J. Jance - Dead to Rights

“Not yet,” the chief deputy returned. “I was was waiting for marching orders from you. Now that I know you’re not pulling the guard, I’ll definitely have someone there by three.”

“Still no overtime, though, Dick,” Joanna cautioned. “I want you to utilize people from the regular patrol roster.”

“Right,” Voland agreed. “No overtime.” He paused. “I’m really glad you’ve come around to my way of thinking on this one, Joanna. I was afraid Morgan would stage some kind of miraculous recovery and just walk out of the hospital. Ex-cop or not, I don’t want to lose this guy. Neither does the county attorney. ”

Dick Voland’s voice on the radio was surprisingly cordial.

No doubt that had something to do with his mistaken belief that Joanna, too, had now joined the others in their conviction that Hal Morgan had murdered Bucky Buckwalter, that the case was as good as closed. It seemed a shame to let him know otherwise.

“Where’s Ernie?” Joanna asked.

“He and Jaime Carbajal are still up at Sunizona. Things are hopping up there. Doc Winfield called a few minutes ago wanting to talk to him as well, but Ernie’s come up with some kind of hot lead in the Carruthers case. I just sent Dave Hollicker hightailing it up to Sunizona with a search warrant. It sounds like Ernie’s convinced that the daughter, Hannah Green, did her old man in. The problem is, right this minute no one can find her.”

Since Ernie already had the Carruthers autopsy results in hand before he left town, Joanna knew that whatever the coroner was calling about had to have something to do with Bucky Buckwalter.

“Doctor Winfield is done with the Buckwalter autopsy then?” Joanna asked.

“Sounds like. It’s not typed up or anything. That won’t happen until tomorrow, but Winfield was willing to brief Ernie on the results in the meantime.”

“What time will Ernie be getting back to town?” Joanna asked.

“No idea whatsoever,” Voland answered. “But most likely it’ll be late. You know what Ernie’s like once he gets his nose to the ground. I told the Doc that he probably won’t turn up any before tomorrow morning.”

That news disappointed Joanna on two fronts. For one, without Ernie talking to Winfield, the department wouldn’t have access to even the most preliminary autopsy results until noon the next day at the earliest. Not only that, if Hal Morgan’s version of the events leading rip to Bucky’s murder was correct, someone besides Morgan had visited the crime scene.

Joanna needed someone to check that out, to go canvassing the Buckwalters’ Saginaw-area neighbors searching for any kind of corroboration. She had hoped that job would fall to Ernie. But there were time constraints. The questions had to be asked while details were still fresh in people’s minds, before they forgot something they had seen without any comprehension of its potential importance. If Detective Carpenter was otherwise occupied, someone else would have to pick up the slack and do the shoe-leather work-someone from Dick Voland’s Patrol Division. That was bound to blow Joanna’s cover with her chief deputy. But that was what she’d been elected for-to take the flak.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’m almost at the traffic circle, Instead of coming straight back to the department, I’ll stop by Doc Winfield’s office and see what he has to say. In the meantime, when you start passing out today’s assignments I want you to send at least one deputy over to Saginaw to talk to Bucky Buckwalter’s neighbors. I want to knov whether or not anyone saw a strange vehicle parked near the house or clinic around noon yesterday.”

There was a moment of dead air over the radio. When Dick Voland spoke again, all trace of cordiality was gone from his voice.

“Why on earth would we want to do that?” he demanded.

“Because we need to,” Joanna replied. “And we need do it A.S.A.P.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Don’t tell me. I’ll bet Hal Morgan passed along his ‘second man’ pile of crap. He led me that same line of bull. Don’t fall for it, Joanna. It’s nothing but a sucker ploy designed to throw us off track.”

We’re off track, all right, Joanna thought, but somebody else put us there. When she spoke, though, she made sure her voice stayed calm and even.

“Whether or not I fell for something is immaterial, Dick,” she said. “I want Hal Morgan’s story checked out.”

“But I thought…” Voland sputtered. “… with your leaving him under guard…”

“We’re keeping a guard on the suspect because you seem to feel it’s necessary,” Joanna said. “But just because you and the county attorney happen to be convinced of Hal Morgan’s guilt doesn’t necessarily make it so. Our department has an obligation to check out all the evidence, to bring it to a court of law, and then let a judge and jury decide. For today, I want one officer from the day shift and one from the night shift working the problem right up until nine o’clock, or until the ends of their respective shifts, whichever comes first.”

“But, Patrol is already spread so thin-”

Joanna didn’t give Voland time to finish voicing his objection. “Just do it, Dick,” she interrupted. “That’s an order. I’ll see you as soon as I finish up with Doc Winfield.”

The Cochise County Coroner’s office was in Old Bisbee, halfway up Tombstone Canyon, beyond the courthouse in what had once been a grocery store. During the mid-eighties and long out of the milk-and-bread business, the derelict but still serviceable old building briefly had been brought back to life to house what was purported to be a low-cost, prepaid Funeral service-Dearest Departures.

Its arrival in town had caused quite a stir. Popular opinion It the time held that the Dearest Departures plan for “discount dying” spelled the end of the line for people like Norm Higgins and other longtime members of family-owned funeral and mortuary businesses. Dearest Departures was supposed to do for the mom-and-pop mortuary business what McDonald’s had done for hamburgers-standardize things and lower costs over all. People predicted that Higgins Funeral Capel and Mortuary would soon disappear off the face of the earth.

It turned out, however, that Dearest Departures was far more of a marketing concept than it was a going concern. It was actually a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme couched in terms that sounded far better than the principals were prepared to deliver.

Franchisees were promised a complete business plan-building, state-of-the-art equipment, and in-depth training for one set fee. A slippery company-hired contractor had come to town with an itinerant crew and a motor-home-based workshop. Almost overnight the crew successfully remodeled the aging storefront into a reasonable facsimile of a mortuary. Unfortunately, corporate training of franchisees and their employees didn’t measure up to the contractor’s ability to transform space. The Dearest Departures “store” in Bisbee, one of the first in the country, had opened with a cadre of people who had barely managed to pass the state licensing requirements and who really didn’t know what they were doing.

In the Bisbee franchise, trouble showed up almost as soon as the doors opened in the form of several public relations disasters. The first Dearest Departures funeral was that longtime Bisbeeite Ralph Calloway. Due to an unfortunate employee screw-up during the embalming procedure Ralph’s send off had a distinctly unpleasant odor. Days later, two bodies were misfiled, with unfortunate and irrevocable results. Miss Maybelle Cashman was mistakenly cremated while Doris Bellweather’s body showed up in the coffin at what was supposed to be the Cashman viewing.