Damage Control (9 page)

“At Crocker’s Motel out in the Terraces,” Joanna said. “Marianne got them vouchers to stay there for five days.”

Jenny made a face. “That old place? It looks like a dump.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Joanna said. “At least they’ll have a roof over their heads. It’s the only motel in town that takes dogs.”

“Oh,” Jenny said. “But where will they go when the five days are up?”

Joanna liked the fact that Jenny was worried about the displaced family, but it concerned her, too. People who cared too much sometimes got hurt.

“I have no idea,” Joanna told her daughter. “Marianne’s working on the problem, but the fire just happened this morning. Sorting out those kinds of arrangements takes time.”

Jenny wasn’t ready to drop the subject. “What about our house?” she asked. “Our other house. Butch told me this morning that the renter moved out and left the place a mess. Maybe Mrs. Sunderson and the kids could live there.”

Joanna had an idea that the reason the Sundersons had settled on Tom McCracken’s hovel of a mobile home was that the price had been right—the rent, that is. And if the family had struggled financially when Mr. Sunderson was alive, Carol and the two boys would most likely be having to make do on less than they’d had before, now that he was gone.

“I doubt they’d be able to afford it,” Joanna said.

“Oh,” Jenny said again.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly quiet—as quiet as afternoons get when there’s a baby in the house. Butch returned fi
nally with a carload of groceries, including steaks for dinner. “Doesn’t look like it’ll rain tonight,” he said. “But they’re expecting another storm tomorrow.”

Let’s hope it’s not as bad as yesterday’s,
Joanna thought.

George Winfield called a little after four. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Back at the fire scene on Double Adobe Road,” he said. “Ted is about to finish up. Then I’ll have a go at it.”

“Ted?” Joanna asked. “Who’s he?”

“Ted Carrell’s the arson investigator from Tucson,” George said. “I thought you called him in.”

I did,
Joanna thought.
But that doesn’t mean I know the man’s name.

“Anyway, he and Blackie have been here for some time. Ernie and I are waiting them out.”

“Blackie?”

“The accelerant-sniffing dog. They’ve been combing through the ashes.”

“Finding much?” Joanna asked.

“Evidently not,” George said. “The heat at the far end of the trailer was incredibly intense.”

“The end with the victim’s bedroom?”

“That’s right. He said what we’ll find will be more like cremains than anything else. Ashes to ashes, as it were.”

One of the things Joanna appreciated about George Winfield was his ability to use a light touch in what were often really tough circumstances. As far as Joanna was concerned, picking through a burned-out trailer in search of scorched body parts was tough.

“While I’m hanging around waiting, though,” George continued, “I thought you’d want to know about this morning’s autopsy. Since Alfred was driving, I did him first. With everything else that’s going on, Martha’s going to have to wait until Monday.”

“Find anything?” Joanna asked.

“About what you’d expect in this kind of incident,” George returned. “The man had multiple injuries. Lots of broken bones. What actually killed him, however, was a severe blow to the side of the head. The air bags deployed as soon as the car hit the first time, but the car went end over end several times. It was one of those later flips that slammed Alfred’s head into the door frame.”

“Any sign of Alzheimer’s?” Joanna asked.

“Not in what I saw,” George said. “I suppose there might be microscopic evidence of plaque that will turn up in later tissue analysis. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye.”

“Have you talked to Ernie?” Joanna asked.

“Yes. He was already at the scene when I got here.”

“Did he tell you about the Beasleys’ joint suicide note?”

“Yes, he did,” George answered. “But if Alfred Beasley was developing Alzheimer’s, it was very early on.”

“You’re saying he overreacted?”

“I’m saying he did what he thought he had to do. Maybe Alfred forgot where he left his car keys that morning or what he had for breakfast. But after he saw what happened to his mother, the idea that he might be developing Alzheimer’s scared the daylights out of him. Worried that his ailing wife would be left behind with no one to take care of her, he took what looked to him
like the easy way out. And I can’t say that I blame him. If I’d been in his place, maybe I would have done the same thing. When Annie and Abby were sick and dying, if I’d thought I was coming down with Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s, I probably would have done something along that same line.”

