Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(16)
Joanna tried to give the woman the brush-off. “Excuse me, Marliss, but I’m in a hurry. Would you mind?”
Marliss, with the camera side of her iPhone pointed in Joanna’s direction, didn’t take the hint. “Is Leon Hogan the victim who’s deceased?” she asked.
Joanna knew from past experience that this annoying woman spent the better part of her day with one ear glued to her home-based police scanner. That meant that day or night she always knew exactly what was going on with Joanna’s department.
Joanna didn’t waste any time crafting a diplomatic response. “Next-of-kin notifications have not been done. That means we’re not releasing any names to the public.”
Marliss wasn’t the least bit deterred by Joanna’s terse reply. “I understand Deputy Ruiz is seriously wounded and has been airlifted to the trauma unit at Banner Medical in Tucson. Any word on his condition?”
“No comment,” Joanna said through gritted teeth. “Now, move out of the way, Marliss. I need to get going.”
Reluctantly, Marliss retracted her head, allowing Joanna to pull forward enough to be parallel with the next shoulder-parked vehicle—the M.E.’s minivan, sometimes referred to as the “body wagon.”
Looking around, Joanna saw that her stop in Sierra Vista had made for a seriously late arrival at the crime scene. Doc Baldwin and her people were huddled on the front porch of the single-wide mobile home, most likely already at work with their preliminary examination of the body, while Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker were combing the weedy yard for shell casings, with Casey laying down evidence markers while Dave followed along, camera in hand. Dogging the CSIs’ heels was none other than County Attorney Arlee Jones.
Joanna stood still long enough to examine her surroundings. Whoever had assigned the arbitrary name of Sheila Street to that washboarded stretch of dirt road had vastly overstated the case. It wasn’t a street at all, but it was the last bit of roadway inside Whetstone proper. The collection of houses strung loosely along its eastern flank were backed by nothing but open range. No grazing cattle were visible at the moment, but barbed-wire fencing surrounded each residence and every driveway included a livestock-deterring cattle guard.
Garth Raymond’s patrol vehicle, parked just beyond the cattle guard and directly behind Armando’s, barred anyone else from entering the property. The driver’s-side door on Armando’s vehicle still hung open. Joanna, on the far side of the cattle guard, was several car lengths away. Even so, she could see the horrifying bloodstains marring the inside of the door panel, showing exactly where Deputy Ruiz had been standing at the time he was hit. All around the car, Joanna saw the telltale scatter of medical debris left behind by EMTs fighting to save Armando’s life.
Beyond Deputy Ruiz’s patrol car, Joanna spotted the body of Leon Hogan. It lay fully exposed on a small wooden porch outside the front door of the single-wide trailer. Dr. Baldwin and her henchmen were clustered nearby, doing whatever was necessary prior to transporting the body.
In search of a better vantage point, Joanna made her way across the cattle guard. One thing in particular stood out. There was not a hint of cover on that porch. In other words, the dead man must have been standing in full sight, facing Armando and firing away. From Joanna’s point of view, that added up to only one thing—suicide by cop. Leon Hogan might have been fine when it came to pulling the trigger on someone else, but he hadn’t had guts enough to take his own life.
She stood for a moment longer, surveying the sad scene. An aging GMC pickup was tucked in under a sagging carport at the near end of the mobile home, a fourteen-by-seventy. The yard around it was nothing but hard-packed dirt, littered with dead weeds and trash. Clearly no one involved was overly concerned about performing any kind of routine maintenance.
Joanna was still lost in thought when Deputy Garth Raymond hurried up to greet her.
“What’s the story?” she asked.
“As near as I can tell, most but not all of the confrontation took place right here in the front yard. Armando must have been in the process of leaving when the woman came racing out of the house with the man taking potshots at her as she ran. He missed her and hit Deputy Ruiz instead, even though Ruiz tried to take cover behind his patrol car. Chances are Hogan wasn’t even aiming at Armando.”
“Any sign of that no-contact order?” Joanna asked.
Garth nodded. “Casey Ledford told me she found it on the living-room floor, soaked in spilled coffee and next to a tipped-over end table. My guess is the coffee got spilled at the same time the table got knocked over.”
“What about the kids?” Joanna asked. “How are they?”
“Okay,” Garth said. “Evidently they heard what was going on but didn’t actually see it. They were in a bedroom where the windows are too high for them to look out. After I got here, I walked over to the neighbor’s house to check on the kids. The little girl, Kendall, told me that while she and her brother were playing in the bedroom, her parents were in the living room. She said she heard the doorbell ring. Right after that, someone closed the bedroom door. That was followed by some loud noises inside the house, but it wasn’t until after the shooting that the kids found out they were locked inside the bedroom and couldn’t get out.”
“But before that?” Joanna asked.
“Kendall told me that after the doorbell rang, at some point, she heard her parents arguing—yelling at each other in the living room along with a ‘sort of wrestling sound.’ That’s what she called it—a wrestling sound.”