Exit Wounds

by J. A. Jance

  She was still considering that thorny issue when her phone rang.

  “Sheriff Trotter here,” her caller said. “I’m not surprised to hear you’re hard at work this morning, Sheriff Brady. Me, too. If our guys had been a little quicker on the draw, that mess at Silver Creek would have happened on my turf instead of yours. Sorry about that.”

  “Sure you’re sorry,” Joanna returned. “And the word ‘mess’ doesn’t come close to covering what happened out there.”

  “I know, and I know, too, that you’ve got your hands full today, and I’m about to add to it by sending more trouble your way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “For one thing, we’ve got tentative IDs on our two Jane Does. Their names are Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega, freelance television journalists from L.A. Diego Ortega, Carmen’s brother, is a pilot. He’s flying into Lordsburg later on today to give us a positive ID.”

  “Television journalists?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s right. Pamela was the on-screen talent. Carmen ran the camera and tech stuff. They worked with a production company called Fandango Productions that sells in-depth pieces to outfits that specialize in female-oriented programming. You might know who they are, but since I never watch that kind of stuff, I hadn’t ever heard of them.”

  Joanna liked Randy Trotter and had worked with him on numerous occasions. Even so, she couldn’t help being slightly irked by his automatic assumptions about her.

  “I’m not big on watching TV of any kind,” she told him. “I don’t have time, so I don’t know them either.”

  Sheriff Trotter hurried on. “According to the brother, Carmen and Pamela won some big cable award a year or so ago for a piece they did on the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. They were going to Tucson to do a new series of interviews.”

  Joanna thought about what Edith Mossman had said about Carol Mossman’s shaky finances—about how she had first asked her grandmother for financial help in having her dogs vaccinated. Later she had told Edith that help was no longer necessary—that she had somehow come up with another way of laying her hands on the money.

  “Does the production team pay for interviews?” Joanna asked.

  “Pay?” Trotter repeated.

  “You know,” Joanna said. “Like the tabloids do. Do they buy exclusive rights to people’s stories?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Trotter replied, “but the brother might.”

  “What time is Diego Ortega due in Lordsburg?” Joanna asked.

  “Sometime around two,” Sheriff Trotter said. “Why?”

  Joanna looked at her watch and considered her options.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “My investigators are all up to their ears in work this morning, but all I’m doing is clearing paperwork. If I leave right now, I should be able to be in Lordsburg by the time Mr. Ortega arrives.”

  “Thought you might want to have someone on hand to talk to him,” Trotter agreed. “I sure as hell would if I were in your shoes.”

  As soon as she got off the phone with Sheriff Trotter, Joanna left word with Lupe Alvarez about where she was going. After stopping at the Motor Pool long enough to gas up, she headed out of the Justice Center compound. Demonstrators still milled in the parking lot and a few of them rapped on the windows of her Civvie as she drove past.

  Peaceful, all right, she thought as she goosed the Crown Victoria forward and left the demonstrators behind. Two miles down Highway 80, she realized that the ratty clothing that had been inappropriate for her newspaper photo wasn’t going to work any better for a next-of-kin interview, either. Rather than driving by the Double Adobe turnoff, she headed home to High Lonesome Ranch to change.

  Butch was sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop open in front of him when Joanna walked in the back door. “You’re home early,” he remarked. “What happened?”

  “I need a change of clothes,” she explained. “I’m on my way to Lordsburg to interview a next of kin. My in-office grubbies aren’t going to hack it.” She disappeared into the bedroom and emerged minutes later wearing a summer-weight khaki uniform. “The dress one has to go to the cleaners,” she told Butch. “Lucky peed on it.”

  “Great,” Butch said. “Whose next of kin?”

  “Randy Trotter has a tentative ID on the two women killed north of Rodeo. The brother of one of them is flying into Lordsburg this afternoon.”

  “When will you be back?” Butch asked.

  “Five or six. Why?”