George didn’t talk about his previous family much, but Joanna knew that both his wife and his daughter had died of cervical cancer. She also knew that he had shouldered most of their end-of-life care. Leaving them alone would have been unthinkable. From that perspective Joanna wasn’t sure she could fault Alfred Beasley’s actions, either.

“Speaking of overreacting and mothers,” George went on. “Have you heard from yours this afternoon?”

“Not in the last couple of hours,” Joanna answered. “She was here helping Butch with the baby earlier this morning, but she left around one or so, shortly after I got home. Why?”

George sighed. “I’ve tried calling her cell several times. She isn’t answering. The calls go straight to voice mail. I know Ellie’s bent out of shape that I messed up her dinner plans last night, but it’s not like her to miss an opportunity to give me a piece of her mind.”

Joanna had to agree that keeping quiet was
very
unlike her mother. In that regard, George’s misgivings about what was going on at home seemed to jibe with her own.

“Did you quarrel?” Joanna asked.

“It takes two to quarrel,” George observed. “Ellie evidently isn’t speaking to me. She was closeted in the guest room when I came home last night, and she was up and out this morning before I woke up. Did she say anything to you about what’s got her all riled up?”

“Not really,” Joanna admitted honestly. “I noticed she wasn’t herself, but I got the feeling she was upset about something—mostly that you’re working too hard.”

“If people would stop dropping like flies around here, maybe I wouldn’t have to. Anyway, I suppose she’ll get around to letting me have it eventually. In the meantime, here comes Ted. That probably means it’s time for Ernie and me to go to work. If you happen to hear from her, ask her to give me a call.”

“Sure, George,” Joanna said. “Will do.”
Not that it’ll do any good.

“What’s up?” Butch asked when Joanna put down the phone.

“George and Mom are evidently on the outs. He was wondering if I knew anything about it, and I told him I don’t. Do you?”

“Me?” Butch asked with a smile. “I’m Eleanor’s son-in-law, remember? I got the feeling she showed up to help me today because she’s of the opinion that I’m reasonably incompetent. But just because she’s willing to lend a hand doesn’t mean she’d be willing to confide in me.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Joanna said, “Mom thinks I’m reasonably incompetent, too, and she doesn’t confide in me, either.”

“Good,” Butch said. “If there’s something going on between them, we’d best not get in the middle of it. No Kevlar vest in the universe will protect you from that kind of cross fire.”

An hour later, when the phone rang again, Joanna expected the caller to be either George or her mother. Instead Dave Hollicker was on the line.

“Hi, boss,” he said. Joanna appreciated the fact that most of her people referred to her that way. “Thought you’d want to know that we finally got Jaime’s bags of bones hauled back to the lab. No
easy thing, by the way. I tried to do it in the van. Without four-wheel drive, that didn’t work out too well, but we’re here now.”

Joanna seemed to remember mentioning four-wheel drive, but there was no point in reminding Dave of that right now.

“So what have you got?”

“As Jaime said, mostly skeletal. We’ve got a good fifty pounds of sand in the bags with the bones. I’ve been going through all that with a fine screen and a brush to see what else might be in there. So far, I’ve found a few remnants of clothing—what looks like part of a T-shirt, what’s left of a pair of jeans, size twenty, and a pair of woman’s Keds. Size nine. From the condition of those I’d say we’re dealing with something that’s months old rather than years.”

“But a female victim, then,” Joanna said. “A wide-load female victim. Any signs of homicidal violence?”

“Plenty,” Dave replied. “In my opinion, at least, although we’ll leave it to Doc Winfield to have the final word on that. Evidence of some stab wounds to the ribs, but I doubt those were fatal. From what I see, our victim has a thoroughly crushed skull—from several different blows. I found some pieces of duct tape inside the bags. One single strip and two that were formed into bands. Since the bones were no longer connected to each other, it’s hard to determine where the tape was or what it was used for. If I were a betting man, I’d say the two bands were probably used for restraints on her hands and legs.”

“And the flat strip was probably used as a gag?” Joanna asked.

“Seems like,” Dave agreed.

“What about blood? Did you find any evidence of that?”

“Luminol says yes,” Dave replied. “Lots. I’d say the victim exsanguinated while inside the bags.”

