by J. A. Jance
“So?”
“It’s a white, odorless compound that resembles salt. Or sweetener. And it dissolves readily in liquids.”
Joanna felt her pulse quicken. “I suppose it’s also poisonous?” she asked.
“Very,” Dave agreed. “More poisonous than cyanide.”
“And tasteless?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dave answered. “And I don’t know how you’d find out for sure. Who’d be willing to taste it, and how would they tell us what they’d found out after they died? But since it evidently ended up in Rochelle Baxter’s iced tea and since she emptied the glass without noticing, we pretty much have to assume it’s tasteless.”
“If sodium azide is that deadly, how come she didn’t die right away?”
“Ingested poisons don’t work until they’re assimilated into the bloodstream. If you breathe it in, it can kill almost instantly. I’m lucky I just got woozy when I did. Otherwise, you’d be having another Fallen Officer funeral in a day or two,” Dave went on.
“Thank God,” Joanna said. “But tell me, where would somebody get this awful stuff?”
“That’s the really bad news,” Dave Hollicker replied. “The answer is, almost anywhere. It’s not a controlled substance, so you could buy a whole barrel of it if you wanted. You could also rip the air bags out of your car and claim somebody stole them. Or else you could go to your local junkyard. If a car wrecks and the air bags are deployed, it’s not a problem. Once the air bag inflates, what’s left after the sodium azide oxidizes is totally harmless. It’s the undeployed air bags with their canisters of unused sodium azide that are the problem.”
“Don’t junkyards strip the air bags out and sell them?” Joanna objected. “My understanding is that they can be parted out and reused.”
“That’s how everybody assumed it would work,” Dave said. “In actual practice, it’s not that simple. People don’t want to ride around in a vehicle where their life and the lives of their loved ones depend on the effectiveness of somebody else’s secondhand air bag. And, if death or injury occurs in a vehicle fitted with a used air bag, there’s always a potential liability problem. All of which leaves this country with millions of unrecycled air bags sitting in junkyards everywhere.”
“The sodium azide is loose, then?” Joanna asked.
“No. It comes in little aluminum canisters about the size of tuna-fish cans. I’m guessing there are stacks of dozens of those little hummers sitting on used-parts shelves in junkyards in Cochise County alone.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna objected. “You’ve told me this is a deadly poison. Do you mean somebody could just walk in off the street and pick a can of it off a shelf?”
“You ever been to a junkyard, boss?” Dave Hollicker asked.
“Not recently.”
“Well, that’s pretty much how they work. Around here, junkyards are long on self-service.”
“Can sodium azide be traced?”
“You mean have the manufacturers put markers in it the way they do with explosives?”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose it’s possible, but I’m guessing the automobile industry would be dead-set against it.”
“Because they don’t want to admit the stuff is a potential problem?”
“You’ve got it,” Dave agreed.
“Great,” Joanna said. “It’s readily available, totally untraceable, and deadly.”
“And that’s what was in those tampered sweetener packets that Casey and I brought back from Latisha Wall’s place down in Naco. I’ve got the DPS crime lab’s printed analysis right here in my hand.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?” Joanna asked.
“Not yet. I’ve been cooling my heels around here all day waiting for test results. They dissolved some and ran it through an ion chromatograph. That’s what I have right now—a preliminary report and a tentative identification of sodium azide. They’ll do a confirmation test using mass spectrometry. The lab manager told me we won’t have tentative results on that for another day or so. Official results will take another week. The criminalist I talked to says they can use the same technique on vomit samples if Doc Winfield sends them along, but that takes up to two weeks longer. I thought you should be the first to know.”
“Thanks for calling,” Joanna said. “I’ll get on the horn and tell everyone else.”
“Do you want me to come by the office with this when I get back to Bisbee, or can it wait until tomorrow?”
Joanna thought about the board of supervisors meeting and the looming overtime issue. “No, since it’s just a preliminary copy, have the lab fax one to the department tonight. Nobody will be able to work on it before tomorrow or Monday anyway. Good work, Dave,” she added. “You and Casey deserve a lot of credit for being on top of this.”
“Thanks, boss,” he said, “but isn’t that what you pay us to do?”
Joanna heard the unmistakable pleasure in his voice at having been given a compliment. “You’re right,” she returned. “That’s exactly why we pay you the big bucks.”
By the time she hung up, Butch had gone over to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “I can hear it already,” he said. “They’re sucking you back into work, aren’t they?”
“Not really,” Joanna said. “But now that we know what killed Rochelle Baxter, I have to tell people. I’ll make some calls. It won’t take more than a few minutes.”
She went into the living room. Butch, tired of having the dining-room table constantly littered with work-related papers, had redesigned the living room. Eva Lou Brady’s little fifties-era telephone table had been replaced by a secondhand cherry secretary, where Joanna’s papers could be spread out and the hinged desk surface closed up over them when necessary.
Joanna retreated there and picked up the phone. The first call she made was to Jaime Carbajal.
When Jaime’s wife, Delcia, said, “Hold on, I’ll get him,” Joanna glanced guiltily at her watch. It was only a few minutes past four. Good, she thought. At least it’s too early for me to be interrupting dinner.
