Dead Wrong (27 page)

“What are you proposing?”

“I’m suggesting that we talk to the
inmates in the Cochise County Jail. I’ll be glad to do it if
you want me to. We’ll let them know what the problem is and
that the only chance these dogs have to survive is if they can be
cared for and nurtured back to
health so that
they can be placed in adoptive homes. I’ll also be glad to
help out with this,” Millicent added. “I can come to
the jail and show the inmates how to feed the puppies as well as
how to handle, care for, and train them.”

“You’re suggesting turning my jail into
an extension of the dog pound?” Joanna demanded.

“A temporary rehab facility,” Millicent
said. “After all, desperate times call for desperate
measures. Temporary and entirely voluntary. Only inmates who
genuinely want to be involved should be allowed to participate.
Each one would be given responsibility for a single dog. If an
inmate breaks any rules—any rules at all—their dog
would be taken away. I can’t help but think that having one
person fostering each animal would be good for the individual dogs
because what these animals need is personal attention. I’m
guessing that being responsible for raising and training a puppy
would be good for your inmates, too.”

Across the table, Frank was watching Joanna with
one eyebrow raised inquisitively. She held the phone away from her
ear and explained to her chief deputy what was going on.

“Do it,” Frank said immediately.

“Do it?” Joanna repeated. “Are
you kidding?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.
Think about it. Putting down even vicious dogs is political
suicide. Saving poor puppies is a PR dream—everybody’s
best bet for a touchy-feely feature. It’ll turn you into a
folk hero. Look at the guy up in Maricopa County. When the health
department condemned one of his jails as ‘unfit for human
habitation,’ he stuck his inmates in tents and turned the
air-conditioned ex-jail into an animal shelter. You’d be
doing him one better, since both the dogs and the inmates would be
inside.

“And think about the results Ted Chapman has
been getting
with some of these guys,”
Frank continued. “Sometimes expecting inmates to do the right
thing makes them do exactly that.”

“But what about the mess?” Joanna
objected. “These are puppies, after all. Once the health
department gets wind of the—”

“Dr. Ross is right,” Frank interjected.
“Cleaning up the messes puppies make is part of the
responsibility of taking care of them.”

The waitress showed up with their food just then.
“Let me think about this,” she said into the phone.
“Frank Montoya and I will talk it over, then I’ll call
you back.”

“I think it’ll work,” Frank
said.

Joanna dug into a mound of gravy-smothered mashed
potatoes that accompanied her sandwich. “But how?” she
asked.

“Let’s get Tom Hadlock on the
speakerphone,” Frank suggested. “Since this would
affect his operation and his people, let’s see what the jail
commander thinks.”

To Joanna’s amazement, once Frank explained
it, even Tom Hadlock was amenable to the idea. “It
wouldn’t be permanent, of course,” he said. “How
long does it take to get puppies ready for adoption? Six weeks or
so?”

“About that,” Joanna agreed.
“Maybe longer for the sick ones.”

“So it’s not forever. I think
it’s an interesting idea,” Hadlock added after a
moment’s reflection, “especially considering the sticky
situation we had here last week. Having a group of bad boy puppies
around for a while might help to resolve some of the tension
that’s built up in the jail. I agree, of course, that
participation would have to be on a totally voluntary basis. If
there are prisoners around who don’t want to have anything to
do with the program, we’ll move them into separate units from
the ones who do. What kind of equipment do you think we’ll
need?”

Joanna thought about Jenny’s deaf black Lab
puppy. Lucky
had come into the family as a
demonically possessed chewer who had mangled his way through one of
Jenny’s cowboy boots after another—and only one boot
per pair—until he’d finally grown up enough to stop
being called Destructo Dog. How many inmate shoes would be chewed
up in the process of socializing almost wild puppies? She thought
about the messes of housebreaking and the knocked-over food and
water dishes.

“Lots,” Joanna said finally.
“Bowls, beds, food, you name it. I can’t see how we can
afford to take this on.”

“Why don’t I talk to Dr. Ross and get
back to you?” Tom Hadlock returned. “Maybe between the
two of us we can get a better handle on everything that’s
involved.”

