Devil’s Claw

“Will do,” Jaime said.

Joa

“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”

“Yes, there is one more thing. As you know, I’ll be gone all next week. I’m going to expect you to give Chief Deputy Montoya here your utmost cooperation. With any kind of luck, things will stay pretty quiet, but we all remember what happened last summer as soon as Doc Winfield left town on his honeymoon.”

“We’ll keep things under control, Sheriff Brady,” Ernie Carpenter assured her, standing up. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

The two detectives were almost to the door when Joa

A wide grin suffused her young detective’s face. “I made it to the field in time for the last two i

“And Delcia didn’t kill you?”

“Not yet,” Jaime answered, “but there’s another game tonight.”

“Get out of here,” Joa

Once the two detectives were gone, Joa

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked.

“We have a murder down here in Cochise County with possible links to one of yours-the Melanie Goodson death out on South Old Spanish Trail.”

“What kind of links?”

“One of Melanie Goodson’s neighbors saw her driving her Lexus with another woman in the vehicle. Two hours later, our homicide victim was spotted with that same Lexus near a campground in the Dragoon Mountains down here in Cochise County. The next morning, Melanie Goodson called your office and reported the Lexus stolen, even though she herself was the last person seen driving it.” Joa

“That remains to be seen.” Bill Forsythe replied. “I take it the officers in question are the same ones who were making nuisances of themselves out at our crime scene yesterday afternoon?”

“My detectives were doing their jobs,” Joa

“Give me the name of the neighbor who talked to your guys,” Forsythe said. “The one who claimed to have seen Melanie Goodson driving her car. Once my dicks talk to him or her, I’ll see what I can do.”

“What you’re saying is, none of your ”dicks,“ as you call them, have yet spoken to Melanie Goodson’s neighbors.”

“We’re still very early in the investigation-”

“Can it, Sheriff Forsythe. You want your department to piggyback on my detectives’ work and then you may or may not decide to share information with us. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not in so many words.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Sheriff Brady, you don’t have to get hysterical about it.”

Hysterical? The word buzzed in Joa

Her voice dropped to the bare whisper that people who knew Joa

“Right,” Sheriff Bill Forsythe responded. “When pigs fly!” With that he slammed the receiver down in her ear.

A stu

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still on the phone.”

“I’m not. That rotten SOB hung up on me. He had the gall to say I was hysterical. Do you believe it?”

“Well,” said Kristin guardedly, “you do look a tiny bit upset-”

“Upset?” Joa

Joa

“What now?” Kristin asked. “What’s so fu

“This,” Joa

“You can do that?” Kristin stared at Joa

“Neither does Sheriff Bill Forsythe,” Joa

An hour later, at lunch with Butch, Joa

“Forsythe wouldn’t have talked to me that way if I were a man,” Joa

“Isn’t there a chance you’re being overly sensitive about this?”

Joa

Butch shrugged. “Seems to me like you already have a handle on that.” He gri

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing at all.”

CHAPTER 21

Joa

“Nothing much.” Frank shut the door and came on into the office, settling into one of the chairs. “I faxed what information we had on the Tom Ridder murder weapon to the Department of Public Safety firearms expert at the lab up in Tucson. I just now got off the phone with the guy.”

“What did he say?”

“That it’s possible to get a match, but he won’t be able to tell for sure unless he can put both bullets under the microscope.”

“What are the chances of that happening?” Joa

Frank Montoya shrugged. “That depends on whether or not Tucson PD kept a bullet from that long ago. And, if the bullet does exist, stashed away in their evidence room, it further depends on whether or not anyone can lay hands on it for us in a timely fashion. I have someone up there looking for it, but she wasn’t very encouraging. She said she’d get back to me, but she wanted to know if I understood that working on a closed ten-year-old case takes a backseat to working on something current. I tried convincing her that ours is a current case, but I don’t know how successful I was. We’ll have to wait and see.”

He paused before continuing. “How’d you do with Bill Forsythe?” he added.

Joa

“That good,” Frank mused.

“He wanted us to give him whatever we had, including the name and address of that neighbor of Melanie Goodson’s, the one Jaime and Ernie talked to yesterday afternoon. Once we tell him everything we know, Forsythe will decide whether or not in his opinion we’re worthy of having his department’s cooperation.”