When Joanna reached the line with Dr. Machett’s florid signature, she picked up her phone. The M.E. answered, but he wasn’t happy to hear from her. “I can’t believe how much damage that crazy old battle-ax did to the van when she pulled me out of the sand. It’s at least a thousand bucks’ worth of body work.”
And you think that’s my fault? Joanna thought. That’s what you get for not waiting for a regular tow truck!
“Sorry to hear it,” she said, hoping she sounded more sympathetic than she felt. She went on to give Guy Machett an overview of the problems at the Caring Friends facility, ending with the fact that the body of another possible victim might need to be exhumed.
“Why wasn’t an autopsy done at the time?” Machett wanted to know. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, you know.”
Joanna ignored the man’s condescending sarcasm. “From what Detective Howell told me,” she said, “the woman was supposedly under a doctor’s care at the time she died. Family members were informed that, since she had died of natural causes, if they wanted an autopsy it would have to be done at their expense. They couldn’t afford it. Now that there’s a possibility of wrongdoing on the caregiver’s part, however, all bets are off.”
“All right,” Machett agreed reluctantly. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good,” Joanna said. “We’ll put Detective Howell in charge of this case since she’s already had some interaction with the family. I’ll have her contact you to work out the details-necessary court orders and so forth. In the meantime, Detective Carbajal will be doing some of the Caring Friends interviewing and helping Ernie Carpenter with the Attwood homicide.”
Joanna knew that at that very moment Ernie was on his way to interview Lester Attwood’s former girlfriend in Benson. While Jaime awaited the arrival of the backup security tape from Action Trail Adventures, he was hoping to interview Alma DeLong and Sylvia Cameron, who, as far as Joanna knew, were still being held in the Cochise County Jail.
With only three detectives in her department, dealing with two cases at once meant that her investigative unit was acting at full capacity. And so was she. Once she finished with the phone call to Machett, she turned to her daily deluge of paperwork.
During her years as sheriff, Joanna had learned to love the investigative part of the work-bringing down bad guys and putting them away. The administrative part of the job? Not so much.
An hour later, she had pretty much cleared the decks when, with a tap on her door, Jaime let himself into her office.
“We’ve got the backup file from the security company at Action Trails,” he said. “I loaded it onto a disc. Want to take a look?”
“Sure,” Joanna said. “Let’s see it.”
He popped the disc into Joanna’s computer. Several moments later, her screen came to life with a series of ghostly nighttime images. Clearly the security camera was set to record only when there was activity in its field of focus. While Joanna watched, three vehicles came through the gate and past the camera. Two were 4-by-4 trucks with ATVs loaded in the back. The third was a hulking van of some kind. All three vehicles came through the gate one after the other, starting at 12:58 A.M., according to the time stamp in the corner of the screen. Immediately after they entered the property, the gate closed. The vehicles turned to the right and drove off past the point where Joanna had parked her Crown Victoria when Ernie had given her a ride out to the crime scene.
On the recording the next scene appeared immediately, but the time stamp said 1:10 A.M. In this scene the gate was still closed. Instead, an ATV erupted from somewhere offscreen-most likely from somewhere near Lester Attwood’s trailer. The vehicle crossed the camera’s limited line of vision and then disappeared.
“Is that Lester Attwood’s ATV?” Joanna asked.
Jaime nodded. “That’s what Mr. Savage said-that the one on the screen now belongs to our victim. The way I see it, the three vehicles arrive from outside about one A.M. and enter the property. A few minutes later, Mr. Attwood goes rushing off in the same direction. Now watch this.”
Joanna stared at the screen. A pair of headlights pulled into the camera’s field of focus and stopped. A door opened. A shadowy figure emerged from the vehicle and quickly walked out of the frame. A moment later, Joanna’s screen went blank and returned to her desktop directory.
“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s when they wrecked the camera?”
Jaime nodded again.
“So the people in the three arriving vehicles were up to no good and wanted to destroy the evidence,” Joanna said thoughtfully.
“That’s how it looks to me.”
“Can we go back and replay the videos slowly enough to get license plate numbers?”
“Not from this,” Jaime said. “The resolution isn’t good enough. In order to do that, we’ll have to enhance what’s here. We can try. It probably won’t be easy because we don’t have the right equipment. I’ve got a call into the Department of Public Safety crime lab up in Tucson to see if they can help.”
“If you were going to get a security camera, doesn’t it stand to reason that you’d get one where the resolution would actually tell you what you need to know?” Joanna asked.
Jaime shrugged. “There’s that old saying: You can have good, cheap, or quick. Pick any two. I’m guessing the Savage brothers opted for cheap and quick.”
“Let’s hope the DPS video guys can ride to the rescue on this,” Joanna said as she removed the disc from her computer and handed it back to Jaime. “And what about Alma DeLong? Did you talk to her?”
Jaime shook his head. “Nope. She lawyered up. I’m guessing, when she goes before the judge, he’ll let her post bail on the assault charge.”
“That’s probably just as well,” Joanna said. “We can leave her on the loose until we have a better idea about whether we can charge her with anything else. What about the patients?” Joanna added. “How are they?”
“The two in the hospital at Sierra Vista and the one in Bisbee are all in satisfactory condition. Philippa Brinson has been released. The patient who was transported to Tucson is in the ICU at Tucson Medical Center. She’s listed as critical and may not make it.”
“What about the nurse?”
“She’s still in the jail. This is her third DUI in as many years. She’s asking for a public defender.”
On the one hand, Jaime was just giving her information, but there was something in his guarded tone that warned Joanna something was wrong-something that had nothing to do with what had happened at Caring Friends or at Action Trail Adventures.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
Rubbing his forehead with one hand, Jaime sank back into his chair. For a long moment after that, he stared out the window, disconsolately examining the limestone cliffs that crowned the steep hillsides behind the Cochise County Justice Center.
“What?” Joanna asked again. Then she remembered the previous day’s difficulty with Jaime’s nephew. “Is this about Luis?”
Jaime nodded. “I went to the high school late yesterday afternoon and spoke to the principal.”
“Debra Highsmith isn’t one of my favorites,” Joanna said.
“Mine, either,” Jaime said. “But she came through this time. The office keeps a comprehensive list of all the padlocks on the lockers-a list of who has which locker and what the combination is. The students and the parents sign a contract at the beginning of the year. If the lock on any given locker isn’t on the official list or on the right locker, the administration has the right to cut it off.”
“You’re saying you went through Luis’s locker?” Joanna asked.
Jaime nodded bleakly, and Joanna’s heart sank. She knew a lot of bad stuff had a way of turning up in high school lockers these days, everything from illicit drugs to illicit weapons.