by J. A. Jance
When she rejoined them, Ernie gave her an appreciative grin. “Whenever I see you in that outfit,” he said, “it makes me think of those old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns.”
“Thanks,” Joanna told him crisply. “I believe I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Her reply brought the ghost of a smile to the corners of Chief Deputy Voland’s mouth, but he made no comment about Joanna’s change of attire one way or the other.
“If you’ll wait just a minute,” he said, “I’ll pass along some marching orders.” Then, raising his voice, he shouted to the parking lot at large. “Okay, folks,” he announced, “listen up.”
That was one of the reasons Joanna had kept Dick Voland on as chief of operations. His rumbled commands automatically inspired respect and attention. At the sound of his voice, all the people there—assembled deputies and firemen alike—stood still, awaiting direction.
“Until we know otherwise,” he told them, “this entire area constitutes the crime scene. That means inside the fence and along the highway outside it as well. I want the whole area searched. As soon as the fire-fighting equipment is out of here, I want the parking lot sealed off. Nobody unauthorized is to come in or out.”
Voland paused for a moment before continuing. “Deputy Hollicker.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You see that Buick parked just outside the fence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That vehicle evidently belongs to the guy the ambulance hauled off to the hospital. I want you to make sure no one goes anywhere near it until we can have it towed away.”
Voland paused long enough to let his eyes scan across the several remaining deputies. “Deputy Pakin?” he called.
Lance Pakin separated himself from the others. “Yo,” he responded.
“I want you to get on down to the hospital. Whenever this Morgan character comes out of the emergency room, you’re to keep an eye on him. Just in case he has some kind of miraculous recovery and they release him, I want you to stick to him like glue. If they admit him and put him in a room, station yourself outside his door and don’t leave until you hear from me.”
“Got it,” Pakin said.
“Deputy Carbajal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m putting you in charge of getting a search warrant for the Buick. Talk to Pakin and get the details from him about what went on here this morning. That should be enough to show probable cause. When you finish up with that, I want you to take charge of the evidence search, but the warrant comes first, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
With those details handled, Voland turned to Ben Lowrey. “Ready,” he said. “Lead the way.”
The four of them—Ben Lowrey, Ernie Carpenter, Dick Voland, and Joanna Brady—walked into the barn in single file. No one said a word about ladies before gentlemen. Joanna was content to bring up the rear.
“The body’s all the way in the back,” Ben Lowrey explained as they went. “That’s where there was combustible fuel in the form of hay, oats, ropes, leather, and so forth. That’s also where the fire burned hottest, so be careful. We’ve still got a few hot spots back there.”
Moments later, Joanna understood what he meant. Over what had been the hottest part of the fire, the overheated metal roof had sagged and stretched under the weight of water. Here and there soot-laden water dribbled down from on high. When Dick Voland’s crisp khaki uniform took a direct hit on the shoulder, Joanna couldn’t help being grateful for the duster. A few steps later, however, a gritty drip from what was most likely the same leak hit Joanna right in the eye.
Slogging along in murky, ash-filled water and breathing smoky air, Joanna was halfway down the barn before she smelled anything other than smoke. When she realized that the vaguely sweetish odor had to be nothing other than baked human flesh, she put one hand to her mouth to suppress a gag. By the time the others stopped walking, she pretty much had herself under control.
When Lowrey and Voland stood aside to let her move closer, she saw Ernie Carpenter crouched on his haunches some four feet from the corpse. The dead man lay face down in another pool of murky water. His clothing had been mostly burned away, but there was enough left for Joanna to see that the body was wearing boots—leather cowboy boots. As many times as Joanna remembered seeing Bucky Buckwalter, either in the clinic or out of it, he had always worn boots. Even without being able to see the dead man’s face, Joanna was pretty sure she recognized Bucky’s Tony Lamas.
“His arms may have protected his face from the flames,” Ernie Carpenter observed, “but we’ll have to see about that once we turn him over.” The detective glanced at Ben Lowrey. “Nobody moved anything, right?”
“Come on, Ernie, how stupid do you think we are?” Lowrey replied.
“Don’t get sore, Ben,” Carpenter told him. “Just checking. Everybody stays back while I take a few pictures.”
Joanna Brady was more than happy to put some distance between herself and the body while the detective began snapping photos. Standing there quietly with the flash going off periodically, all she could think of was how, mere hours earlier, this lump of charred flesh had been a living, breathing human being, taking care of day-to-day business. Now the man lying face down in the puddle was giving a whole new meaning to the term “ashes to ashes.”
“When you finish that, you may want a picture of this, too,” Ben Lowrey said.
“What is it?” Carpenter asked, clicking the camera without looking away from the body.
“I’d say it’s melted wax. Paraffin,” Lowrey answered. “It could be that a candle, or candles, were left burning in loose hay. That could have been what was used to start the fire. The bales would have been slow to start because they’re packed so tight, but once they get going, they burn like mad.”
“Why would someone use candles to ignite a fire?” Joanna asked. “Why not light a match?”
“To give the arsonist time enough to get the hell out of the way,” Dick Voland answered. “That way he could be long gone before the fire was ever discovered. The candles were probably already burning when Bebe Noonan showed up for work, but she didn’t see smoke until much later, when the hay actually caught fire.”