  “Just wondering. By the way, Eva Lou invited us over for meat loaf after church tomorrow. I told her I’d check with you first. I said I didn’t know if your tummy would tolerate meat loaf.”

  “Sounds good right now,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Off riding Kiddo,” Butch answered. “This afternoon she’s going swimming with Cassie, and she’s planning on spending the night.”

  Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived a few miles away in a former KOA campground that her parents had rehabbed into a private RV park. The park, catering mostly to winter visitors, was underutilized in the summer, giving Cassie and Jenny a clear shot at the park’s swimming pool.

  “So it’ll be just be the two of us for dinner tonight?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s right. I might make something special then,” Butch added. “We haven’t exactly celebrated our new addition. Drive carefully, but don’t be late. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not starting dinner until I see the whites of your eyes.”

  From High Lonesome Ranch, the most direct route to Lordsburg, New Mexico, was on Highway 80 through Douglas, Rodeo, and Road Forks. It also meant returning to Silver Creek. If time hadn’t been an issue, Joanna might have been tempted to drive the long way around, just to avoid revisiting the site of the deadly accident, but her dread proved to be mostly unfounded. By the time she arrived, few signs remained of the previous day’s horrors. The Highway Department had already sent out a crew to reposition the displaced Jersey barriers. A few scraps of yellow crime scene tape still lingered here and there, marking spots where the bodies of dead and injured had come to rest.

  There may have been little to see, but, driving alone in her Crown Victoria, Joanna heard once again the frantic voice of the injured mother calling for her baby. It was a voice and a sound she would never forget, any more than she’d be able to wipe away the memory of carrying the terrible burden of that dead child up the embankment and into the waiting helicopter. Yesterday Eduardo Maldonado’s deadweight had been a burden for her arms and shoulders. Today he was a burden for her heart.

  Snap out of it, she ordered herself when a blur of tears clouded her eyes. That was one job. This is another.

  With intermittent radio traffic chattering in the background, Joanna forced herself to review everything she knew about the Carol Mossman case. If she could establish a definite connection between Carol’s death and the two murders in New Mexico, then perhaps there was something else at work here other than simply an opportunist killer targeting susceptible women.

  She had crossed the border into New Mexico and was heading north when her cell phone rang. “Hi, Frank,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Jaime and I are on our way to University Medical Center in Tucson to do the interviews you wanted,” Frank Montoya answered. “How about you?”

  “Between Rodeo and Road Forks on my way to Lordsburg. What’s up?”

  “I thought you’d like to have a little of the inside scoop on the lady in charge of the Animal Welfare Experience folks. It occurred to me that it was too much of a coincidence that AWE would show up with all those sign-waving demonstrators within minutes of the time I had scheduled the press briefing.”

  “Right,” Joanna agreed. “The timing was impeccable.”

  “I wondered if someone had tipped them off about when the briefing was to happen, so I did some research.”

  “And?”

  “Tamara Haynes and Marty Galloway were roommates tog
ether at Northern Arizona University.”

  “Tamara and Ken Junior’s wife were roommates?” Joanna blurted. “Are you telling me that whole demonstration thing was nothing more than an election campaign stunt?”

  “That’s how it looks, although maybe that’s not entirely true,” Frank said. “AWE does exist. Nationally, it’s a legitimate organization, but the local group has surfaced just in the last few days. And there’s a good chance today’s demonstration was a put-up deal, aimed at garnering free publicity for them at your expense, to say nothing of boosting Ken Junior’s chances in the upcoming election.”

  “In other words, Ken Junior isn’t above using Carol Mossman’s dogs as political fodder.”

  “And neither is Tamara Haynes, who’s something else, by the way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve taken a look at her rap sheet. During the week she teaches Women’s Studies courses at the Sierra Vista campus of Cochise College. On weekends, she’s a political activist. She’s been picked up twice for demonstrating at the Nevada Test Site, twice at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant at Gila Bend, and twice at demonstrations at the front gate at Fort Huachuca. So far, she’s got two disorderly conduct convictions and one interfering with a police officer—all of them with suspended sentences.”

