Rattlesnake Crossing

"All right, all right," Fran Daly grumbled reluctantly. "I'll wait right here until you get back."

Smiling to herself, Joa

"And if you need anything else, Chief Deputy Voland and I will be right outside."

Out on the porch, Jaime Carbajal convulsed with laughter. "What planet did she come from?" he demanded when he was finally able to talk.

" Pima County," Joa

"Let's hope it's for this case only," Detective Carbajal said. "I wouldn't want to make a career of it."

Joa

"Did you see the expression on her face when she finally figured out that you were in charge?"

"I saw it, all right," Joa

"I'll try," Jaime Carbajal replied cheerfully, "but I'm not making any promises. From what I saw of Fran Daly, she doesn't look like the kind of person where smoothing is going to work."

"Sheriff Brady?"

Joa

"Did you get the door open?" Joa

"Yes, ma'am," Pakin replied. "But Chief Deputy Voland wants you to come there right away."

The urgency in Pakin 's voice made Joa

She had visions of another previously undiscovered victim rotting on the gun-shop floor. "Not another body," she said.

"No," Pakin said. "Nothing like that."

"What, then?"

"They're empty."

“What's empty.”

"The shop out back and the truck, too. If either one of them used to have guns in them, they don't now. Chief Deputy Voland thinks you'd better come take a look."

CHAPTER FIVE

Compared to the harsh August heat outside, the interior of Clyde Philips' fortresslike gun shop was downright cold. Consisting of two rooms, the shop had a large showroom and a back room with a door marked OFFICE. The place was lit by ceiling-mounted shop lights. The outside walls of the showroom area were lined with glass-enclosed, locking gun racks. Now all of those glass-doored cabinets stood wide open, with the slots inside them totally empty. In the middle of the room stood a series of glass-topped display-case counters, also open and empty. In the dust left behind on the glass shelving were the imprints of missing handguns and holsters as well.

Seeing the ghostly shadows of those missing weapons, Joa

Joa

Joa

Joa

Blushing visibly in the sallow light, he shrugged his shoulders. "No way to tell for sure," he said gruffly. "But even if the cases held only one or two guns apiece, it's way too many to have them ru

"Peachy," Joa

"None whatsoever," Voland replied in a brisk, business-like fashion. "Whoever did this came in with a key to the front door and with keys to all the individual cabinets as well. None of the locks have been damaged in the slightest. Not only that, whoever did it also knew lie or she had plenty of lime. This place was cleaned out in a methodical and very thorough ma

"To say nothing of Sarah Holcomb," Joa

Voland frowned. "What was that?"

"Never mind," Joa

"Not so far."

"What about inventory, sales, or billing information? If we had some of those details, we'd know where to start in order to estimate what's actually missing."

"That could be a problem. Come take a look," Voland said, gesturing toward the office door. "It's a combination office/storeroom, and from the looks of things, there's not much left there, either."

Joa

"If there's been a conscious effort to destroy paper trails, we could be dealing with some kind of insurance fraud," Joa

"It could be," Voland agreed.

"We'll need to dust the whole place for prints," she added, glancing at her chief deputy.

"Right," he said. "I've already asked Patrol to send over anyone they can spare to help out with crime-scene investigation. It probably won't do much good, though. I have an idea whoever did this was probably smart enough to wear gloves."

Joa

As expected, any suggestion of involving another jurisdiction, especially a federal agency like Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, elicited an immediate frown of a

"Why include them until we have to?" he asked.

Through working with the MJF and with Adam York of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Joa

"Their guys run as much risk of going head to head with whoever took these guns as ours do," she said. "So even though reporting it may not be strictly required, we're going to tell them all the same. Out of courtesy, if nothing else."

"All right, all right," Voland agreed grudgingly. "I'll take care of it once we get back to the office. So tell me, what all's going on back at the house?"