Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [8]
As the miles ticked by, she tried to remember the exact sequence of events in which she had first been made aware of the Mossman situation and what actions she should have or could have taken to prevent this from happening. Manny Ruiz’s initial report had shown up in a mid-June morning briefing.
“What’s a hoarder?” she had asked Chief Deputy Frank Montoya.
“Jeannine tells me they’re people who are a couple of bubbles out of plumb,” Frank replied. “As long as their lives are going along normally, they’re fine, but once they go off the tracks, they start ‘saving’ animals. They usually mean well, but they often end up taking in far more animals than they can care for properly.”
“And they don’t have them vaccinated,” Joanna offered.
“Because they don’t take them to see vets,” Frank added. “With that many dogs, it’s too expensive. Same thing goes for buying decent food.”
Joanna had skimmed down Manny Ruiz’s report. “It says here that the dogs seem to be well cared for.”
Frank nodded. “And when he went by that day, none of the dogs were loose. They were all in their crates in a shed. That’s why Manny issued a citation rather than taking the dogs into custody.”
“And gave her two weeks to comply,” Joanna added.
Which she probably didn’t do, Joanna thought.
As she left Tombstone on the Charleston Road and headed west, the glare of the setting sun was blinding. Even with the help of her visor and sunglasses, it was almost impossible to see oncoming traffic.
She crossed the spindly bridge across the San Pedro River—the same river Cortés had followed north in search of the Seven Cities of Gold—and turned right. She knew from Manuel Ruiz’s previous report that Carol Mossman’s single-wide mobile home was about half a mile north of the intersection. As soon as she turned off, she could see the clutch of vehicles that meant some, if not all, of her officers had already arrived.
Slowing the Blazer, Joanna steeled herself for what was to come. Crime scene investigation wasn’t one of her favorite things. As sheriff, she certainly wasn’t required to be a part of every homicide investigation. Nonetheless, ever since taking over the helm of the department, she had insisted on being present and accounted for each time a homicide had occurred inside her sixty-four-hundred-square-mile jurisdiction.
Andy, Joanna’s first husband, had been a deputy sheriff campaigning for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down by a drug dealer’s hit man. Despite Joanna’s own lack of law enforcement experience, she had been asked to run for office in his place. To everyone’s surprise, including her own, she had been elected by a wide margin in what her detractors called a “sympathy” vote. Those same naysayers had expected her to confine herself to administrative duties only. Instead, in the course of those first few treacherous months in office, she had sent herself off to take police academy training and had made it her business to be personally involved in the process of fighting crime at its most basic and gut-wrenching level. Her active personal involvement in each of her department’s homicide cases had gone a long way toward winning her the grudging respect and cooperation of the career police officers under her supervision.
She came to the grim task of homicide investigation with the clear knowledge that every murder affected far more than a single victim. The dead were already beyond help. As someone whose husband had died as a result of violent crime, Joanna was focused on helping to bring closure and comfort to those who were left behind. It