J. Jance - Fire and Ice

My spotty remembrance of Arizona geography told me that the state is a lot like Washington in that it’s bigger than you think. And it’s a lot farther from Tucson to Bisbee than it appears when you’re looking at it in your handy AAA Road Atlas .

Joanna answered on the second ring. She sounded stressed and not the least bit happy to hear from me, which may have been because (a) she really was busy; or (b) she wasn’t particularly interested in hearing from me ever again.

“Hey, Joanna,” I said cheerfully. “We’ve got a situation here. We’re hoping you can give us a hand.”

“All right,” she said after I explained what I needed. “I’m on my way to a meeting right now. I have a detective who’s currently on his way to Tucson on another matter. His name is Ernie Carpenter. I’ll have him give you a call.”

Joanna placed the call to Ernie while pulling into a parking place in the county government complex on Melody Lane. It was only after she got out of the car and was walking toward the building that she noticed Marliss Shackleford’s RAV-4 parked three spots away from her Crown Victoria.

That in itself seemed odd. Marliss seldom attended “Board of Stupidvisors” meetings, as she sometimes playfully referred to them in her column. Had Joanna been more on her game, she might have sensed a trap, but she’d had a very complex past several days.

The meeting was already well under way when she stepped into the room and slipped into the last row of chairs reserved for heads of departments. Her arrival, however, didn’t go unnoticed. The door had made a slight swishing sound as it closed. Several people looked up and glanced in her direction. Marliss, seated in the second row, gave her a smile and a tiny wave. The smile especially should have been ample warning, but it wasn’t.

When the chairman announced it was time for new business, Peggy Whitehead surged to her feet and walked briskly over to the speaker’s podium, unfolding a piece of paper as she stepped in front of the microphone.

“I’m here today to lodge an official complaint against Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she announced, reading from a prepared text. “Her actions this past week and those of her officers have deliberately undermined my department as well as my ability to do my job. As head of the county health department I’ve been hired by this board to look out for the health and well-being of our citizenry. This is an important endeavor and a complicated one. Sheriff Brady seems to be under the impression that her job is the only one of any importance. As an elected county official she seems to be under the mistaken impression that she’s won some kind of popularity contest, one that gives her the right to be rude and disrespectful to the rest of us.

“Two nights ago, at Caring Friends, a fully licensed Alzheimer’s care facility in Palominas, her people, supervised by an inexperienced chief deputy, grievously overstepped their authority. Without consulting anyone other than Sheriff Brady-without consulting medical personnel or family members, I might add-they moved several frail and at-risk patients to other facilities. When the owner of the facility attempted to object to those precipitous actions, she was verbally attacked by Sheriff Brady and physically assaulted by several of Sheriff Brady’s senior officers. They went so far as to jail her overnight.

“Caring Friends is a health-care facility and it falls in my area of responsibility. It may be that there are and were serious deficiencies at Caring Friends, but it’s impossible for me or my people to do a proper investigation with Sheriff Brady and her officers running roughshod over the premises. I don’t get in the way of how Sheriff Brady does her job, and I respectfully request that she stay away from mine.

“I am placing my words in the minutes of this meeting as a way of expressing my dismay about the manner in which this was handled and to officially serve notice to the board that I expect you to properly supervise Sheriff Brady and her officers in the future. Thank you.”

Stunned to momentary silence, Joanna was about to stand up and respond to Peggy Whitehead’s charges when Claire Newmark, the chairman of the board, unexpectedly came to Joanna’s defense.

“It’s my understanding that the sheriff’s department was summoned to Caring Friends the other night on a missing persons call. Is that correct?”

Peggy had been about to sit down. Now she returned to the podium. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. One of the patients had walked away from the facility.”

“How did that happen?” Claire asked.

“I understand there was a staffing problem,” Peggy answered.

“And was this patient found safely?”

“Yes, but-”

“As for those patients who were moved. Where were they taken?”

“Two of them were admitted to the hospital in Sierra Vista, one went to the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, and one to Tucson, Tucson Medical Center, I believe.”

“And did Sheriff Brady’s deputies drag those unfortunate people out of their beds and force them into patrol cars in order to transport them?”

A titter of laughter went through the room. This wasn’t going the way Peggy had intended, and she flushed angrily. “No,” she said. “Of course not! They were transported in ambulances.”

“Presumably ambulances accompanied by EMTs,” Claire added drily. “Which means that there was some agreement on their part that the patients in question required further medical assistance. And isn’t it true that what you refer to as a ‘staffing problem’ was actually a situation where the patients were left entirely on their own for a number of hours? And weren’t the conditions found there something less than sanitary?”

“Yes, it was unstaffed,” Peggy admitted. “But when the nurse on duty arrived and tried to intervene, she, too, was waylaid and manhandled by Sheriff Brady’s overzealous deputies.”

That nurse was drunk, Joanna wanted to say. But she didn’t have to.

“Thank you, Ms. Whitehead,” Claire Newmark said, dismissing her. “That will be all. Now, is there any other new business?”

A few minutes after getting off the phone with Joanna Brady, I was speaking to Detective Gerald Lowell with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department. When I identified myself, he didn’t sound any happier to hear from me than Joanna Brady had been. My lack of popularity was almost enough to give me a complex.

“Warden Willison told me you’d be calling, but there’s not much I can tell you. Marco Andrade’s dead and so is my investigation.”

“But-”

“I was ordered to back off,” Lowell told me, “and I have.”

“Who told you to back off?” I asked.

“My boss,” Lowell said. “That’s who. When he said drop it, I did.”

“Does Warden Willison know you’ve dropped it?”

“For all I know, Willison may be part of the problem. So, no, I haven’t told him, and I’d be much obliged if you didn’t mention it either.”

“Part of the problem-” I began.

“Look,” Lowell interrupted. “This is evidently a much bigger deal than some worthless punk getting his on a shower-stall floor. At least that’s what I was told by the people who took over.”

“What people?” I asked.

Lowell sighed impatiently, as though I were a complete idiot. “How do you spell F-E-D-S?” he asked.

“You’re saying the feds have taken over?”

“Yes, they have-lock, stock, and barrel.”

“What about Marco Andrade’s personal effects?”

“Gone,” Lowell said. “I already told you. They took everything I had. I was told this is all part of a much larger investigation into one of those new Mexican drug cartels. The DEA doesn’t want any of us local guys getting in the way of something they’ve been working on for months.”