Missing and Endangered

by J. A. Jance

  “Could the scratches have come from someone attacking him?” Joanna suggested.

  “Possibly,” Dr. Baldwin allowed.

  “Was he drunk?” Joanna asked.

  “Drunk?” Kendra sounded a bit puzzled. “I found no blood-alcohol content at all.”

  “Armando told his wife that when Leon Hogan came to the door that morning he appeared to be under the influence.”

  “He may have been,” Kendra conceded. “If so, it wasn’t due to booze. If there was something else in his system, it’ll show up in the tox screen. No telling how long that will take. By the way, I mentioned all of this to Dave Newton. He had glommed onto what Armando said about Leon Hogan being under the influence. He was not at all happy when I told him no alcohol was involved.”

  Joanna was busy putting puzzle pieces together, and she hit on the other thing Casey had mentioned—that there’d been signs of struggle in Leon Hogan’s living room, with dregs of coffee spilled on the protective order itself. Was it possible that Madison Hogan had slipped something into Leon’s coffee in an effort to incapacitate him? And if so, was there a chance that evidence of her doing so might linger on some of that coffee-stained paperwork?

  Kendra was still speaking. “. . . to the Taylor/Finch Funeral Home in Sierra Vista. They’ll be the ones handling the services.”

  “Anything else of interest?” Joanna asked.

  “I spoke to Armando’s surgeon early on, requesting a forensic examination of the slug removed during the surgery. A microscopic examination shows the presence of powdered glass on the bullet.”

  “Because it hit him after going through the safety glass in his car window?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes,” the M.E. replied. “But that safety glass might also have helped save his life. Leon fired from up on a porch. The angle was such that the bullet in question came through the car window on a slightly downward trajectory, striking the window frame along the way. That combination—the window frame and the window itself—might have slowed the velocity of the bullet enough that Armando’s internal damage is less severe than it would have been otherwise.”

  “What you’re saying,” Joanna murmured, “is thank God for safety glass.”

  As soon as the call with the M.E. ended, Joanna dialed the lab and passed along everything Doc Baldwin had told her.

  “All right,” Casey said. “Once Dave Hollicker gets back from Elfrida, I’ll have him take a close look at that window frame. Anything else?”

  “One thing more,” Joanna said. “Would it be possible to examine the coffee stains left on that protection order? There’s a chance Madison Hogan might have slipped Leon something, and using his morning coffee to deliver it would be a good bet.”

  “A mass spectrometer could tell us that in a blink,” Casey said.

  “But since we don’t have one of those,” Joanna muttered, “that’s probably a no go.”

  “Not exactly,” Casey said, “because you know who does have one? The Department of Public Safety. And you just happen to be talking to someone—that would be me, the CSI assigned to the case—who can request they use it.”

  “How does it work, and how soon can it happen?”

  “They’ll need a sample of the document itself, but I can put a rush on it and ask for the test to be done as soon as I can get the evidence to their lab in Phoenix.”

  “Get it ready, then,” Joanna ordered. “As soon as it is, I’ll have Tom Hadlock assign a deputy to make the delivery. Tox screens take forever. We want this done sooner rather than later.”

  Chapter 15

  That morning when Joanna left home, Butch had sent along a tuna sandwich for her lunch. She ate it while seated at her desk doing the boring but necessary administrative work her position as sheriff demanded. Movies and television shows made it sound as though people in her line of work bounced from one piece of high drama to the next, without anything in between.

  Unfortunately, what went on in all that “in between” space was both complicated and excruciatingly dull. How many vehicles did her department have? How many of them needed new tires at any given moment? How many computers out in the front office would need to be replaced? Was someone keeping up with the department’s cybersecurity needs? How many prisoners passed through the jail? How much was the county paying to feed them on any given day? And if you happened to have a jail guard who was doing things he shouldn’t with a female prisoner? Firing his ass was also Joanna’s responsibility—and she had done so, by the way—immediately.

