Exit Wounds (9 page)

“Whose dog?” Kristin asked, nodding toward Joanna’s closed office door.

“Mine,” Joanna said.

Without having to be asked, Kristin got up and opened the door. The Australian shepherd was waiting anxiously just inside. When the animal saw Joanna, her cropped tail wagged furiously. Joanna set the plate of water down and watched while the dog lapped it dry.

“When I took the mail in, I wasn’t expecting to find a dog in your office,” Kristin said. “She scared me so much I almost dropped the mail. I guess I scared her, too.”

“Sorry,” Joanna said. “I meant to tell you but you weren’t here when I went by and—”

“Is that the dog from last night’s crime scene?” Kristin asked. “Somebody said it was a puppy, but this doesn’t look like a puppy.”

“Different dog,” Joanna said. “This one’s from Animal Control. They were getting ready to put her down, so I decided to take her. You and Terry wouldn’t happen to want another dog, would you?”

“We’ve already got Spike,” Kristin said, shaking her head. “If we brought home another dog, our landlady would have a fit.”

Kristin’s husband, Terry, and his eighty-five-pound German shepherd, Spike, constituted the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department’s K-9 unit.

“Right,” Joanna said. “I’m sure she would.”

The phone rang, and Kristin reached to answer it. “It’s Tom Hadlock,” Kristin told Joanna. “He says the jail AC has gone out again. He’s done his best to restart it but so far no luck. Now he’s asking what you want him to do about it.”

Joanna sighed and looked longingly at her desk, where that day’s worth of correspondence was already laid out and awaiting her attention.

“Tell him I’ll be right there,” Joanna said.

Walking between her office and the jail commander’s, Joanna found herself squinting in the unrelenting sun. She didn’t need a thermometer to tell her that, for the third day in a row, the midday temperature was already over a hundred.

Tom Hadlock sat at his desk with the top two buttons on his uniform unbuttoned and sweat pouring down his face when Joanna entered his office. A small personal fan sat on his desk, facing him and oscillating feebly. The moving fan blades stirred the air slightly, but the resulting breeze did little to take the edge off the heat.

“I’m on hold with the AC company in Tucson,” he said. “The first person I talked to said they could probably have someone here the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

“That’s not good enough,” Joanna said.

Hadlock nodded. “I told her that. She said she’d see what she could do. That’s what we get for going with the lowest bidder,” he added. “Sammy Cotton here in town handled our AC contract for years. Whenever we called him, he was always Sammy-on-the-spot, but then the board of supervisors decided we needed to put the contract out to bid. This outfit up in Tucson underbid Sammy but…Hello? Who’s this?”

Tom punched the speakerphone button so Joanna could hear what was being said.

“I’m Alexander Blair, the owner of Anchor Air Conditioning.”

“Well, Mr. Blair,” Tom replied, “I’m Tom Hadlock, the jail commander down here in Bisbee. You could say I’m a little hot under the collar at the moment. We’ve got an air-conditioning problem here at the jail—an air-conditioning crisis, actually. The girl who answered your phone told me you wouldn’t be able to have anyone here until the day after tomorrow. That’s totally unacceptable.”

Joanna winced at Tom’s use of the word
girl
. As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one to take umbrage.

“That ‘girl’ happens to be my mother,” Alex Blair answered stiffly. “She’s been in the business for thirty-some-odd years. If she says that’s the soonest we can get to you, then that’s the way it is. Like she said, we’ll have someone down there first thing the day after tomorrow.”

“But,” Tom Hadlock sputtered, “I have the contract right here. It says we’ll receive ‘priority’ treatment.”

“That
is
priority treatment,” Blair returned. “In case you haven’t noticed, all of Arizona is in the middle of a heat wave at the moment. Every single one of my technicians is out on calls. We’re doing the best we can.”

Joanna stood up and turned the speakerphone in her direction. “Then it’s not good enough,” she said.

“Who’s this?”

“Sheriff Brady, Mr. Blair,” she replied. “Sheriff Joanna Brady. What day is today?”

“The second,” he replied after a pause.

“And that would make the day after tomorrow July Fourth. Do you really think you’ll have a technician willing to come down here on a national holiday, Mr. Blair? And what if he needs parts? Will any of your suppliers be open that day?”

“Sheriff Brady—” Blair began, but Joanna cut him off.

