Partner In Crime

by J. A. Jance

  With lights flashing and siren blaring, we screamed into the old part of town and turned right up a narrow, one-lane strip of steep pavement. The sign said “O.K. Street,” but there was nothing okay about it. Calling it a goat path would have been closer to the mark than calling it a street. Then, about the time I was sure the Blazer was going to scrape off both its mirrors, we met a vehicle coming down. A silver-haired lady, driving a Pontiac Grand Prix with Nebraska plates, backed out of a parking lot beside what was evidently a small hotel and started in our direction.

  She looked a bit surprised when she realized a cop car with flashing lights and a blaring siren was aimed right at her, but instead of stopping or returning to the parking lot, she kept right on coming, motioning for us to move over and get out of her way. Somehow Joanna managed to do exactly that, tucking the Blazer into an almost nonexistent wide spot.

  “For God’s sake!” I demanded. “Isn’t this a one-way street?”

  “For everyone but the tourists!” Joanna muttered. The woman in the Pontiac edged past us, waving cheerfully and smiling as she went. “Lights and sirens must not mean the same thing in Nebraska.”

  “Sheriff Brady,” the dispatcher called, interrupting Joanna in midgripe.

  Not wanting her to take her eyes off the road, I picked up the mike. “Beaumont here. What is it?”

  “City of Bisbee wants to know what’s going on, so I told them. They’re sending backup for you. And I have that address on Youngblood Hill for you now.”

  Joanna Brady didn’t look as though she needed to be told where she was going, and right that minute I was too busy hanging on for dear life to take notes.

  “As long as the Haz-Mat guys have it,” I said. “I think we’re fine.”

  We came to a real wide spot in the road where several cars were parked at haphazard angles around the perimeter. Joanna threw the Blazer into “Park” and jammed on the emergency brake. She paused long enough to retrieve a pair of worn tennis shoes from the floor of the backseat. After changing shoes, she leaped out of the car and started down a winding street that was even steeper than the one we’d been on before. The posted sign here said “Youngblood Hill.” Glad to be ignorant of the street name’s origin, I tagged after her.

  The pockmarked, broken pavement was scattered with loose gravel. The surface was an open invitation for broken legs. Or ankles. It was all I could do to keep from falling ass over teakettle.

  Halfway down the hill was a blind curve. I expected Youngblood Hill to be a one-way street. No such luck. Rounding the curve, we came face-to-face with a city of Bisbee patrol car nosing its way uphill. About that time Joanna Brady turned left, darted under an archway, through a wrought-iron gate, and up an impossibly narrow concrete stairway. I went after her. Taking both age and altitude into consideration, I didn’t even try to keep up. The best I hoped for was not to die in the process.

  Hearing footsteps behind me, I looked back. Right on my heels came a beefy young man in a blue uniform. The Bisbee City cop had left his idling patrol car sitting in the middle of the street and charged after us. He outweighed me by forty pounds, but by the time we reached a small terrace of a yard, he was only a step or two behind me. My chest was about to burst open. He hadn’t broken a sweat.

  The new arrival was Officer Frank Rojas. I stood aside long enough to let him hurtle past me and catch up with Sheriff Brady. Since we were obviously inside city boundaries, I expected an immediate outbreak of jurisdictional warfare. I’ve seen it happen often enough. I know of numerous occasions in the Seattle area where bad guys have gotten away because cops from neighboring suburbs weren’t necessarily on speaking terms. In Bisbee, Arizona, that was evidently not the case.

  “What do you need, Sheriff Brady?” Rojas asked.

  “To secure the residence,” she gasped. That made me feel a little better. At least I wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing.

  “Anyone inside?”

  Joanna glanced at two men who stood together in the far corner of the tiny front yard – a rangy African-American in a T-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes, and a white man in full Sunday go-to-meeting attire – gray suit, white shirt, and tie. His once highly polished shoes now sported a layer of red dust. I assumed the guy in the suit to be the attorney, Burton Kimball. That meant the other one was Bobo Jenkins, Latisha Wall’s boyfriend.

