Damage Control (4 page)

“So am I,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jenny?”

“Sleepover at Cassie’s house, remember?”

Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived a few miles away near Double Adobe at a decommissioned KOA campground her parents had turned into a mobile home park.

“Didn’t,” Joanna said.

Butch went over to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Want one?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” Joanna said.

“How were the roads?”

“They’re fine,” she said. That was a little white lie, but Butch didn’t need to know she had crossed a possibly dangerous wash on her way home. “So far,” she added. “But it’s raining enough right now that they could be bad by morning. My Crown Victoria doesn’t have a whole lot of clearance.”

Butch looked at her and grinned. “But tomorrow’s Saturday. You won’t need to go in, will you?”

Her department was currently dealing with a homicide/suicide. It seemed unlikely that Joanna would be able to take all of Saturday off. “Maybe not,” she hedged.

Most of the time Butch was really understanding about the demands of her job, but at the moment his job as a mystery writer was demanding its own kind of attention.

“That’s a relief,” he said. “The reviewed copyedited manuscript needs to be in New York by Tuesday at the latest, and I could sure use some help with little troublemaker here in the meantime.” Butch helped himself to another piece of pizza, then he came over and kissed the top of Joanna’s head. “This is food for the gods, by the way,” he added.

Joanna tried the bottle again. This time Dennis took it. The sudden silence in the kitchen was almost deafening. The pizza was calling to her, too, but with the baby in one hand and the bottle in the other, Butch’s double pepperoni would have to wait.

“I do have some bad news,” Butch said. “The check bounced.”

“What check?”

“The renter’s check—from the ranch. It was due on the first and didn’t get here until the fifth. I deposited it yesterday. The bank called this afternoon right after I talked to you to say Bob Baker’s checking account was closed.”

Between them, Butch and Joanna had two rental properties, a house he had rehabbed in Bisbee and the original house on High Lonesome Ranch, one Joanna and her first husband, Andy, had purchased from his parents. Over the course of the past few months they had learned that being landlords wasn’t a trouble-free proposition. Bob Baker had rented the property six months earlier, claiming he was putting together an important import/export company that would be based in Agua Prieta, south of Douglas.

“Closed,” Joanna echoed.

“So I loaded Dennis into his car seat and drove over there to raise hell with him. He’s long gone, Joey, and the place is a pigsty. I don’t know how long he’s been gone. It looks like illegals have been using it as a stopping-off place for quite some time. In
fact, I’m starting to wonder if Bob Baker’s supposed import/export business wasn’t just a cover for whatever else he was really doing.”

“You think he was a coyote?”

In the parlance of southern Arizona’s law enforcement community, coyotes were more often the two-legged kind involved in smuggling illegal immigrants rather than four-legged ones, who were generally law-abiding.

Butch nodded.

“And he’s been using our property as a base for that kind of illegal activity?”

“Right again,” Butch said. “I’d bet money on it. I locked the place up as best I could. We’ll have to bring in a whole crew to muck it out. Baker gave us a cleaning deposit along with his first and last month’s rent, but that’s not going to come close to covering the costs. And by the time we get it cleaned up enough to rent it again, I’m guessing we’ll be out another month’s rent, maybe even more.”

“Great,” Joanna said.

“And whatever that bill turns out to be,” Butch continued, “I want to go after him for it.”

“Go after him?”

“You bet,” Butch said. “I already called Dick Voland and asked him to do a skip-trace.”

Richard Voland had once served as one of Joanna’s chief deputies. Since leaving the department, he had hung out his shingle and now worked as Bisbee’s only private investigator. Even though Voland’s going rate was far under what was being charged in Tucson and Phoenix, Joanna knew it wasn’t an
inexpensive proposition. On the other hand, she couldn’t very well turn anyone from her own department loose on investigating something that was essentially a private matter, coyote or not.

“Dick Voland’s a private eye. He’ll end up charging us way more than the cleaning is worth,” Joanna pointed out, “and more than you’ll ever get back from Baker, either.”

“I don’t care,” Butch insisted. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Since Butch handled the rental properties, Joanna didn’t argue the point. And if Baker had been using their property as a cover for illegal activities, Butch was more than justified in being pissed at the man.

