by J. A. Jance
Stopping abruptly in mid-sentence, Sarah pursed her thin lips again. "You don't suppose…?" Then, as if in answer to her unfinished question, she shook her head. "Certainly not," she announced. "It's not possible."
"What's not possible?" Joanna asked.
"That Belle had somethin' to do with all this-with what happened to Clyde. No, I've known the woman all her life. She wouldn't hurt a flea. Fact of the matter is, some of the neighbors and I used to laugh at her when we'd see her move things out of the house-bugs and centipedes and such-rather than kill 'em. Surely someone who literally wouldn't hurt a fly couldn't kill a person, could they?"
For the third time in the space of a half-an-hour, someone had raised the possibility that Belle Philips was somehow responsible for her former husband's death.
"That's why we have homicide detectives," Joanna said soothingly. "To find out whether something like that is possible."
All the while Sarah had been droning on and on, Joanna had been paying close attention to what was happening outside the lace-curtained windows and beyond the two cottonwood trees that shaded Sarah's front yard. Sitting where she was, the sheriff had an almost unobstructed view of the street. In ten minutes' time, a series of cars had come and gone as Mike Wilson's Search and Rescue detail assembled, collected Deputy Sandoval and then left again, Dick Voland's Bronco had also pulled up. It was parked directly behind Joanna's Blazer. Voland and one of the deputies had marched off toward Clyde 's shop at the back of the property. Realizing her chief deputy must have arrived with a search warrant in hand and trusting that he knew what he was doing, Joanna hadn't bothered to traipse after them.
Now, though, she watched as a van with Pima County 's logo emblazoned on its door pulled up and parked behind Dick's Bronco. The pinch-hitting medical examiner had arrived from Tucson, so Joanna decided to go.
She stood up and held out her hand. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Holcomb. You've been a great help. One of my detectives or I may need to talk to you again, but in the meantime, I'll have to be going."
Rather than taking Joanna's proffered hand, Sarah simply stared at it without moving. "If I'da known where all this was headed…" she said, "that you might end up goin' after Belle… I'da kept my big mouth shut. That's what I shudda done."
"Mrs. Holcomb," Joanna said reassuringly, "depending on the actual time of death, what you've told me may or may not have any bearing on this case. Regardless, let me assure you that you've done the right thing by telling us everything you know."
Sarah Holcomb shook her head. "I always did talk way too much," she muttered morosely. "From the time I was just a little tyke. You'da thought that by the time a woman gets to be my age she'd know better."
"But-" Joanna began again.
Sarah waved her aside. "No," she said. "You go on now. I don't want to talk no more. Not to you and not to nobody else, either."
Feeling as though she'd botched things somehow, Joanna let herself out the front door. She hurried back to Clyde Philips' house in time to see a tall, beefy woman with bleached blond hair disappear through the front door.
Joanna arrived at the bedroom doorway as the woman slammed a heavy brown valise to the floor just inside the room. Planting both hands on her hips, she turned to survey her surroundings. "I'm Fran Daly of the Pima County Medical Examiner's office," she told Jaime Carbajal. "Doctor Fran Daly. Who are you?"
At five-four, Joanna couldn't see over Dr. Daly's broad shoulder, but she peered around the other woman in time to catch sight of a grimy Jaime Carbajal using a metal ladder to climb up and out of the crawl space. Gingerly, he eased himself onto what seemed to be a relatively stable part of the bedroom floor.
"I'm Detective Carbajal," he replied. "I'm a homicide detective with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department."
"All right. So where's the body?"
Jaime nodded back toward the hole. "Down there," he said. "The victim was lying on a bed that collapsed and fell through the floor into the crawl space."
"Great," Fran muttered irritably. "Just what I need. The body's fallen into the basement. What else? It looks like a damned army's been in and out of this room. What the hell happened here?"
