by J. A. Jance
Catching sight of Detective Jaime Carbajal standing next to his Econoline van, Joanna directed Matt Raymond that way. Once the wheels stopped moving, she hopped out and hurried over to Jaime. “Any word?” she asked.
“Morning, boss,” Jaime replied. “Yes. The word for the day would be stupidity. I haven’t talked to the survivors yet, but the fire chief told me the dead guy was a smoker. He was also on oxygen. The miracle is that he’s the only one who died.”
“Do we have any names?”
“Sunderson,” Jaime answered. “Leonard and Carol Sunderson. I don’t know the grandkids’ names. The grandparents were evidently raising the two boys.”
Joanna surveyed the scene and saw no one. “Where are they?” she asked.
“In their van,” he said, nodding toward an older-model VW bus with an empty wheelchair holder attached to the back. “They’re all pretty broken up. Reverend Maculyea just went over to talk to them. I thought I’d give them a little private time with her before barging in with a bunch of questions.”
It was only then that Joanna caught sight of Marianne Maculyea’s sea-foam-green antique VW Bug tucked in among the hulking fire trucks. Marianne was the pastor at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, which Joanna and Butch attended. More than that, though, she and Joanna had been best friends since junior high.
In the past several months, in the wake of disasters that had overtaken other small towns around the country, Bisbee’s various clergy members had joined together to create an emergency response team of their own. They had established an on-call duty roster so that, in a crisis, one of them could roll out at the same time the first responders did.
As if on cue, Marianne emerged from the van. Two boys, barefoot and wrapped in blankets, followed. One of them clutched a black-and-white mongrel dog to his chest. Marianne turned back and helped a gray-haired woman out of the dilapidated vehicle as well. Wearing a pair of what looked like oversized men’s pajamas, she too was barefoot. That was all these three unfortunate people had left in the world, Joanna realized. The clothes on their backs, the dog the one boy carried, and nothing else.
The two boys appeared to be several years younger than Jenny—one about seven and the other one maybe nine. Both were still wide-eyed with shock. The traumatized dog, a sheltie mix, shivered uncontrollably. The woman was fairly heavyset and somewhere in her late fifties to early sixties. Her frizzy gray hair stuck out in all directions, and her sunken, careworn face was twisted with grief.
Breaking away from Ernie, Joanna hurried up to them. “I’m Sheriff Brady,” she said, holding out a hand to the bereaved woman. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Sunderson.”
Biting her lip, Carol Sunderson nodded somberly. “Thank you,” she murmured.
The younger boy stared as if mesmerized at the remains of what had been their home.
“Where will we go, Grandma?” he asked plaintively. “What’s going to happen to us? Where will we live?”
“Hush, Danny,” the distraught woman said determinedly. “Don’t worry. We’ll manage somehow. We always have.”
Jaime walked up behind Joanna. “This is one of my investigators,” Joanna said, stepping aside to introduce him. “Detective Jaime Carbajal. He’ll need to talk to you,” she explained. “Get some background, find out what happened, that sort of thing.”
Jaime handed Carol his card. She studied it for a long moment. As she did so, the look on her face changed abruptly. Joanna knew that was when the word “homicide” finally registered. Carol gave Jaime a beseeching look. “Do the boys have to be there while you do it?” she asked.
Unasked, Marianne immediately stepped into the breach. “I’ll bet you two are hungry,” she said, addressing the boys. “How about if I take you down to the Mini-Mart at Double Adobe and get you something to eat—doughnuts, cupcakes, juice, and maybe some chocolate milk?”
The younger boy’s face broke into a sudden smile at the proffered treat. “Real chocolate milk?” he asked. “Like in a carton?”
The older boy—the one holding the dog—shook his head and tightened his grip on his still traumatized pooch. “Only if Scamp gets to come along,” he declared.
“Great,” Marianne said. “By all means bring Scamp with you. He’s probably hungry, too. We’ll get him some food as well. That’s my car—the little green one over there by that last fire truck. Why don’t you go get in. I’ll be there in a minute.” As the boys walked away, taking the dog with them, Marianne turned back to Carol Sunderson. “Would you like something?” she asked. “We can bring it back here.”
