J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“Washington State Attorney General’s Office,” a businesslike voice responded.

Hearing that, Doc Winfield was convinced the phone number was wrong as well. “I’m looking for someone named Lawrence Baxter,” he said.

There was a long pause. “One moment, please,” the woman said. “Let me connect you with Mr. Todd’s office.”

“Did you say Mr. Todd?” Doc managed before she cut him off.

“Yes.” She was gone before he could ask anything more. After an interminable wait, a man’s voice came on the line. “O.H. Todd,” he said brusquely. “To whom am I speaking?”

“My name’s Winfield. Dr. George Winfield. There’s probably been a mistake. I’m looking for someone named Lawrence Baxter, but they connected me to you instead.”

“Baxter!” O.H. Todd exclaimed. “What do you want with him?”

“You know him then?” George asked hopefully.

“Why do you need him?” Todd demanded. “Who are you again?”

“Dr. George Winfield,” he explained patiently. “I’m the medical examiner in Cochise County, Arizona. I’m calling about Mr. Baxter’s daughter, Rochelle. If you could simply tell me how to reach him-”

“Something’s the matter with her?” the man interrupted. “Why? What’s happened?”

George Winfield sighed. This was all wrong. “I’m sorry to have to deliver the news in this fashion,” he said finally. “Over the phone, I mean. But Ms. Baxter is dead. She died last night.”

For a long moment, all George heard was stark silence. Just as the ME was beginning to think he’d been disconnected, O.H. Todd breathed a single word.

“Damn!” he muttered, sounding for all the world like he meant it.

DRIVING PAST THE Cochise County Justice Center on her way to the Naco, Arizona, crime scene, Joanna wondered about her own motives. Had she opted to go to the crime scene in order to avoid the members of her department who had boycotted the funeral reception? She had anticipated that countywide politics was a necessary part of being elected to the office of sheriff. What she hadn’t expected were the political machinations within the department itself.

She had managed to dodge the obstacles her former chief deputy Dick Voland had rolled into her path. Once he resigned from the department, Joanna had thought her troubles were over. She knew now that had simply been wishful thinking. Politics was everywhere – inside the department and out. She had to accept that reality and learn to work around it.

Fifteen minutes after leaving High Lonesome Ranch, Joanna pulled in behind a fleet of departmental cars parked at the corner of South Tower and West Valenzuela in the tiny hamlet of Naco. The front door of an aging stucco building stood ajar. When Joanna knocked, Detective Carbajal appeared in the doorway.

“Morning, boss,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were with the ME.”

Jaime nodded. “I thought so, too. Then Doc Winfield called to say there would be a slight delay. I had an extra forty minutes, so I thought I’d come see what’s what.” He moved aside and allowed Joanna to enter. “We left the door open in hopes of airing the place out,” he added, handing her the crime scene log. “You may not want to come in.”

As Joanna stepped into the large open room, she understood at once what Jaime meant. The all-pervading stench of stale vomit assailed her nostrils. When she finished signing the log, Jaime passed her a mask and a small jar of Vicks VapoRub.

“Thanks,” she said, dabbing some on her upper lip. “Now where?”

“Dave Hollicker is over there in what passes for a bedroom,” Jaime Carbajal said, pointing. “That’s where the EMTs found the victim. She’d been sick as a dog all over her bed and most of the room as well. Casey’s in the kitchen lifting prints.”

“What’s the victim’s name again?”

Jaime checked his notebook. “Rochelle Ida Baxter. Age thirty-five. The EMTs found a purse with a driver’s license and gave the information to Doc Winfield.”

“Any sign of robbery?”

Jaime shook his head. “Negative on that. They found eighty dollars and some change in her purse, along with a full contingent of credit cards. She was wearing two rings when she was taken to the hospital, and nothing around here looks disturbed. No broken glass. It’s not looking good for a robbery motive.”

“Forced entry?” Joanna asked.

“That’s a little harder to tell, but I don’t think so,” Jaime said. “Both front and back doors were locked when the ambulance arrived, so the EMTs had to break in. If the lock on the front door was damaged prior to that, there’d be no way to separate EMT damage from any that might have occurred previously. There’s an alarm system that went off like a banshee while the medics were here. I’ve already checked with the alarm company. Their monitoring system shows no disturbance prior to the arrival of the emergency personnel.”

Following Jaime’s directions, and with the smell of vomit no longer actively engaging her gag reflexes, Joanna moved to the bedroom area. The bed had been stripped down to bare mattress, and Dave Hollicker was in the process of rolling up a soiled bedside rug. The place didn’t resemble a crime scene so much as it did a hospital room, emptied of one desperately ill patient and awaiting the arrival of another. Joanna was relieved to see that most of the mess had been cleaned up prior to her arrival.

“How’s it going, Dave?”

He finished bagging the rug and placed it in a stack of similarly full and tightly closed bags before answering. “I’ve taken photographs and bagged everything I could. Once I load this stuff into the van, I’ll come back and start looking for hair and fibers.”

“How’s the print work coming?”

Dave Hollicker shrugged. “Beats me. You’ll have to ask Casey. I’ve been in here most of the time.”

“I’ll go see,” Joanna said, heading for the screens she assumed walled off the kitchen. The great room glowed with natural morning light that streamed in through an overhead skylight. Off to one side stood a large wooden easel. On it hung a starkly empty canvas. Joanna paused in front of it, struck by the fact that the person who had placed the canvas there was no longer alive to color it. Whatever scene Rochelle Ida Baxter had intended to paint there would never materialize. Next to the easel squatted a paint-blotched taboret. The top drawer sat slightly open, revealing neat rows of paint tubes. On the back of the taboret was a collection of oddly sized jars. In them brushes of various sizes stood with their bristles up, waiting to be taken up and used once more.

“Our victim’s an artist then?” Joanna asked, turning back to Jaime Carbajal.

The detective nodded. “Evidently,” he said, “although you couldn’t prove it by what’s here. So far I haven’t found anything but a few sketchbooks and more empty canvases just like the one on the easel. Maybe she was an artist who hadn’t quite gotten around to actually doing any painting.”

Joanna looked at the floor underneath the easel, where more daubs of paint stained the white planks of the floor. “She’d been painting, all right,” Joanna observed. “There must be finished canvases around here somewhere. Keep looking.”

When Joanna poked her head into the kitchen area, Casey Ledford was carefully brushing fine black powder onto the smooth gray surface of an old-fashioned Formica-topped table.

“How’s it going?” Joanna asked.

Pursing her lips in concentration, Casey smoothed a strip of clear tape onto the powder before she answered. “All right,” she said. “Good morning, Sheriff,” she added.

Carefully peeling it back, Casey smoothed the black-smudged clear tape onto a stiff manila card. After holding the card up and examining it, she put it back down. On the top of the card she jotted a series of notations about where and when the prints had been found. Then she tossed the tagged card into an open briefcase that already held many others just like it.