ONCE THE CADAVER CREW AND TOM SET OFF FOR THE PELONCILLOS, Joanna returned to the house feeling like a star quarterback benched in the middle of a playoff game. This was obviously a major case, and even though her people were doing an outstanding job, she couldn’t help resenting the fact that she’d been sidelined. She wanted to be in the middle of it rather than fixing a snack for Denny, feeding Sage, and starting another load of laundry, none of which improved her disposition.
Just after two her phone rang with an unfamiliar number in the caller-ID window. Thinking it was some kind of solicitation call, she almost let it go to voice mail. Then, after the third ring, she changed her mind and answered.
“Hello.”
“Sheriff Brady?”
“Yes, who’s calling?”
“My name is Rochelle Powers. I’m a friend of Robin Watkins.”
“Oh, yes,” Joanna said, “Rochelle. It’s so good to hear from you.”
“Sorry it took a while for me to get back to you. I’m up at the Grand Canyon with my folks, and cell-phone service up here is almost nonexistent. The only place I can get even one bar is out in the parking lot. That’s where I’m calling from, and I can tell you it’s damn cold out here. This is Arizona. I thought it was going to be warm.”
Not when you’re close to seven thousand feet in elevation, Joanna thought. “Thanks for calling,” she said aloud. “I hate to intrude on your vacation.”
Rochelle laughed. “If you knew my parents, you’d know that having a vacation from my vacation isn’t such a terrible idea. How can I help?”
“Did Robin bring you up to speed?”
“Only the basics—that your department may be dealing with a serial-killer situation and that you’re having some challenges with bureaucratic stalling.”
“That’s pretty much the size of it.”
“How about if you fill me in?”
“We’ve located human remains scattered across what we believe to be a dump site,” Joanna explained.
“What kind of remains?”
“Mostly skeletal, although one body was recent enough that our M.E. was able to perform an autopsy.”
“How many victims are we talking about?”
“That’s unknown at this time. So far we’ve found evidence of four separate victims, but there could be more. My people collected a good deal of evidence yesterday, and we have a team of cadaver dogs and more crime-scene investigators on their way to the site today.”
“So most of the bones have been there for some time and have probably been open to scavengers?”
“Correct.”
“What about the body that was autopsied? How fresh was it?”
“Several days old at the time it was found.”
“Who did the autopsy?”
“The Cochise County medical examiner, Dr. Kendra Baldwin.”
“What did she turn up?”
“According to Dr. Baldwin, we’re dealing with a young female, most likely in her mid- to late teens, who was thirteen weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Dental work suggests that she might have come from Mexico originally. There was internal bruising on at least one of her lower limbs that would indicate she was held in restraints for a considerable period of time. She was also severely malnourished. An examination of her stomach contents revealed dry dog food and nothing else.”
“Dog kibble?” Rochelle asked. “That’s all she had to eat?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Which explains her being malnourished,” Rochelle observed. “What about sexual assault?”
“There were signs of a violent sexual assault recent enough that the M.E. hopes will provide enough DNA to establish a profile. Given the fact that the victim was pregnant at the time of her death, I think it’s fair to assume that the sexual assaults had been ongoing for some time.”
“Did the M.E. establish either a time or cause of death?”
“Dr. Baldwin estimates our Jane Doe was dumped on Wednesday, so the time of death would have been prior to that—the same day or earlier. Cause is listed as asphyxiation,” Joanna replied. “In addition, the M.E. has established that at the time of her death the victim might have been locked in some kind of freezer.”
“A freezer?”
Joanna went on to recount the other troubling details surrounding the victim’s death. When she finished, there was a momentary silence on the line before Rochelle asked, “Have you found any matching missing-persons reports?”
“None so far,” Joanna answered.
“What about the other victims? I know you mentioned we’re talking only partial remains. Was the M.E. able to establish a cause of death in any of those?”
“One skull exhibited signs of a gunshot wound. The other two show signs of blunt-force trauma. Once Dr. Baldwin sorts all the pieces, she may find evidence of other wounds as well.”
Rochelle fell silent again for a moment, as if sifting through her thoughts. “So we’re dealing with an individual who abducts multiple victims, who has the ability to hold them prisoner for an extended period of time, who most likely subjects them to ongoing sexual assaults, and who murders them once he’s had his fill.”
