J. Jance - Partner In Crime

I’m not sure what Joanna’s team of investigators had been told previously about my presence in their midst. None of them went out of his or her way to make me feel welcome. I was grateful when Joanna Brady tackled that issue head-on.

“You’ve all been introduced to Special Investigator Beaumont,” Sheriff Brady said when she stood up at the stroke of 1 P.M. “He’s here as a representative of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, which has a vested interest in seeing that whoever killed Latisha Wall is brought to justice. Since it seems inconceivable that Latisha’s murder and Deidre Canfield’s death are unrelated, this is Mr. Beaumont’s deal as much as it is ours. From here on, he’s to be treated as a full member of this investigation. Any information you give me, you should also give him. Is that clear?”

Sheriff Brady’s crew may have been young, but they were unarguably professional. Uneasy nods of assent passed around the table. None of them were thrilled to have an interloper among them, but no one raised an audible objection.

“Good, then,” Joanna concluded. “Let’s get started.”

Clearly I wasn’t the only one who had put in a relatively sleepless night. Deputy Hollicker looked especially bedraggled, with dark circles under bloodshot eyes. He had spent most of the night processing the Canfield crime scene down in Naco. Scanning through my pile of papers, I noticed that it didn’t contain a written report from him about that. Bearing that in mind, I wasn’t the least surprised when Joanna Brady put him in the hot seat first.

“I’m working on the paper,” he said when she called on him. “I’m sorry my report isn’t ready-”

“Never mind the report,” Joanna Brady said, waving aside his apology. “Just tell us. Did you find anything useful?”

The CSI shook his head miserably. “Not really. Local kids have been messing around in those old cavalry barracks for years. I found all kinds of junk in there – trash, beer bottles, cigarette butts, and gum wrappers. It’s tough to tell what, if anything, might be related.”

“You did say cavalry,” I confirmed. “As in horses?”

“That’s right. The building where the body was found is on the site of an old U.S. Cavalry post that dates from the 1880s,” Joanna Brady explained. “The crime scene is actually one of the old officers’ quarters. What about the stables, Dave? Did you search them, too?”

If I had stumbled into a case where the crime scene turned out to be a cavalry post, maybe I was Rip Van Winkle in reverse.

Hollicker nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Every inch. Detective Carbajal thought we might find another body there – the boyfriend’s, presumably. We didn’t, though.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Joanna said grimly. “There’ll be more about Warren Gibson later. Go on.”

“Deputy Howell and I brought back as much stuff to the lab as we thought might be relevant. Again, it’ll take time to go through it all. I’ll work on it as time allows.”

“Did you talk to Doc Winfield?” Joanna asked.

Dave nodded. “Detective Carbajal and I both did. It was right after the ME arrived on the scene, so he didn’t know much at that point. He did tell us, though, that he’s reasonably certain Dee Canfield died somewhere else. The body was dumped there afterward.”

“What about Dee’s house out in Huachuca Terraces? Did either you or Casey get around to checking it out?”

Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker shook their heads in unison. “Ran out of time,” Dave explained. “I had a deputy put up crime scene tape. I’ll go there later today, right after the meeting.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Moving right along. Let’s talk about Warren Gibson for a minute. Dave, you and Mr. Beaumont probably haven’t heard about this yet, but Ms. Canfield’s daughter from Cheyenne, Wyoming – a woman named Serenity Granger – came to my office this morning. She brought along a copy of an unfinished e-mail that her mother sent her Thursday afternoon. Ms. Granger didn’t actually read the message until yesterday. You should have a copy of that along with your other handouts.”

I shuffled through my paperwork until I located Deidre Canfield’s unfinished missive to her daughter.

“If you check the time,” Joanna Brady was saying, “it’s listed as 4:10:26 P.M. Mountain Standard. Now look at the transcript of Jaime’s interview with Dee Canfield. Look at the last two sentences right at the end.”

After a little more paper shuffling, I located the right passages.

Detective Carbajal: Since both you and Mr. Gibson were in Latisha Wall’s house yesterday, we’ll need fingerprints from both of you.

Ms. Canfield: Yes, yes, of course. I understand. We’ll take care of it right away, tomorrow probably, but not right now. The show’s tonight. I really do have to get back up to the gallery now so I can be ready to meet the caterer and let her in.

That was the last entry. The transcript indicated that the interview terminated at 3:08 P.M. An hour and two minutes later, Dee had sent her daughter an incomplete e-mail voicing her concern that perhaps Warren Gibson had been involved in Latisha Wall’s murder. I could see where Sheriff Brady was going with all this.

“Casey and Deputy Galloway spent a great deal of time last night and early this morning processing Castle Rock Gallery. A while ago, Casey got an AFIS hit on one of the prints she found there. The man everyone in Bisbee knows as Warren Gibson turns out to be a convicted felon named Jack Brampton. How about passing around copies of that rap sheet, Casey?”

As we say in the trade, “Bingo!”

Joanna Brady was totally in her groove by then. While the fingerprint tech slid pieces of paper out across the smooth surface of the conference table, Sheriff Brady continued without pause. “So we’ve put out an APB on Jack Brampton, aka Warren Gibson.” She stopped long enough to give her chief deputy a searching look. “It did go out, didn’t it, Frank?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Montoya replied. “And I added that the suspect is most likely driving a 1970 red Pinto wagon.”

Joanna frowned. “Red,” she repeated. “Where did you get that information?”

Montoya bristled slightly at the impatient way she posed the question. I would have, too.

“Where else?” he returned. “From the DMV. That’s the vehicle they show as being registered to one Deidre Canfield, 114 Cochise Drive, Bisbee, Arizona.”

“The DMV maybe thinks it’s red,” Joanna told him. “But they’re wrong. The last time I saw Dee Canfield’s Pinto, it looked like somebody had used it for a drop cloth.”

“What color is it then?” Montoya asked.

“All colors,” she answered.

The chief deputy sighed. “All right, then,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll go amend that APB.”

Frank Montoya stood to leave the room as Joanna continued. “The good news is, there aren’t that many 1970 Pintos of any kind or color still on the road. If someone spots one moving under its own power, they’re likely to let us know.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, opening my mouth for only the second time in the course of the meeting. “A 1970 Pinto? What kind of fuel does it run on?”

“Leaded,” Joanna said.

“I didn’t know you could still buy leaded,” I objected.

“You can,” she replied, “but only across the line in Old Mexico.”

Frank Montoya was still lingering by the conference room door. “That’s something then,” he said. “If Brampton is using the Pinto as his getaway car, it’s a pretty good bet he’ll be headed south. I’ll get on the horn to Border Patrol here about him, and I’ll let the federales in Mexico know about this as well.”