  “What do you think we should do about it?” Joanna asked after several moments of reflection.

  “I’m not sure,” Frank began.

  Suddenly her chief deputy’s voice disappeared into the ether. Then there was nothing. Frustrated, Joanna checked her phone and saw that she had crossed into a no-service zone. She tossed the phone down in disgust.

  There was no sense in wondering how Tamara Haynes and AWE had hooked themselves up to Frank Montoya’s press briefing. Ken Galloway no longer worked inside the department but he still had plenty of friends there. Looking for the leak would serve no useful purpose.

  Joanna was offended to think her opponent would stoop so low as to use Carol Mossman’s dead dogs to make political hay.

  Which is exactly why Ken Galloway isn’t worthy of being sheriff, Joanna told herself determinedly. And it’s why, baby or no baby—Eleanor or no Eleanor—I’m staying the course, and I’m going to win!

  Eleven

  The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department was located in a single-story cinder-block building in Lordsburg’s small downtown area. Hard-to-come-by tax money had been spent on the new jail and communications center two blocks away, but Randy Trotter’s humble two-phone-line office reminded Joanna of her father’s old office. When D. H. Lathrop had been the sheriff of Cochise County, his department—office, jail, and all—had been located behind barred windows in the art deco courthouse up in old Bisbee. That, too, had been a two-phone-line office. Here, though, the iron bars with their brightly painted Zia symbols were more decorative than utilitarian.

  Sheriff Trotter, carrying a cup of steaming coffee, emerged from a back room and greeted Joanna. In his late forties, Trotter had the bowlegged, scrawny, sunbaked look of a man whose preferred mode of transportation remained a horse and saddle. Joanna remembered hearing from someone that Sheriff Trotter’s family had once lived in the Bisbee area, but they had left there before he was born. Long before Joanna was born, too, for that matter.

  “Coffee?” he asked, offering Joanna a stained mug full of thick, brackish brew.

  Just the smell of it was enough to make her queasy all over again. “No, thanks,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m off coffee at the moment.”

  “You’re not one of those anti-coffee health nuts, I hope.”

  Joanna thought about her answer for a moment. “Not anti-coffee,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

  Trotter was old enough that he hailed from a time when women in law enforcement had been anything but commonplace and pregnant women had been rarer still. Joanna expected some kind of comment. All she got right then was a raised eyebrow. “Water, then?” he asked. “Or a soda?”

  “Water would be great.”

  “Come on into my office,” he said. “The place isn’t much, but it works for me. Have a chair.”

  Joanna followed him into his private office, where the wooden desk and creaky chair reminded her even more of her father’s old digs. Randy Trotter walked into the adjacent room and removed a bottle of water from a small refrigerator. He handed it over as Joanna sat down on a battered and lumpy brown leather chair that seemed to swallow her whole body.

  “Sorry about that,” Randy apologized. “When push came to shove, there was money enough for a new refrigerator or a new chair. The fridge won.” He glanced at his watch. “Johnny Cruikshank, my homicide detective, is out at the airport now. As soon as Mr. Ortega’s plane lands, Johnny will bring him here to the office. Then, once we make arrangements, we’ll take him to the morgue—what we call the morgue, anyway. It’s really nothing more than a couple of rooms the county leases from a local funeral chapel.”

  Sipping her water, Joanna nodded. “Fine,” she said.

  Trotter eyed her curiously. “If you’re pregnant, are you still going to run?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Do people well…you know…” He paused awkwardly.

  “You mean, do they know I’m pregnant?” It was Sheriff Trotter’s turn to nod. “They do,” Joanna continued. “You know how small towns work. I haven’t had my first prenatal checkup yet, but the pregnancy is already hot news in the local paper.”

  “So how’s it going then?” he asked, studying her over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “My pregnancy or the reelection campaign?”

  “Reelection.” He grinned.

  Thinking about the demonstrators banging on her car windows and doors as she drove through the Justice Center parking lot, Joanna decided to underplay her hand. “All right, I guess,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “Yours?”

