Outlaw Mountain (22 page)

“Will you be needing a ride back to Douglas?” Joanna asked. “If you do, I can get one of my deputies ...”

Jessie waved the offer aside. “Oh, no,” she said. “I have my own wheels. Not really mine, of course. I turned in my license when I hit eighty-five. Seemed like the responsible thing to do because my reflexes were getting so bad. But Helen Dominguez, one of the attendants from the home, drove me here. I’m paying her, of course. That’s only fair. But she can’t get home too late. She’s a young person, you see, and still has children that will be coming home from school soon. I’ve always felt that mothers should be at home when their children get out of school, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Joanna agreed. “I certainly do.”

By force of will she managed to keep herself from casting a guilt-ridden glance at her own watch. Jenny would be out of school by now and on her way to Butch’s house where there would be no at-home mother in attendance.

Jessie started toward the door. “By the way,” she added, “when you read Ali’s book—Alice’s book—don’t expect it to be great literature. It was done by one of those self-publishing outfits. Vanity presses, I think they call them. I don’t know how much she paid for it—probably way too much—but the company who did it certainly didn’t squander any of what she paid on editing. My sister was a great gal, but she never was much of a writer, so the book’s a bit rough in spots. You’ll get the picture, though. Or your detectives will.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, following her guest to the door. “By the way, is your address in the book, so I’ll be able to return it to you when I finish reading it?”

“You can keep it if you like,” Jessie said. “Alice gave me ten copies for my birthday last year. Even with this one gone, I still have seven. That should be plenty. It’s not like I have any children of my own to leave them to. I did give one to the Douglas Historical Society and another to the historical society over in Tombstone. Alice lived both places, you see. Both towns are in the book.”

“I’m looking forward to reading it,” Joanna said. “I’ll get to it just as soon as I can.”

As the door closed behind Jessie Monroe, Joanna picked up Alice’s book and began to read. The first chapter was a charming childhood remembrance of playing hide-and-seek with her older brothers and sisters. Halfway through the second chapter, though, Joanna could no longer hold her eyes open.

With the book lying open on her desk, Joanna laid her head on her arms and fell fast asleep. She had no idea how much time had passed when Kristin tapped on the door. “Yes,” Joanna managed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and hoping she sounded more wide awake than she felt. “What is it?”

“Casey down in AFIS needs to see you right away.”

“What about?” Joanna asked.

“All I know is she said it’s urgent.”

Before Joanna could stand up, she had to find the shoes she had kicked off under her desk. It took several tries before she was able to force her aching feet back into them. “All right,” she said. “Tell her I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Casey Ledford, the gifted young technician who ran Cochise County’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System, was a Bisbee girl who had gone off to college on a full-ride Veterans of Foreign Wars scholarship. She had enrolled in the University of Arizona’s College of Fine Arts, where she had planned on becoming a commercial artist. Smart, but not smart enough to avoid all the treacherous pitfalls of young adulthood, she had returned to her parents’ home two years later, with no degree, but with a four-month-old baby—a daughter named Felicity—in tow. Back in Bisbee, Casey had taken whatever work she could find, including stints waiting tables in the dining room al the Copper Queen Hotel while she continued to attend college level classes on a part-time basis.

Like a lot of other things, the AFIS equipment had fallen into Cochise County hands through a law enforcement, War Against Drugs grant that paid for hardware and software, hut no “liveware”—the people necessary to make the other two work. Prior to receiving the equipment, Joanna had mistakenly supposed that automated fingerprint identification meant just exactly that –automated. With the arrival of the equipment and the technical documentation that accompanied it, Joanna learned that fingerprints usually had to be augmented by hand before they could be fed into the computer. That meant that the department was going to need to hire someone who was not only artistically inclined but also more than moderately computer-literate. When the position was advertised in the paper, only one applicant had responded—Casey Ledford.

“What’s so urgent?” Joanna asked, poking her head in Casey’s lab, where dozens of images of Felicity Ledford—most of them framed pastels—covered the walls.

“It’s the Rogers case,” Casey said.

“You got a hit?”