“Coffee, please,” Carol said. “Black coffee would be nice, but don’t get me anything to eat. I’m not hungry.”
And won’t be for a long time, Joanna thought. In the days and weeks that had followed the shooting death of her first husband, Sheriff Deputy Andrew Roy Brady, food had been the last thing she had wanted.
Leaving Carol with Jaime Carbajal, Joanna followed Marianne back toward her car. “Anything we should know?” she asked.
“The older boy is Rick; the younger one is Danny,” Marianne said. “Their father isn’t in the picture. Hasn’t been since Danny was born. Their mother, the Sundersons’ daughter, got caught up in the drug trade and is doing time for manslaughter back east somewhere. The grandparents have custody and have had since the boys were three and five.”
“And the grandfather?”
“A retired coal miner. Dusted. Came out here for his lungs.”
Bad lungs were a health hazard for miners everywhere. Copper miners used the code word “dusted.” In other places it was called “black lung disease.” Joanna wasn’t a smoker. Never had been, but the idea that a man whose lungs were already compromised would exacerbate the problem by smoking cigarettes was something that left her shaking her head. And lighting up a smoke in a room where oxygen was in use was, as Jaime Carbajal had already pointed out, downright stupid.
Marianne herded the boys into the car and directed them to buckle up. “I think she’s afraid he did it on purpose,” Marianne added quietly once the door closed behind them.
“On purpose?” Joanna asked.
Marianne nodded grimly. “Lenny Sunderson was in a wheelchair, and his health was deteriorating more and more. They’ve been scraping by on his Social Security and some pittance of a pension. Mrs. Sunderson says she thinks he decided he didn’t want to be more of a burden to her.”
“Offing himself and leaving his family homeless isn’t what I’d call helping,” Joanna observed.
Just then a battered pickup roared up behind them. As soon as it came to a stop, an outraged man sprang out of the driver’s seat. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “How did this happen?”
Joanna recognized the newcomer as Tom McCracken, an eccentric old codger who was Cochise County’s resident slumlord. Over the years he had bought up distressed properties everywhere from Pirtleville to Kansas Settlement. Without ever doing much to improve them, he rented them out to people of limited means. He had come to Joanna’s department on more than one occasion seeking help in carrying out eviction notices.
Jaime, holding one of Carol’s arms, was leading her toward his van, where they’d be able to talk with a semblance of privacy. Tom McCracken, wearing a frayed cowboy hat and down-at-the-heel boots, strode after them.
“What the hell did you people do?” he raged at Carol. “Set fire to the place? Is this the thanks I get for renting to poor white trash?”
Joanna hurried to cut him off. “Excuse me, Mr. McCracken,” she said. “Enough. Leave her alone.”
“Leave her alone? Why should I?” he went on, his face twisted in fury. “They’ve burned down my trailer! Those ratty little kids of hers probably torched it. Playing with matches, I’ll bet. Worthless little buggers!”
With a shake of her head, Marianne started her VW and drove away, taking the two boys safely out of earshot. Carol, pulling free of Jaime’s arm, turned back to face McCracken.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”
“You’re sorry?” he repeated. “My mobile is gone, and all you can say is that you’re sorry?”
“Come on, Mrs. Sunderson,” Jaime urged. “Ignore him.”
Joanna knew Tom McCracken to be a canny businessman. She had no doubt whatsoever that his rental mobile home was fully insured. Whatever settlement he received would be more than enough to purchase another run-down mobile home to replace the one that was gone. The Sundersons’ losses, on the other hand, were just exactly that—overwhelming, uninsured losses that wouldn’t be easily recouped.
“Please, Mr. McCracken,” Joanna said. “The fire was reported a little after four this morning, at a time when the two boys would have been in bed asleep. I doubt they had anything to do with it.”