“Fair enough,” Joanna said finally. By then Dennis had drifted off to sleep. “I’m going to put him back in the crib. Don’t eat all the pizza while I’m gone.”

By the time Joanna and Butch were finishing their pizza, the wash between their house and High Lonesome Road was running at full flood stage. Ten miles to the south and west was another gully, Greenbush Draw. That one, near the tiny border community of Naco, had also turned from a sandy creek bed into a rushing torrent.

The transformation happened gradually. At first there was only a tiny trickle of water in the middle of the sandy bed, but as more and more water drained off the desert floor, the flow increased. Within minutes it expanded from being inches wide to more than a foot. Eventually a wall of water five feet
deep came roaring downstream, carrying in front of it the flotsam and jetsam—discarded backpacks, food wrappers, water containers—deposited by the unending army of illegal border crossers who also had to scramble through the usually dry creek bed and across that portion of the Sonoran Desert in their quest to gain entry into the United States.

At first the water rushed over the sand, but as the flow deepened and strengthened, the sand in the gully’s bed liquefied and began to move—and so did something else, something that had long lain undiscovered in that desolate, sandy wash.

Two black plastic bags, held together with a swathe of duct tape, had been buried deep enough in the sand that it took time for the anchoring weight of the sand to rise up and drift away. As the sand rose, so did the bags.

Time, the elements, and ravening insects had done their work well. The contents of the bags weren’t nearly as heavy as they had been when they’d first been placed there. Holes chewed in the material—also the work of industrious insects—did their part to keep the grisly package from actually floating, but the bags did move. They tumbled along in the murky red flood like some evil-looking bottom-dwelling fish.

Then, where the streambed curved sharply to the right, the roaring water overflowed the steep banks and surged out across hundreds of yards of flat desert floor. The trash bags were carried along there as well. They came to rest finally, caught up in the low-hanging branches of a scrawny mesquite tree. In the course of the night, as the storm moved northward, the water gradually receded. By morning the desert was a desert again, but the tattered bags were still there—sodden and stinking—waiting patiently for some poor unsus
pecting passerby to see them and uncover the horror lurking inside.

After being up with Dennis twice overnight, Joanna was sound asleep the next morning when Butch shook her awake at two minutes past six. “Up and at ’em, sleepyhead. There’s a deputy waiting for you outside. Didn’t you hear the dogs bark?”

“A deputy?” Joanna mumbled groggily. “This early? Which one, and how come? What’s he doing here?”

Butch shook his head. “I’m not sure which one,” he said. “I believe he said his name is Raymond.”

That would be Deputy Matt Raymond,
Joanna thought.

“According to him, our landline phone is currently out of order,” Butch continued. “And lightning took out two cell-phone towers up on Juniper Flats.”

Joanna sat up and tried to put her feet on the floor. They landed first on Lady, who refused to sleep anywhere but next to Joanna’s side of the bed. “That means my cell phone isn’t working either?”

“What it really means is that nobody in Bisbee has a working cell phone.”

“Great,” Joanna muttered. “So why’s Deputy Raymond here? What’s going on? Has something happened?”

“There’s evidently been some kind of incident down near Double Adobe,” Butch answered. “A fatality mobile-home fire. Dispatch thought you’d want to know about it.”

Joanna’s heart constricted. Jenny had spent the night with Cassie Parks in her family’s mobile home a few miles from Double Adobe. “Not Cassie’s—” she began.

Butch shook his head. “No,” he reassured her quickly. “I already checked. It’s not Cassie’s folks’ place. The fire’s within half a mile or so of there, but Jenny’s fine.”

“Thank God,” Joanna breathed. She got up and staggered toward the bathroom. “So much for having Saturday off. Tell Matt to go on ahead. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“No can do,” Butch said. “That storm parked itself right over the Mule Mountains and stayed there most of the night. Our wash is still running. So are the ones down on High Lonesome Road. Raymond managed to get through them in his four-wheel-drive Explorer. Your Crown Vic doesn’t have four-wheel drive and won’t do the job. It’s stranded here for the time being. He’s waiting to take you.”