“The weather reports I’ve seen indicate this weather pattern is going to continue for the next few days, so I’m giving you a choice, Mr. Blair. Either you have someone here to fix our problem prior to five P.M. today, or I’m calling someone else. Once they get us up and running again, they can send their bill to you. We’ll just assume you’ve subcontracted the job out.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Oh?” Joanna asked. “How are you being paid for maintaining our facility, Mr. Blair?” She knew exactly how much Anchor Air Conditioning was being paid on a monthly basis as an ongoing maintenance retainer. When the board had come up with that brilliant idea, she had argued against it—argued and lost.

“Monthly,” Alex Blair returned.

“Right. Because the board of supervisors wanted to have a regular budgetary item they could count on rather than having occasional spikes, right?”

“Yes,” Blair replied. “I believe that’s correct.”

“And how long have you had the contract?”

“Six months or so,” Blair said.

“Seven,” Joanna corrected. “I have it right here. It started in December of last year.”

“Well, seven then,” Blair admitted grudgingly.

“And how much time have you put in at our facility?”

Blair paused again. Through the phone Joanna could hear him shuffling papers. “That would have been two months ago, when we came out to fire up the AC units and get them ready for summer.”

“Seven months,” Joanna said. “And your people have been here exactly once. As I said before, Mr. Blair, you’d better have someone here working on our equipment by five o’clock today. Otherwise, I’m calling in a pinch-hitter repair company and reporting you to the board of supervisors as well.”

She punched the speakerphone button, ending the call, cutting Alex Blair off in mid-excuse.

“Do you think these clowns will actually show up, Sheriff Brady?” Tom Hadlock asked.

“They’d better,” she said. “But if I were you, I’d call Sammy Cotton and give him a heads-up. Tell him if Anchor Air Conditioning isn’t here by five, I want his crew here by five after.”

“What if Sammy does the job and Anchor doesn’t pay him for it?”

“Anchor will pay, all right,” Joanna said grimly. “I’ll see to it. Now tell me, what do we do in the meantime? I don’t want to lose anyone—guards or prisoners—due to heat prostration.”

“We can let the prisoners out in the yard, I suppose,” Tom Hadlock said dubiously. “It’s cooler outside in the shade than it is in here, but I hate to have that many people outside all at once. If there was any trouble…”

“Call Chief Deputy Montoya,” Joanna said. “Have him come over. I need him to give me a hand.”

Frank Montoya arrived at the jail a few minutes later. “What’s up, Sheriff Brady?” he asked.

“What can we do about the prisoners?” Joanna asked. “We’ve got to let them cool off. Can we let them outside?”

Frank thought about it for a minute. “If everyone is loose in the yard at once, we should probably bring in some of the patrol deputies to back up the detention officers just in case there’s trouble.”

Joanna nodded. “Good idea.”

“I’ll get on the horn and see how long it’ll take to get them here.”

Joanna nodded and turned to Hadlock. “Before we let them into the yard, I want water out there—water and ice—plenty of it. Plenty of paper cups, too. Got it?”

“Right,” the jail commander said. “I’ll notify the kitchen right away. Anything else?”

“Yes. How do I make a jailwide announcement?”

Tom Hadlock motioned to an old-fashioned-looking microphone that stood on the credenza behind his desk. “Help yourself,” Tom said. “Hold down that button and talk into the mike.”

“What next?” Frank asked.

“I’m going to make an announcement over the jail intercom,” Joanna told him. “And, for the sake of our non-English speakers, you’re going to translate.

“This is Sheriff Brady speaking,” Joanna said. “As you have no doubt noticed, our air-conditioning units have gone out and won’t be repaired until much later this afternoon. We have a choice here. You can spend the afternoon sweltering in your cells, or we can do something about it.”

She passed Frank the microphone and then waited for him to translate before she continued. “At this point it’s probably cooler outside than it is inside. We’re willing to let people outside, but only if we can have some assurances that there won’t be any difficulty.”

Again she waited while Frank translated. “Once we have additional personnel in place, we’ll be moving you out into the recyards where we plan to have ice, water, and towels. We’ll let you out. We’ll do it in an orderly, careful fashion, but let me warn you—if there’s any trouble, and I mean at the first sign of trouble—heat or no heat, you go back inside under full lockdown.”

By the time Tom Hadlock returned to his office, Frank had finished translating the last segment of Joanna’s announcement. “The kitchen will have the water and ice out there within the next fifteen minutes,” Hadlock reported.