  Late in the afternoon, Kristin tapped on the door. “Someone to see you, Sheriff Brady.”

  The seriousness in Kristin’s tone caught Joanna’s attention. “Who?” she asked, looking up from her paperwork.

  “A Mr. Lyndell Hogan,” Kristin replied.

  “Leon’s father?”

  Kristin nodded.

  “By all means send him in,” Joanna said.

  Joanna stepped out from behind her desk to welcome her visitor. The man who entered the room was an older gentleman, probably somewhere in his sixties. He was dressed in cowboy attire—jeans, boots, and a western shirt—and carried a worn Stetson in both hands. His long, silvery hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and an equally silver handlebar mustache graced his upper lip.

  “Howdy, Sheriff Brady,” he said, extending a hand as Joanna came forward to meet him. “Hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you like this,” he said in a soft drawl that reminded Joanna of her late father, D. H. Lathrop. “I was told if I needed any information, I should contact a guy named Dave Newton, but he doesn’t seem interested in getting back to me. Since you’re the local sheriff, I thought I’d come straight to the horse’s mouth.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Hogan,” Joanna said.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Appreciate it. My names Lyndell, but please call me Lyn.”

  Joanna glanced behind him. “Is your wife here, too?”

  “No, ma’am, Izzy’s a bit tuckered out. It’s a long drive from Cody to here. I parked her at the hotel so she could take a nap.”

  “You drove here from Wyoming?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, having a seat and placing the hat in his lap. “Took some time to find people to look after our livestock, so we didn’t leave until Friday morning. We had twenty-four hours and forty-six minutes of pure driving time, divided up over four days. Driving straight through wasn’t an option. We ran into some real bad weather in Colorado—a blizzard that pretty much stopped us in our tracks for the better part of a day and a half.”

  Joanna sat down to face him, and Lyndell continued. “Most people might’ve flown at a time like this, but Izzy’s folks died in a plane crash when she was just a little girl. She hasn’t set foot in a plane all her life, and she’s not about to start now.”

  “How can I help?” Joanna asked.

  “Well, ma’am, “ Lyn said, “seeing as how my son has turned up dead, I’d like to know the reason why.”

  “You do realize this isn’t my department’s investigation,” Joanna began. “Since one of my officers was involved—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I know,” Lyndell Hogan said impatiently, waving aside her objection. “Officer-involved shooting and all that. And if I could get that Dave Newton fella to call me back, I’d be talking to him. But he hasn’t, so I’m talking to you, and I’m asking you straight out. Just how much did Madison Gale have to do with it?”

  Joanna blinked at that. “Madison Gale?” she repeated.

  “Leastways that’s the name she was going by at the time Leon married her. So answer my question.”

  Joanna knew her reply needed to be circumspect. “We know that Madison was at the scene when all this happened,” she said, “but so far we have no hard evidence to suggest that she was directly involved.”

  “I’d bet money she was,” Lyn said. “Was she screwing around with that officer who shot Leon by any chance?”

  “Absolutely not!” Joanna declared. “Deputy Ruiz w
ent to your son’s residence to deliver a protection order. Armando Ruiz is a good guy, a married man with a wife and three kids. To my knowledge, prior to this week he’d had no previous interactions either with your son or with Madison.”

  “Wait,” Hogan said. “You’re saying my son finally wised up and asked for a protection order against that witch? We’ve been telling him to do that for months.”

  “I’m afraid it was the other way around,” Joanna replied. “Madison swore out a protection order on him.”

  “That’s ridiculous, when all this time she’s the one who’s been beating the crap out of him.”

  “You knew she could be violent, then?”

  “Absolutely,” Lyn asserted.

  “If she lied to get the protection order, maybe we should start by having you tell me what you know,” Joanna said quietly. “But would you mind if I invited one of my detectives to join us?”

  “Not at all,” Hogan said. “The more people who know the truth about that little hussy, the better off we’ll be.”