“Go ahead,” Joanna agreed at last.
“It looks like I’m outvoted on this one.”

After that, Joanna managed to choke down only a few
more halfhearted forkfuls of food. Finally, giving up, she laid her
knife and fork across her plate.

“What’s the matter?” Frank asked.
“Food’s no good?”

Joanna shook her head. “I guess it’s
all starting to hit me. Three people are dead, two little kids
could have been, and one man has been shot, yet here we are focused
on saving a bunch of dogs. It doesn’t seem right.”

“The dogs are in jeopardy
because
the people were killed,” Frank
returned. “And we all know they weren’t nice people to
begin with. Our department is in charge of cleaning up a problem
someone else created, so don’t go around giving yourself a
hard time feeling guilty about it. What you should be doing is
patting yourself on the back. If it hadn’t been for you and
Deputy Thomas, one or both of those kids might be dead right
now.”

“You’re going to have to keep reminding
me of that,” she told him.

After leaving the Triple T, Frank drove directly to
the DPS office on South Tucson Boulevard. Deputy Thomas was leaving
the building as Joanna entered.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I
did like you said, Sheriff Brady. I told them the truth.”

“That’s all you needed to
do.”

“But I’m not sure they believed me.
Especially the part about you shooting him under the
car.”

“Maybe they’ll like it better if they
hear the same thing from me,” Joanna said.

Newton and Unger were waiting for Joanna inside a
small interview room. For the better part of an hour they shot one
question after another in her direction. Most of the questions were
straightforward enough: How had the incident begun? When had Deputy
Thomas taken up the chase? As Thomas had warned, everything moved
along smoothly until they reached the part about the shooting
incident itself. When Joanna explained how that had gone down,
Detective Newton’s disbelief was clear.

“You and Deputy Thomas expect us to believe
that you supposedly jumped out of his vehicle, threw yourself flat
on the ground, and then shot the suspect by aiming under the parked
Dodge Caravan?” Newton asked.

“Yes. That’s what happened.”

“That would have taken a hell of a good
shot.”

“I am a good shot,” Joanna
returned.

“In your condition?”

Joanna felt her temper rising. In the present
situation, that wasn’t a good thing. “What do you mean,
‘my condition’? You mean because I’m pregnant,
Detective Newton? Are you under
the impression
that pregnant women are incapable of shooting, or are you objecting
to my being able to shoot from a prone position?”

“Well, yes,” Newton admitted
sheepishly. “That does seem highly unlikely.”

“I’ll tell you what, Detective
Newton,” she said quietly. “Let’s you and I take
a trip out to your target range. We’ll both use semiautomatic
rifles. I’ll lie on my stomach. You lie on a soccer ball.
We’ll see which one of us can hit a moving target.
Twice.”

“I didn’t mean to imply…”
Newton began.

“Yes, you did,” Joanna returned
sharply. “I’ve been patient. I’ve answered all
your questions. I’m assuming Deputy Thomas’s story and
mine jibe, because that’s what happened. Now, unless you have
something substantial to add, I’m done. All things
considered, it’s been a pretty big day—for someone in
my condition.”

“Sure, Sheriff Brady,” Detective Unger
put in quickly. “If we need anything else, we’ll
call.”

“You do that.”

“This doesn’t mean our investigation is
over,” Detective Newton growled.

“It is for tonight,” she told him. She
knew she had nailed the man with her soccer-ball comment and she
had not the slightest doubt that, if push came to shove, she could
outshoot him.

Getting to her feet, Joanna stalked from the room.
In the lobby, Frank was talking on his cell phone, pacing back and
forth. “Oh, wait,” he said. “Here she is. If we
leave right now, we can be there in a little over an hour, Mr.
Oxhill. You’re sure that won’t be too late? Okay.
Fine.”

“What’s that all about?”

“He’s the manager of the Target in
Sierra Vista.”

Still rankled by Newton’s remarks, Joanna
answered impa
tiently as they headed for
Frank’s car. “I remember who he is. What does he
want?”

“I told you he called earlier and said the
primer had been purchased with cash.”

