Tombstone Courage

by J. A. Jance

  It was well after one by then, and Joanna’s growling stomach was complaining too much to be ignored. She resisted the temptation to go straight back to the department. After all, even the sheriff deserved a lunch break. With as much haste as the posted limits allowed, she hurried out to the High Lonesome, stripped out of her clothing, grabbed one of the world’s shortest showers, and gulped down a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Still eating the last half of the sandwich, she headed for the Cochise County Justice Center dressed in some of her old insurance-agency work clothes.

  This business of what to wear and what not to wear was fast becoming a pain in the neck.

  Once at the Sheriff’s Department, she noticed that several news vehicles were parked in front of the building. Driving around back, she pulled into the reserved parking spot marked SHERIFF. It was empty and waiting for her Eagle.

  It would have been nice to use her own private entryway, but no one had as yet given her the push-button code. Instead, she had to buzz before she could be allowed in through the common entryway marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. She walked into the reception area of the back suite of offices just in time to catch Dick Voland railing at the unfortunate Kristin.

  “Don’t ask me what to do with all those reporters out in the lobby. It’s not my problem anymore. Ask Sheriff Brady.”

  “Ask me what?”

  Voland turned the focus of his irritation on her. “We’ve got a swarm of killer-bee media out there in the lobby, all of ’em wanting to know what the hell’s going on. Somebody should have called a press conference.”

  “What a good idea,” Joanna said amiably. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it?”

  “Me?” Dick Voland objected. “Why me?”

  “Why not you? Didn’t you handle media relations back when Walter McFadden was in charge?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And you can do it again,” Joanna interjected. “With a major story like this, we’re a lot better off having someone experienced controlling that aspect of things. Kristin, call out front. Have them tell the reporters there’ll be a press conference in fifteen minutes. By the way, where’s Ernie? Is he back yet?”

  “He’s in his office,” Kristin put in. “He said he wasn’t to be disturbed. I think he’s working on his paper.”

  “Tell Ernie to come to my office anyway. It won’t take long, but I want to see him before Chief Deputy Voland’s press conference. I want you there as well, Dick. Before you talk to those reporters, the three of us need to put our heads together.”

  Without waiting for either a reply or an argument, Joanna headed for the private corner office, the one she knew belonged to the sheriff. She more than half expected to find it still occupied by Dick Voland’s messy paraphernalia, but she was wrong.

  Overnight the piles of stacked papers and accumulated junk had entirely disappeared. Even the collection of Al Freeman yard signs was gone. The wooden surfaces of the desk, credenza, and coffee table were all polished to a high gloss. The overflowing, freestanding ashtray had been replaced by a heavy, velvet-bottomed marble one that sat in clean and solitary splendor on the upper right-hand corner of the desk.

  Joanna paused in the doorway and then turned back to the receptionist’s desk where both Dick Voland and Kristin Marsten still stood motionless as if frozen in place.

  “And, Kristin,” Joanna added, “after you give Ernie my message, I need a supply of yellow pads, pens, and pencils in here.”

  Joanna waited long enough to see whether or not the young woman would move. With a defiant scowl and an extra toss of her big hair, Kristin turned and bent over to use her telephone. “Detective Carpenter,” Joanna heard her say a moment later. “The sheriff wants to see you in her office. Right away.”

  Leaving the door open behind her, Joanna walked over to the desk and sat down in the massive leather chair behind it. The outsized chair was far too big for her. The tall back made her feel dwarfed and inconsequential. The office had the expectant, empty feel of a vacant apartment, but now was no time for Joanna to bring in her meager box of possessions or to think about putting her own personal stamp on the place. That would have to wait.

  Moments later the miniskirted Kristin flounced into Joanna’s office and unceremoniously dumped a stack of legal pads and three pens on the desk. “We’re out of pencils,” she mumbled through a mouthful of gum.

  “Who’s in charge of ordering supplies?” Joanna asked.

  “I am.”

  “Well, order some then. I want pencils.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I want you to have whoever is in charge of Motor Pool to make arrangements for me to have a vehicle, one with a radio.”

  “What else?”

  Joanna studied the young receptionist. Twenty-two or twenty-three at the most, Kristin Marsten bristled with ill-disguised hostility. Up to a point, Joanna understood that. It was a necessary part of the way politics worked. When someone new won an election and took over the helm of an elected office there was always a period of adjustment with the staff, a time when, although loyalties were shifting, the work still had to be done.

  “Have you ever worked for a woman before?” Joanna asked.

  Startled, Kristin lowered her eyes and shifted on her feet. “Not really. Why?”

  “I was just wondering,” Joanna said. “You enjoyed working for Mr. Voland, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kristin said. “Very much.”

  “Let me ask you a question. When he was in this office, did you ever bring him coffee?”

  “Yes. Sometimes. He likes his black.”

  “And Ernie Carpenter?”

  “He takes his black, too.”

  “I see,” Joanna said, leaning back in the chair. “That makes three of us. All black. We’ll just continue the tradition then, if you don’t mind. And since the three of us have already had a very long morning, why don’t you bring in three cups of black coffee as soon as Ernie and Dick get here.”