Casey Ledford nodded, but she didn’t look any too happy about it. Joanna perched on a lab stool. “So tell me,” she urged. “What did you find?”

“The hit resulted from prints we found at the mobile at Outlaw Mountain.”

“Farley Adams’ place,” Joanna murmured. “The ones left on the dirty dishes?”

Casey nodded again. “Right,” she said. “None of the guys thought to look there. They had dusted the outside controls, but they hadn’t bothered to check inside.”

“Good work,” Joanna said with a grin “That’s what it takes around here sometimes—a woman’s touch. Go on.”

“I actually brought the dishes back here to process them,” Casey continued. “It was easier that way. And the prints I lifted were good ones. They didn’t need all that much augmentation or anything. And once I fed them into the computer, the hit came back almost right away.”

“So what’s the problem then?”

“The computer spits out the person’s name and the name of the jurisdiction that’s looking for him. We usually have to call that department by phone in order to get the original fingerprint card as well as details on the criminal activity in question. I’m the one who does that. It’s just a bureaucratic formality. I get the information and pass it along to whoever’s working our end of it.”

“You did that, then?”

“Yes. The hit was from North Las Vegas, up in Nevada.”

“Let me guess,” Joanna said. “Farley Adams’ name isn’t Farley Adams.”

“Right,” Casey agreed. “It’s Jonathan Becker.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“He
was
wanted for conspiracy to commit murder.”

“You said was,” Joanna said. “You mean he isn’t anymore?”

“Jonathan Becker is dead,” Casey said. “At least that’s what the first person I talked to up in Nevada told me. He said Becker’s prints should have been pulled from the system because he’s deceased. According to the guy I talked to, Becker died in a one-car roll-over accident on the road between Vegas and Kingman. And that’s where he’s supposedly buried—Kingman, Arizona. The problem is, Becker obviously isn’t dead. If he were, he couldn’t have left fingerprints for us to find.”

“There has to be some kind of mixup,” Joanna suggested.

Casey shook her head determinedly. “There’s no mixup,” she said. “Not ten minutes after I get off the phone with the first detective, somebody else was on the line, calling me from North Las Vegas and pumping me for any and all information we might have on this case. It just didn’t sound right, Sheriff Brady. There’s something weird about this, and I don’t know what it is.”

“I don’t know either,” Joanna said, taking the fistful of computer printouts Casey handed her. “But I’m going to make it my business to find out.”

She went straight back to her office and shut herself inside. There she studied the papers and tried to make sense of the conflicting bits of information. The more she examined the materials, the more she agreed with Casey’s assessment. Something was wrong there. Obviously Becker and Farley Adams were one and the same. If Jonathan Becker really were dead, then the detective in North Las Vegas would have no possible interest in what was going on in Cochise County.

Joanna Lathrop Brady had learned the art of the full frontal attack at her mother’s knee. Eleanor Lathrop’s approach to life had often served her daughter well, and Joanna applied it now. Searching through Casey Ledford’s thorough paperwork, Joanna located the notes she had made concerning the incoming call from North Las Vegas. The inquiring detective’s name was listed as Garfield—Detective Sam Garfield, but he hadn’t left a phone number. There was one, however, listed with Jonathan Becker’s AFIS printed record.

Joanna dialed it and reached the non-emergency number for the North Las Vegas Police Department. “Detective Sam Garfield, please,” she told the operator who answered.

“Who?”

“Detective Garfield,” Joanna repeated, enunciating clearly. “Detective Sam Garfield.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have anyone here by that name. This is North Las Vegas. Have you checked with Las Vegas Metropolitan PD? Detective Garfield probably works there. People are always getting the two cities mixed up. Would you like me to give you that number?”

Joanna took the number, jotting it down mechanically, even though she knew in advance that she wasn’t going to call. Casey Ledford’s “weird” feeling had just become a whole lot weirder. Something was more than wrong, and Joanna knew the answers she needed wouldn’t be coming through regular channels in Vegas, or North Las Vegas, either.

After only a momentary delay, she dialed Frank Montoya’s number at the marshal’s office in Tombstone. “How are things?” she asked.