“Even better,” Joanna muttered. Still shaking her head, she hurried into the bathroom. By the time she had showered and dressed, Deputy Raymond was in the kitchen drinking coffee and having an earnest conversation about the ins and outs of APUs—alternate power units—and the overall reliability of electrical generators. Dennis, already dressed and breakfasted, snoozed peacefully in his infant swing.

Red-haired and pink-cheeked, the baby looked for all the world like a sweet little cherub—nothing at all like the red-faced demon who had kept both his parents awake for much of the preceding night. That was the distressing reality about babies, Joanna realized. They got to nap at will off and on during the day while their poor zombielike parents did not.

Grateful that Butch wasn’t giving her any grief for abandoning him on a Saturday, she took the travel cup of coffee he offered her and headed for Deputy Raymond’s Explorer. “Butch said there’s a fatality,” she said as she buckled up. “Any idea who’s dead?”

Matt Raymond shook his head. “Dispatch may know the names. I don’t. From what I’ve heard, a woman, two kids, and a dog all survived. The man, confined to a wheelchair, didn’t.”

“Anything else going on that I should know about?” Joanna asked.

Deputy Raymond didn’t answer until after he’d picked his way across the rocky expanse of creek bed that was still running several inches deep with reddish-brown water.

“Most of the county got two-plus inches of rain. The Mule Mountains above Bisbee got the worst of it,” he replied finally. “Three and a half inches up there. We’ve spent the whole night dragging stranded doofuses out of flooded washes and dips all over the county. Phone and power lines are down between here and Douglas and between Bisbee and Tombstone. People are without power from Douglas east to the state line and there are spotty outages around Sierra Vista and Benson and over by Elfrida and Willcox as well. It’s a mess.”

“No wonder the phones are out,” Joanna said.

“Exactly,” Matt Raymond agreed. “Just what we needed.”

As they turned off High Lonesome onto Double Adobe Road, Joanna looked several miles to the east, where the remains of what must have once been a dark smudge of smoke were still visible against a cloudless blue sky. The fact that the smoke appeared to be white and dissipating meant that the fire was most likely fairly well under control.

Reaching for the car’s radio, Joanna called in to Dispatch, where Tica Romero was holding down her usual weekend shift. “Deputy Raymond got to you, then?” Tica asked. She sounded relieved to hear Joanna’s voice. “When I couldn’t reach you by either of your phones, I started to worry.”

“The washes by our house are still running, but we’re fine,” Joanna said with a laugh. “And thanks for sending Deputy Raymond to come get me. I won’t be able to drive the Civvie out until after the water goes down.”

“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger,” Tica returned. “You’re not the only one with no phone and lots of running water. This storm was a doozy. There are crews out working on downed phone and electrical lines all over the county. They’re getting things back on line, but it’s slow going. Where are you?”

“Headed down Double Adobe Road toward the scene of that fire. What can you tell me about it?”

“Not much. The phones were out. A passerby saw the flames. He stopped long enough to pound on the doors and help the survivors out. Then he drove down to Double Adobe and reported the fire at four-twenty this morning. By the time their volunteer fire department responded, the structure was fully engulfed. Afraid the fire might spread to other nearby structures, they called for backup from Bisbee and Douglas both.”

“What about the survivors?” Joanna asked. “Any injuries?”

“The woman who lived there, her two grandsons, and a dog are all fine,” Tica replied. “The woman’s husband was disabled. He was trapped in a back bedroom and couldn’t get out. We’re assuming he’s deceased. The mobile home is a complete loss.”

“Cause?” Joanna asked.

“It’s all speculation so far,” Tica returned. “We called out Detective Carbajal. If he’s not on the scene, he’s on his way. I believe Doc Winfield is headed there as well.”

Wonderful,
Joanna thought.
Another hitch in whatever plans Mother made for the weekend. George and I will both be in the doghouse.

“Anything else I should know about?”

“We’re still operating on backup generators here at the Justice Center,” Tica continued. “Chief Deputy Montoya is coming in to keep an eye on the situation here.”

It sounded as though Joanna’s department had been managing to keep things together in the face of a damaging storm, even with Joanna out of the picture.
But is that a good thing or a bad thing?
she wondered. Did it mean she had succeeded in creating a department where things could be delegated to the right people in the right jobs? That was one side of the coin. Or did it mean that she was really extraneous and they could get along fine without her?