J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“Thanks, Lupe,” Joanna said, then turned back to her team of investigators. “Okay, Jaime. You, Casey, and Dave get on this right away.” Without another word, the three of them hustled out of the room.

“What about me, boss?” Frank Montoya asked.

“Even if you’re dealing with second-stringers, you stay here and keep after the phone stuff. We need that information.”

“And me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re with me.”

“Why?”

“So I can keep an eye on you. You’re part of this investigation, but I don’t want to spend the entire afternoon giving you directions and guiding you from one place to another.”

“I have a map…” I began.

“Forget it. Just go get in the car.”

“Yours or mine?”

The disparaging look she gave me told me the question was unworthy of being dignified with an answer. “Come on,” she said.

Rather than going out through the public lobby, Joanna hustled me first to her private office and then out a door that led directly into the parking lot. I started toward the Crown Victoria I knew to be hers.

“Not that one,” she said, stopping me. “We’ll take the Blazer.”

We walked two rows into the parking lot, where she climbed into the driver’s seat of an SUV that had definitely seen better days – from a physical-beauty point of view. However, a powerful engine sprang to life the moment she turned the key in the ignition. The term “ugly but honest!” came to mind.

We drove into town and back toward Old Bisbee. At the far end of the huge layered hole in the ground she explained was Lavender Pit we came to a spot where a group of cop cars, lights flashing, had converged alongside the road. Some of the vehicles were marked city of bisbee; others, sheriff’s department. They were grouped around the entrance to a freshly graded dirt road that led off between the red-rock hills.

We were pulling over to check things out when a call came in over the radio. “Sheriff Brady?”

“Yes, Tica,” she responded. “What is it?”

“I have Burton Kimball on the phone. He needs to talk to you right away.”

Joanna sighed. “Look, Tica. I’m really busy at the moment…”

“He says it’s urgent,” Tica insisted. “Is it all right if I patch him through?”

“I suppose so,” Joanna agreed grudgingly. “Go ahead.”

“Sheriff Brady?” A male voice roared through the radio. Despite having been filtered through both a telephone receiver and the radio, his words buzzed angrily in the air.

“What in the world are you and your people trying to pull now?” he demanded. “I can’t believe you’d stoop so low that you’d go to such incredible lengths. Really, Joanna, I always thought you were above this kind of stunt.”

Whoever Burton Kimball was, he was pissed as hell. In the course of the previous twenty-four hours, I’d seen some pretty strong indications that Sheriff Brady has a temper. I fully expected her to cut loose and give the guy as good as she got. She surprised me.

“Slow down a minute, Burton,” she returned mildly. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone has broken into my client’s house and planted what looks like a cache of drugs here,” he replied. “If you think you can get away with that kind of nonsense…” He paused as if searching for words. “I tell you, Joanna, I’m outraged about this – absolutely outraged!”

She and I hit on the word “drugs” at the same time, and we both jumped to the same conclusion. Why wouldn’t we? Drug or not, sodium azide was the topic of the moment. A few minutes earlier we’d been sitting in a conference room learning all about it.

It was interesting to realize once again that when Joanna Brady was upset, her voice went down instead of up. “What drugs?” she asked urgently but softly. Sitting right next to her, I could barely hear her, but Burton Kimball heard.

“How would I know?” he snapped back. “I didn’t taste it, if that’s what you mean. I wouldn’t know what cocaine tastes like if it walked up and hit me in the face, but since this is a white powder, cocaine is my first assumption.”

I watched while every trace of color drained from Joanna Brady’s face. Her voice didn’t change or falter. “This white powder,” she said calmly, “where exactly is it?”

“In my client’s laundry room,” Burton Kimball replied. “Bobo went out there this afternoon to do some laundry and found it sitting there, right in plain sight on the dryer. It’s in a box that’s been wrapped in duct tape and hooked up to the dryer vent. When he called to tell me about it, I advised him to leave it alone. I tell you, Joanna…”

“Where are you right now?” Joanna interrupted.

“Where am I?” Burton Kimball returned. “Where do you think? I’m at my client’s house, and you can bet I’m staying here until someone comes to collect this stuff and take it away.”

“Whereabouts are you in the house?” Joanna prodded.

I had to give the lady credit for staying cool. By then she had put the idling Blazer in gear. We were back on the road, speeding toward Old Bisbee.

“In the kitchen,” he said. “Talking to you on the phone.”

“What about Bobo?” she asked. “Where’s he?”

“Right here with me. Why?”

“Good,” she said. “Now listen to me, Burton. Listen very carefully. Whatever’s in that box in Bobo’s laundry room wasn’t planted by anyone from my department. But I suspect that it is dangerous, probably even deadly.”

“What is it, then, some kind of bomb? Is it going to explode?”

“No, nothing like that. But don’t interrupt. I want you both to leave the house, Burton. Immediately. Go outside and stay out. I’ll be there in a few minutes. In the meantime, don’t go near the laundry room, and whatever you do, don’t touch that box.”

“I hope you’re not trying to pull a fast one here, Joanna,” Burton Kimball warned, but his tone of voice had changed slightly. The naked urgency in her orders had commanded his attention.

“All right,” he relented, backing down. “But if you even so much as try using this as evidence against my client without having a properly drawn search warrant…”

Joanna started to lose it. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about evidence,” she interrupted. “I’m trying to save lives here. Now get the hell out of that house, Burton, and take Bobo Jenkins with you.”

She ended the call and tossed me the microphone.

“What?” I said.

“Call Dispatch back,” she ordered, switching on both lights and siren. The calm voice she had used to address Burton Kimball was replaced by that of a drill sergeant barking orders. “Tell them we need the state Haz-Mat team at Bobo Jenkins’s place on Youngblood Hill. Tell them you and I are on our way to secure the scene.”

“Which is where?”

“On Youngblood Hill.”

“I know that. What’s the address?”

Joanna Brady shook her head in disgust. “For crying out loud!” she exclaimed. “I have no idea, but since it’ll take the Haz-Mat team a good hour and a half to get here from Tucson, we should be able to figure out the address between now and then. Maybe somebody with half a brain can look his address up in the phone book!”

I punched the “Talk” button on the microphone. As I gave Tica the necessary information, it occurred to me that I wasn’t the only person in that speeding Blazer who should have invested a few hundred bucks in a Dale Carnegie course.

With lights flashing and siren blaring, we screamed into the old part of town and turned right up a narrow, one-lane strip of steep pavement. The sign said “O.K. Street,” but there was nothing okay about it. Calling it a goat path would have been closer to the mark than calling it a street. Then, about the time I was sure the Blazer was going to scrape off both its mirrors, we met a vehicle coming down. A silver-haired lady, driving a Pontiac Grand Prix with Nebraska plates, backed out of a parking lot beside what was evidently a small hotel and started in our direction.