"Well," Jaime explained, "a woman fell through the floor right along with the victim. As I understand it, she was seriously hurt in the fall. We had to call for help. All told, it took six men-four firemen and two EMTs to get her out-and-"
"You're telling me six men have been tracking through my evidence? Who the hell's the dimwit who authorized that? The least those clowns could have done was worn booties over their shoes so they wouldn't have left these god-awful tracks all over the place. Are you responsible for this mess, Detective Carbajal?"
Joanna couldn't see the superior sneer Fran Daly leveled at Jaime Carbajal, but she heard it well enough.
"No," Joanna said quietly. "I am."
Dr. Fran Daly spun around and glared at her. Built with all the grace and delicacy of a tank, she wore a cowboy shirt and jeans. Her only pieces of jewelry were a man's watch and an immense, turquoise-encrusted silver belt buckle on a wide leather belt.
"And who might you be?" Fran Daly demanded.
"My name's Joanna Brady."
"Well," Fran said, "I was directed to report to someone named Voland-Chief Deputy Richard Voland. Where's he?"
"Outside," Joanna said. "Chief Deputy Voland is busy at the moment, but you're welcome to talk to me."
"What are you?" Fran Daly asked. "His deputy?"
"As a matter of fact," Joanna said deliberately, "it's the other way around. Dick Voland is my deputy. I'm Sheriff Joanna Brady, Dr. Daly. And I'm also the person-I believe you used the term 'dimwit'-who made the decision that it was more important to effect a timely rescue of a seriously injured woman than it was to tiptoe around preserving evidence. When it comes to handling injury situations, the possibility of losing some trace evidence must take a backseat to emergency medical care. What was done here seemed like a reasonable trade-off to me. If I had it to do over, I'm sure that I'd reach the exact same conclusion."
Fran Daly sighed and rolled her eyes. "All right then," she said. "Just show me where the body is and let me get started. And for God's sake, somebody turn off the damned air-conditioner."
With that she picked up her valise from its spot in the doorway and started into the room.
"I'd be careful if I were you," Joanna warned. "The floor in here collapsed because the whole thing's been rotted out by termites. Underneath the roll flooring, what's left of the wood is little more than powdery cardboard."
Once again the medical examiner swung around to face Joanna. "Excuse me, Sheriff Brady," she snapped. "My boss sent me here to do this job because I happen to be a trained technician, the senior trained technician in our department. I don't know what that means in your bailiwick, but in mine it means that I know what I'm doing. It also means that I'm qualified to do my job without any unnecessary supervision from you or anyone else. So if you'll excuse me-"
Reaching the center of the room, she slammed the heavy valise down once more. The thud of the case on the floor was immediately followed by a loud, ominous crack. What had appeared to be flat flooring up to then tilted sharply downward. In slow motion, the valise began to move, sliding down a ski slope of worn linoleum toward the jagged-edged and ever-expanding hole into the crawl space.
As the bag of equipment slid away from her, Fran Daly reached down and made a desperate grab for it, but she missed. Eluding her fingertips, the still upright valise slipped out of reach and then dropped majestically from view. When it landed in the dirt of the darkened crawl space some five feet below, it did so with a distinct splat-one that included the muffled tinkle of breaking glass.
"Shit!" Fran Daly exclaimed.
Joanna had a sudden, vivid remembrance of her father, D. H. Lathrop. "What goes around comes around" had always been one of his favorite expressions. Those words came back to his daughter now with such clarity and meaning that it was all Joanna co
uld do to keep from laughing.
With some difficulty she managed to contain herself. "If this is your idea of crime-scene preservation, Dr. Daly," Joanna said sternly, "then it would appear supervision is very much in order. I'll leave Detective Carbajal here to keep an eye on you. He can give you any assistance you might need."
Glancing at the young detective, Joanna saw that he was having almost as much trouble keeping a straight face as she was. "Is that all right with you, Detective Carbajal?" she asked.
Sobering quickly, he nodded. "Sure thing, Sheriff Brady," he managed. "I was just on my way out to the van to pick up some lights. I've been taking pictures this whole time, but it's really dark down there in the crawl space. If Dr. Daly and I are going to do any kind of meaningful work, we'll need more light. If that's okay with you, that is." He turned deferentially to Dr. Daly.
