Using her combination on the push-button lock, Joanna let herself into the building through the private door that led directly into her office. When she switched on the lights, she found to her surprise that the room was already occupied. Ernie Carpenter was sitting in one of the captain’s chairs opposite her desk. He looked up at her. His face was bleak, his skin ashen.
“I blew it,” he said.
“You had no way of knowing,” Joanna told him, dropping her purse on the corner of the desk and then coming around to stand leaning against it. “Don’t blame yourself, Ernie. I’ve been thinking about it all the way here. It’s not my fault, and it’s not yours, either.”
“But it is,” Ernie insisted. “Don’t you understand? Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I’m usually a better judge of people than that-better at reading what’s going on with them. I’ve always prided myself at being able to tell in advance if someone’s going to turn violent on me or go gunny-bags. I didn’t see this one coming, not at all.”
“How long had Hannah Green been in her cell before it happened?” Joanna asked.
Ernie shook his head. “Not long. No more than half an hour or so. She waived her right to a lawyer, so Jaime and I stayed long enough to get the whole interview down on tape. I’d just managed to drag my ass home and crawl into bed when the call came in saying she was dead.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Not nothing, Ernie. Her confession to you and Jaime, her confession to me was a note of sorts.”
“I realize that now,” Ernie agreed. “I should have picked up on it at the time. But I didn’t. That’s why I’m quitting.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the leather wallet with his badge in it and tossed it on Joanna’s desk. Joanna could barely believe her eyes or her ears. “Quitting?” she echoed.
“That’s right.”
“Over this? Over Hannah Green?”
Ernie nodded. “If you want me to, I’ll go write my letter of resignation right now. That’s why I was waiting for you here in your office. I wanted to talk to you alone. Without Dick Voland hanging around. He’ll try to talk me out of it.”
“You don’t think I will?”
“Why should you? Look, there are other, younger, guys coming along. I’ve put in my twenty-plus years. This wasn’t a fatal error for me, but it sure as hell was for Hannah Green. By the time we had finished talking to her, I could see that if she was telling us the truth about her father, we’d have a problem when it came to charging her with murder one. Maybe we could get voluntary manslaughter. Maybe even second-degree homicide. Whatever the charges might have ended up being, they wouldn’t have amounted to a capital offense. She may have committed a crime, but she shouldn’t have died for it. The fact that she did is my fault plain and simple. Who’s to say that the next time I won’t screw up worse and somebody else will die? Jaime Carbajal, for example.”
“You’re overreacting,” Joanna said.
“The hell I am.”
Joanna picked up the wallet. The leather was still warm to the touch from being in Ernie’s pocket. She flipped it open and studied the badge. The picture was of a somewhat younger man. A man with a less florid, less careworn face. “Detective Ernest W. Carpenter,” the card said. “Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.”
“You’ve been here a long time,” Joanna said softly. “Since my father’s time.”
Ernie nodded. “That’s right. Your dad is the one who hired me. That’s so long ago it seems like ancient history.”
“How many times, in all the years you’ve been here, have you had two homicides and a suicide in three days?” Joanna asked.
Ernie looked up at her quizzically. “Never,” he said.
“Is there a chance that you’re spread too thin right now? That you’ve been doing too much? Could that account for your not reading Hannah Green the way you might have under ordinary circumstances?”
“I suppose it could,” Ernie allowed grudgingly. “Jamie and I have both been working our tails off.”
“What about Jaime?” Joanna asked. “Do you think he’s ready to step into your shoes? Is he capable of doing this job without you?”
Folding his arms, Ernie stuck his feet out in front of him and examined his shoes. For the first time ever, Joanna noticed that his usually immaculate wing tips were in need of a shine. “Jaime’s young,” Ernie said. “But he’s getting there.”
“But he’s not all the way up to speed yet, is he?”
“No.”
“If you drop the ball now, Ernie, you’ll leave us all in the lurch. Jaime will be in over his head, so will I. So will my department.”
“But what about…” He stopped.
“Hannah Green?”
Ernie nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about that all the way here,” Joanna said. “We gave Hannah Green what she wanted and needed, Ernie. You and Deputy Carbajal and I not only listened to her, we believed her. It may have been the first time ever in her poor unfortunate life that anyone really listened to her. If Reed Carruthers was the kind of man we both suspect, he never paid any attention to a word she said-including what television channels she wanted to watch.”
Holding out the wallet, Joanna handed it back to Ernie. He studied it. “So what are you saying?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stay,” she said simply. “Go over to the jail and take charge of our part of the investigation. Hannah Green’s death will have to be investigated by an outside agency, of course. Dispatch has already called in the State Department of Public Safety, haven’t they?”
Ernie nodded. “But you’re to handle our end of it,” Joanna said.
When Ernie Carpenter looked up at her, his eyes were grave. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Joanna said with conviction.
Slowly, Ernie pulled himself up and out of the chair. He stood there with the leather wallet still open in his hand, staring down at his badge. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll get on it. You’re sure you don’t mind having old duffers like me hanging around?”
Joanna shook her head and smiled. “It’s the old guys, as you call them, who keep the rest of us from having to reinvent the wheel. Not only that, if I were dumb enough to let you quit over Hannah Green, then I’d have to quit myself. After all, I didn’t see it conning any more than you did. As of right now, we’d both he out of a job.”
Closing the wallet, Ernie stuffed it heck in his pocket. “I guess I’d better get cracking,” he said. “Are you coming along over to the jail?”
“In a minute,” Joanna told him.
Ernie headed for the door. “All I can say is, Sheriff Brady, you’re a hell of a salesman. I’ll bet Milo Davis is still kicking himself over losing you.”
At the time Joanna left the insurance agency, she had not yet quite completed the transition from office manager to sales, but there was no reason to explain that to Ernie-not right then.
“I hope so,” Joanna said. “I certainly do.”
It was almost seven by the time Joanna stumbled home. She walked into a house that was alive with the fragrance of frying bacon and brewing coffee. Jenny and Angie Kellogg were already eating breakfast in the kitchen nook. Because she planned on trying to grab another few hours of sleep, Joanna passed on Angie’s offer of coffee. Instead, she opted for a glass of orange juice. Dragging the kitchen stool to the end of the breakfast counter, she sat down, kicked off her shoes, and began rubbing the soles of her aching feet.
“Where were you, Mom?” Jenny asked. “Angie said you had to go to work.”