“Yes,” Joanna agreed, “those are our assumptions, too.”
“All that being said, we can be reasonably confident that this is a well-established MO rather than a onetime thing, and with the likelihood of other victims no wonder you can’t afford to wait to have your request for a profiler slow-walked through channels and across desks.”
When the profiler fell silent yet again, Joanna held her breath, waiting to hear what would happen.
“I’m in, then,” Rochelle concluded at last. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I’ll need information. If you can have your M.E. forward her autopsy results, I can run those through ViCAP and see if there are any other cases out there, solved or not, with similar characteristics.”
“Wait,” Joanna suggested. “Instead of my being in the middle, why don’t you contact Dr. Baldwin yourself? Tell her I asked you to call. Once we’re off the phone, I’ll text you her numbers. I’ll also send along the numbers for a guy named Ernie Carpenter. He usually works homicide, but right now he’s holding down the fort at Media Relations. His information will be more current than anything I can give you.”
“What about the detectives working the case? When can I speak to them?”
“Not anytime soon—they’re all out working right now, most likely not in cell-phone range, either knocking on doors or examining the crime scene. There’s going to be a debriefing later tonight when they finish up. Would you want me to see if we could maybe Skype that?”
“Don’t bother,” Rochelle said. “The Wi-Fi connection here at the hotel is useless. We’re leaving in the morning, though, and heading back to Scottsdale. Whereabouts is your department again?”
“We’re located in the Cochise County Justice Center complex, a few miles east of Bisbee on Highway 80.”
“My knowledge of Arizona geography is pretty limited,” Rochelle admitted. “How far is Bisbee from Scottsdale?”
“Four hours, give or take,” Joanna said. “Scottsdale is more or less in the middle of the state. If you think about a map of Arizona, Cochise County is in the lower right-hand corner. The crime scene itself is only a few miles from the New Mexico state line.”
“So we’re not exactly right next door at the moment,” Rochelle said. “I can probably show up there late tomorrow, but it would be helpful to know what’s said in that debriefing between then and now. I’ll be able to access whatever’s in the reports, but I’d also like to hear everything else that goes on—the offhand hunches and theories people come up with, things that may not make it into any of the official reports but might prove useful in the long run.”
“You’re saying you’ll need to speak to them directly?”
“I will,” Rochelle asserted, “but I can’t stress how helpful it would be for me to have some inside access to that initial debriefing. That way I’ll know where the investigation started and where it’s heading. Would it be possible for you to record it and send me the file?”
“I can’t promise, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Even though you’re supposed to be on maternity leave?” Rochelle asked.
“Theoretically,” Joanna replied, “although I think people around here would tell you that I’m not very good at maternity leave.”
Rochelle laughed.
“What about you?” Joanna asked. “Is doing something off the books going to land you in hot water back home in D.C.?”
“How long have you been sheriff?” Rochelle countered.
“Eight years or so. I won my third term in office a couple of weeks ago. Why?”
“In the intervening years, I have to assume you’ve had some dealings with the FBI.”
“Yes,” Joanna said, “some good and some bad, although I have to say, when it comes to dealing with field agents, Robin Watkins is my hands-down favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Rochelle agreed, “but do you know how she ended up being transferred to Tucson?”
“I seem to remember she got sideways with a supervisor back in D.C.”
“That’s correct,” Rochelle answered, “and trust me when I tell you there are a lot of supervisors in the Bureau. The whole joint is top-heavy with them, and shit definitely rolls downhill. Robin got shipped off to Tucson—we like to say ‘remoted’ rather than ‘demoted’—because she crossed a higher-up who happens to be a micromanaging jerk. I made the same mistake with someone else, and that’s why I’m currently stuck on the bottom tier of the profiler totem pole.
“I didn’t sign up for this job to push paper, Sheriff Brady,” Rochelle continued. “I signed up because I wanted to catch bad guys, and you’re giving me a chance to do just that. I have the skill set, but I’m lacking experience. I really want to work this case, but if I feel like I’m out of my depth, I’ll let you know and you can call in someone else.”
“That’s more than fair,” Joanna said. “Thank you.”