“Yes, I remember that, too.”

“He evidently spent all afternoon worrying
about it until he finally realized something. Even though there was
no credit-card trail, he did have the product numbers. He decided
to try going through cash-register records to see if he could find
out exactly when the purchase was made. And he did. He wants us to
come look at the store security tapes. He believes he has photos of
a woman making the actual purchase.”

Suddenly Joanna’s annoyance with Detective
Newton dissipated and she was no longer the least bit tired.
“Let’s go then,” she said, scrambling into
Frank’s Crown Victoria. “Let’s not just stand
around jawing about it.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Frank added, as
they headed back to the freeway. “I’ve got some other
good news. Tom Hadlock and Millicent Ross have been talking.
He’s gone through the jail and talked to the inmates and
ended up with four more volunteers than he had puppies. He and I
talked it over. He’s going to use four trustees as a work
group to help with all the extra dogs that will be staying at the
pound right now while we’re so shorthanded. And Millicent has
tracked down some deep-pockets pit-bull-rescue guy who’s
agreed to underwrite whatever equipment or additional expenses we
have to run up in order to make this thing work.

“Millicent says she’ll stow as many
dogs and puppies as she can at her clinic tonight. Tomorrow morning
she’ll go to Tucson armed with the guy’s credit-card
number and purchase whatever equipment we need—beds, dishes,
puppy food, toys, bowls, col
lars, leashes.
We’ll bring the dogs to the jail tomorrow afternoon after she
gets back.”

“Leashes?” Joanna asked. “Did you
say leashes? We just had a major fight at the jail last
week—a fight with homemade weapons. Are you telling me that
now we’re going to issue leashes to our inmates?”

“We can’t have the dogs there without
leashes,” Frank said. “There wouldn’t be any way
to control them. And I think it’s going to work. According to
Tom, the inmates are so excited you’d think it was
Christmas.”

When Frank and Joanna arrived at the Target store
in Sierra Vista, Manfred Oxhill was waiting just inside the front
door. He turned out to be a tall African-American man with a ready
smile and an accent that suggested a Caribbean heritage.

“I’m so glad to meet you,” he
said. “Right this way.”

They followed him through a door marked
“Employees Only,” up a narrow set of stairs, past what
was clearly an employee breakroom and into a warren of offices that
lined one whole end of the store. Beyond a door marked
“Security,” they squeezed themselves into a room that
included one wall lined with monitors and another lined with
recording equipment. Manfred Oxhill introduced them to the lone
operator in the room, then gave the man a piece of paper covered
with a series of handwritten scribbles. Within a matter of minutes,
Joanna was staring at a screen where customers, totally oblivious
to the watching cameras panning back and forth across the scene,
casually went about their business.

“There!” Manfred Oxhill said, pointing
at one of the monitors. “That’s register sixteen and
this should be the right time—two fifty-two
P.M.
on 02:25:2005.”

Joanna stepped closer to the monitor. At first all
she could see
was a back view of a woman
standing in front of the cash register. Only when she turned and
looked nervously from side to side did Joanna recognize
her—Dolores Mattias, Aileen Houlihan’s caregiver.
Joanna’s heartbeat quickened in her breast as she watched the
cashier put one can of primer after another into a series of
plastic bags and then hand them over.

“I’ll be damned,” Joanna
exclaimed.

“Who is it?” Frank asked.

“Dolores Mattias,” she said. “I
met her this morning.” Joanna turned to Manfred Oxhill.
“Can we have a copy of this tape?”

“Of course,” he said. “If
you’ll wait here, I’ll bring a new tape from
downstairs.”

“What does this mean?” Frank asked.

They had been so caught up with other events and
concerns all afternoon and evening that Joanna hadn’t had
either the time or the energy to tell Frank what she had learned
during her earlier trip to the Triple H.

“Aileen Houlihan may be bedridden with
Huntington’s disease,” Joanna said, “but
I’m betting she’s still calling the shots.”

W
ith
their copy of the security tape in hand, Joanna and Frank sat in
his car in the Target parking lot and discussed what to do
next.

“I think we should go talk to her,”
Joanna said.

