J. Jance - Dead to Rights

“His arms may have protected his face from the flames,” Ernie Carpenter observed, “but we’ll have to see about that once we turn him over.” The detective glanced at Ben Lowrey. “Nobody moved anything, right?”

“Come on, Ernie, how stupid do you think we are?” Lowrey replied.

“Don’t get sore, Ben,” Carpenter told him. “Just checking. Everybody stays back while I take a few pictures.”

Joanna Brady was more than happy to put some distance between herself and the body while the detective began snapping photos. Standing there quietly with the flash going off periodically, all she could think of was how, mere hours earlier, this lump of charred flesh had been a living, breathing human being, taking care of day to-day business. Now the man lying lace down in the puddle was giving a whole new meaning to the term “ashes to ashes.”

“When you finish that, you may want a picture of this, too, ”Ben Lowrey said.

“What is it?” Carpenter asked, clicking the camera without looking away from the body.

“I’d say it’s melted wax. Paraffin,” Lowrey answered. “It could be that a candle, or candles, were left burning in loose hay. That could have been what was used to start the fire. The bales would have been slow to start because they’re packed so tight, but once they get going, they burn like mad.”

“Why would someone use candles to ignite a fire?” Joanna asked. “Why not light a match?”

“To give the arsonist time enough to get the hell out of the way,” Dick Voland answered. “That way he could be long gone before the fire was ever discovered. The candles were probably already burning when Bebe Noonan showed up for work, but she didn’t see smoke until much later, when the hay actually caught fire. ”

Ernie Carpenter turned away from the body long enough lo look where Ben Lowrey was pointing. After taking a picture of the grayish, soot-covered lump on the floor, he picked it up, stuffed it in a glassine bag, and slid it into the side pocket of his shabby overalls while Joanna found herself wishing that some of her insurance sales experience had included the rudiments of arson investigation.

Meantime, Ernie looked questioningly around the remains of the shed. “But where would the killer get candles till here in the middle of a barn?” he asked finally.

“Maybe they came from HaI Morgan’s car,” Joanna suggested quietly.

All three men turned at once lo look at her. “Why do you say that?” Ernie Carpenter demanded.

“Because I remember Bucky saying something about Hal Morgan holding a candlelight vigil last night out in front of the animal clinic.”

“Hot damn!” Carpenter exclaimed. “With any kind of luck, there’ll be one or two left so we can do a chemical comparison. Getting a match will go a long way toward helping build our case.”

He turned to Lowrey. “Give me a hand here, Ben. Let’s turn this guy over and make sure who he is.”

With Ben managing the feet and Ernie taking the body by the shoulders, they turned the dead man onto his back. As soon as they did so-as soon as Joanna saw the man’s face-she knew that everyone’s initial suspicions had been con-firmed.

Dr. Amos Buckwalter, also known as Bucky, was as dead as he could be.

By the time the Cochise County Coroner, Dr. George Winfield, showed up with his two assistants to collect the body, Joanna and Ernie Carpenter were standing beside Ernie’s van. Joanna had taken off her wet and filthy duster, shoes, and socks by then, but the socks had left an ugly gray high-water mark partway up her leg. It was possible that washing would dissolve the grime from her No Nonsense panty hose, but Joanna doubted it.

Before handing the body over to the coroner, Ernie had removed Bucky’s wallet. Because the wallet had been under the dead man’s body, it had been protected from the worst heat of the fire. Even so, Bucky Buckwalter’s collection of credit cards had melted together in their equally melted sleeves. Now, prying deformed hunks of plastic apart, Ernie was going through the contents one card and one soggy photo at a time, inventorying the contents and mumbling aloud to himself as he did so.

“I don’t understand,” Joanna said.

“What don’t you understand?” Carpenter asked, never removing his eyes from the task at hand.

“According to what I’ve read,” Joanna mused, “most of the time perpetrators set fires in hopes of concealing evidence of a crime. But this is a metal barn sitting on a concrete slab. There wasn’t enough fuel inside the barn to cause the building to collapse or even to burn up the corpse. Morgan must have known that, so what was the point? Why did he bother?”

Ernie stopped what he was doing long enough to fix her with an appraising stare. “Good question,” he said. “Damned good question. If you’re not careful, we may end up making a reasonably good homicide detective out of you yet.”

With that, Ernie returned to checking the contents of the wallet.

“It may be a good question, but you haven’t answered it,” Joanna insisted.

“And I’m not going to,” Detective Carpenter told her. “Remember, this is only the bare beginning of the investigation. Once I know what the answer is, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

Moving closer, Joanna observed Ernie’s painstaking handling of Bucky Buckwalter’s personal effects. Each time the detective removed some item from the wallet, he would examine it carefully and then place it in an evidence bag before making the proper notation on an inventory sheet attached to a clipboard. It was a tedious process, one that required more than two hands.

“Would you like me to help with that?” Joanna offered. “I could either take the stuff out of the wallet and you could list it, or we could do it the other way around.”

“Thanks,” Ernie said, handing her his pencil and clipboard. “That’ll speed things up.”

One by one Joanna listed the driver’s license as well as the other cards, photos, and pieces of paper. “He was carrying a little bit of cash on him,” the detective reported eventually. “I count three twenties, a ten, and six singles. Seventy-six bucks and a package of Trojans.”

“Trojans?” Joanna repeated. She heard the shock and surprise in her voice when she uttered the word, and she wondered if Ernie noticed.

“Sure,” he said with a short laugh. “As in condoms. These are the nineties, Sheriff Brady. Lots of men pack them around in their wallets these days. What’s wrong with that?”

Joanna considered for a long moment before she answered. “Nothing,” she said finally. “Except if Bucky Buckwalter had been behaving himself, he wouldn’t have needed them.”

Rocking back on his heels, Ernie Carpenter regarded Joanna Brady with a puzzled frown. “Do you know something I don’t know?” he asked.

Joanna nodded. “The Davis Insurance Agency sold the Buckwalters their health insurance several years ago. With all of Milo Davis’s health insurance clients, whenever there was a problem with a claim, I was the designated troubleshooter. It was my job to duke things out with the claims people, to help our clients make their way through the bureaucratic jungle.”

“So?” Ernie urged when Joanna paused and seemed disinclined to continue.

“Terry Buckwalter suffered from recurring ovarian cysts,” Joanna answered at last. “She finally had a complete hysterectomy up at University Medical Center in Tucson. This was three or four years ago. There was a huge mixup because the insurance company paid the anesthesiologist twice and didn’t pay the surgeon anything. It was a mess that took me months to sort out.”