J.A. Jance - Dead Wrong

“No,” Joanna returned. “I’m sure no one has ever mentioned any such thing.”

“Consider yourself told, then,” Frank said. “And remember, you heard it here first.”

Once Joanna got off the phone, she started a load of laundry and then hustled around making a breakfast that she hoped would help put her back in Jenny’s good graces. And it worked. Jenny and the two dogs emerged from her room as soon as the first whiff of pancakes made it to her bedroom door.

“What’s for breakfast?” Jenny asked, pausing in the kitchen door. “I’m starving.”

“Paper-thin pancakes,” Joanna told her. “Cooked just the way you like them.”

By the time breakfast was over, Joanna had more or less worked her way off the “bad” list. When they got to the traffic circle, Joanna stayed long enough to have the girls wash her Crown Victoria.

“You have your cell?” Joanna asked. Having her own cell phone was the one thing Jenny had wanted for Christmas. Butch, over Joanna’s objections of its being extravagant, had seen to it that she got one.

“Yes, Mom,” she said. “I have it right here.”

Joanna was relieved to hear that she had been promoted back to “Mom” status from an all-time low of “Mother.”

“Call me at the office when you’re finished,” Joanna said. “I’ll come get you. Maybe we can have our girls’ night out and eat some Mexican food.”

Joanna stopped by Dr. Ross’s on the way to her office since the veterinary clinic was between the traffic circle and the Justice Center. Jeannine Phillips’s truck was still in the parking lot when Joanna arrived.

Jeannine was sitting in the waiting room thumbing her way through a worn magazine when Joanna entered. “Where’s the patient?” she asked.

Jeannine Phillips was a tough customer who looked as though she could have been comfortable working as a bouncer in a bar. But when Joanna asked the question, she looked down at her feet and blushed to the roots of her hair. “In surgery,” she said.

“In surgery!” Joanna repeated. “I thought I told you to have Dr. Ross call me before she did anything.”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff Brady,” Jeannine muttered. “There wasn’t time. I was afraid we were going to lose him. Besides, I told Dr. Ross that if the department wouldn’t pay I would.”

Well, Joanna thought, taking a nearby seat. At least I’m not the only softheaded one around here. “So what’s the prognosis?” she asked after a pause.

Jeannine shrugged. “She said we’d know more after she got him stitched back up. She’s been working on him for over an hour now.”

For some time the only sound was the small click of an oversize electric clock that hung on the wall behind the reception desk. Jeannine was the one who broke the silence. “I think I know who’s behind the fights,” she said quietly.

“Who?”

“The O’Dwyers.”

Joanna’s heart sank. If Cochise County had a natural, homegrown pair of troublemakers, the O’Dwyer brothers, Clarence and Billy, were it. Grandsons of one of Arizona‘s pioneer families, they had taken over their parents’ ancestral home. The vast Roostercomb Ranch, established before statehood, had once stretched from Arizona’s San Simon Valley across the northern Peloncillo Mountains and on into New Mexico.

Years of drought and a series of disastrous business decisions had caused the family to sell off huge tracts of land. Several years earlier, the death of their elderly mother had thrown her cantankerous sons into a pitched battle with the Internal Revenue Service over estate taxes. By the time the feds had collected what was due, the sons were left with a much smaller ranch and a permanent antipathy toward anyone in law enforcement. Their run-in with government officials had also left them with a fondness for high-powered firearms.

“How do you know that?” Joanna asked.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on them,” Jeannine said.

“On your own?” Joanna asked.

Jeannine nodded.

The thought of one of Joanna’s unarmed Animal Control officers facing down a pair of gun-toting conspiracy nuts wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate. And she didn’t want the actions of her ACO inadvertently to provoke a Cochise County version of Waco‘s Branch Davidian shoot-out.

“Leave them alone,” she said.

“But, Sheriff…” Jeannine began. “If we ignore them, we’re just letting them get away with it.”

“No buts,” Joanna snapped. “I’m ordering you to stay away from them, Jeannine, and I mean that’s a direct order. Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer are dangerous men. The two of them would make mincemeat out of you.”

“What are we supposed to do? Turn our backs? Let them keep on doing what they’re doing?”

“What you think they’re doing,” Joanna corrected. “Look, Jeannine. I understand how you feel. Don’t forget, I’m every bit as much of an animal lover as you are, but the sheriff’s department is a law enforcement agency. What you suspect the O’Dwyers of doing is very much against the law, but in order to catch them at it, we have to have more than unsubstantiated suspicions. We have to put a team of people on this and conduct a real investigation. Not only that, we’re going to have to follow the rule of law while we do it. We have to have probable cause, properly drawn search warrants, and all those other things-the crossed t’s and dotted i’s -that will stand up in court. Believe me, when we do go in there, we’ll do it with officers who are armed and trained to handle those guys, not with one officer acting on her own. Understand?”

Jeannine Phillips nodded glumly. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

A swinging door on the far side of the lobby opened, and Dr. Millicent Ross strode into the room. She was a heavyset woman with gray hair pulled into a knot at the back of her neck. Her brusque exterior belied a life lived with unstinting kindness.

“It’s still touch and go, Jeannine,” she said. “But I think that tough little guy of yours may make it.”

Jeannine’s previously grim countenance brightened. “Really?” she asked.

“Really,” Dr. Ross answered. “The damage looked far worse than it was. I’ve stitched him back up. He’d lost a lot of blood, though, and he was very dehydrated, so I’m keeping him sedated and on an IV If you hadn’t brought him in right when you did, though, it would have been an entirely different story. He’d have been a goner.”

Jeannine scrambled to her feet. “I’ll be going then. Thanks, Mil. Thanks a lot.” At the door she stopped and turned back. “I’ll come back later to check on him.”

Once the ACO had left the waiting room, Joanna turned to Millicent Ross. “Jeannine told you the background on this?”

“The dogfight issue?” the vet asked. “Yes, she told me. And to that end, I took a number of photos to document the extent of the dog’s injuries. You’ll have those to use in court. If he lives, there’ll be plenty of scars, too.”

“About the charges then,” Joanna said, opening her wallet and removing a business card. “Since we’re hoping to use the dog as evidence, you should bill the sheriff’s department. Send it to my attention and I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Millicent Ross said. “It’s already been handled.”

“Surely Jeannine didn’t agree to pay for the treatment. With what she makes, she couldn’t possibly afford-”

“There won’t be any charges, Sheriff Brady,” Dr. Ross said firmly. “This is a situation where I’m donating my services.”

Joanna was taken aback. “Are you sure?”

Dr. Ross smiled. “Absolutely,” she said.

“What about a microchip?” Joanna asked as an afterthought. “Did you find one so we’ll be able to locate the owner?”