by J. A. Jance
When Animal Control had been folded into Joanna’s department on a “temporary” basis, she had soon discovered that the two radio systems involved were incompatible. Requests to replace Animal Control’s system with new and compatible equipment had been disallowed on the grounds that the situation was “temporary.” Permanently temporary. Relaying messages back and forth was cumbersome, time-consuming, and, in this case, pointless. By the time Joanna knew someone was coming, she was pretty much there.
The three officers watched as an antique jeep careened over the top of the dune behind them. Ernie moved forward to flag down the vehicle. For a time it appeared that the jeep was going to plow right into him. The female driver stopped only a couple of feet from where Ernie was standing. The woman, tanned and weather-beaten, wore a man’s Western shirt and a faded baseball cap. A foot-long gray ponytail stuck out through the hole in the back of the cap. Looking at her, Joanna estimated the woman to be in her late sixties or early seventies. There was no need to guess about her state of mind. She was mad as hell.
“Where’s my brother?” she demanded. “What’s happened and what have you done with him? That’s Lester’s ATV over there. It looks like it’s been wrecked.” She pointed at the fallen ATV. “Is he all right? And who the hell are all of you?”
Since Ernie was right in front of the bumper, he was closer to the newly arrived vehicle than anyone else. Producing his badge and ID wallet, he held them up. “I’m Detective Ernie Carpenter with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. That’s Sheriff Brady and Detective Howell,” he added, pointing in their direction. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
“I can see that!” the woman snapped. “What do you think I am, blind or something? Now get the hell out of my way.”
The engine was still idling. She gunned it determinedly, as though she fully intended to hit the gas and barge right past him. Or over him.
“You can’t go there, miss,” he insisted. “It’s a crime scene.”
“Don’t you ‘miss’ me…” she began, but before she could pull away, Ernie reached across her, switched off the ignition on the steering column, and took possession of the keys. In the momentary quiet, the woman gave Ernie a piercing look.
“Wait a minute. Did you say crime scene?” she asked. It seemed as though she had only then internalized his words.
Ernie nodded again. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “It’s a possible homicide.”
A shocked expression flitted across the woman’s face. “You’re saying someone’s dead-that they’ve been murdered?” she asked.
“There’s been a fatality,” the detective told her, keeping his voice neutral. “We don’t know yet if it’s a homicide. That’s what we’re investigating right now.”
“My brother lives out here,” the woman said forcefully. “Tell me who’s dead. Where?”
In answer Ernie nodded slightly in Dave Hollicker’s direction. Before anyone could stop her, the woman bolted from the jeep. With an unexpected burst of speed she dodged past Ernie and sprinted toward Dave, heading straight off across the sand. Without pausing to confer, Joanna and Deb Howell leaped forward to head the woman off. Each of them managed to lay hands on an arm and together they jerked the woman to a stop.
“Let me go,” she shouted, trying to extricate herself. “What if that’s my brother over there? I saw Lester’s dog back at the gate with another cop. She wouldn’t tell me what was going on, either, but Miller wouldn’t have left Les’s side unless something was terribly wrong.”
“Our victim may very well be your brother,” Joanna agreed calmly, trying to reason with the still struggling woman. “But you can’t go there. As Detective Carpenter told you, this is a crime scene. We need to preserve it. We have to keep it the way it is in hopes of figuring out what happened.”
“Let me go!”
“No!” Joanna told her. “Not until you calm down. You can’t just go tearing off across the sand. What if the victim does turn out to be your brother? The only way we’ll be able to find out what really happened to him is by examining every detail of the crime scene so we can figure out what went on.”
As suddenly as the struggle had started, it ended. The woman dropped her arms and stopped pulling. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Joanna let go of the arm she was holding. As a precaution, Debra continued to hold on to hers.
“Who are you?” Joanna asked. “What’s your name?”
The woman took a deep breath. “Margie,” she said. “My name’s Margie Savage.”
“You said you think this man-the victim-may be your brother?” Joanna asked.
“My baby brother,” Margie answered. “His name is Lester-Lester Attwood. He lives in that camper back by the gate. His truck’s there, but he’s not. I was afraid something bad had happened to him.”
“What made you think that?” Joanna asked. “Is that why you came here today?”
Margie nodded. “I work at the post office in Bowie. One of the neighbors from up the road stopped by a little while ago and told me something strange was going on up here. He said he’d seen an Animal Control truck turn in here and a cop car, too, one that took off over the dunes. I couldn’t figure out why Animal Control would be here. I know Miller’s licensed. I took care of that myself. So I headed out here on my lunch hour to see what happened. I followed the tracks and they led me right here. So what did happen? Did he come down that dune too fast and take a spill? I kept telling him to stay off that ATV, that the damned thing would be the death of him.”
That jeep doesn’t look much safer, Joanna thought, but what she said was “We don’t think what happened was an accident. That’s why Detectives Carpenter and Howell are here. They’re homicide detectives, and that man you see working over there…” She pointed at Dave. “He’s my crime scene investigator. That’s why we’re trying to preserve the crime scene-so we can examine it for clues.”
