Exit Wounds (32 page)

And as she made her way to the Civvie she had left parked outside, for the first time it occurred to her that, tragic as her father’s sudden death may have been, perhaps D. H. Lathrop had been lucky to go the way he did. Seeing Irma Mahilich made Joanna think that there were far worse alternatives.

It was a subdued and thoughtful Sheriff Brady who drove into the Justice Center parking lot forty minutes later. She stepped into the lobby outside her office long enough to let Kristin know she had arrived, then she returned to her desk and started sifting through stacks of loosely organized papers.

She had barely made a dent in the first pile when there was a tap on the door. She looked up to see the hulking figure of Detective Ernie Carpenter filling her doorway. The grim set of his mouth told her something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Just had a call from University Medical Center,” he said, shaking his head. “Maria Elena Maldonado didn’t make it.”

“The little boy’s mother?”

Ernie nodded. “She died a little over an hour ago. They just now got around to letting us know.”

“Where’s Jaime?” Joanna asked.

“On his way to Tucson to catch his plane,” Ernie replied. “Why?”

Without answering, Joanna picked up her phone and dialed Frank Montoya’s extension. “Meet Ernie and me over at the jail interview room ASAP,” Joanna told her chief deputy after passing along Ernie’s news. “The three of us are going to have a little chat with our friendly neighborhood SUV driver. You might want to bring along your tape recorder and a fresh tape.”

“Wait a minute,” Ernie said as he followed Joanna down the corridor. “If we’re going to ask him questions, shouldn’t we call his attorney?”

“Who said anything about questions?” Joanna returned. “We’re going to give that son of a bitch a message. He’s still jailed as John Doe, isn’t he?”

Ernie gave her a somber, questioning look before nodding. “That’s right, boss. We ran his prints through AFIS and came up empty.”

Once at the jail, Joanna detoured long enough to stop by the booking desk before she met up with Frank and Ernie inside the jail’s stark interview room. Joanna took Frank’s proffered recorder and handed it over to Detective Carpenter.

“I’ll talk,” Joanna said. “Frank will translate. Ernie, you listen.”

They were standing, ranged silently around the perimeter of the interview room, when the shackled prisoner, walking with the aid of crutches and with his left foot in a cast, was led inside a few minutes later. The tape recorder, already running, sat on a table in front of Ernie Carpenter.

“Are you interested in having your attorney here?” Joanna asked as soon as the man was seated.

Frank translated the question, and the man shook his head. “I just want to go home,” he said in Spanish. “Back to Mexico.”

Joanna walked over to the table, stopping only when her face was no more than a foot away from the prisoner’s. “Do you know another of your passengers has died?” Joanna asked as her emerald eyes, blazing with fury, bored into his. “The mother of the little boy you murdered,” she continued. “Now she is dead as well.”

“Not murder,” the man objected, again with Frank translating. “An accident. It was only an accident.”

“The deaths occurred in the course of your committing a crime,” Joanna returned. “Smuggling illegal aliens into this country is a crime—a felony. I’m sure your attorney explained to you that when death occurs in the course of committing a felony, that results in an automatic charge of murder.”

“No,” the man said. “It was not my fault. The car was old—”

“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” Joanna asked, interrupting Frank’s translation.

Frank paused before passing along her question, as though he couldn’t quite believe that was what she meant for him to say.

“Go on,” Joanna urged impatiently. “Ask him.”

With a reluctant shake of his head, Frank did as he’d been told. Once he heard the question, the prisoner shot Joanna a quizzical look and then shrugged his shoulders dismissively as though the question didn’t merit an answer.

“You’re here as John Doe,” Joanna continued. “You may think that because we don’t know your real name, you can’t be charged with a crime. And the truth of the matter is, because of jurisdictional considerations, we may not be able to hold you here much longer. Federal law may take precedence and you may very well end up being deported.”

The prisoner smiled knowingly and began to nod as Frank neared the end of that translation. That was how the system usually worked. It was what the driver had expected to happen.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Joanna said. “The one about heaven and hell. Do you believe or not, yes or no?”

“No,” he said.

