J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“What is it, Jaime?” she asked.

“Sorry, boss,” he said. “It’s a dead end. Spike led us right back here – to the highway. That’s where the trail stops. Brampton got into a vehicle and rode away.”

“Have Terry and Spike go back to the Pinto and try following the trail in the other direction,” she ordered. “I want to know where that one goes as well. In the meantime, send Casey out to Dee Canfield’s house. I’ll need Dave up here so he can handle the chain of custody on whatever evidence the Haz-Mat guys turn up.”

She ended the call. Beaumont had obviously been listening. “If the killer got in a car and rode away,” he said, “that probably means one of two things.”

“What would those be?” Joanna asked.

“Either Jack Brampton has an accomplice who came and picked him up, or else he hitched a ride with some poor innocent passerby who’s going to wind up being our next victim.”

“Great,” Joanna muttered. “Just what I want to hear.”

About that time the first member of the moon-suited Haz-Mat team came huffing up the stairs. “I’m Ron Workman, the team captain,” the leader announced to everyone in the small yard. “Who’s in charge here?”

Since Deputy Raymond’s was the only visible uniform, the question was addressed to him. The deputy nodded in Joanna’s direction and she stepped forward.

“I am, Mr. Workman. I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

The man gave Joanna a skeptical top-to-toe appraisal, from her grubby tennis shoes to the skirt, blouse, and blazer she had dressed in for church. He seemed less than thrilled at the idea that she was in charge.

Workman peered around the yard. “I was told we’d find a hazardous material situation here,” he said. “What is it, some kind of false alarm?”

By then three more moon-suited guys had crowded into Bobo Jenkins’s tiny front yard. They stood in a clump like a bunch of stranded astronauts waiting to see what would happen.

It would have been nice if Workman’s dismissive attitude hadn’t been quite so blatant. Joanna had dealt with similar reactions for years; they still irked her.

“It’s no false alarm,” she assured him crisply. “The hazardous material is inside the house. In the laundry room you’ll find a box we suspect contains sodium azide. The box is hooked up to the dryer vent.”

That got Mr. Workman’s attention. “Sodium azide?” he demanded. “My God, woman! Do you have any idea how dangerous that stuff can be?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Joanna said sweetly. “That’s why we called you.”

“Where is it?”

“Around back. A uniformed officer is standing by at the back door-”

Not waiting for her to finish, Workman motioned to his team. “All right, guys. Let’s get moving.”

“Stop,” Joanna barked. “That’s not all.”

A moment earlier, Workman had been prepared to write the whole thing off as a false alarm. Now he scowled impatiently at the delay. “What then?” he asked.

“Your team is to remove and examine all open food containers, including the contents of all sugar, flour, and salt containers. We’ve had one homicide due to sodium azide poisoning and suspect we may have another. In the first case, the poison was concealed in sweetener packets. My concern is that here it may have been used to contaminate other foodstuffs. So, although this is primarily a hazardous-materials operation, it’s also a crime scene investigation. I want photographs and a properly documented evidence log.”

“I was told no one here was hurt,” Workman objected. “In fact, I asked the dispatcher specifically, and he said-”

“You’re right, no one is hurt here,” Joanna corrected. “Not at this location, but only because we got lucky. Let me remind you, however, Mr. Workman, that two other people are dead. If you find any trace of sodium azide in the food inside the house, that adds one count of attempted murder as well.”

“All right, all right!” Workman conceded grudgingly. “I get the picture.” He turned once again to his waiting crew. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Move it.”

One by one, the Haz-Mat team disappeared into the house.

“Good work,” Beaumont said after they left.

Joanna turned on him. “What do you mean?”

He grinned at her. “You know exactly what I mean. You chewed that poor guy up and spit him out. He never even saw it coming.”

The next thing Joanna Brady knew, she was grinning, too.

“Something’s bothering me,” he said, when the lighthearted moment had passed.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone that was very nearly a duplicate of her own. “How come yours works and mine doesn’t?” he asked.

“Oh, that,” she says. “It’s a Dual-NAM phone.”

“What’s that?”

“Two numbers and two cell-phone providers. I got tired of all the dropped calls. Now I’m hooked into the system down in Naco, Sonora, as well. They have a stronger signal…”

“Is that why I keep ending up with the recording in Spanish?”

“Right,” she said. “And you’re going to keep on getting it until you’re on the other side of the Mule Mountains.”

Shaking his head, Beau pocketed his phone. “Sorry I asked,” he said.

SOMETIME LATER, THE FIRST OF THE HAZ-MAT crew members emerged from the house carrying several tightly closed stainless-steel containers. It was an hour after that when the last of them, Ron Workman, stepped out onto the porch. Divested of his moon suit, he stopped in front of Joanna and handed over an evidence log as well as a fanfold of Polaroid prints.

“Whoever your guy is, he knows what he’s doing,” Workman told Joanna as she studied the pictures.

“What makes you say that?”

“If he hadn’t known something about sodium azide, he’d most likely be lying dead in there, too, since just breathing this stuff can kill you.” Dave Hollicker was standing nearby. Remembering her crime scene investigator was lucky to be alive, Joanna shot him a meaningful glance. Dave nodded and said nothing.

Workman continued. “He jury-rigged himself a laminar-flow fume hood. Attached a cooling fan from a computer to one side and cut a hole big enough for his hands in the other. With his hands inside, the two openings would be almost the same. He also cut holes into the top and made Saran Wrap windows so he could work with his hands inside the box and still see what he was doing. Then he sealed all the seams with duct tape. And – voilà. There you have it – the same kind of equipment we use when we’re working with hazardous materials in the lab, except ours sets the state back a bundle of money. What your guy used was crude but effective.”

“And portable,” Joanna added.

“That, too,” Workman agreed. “Whenever he was working with it, he would have connected it to an outside vent.”

“It’s hooked to the dryer vent so he wouldn’t end up breathing it himself.”

“Right.”

“Did you dust for prints?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet,” Workman told her. “When we get back to the lab, we’ll dust the box and the food containers we took, but for the rest…”

“That’s all right,” Joanna said. “My people will handle it. How much sodium azide did you find in there?”

“In the box?”

She nodded.

“Plenty,” Workman answered grimly. “More than I wanted to see. If your suspicions about the sugar and flour are correct, he had enough to do some real damage.”

“How long will it take you to find out about the sugar and flour?” she asked.

“Not long,” he said with a shrug. “A day or two. I’ll be in touch as soon as we finish the analysis.”