She waved him aside. "If you say we need lights, we probably do. Go ahead and get them."
"And Sheriff Brady is right about this floor, Dr. Daly," Jaime added. "It's extremely treacherous. In fact, I don't think it would take much for the whole house to cave in to the crawl space. That being the case, on your way over to the ladder, it might be wise if you stick as close as possible to the outside wall. And if you can wait long enough for me to come back with the lights, I'll bring along a couple of hard hats as well. We probably shouldn't be down there without them."
"All right, all right," Fran Daly grumbled reluctantly. "I'll wait right here until you get back."
Smiling to herself, Joanna backed away from the door. "I'll leave and let you two get to it, then," she said sweetly.
"And if you need anything else, Chief Deputy Voland and I will be right outside."
Out on the porch, Jaime Carbajal convulsed with laughter. "What planet did she come from?" he demanded when he was finally able to talk.
" Pima County," Joanna replied. "As long as Doc Winfield's out of town, we're stuck with her."
"Let's hope it's for this case only," Detective Carbajal said. "I wouldn't want to make a career of it."
Joanna nodded. "Me, neither."
"Did you see the expression on her face when she finally figured out that you were in charge?"
"I saw it, all right," Joanna said. "Unfortunately, I don't think I handled the situation in the best possible fashion. Dr. Daly got under my skin almost as much as I got under hers. While you're down in the crawl space working with her, Jaime, see what you can do to smooth things out."
"I'll try," Jaime Carbajal replied cheerfully, "but I'm not making any promises. From what I saw of Fran Daly, she doesn't look like the kind of person where smoothing is going to work."
"Sheriff Brady?"
Joanna turned to see who had called. Lance Pakin, the deputy she had seen arrive with Dick Voland, came jogging toward her from the back of Clyde Philips' property.
"Did you get the door open?" Joanna asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Pakin replied. "But Chief Deputy Voland wants you to come there right away."
The urgency in Pakin 's voice made Joanna’s heart fall.
She had visions of another previously undiscovered victim rotting on the gun-shop floor. "Not another body," she said.
"No," Pakin said. "Nothing like that."
"What, then?"
"They're empty."
“What's empty.”
"The shop out back and the truck, too. If either one of them used to have guns in them, they don't now. Chief Deputy Voland thinks you'd better come take a look."
CHAPTER FIVE
Compared to the harsh August heat outside, the interior of Clyde Philips' fortresslike gun shop was downright cold. Consisting of two rooms, the shop had a large showroom and a back room with a door marked OFFICE. The place was lit by ceiling-mounted shop lights. The outside walls of the showroom area were lined with glass-enclosed, locking gun racks. Now all of those glass-doored cabinets stood wide open, with the slots inside them totally empty. In the middle of the room stood a series of glass-topped display-case counters, also open and empty. In the dust left behind on the glass shelving were the imprints of missing handguns and holsters as well.
Seeing the ghostly shadows of those missing weapons, Joanna felt a wave of gooseflesh spread across her body. That icy reaction owed far more to simple dread than it did to the droning presence of Clyde Philips' air-conditioning unit up on the shop's roof.
Joanna glanced away from the missing guns and caught Dick Voland staring at her with a look of undisguised longing on his face. In the months since the collapse of Dick Voland's marriage, Joanna's working relationship with her chief deputy had become more and more complicated. At this point, she would have welcomed a dose of Voland's early and outspoken opposition, rather than the puppylike (if unspoken) devotion with which he now sometimes regarded her. Clearly, the fifteen years' difference in their ages and the fact that his feelings weren't reciprocated made no difference.
Joanna had no quarrel with the man's professionalism. He had never once said anything out of bounds. In the easy give-and-take of the office, he was fine. In public, in fact, he still tended to be overbearing and patronizing on occasion. But in private, unguarded moments like this one, the man wore his heart on his sleeve. Joanna sympathized with him, but she needed a working, full-fledged chief deputy far more than she did a lovesick schoolboy suffering from an unrequited crush.