  “About the same,” he agreed. “I just wish politics weren’t so dirty. You think about that poor guy out in Kentucky, the one whoops allegedly gunned down by one of his opponent’s henchmen a while ago…” He paused. “I mean, when one candidate for sheriff puts out a contract on the other guy’s life, it kind of defeats the whole idea of law and order, wouldn’t you say? Makes you wonder if it’s worth the time, effort, and trouble.”

  Joanna nodded. You’ve got that right, she thought.

  “I think I’ve heard, but remind me,” Trotter continued. “What’s the name of the guy who’s running against you?”

  “Galloway,” Joanna answered. “Kenneth Galloway.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Sheriff Trotter said. “Is he one of the old Jiggerville Galloways?”

  That brought Joanna up short. Jiggerville was a Bisbee neighborhood that had been dismantled in the early 1950s to make way for Lavender Pit. One by one, houses from places like Jiggerville and Upper Lowell had been removed from their foundations, loaded onto axles, and then trucked to other locations in newly created subdivisions around town. Joanna had heard her father talk about those old parts of town, but for Joanna herself they were pieces of local history and lore rather than places rooted in actual memory.

  “I think Ken’s from Saginaw,” she said.

  “Right,” Trotter agreed. “That’s where Phelps Dodge put the Galloway house when they moved it. And, from what I’ve heard, Ken’s pretty much a chip off all those old Galloway blocks.”

  Joanna looked at Sheriff Trotter in surprise. “You know Ken Junior then?” she asked.

  “Not directly, but I know of him and of his family by reputation, if nothing else,” he added. “There was a whole clan of Galloways living in Jiggerville back when my grandparents lived there. Grandpa Trotter was a shift boss—a jigger—in the mines in Bisbee, and Jiggerville was the residential area where most of the shift bosses lived. My dad used to tell stories about living there as a kid—about exploring caves, getting in all kinds of hot water, and pole-vaulting all over God’s creation on agave sticks.

  “Dad is one of
those old-time, Andy Griffith–type storytellers,” Trotter continued. “The wonderful thing about his stories is that he never edits out any of the bad stuff he did, including all the scraps and scrapes. And I remember that whenever someone named Galloway showed up in one of Dad’s stories, you could bet he’d be tough as nails and mean as hell.”

  Joanna gave a wan smile. “Sounds like Ken’s right in there with the rest of them,” she said.

  Randy Trotter grinned. “That’s something Grandpa Trotter always used to say. ‘The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.’ ”

  It seemed strange for Joanna to be sitting a hundred miles away from Bisbee and hearing about her town’s history.

  “According to my father,” Randy continued, “Jiggerville was paradise on earth and the Garden of Eden all rolled into one. It was full of shade trees and fruit trees and lush gardens because back then people could still use the mineral-rich water they pumped out of the mines. There was a trolley stop and a play-field where Dad and his pals played pickup games of baseball and football. Dad said when they had to leave there to move to Lordsburg, he hated it.”

  “Why’d he leave?”

  “His mother, Grandma Trotter, came from Lordsburg originally. When her mother, my Great-Grandma Clementine Case, took sick, Grandma and Grandpa came back here to look after her. Grandpa had worked in the mines for quite a while, but he got on with Southern Pacific—Sufferin’ Pacific, as he called it—and he worked there until he retired. They built a house next door to Clementine’s. That’s where my dad and uncles were raised. Now, with my mother gone and my father retired from teaching, he lives in Clementine’s House, as we call it. My wife and I live next door.”

  “Your father taught school?”

  “That’s right. He taught social studies and coached football and basketball right here in Lordsburg. Grandpa said he wanted his sons to work with their brains instead of their brawn, so he made sure they all went to college. It worked, too. Came out with a college professor, a high school principal, and my dad. Then there’s the black sheep of the family, my Uncle Ned. He owns the Ford dealership up in Silver City and probably makes as much money as the other three put together.”