Rattlesnake Crossing

"I guess you heard about Clyde Philips," she said as Frank settled into his chair.

Montoya nodded. "If he's dead and his shop's been cleaned out, I don't suppose we'll be buying sniper rifles from him, no matter what."

"When you talked to him, he didn't happen to mention how many of those things he had on hand, did he?"

Frowning, Frank considered a moment before he answered. "Now that you mention it, I believe he told me there were three individual weapons we could choose from, ones he had available for immediate delivery."

"Great," Joa

Voland came in holding computer printouts of the previous day's incident reports. "So what all's happening, Dick?" she asked.

"Not too much. S and R's been up and out since six of the A.M.," the chief deputy replied. "Still no sign of Katrina Berridge. The evidence techs are on their way to the crime scene to pick up anything we may have missed last night. Detective Carbajal will meet them there and lead them in. Ernie is going up to Tucson to be on hand for the two autopsies. Dr. Daly has scheduled them back-to-back this morning, one right after the other."

Joa

Joa

Voland glowered at Frank Montoya. The Chief Deputy for Administration was charged with overseeing the budget. In that role, he had been conducting an unrelenting campaign to keep Dick Voland's Patrol Division pared to an absolute minimum.

"You're trying to get blood out of a turnip," Voland said. "Frank here has us ru

In these kinds of internal turf wars, Joa

"You're going to have to cut us a little slack here, Frank," she said. "Dick's going to have officers ru

Frank nodded. "You're the boss," he said. "I'll see what I can do."

"Speaking of normal caseload," Joa

"Not too much," Voland answered. "We had somebody-teenagers, most likely-shooting up road signs out on Moson Road."

"Road signs but no livestock and no people, right?" Joa

"Right," Voland replied. "Two speeders, a couple of DWIs, a reported runaway from out east of Huachuca City, and that's about it. Nothing serious."

"No illegals?"

"Hard as it is to believe, nobody picked up a single one last night."

"God," Joa

"I have," Frank volunteered. "No leads so far. The driver isn't exactly eager to talk about it. He's evidently married and doesn't want his wife to know that he stops along the road to pick up naked hitchhikers."

"That's hardly surprising," Joa

"Pretty well," he said. "At least they're put to rest for the time being. Some of the old-time jail guards still haven't figured out that women are in the workforce to stay. There were three different complaints, all of ' em about Tommy Fender. He's forever telling off-color jokes and making snide comments. The women finally had enough. After I heard what they had to say, I hauled Tommy into my office and gave him a second warning. I told him to cool it. I let him know if he wants to stay around the department long enough to see his retirement, he'd damned well better shape up."

"Do you think he will?" Joa

Frank shrugged. "Who knows? I wouldn't hold my breath. I tried to put the fear of God in him, but if he doesn't fly right and we have to fire him, we'll be stuck between a rock and a hard place. We are anyway. If we ignore what he's doing, the women take us to court for sexual harassment. And if we end up firing him over it, chances are he'll take us to court for wrongful dismissal. Either way, it's going to be a mess. And as for those two provisioners-"

"I don't have time to talk about the provisioners, Frank," Joa

"You're right about that," Dick Voland grumbled. "Montoya's such a cheapskate, you'd think every dime he spends comes out of his own personal pocket instead of the county's."

"And you should be properly grateful," Joa

Squabbling as usual, the two men left the office. For more than an hour Joa

"Sheriff Brady," Ernie Carpenter said, "I've got news."

Joa

"Hardly," Ernie replied. "But that doesn't mean she hasn't made progress. We've got a positive ID on the girl from the ledge. Her name's Ashley Brittany. She's a twenty-two-year-old oleander activist from Van Nuys, California."

"An oleander activist?" Joa

"First things first. The Pima County ME is a big supporter of the FBI's National Crime Information Computer. They're on this program to make sure all their missing persons' dental records get registered. In fact, I think some professor at the University of Arizona finagled a federal grant to help them do it."

"I remember reading something about that."

"So in Pima County, it's automatic now. Once people go on the missing-person's roster, their dental charts go into the computer. This Ashley Brittany was reported missing a month ago, although she may have been gone longer than that."

"May have?"

"That's where the oleander comes in. She was part of a federal grant, which they call a federal study, sponsored by the USDA."