  Kristin started toward the door. “Is that all?”

  “One more question. Why exactly did you come to work here?”

  Kristin shrugged. “It was a job, I guess. But I kinda thought it would be interesting, being in law enforcement.”

  “And is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever thought about doing anything more around here rather than just working as a receptionist? Have you thought about maybe being a deputy or doing something in Dispatch? Something responsible that would give you a chance at better pay?”

  Kristin shook her mane of hair. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, being a dispatcher is really serious stuff. Nobody ever takes me seriously. I’m not really an airhead, but you know all those blonde jokes, and I…”

  “It’s difficult for men to take you seriously when they’re spending all their time trying to look down your blouse or up your skirt,” Joanna returned. “By the way, that’s a very nice set of underwear you have on today. I particularly like that shade of turquoise, especially for a bra and matching panties. I’m sure the guys around here like them, too. I’ve noticed several of them looking. It’s possible, though, if you want the men to take you seriously, that a longer skirt would help.”

  Shocked, Kristin opened her mouth, but no words came out. Blushing furiously, she spun around and nearly ran over Dick Voland in her rush to escape Joanna’s office and her steady, appraising gaze.

  “What’s the matter with Kristin?” Dick asked, as he shambled in and sank down into one of the side chairs.

  “I believe it’s called culture shock,” Joanna replied. “Where’s Ernie?”

  “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Thanks for having the office ready for me to move into, Dick,” Joanna said. “That was thoughtful of you. I don’t know when you had time.”

  The chief deputy shrugged grudgingly. “No big thing,” he said. Although Joanna knew it was.

  Ernie appeared moments later. The man may have spent the
entire morning grubbing around at a crime scene in a pair of much-used sweats and tennies, but by the time he appeared in Joanna’s office, he was wearing a well-pressed suit, a tie, and a stiffly starched white shirt, to say nothing of highly polished wing tips. Looking at him, Joanna was glad she’d taken the time to go home and clean up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked irritably. “I’m busy as hell.”

  “I’m sure you are, but we’ve got a press conference coming up in a few minutes,” Joanna told him.

  “Since when?”

  “Since I called it. This is a big case, and we’re going to handle it in a way that won’t have the press tearing us apart. Dick will be running the show, but I want a united front on what he says and what he doesn’t.”

  Kristin walked in right then, bringing the three cups of coffee. Wordlessly, she delivered Joanna’s cup to the desk. When she turned back to the two men, she paused for a moment in front of the coffee table, struggling to find a way to deposit the cups on the low surface of the table without having to bend over to do it. She finally solved the problem by passing the cups directly to their hands.

  “So where do we stand?” Joanna asked, once Kristin left the room.

  “Two stiffs for the price of one,” Ernie Carpenter replied. “I’ve got Harold Patterson’s body pulled up to the surface. The coroner has taken charge of him, and we’ve packed out most of the skeleton in a body bag. The sump pump is doing the job, but it’s still too wet down there to finish searching the bottom of the glory hole.”

  “Any possible I.D. on the skeleton?”

  “None.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Looks like a rock to the head to me, but that’s just a wild guess.”

  “Do you have any leads on either case?”

  “Not really. But how could I? For Pete’s sake, I’ve been down in that damn hole mucking around in the mud all morning long.”

  Joanna turned from Ernie Carpenter to the chief deputy. “All right then, Dick. That’s what you tell the press.”

  “What?”

  “Two separate homicides. One positive I.D., one John Doe. No specific leads in either case at this time.”

  “That’s all? You call a press conference and just give ’em that little snippet of information? They’ll tear me apart.”

  “Some information is better than no information,” Joanna countered. “They’ll have to make do. Tell them when we know more, they’ll know more.”

  Shaking his head, a disgruntled Dick Voland took his coffee and headed out of the office. Ernie Carpenter made as if to follow, but Joanna stopped him. “Wait a minute, Ernie.”

  Ernie sighed and reluctantly sat back down. “What now?”

  “I picked up a few tidbits of information out at the Rocking P this morning,” she told him.

  “Tidbits?” he asked with a disinterested shrug. “Like what?”

  Joanna got up from behind her desk, walked over to the door and closed it. “Like who might have killed Harold Patterson,” she answered firmly. “And why.”

  Twenty-Six

  ERNIE CARPENTER stayed in Joanna’s office for more than an hour. Once she started relating all she had learned out at the Patterson place and during her stop at Casa Vieja, Ernie appropriated one of Joanna’s legal pads and pens and began scribbling notes.

  When she finished telling him everything she could remember, Ernie studied his notes in silence for several moments. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, chewing one end of the pen, “what you’ve told me tallies with some of the things I picked up.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance,” he replied, “near as I can tell, there were several sets of tire tracks in and out of that place for days. The only trouble is, they’re all from the same vehicle.”

  “Which one?”

  “Harold Patterson’s Scout.”

  “That stands to reason.”

  “But only up to a point,” Ernie said. “He could have driven it in one last time, but he sure as hell didn’t drive it out. According to the coroner’s preliminary look-see, he guesstimates time of death as sometime Tuesday or Wednesday, but Burton Kimball says he came to the Election Night party looking for his uncle because he saw his car in the convention-center parking lot.”