“But that’s a lie, isn’t it?” Joanna said, pulling a slip of paper out of her pocket. “I stopped by the property room,” she said. “This is an inventory of your personal possessions, the ones that were taken away from you when you were booked into my jail. The second item here is listed as a crucifix. People who don’t believe in God or in heaven or hell don’t usually wear crucifixes.”

The prisoner stared at the silently whirring pins in the tape recorder and said nothing.

“So even though I don’t know your real name, God does,” Joanna continued. “You can call what happened an accident if you want, but God knows better. He knows that the blood of all those people—including the blood of that little boy, Eduardo, and his mother, Maria Elena—is on your head and your hands.”

Joanna paused after that and waited for a response that didn’t materialize. “It may be true that you don’t believe in God or in heaven or hell, but you might want to reconsider,” she added several long moments later. “Because when you are deported, I’m going to let it be known among some of our friends in the
federales
that the reason we let you go is that you told us everything we needed to know about the people behind this coyote syndicate. We’ll say you told us who they are and that we’re just waiting for one of them to cross the border so we can arrest them and put them on trial.”

The prisoner shifted in his seat. For the first time in several minutes, his eyes met Joanna’s. “No,” he objected. “You must not do this. It is a lie. I’ve said nothing to you about them. Nothing.”

“We know that, you know that, and even God knows that,” Joanna agreed with a slight smile. “Unfortunately, the people you work for will not know that. Call Border Patrol,” Joanna added briskly to Frank. “Tell them to come get Mr. Doe and take him back to Mexico. It’s too much trouble to keep him in my jail any longer.”

The prisoner, who up to now had required a translator, suddenly burst into perfect English. “No, señora,” he begged. “Please. You don’t understand. If they think I have told you anything, they will kill me.”

Joanna shrugged. “Too bad,” she said. “That’s your problem and God’s, Mr. Doe, not mine.”

“But what if I do tell you what you want to know?” he asked. “Then will you let me stay?”

“I can’t say because it’s not up to me,” Joanna replied. “I suggest you call your lawyer and talk to him. Have him see what kind of deal he can negotiate. Your attorney may be able to help you. I can’t.”

Turning her back on the prisoner, Joanna walked as far as the door and knocked on it to summon the guard. “We’re leaving now,” she announced as the guard unlocked and opened the door. “If the prisoner wishes to speak to his attorney, let him use the phone.”

“Wait,” the prisoner called after her. “Señora, wait, please. My name is Ramón—Ramón Alvarez Sandoval. I will tell you whatever it is you want to know, but you must understand that the men I work for are evil. If they find out what I have done, they will kill me, and my family, too.”

Joanna stared hard at the prisoner. She wanted to spit in his face and grind it into the ground. Here was a man whose wanton disregard for others had left a total of seven people dead. And yet he was, as she had told Jaime Carbajal earlier, very small potatoes. Drivers were entirely expendable—to both sides. What she really wanted was a list of the names of the people running the syndicate—the ones giving the orders and collecting their blood money while giving not the slightest consideration to the lives that might be lost in the process.

“You’re right,” Ramón added softly a moment later. “I do believe in God, and you do, too.”

Slowly Joanna moved away from the door and returned to the table. Not taking her eyes off Ramón, she sat down across from him. “I am only a sheriff,” she said quietly. “I’m not with INS or the FBI. I’m not a prosecutor. I can’t make plea bargains, and I can promise nothing, but if you help us put the animals you work for out of business—if you will tell us what you know and agree to testify if they can be brought to trial—I will do what I can to help you. Do you understand?”

Ramón nodded. “Yes,” he said.

Joanna looked at Frank Montoya. “Talk to the prosecutor’s office,” she said. “Check with Arlee Jones and see who all needs to be here to witness Mr. Sandoval’s statement—in addition to Mr. Sandoval himself and his attorney, that is. Then set it up for tomorrow if at all possible.”

“But, Sheriff Brady,” Frank began. “There are all kinds of jurisdictional complications here.”

“You’re good at sorting out complications, Chief Deputy Montoya. You always have been. Does this meet with your approval, Mr. Sandoval?”

“Yes,” Ramón said softly.

“Then you’d better talk with your attorney and clear it with him. If he advises you not to go through with this, or if you change your mind, you’re to notify Mr. Montoya here at once. Do you understand?”

“You have given me your word, and I have given mine,” Ramón Sandoval said. “I will not change my mind.”