  When Joanna called over to the bullpen, Ernie Carpenter was the only guy available. He lumbered into her office, where after a brief introduction he took a seat next to her visitor.

  “Mr. Hogan here seems to be under the impression that Madison might have had something to do with his son’s death. I’m hoping he can provide us with some background information.”

  Ernie nodded sagely. “Seems like a good idea,” he said. “So how about if you start at the beginning, Mr. Hogan?”

  Lyn heaved a deep sigh and ran his hands around the brim of his hat as if searching for a place to start. “You need to understand that me and my boy didn’t always see eye to eye,” he said finally. “Fact is, once Leon hit high school, the two of us butted heads most all the time. We’ve got this cattle ranch, you see. I wanted him to go off to college, be an aggie, and then come home and take over running the place, but he didn’t want nothin’ to do with it—not with running the ranch and not with going to college neither. Soon as he was old enough to do so on his own, he enlisted in the army. Told his mom he wanted to be a mechanic and the army would train him for that for free. And he was right about that. They evidently turned him into a first-rate mechanic.

  “I was mad as hell when he left, but you know how mothers are. Izzy stayed in touch with him the whole time. I kept thinking he’d wise up and come home. He did three two-year hitches, spent some time in the Middle East, and then ended up being stationed at Fort Huachuca, working in the motor pool. That’s when he hooked up with Madison.”

  “How long ago was that?” Joanna asked.

  Lyn shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. Four years ago, maybe?”

  “Wait,” Joanna said. “The two kids are seven and five. Are you saying your son wasn’t Kendall and Peter’s biological father?”

  “Nope,” Hogan replied. “Madison and the two kids came as a package deal, but I can tell you, once things started going downhill, those kids were the only reason Leon stuck around. He had adopted them, you know. Kendall had some other last name to begin with. I forget what it was, and Peter’s last name was Gale. When Leon adopted them, they all ended up with the same name—his. And that was the one thing that kept him from filing for a divorce, you see. He was their adoptive father, and their stepfather, too. He didn’t think there was any way in hell that the courts would grant him a shared-custody arrangement, much less full custody. Especially when Madison told him that if he ever tried to divorce her, she’d say he’d been molesting the little girl—which he hadn’t, by the way. My son loved that little girl beyond bearing.”

  Joanna was astonished. It had never occurred to her that Leon was anything other than Kendall and Peter’s biological father. And what Lyndell Hogan was saying was inarguably true. In a custody hearing, a stepfather wouldn’t stand a fighting chance, especially one who’d had a child-molestation charge lobbed against him. Proven or not, that was something that would have stuck to Leon Hogan like glue. After all, when Joanna had first heard there were domestic-violence issues in the household, hadn’t she assumed that Leon had been the one at fault? It wasn’t just divorce courts that were biased in that direction.

  Suddenly Joanna had a much clearer idea of why Leon would have been reluctant to press charges during those previous domestic-violence incidents. He’d been doing his best to hold the marriage together, maybe for no other reason than to create a line of defense between two young kids and a potentially violent mother.

  “You told us earlier that you and your son were estranged,” Ernie offered. “So how come you know so much about all of this?”

  “I think I told you I come from a long line of ranchers. Our place has been in our family for three generations now. Years back a lot of our ranch hands came through that old bracero program. One of the best of those guys was named Eduardo Moreno. He had worked for my dad for years before he married a local girl and was able to become a U.S. citizen. Their youngest son, Jorge, and I grew up as best friends. We played football, baseball, and basketball together all through high school, but Jorge was always the smart one. After graduating we both went to the University of Wyoming. I was an aggie, Jorge was prelaw. I went back home and became a rancher. Jorge went to law school, became an attorney, and eventually settled in Tucson—Jorge Moreno. Ever heard of him?”

  Joanna and Ernie shook their heads in unison.