When Jaime came to the phone, he sounded out of breath. “Pepe and I were out doing batting practice,” he said. “Frank told me earlier about Sadie. Is Jenny okay?”
“She’s fine,” Joanna returned. “In fact, she’s handling it better than I am at this point, but tell me about the interview with Bobo Jenkins. How did it go?”
“No surprises there,” Jaime said. “Bobo insists he had nothing to do with what happened to Latisha Wall. He claims the two of them were in love and that he had no reason to harm her.”
“Did he mention being afraid that she was about to break up with him?”
“He said something about it, but he claimed things were fine between them when he left her place on Wednesday night. As far as I’m concerned, that remains to be seen.”
“Did you let him know we found his prints on the sweetener packets?”
“No. That’s a holdback. I didn’t want to say anything about that until I had a chance to talk to both Dave and Casey.”
“Makes sense,” Joanna said.
“Did you ask Bobo about Dee Canfield?”
“Affirmative. He claims the last time he saw her was in the gallery on Thursday morning. He said you were there at the same time. He says he has no idea what happened to her afterward, and he has no clue where she and Warren might have gone.”
“He’s right,” Joanna said. “I was there when he was. Now what’s the deal on the search warrant?”
“Not yet,” Jaime said. “I finally found out why the judge didn’t come home last night. Mrs. Moore ended up in TMC with an emergency appendectomy. I talked to their house sitter. She says Judge Moore is supposedly coming back to Bisbee tonight. The soonest I’ll be able to get the warrant and serve it will be later this evening.”
“That’ll have to do, then,” Joanna said. “If you want someone along when you serve it, check with Frank.”
“Will do,” J
aime said. “Now, what about Dave Hollicker?”
The detective listened in silence while Joanna told him what the crime scene investigator had learned. “Does Frank know about any of this?” Detective Carbajal asked.
“He’s my next call.”
She tried Frank’s home number and got no answer. Next she called the department.
“He’s in,” Lupe Alvarez told her. “But he’s got someone with him at the moment. That guy from Washington.”
Beaumont again, Joanna thought. Good enough. Let Frank deal with him.
“Have Chief Deputy Montoya call me when he’s done,” Joanna said. “I’m at home. Anything else I should know about now that I’m available?”
“Yes,” Lupe said. “You’ve had three calls from someone named Cornelia Lester. She says she’s . . .”
Joanna remembered the name from the next-of-kin contact sheet in Latisha Wall’s file. “I know who she is. Is she here in town?”
“Yes. She’s staying at the Copper Queen, room five-twelve.”
Joanna picked up a pen. “Do you have the number?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better give it to me, then,” Joanna said, once again dreading the thought of having to speak to yet another grieving relative. “I’ll call her back while I’m waiting to hear from Frank.”
Twelve
BY FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I was back at the Cochise County Justice Center. “I’m sorry, but Sheriff Brady has had a family emergency,” the same public lobby receptionist told me. “She’s not available at this time.”
“What about her second-in-command?” I asked.
“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his line at the moment. When he’s free, I’ll let him know you’re here.”
“And my name is—”
“I know,” she returned. “You’re Special Investigator Beaumont. I remember you from earlier.”
I wondered about that. Did she remember my name because she just happened to remember it, or had her boss passed the word that I was persona non grata? For the next ten minutes, I cooled my heels in the lobby. The longer I waited, the more I fumed. It wasn’t as though I was in a hurry or had anywhere else to go. It was the principle of the thing. So far, Sheriff Brady and her department had been something less than cooperative.
I found myself once again studying the picture montage in that glass display case. Joanna Brady may have been cute as a button when she was a little kid, dressed in a Brownie uniform and selling Girl Scout cookies like mad. Maybe she still was, but cute wasn’t working on me.
Eventually the secured door to the back offices opened and out walked a late-thirty-something Hispanic guy. He wore the same kind of uniform the sheriff had been wearing when I last saw her, although his was free of curves. And his head was shaved absolutely smooth.
“Hello,” he said as he approached my chair. “You must be Special Investigator Beaumont. I’m Chief Deputy Frank Montoya. What can I do for you?”
He escorted me back to his office, which was in the same wing of the building as the sheriff’s private office. I thought maybe I could pull out the good ol’ boy card and jolly Chief Deputy Montoya out of some useful information. But Sheriff Brady had her people firmly in line as far as J.P. Beaumont was concerned. Montoya gave me diddly-squat.
“Look,” he said in answer to my direct question about the Bobo Jenkins interview. “I can appreciate your wanting to know about that, but our department is conducting what is becoming a more and more complicated investigation. Without Sheriff Brady’s express permission, I’m not authorized to give out any information. Period.”
“It is complicated,” I agreed, “what with the addition of not one but two missing persons cases.”
Montoya’s eyes narrowed when I said that. He didn’t like my knowing about the missing art dealer and her boyfriend.
Too bad, I thought. I found that out on my own, Mr. Chief Deputy Montoya. If you don’t like it, you’ll just have to lump it.
“If I were Sheriff Brady,” I said aloud, “I think I’d be glad to have an extra detective show up and lend a hand with all this.”