“Who the hell—” the man began, turning his anger in Joanna’s direction. Then, recognizing her, he stopped. “Oh,” he said, a bit more reasonably. “Sheriff Brady. What are you doing here?”
“We believe your renter, Leonard Sunderson, died in the fire,” she told him. “That’s why we’re here. People from my department are investigating.”
It took a moment for Joanna’s words to penetrate McCracken’s fog of outrage.
“Sunderson died?” he repeated at last, sounding far more subdued. “My phone isn’t working. A friend of mine, Mason Timbers, was driving into town and saw the fire trucks. He came by the house to let me know what was going on. He never mentioned someone was dead. I had no idea.”
Joanna was relieved to see that hearing the news seemed to bring McCracken back to his senses. He might be an obnoxious old coot without enough good breeding to come right out and say he was sorry, but at least he backed off some. So did Joanna.
“That’s because your friend didn’t know,” she said. “No one did, and we haven’t actually confirmed the fatality at this point. The wreckage is still too hot to search.”
McCracken walked back to his pickup truck and leaned against it. He took off his hat and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The sun was fully up now, and with the humidity still off the charts after the previous night’s rain, Joanna could tell the day was going to be a scorcher.
“If the kids didn’t do it, what caused it, then?” McCracken asked.
Now was not the time to tell him Carol Sunderson was afraid her husband had deliberately caused the fire. “No way to know that until we’re able to do more investigating.”
McCracken nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “No sense in my hanging around here.” He opened the passenger door, reached into the glove box, and produced a business card that read “McCracken Enterprises.” He handed it over to Joanna. “If your people need to contact me, those are my numbers—once they get the phone service working again.” With that, he entered the pickup, slammed the door, started the engine, and drove away.
George Winfield had arrived unobserved during Joanna’s confrontation with Tom McCracken. “Good riddance to that little turd,” the medical examiner said now from just behind Joanna’s shoulder. “I liked the way you got rid of him. I’m here way too early to look for a body. What have we got?”
Joanna gave him a brief overview of what Marianne had said. “Two possible suicides in as many days, and one collateral damage,” George said. “This is starting to get old.”
She wondered if George even remembered that was the title of the book Butch was working on. Joanna was about to mention it when Deputy Armando Ruiz, one of Joanna’s relatively new hires, came up and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “There’s someone over there who says she needs to speak to you right away. She said she tried to call you, but her cell phone isn’t working.”
Joanna glanced in the direction Deputy Ruiz was pointing and spotted Jenny standing on the far side of the cattle guard leading into the Sunderson place. She stood next to Kiddo, her sorrel gelding quarter horse, with the reins clutched in one hand. With the other, she gave her mother a halfhearted self-conscious wave.
Without another word to anyone, Joanna hurried toward her daughter. “Jenny,” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to know what was going on,” Jenny began. “I tried calling, but—”
“I know, I know,” Joanna interrupted. “The phones aren’t working. But this is a crime scene, Jenny. You have no business—”
“Are Danny and Ricky all right?” Jenny asked.
That brought Joanna up short. “Danny and Ricky are fine.”
Jenny’s face flooded with relief. “Great,” she said.
“You know them, then?” Joanna asked.
Jenny nodded. “They’re good kids. Cassie takes care of them sometimes at her place when Mrs. Sunderson has to take her husband to the doctor or when she needs groceries or something.” By then Jenny’s boot was already in the stirrup. “I’ll go,” she added. “I know you don’t like having me around stuff like this. And I told Butch I’d come home early to help with Denny.”
Jenny was the only member of the family who routinely called the baby by that pet name. Jenny and Denny.
“Butch has a bunch of work to do on the book this weekend,” Jenny continued. “And since you’re not there, I’d better go. I’ll stop by Cassie’s and tell her that the boys are okay. She was worried.”
With that, Jenny wheeled Kiddo around and threaded her way through the parked vehicles. Once she was clear of them, she gave the horse a light jab in the ribs that brought him to a swift canter.