Joanna's eyes met his over the top of one of the display cases. Quickly, Dick Voland looked away. "How many guns do you figure walked out of here?" she asked.
Blushing visibly in the sallow light, he shrugged his shoulders. "No way to tell for sure," he said gruffly. "But even if the cases held only one or two guns apiece, it's way too many to have them running around loose. They would still amount to enough guns to supply a small army."
"Peachy," Joanna said. "Any sign of a break-in?"
"None whatsoever," Voland replied in a brisk, business-like fashion. "Whoever did this came in with a key to the front door and with keys to all the individual cabinets as well. None of the locks have been damaged in the slightest. Not only that, whoever did it also knew lie or she had plenty of lime. This place was cleaned out in a methodical and very thorough manner, probably in the middle of the night and probably in dead silence. Any kind of noise or breakage might have aroused suspicion."
"To say nothing of Sarah Holcomb," Joanna added.
Voland frowned. "What was that?"
"Never mind," Joanna told him. "What about paperwork or a computer, maybe? Any kind of customer lists?"
"Not so far."
"What about inventory, sales, or billing information? If we had some of those details, we'd know where to start in order to estimate what's actually missing."
"That could be a problem. Come take a look," Voland said, gesturing toward the office door. "It's a combination office/storeroom, and from the looks of things, there's not much left there, either."
Joanna walked as far as the office doorway and stopped. Inside, the drawers to the file cabinet lay scattered around the room, spilling loose papers on the floor in all directions. Other drawers still sat in place in file cabinets, but they appeared to be completely empty, as though someone had simply dumped the contents into a bag or box and carted them away.
"If there's been a conscious effort to destroy paper trails, we could be dealing with some kind of insurance fraud," Joanna suggested, musing more to herself than to anyone else.
"It could be," Voland agreed.
"We'll need to dust the whole place for prints," she added, glancing at her chief deputy.
"Right," he said. "I've already asked Patrol to send over anyone they can spare to help out with crime-scene investigation. It probably won't do much good, though. I have an idea whoever did this was probably smart enough to wear gloves."
Joanna looked around the room again. "What about letting ATF in on this? Considering the possible number of weapons involved, we probably should,"
As expected, any suggestion of involving an
other jurisdiction, especially a federal agency like Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, elicited an immediate frown of annoyance from Richard Voland. An old-timer with the department, the chief deputy jealously guarded all possible jurisdictional boundaries.
"Why include them until we have to?" he asked.
Through working with the MJF and with Adam York of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Joanna was coming to understand that in the new world of law enforcement, cooperation was the name of the game. I wonder if anyone's ever explained that fact of life to the lady from the Pima County Medical Examiner's office, Joanna wondered wryly.
"Their guys run as much risk of going head to head with whoever took these guns as ours do," she said. "So even though reporting it may not be strictly required, we're going to tell them all the same. Out of courtesy, if nothing else."
"All right, all right," Voland agreed grudgingly. "I'll take care of it once we get back to the office. So tell me, what all's going on back at the house?"
"For one thing, Detective Carbajal is working with that lady buzz saw from Pima County, Dr. Fran Daly," Joanna said. "Incidentally, since Dr. Daly fully expected to report to you, she wasn't at all pleased to have me involved."
"I'm sorry," Voland apologized. "When I was talking to the woman on the phone, I told her as plain as day what the deal was. Where she got the idea that I was in charge, I don't'-"
Joanna cut him off in mid-apology. "II doesn't matter. What Dr. Daly did or didn't think makes no difference. Whatever her misapprehensions, we've worked them out."
Trying to change the subject, Joanna glanced around the room and said:
"It looks to me as though poor old Clyde was a far better shop owner than he was a housekeeper. The house is a pig-sty. You maybe wouldn't want to eat off the floor in here, but it's a whole lot cleaner than the house was. With the added advantage that the shop feels like it's built on a concrete slab."
At once Voland turned solicitous. "You didn't get hurt when the floor collapsed, did you? Even with an injured woman down there, you never should have climbed down there by yourself without waiting for backup."