“You’re saying Lester’s been murdered?” Margie repeated the words as if she couldn’t quite believe them.
“We think murder is a distinct possibility,” Joanna answered. “As to whether or not the victim is your brother…”
Margie squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Show him to me,” she said. “Let me see for myself. I’m not going to faint or anything. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than that.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right, then,” Joanna said. “Follow me. If you don’t mind, please stay on the pathway.”
Margie nodded. “I will,” she said.
With Joanna leading the way, they started off across the intervening sand by following the plastic-grid path Dave Hollicker had laid down. A full ten yards from the half-buried body, Margie came to an abrupt stop. Ernie, following behind, almost ran into her.
“It’s him,” Margie said. “That’s my brother.”
Joanna stopped, too. From where she stood, all that was visible of the body was the back of the man’s head and neck, as well as the top of his shirt collar. What looked like an ugly bruise covered the back of his neck from the top of his shirt to the bottom of his hairline.
Joanna was surprised by the certainty in Margie’s voice. “Are you sure?” Joanna asked. “You can identify him from all the way back here?”
“It’s the birthmark,” Margie said. “The one on the back of his neck.”
Joanna looked again at what she had assumed to be a recent injury. “That’s a birthmark instead of a bruise?” she asked.
Margie nodded. “The whole time we were growing up I was forever having to beat the crap out of asshole kids who teased him about it. They’d torment him and tell him the discoloration on his neck was really the mark of the devil. By the time I finished blackening their eyes, they knew all about the mark of the devil.”
She paused and gave a small snort. “When I was younger, I used to have a pretty mean left hook. I busted out Tommy Leroy’s right front tooth when I was sixteen, and
it wasn’t no baby tooth, either. He was only fourteen, but he was also a good five inches taller than me. I thought his mother was gonna kill me when she found out about it, but then someone told her what he’d been doing-that Tommy and some friends of his had been picking on Lester-she changed her mind. She lit into Tommy herself and gave him a whuppin’, too. Not that any of that ever helped poor Les,” she added sadly.
For a long moment, she stood staring across the expanse of sand toward her brother’s still form. “It’s like the guy never had a chance at a decent life,” she said finally. “The cards were so stacked against him from the start that you could hardly blame him for drowning his sorrows in booze.”
With that, she turned and walked back the way they had come, deftly slipping past Ernie without once venturing off Dave Hollicker’s plastic-grid trail. By the time Margie reached the side of her jeep, she sank down on her knees next to it, buried her face in her hands, and wept. Joanna realized then that Margie Savage had put on a good front of being tough, but it was only that-a front. Joanna caught up with her in time to hear her sob, “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“None of this is your fault,” Joanna said consolingly, “unless you did this. Did you?”
Margie shook her head. “But I promised our mama that I’d look after him, that I’d keep him safe. Once he sobered up, I helped him get this caretaker’s job so’s I could keep an eye on him. Now he’s dead.”
She pulled a red hankie out of the pocket of her jeans and blew her nose into it. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked back at the ATV. “They ran him down, didn’t they?” she said.
“That’s what it looks like,” Joanna agreed. “We won’t know for sure until we finish our investigation.”
“And who did it?”
“We don’t know that, either. Is there a chance your brother got involved with some unsavory characters?”
“Les has been involved with ‘unsavory characters’ all his life,” Margie replied. “He didn’t hardly know any other kind. I thought he’d left all that behind him-those kinds of friends, but maybe he had a slip.”
“A slip,” Ernie said, latching on to the sobriety lingo. “Are you saying he’d been through drug or alcohol treatment?”
“Alcohol,” Margie answered. “Three times, to be exact, but this last time it finally took. Les had been sober for a little over a year. Fourteen months, to be exact. Said the only kind of booze he still had around the house was Miller.”
“Miller High Life?” Ernie asked. “You mean he still drank beer?”
“Not that kind of Miller,” Margie said. “His dog. Les was still drinking two years ago when somebody dumped an almost dead puppy out by the garbage cans at the trailer court in Tucson where Les used to live. The puppy was a tiny little thing. To begin with, Les fed him with an eyedropper and later with a toy baby bottle. He finally managed to nurse him back to health. Les named the dog after his favorite beer-Miller-and even taught him to bring him a cold one from the fridge. He thought that was funnier ’an a rubber crutch. ‘Hey, Miller,’ he’d say, ‘bring me a Miller.’ And that dog would do it just as cute as can be. Truth be told, Les let that dog drink some of his beer as well. But finally Lester went through treatment and sobered up. It turns out that when Les stopped drinking, so did Miller. But when Les wanted a soda from the fridge, he’d still say the same thing-for Miller to bring him a beer. Les told me it was just too much trouble to try teaching that dog a new command. Besides, Les liked it. He said asking the dog to bring him a soda didn’t have quite the same ring to it; wasn’t as funny.”
Margie paused and looked around. “Les loved that dog to distraction,” she added. “What’s going to happen to him now?”
Joanna had learned over time that dealing with pets left behind by homicide victims was often a tough call. Sometimes any number of people-friends and relatives-came forward to lay claim to the suddenly orphaned animal. Other times no one did and the unwanted dog or cat or gerbil ended up being hauled away to the pound. As head of Animal Control, Jeannine Phillips was a tiger about finding homes for abandoned animals, but sometimes even she came up empty.