  The man was big and tough, and I wondered how he felt about being called Bobo. Someone tried to pin that handle on me once when I was in fifth grade. I creamed the guy. I hoped Mr. Jenkins didn’t mind. Despite Archie’s description of Bobo as a sort of gentle giant, Mr. Jenkins looked as though he was more than capable of taking care of himself when it came to physical combat.

  “No,” Joanna told Rojas. “As far as I know, no one’s inside.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Dangerous chemicals,” she answered. “We’ve called for the Haz-Mat team from Tucson. You take the back of the house, Frankie. Make sure no one enters. And whatever you do, don’t go near the dryer vent.”

  Frank Rojas didn’t question her orders. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. Without another word, off he went.

  Seventeen

  ABOUT THEN THE MAN IN THE SUIT charged across the yard to meet us. From the irate expression on the attorney’s face I doubted Burton Kimball would be nearly as tractable as Officer Rojas had been.

  “All right, Sheriff Brady,” Kimball snapped. “As you can see, we did what you said. We’re out of the house. Now how about telling us what this is about? If the white powder in the box isn’t a drug, what is it?”

  Joanna took one more deep breath before she answered. “I’m guessing it’ll turn out to be sodium azide,” she answered. “It’s a deadly poison. We have reason to believe Latisha Wall died as a result of sodium azide poisoning.”

  “Never heard of it,” Kimball grunted.

  “Not many people have,” Joanna agreed.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the propellant used to deploy air bags in vehicles,” she explained. “Sodium azide is more toxic than cyanide. It has no known antidote.”

  Bobo Jenkins spoke for the first time. “Did you say Shelley was poisoned?” he croaked. “How’s that possible?”

  “We believe the fatal dose was placed in something she drank,” Joanna answered. “Most likely in her iced tea.”

  “But how…” Bobo began. Then his face changed as he put it together. “The sweetener packets!” he exclaimed.

  Joanna gave him a searching look. Finally, she nodded.

  As I said, Bobo Jenkins was a big man. His arms and legs bulged with muscles. As the awfulness of the situation sank in, his knees seemed to buckle. He staggered unsteadily over to the porch steps and dropped down onto the topmost one.

  “But I’m the one who put the sweetener in her tea,” he blurted out. “Two packets. That’s what Shelley always took in her iced tea. Two packets. Never any more; never any less. Does that mean I’m the one who killed her?”

  “Enough, Bobo,” Burton Kimball interjected. “Don’t say anything more. Not another word.”

  If Kimball’s stunned client heard his attorney’s objection, he paid no attention.

  “And that’s what you think is here in my house right now, in the box in my laundry room?” Jenkins continued. “You think it’s the same thing? The same poison?”

  By then, Kimball was practically beside himself. “Mr. Jenkins, please. No more. Sheriff Brady, you haven’t informed my client of his rights. I must ask that you refrain from asking any more questions, the answers to which may be prejudicial…”

  Ignoring the lawyer, Joanna sat down on the porch step next to Bobo Jenkins. “Tell me about today,” she said quietly.

  “Today?” He gave her an anguished look, as though not quite comprehending the question.

  “Tell me everything that happened,” she urged. “Everything that led up to your finding the box.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Last n
ight I couldn’t sleep.” He said. “I kept tossing and turning and thinking about…” He paused and swallowed hard before continuing. “… about what had happened. I couldn’t believe I’d lost Shelley just like that. I still can’t believe it. Sometimes it seems like it’s got to be some awful nightmare. Eventually, I’ll wake up and she won’t be gone.

  “Anyway, after lying in bed for hours, I finally got up about three o’clock this morning. I dressed and went for a run. I ran all the way down to Warren and back. By the time I finished, the sun was just coming up. I showered and went to bed. I finally fell asleep after that and didn’t wake up until a little while ago. I went out to the kitchen to put on some coffee. While I waited for the coffee to finish, I decided to start a load of clothes. That’s when I found that box – a duct-taped box I’d never seen before – sitting there on top of the dryer. The flexible vent duct is connected to it.”

