J. Jance - Partner In Crime

With their weapons drawn, they advanced again. When they ducked for cover the third time, Brampton still hadn’t moved. “He’s either knocked out cold or he’s dead,” she said.

Before they moved forward that last time, a gust of wind blew down the bed of the river, bringing with it a sudden flurry of movement. A cloud of something seemed to rise up ghostlike out of the ground beside the fallen man. It floated toward them, eddying in the breeze. As the mini – dust devil came closer, it separated itself into individual pieces of paper. Only when one of them landed beside her did Joanna realize it was a twenty-dollar bill – one of hundreds of other bills, twenties and fifties and hundreds – spiraling through the air.

Blood money , Joanna thought.

Still the suspect didn’t move. “Shall we take him?” she asked.

Beaumont nodded. “Let’s.”

“Go!” she ordered.

Joanna and Beaumont scrambled to their feet simultaneously and rushed toward Jack Brampton. When they reached the border fence, they stopped. On the far side of it their murder suspect lay lifeless on the ground, his neck twisted back toward them, his eyes open but unmoving. Still strapped to his body was a torn backpack leaking money.

“He must have thought Princess was a jumper,” Joanna Brady muttered as she reholstered her weapon. “Lucky for us, it turns out she wasn’t.”

HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS twenty-twenty. What Joanna Brady and I probably should have done the moment we saw Jack Brampton was grab him by his legs and drag his body back under the fence. Unfortunately, we were so relieved to be alive that neither of us figured that out until it was too late. By then, the federales had arrived on the scene, and all bets were off.

I worked the Seattle PD Homicide Unit for the better part of two decades. In all that time, I never had to bring a dead suspect’s body back across an international border. I was about to get a firsthand lesson, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Sheriff Brady spoke. Frank Montoya translated. The federales listened and shook their heads. One of them caught sight of the packets of money spilling out of the fallen backpack. At that point the head-shaking became even more adamant. I believe the applicable term would be “No way, José.” Right then I knew how it was going to play out. Without the personal intervention of Vicente Fox, or even God himself, Jack Brampton wasn’t coming back across the border anytime soon. Neither was the money.

Frustrated beyond belief, I went plowing back down the river, gathering hundred-, fifty-, and twenty-dollar bills as I went. I had a whole fistful of them by the time Joanna Brady, her face clouded with anger, caught up with me. I glanced back at what should have been an official crime scene in time to see the Mexican officers summarily load Jack Brampton’s body onto a stretcher and cart him away, right along with his backpack.

“Which do you want to take back?” she demanded. “Princess or the Blazer?”

“Princess?” I repeated.

“The horse,” she said impatiently. “The horse’s name is Princess.”

I had far more faith in my ability to drive a Blazer than I did with my skill on a horse. For one thing, just inside the border fence on the U.S. side, I had spotted a reasonably serviceable roadway someone had carved through the desert. I suspected it had been put there for the convenience of passing Border Patrol vehicles and agents, and it looked to be in better condition than either of the narrow tracks I had driven on earlier.

“I’ll drive,” I said. “What about the money?” I added, showing her the wad of bills I held in my hand.

“Give it to Frank,” she said. “He’ll have deputies gather what they can and bring it back to the department. I’ll be more than happy to put it in the confiscated-funds account.”

Without another word, Joanna tossed me the keys, then she stalked off toward the Blazer. Once there, she pulled a gallon-sized plastic bottle of water out of the luggage compartment and poured it into a hard hat she evidently kept on hand in an equipment locker. Holding the water-filled hard hat in front of her, she moved cautiously toward the horse, making soothing clucking sounds as she did so.

As a city-born-and-bred boy, I figured the animal would take off. Instead, Princess pricked up her ears, trotted straight over to Joanna, and gratefully buried her muzzle in the water. By the time Princess had drunk her fill, Joanna had the creature’s bridle firmly in hand. Without a word, Sheriff Brady vaulted easily into the saddle. As she rode past, she tossed me the hard hat.

“Put it back in the Blazer, would you?”

“Sure thing,” I said.

Watching her ride away, I remembered what Harry I. Ball had said all those days earlier about Joanna Brady being a latter-day Annie Oakley. As it turned out, he hadn’t been far from wrong.

JOANNA DELIVERED PRINCESS BACK to the Lozier place. By then someone had contacted Billyann Lozier at work, and she had come home to be with her mother. Alma Wingate, worn out by all the excitement, was back up in her bedroom lying down. Billyann was ecstatic to see Princess. She ran across the road to greet them when Joanna and the horse emerged from the riverbed. With tears running down her cheeks, Billyann Lozier buried her face in the horse’s long black mane.

“Thank you so much for bringing her home, Sheriff Brady,” Billyann murmured. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. After what Mother told me, I didn’t think I’d ever see Princess again.”

“You’re welcome,” Joanna said.

Returning the horse safely was the single bright spot in the day’s events. Joanna should have been happy knowing that Jack Brampton was done for. He would never be able to harm anyone else. The problem was, he had died without revealing anything about the people he had worked for – the people who had provided the money that the wind had blown out of his backpack. As far as Joanna was concerned, the job of apprehending the killer was only half done.

Not only that, but from the ham-fisted way the federales were handling the situation, Joanna doubted she and her investigators would learn anything more from the effects on the dead man’s body. Plus, she didn’t even know if Jack Brampton had gone to his death with an additional supply of sodium azide still in his possession, although Frank had apprised the Mexican officers of the possibility.

It was only when Joanna was standing in Paul and Billyann Lozier’s front yard that she realized one of the backup deputies she had summoned had yet to appear. The others had both been sent down to join Chief Deputy Montoya and Ernie in searching for more of the scattered money. The K-9 Unit, however, wasn’t with them.

Once Beaumont handed over the keys to the Blazer and they were headed into town, Joanna got on the radio to Dispatch. “Tica,” she said, “whatever happened to Deputy Gregovich? He never showed up.”

“He’s at the hospital,” Tica Romero replied. “At least Deputy Gregovich is. I don’t know about Spike. Kristin’s about to have her baby.”

“Oh,” a relieved Joanna said. “That explains it.”

Minutes later, while requesting a tow truck to come to retrieve Beau’s damaged Kia, she turned to him and asked, “Where should they take it?”

“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “The rental agreement’s in the glove box. Have the tow-truck driver call Saguaro Discount Rental in Tucson and ask them where they want it. Unless you need it for evidence, that is. If so, you can take it back to your department and have someone dig the bullet out of the passenger seat.”

Joanna shook her head dispiritedly. “Why bother?” she asked. “The shooter’s dead and you’re not. I don’t see any point in wasting time or energy on it.”