J. Jance - Fire and Ice

As a matter of fact I do, Joanna thought, but she was done. She’d had enough of Guy Machett’s temper tantrums for one day, and she didn’t need any more.

“You do whatever you need to do,” she said. “I’m sure you and Dave will be able to work it out. In the meantime, Detective Carpenter, how about if you give me a ride back out to my vehicle. I’ll leave the rest of you to it.”

“That guy’s no Doc Winfield,” Ernie said, once they had climbed into the Yukon and driven out of earshot.

The understated elegance in Ernie’s comment was enough to make Joanna smile. “No, he’s not,” she agreed.

“And he’s not going to last,” Ernie added.

That unequivocal statement was enough to make Joanna sit up and take notice. Maybe something was going on that she hadn’t heard about.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Because he’s a balloon full of hot air and somebody needs to pop it-somebody who’s got his twenty years in and doesn’t have anything to lose.”

Joanna knew Ernie wanted to be the one doing the popping, but he was now one of the grand old men of her department. Having already lost the services of Frank Montoya and the good counsel of Dr. George Winfield, she couldn’t afford to be without Ernie’s time and experience.

“Ignore him,” she said. “I need you around far more than I need Machett to be taken down a peg.”

When they arrived back at the gate, Natalie Wilson’s dog pound vehicle was gone and Miller was as well. A second Crown Victoria was parked next to Joanna’s. That Crown Vic, which had once been driven primarily by Frank Montoya, had now been passed down to her three-man homicide team. Detective Jaime Carbajal was inside it, talking on the phone. When Joanna approached the vehicle, he rolled down the window and waved a piece of paper.

“The search warrant?” she asked.

He nodded. “Be right with you.” When he stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut a few moments later, the thunderous appearance on his face told Joanna something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He let out a long breath. It sounded like air being released from an overloaded tire. “That was Debra Highsmith,” he said. “Luis got in another fight today. He’s being suspended. She’s of the opinion that whatever’s wrong with Luis is all my fault, and she wanted me to come get him. I told her I can’t. Delcia’s going instead.”

Luis Andrade was Jaime’s nephew, the son of Marcella Andrade, Jaime’s ne’er-do-well sister, a sometime prostitute who had abandoned her progeny the previous summer. Despite having a son of their own, Jaime and his wife had gone to court and petitioned for custody, which had been granted. At the time taking their nephew in seemed like a no-brainer. Luis had come across as a good, self-motivated kid who had looked after his mother more than she had looked after him. At first Luis had convinced everyone, including himself, that his mother’s disappearance was temporary. As the months went by and the loss of his mother seemed more and more permanent, he had started getting into trouble. His grades had fallen. He’d lost interest in sports. And Joanna knew that this was the third time in as many weeks that he’d been in trouble at school for fighting.

As for Debra Highsmith, the high school principal? Joanna had done a few rounds with the woman herself. Two years earlier, one of the high school counselors had suggested that Joanna, as sheriff of Cochise County, be invited to speak to the students at a career day assembly. Joanna had been pleased to accept until she’d been told that due to the school’s zero-tolerance weapons policy, she would have to check her weapons at the door. She had complied that one time, but since then, in the aftermath of a rash of school shooting fatalities around the country, that rule had been quietly rescinded. Zero tolerance of weapons no longer applied to those carried by trained police officers. The last time Joanna had addressed a school audience, she had done so in her uniform, and no mention had been made of the fact that she’d been armed with both a Taser and a firearm.

“Is Luis all right?” Joanna asked.

“He’s not all right,” Jaime said. “He’s a long way from all right. Marcella has wrecked everything she ever touched. Why should her son be any different?”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Jaime shook his head. “Ernie and I will execute this warrant,” he said. “At least it’ll give me something to think about besides going home and trying to knock some sense into Luis’s head.”

“Don’t do that,” Joanna said. “He’s been through a lot. He’ll come around eventually.”

“I hope so,” Jaime said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Joanna was tempted to hang around while they searched for clues in Lester Attwood’s Airstream. That sounded far more interesting than going back to her office and facing down a snarl of administrative nitty-gritty. Unfortunately, without Frank Montoya there to handle some of those issues, she had to focus more and more of her energy on day-to-day departmental issues. She knew that if she ever fell behind, she’d never catch up.

“Okay,” she said. “Good luck. I’ll head back to the office and leave you and Ernie to it.”

Lucy Caldwell left me sitting in a grim little cubicle with the murder book while she went to get the evidence box. I scanned through what was there. The skull and bones had been found on Friday afternoon by a road worker of some kind, a guy named Ken Leggett. I made a note of his name, address, and phone number.

Lucy returned, dragging another cop with her. “This is Gary Fields,” she said. “He’s my partner.” Gary dropped an evidence box on the desk, gave me a look, and rolled his eyes.

“Anything else?” he wanted to know. “I need a smoke.”

“Knock yourself out,” Lucy told him.

When you’re a cop, partners are important. Knowing what to expect from the officer next to you sometimes means the difference between life or death. Clearly the partnership between Detectives Caldwell and Fields wasn’t a match made in heaven. And the fact that Gary preferred going out for a cigarette to discussing a current investigation didn’t speak well for him. This was a homicide-his homicide-and he should have exhibited a little more interest. At least I thought he should have.

“What’s his problem?” I asked.

Lucy shrugged. “He thinks a woman’s place is in the home and not in homicide.”

Truth be known, not too long ago that used to be my attitude as well. Once upon a time, the fifth floor at Seattle PD was an all-boys club, one with no girls allowed right up until Sue Danielson arrived on the scene. Since then, I had changed my mind about all that, and I thought the rest of the world had changed right along with me. But maybe not some of the “good old boys” in Kittitas County. And if Detective Caldwell was being treated as a pariah by her homicide detective colleagues, that could go a long way in explaining her pissed-off attitude toward me.

“Remind me to introduce Detective Fields to my wife,” I said. “She’ll clean his clock.”

Lucy Caldwell responded to that with a thin smile. Then she opened the box and pulled out a video-good old-fashioned VHS. The local M.E. might have gone high tech and high def, but the sheriff’s department was still stuck in the twentieth century.

“Here’s the interview we did with Leggett, the guy who found the body. Want to see it?”

I knew that watching the actual interview would take hours-as many hours as the interview itself. No instant replays. No commercial interruptions, and no TiVoed highlights. Besides, since it looked as though I was going to be working with Detective Caldwell, it seemed to me that a show of mutual respect might help us along.