“Do we know anything else about Dolores
Mattias other than the fact that she purchased the primer?”
Frank asked. “How do we know that was the primer used on
Evans’s vehicle?”

“According to Leslie, Dolores and her husband
have been living on the Triple H since about the time Leslie was
born.”

“Do you think Dolores may have some knowledge
about what went on between Aileen Houlihan and Lisa Marie Evans
back in 1978?” Frank asked.

“Maybe,” Joanna replied. “And
that’s probably where we should start. We’ll go see
her. We’ll bring up the primer to begin with, then
we’ll switch over to what happened to Lisa. Dolores most
likely won’t be expecting questions on something that
hap
pened that long ago. We may surprise her
into saying something she shouldn’t.”

“What about Leslie herself?” Frank
asked. “Does she have any idea that Aileen may not be her
biological mother?”

“I certainly haven’t told her,”
Joanna returned. “And from what she told me, I don’t
believe she has a clue. She’s fully expecting that
she’ll end up just like her mother, bedridden with
HD.”

“Are you going to tell her?” Frank
asked.

Joanna shook her head. “Not until we have DNA
evidence to substantiate that theory.”

“You must be getting older,” Frank
said.

“What do you mean by that?” Joanna
demanded.

“You’re sure as hell getting wiser. So
do we need backup to go see Dolores Mattias, or are we doing this
on our own?”

“Between the two of us, I think we can
probably handle Dolores Mattias,” Joanna said after a
moment’s consideration. “Besides, at this point all
we’re going to do is ask her a couple of
questions.”

“Where to, then?” Frank asked, turning
the key in the ignition.

“The Triple H. Dolores and Joaquin have a
place on Triple H Ranch Road.”

The Mattias place was easy enough to find. It had
apparently started out as a double-wide mobile home, but with the
addition of a screened front porch and a covered back patio, there
was no longer anything mobile about it. The Dodge Ram Joanna had
seen earlier in the day was nowhere in evidence as they drove up to
the house. A dog, a shaggy black and white mutt, raced out to meet
them, barking furiously. By the time Frank stopped at the front of
the house, the front light had switched on and the door to the
screened porch slammed open.

“What’s happened?” Dolores
Mattias called before Joanna
had even set foot
outside the car. “Has there been an accident? Is Joaquin
hurt? Where is he?”

Joanna switched gears. “Your husband is
missing?” she asked.

“He was supposed to come up to the house to
get me when my shift was over, but he didn’t. I had to ask
the night nurse to give me a ride home.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

Dolores shook her head. “He doesn’t
have a cell phone.”

“When did you see him last?”

“This morning,” Dolores said.
“When he dropped me off at Aileen’s place.”

“Did your husband have plans for the
afternoon?” Joanna asked. “Have you checked with his
friends?”

“He said he was going to be working around
here,” Dolores asserted. “At least that’s what he
told me at breakfast—that he wanted to finish painting the
front gate. That’s one of the reasons I’m worried.
Nothing’s been done on the gate—nothing at all.
It’s not like him to go off somewhere without letting me
know. But if you’re not here about Joaquin, why did you
come?”

“To speak to you, Mrs. Mattias,” Joanna
said.

“Me?” Dolores asked. “Why
me?”

“This is my chief deputy, Frank Montoya.
We’re investigating the homicide of someone named Bradley
Evans. May we come in?”

Dolores Mattias gave no sign of recognition at
hearing the murder victim’s name. Instead, she opened the
door wide enough to allow them entry to the screened porch and then
escorted them into the living room.

“How can I help you?” she asked,
seating herself and motioning for Joanna and Frank to do the
same.

“We understand you purchased some automobile
paint primer a week or so ago,” Joanna ventured.

Dolores nodded. “Yes, I did.” She made
the admission easily, as if it were of no consequence at all.
“Joaquin had agreed to help a friend paint his car that
weekend. My husband was supposed to pick up the primer, but he ran
out of time. Since I was going to town anyway, Joaquin asked me to
pick it up, and I did.”

“What friend?” Joanna asked.