“Pretty quiet. I guess you heard about the fingerprints they found at Outlaw Mountain,” Frank said.

“I heard,” Joanna told him. “And that’s why I’m calling.”

Over the next few minutes she explained about Casey’s call from the mysteriously nonexistent Detective Garfield. “So here’s the deal, Frank,” she finished. “I’m hoping you can tune up that hotshot computer of yours, go on the Internet, and find out anything and everything you can about someone named Jonathan Becker. Look for articles about the accident, obituaries, whatever.”

Frank Montoya, a self-taught technophile, had created a totally mobile and wonderfully high-tech office for himself that was usually based in his departmental Crown Victoria. The fact that he was always more than willing to go on-line it search of esoteric pieces of information made it unnecessary for Joanna to do so.

“I’ll get on it right away,” he said. “By the way, did you hear about Alice Rogers’ funeral?”

“What about it?”

“Clete stopped by just a few minutes ago. He said it’s going to be Friday afternoon. The funeral itself will be at the Episcopal Church, with burial afterward in Tombstone Cemetery.”

“Did he say what time?” Joanna asked, pulling out her calendar.

“Early afternoon. Two, I think.”

“I’d better plan on going.” Joanna made a note of it. In the process she saw the notation for Wednesday, November 11. “Kiwanis,” it said. “Seven A.M., Tony’s in Tintown, guest speaker.” She had almost forgotten about the speaking engagement. That would have been embarrassing.

“What’s happening out in Sierra Vista?” Frank asked, changing the subject. “Any word on the Oak Vista situation?”

“None so far,” Joanna told him. “I’m hoping that means no news is good news. It’s about quitting time, and this is when the trouble started the other day. As soon as I get off the phone with you, I’ll call and check.”

Moments later she was on the horn with Dick Voland. “Any sign of monkey wrenchers revisited?” she asked.

“None whatsoever,” he growled back at her. “Here I am with half the deputies for this shift stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing happening. Meanwhile, big chunks of the county are totally without patrol coverage.”

“Any more weapons turn up among the workers?”

“No. But that’s hardly surprising. As much hell as you raised earlier, if they brought guns to work with them, they’ve stowed them out of sight. I’m guessing they’re in tool chests and glove boxes. At the moment, though, we’ve got no probable cause, so they’ll most likely stay there.”

“What happened with the snakes?” Joanna asked. “When I left, Ranger Brooks from Fish and Wildlife was just getting ready to write up a citation for hunting without a permit and taking wildlife for profit. She didn’t need to keep the snakes for evidence, did she?”

“No. She let them go.”

“Right there?”

“On the spot,” Voland answered. “Elvira had a snake stick hidden back tip in the brush behind her car. Ranger Brooks used that to remove the snakes front the trunk and put them back where they belonged, more or less. According to Brooks, snakes are real homebodies, and they don’t like to he moved around at all. Naturally, it wasn’t possible to return them to exactly the places where they had been found. Which means the construction site is going to have snakes milling around for the next few days, looking for a way to get out of the cold once the sun goes down. That should make life interesting for Childers’ work crews. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of the workers gets bitten.”

“I’m voting for Rob Evans,” Joanna said. “If one of those displaced snakes has to go after someone, I hope it’s him. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“Is there anything else?” Dick Voland asked. “Deputy Pakin just radioed me that Marliss Shackleford is down by the gate on the highway. She evidently wants to talk to me about something. I told him to tell her that Frank Montoya is in charge of media relations and she should talk to him, but that had absolutely no effect. She still wants to talk to me. Any idea what it’s about?”

Joanna knew exactly what it was about—Junior. She felt a stab of regret that she hadn’t played the game better. “Remember Frank’s idea about having Marliss help find Junior’s family by writing a human-interest piece about him?” she asked.

“Right,” Voland growled. “Another one of Frank’s cock-eyed ideas. But why is she coming to see me about it? Shouldn’t she be talking to you?”

“We tried that,” Joanna said. “I threw her out of my office.”

“That’s probably not the best way to treat one of our local newsies.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Joanna agreed. “So do me a favor, Dick. Talk to her. Try to smoothe things over.”