“It’ll take more time than that to get our people here,” Frank said. “Okay,” Joanna said. “Wait on the ice, and don’t start emptying the units until we have backup on the scene, Tom. Frank will let you know when they’re here.”

“Fair enough,” Hadlock replied. “You say the word, and we’ll start moving ’em out.”

“Did you call Sammy Cotton?” Joanna asked.

“Yes, ma’am. He says if we need him, he can be here with a crew at five-oh-five.”

“Now that we’ve called Mr. Blair’s bluff, that probably won’t be necessary,” Joanna said. “Anchor Air Conditioning has had a trouble-free ride up to now. I’m guessing Mr. Blair isn’t going to want to screw that up.”

Joanna and Frank left the jail complex and headed back across the parking lot. “Mind if I ask you a question?” Joanna said.

“What’s that?”

“Have you ever heard of someone named Ada Lovelace?” Joanna asked.

“You mean that smart lady who’s the mother of all computers?” Frank returned. “Sure, I know about her. Why?”

“Never mind,” Joanna said irritably, chagrined that her male staff knew far more about this female computer pioneer than she did. “Forget it,” she told Frank. “I’m going home for lunch. Hopefully I’ll be back before it’s time to move the prisoners outside. Tell the Double Cs that I still want to touch base with them later on this afternoon. Before five o’clock today, I want to know exactly where we stand on the Mossman case.”

“Will do,” Frank said, “but I need to warn you. Word is out about all those dead dogs. I’m afraid we’re going to take a hit on that subject once it’s in the papers.”

“What else is new?” Joanna asked.

Back in her office, Joanna found her devoted but as-yet-unnamed dog waiting just inside the door. The animal sprang to her feet and greeted Joanna as though the two of them were old friends. Looking at the dog, Joanna shook her head. “Maybe I’d better call Butch and give him a heads-up about you, old girl.”

She picked up her phone and dialed High Lonesome Ranch. “Would you happen to have a couple peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches lying around if I were in a mood to come home for lunch?” she asked when Butch answered.

“If you’ll give me ten minutes, I can probably do better than that.”

“Good. I’ll be there. How’s Lucky doing?” Joanna asked.

“Fine. At least I guess he’s fine. I’ve hardly seen him. He’s been with Jenny all morning. They’re evidently bonding. The good news is that so far Tigger hasn’t bitten the little guy’s head off.”

“I had to go by Animal Control this morning…” she began.

Somehow Butch Dixon knew instinctively where she was going. “No,” he said at once. “You didn’t. Not another one.”

“I had to,” Joanna said. “She’s such a sweet little thing. And her time was almost up. By tomorrow morning, if no one took her, they’d have put her down. Wait till you see her.”

“Well, all right then,” Butch said. “I suppose that makes us even.”

“Even?” Joanna asked. “What do you mean?”

“I invited your mother and George over for dinner tonight. I thought it would be better if the two of us were together when we drop the big news that we’re pregnant.”

Joanna thought about that for a few seconds. “Right,” she agreed at last. “I guess that does make us even.”

An hour later she was back from lunch with the dog once more stowed under her desk when Kristin came to tell her the extra deputies had been deployed in and around the jail complex. Unbidden, the dog emerged from her cave and greeted Kristin with effusive tail-wagging.

“I thought you were going to leave her at home this afternoon.”

“So did I,” Joanna said ruefully. “But as soon as she saw Butch she started jumping and bucking so hard, I could barely hold on to her leash. With him there, I would have had to bodily drag her into the house, so I ended up leaving her in the garage all through lunch. Jeannine Phillips warned me that the dog doesn’t like men, but this is more than not liking. You should have seen her, Kristin. The poor thing was scared to death.”

“What are you going to do?” Kristin asked. “Take her back to the pound?”

“I offered to, but Butch said no. He says he’ll figure out a way around her, but he thought it would be better for everybody concerned if I brought her back to work this afternoon. So I did. Obviously the dog is fine with you, Kristin, but you should probably let Frank, Jaime, and Ernie know she’s here so they don’t barge in unexpectedly.”

“I’ll tell them,” Kristin said. “By the way, Tom Hadlock said to tell you that the guy from Anchor called. They’ve hired Sammy Cotton’s crew to come work on the air-conditioning. They’ll be here by three this afternoon.”