Dead Wrong

The phone rang again as the cameras switched over to a scene of Millicent Ross handing out puppies while the reporter was saying, “… only inmates expected to be in custody for at least the next six weeks are allowed to participate.”

“I can’t believe it!” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield exclaimed. “You’re actually on Good Morning America. Are you watching?”

“Sort of,” Joa

Joa

“Is the baby all right?” Eleanor went on. “Butch called and told us that everything was fine, but I want to hear it from you so I can stop worrying.”

“The baby’s fine, Mom,” Joa

By then the camera was focused on Axel Turnbull. Axel was one of the regular habitues of the Cochise County Jail. He came in several times a year for sentences of longer or shorter duration depending on how drunk and disorderly he’d been and how much property damage he’d caused in the course of his most recent bender.

There he was, sitting in his distinctive red-and-white-striped jail uniform in the exercise yard with a black-and-white pit bull puppy snuggled, sound asleep, under the man’s grizzled chin. “I think I’ll call him Tucker,” Turnbull was saying, “ ‘cause, as you can see, the little guy’s all tuckered out.”

The camera switched back to Diane Sawyer, who was beaming. “We wanted to interview Sheriff Brady for this piece, but we understand she’s in the hospital in Bisbee, where, a few hours after we filmed this piece, she gave birth to a seven-pound, eight-ounce boy. We are told both mother and baby are doing well.”

The phone rang again. This time it was Je

Joa

“He takes after you then?”

“We’ll see,” Joa

This time she didn’t even bother to hang up the phone, she just depressed the receiver button with her finger. Sure enough, it rang immediately.

“I told you it would be great publicity,” Frank Montoya told her. “What did you think?”

“I looked very pregnant,” Joa

“It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, and I’ve already had four requests for interviews with you. People magazine, USA Today, the Arizona Sun, and Newsweek. What do you think?”

“I think I’m on maternity leave, Frank. Besides, you and Millicent Ross were the ones who came up with the idea. You should do the interviews.”

“I’ll tell them I’ll get back to them later,” Frank said.

“You mean you think you’ll be able to talk me into changing my mind. Tell me what happened after I left the Triple H yesterday.”

“I thought you were on maternity leave.”

“Frank…”

“Doc Winfield opened the boxes Joaquin Mattias dug up. His recommendation is that we ship them, boxes and all, to the University of Arizona, where the bones that were inside can be properly examined by a forensic anthropologist. Autopsies for Joaquin Mattias and Rory Markham will be later today. As far as evidence, what we turned up is pretty damning.”

“What’s that?”

“Fingers,” Frank said.

Joa

“Presumably. We found ten of them preserved in a half-gallon jar of formaldehyde on a shelf in Rory Markham’s garage. I can’t imagine what possessed him to keep them, and now we’ll never be able to ask him, either. There is a walk-in refrigerator in one of the outbuildings. We’re checking but it looks as though Evans’s body was stored there until they transported it to the dump site. Oops. Another call,” Frank added. “Gotta go.”

When Joa

“A little overwhelmed. I’ve just been on national TV”

“I know.” Maria

“It’s all about the dogs, Mari,” Joa

“What happened to the guy who did it?” Maria

“You mean Antonio Zavala, the one I shot? He’s at UMC, where the doctors are patching his foot back together. I didn’t want them to take him there because that’s where Jea

Maria

But resting was out of the question. By the time Butch took Je

Once Joa

About two o’clock in the afternoon-after a lunch that was almost as bad as breakfast-Joa

De

She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a worn leather jacket, and an enormous pair of sunglasses. Her face, utterly devoid of makeup, was dreadfully pale. She stopped uncertainly just inside the door. Then, after a moment, she turned and started to leave.

“It’s all right,” Joa

Leslie removed the glasses. Dark shadows surrounded her eyes-eyes that had wept too much and slept too little. “I’m so sorry, Sheriff Brady. I shouldn’t have disturbed you…”

“You’re not disturbing me,” Joa

“He already has,” Leslie said. “I came to Bisbee to talk to Dr. Winfield. I wanted to have some idea of when he’ll be able to release the body-bodies, actually; Joaquin Mattias’s, too. Dolores and I need to know so we can decide on services, that kind of thing. He said it’ll probably be several days.”

“That’s how these things go,” Joa

“Everyone in your department has been very kind,” Leslie continued. “Mr. Carpenter, your detective, told me about…” She paused and bit her lip. “He told me about what they found up by the old cabin,” she added. “About the two boxes and what was in them and what he thinks happened. He showed me the picture, too, the picture of Lisa Marie Evans. When I looked at it, I couldn’t tell if I was looking in a mirror or if I was seeing a ghost. A little bit of both, I guess.”

She paused again. This time it was more than a minute before she gathered herself enough to go on. Joa