’s leaving the mines to go into law enforcement. Everyone had always maintained that D. H. had stopped working underground because he had wanted to.

Was that really true? Joanna wondered now. Or was he forced out?

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