“Someone who works at the restaurant in
Sonoita.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” Dolores said.
“Joaquin didn’t say. As moody as he’s been
lately, I didn’t press him. He’s been so upset that
he’s been almost impossible to live with.”

Being involved in a murder is
upsetting,
Joanna thought. “Upset about what?”
she asked.

“The survey,” Dolores answered.
“Ever since Joaquin found out about it, he just hasn’t
been himself.”

“What survey?”

“He was going around the ranch in late
January, checking fence lines. That’s one of his
jobs—making sure the fences are okay. He was down at the far
western corner of the ranch when he came across a survey crew. He
asked them what they were doing. They told him they were working
for Mr. Markham and doing preliminary survey work in advance of
subdividing the ranch—this part of the ranch,” Dolores
added. “The part closest to the road. It’s going to be
called Whetstone Ranch Estates.”

Joanna sent Frank a questioning look. For the last
several months, he’d been the one attending the board of
supervisors meetings. Perhaps this proposal had come up in one of
the Planning and Zoning reports. In answer to Joanna’s
unspoken ques
tion, her chief deputy shrugged
his shoulders and gave a slight shake to his head.

“Joaquin was very upset to hear it,”
Dolores continued. “Señora Ruth promised that we’d
always be able to keep our place here, no matter what. So did
Aileen. Naturally, Joaquin went straight to Mr. Markham and asked
him about it. He said not to worry. That he’d see to it that,
no matter what happened to the Triple H, we’d be taken care
of.”

Joanna thought back to what Leslie had said
earlier, about her planning to give up her career in real estate in
order to focus her attention on running the ranch once her mother
was gone. It sounded as though she and her husband were of two
different minds on the subject.

“Does Leslie know anything about this?”
Joanna asked.

Dolores shook her head. “I don’t know.
She’s already dealing with so much concerning her poor mother
that it didn’t seem fair to ask. I told Joaquin not to
worry—that we’d be fine. We’ve saved our money
over the years, and we haven’t had to pay rent. Maybe
we’ll be able to buy a place in town.”

“How did your husband react when you told him
that?” Joanna asked.

“He was fine. At least I thought he was fine,
but then last week, he was all upset again. He couldn’t eat.
Couldn’t sleep. I asked him what was bothering him, but
he’s a man. He told me nothing was bothering him and that I
should leave him alone, so I did.”

“It sounds as though you and your husband
have lived and worked here on the Triple H for a very long
time,” Joanna ventured.

Dolores nodded. “The whole time we’ve
been together,” she
answered.
“Joaquin was working here when we first got married. He
wasn’t the foreman then, just a hand. He wasn’t even
legal. When Leslie was about to be born and they wanted someone to
help out, Joaquin suggested that I go to work for them. I’ve
been working for the Houlihans ever since. I took care of the house
and looked after Leslie when she was a baby. Then when first
Señora Ruth and later Señora Aileen got sick, I took care
of them as well, and I pray every day that the same thing
won’t happen to Leslie.”

“You mean Huntington’s disease?”
Joanna asked.

“It’s a terrible thing, that
disease,” Dolores replied. “It’s something that
passes from one generation to another, from parent to child. I
would not want to live and die that way. Now that I’ve seen
what’s happening with Aileen, I can see why her mother did
what she did.”

“Have you ever noticed that Leslie
doesn’t look very much like her mother?” Joanna
asked.

“Yes,” Dolores said. “I always
thought maybe she took after her father’s side of the family.
Mr. Tazewell left soon after Leslie was born, though. I never knew
very much about him.”

“What if I told you that perhaps Aileen
Houlihan isn’t Leslie Markham’s mother?”

“It wouldn’t be true,” Dolores
Mattias declared. “Couldn’t be true. She had the baby
here at the ranch. Joaquin told me all about it—how
Señora Ruth took Aileen and the baby to the hospital after
Leslie was born.”

“You’re sure Aileen Houlihan was
pregnant?” Joanna asked.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I came to the ranch with Joaquin one
day and
saw
her,” Dolores retorted. “I knew Aileen
was pregnant with Leslie the same way I know you’re
pregnant—just by looking.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd that
Leslie was born at home?” Joanna asked.