Watching her daughter head home, Joanna was flooded with yet another rush of insecurity. It wasn’t just her department that was more than capable of functioning without her. The same thing seemed to be true of her family as well.
Boy, Joanna told herself. Isn’t it great to be needed.
Luis Andrade opened his eyes. The sun was up, boring in through the open bedroom window. That was what woke him—the sun and the heat. For a few minutes he lay there, listening. In Tucson, with the air-conditioning running, he had never paid attention to the birds. But the AC in this place didn’t work. Luis had learned that the birds woke up early, just as the sun came up. The quail were especially noisy, but they were comical and fun to watch.
Luis had fallen asleep last night during the height of the storm, reveling in the cool wind that had blown in through his window. A little rain might have come in through the window, too, but Luis hadn’t minded that. He was grateful not to be too hot for a change. His mother kept telling him that their landlord was going to get their AC fixed one of these days. That had been the story for over a month now, but it still hadn’t happened.
His mother, Marcella, had come home at her usual time—around three in the morning or so. He had heard her laughing when someone dropped her off. That probably meant she’d had too much to drink and was too drunk to drive herself home. That was all right. Luis knew they’d find the car eventually, even if they had to walk to do it. They’d done that often enough before, and they always knew where to look—outside one of the bars down in Naco. Marcella might have gone trolling for customers up in Bisbee. A lot of tourists came through town now, but Old Bisbee was where his mother’s brother lived, and Luis knew she didn’t want to run into him. So she stayed away from Bisbee proper, limiting her trolling to the broken-down bikers and toughs who preferred hanging out in Naco or even at that place outside Huachuca City. Luis hoped she hadn’t gone there. It was a long way away and it would make getting the car back a lot tougher.
Luis was a smart kid. At fourteen, he knew the score. He understood what his mother did for a living. Everyone else in town could pretend that Marcella Andrade kept her head above water by selling cosmetics for Avon, but Luis knew that was a lie. His mother was a whore. Men paid money to have sex with her—unprotected sex. The more men Marcella saw, the more money she and her son had for rent and groceries and gas.
Luis had learned enough in his eighth-grade sex ed classes to be
scared to death about that. When his mother was drinking too much—as she usually was—she never bothered to wear her seat belt. He doubted she made her customers wear condoms, either. Marcella liked to say she was a “free spirit” and she wasn’t going to be forced into doing anything she didn’t want to do—like being a grown-up, for example. Apparently she also didn’t much like being a parent.
Sometimes Luis envied his cousin Pepe. He had two parents instead of one. They both went to Pepe’s baseball and basketball games and to his parent/teacher conferences at school. As far as Luis knew, his mother had never attended a single one. And that was probably just as well. Luis was smart and got good grades, whether she was there or not, and if Marcella showed up drunk or high, it would have been far worse for Luis than not having her there at all.
But it was his mother’s line of work, along with the hot pressing rays of the sun, that drove Luis out of bed early that Saturday morning. Careful not to make any noise so he wouldn’t disturb her, he pulled on his clothes and shoes. Then he crept out through the door, closing it softly behind him. He knew Marcella would sleep until noon at least. That gave him several hours to do what he wanted without anyone being the wiser.
Once out of the house, Luis cut out across the desert at an angle, making straight for the wash. The sooner he was in it and out of sight, the less likely he was to attract anyone’s attention. They had one neighbor in particular, Mrs. Dumas, who was always watching him and threatening to call Child Protective Services when his mother left him home alone. Not that Luis wasn’t used to that. He’d been taking care of himself for a very long time. Now, though, he was hoping to find a way to take care of his mother.
One of the things Luis did when he was home alone was watch TV. At least his mother had sprung for Basic Cable, and what Luis liked to watch more than anything was news—all kinds of news. CNN. Fox. He didn’t care. Luis liked them all.
He knew everything there was to know—at least everything that was reported on television—about the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. He knew about the army of illegal immigrants that came through his neighborhood every day of the year, and he knew all about what some of those border crossers had to leave behind as they lightened their loads, abandoning backpacks and debris along the way.