Ernie Carpenter turned away from the body long enough to look where Ben Lowrey was pointing. After taking a picture of the grayish, soot-covered lump on the floor, he picked it up, stuffed it in a glassine bag, and slid it into the side pocket of his shabby overalls while Joanna found herself wishing that some of her insurance sales experience had included the rudiments of arson investigation.
Meantime, Ernie looked questioningly around the remains of the shed. “But where would the killer get candles out here in the middle of a barn?” he asked finally.
“Maybe they came from Hal Morgan’s car,” Joanna suggested quietly.
All three men turned at once to look at her. “Why do you say that?” Ernie Carpenter demanded.
“Because I remember Bucky saying something about Hal Morgan holding a candlelight vigil last night out in front of the animal clinic.”
“Hot damn!” Carpenter exclaimed. “With any kind of luck, there’ll be one or two left so we can do a chemical comparison. Getting a match will go a long way toward helping build our case.”
He turned to Lowrey. “Give me a hand here, Ben. Let’s turn this guy over and make sure who he is.”
With Ben managing the feet and Ernie taking the body by the shoulders, they turned the dead man onto his back. As soon as they did so—as soon as Joanna saw the man’s face—she knew that everyone’s initial suspicions had been confirmed.
Dr. Amos Buckwalter, also known as Bucky, was as dead as he could be.
FOUR
BY THE time the Cochise County Coroner, Dr. George Winfield, showed up with his two assistants to collect the body, Joanna and Ernie Carpenter were standing beside Ernie’s van. Joanna had taken off her wet and filthy duster, shoes, and socks by then, but the socks had left an ugly gray high-water
mark partway up her leg. It was possible that washing would dissolve the grime from her No Nonsense panty hose, but Joanna doubted it.
Before handing the body over to the coroner, Ernie had removed Bucky’s wallet. Because the wallet had been under the dead man’s body, it had been protected from the worst heat of the fire. Even so, Bucky Buckwalter’s collection of credit cards had melted together in their equally melted sleeves. Now, prying deformed hunks of plastic apart, Ernie was going through the contents one card and one soggy photo at a time, inventorying the contents and mumbling aloud to himself as he did so.
“I don’t understand,” Joanna said.
“What don’t you understand?” Carpenter asked, never removing his eyes from the task at hand.
“According to what I’ve read,” Joanna mused, “most of the time perpetrators set fires in hopes of concealing evidence of a crime. But this is a metal barn sitting on a concrete slab. There wasn’t enough fuel inside the barn to cause the building to collapse or even to burn up the corpse. Morgan must have known that, so what was the point? Why did he bother?”
Ernie stopped what he was doing long enough to fix her with an appraising stare. “Good question,” he said. “Damned good question. If you’re not careful, we may end up making a reasonably good homicide detective out of you yet.”
With that, Ernie returned to checking the contents of the wallet.
“It may be a good question, but you haven’t answered it,” Joanna insisted.
“And I’m not going to,” Detective Carpenter told her. “Remember, this is only the bare beginning of the investigation. Once I know what the answer is, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Fair enough,” she said.
Moving closer, Joanna observed Ernie’s painstaking handling of Bucky Buckwalter’s personal effects. Each time the detective removed some item from the wallet, he would examine it carefully and then place it in an evidence bag before making the proper notation on an inventory sheet attached to a clipboard. It was a tedious process, one that required more than two hands.
“Would you like me to help with that?” Joanna offered. “I could either take the stuff out of the wallet and you could list it, or we could do it the other way around.”
“Thanks,” Ernie said, handing her his pencil and clipboard. “That’ll speed things up.”
One by one Joanna listed the driver’s license as well as the other cards, photos, and pieces of paper. “He was carrying a little bit of cash on him,” the detective reported eventually. “I count three twenties, a ten, and six singles. Seventy-six bucks and a package of Trojans.”
“Trojans?” Joanna repeated. She heard the shock and surprise in her voice when she uttered the word, and she wondered if Ernie noticed.
“Sure,” he said with a short laugh. “As in condoms. These are the nineties, Sheriff Brady. Lots of men pack them around in their wallets these days. What’s wrong with that?”
Joanna considered for a long moment before she answered. “Nothing,” she said finally. “Except if Bucky Buckwalter had been behaving himself, he wouldn’t have needed them.”
Rocking back on his heels, Ernie Carpenter regarded Joanna Brady with a puzzled frown. “Do you know something I don’t know?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “The Davis Insurance Agency sold the Buckwalters their health insurance several years ago. With all of Milo Davis’s health insurance clients, whenever there was a problem with a claim, I was the designated troubleshooter. It was my job to duke things out with the claims people, to help our clients make their way through the bureaucratic jungle.”
“So?” Ernie urged when Joanna paused and seemed disinclined to continue.
“Terry Buckwalter suffered from recurring ovarian cysts,” Joanna answered at last. “She finally had a complete hysterectomy up at University Medical Center in Tucson. This was three or four years ago. There was a huge mixup because the insurance company paid the anesthesiologist twice and didn’t pay the surgeon anything. It was a mess that took me months to sort out.”
