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Wearily, Joa
They all left the department a few minutes later. On the drive home, Joa
“What now?” she muttered. “Not an accident, I hope.”
When she reached the lights, however, she discovered not one but two utility crews. “What’s going on?” she asked, rolling down her window.
“We’ve got a fried transformer here,” the foreman told her. “It melted some wires as well. None of the people up High Lonesome have power right now, but we should have it back on within a couple of hours.”
“Great,” Joa
The dogs met her, as usual, halfway up the drive. The water had drained out of both creek beds, leaving both crossings rocky and muddy and devoid of the usual tracks, but passable nonetheless. It was eerie, though, driving into the yard without having the motion detector turn on the floodlights. Joa
It’s going to be quiet, she thought. Way too quiet.
But when she stepped out of the Eagle, she was assailed by the noise of what sounded like the bleating of a herd of a thousand sheep. Colorado River toads, she realized with a smile of relief. The night wasn’t going to be quiet after all.
The frogs’ noisy squawking was one of the sounds of summer. That first rainstorm always awakened hordes of hibernating toads and set them on their brief but frenetic mating trail.
Their raucous racket never failed to cheer Joa
Joa
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Standing in front of her closet on Monday morning, Joa
The phone in the outer office was ringing as she walked in the door to hers. “It’s Adam York,” Kristin Marsten, her secretary, a
“Sure,” she said. “Hello, Adam,” she added a moment later. “You’re certainly up and at ‘em bright and early this morning.”
“You call this bright and early? What do you mean?” Adam replied. “I’ve been working all weekend-ever since you called on Saturday. In fact, I tried like hell to reach you yesterday evening. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. Your machine never picked up, either.”
“Sorry about that,” Joa
Adam York laughed. “Sounds like it’s about time to toss out that outdated machine and sign up for something civilized like voice mail.”
“I’ll look into it,” Joa
“Here’s the deal. As I told you the other night, the guys up in Phoenix have been working overtime on a big-time Freon-smuggling case. I checked with them. No one on that case thinks your Benson guy is related to what’s going on in Phoenix. They agree with me that he sounds like more of a small-time, independent operator than a big one. The Phoenix case revolves around a major air-conditioning contractor up there, not some seat-of-the-pants tow truck operator. All the same, as of six o’clock this morning, both Sam Nettleton and Sam’s Easy Towing and Wrecking are under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
“Great,” Joa
Adam York laughed. “There are a few advantages to being the agent in charge, you know. If we come up with anything concrete, we’ll let you know right away.”
“I appreciate it,” Joa
“Sure thing,” Adam told her cheerfully. “Rut don’t bother Ilianking me. If this lead turns into something, we should be thanking you. You’re the one helping us, remember?”
Putting down the phone, Joa
“We took another big hit in the overtime category again this weekend,” Frank Montoya complained. “Nobody around here seems to listen or believe me when I tell them a budget crunch is coming. It’s going to nip us in the butt. We can’t keep squandering our resources this way, day after day, week after week.”
“You call that squandering? We had a homicide, for one thing,” Voland reminded him. “We also got hit by a record breaking storm-one that played havoc with roads and traffic all over the county. Of course, we had to use overtime. What do you expect?”
“I’ll tell you what I expect. If we keep splurging on overtime at the same rate we have been lately, my computer model says payroll will hit empty two weeks prior to the end of the fiscal year. What’s going to happen then?”
“Nothing much,” Dick Voland said easily. “We’ll have ourselves an old-fashioned SDC with the board of supervisors.”
“An SDC?” Frank Montoya asked with a frown. “What’s that?”
“A stare-down contest,” Voland replied with a sardonic grin. “First guy to blink loses.”
Montoya, chief deputy for administration, was not amused. “That’s no way to run a department,” he said.
“And neither is this,” Joa
The intercom buzzed. Shaking her head in a
“There’s someone here who insists on seeing you, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin said. “His name’s Ignacio Ybarra.”
“You mean he’s here to see one of the detectives, don’t you?” Joa
“No. He says he wants to see the sheriff. Right away.”
“Where’s Detective Carpenter?”
“He still hasn’t come in this morning.”
“And Detective Carbajal?”
“He’s on his way up to the courthouse to see Judge Moore about a search warrant.”