Joanna didn’t have a lot of patience when Dave or anyone else started tossing around crime lab jargon. “You’re saying she bled to death inside the bags; that the victim was alive when her killer taped her inside?”

Dave paused for a moment before he answered. “Yes,” he said finally. “Affirmative on that.”

His reluctant confirmation left Joanna feeling half sick. Unsuccessful at stabbing Jane Doe, her killer or killers had trussed her, stuffed her inside the bags, and then finished her off with blows to the head. No matter how many times Joanna encountered man’s inhumanity to man, it was always shocking; always troubling; always disturbing.

“Anyway,” Dave continued, “I’d like to call Casey and ask her to come in to help out. I’m guessing that once the sand got inside the bags, any fingerprints on the inside of the plastic probably got scrubbed off, but with all the duct tape, maybe we’ll be able to find evidence on some of that. The tape may have protected some trace evidence—DNA evidence and/or fingerprints—from being washed away.”

Casey Ledford was the department’s resident latent fingerprint expert. Joanna knew that duct tape used in the commission of crimes often proved to be a good collection source for both DNA and fingerprints. Between the two of them, though, Joanna was hoping for the latter. Yes, DNA results could nail crooks with astonishing reliability, even on cases that were decades old. The problem with DNA evidence was not so much a matter of reliability as it was the time it took to get results. DNA testing often required months, if not years. With the advent of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a hit on an unidentified
fingerprint could be accomplished in a far more timely manner—in minutes, as opposed to months.

“Thanks for checking with me on this, Dave,” Joanna said. “I’ll let Frank know I’ve personally authorized the overtime.”

The rest of the evening was reasonably quiet. Butch grilled the steaks and boiled some fresh corn on the cob. Once the baby was in bed and Jenny was in her room with her dogs and her TV set, Joanna and Butch settled down on the swing on the outside patio and shared a bottle of wine. It was quiet. The day’s heat had burned off and the humidity had dissipated. A slight breeze was blowing from the south, and the black velvet sky overhead was littered with stars.

Lady sat with her head in Joanna’s lap, soaking up some individual attention that didn’t have to be shared with a baby or the other two dogs.

“I heard from Carole Anne today,” Butch said.

Carole Anne Wilson was Butch’s editor at Hawthorn Press.

“And?” Joanna asked.

“She asked again if I’d be willing to go on tour for
Serve and Protect
.”

That book, Butch’s first, was due out at the end of September. It had been finished for a long time as opposed to the one in manuscript form that had been shipped to New York earlier that day.

“What did you tell her?” Joanna asked.

“That I’d need to talk it over with you. For one thing, these days it’s unusual for publishers to send beginning authors out on tour. I’m gratified that they’re still thinking about it, especially since I already told them no. Twice.”

“Carole Anne’s never been very good at taking no for an answer,” Joanna said.

“True,” Butch agreed, “and I’d like to do it, but how would we manage? More importantly, how would you manage? I’d only be gone for two weeks, but still, that’s a long time for you to get along on your own with both kids. This summer Jenny’s been a huge help, but once she goes back to school…” He paused. “What about your mother?”

“My mother?” Joanna repeated.

“You should have seen her with Dennis this morning. She was great with him.”

Joanna was already shaking her head. “No way,” she said. “I couldn’t deal with my mother for two full weeks. Either I’d end up killing her or it would be the other way around.”

“I thought as much,” Butch said. “I’ll call Carole Anne back first thing Monday morning and tell her to forget about it. I’ll tell her there’s no way I can go.”

One of the things Joanna and Butch had discussed often was the reality that she was an elected official. Being sheriff wasn’t a lifetime job. She served at the whims of her constituents. She and Butch were both hoping that his career as a writer would take off while Joanna’s job situation was still stable. And going on book tours was one of the prices of success.

What about all those months when Butch was here keeping the home fires burning when I was out running for office?
Joanna thought.
Doesn’t he deserve a little of his own back?

“Don’t do that,” Joanna objected. “Don’t call her and turn it down. A book tour on a first book sounds like an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up. No matter how much we have to scramble, we’ll figure out a way to make it work.”