  “Did you touch it?”

  Jenkins shook his head. “Give me some credit. I’m smarter than that. The box has a window in the top that’s covered with plastic wrap. As soon as I saw the white powder in it, I called Mr. Kimball.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you kidding? When Jaime Carbajal and Frank Montoya interviewed me yesterday morning, they didn’t give out any details, but I could tell from their questions that I was under suspicion – that they thought I was somehow responsible for Shelley’s death. Now I know why. You must have found my fingerprints on the sweetener packets, since I’m the one who poured them into her glass.”

  Ignoring that, Joanna responded with yet another question. “When you saw the box, what did you think was in it?” she asked.

  Jenkins shrugged. “I assumed it was cocaine. I figured someone was trying to frame me for dealing drugs or something worse.”

  “But why would you think someone from my department placed it there?” Joanna asked.

  He shook his head as though no explanation should have been necessary. “You’re not a black man considering running for public office in this country,” he said softly. “You’re not being paranoid if people really are out to get you.”

  I had been listening to all of this and trying to keep my mouth shut. Now, though, I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents’ worth. “Look. If someone planted the box in Mr. Jenkins’s house, how was it done? Any sign of a break-in? It takes time to rip off a dryer duct and reconnect it.”

  “I don’t lock my doors,” Bobo said. “I never have.”

  Burton Kimball looked distinctly unhappy about the way the conversation was going, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Nobody paid any attention to him, least of all his client.

  “You said you were making coffee,” Joanna mused thoughtfully. “What do you use in it?” she added.

  It seemed like an off-the-wall question. At first I couldn’t see where she was going. Bobo Jenkins seemed puzzled as well. “What do you think? Coffee and water,” he said. “What else is there?”

  “I mean, how do you take it?” Joanna asked. “Black, or with cream and sugar?”

  “Sugar but no cream,” he said. “I’m lactose-intolerant.”

  “Where do you keep your sugar?”

  “In the fridge,” he said. “If I leave it out on the counter or table, I sometimes have problems with ants. Why?”

  Then I understood. The white powder in the duct-taped box. It would have taken time, effort, and ingenuity to put sodium azide in sweetener packets. By comparison, putting a few spoonfuls of it into a sugar bowl would be simple – and just as deadly.

  At that moment a deputy I didn’t know – an officer named Matt Raymond – hustled up the steps and into the yard. “What’s happening?” Joanna asked.

  “Detective Carbajal says it’s confirmed. The abandoned car definitely belongs to Dee Canfield. It’s on a road that winds through the hills and ends up about half a mile east of here, on the far side of B-Hill.”

  I had noticed a big whitewashed “B” on one of the hills as I drove into town for the first time. Now I realized that Bobo Jenkins’s home was on one of the flanks of that selfsame hill. Half a mile away wasn’t very far.

  “Which way was the Pinto going when they found it?” Joanna asked. “In or out?”

  “Out,” the deputy returned. “Detective Carbajal says it looks like the driver was attempting to turn the vehicle around so he could head back to the highway when he got hung up on a boulder. Broke the axle right in two.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” Joanna said. “We’d better get the K-9 unit out there on the double.”

  “Already done,” Officer Raymond said. “Deputy Gregovich and Spike are on their way.

  Nodding, Joanna turned back to the attorney. “Look, Burton,” she said, “we’ve called in the Haz-Mat team. The fewer people we have hanging around when they get here, the better. How about if you take Mr. Jenkins and go someplace else for a while? Let me know where you are. Someone from the department will notify you when it’s safe for him to return home.”

  “I’ll be only too happy to,” Kimball said, still sounding slightly miffed. “Come on, Bobo. Let’s get out of here. We wouldn’t want to be in anyone’s way.”