  “So the question is, how did it get from the glory hole to the parking lot?”

  “No way to tell, but presumably the killer drove it there.”

  Ernie shook his head thoughtfully. “The part about all this that doesn’t add up is Ivy and her boyfriend spending the night in the Scout with Harold lying there dead a matter of a few feet away. That one just flat-out takes the cake!”

  “It’s sick, all right,” Joanna agreed.

  “And they’re getting married tonight?”

  Joanna nodded. “That’s what they said. Seven o’clock at the Canyon Methodist parsonage. Marianne Maculyea is officiating.”

  “I call that really rushing it,” Ernie said, frowning. “I mean, the old guy’s not even cold yet, and his daughter’s out banging her boyfriend in Daddy’s car. Next thing you know, she’s getting married. Couldn’t she hold off the celebration at least until after the funeral? And you say Burton Kimball didn’t know anything at all about the wedding until today?”

  “That’s how it sounded—as though he’d never even heard of Yuri Malakov,” Joanna told him.

  “So the Russian and Ivy were already engaged, but maybe no one in the family knew anything about it, including the old man.”

  “Why keep your engagement a secret?” Joanna asked.

  “Because you figure someone’s going to object,” Ernie answered. “So the next question has to be why there’d be an objection in the first place.”

  Joanna nodded thoughtfully. “According to Marianne, Yuri is applying for U.S. citizenship. Wouldn’t Immigration have an application with fingerprints on it?”

  “And with any criminal record as well,” Ernie said.

  “Can we get a copy?”

  Ernie laughed. “Supposedly, but nobody rushes those guys down at INS. I’ve gone to them for records before. Just getting an answer to a simple question could take months, even with the MJ boys working on it.”

  The Multi-Jurisdictional Force was a recently created task force designed to counter criminal activity along the Mexican border, including unlawful enterprises that often crossed jurisdictional boundaries. One MJ squad was based out of the Cochise County Justice Center. Joanna knew about it, but only distantly. It was one of those aspects of her new job that she had expected to have time to research between Election Night and being sworn in sometime in January.

  “Maybe you can get someone from there to pull a string or two,” she suggested.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Ernie said sourly, getting up. “But I’ll give it a whirl.”

  He was already at the door when Joanna remembered the magazine. “You don’t read People by any chance, do you?”

  Ernie shook his head. “Not me. I’m more into Smithsonian and Home Mechanix,” he answered. “Last month they had a great article on building decks. Why do you ask?”

  Joanna leaned down, reached into her purse, and was about to haul out Helen Barco’s dog-eared magazine when she thought better of it.

  “Never mind,” she said. “There’s an article in one of them I thought you should read, but you already have enough to do. I’ll try to scan it sometime tonight. If it looks as though it has any bearing on the case, I’ll get it to you first thing in the morning.”

  “Good,” Ernie said, heading out the door. “What I don’t need is one more thing that has to be done tonight.”

  The intercom on Joanna’s desk buzzed loudly. Without having been given proper operating instructions, Joanna wasn’t able to figure out how to make it work. Giving up, she finally walked over to the door and threw it open.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s someone out here waiting to see you.”

  “Who?”


  Before Kristin could answer, a young woman rose from one of the chairs across the room and hurried forward, hand extended. Short, stocky, well dressed, and very businesslike, she seemed vaguely familiar, although Joanna couldn’t quite place her.

  “Sue Rolles,” the woman said with a winning smile. “I’m a reporter for the Arizona Daily Sun.”

  “A reporter. I’m afraid you need to talk to Chief Deputy Voland. He’s the one handling the press on today’s glory-hole cases.”

  “This isn’t about those,” Sue Rolles said. “It’s something else entirely.”

  Joanna led the way back into her office and motioned the visitor into a chair. “Have we met before?” Joanna asked. “You look familiar.”

  “We didn’t exactly meet,” Sue Rolles replied. “We ran into one another back in September in the lobby at University Hospital in Tucson. But we were never properly introduced. Since then, I’ve spent a good deal of time here in Cochise County working on a special assignment.”

  “What kind of assignment?”

  “The sheriff’s race.”

  Joanna Brady had been in office for only one day, but she had been around law enforcement long enough to suspect ambush journalism. “That’s funny,” she said. “I don’t remember your ever asking for an interview with me.”

  “It’s not that kind of article,” Sue Rolles said quickly.

  “I see. Exactly what kind is it then?”

  Sue Rolles shrugged. “You know how it is. People are free to say things before elections that they can’t or won’t say afterward. My editors wanted me to survey some of the people who work here to get an insider’s view of how people would react depending on which of the three candidates was actually elected.”

  “In other words,” Joanna interjected without humor, “you’ve been out stirring up a hornet’s nest in advance of my taking office.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “What, then?”

  “Since you’re the first woman to hold this office in the state of Arizona, there’s a good deal of interest, especially since most of the officers who will be reporting to you are men.”

  “So?” Joanna asked warily.

  “Do you see a problem with that?”