That far into the story, Joanna stopped cold.
“Go on,” the detective urged.
Joanna shook her head. “That’s all. The problem is, that’s confidential information. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”
Thoughtfully Carpenter dropped the condoms into a glassine bag. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s interesting information and probably not that important in the long run. If I do end up needing to have official corroboration, though, I can certainly find it out from other sources.” Ernie paused. “That’s the way it is in small-town law enforcement,” he added. “Lots of people know things about other people’s business.”
Joanna nodded, but still she felt guilty for betraying a confidence, for giving out information without having a proper authorization to do so. Turning away from him, Joanna studied the intensely turquoise sky above the rust-colored man-made mesa of the tailings dump. If she was hoping for guidance in that vast expanse of blue, she found none—only more disturbing questions.
“Does that mean Bucky was having an affair?” she asked.
Carpenter shrugged. “Maybe. Either that, or he was hoping to or seeing professionals. Whichever, it does throw a somewhat different light on the situation. And it opens us up to the idea that things around here might be somewhat more complicated than they look.”
Joanna thought about that as Carpenter stowed his collection of glassine bags in a scarred but ample briefcase. In the aftermath of Andy’s death, there had been some question about whether or not he had been having an affair, too. Even though those suspicions had eventually proved groundless, Joanna knew from personal experience how much the unwarranted allegations had bothered her—how much additional and needless hurt they had added to her pain. The same thing could happen to Terry Buckwalter if unfounded hints of Bucky’s infidelity were tossed around during the investigation into the veterinarian’s death.
“What if Terry doesn’t know anything about the possibility that her husband was messing around on her?” Joanna asked.
Carpenter seemed unconcerned. “She’s bound to find out eventually,” he said.
“Not necessarily,” Joanna returned. “I’d hate to think that someone in my department was responsible for telling her.”
“As in ignorance is bliss?” Ernie asked.
“No,” Joanna returned. “Not bliss. It’s just that sometimes being allowed to believe a lie is less painful than knowing the truth.”
Ernie gave Joanna a searching look. “You don’t want me to tell her?”
“Right,” Joanna replied. “Not if it isn’t necessary. Remember what happened with Andy?”
Ernie Carpenter was one of the homicide detectives who had come to Joanna’s house to question her, bringing with him those unfounded and hurtful rumors.
Ernie Carpenter looked down and examined his feet. “A good cop was dead,” he said huskily. “In what had been made to look like a suicide. Maybe I was a little overzealous, but it was my job to figure out what had happened. I’ve been sorry about that ever since.”
Joanna nodded. “Me, too,” she said. “And if there’s any way to keep that kind of ugliness from happening to some other human being, I’d like to. You’re a homicide detective, Ernie. I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m just asking you to go a little easy on Terry Buckwalter. Don’t tear her heart up in little pieces and step on them, not if you don’t need to. If Hal Morgan turns out to be our killer, then there’ll be no need to bring any of this up, will there? No need to mention the condoms at all.”
At least Ernie Carpenter did Joanna the courtesy of considering for a moment before he replied. “Like I said before, Sheriff Brady, this is a small town. If Bucky Buckwalter was screwing around behind Terry’s back, there’ll be plenty of other people besides me who’ll be willing to tell her so. The fact is, maybe she already knows.”
“That’s different from having the information come from you
or from someone in my department,” Joanna returned. “All I’m saying is if it isn’t necessary to the case, don’t bring it up. Do I have your word on that?”
Ernie Carpenter shook his grizzled head. “I can’t promise it won’t come up,” he said at last. “But I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks, Detective Carpenter,” Joanna said. “Your best is good enough for me.”
By three o’clock, the crime-scene investigation was pretty well complete. Ernie had retreated into the clinic’s restroom to change back into his street clothes, and Joanna was about to head back to the department. Just as she was climbing into the Blazer, Terry Buckwalter’s mottled white T-Bird bounced over the cattle guard and stopped just inside the clinic compound.
Deputy Dave Hollicker had been stationed at the clinic’s entrance all afternoon, telling whoever tried to turn into the parking lot—potential clients and gawkers alike—that they would have to come back some other time.
As soon as Deputy Hollicker waved the T-Bird to a stop, Joanna headed in that direction. Dave wasn’t a bad guy, but he had all the subtlety of a baseball bat. Joanna didn’t want him to be the one who told Terry Buckwalter that her husband was dead.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Dick Voland had issued orders that no information was to be released by anyone other than Frank Montoya, the public information officer. Dave Hollicker was exceptionally good about obeying orders.
When Joanna reached the T-Bird, a frowning Terry Buckwalter peered up at her in frustration. “What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “This is my property—my business—but your jackass deputy here won’t let me in, and he won’t tell me what’s going on, either.”
“It’s all right, Deputy Hollicker,” Joanna said. “Let her through. I’ll take over from here.”
They moved forward that way, with Terry Buckwalter driving the T-Bird as Joanna walked alongside. Terry left the driver’s window rolled down so they could speak as they went.
Not knowing where to begin, Joanna took a deep, steadying breath. “There’s been a fire,” she said.