Frank Montoya’s lips curled into a tight smile. “I don’t think that’s quite how she views the situation,” he said. “And until I have a chance to talk to her about it . . .”
By then I had pretty well decided that Sheriff Brady’s supposed family emergency was nothing but a smoke screen to keep me out of her hair.
“When will that be?” I asked. “When will you be able to talk to her again? And how long is this so-called family emergency scheduled to last?”
That one pissed him off. “As long as it takes,” he replied, standing up. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m quite busy at the moment.”
With that he escorted me to the door, down the hall, and back into the public lobby. As he booted me out I realized that, years ago when I had the chance, I should have coughed up the six hundred bucks and taken myself through the Dale Carnegie course.
JOANNA DIALED THE HOTEL and was relieved when Cornelia Lester didn’t answer. She left word with the desk clerk and had just put down the phone when Frank called her back. “Losing a dog is tough,” he said. “How’s Jenny faring?”
Joanna liked the fact that everyone who knew about Sadie asked about Jenny. “Better than I would have expected,” Joanna told him. “She took Kiddo and Tigger and went for a ride. Now, tell me. What did Mr. Beaumont want?”
“Anything and everything,” Frank replied.
“I’m not surprised, but what exactly?”
“He asked about the Bobo Jenkins interview.”
It was something Joanna hadn’t anticipated. “How did he know about that?” she demanded.
“Who knows?” Frank replied. “I sure as hell didn’t tell him. He also asked if we were making any progress in locating Dee Canfield and her boyfriend.”
“So he knows about the missing persons part of it, too,” Joanna mused. “Who all has he been talking to?”
“Beats me, boss,” Frank said. “Remember, though, the man’s an ex—homicide detective. He’s probably been all over town asking questions. You know how people here love to talk.”
Joanna knew that very well. Bisbee was a small place where everyone had a finger in everyone else’s pie.
“What did you tell him?” she asked.
“Nothing. Not without your approval.”
“Which I’m not in danger of giving anytime soon,” Joanna said. “Now let me tell you what Dave Hollicker found out.”
When she finished explaining about sodium azide, Frank Montoya was aghast. “Geez!” he exclaimed. “That stuff sounds scary!”
“You’ve got that right,” Joanna told him grimly. “It’s scary as hell.”
“You’re saying this sodium azide crap is lying around all over the place where any nutcase in the universe can lay hands on it?”
“That’s the deal,” she told him. “And,” she added, “unlike cyanide or arsenic, there aren’t any limits on who can have it.”
“There should be,” Frank said.
“Amen to that,” Joanna agreed.
There was a pause. “Maybe I should go on the Internet and check this out,” Frank suggested. “I’ll see what more I can find out about it.”
“Good idea,” Joanna said. “Unfortunately, we have no idea how much of it the killer still has in his or her possession. I’m guessing there’s some left over after loading up the sweetener packets in Latisha Wall’s kitchen.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “While you’re surfing the Net, there’s something else I’d like you to check out, Frank. I want you to do some research on Anne Rowland Corley.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Isn’t she the young girl from Bisbee who, years ago, supposedly killed her father and then skated?”
At the time, the two Rowland deaths had been high-profile cases in southern Arizona, and they still were. Joanna wasn’t surprised to learn that, years later, their outcomes continued to be common knowl
edge in local law enforcement circles.
“She’s the one,” Joanna replied.
Frank frowned. “I seem to recall she died several years ago.”
Joanna nodded. “I vaguely remember that, too,” she said. “But the details escape me. That’s why I want you to check it out.”
“This Rowland thing is ancient history,” Frank objected. “Why the sudden interest?”
“Because Special Investigator Beaumont told me he used to be married to Anne Rowland Corley,” Joanna told him. “I believe he said she was his second wife, although he’s probably on number three or four by now.”
“Beaumont was married to her?” Frank asked. “That’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it, though,” Joanna agreed. “Very interesting.”
EARLIER AT THE HOTEL I had tried using my laptop to check my e-mail. Years ago, when Seattle PD dragged me kicking and screaming into the twentieth century and forced me to start using a computer, I hated the damned things. Now that I’m used to them, I can see they have some advantages. I’ve adjusted. On this day, however, not being able to make my connection work in the twenty-first century drove me nuts.
Frustrated, I had turned to my cell phone. I wanted to talk to Ross Connors and ask him who all had been in the know when it came to witness protection living arrangements for Latisha Wall. To my astonishment, I found that my cell phone didn’t work, either—not in Bisbee. The call wouldn’t go through. When I went downstairs and asked the desk clerk about the problem, he explained that maybe my cell phone’s poor signal strength was due to the hotel’s location deep inside the steep walls of what he called Tombstone Canyon.
Now, having been thrown out of Frank Montoya’s office, I sat in my Sportage in the Justice Center parking lot and considered my options. Reflexively checking the readout on my cell phone, I was delighted to see that I had full signal strength. Again I dialed the Washington State Attorney General’s home number. The phone rang once and was immediately answered by a woman speaking in a torrent of rapid-fire Spanish. After a couple of futile attempts to get her to switch to English, I realized I was talking to a recording.