  “We lost track of each other over time, but then, a couple years back there was a big piece about Jorge in our alumni magazine, because he’d been given some prestigious award. And that’s when I found out that he’s built a national name for himself in representing husbands who are being booted around during the course of family divorce proceedings, and most especially ones who are fighting to be granted custody of their kids.

  “As I said, Leon and I had been estranged, but once Izzy told me what was going on, I called Leon up, put him in touch with Jorge, and told him that whatever the bill was, I’d pay it. And that’s what broke the ice between us. Leon was incredibly grateful for the help. When it came time for him to move out, I helped him with that, too—paid his first and last months’ rent and security deposit. It was a small price to pay—pocket change, really—to get my son back.”

  Lyndell Hogan paused for a moment, fighting back tears and searching for words. “Except I didn’t get him back,” he said at last. “Now he’s dead.”

  Hogan pulled a hankie out of his pocket and dabbed at his eyes. Then he turned his gaze on Joanna. “That’s my story,” he said. “What can you tell me?”

  Before Joanna could say anything, Ernie asked another question. “When your son was telling you about all his difficulties, how did the two of you communicate—by phone, e-mails, texts?”

  Lyn frowned. “Mostly by text,” he said, “although there were some e-mails, too. Why?”

  “And do you routinely erase text messages?” Ernie asked.

  “Hell no, why would I? As much as I use that phone, it’s not like it’s going to get so full of stuff that it blows up. But you haven’t told me why you’re asking.”

  “Because it sounds to me as though your son really cared about those kids—as though he thought of them as his kids rather than hers.”

  Hogan nodded and said nothing.

  “With Leon gone, Madison is all those kids have left.”

  Lyn Hogan nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “Their mother and us—Izzy and me. Madison may not think much of us as grandparents, but that’s how we think of ourselves. Leon went to court to make those kids his. In my book that means they’re ours, too.”

  “So if something were to happen to Madison, would you and your wife be willing to take the kids?” Ernie asked.

  “In a heartbeat,” Lyndell Hogan declared, “and without a moment’s hesitation. And if it comes to taking her to court to ask for custody of the kids, we’re up for that, too. As far as I’m concerned, if there were ever an unfit mother, Madison Hogan is it!”

  “In that case,” Er
nie said, “having access to those contemporaneous texts and e-mails would go a long way to telling the real story about what was going on behind closed doors while Leon was still here. It would also give Leon a chance to speak out on his kids’ behalf from beyond the grave. It might be possible for the court to consider it as deathbed testimony. Mind if I take a look?”

  There was a long silence after that. It wasn’t easy, but Joanna somehow managed to stifle the impulse to get up and hug Ernie Carpenter around the neck. Finally Lyndell Hogan reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his phone. He logged in with several swipes and taps before passing it over to Ernie.

  “Here you go,” Lyn said. “Be my guest. I turned it on. All you have to do is go to my text and e-mail folders. Everything is in there—all of it. What he sent to me, what I sent to him, and a lot of what he sent back and forth to Jorge. Since I was paying the bill, Leon copied me on most of their correspondence.”

  For the better part of a minute, Ernie studied the screen in stony silence. Finally he looked back at Lyndell. “We’ll be able to get all this material from Leon’s phone, too, but doing that will take warrants, time, and all kinds of technical effort that we don’t necessarily have available. It’ll go a hell of a lot faster if we simply copy what’s already here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Lyn said. “Copy away.”

  Ernie glanced at his watch. “Maybe I can catch Kristin before she takes off.” Without another word Ernie took the phone and left the room.

  When Frank Montoya accepted the job in Sierra Vista, his departure had left Joanna in a world of hurt when it came to having someone who was up to speed on all things cyber. Fortunately, her secretary, Kristin Gregovich, had stepped into that void and was the department’s current IT guru.

  While Ernie was gone, Joanna did her best to bring Lyndell Hogan up to speed, sharing what information she could about the ongoing investigation. In actual fact she probably told him more than she should have, but that was too bad. If Dave Newton found out about it and raised hell? That was a risk Joanna was willing to take.