Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [68]
“Who’s it registered to?” Joanna asked.
“A guy in Tucson who says he sold it last week to a Hispanic guy who paid him a thousand bucks in cash and said he needed it for his landscaping business. He used it for landscaping, all right. Turned it into a bulldozer.”
“Do we have any idea who ‘he’ is?” Joanna asked.
Dave Hollicker shook his head. “No idea. The driver was carrying a fake ID and a fake driver’s license. He won’t answer any questions, but he’s asking for a court-appointed lawyer. Says he wants to be deported back to Mexico.”
Joanna thought for a moment of the dead and bloodied baby she had cradled in her arms. “That driver’s not going home anytime soon,” she declared determinedly. “Not if I can help it.”
Leaving the impound lot in her Civvie, Joanna was surprised at the number of vehicles pulling into the Justice Center parking lot. On Saturdays, when court wasn’t in session, the public parking area at the front of the complex was usually deserted. Last in the line of arriving vehicles was a battered Camry. A magnetic sign bearing the Bisbee Bee’s distinctive logo was plastered on the driver’s door.
As passengers began spilling out onto the hot pavement, Joanna assumed they had nothing to do with her and headed for her reserved and shaded parking place behind the building. Inside her office, she used her phone to call Lupe Alvarez at the reception desk in the public office.
“What’s going on out front, Lupe?” Joanna asked. “Did someone schedule some kind of tour or activity that I don’t know about?”
“Beats me,” Lupe replied. “From here all I can see is a bunch of people milling around in the parking lot, lots of them waving signs. It must be some kind of demonstration.”
“What do the signs say?” Joanna asked.
“One of them said A-W-E,” Lupe returned. “Any idea what that means?”
“AWE? Not the slightest,” Joanna answered. “What about the people? Do any of them look familiar?”
“No, but most of their backs are to me right now. They seem to be posing for photos in front of the door. Right, I just saw a flash, so someone did take a picture.”
“Why don’t you give Chief Deputy Montoya a call,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe he knows something about this.”
“Right away, Sheriff Brady.”
Joanna put down her phone. While she waited for Lupe to call back, she turned on her computer to check her e-mail in-box. She had twenty-seven new messages, most of them offering her ways to earn money by working at home, or quick fixes for the latest computer virus. One by one she deleted those without even opening them. She was down to the last eleven seemingly real messages when her phone rang again.
“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his way in,” Lupe reported. “It’ll take him about twenty minutes to get here. He’s scheduled a ten o’clock press briefing, so maybe some of the vehicles are reporters coming for that, but he doesn’t have a clue about a demonstration.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “Well, then, since he’s not here and I am, I’d better go out and see what’s happening.”
Since it was Saturday and Joanna had planned on spending the entire day in the office, she had come to work wearing jeans and a wrinkled but comfy linen blazer. If a newspaper photographer was outside snapping pictures, it was likely that a less-than-wonderful photo of Sheriff Brady would end up appearing in print.
Eleanor Lathrop was nowhere around, but Joanna had a fair idea of how their next conversation would go. “How could you possibly go to work dressed like that,” her mother would ask, “looking like something the cat dragged in? What about that nice uniform you wore in the Fourth of July parade?”
Walking toward the door, Joanna smiled grimly to herself, imagining the reaction if she came right out and told Eleanor that the uniform was out of commission