Damage Control (5 page)

Joanna pushed aside that nagging bit of insecurity. “Tell Frank I’ll come in as soon as we’re finished here. Ask him to pull together a briefing. I’ll let you know when we’re headed in that direction.”

They drove past Mountain View Mobile Estates, the former KOA campground Dick and Susan Parks had re-created as a mobile home park. In the wintertime the place filled up. Countless snowbirds in their fifth-wheel campers or RVs crammed their vehicles in cheek by jowl, parking next to tiny concrete pads where they could throw out a patio chair or two. In the dead of summer, though, the place was virtually deserted, except for the modest double-wide where the Parks lived with their daughter, Jenny’s best friend.

Joanna knew the smoke and flames would have been visible from the Parkses’ front door, and someone had perished in the inferno. It was likely the two boys, grandsons of the man who had died, would turn out to be friends of Jenny’s and Cassie’s or, at the very least, acquaintances from riding the school bus.
Having a family tragedy come this close to her own daughter’s existence made Joanna uncomfortable. It was one thing for Joanna herself to deal with death, murder, and mayhem. After all, that was her job, but she would have liked to protect her daughter from that kind of ugliness.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed,
Joanna thought hopefully.
With any kind of luck, maybe Jenny and Cassie slept through the whole thing.

HALF A MILE BEYOND THE MOBILE HOME, PARK DEPUTY RAYMOND’S
Explorer came even with a collection of emergency vehicles, augmented by a number of private vehicles. The shoulder of the road was peppered with neighbors, curiosity seekers, and passersby, all of them hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

Matt drove across a cattle guard and then headed down a bumpy dirt road toward a grouping of three different fire trucks. Suited-up firemen were in the process of unpacking hoses from two of them. Crew members from the third were using lengths of hoses that had been strung from a stock tank to pump water onto the smoldering ruin. What little remained offered scant testimony that a few hours earlier a fully habitable mobile home had stood in that spot.

Catching sight of Detective Jaime Carbajal standing next to
his Econoline van, Joanna directed Matt Raymond that way. Once the wheels stopped moving, she hopped out and hurried over to Jaime. “Any word?” she asked.

“Morning, boss,” Jaime replied. “Yes. The word for the day would be stupidity. I haven’t talked to the survivors yet, but the fire chief told me the dead guy was a smoker. He was also on oxygen. The miracle is that he’s the only one who died.”

“Do we have any names?”

“Sunderson,” Jaime answered. “Leonard and Carol Sunderson. I don’t know the grandkids’ names. The grandparents were evidently raising the two boys.”

Joanna surveyed the scene and saw no one. “Where are they?” she asked.

“In their van,” he said, nodding toward an older-model VW bus with an empty wheelchair holder attached to the back. “They’re all pretty broken up. Reverend Maculyea just went over to talk to them. I thought I’d give them a little private time with her before barging in with a bunch of questions.”

It was only then that Joanna caught sight of Marianne Maculyea’s sea-foam-green antique VW Bug tucked in among the hulking fire trucks. Marianne was the pastor at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, which Joanna and Butch attended. More than that, though, she and Joanna had been best friends since junior high.

In the past several months, in the wake of disasters that had overtaken other small towns around the country, Bisbee’s various clergy members had joined together to create an emergency response team of their own. They had established an on-call duty roster so that, in a crisis, one of them could roll out at the same time the first responders did.

As if on cue, Marianne emerged from the van. Two boys, barefoot and wrapped in blankets, followed. One of them clutched a black-and-white mongrel dog to his chest. Marianne turned back and helped a gray-haired woman out of the dilapidated vehicle as well. Wearing a pair of what looked like oversized men’s pajamas, she too was barefoot. That was all these three unfortunate people had left in the world, Joanna realized. The clothes on their backs, the dog the one boy carried, and nothing else.

The two boys appeared to be several years younger than Jenny—one about seven and the other one maybe nine. Both were still wide-eyed with shock. The traumatized dog, a sheltie mix, shivered uncontrollably. The woman was fairly heavyset and somewhere in her late fifties to early sixties. Her frizzy gray hair stuck out in all directions, and her sunken, careworn face was twisted with grief.

Breaking away from Ernie, Joanna hurried up to them. “I’m Sheriff Brady,” she said, holding out a hand to the bereaved woman. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Sunderson.”

Biting her lip, Carol Sunderson nodded somberly. “Thank you,” she murmured.

The younger boy stared as if mesmerized at the remains of what had been their home.

“Where will we go, Grandma?” he asked plaintively. “What’s going to happen to us? Where will we live?”

“Hush, Danny,” the distraught woman said determinedly. “Don’t worry. We’ll manage somehow. We always have.”