“Miller loved Lester, but ever since he stopped being a puppy, I’ve been half scared of him,” Margie admitted. “And after getting used to living out here with all this room to run around, I think he’d be too much dog for me and my little single-wide. I doubt he’d get along with my pug, Miss Priss, either.”
Joanna had learned enough about animal control to see that sending Miller to live with someone who was scared of him was an invitation to disaster-for Marge Savage, for her little pug, and for Miller as well. A second choice would be to send Miller to live with some other relative so the dog wouldn’t be shipped off either to the pound or to live with complete strangers.
“Is there anyone else who’s familiar with the dog?” Joanna asked.
“My stepsons know him, of course,” Margie said.
“Could one of them take him?” Joanna asked.
The woman shook her head. “They both have little kids,” she said. “Miller’s a Doberman, after all-part Doberman, anyway. He’s used to being around grown-ups.”
Joanna sighed. “All right, then,” she said. “You have enough on your plate right now to worry about the dog, but we certainly can’t leave the poor thing here. I’ll have my ACO take Miller back to the pound in Bisbee.”
“You won’t let them put him down, will you?” Margie asked. “I mean, none of this is Miller’s fault.”
That was certainly true.
“I can’t promise,” Joanna said, knowing how often her pound filled up with unwanted animals. “We’ll do our best to find a place for him, but if you happen to think of anyone else who might want him…”
The sentence was interrupted by the ringing of Joanna’s cell phone. “I’m here,” Guy Machett announced in her ear. “At least I think I’m here. I’m at a place where the sign on the gate says ‘Action Trail Adventures.’ This is where the guy at the post office told me to come. There’s an Animal Control truck parked out on the shoulder of the road. I don’t see anyone in it.”
“You asked for directions from the post office?” Joanna asked.
“Yeah, right here in Bowie,” the M.E. replied. “Why not? Those people have to know where to find people.”
Joanna noticed the man was still using the bow-and-arrow pronunciation of Bowie. He had also disregarded her advice about calling her for directions. She knew that his driving up to Bowie’s post office in a vehicle marked COCHISE COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER would have caused a firestorm of small-town interest even it hadn’t been Margie Savage’s place of employment.
“The crime scene is out here in the dunes,” she told him. “If you like, I could send Ernie or Debra to come guide you in.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of getting there myself. Just tell me where you are.”
Joanna turned to Ernie. “How far is it from the gate to where we turned off?”
“Three-quarters of a mile,” he said. “Give or take.”
Joanna returned to the phone. “All right,” she said. “Turn right on the gravel road and follow that for three-quarters of a mile. You’ll see where the tracks lead off to the left into the dunes.”
Joanna ended the call. “The M.E.,” she replied in answer to Ernie’s quizzical look. “He’s coming.”
For the next several minutes she took a backseat to her detectives while Debra and Ernie plied Margie for information about her brother. “How long did Les work here?” Ernie asked.
“Since he got out of treatment,” Margie said. “A little over a year. My two stepsons own the place, and they hired him as a favor to me. The ranch has been in the family-their mother’s family-for generations, and they inherited it after Monty died. Monty was my husband, you see. Third husband. The boys-Arnie and Chuck-have wanted to turn it into an ATV playground for years. Monty was against it, but once it bel
onged to them, they went ahead and did what they wanted.”
“Is there any bad blood between your stepsons and your brother?” Debra Howell asked.
“Between Les and the boys? Good heavens, no!” Margie exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “They’ve been good as gold to him, and to me, too. Just as Les was getting out of treatment, their previous caretaker quit. I asked them if they’d mind hiring him. He’d had to move out of his other place when he went in for treatment, and I knew the job here came with a place to live. I sure as hell didn’t want Les and his dog living with me.
“It was a huge relief for me when they hired him. That way I knew Les had a roof over his head, and he made a little money, too, enough to supplement his Social Security and keep him and Miller in food. Chuck and Arnie let him have that old pickup truck and the ATV to drive around here and use for chores, but the rule was, Les wasn’t allowed to take either one of them off the property or onto the highway. With all those DUIs on his record, he’d lost his driver’s license and couldn’t have gotten insurance on a bet. So I’d take him into town if he needed groceries and dog food. Or one of my daughters-in-law would. Like I said, Chuck and Arnie and their families were all as good to him as they could be, even if they did it because they were doing me a favor. They’re nice people.”
“Did Les have a girlfriend?” Deb asked.
Margie snorted at the very idea. “Not a girlfriend,” she said. “More like a drinking buddy.”
“Does she have a name?”
“LaVerne,” Margie said.
“Last name?”
“LaVerne,” Margie replied. “I believe her last name’s Hartley and I think she lives in Benson, but once Les sobered up, Old LaVerne gave him the brush-off. My reading is that if he was off the sauce, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Besides, she didn’t like Miller, and Miller didn’t like her. ‘Les,’ I told him more than once, ‘when it comes to women, that dog of yours has got way better sense than you do.’”