Dead Wrong

What’s the matter with you? she lectured herself. I thought you were all about leading by example.

Feeling like a little kid stuffed into last year’s snowsuit, she managed to stand up. Only then did she call Butch.

“When are you going to have this baby?” he asked.

“I hope it’ll be any day now. Why?”

“Because my parents are driving me crazy,” he said. “Mom saw you on the Noon News. She wanted to know why a sheriff’s office would be in charge of the dogcatchers.”

“So you know about Jea

“I do,” he said. “Heard about it from Jim Bob. We were supposed to go there for di

“We’ve located someone who witnessed part of the attack on Jea

“Right,” he said. “You’re probably hiding out in your office and only pretending to be on your way to a crime scene. I know the real story. You don’t want to have anything to do with my parents. The truth is, neither do I.”

“You’ll just have to buck up,” Joa

“Oh, yeah?” Butch returned. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not stuck here at the house with them. I may call Dr. Lee and ask what it would take to convince him to induce labor.”

“From the way I’m feeling right now,” Joa

When she went back into the restaurant, the two younger men were greedily and silently mowing their way through individual platters of tacos. No doubt they were hungry after a hard day of physical labor, but they ate as though their hunger went deeper than that-as though it had been a long time since they’d been able to eat their fill.

Frank Montoya and Ephrain Trujillo had been speaking in Spanish. When Joa

Nicaragua. A country, yes, but also a word from the history books. Joa

“Are you all right?” Frank asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Why?”

“You look… I don’t know… sort of uncomfortable. I was afraid…”

I am uncomfortable, she wanted to say. I’m wearing this godawful vest and. I can hardly breathe. “I’m fine,” she said.

“Would you like something to eat?” Frank asked.

I couldn’t squeeze in a bite without popping the Velcro, she thought. What she said was “No, thanks. I just had lunch.”

Forty-five minutes later, they pulled into San Simon, where two more sheriff’s department vehicles joined the caravan for the drive out to Doubtful Canyon Road. Half a mile beyond the locked and gated turnoff to Roostercomb Ranch, Ephrain Trujillo stopped the LUV just short of a low rise. He and his friends as well as Joa

“There,” he said, pointing. “That’s where it happened.”

While Dave Hollicker and Casey Ledford began their painstaking examination of the crime scene, Jaime Carbajal and Debbie Howell began interviewing Ephrain Trujillo and his two so far nameless passengers. Debbie’s Spanish wasn’t fluent enough to do the questioning, so Jaime took the lead. With no definite jobs to do, Joa

They barely had time to scramble out of the way before an old open-air jeep, spewing smoke and raising a cloud of dust, charged over the top of the rise.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the driver demanded as he stood on the brakes and brought the speeding vehicle to a skidding stop a few feet shy of where Joa

Joa

I wonder if this vest would stop a 30-06 slug at close range? she thought as she stepped forward to answer his question.

“Good afternoon, Mr. O’Dwyer,” she said. “We’re here investigating the attempted homicide of one of my officers around midnight last night. She was here investigating a complaint about a possible dogfighting ring. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Screw you!” Clarence said.

Somebody already did that, she felt like saying, but this was no time for tasteless jokes. “Do you know anything about it?” Joa

“I don’t know nothin‘,” Clarence growled. “Now get off my land!”

“We’re well outside the fence line, which means we’re all in the public right-of-way,” she said. “It also means that we won’t be leaving until we’re good and ready or until we’re done, whichever comes first.”

In reply, Clarence flashed her a one-finger salute. Then he ground his gearshift into reverse and tore off back down the hill.

“Same to you, buddy,” Joa

Chapter 11

Joa

“Me?” Joa

“When a woman claiming to be Jea

“How do you suppose such a thing happened?” Joa

“Right,” Dr. Waller said sarcastically. “I’m sure you can’t. And since the rape kit was illegally obtained, I’m not at all sure the results will stand up in court.”