“Señora Ruth said the baby came too
fast, that there wasn’t time enough to get to the hospital.
They were up at the other house—at the house where Leslie and
Mr. Markham live now. But Señora Ruth was a nurse, you know.
She was able to take care of things just fine.”

“Having a baby can be very messy work,”
Joanna said. “Who cleaned up the mess afterward? Did you ever
wonder about that?”

Dolores shook her head. “No. I told you,
Señora Ruth was a nurse. She took care of it all—Aileen,
Leslie, and everything.”

Frank Montoya’s “older and wiser”
comment was still fresh in Joanna’s ears, so she didn’t
glance in her chief deputy’s direction as she opened her
briefcase and pulled out the envelope containing the photos. She
removed the high school graduation picture of Lisa Marie Evans and
passed it over to Dolores. She looked at it for a moment through
squinted eyes, then she located a pair of reading glasses under the
top of her dress.

Dolores Mattias examined the picture for a very
long time, then handed it back. “She does look like Leslie.
And I’ve seen that picture before,” she said
quietly.

Joanna felt her heart quicken. “When?”
she asked.

“When that man came to the house.”

“What man?” Joanna asked. “And
which house are you talking about? This one?”

“No, to Señora Aileen’s house. I
was there. It was late in the afternoon some day the week before
last, maybe Wednesday or Thursday. A man drove up to the house in a
red pickup truck.
When he knocked on the door,
I thought maybe he was one of those missionaries that are always
coming around, but he wasn’t a missionary at all. Instead, it
was some crazy man who came storming up onto the porch and started
pounding on the door. I was getting ready to give Aileen her bath.
When I came to the door, the man told me he was there to see his
wife, Lisa somebody. I don’t remember the last name. He said
he wanted to talk to her.

“I told him he was mistaken—that the
only person living there was named Aileen Houlihan and that she was
very ill, too ill to see anyone. Then he said, ‘Is she Leslie
Markham’s mother?’ I said, yes, of course she was. At
that point he pulled out this picture—maybe not this exact
one, but one just like it. He waved it at me and said,
‘Isn’t this Aileen?’ And I told him no, it
wasn’t. Not even close. Then he just went nuts. He pounded
his fist on one of the posts so hard that it made the whole porch
shake. It scared me to death. I was afraid he was going to force
his way into the house no matter what I said. I don’t know
what would have happened if Mr. Markham hadn’t driven up
right then. He had come to deliver a prescription he had picked up
in town. He came up on the porch and asked what was going on. I
told him. He said I should go inside and that he’d handle it.
And he did.”

“What do you mean, he handled it?”
Joanna asked.

“I don’t know exactly. I went back
inside to take care of Aileen. When I came back out, the man was
gone along with his truck. So was Mr. Markham.”

Once again Joanna reached into the envelope. This
time she pulled out the enlargement of Bradley Evans’s ID
photo. “Is this the man who came to the door?”

Using her reading glasses again, Dolores Mattias
studied the
photo. “Yes,” she said
finally. “This is the man from the porch. Who is
he?”

“His name is Bradley Evans,” Joanna
said. “He’s the man we told you about when we first got
here, the man who was murdered. His body was found on Friday
morning out near Paul’s Spur. A few days later his pickup was
found with a For Sale sign on it in a vacant lot in Huachuca City.
The truck was red at one time, Mrs. Mattias, but it had been
painted over with gray primer.”

Dolores Mattias sucked in her breath. “And
so, because I bought primer, you think I had something to do with
this?” she demanded. “Or that my husband did? You
tricked me into talking to you, Sheriff Brady. I think you should
leave now.” Then suddenly she stopped speaking. After a long
pause, her face seemed to collapse on itself as she reached some
appalling conclusion.

“No,” she said.

“No what?” Joanna asked.

“Joaquin is involved, isn’t
he!”

“Why would you say that?”

“He must be. That’s why he was so upset
this morning when he dropped me off. When we drove up and he saw
the cop car there in front of the house, he almost drove right
past. When I asked him what he was doing, he said…”