As Joanna left the jail to walk back to her office, she was not surprised to notice that the sky had darkened overhead. A stiff, cooling breeze took the edge off the July heat and kicked up puffs of dust devils that danced and jigged across the parking lot. Off in the distance, thunder rumbled. Joanna couldn’t tell if the sudden lift in her spirits came from the possibility of breaking up a major illegal-alien-smuggling syndicate or from the desert dweller’s hard-wired joy at the prospect of coming rain.

Fifteen minutes later Joanna was back at her desk when Ernie Carpenter once again appeared in her doorway. “How the hell did you pull that one off?” he demanded morosely. “Here we busted our butts to get all those USDA interviews, and you never even bothered to mention them.”

“Didn’t have to,” Joanna said. “All I had to do was let him know God was on our side. Once Sandoval understood that, he knuckled right under.”

“Whatever gave you the idea that God was on our side?” Ernie asked.

Sheriff Brady looked at her detective and grinned. “She told me so Herself,” Joanna said.

“Right,” Ernie Carpenter returned, shaking his head. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I!” He was still shaking his head and muttering under his breath as he turned to walk away.

Sixteen

Y ou’re looking chipper,” Frank Montoya said the next morning as he entered Joanna’s office for the daily briefing, which would include the previous day’s skipped briefing as well.

It helped that Joanna had gotten a decent night’s sleep for a change. She had come home to find Butch and Jenny both excited about the prospect of a publisher’s making him an offer on
Serve and Protect
. That good news, combined with a nice dinner and a rainstorm pounding down on the roof, had made for a restful night’s sleep. And once again this morning’s nausea hadn’t been quite as rough as that on previous days.

“I’m feeling half-human for a change,” Joanna replied with a smile. “Which reminds me, I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon at two for my first prenatal checkup. You’ll be here, won’t you?”

“Sure will,” Frank said. “But I’ll be busy. One o’clock is when the Sandoval meeting is scheduled to take place. That’s the soonest I could gather everyone together.”

“Where will you hold it?” Joanna asked.

“The conference room here,” Frank answered. “There are too many people coming for them to all fit in the interview room at the jail.”

“Have you talked to Sandoval’s attorney?”

“Twice,” Frank said. “Her name’s Amy Template. I suggested she have Sandoval show up dressed the same way he would if he was going to court rather than in his jail jumpsuit. I also suggested that they ditch the translation pretense. Sandoval’s English is fine, and dealing with a translator may wind up pissing off some of the people he needs to have in his corner. That’s what I told her, but I probably didn’t need to. She says her firm is already working on the details of a deal for Sandoval. She expects to have it pulled together in time for this afternoon’s meeting.”

“What firm?” Joanna asked.

“Gabriel Gomez, down in Douglas.”

“The immigration attorney?” Joanna asked. “You mean Richard Osmond’s girlfriend’s daddy?”

Frank nodded.

“The one who’s going to take us to court for Osmond’s wrongful death?”

“One and the same,” Frank replied. “But I think Gomez has changed his mind on that score. With an autopsy diagnosis of metastasized pancreatic cancer, it would be pretty hard to make a wrongful-death charge stick.”

Joanna allowed herself a small sigh of relief. “When’s Osmond’s funeral?” she asked.

“Yesterday,” Frank said.

“I suppose the department should have sent flowers.”

“We did,” Frank told her.

Joanna looked at her chief deputy in absolute gratitude. “I’m not sure how I’d ever get along without you, Frank.”

“Good.” Frank grinned. “It’s nice to be indispensable. Let’s keep it that way. Now how about getting down to business?”

Most of the items up for discussion were strictly routine, including the usual fender-benders and DUIs. The fierce storm that had marched through Cochise County the night before had caused numerous power outages. Running water on the road between Double Adobe and Elfrida had once again stranded several motorists who had required rescue for both themselves and their vehicles. A divorcing couple from Sun Sites had gotten into a domestic-violence beef over who would have custody of their Old English sheepdog, Casey. The husband and wife were now both cooling their heels in the Cochise County Jail, while the dog had been taken into custody by Animal Control. In Bisbee Junction, a rancher’s herd of cattle had gotten loose and had damaged gardens and fruit trees on three separate properties.