Jaime walked up behind Joanna. “This is one of my investigators,” Joanna said, stepping aside to introduce him. “Detective Jaime Carbajal. He’ll need to talk to you,” she explained.
“Get some background, find out what happened, that sort of thing.”

Jaime handed Carol his card. She studied it for a long moment. As she did so, the look on her face changed abruptly. Joanna knew that was when the word “homicide” finally registered. Carol gave Jaime a beseeching look. “Do the boys have to be there while you do it?” she asked.

Unasked, Marianne immediately stepped into the breach. “I’ll bet you two are hungry,” she said, addressing the boys. “How about if I take you down to the Mini-Mart at Double Adobe and get you something to eat—doughnuts, cupcakes, juice, and maybe some chocolate milk?”

The younger boy’s face broke into a sudden smile at the proffered treat. “Real chocolate milk?” he asked. “Like in a carton?”

The older boy—the one holding the dog—shook his head and tightened his grip on his still traumatized pooch. “Only if Scamp gets to come along,” he declared.

“Great,” Marianne said. “By all means bring Scamp with you. He’s probably hungry, too. We’ll get him some food as well. That’s my car—the little green one over there by that last fire truck. Why don’t you go get in. I’ll be there in a minute.” As the boys walked away, taking the dog with them, Marianne turned back to Carol Sunderson. “Would you like something?” she asked. “We can bring it back here.”

“Coffee, please,” Carol said. “Black coffee would be nice, but don’t get me anything to eat. I’m not hungry.”

And won’t be for a long time,
Joanna thought. In the days and weeks that had followed the shooting death of her first husband, Sheriff Deputy Andrew Roy Brady, food had been the last thing she had wanted.

Leaving Carol with Jaime Carbajal, Joanna followed Marianne back toward her car. “Anything we should know?” she asked.

“The older boy is Rick; the younger one is Danny,” Marianne said. “Their father isn’t in the picture. Hasn’t been since Danny was born. Their mother, the Sundersons’ daughter, got caught up in the drug trade and is doing time for manslaughter back east somewhere. The grandparents have custody and have had since the boys were three and five.”

“And the grandfather?”

“A retired coal miner. Dusted. Came out here for his lungs.”

Bad lungs were a health hazard for miners everywhere. Copper miners used the code word “dusted.” In other places it was called “black lung disease.” Joanna wasn’t a smoker. Never had been, but the idea that a man whose lungs were already compromised would exacerbate the problem by smoking cigarettes was something that left her shaking her head. And lighting up a smoke in a room where oxygen was in use was, as Jaime Carbajal had already pointed out, downright stupid.

Marianne herded the boys into the car and directed them to buckle up. “I think she’s afraid he did it on purpose,” Marianne added quietly once the door closed behind them.

“On purpose?” Joanna asked.

Marianne nodded grimly. “Lenny Sunderson was in a wheelchair, and his health was deteriorating more and more. They’ve been scraping by on his Social Security and some pittance of a pension. Mrs. Sunderson says she thinks he decided he didn’t want to be more of a burden to her.”

“Offing himself and leaving his family homeless isn’t what I’d call helping,” Joanna observed.

Just then a battered pickup roared up behind them. As soon as it came to a stop, an outraged man sprang out of the driver’s seat. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “How did this happen?”

Joanna recognized the newcomer as Tom McCracken, an eccentric old codger who was Cochise County’s resident slumlord. Over the years he had bought up distressed properties everywhere from Pirtleville to Kansas Settlement. Without ever doing much to improve them, he rented them out to people of limited means. He had come to Joanna’s department on more than one occasion seeking help in carrying out eviction notices.

Jaime, holding one of Carol’s arms, was leading her toward his van, where they’d be able to talk with a semblance of privacy. Tom McCracken, wearing a frayed cowboy hat and down-at-the-heel boots, strode after them.

“What the hell did you people do?” he raged at Carol. “Set fire to the place? Is this the thanks I get for renting to poor white trash?”

Joanna hurried to cut him off. “Excuse me, Mr. McCracken,” she said. “Enough. Leave her alone.”

“Leave her alone? Why should I?” he went on, his face twisted in fury. “They’ve burned down my trailer! Those ratty little kids of hers probably torched it. Playing with matches, I’ll bet. Worthless little buggers!”

With a shake of her head, Marianne started her VW and drove away, taking the two boys safely out of earshot. Carol, pulling free of Jaime’s arm, turned back to face McCracken.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”

“You’re sorry?” he repeated. “My mobile is gone, and all you can say is that you’re sorry?”

“Come on, Mrs. Sunderson,” Jaime urged. “Ignore him.”