  JOANNA BRADY WASN’T GOOD AT WAITING; she never had been. As the minutes ticked by, she paced back and forth in Bobo’s small terraced yard. If her suspicions proved correct, her jurisdiction had been plagued by two murders and an attempted homicide in less than a week. Right that minute, the only thing working in her favor was the fact that the supposed getaway car – Dee Canfield’s aging Pinto – had finally come to grief. Had it not been for that, Warren Gibson would have been long gone. Then again, with as much of a head start as he’d had, maybe he’d made good his escape after all.

  It didn’t help that J.P. Beaumont sat on the porch staring at her and watching her every move as she anxiously paced the confines of the yard. The last thing she needed right then was an audience.

  “Sit down,” he suggested. “Take a load off.”

  But Joanna didn’t want to sit. She didn’t want to be patronized, either. “I’d rather stand,” she said.

  Across the yard, Matt Raymond’s radio crackled to life.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  The deputy listened for a moment, holding one finger in the air. “It’s Detective Carbajal. He says the K-9 Unit has found two separate trails. One seems to head in this general direction. The other one heads back along the road and out to the highway.”

  “Have them follow that one,” Joanna said at once. “Let’s try to see where the SOB went.”

  When she glanced back at Beau once more, she noticed he had taken his packet of Xeroxed reports out of his coat pocket. He unfolded the pages, put on a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses, and began studying the pages, occasionally making notes.

  At least he finally quit staring at me, Joanna thought as she checked her watch for the third time in as many minutes. At this rate, the hour-and-a-half wait for the arrival of the Haz-Mat team was going to take a very long time.

  Several long minutes passed without a word being exchanged. Beaumont finally broke the lingering silence. “Could you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “It says here that Jack Brampton was incarcerated in the Gardendale Correctional Institute outside Elgin, Illinois.”

  “Right.”

  “I need to find out if that’s a state- or privately run facility.”

  “Frank Montoya’s your guy,” Joanna said. She removed her cell phone from her pocket, punched up Frank’s direct number, and handed it over to Beau. He looked down at it in baffled silence, as though he had never seen a cell phone before in his life.

  “The number’s already programmed in,” she told him impatiently. “All you have to do is hit ‘Send.’ “

  Beaumont shot her another dubious look and then did as he was told. A moment later he was explaining to Chief Deputy Montoya what was needed.

  Joanna glanced at her watch onc
e more. Time was passing, but not nearly fast enough. She listened to Beau’s part of the conversation with only half an ear. The call had barely ended when another one came through. She took the phone from Beau’s hand and answered the call herself.

  “What is it, Jaime?” she asked.

  “Sorry, boss,” he said. “It’s a dead end. Spike led us right back here – to the highway. That’s where the trail stops. Brampton got into a vehicle and rode away.”

  “Have Terry and Spike go back to the Pinto and try following the trail in the other direction,” she ordered. “I want to know where that one goes as well. In the meantime, send Casey out to Dee Canfield’s house. I’ll need Dave up here so he can handle the chain of custody on whatever evidence the Haz-Mat guys turn up.”

  She ended the call. Beaumont had obviously been listening. “If the killer got in a car and rode away,” he said, “that probably means one of two things.”

  “What would those be?” Joanna asked.

  “Either Jack Brampton has an accomplice who came and picked him up, or else he hitched a ride with some poor innocent passerby who’s going to wind up being our next victim.”

  “Great,” Joanna muttered. “Just what I want to hear.”

  About that time the first member of the moon-suited Haz-Mat team came huffing up the stairs. “I’m Ron Workman, the team captain,” the leader announced to everyone in the small yard. “Who’s in charge here?”

  Since Deputy Raymond’s was the only visible uniform, the question was addressed to him. The deputy nodded in Joanna’s direction and she stepped forward.

  “I am, Mr. Workman. I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

  The man gave Joanna a skeptical top-to-toe appraisal, from her grubby tennis shoes to the skirt, blouse, and blazer she had dressed in for church. He seemed less than thrilled at the idea that she was in charge.

  Workman peered around the yard. “I was told we’d find a hazardous material situation here,” he said. “What is it, some kind of false alarm?”