Joanna knew Tom McCracken to be a canny businessman. She had no doubt whatsoever that his rental mobile home was fully insured. Whatever settlement he received would be more than enough to purchase another run-down mobile home to replace the one that was gone. The Sundersons’ losses, on the other hand, were just exactly that—overwhelming, uninsured losses that wouldn’t be easily recouped.

“Please, Mr. McCracken,” Joanna said. “The fire was reported a little after four this morning, at a time when the two boys would have been in bed asleep. I doubt they had anything to do with it.”

“Who the hell—” the man began, turning his anger in Joanna’s direction. Then, recognizing her, he stopped. “Oh,” he said, a bit more reasonably. “Sheriff Brady. What are you doing here?”

“We believe your renter, Leonard Sunderson, died in the fire,” she told him. “That’s why we’re here. People from my department are investigating.”

It took a moment for Joanna’s words to penetrate McCracken’s fog of outrage.

“Sunderson died?” he repeated at last, sounding far more subdued. “My phone isn’t working. A friend of mine, Mason Timbers, was driving into town and saw the fire trucks. He came by the house to let me know what was going on. He never mentioned someone was dead. I had no idea.”

Joanna was relieved to see that hearing the news seemed to bring McCracken back to his senses. He might be an obnoxious old coot without enough good breeding to come right out and say he was sorry, but at least he backed off some. So did Joanna.

“That’s because your friend didn’t know,” she said. “No one did, and we haven’t actually confirmed the fatality at this point. The wreckage is still too hot to search.”

McCracken walked back to his pickup truck and leaned against it. He took off his hat and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The sun was fully up now, and with the humidity still off the charts after the previous night’s rain, Joanna could tell the day was going to be a scorcher.

“If the kids didn’t do it, what caused it, then?” McCracken asked.

Now was not the time to tell him Carol Sunderson was afraid her husband had deliberately caused the fire. “No way to know that until we’re able to do more investigating.”

McCracken nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “No sense in my hanging around here.” He opened the passenger door, reached into the glove box, and produced a business card that read “McCracken Enterprises.” He handed it over to Joanna. “If your people need to contact me, those are my numbers—once they get the phone service working again.” With that, he entered the pickup, slammed the door, started the engine, and drove away.

George Winfield had arrived unobserved during Joanna’s confrontation with Tom McCracken. “Good riddance to that little turd,” the medical examiner said now from just behind Joanna’s shoulder. “I liked the way you got rid of him. I’m here way too early to look for a body. What have we got?”

Joanna gave him a brief overview of what Marianne had said. “Two possible suicides in as many days, and one collateral damage,” George said. “This is starting to get old.”

She wondered if George even remembered that was the title of the book Butch was working on. Joanna was about to men
tion it when Deputy Armando Ruiz, one of Joanna’s relatively new hires, came up and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “There’s someone over there who says she needs to speak to you right away. She said she tried to call you, but her cell phone isn’t working.”

Joanna glanced in the direction Deputy Ruiz was pointing and spotted Jenny standing on the far side of the cattle guard leading into the Sunderson place. She stood next to Kiddo, her sorrel gelding quarter horse, with the reins clutched in one hand. With the other, she gave her mother a halfhearted self-conscious wave.

Without another word to anyone, Joanna hurried toward her daughter. “Jenny,” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to know what was going on,” Jenny began. “I tried calling, but—”

“I know, I know,” Joanna interrupted. “The phones aren’t working. But this is a crime scene, Jenny. You have no business—”

“Are Danny and Ricky all right?” Jenny asked.

That brought Joanna up short. “Danny and Ricky are fine.”

Jenny’s face flooded with relief. “Great,” she said.

“You know them, then?” Joanna asked.

Jenny nodded. “They’re good kids. Cassie takes care of them sometimes at her place when Mrs. Sunderson has to take her husband to the doctor or when she needs groceries or something.” By then Jenny’s boot was already in the stirrup. “I’ll go,” she added. “I know you don’t like having me around stuff like this. And I told Butch I’d come home early to help with Denny.”

Jenny was the only member of the family who routinely called the baby by that pet name. Jenny and Denny.

“Butch has a bunch of work to do on the book this weekend,” Jenny continued. “And since you’re not there, I’d better go. I’ll stop by Cassie’s and tell her that the boys are okay. She was worried.”

With that, Jenny wheeled Kiddo around and threaded her way through the parked vehicles. Once she was clear of them, she gave the horse a light jab in the ribs that brought him to a swift canter.

Watching her daughter head home, Joanna was flooded with yet another rush of insecurity. It wasn’t just her department that was more than capable of functioning without her. The same thing seemed to be true of her family as well.