Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(18)
Newton was a grizzled fiftysomething. His partner wasn’t a day over thirty. The younger man responded with a winning smile.
“Name’s Liam Jackson, ma’am,” he replied, “Detective Liam Jackson. Glad to meet you.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Newton insisted, prying Joanna’s attention away from the younger man. “What are you doing here, Sheriff Brady? My instructions were clear. We may be having to use your CSIs, but this is a DPS investigation from beginning to end. We’re in charge.”
“Understood,” she agreed, “and this is as close as I’ve been to the crime scene, but I wanted to be here in person to hand things over to you. This is Deputy Garth Raymond. He was the first member of my department to respond to Deputy Ruiz’s officer-down call, although officers from Huachuca City PD arrived before he did. Garth will be able to supply you with the names of everyone who’s been here, including the EMTs.”
Looking around the scene, Newton frowned. “You don’t have any investigators here, do you?”
“As requested, Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker, my CSIs, are here, as is County Attorney Arlee Jones,” Joanna replied. “No one else from my department is on the scene. I've told everyone that we’re handling this by the book. And now that you’re here to take charge, I’ll be on my way.”
“Where to?” Newton asked suspiciously.
Joanna bristled. Where she was going was none of Newton’s business, but she answered the question anyway. “I’m on my way to Tucson,” she replied. “Deputy Ruiz is currently undergoing emergency surgery at Banner Medical. He’s one of my people, Detective Newton, and my place is with his wife in the waiting room outside the OR.”
“Just remember,” Newton cautioned, “under no circumstances are you to speak to him about this case. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Joanna said. “By the way,” she added, “you’ll need to move your vehicle. It looks like yours has me blocked in.”
“Sure thing,” Detective Jackson said cheerfully. “Right away.”
Pulling car keys from his pocket, the younger man headed over to the SUV with Joanna following on his heels. She didn’t need to look back at Newton to confirm that he was sending a superior sneer in her direction. By publicly dissing her and banning her from the scene, he probably thought he’d won, but to Joanna’s way of thinking, this dustup was only the first round. Maybe she couldn’t talk to Armando Ruiz, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t listen in when other people did.
She’d taken Butch’s advice and had seemingly accepted her sidelining with good grace, but if Newton tried pushing Arlee Jones around in the same manner in which he’d treated her, the man was in for a big surprise. The Cochise County attorney happened to be the guy who would have the final say about whether or not Armando Ruiz would be facing charges. Jones was also a stubborn old coot and not the least bit pushable. He could be gotten around, however, and Sheriff Joanna Brady had more than eight years’ worth of practice in doing just that.
Chapter 5
Joanna might have looked calm, cool, and collected as she departed the crime scene, but when she called Butch a few minutes later, she was in full rant mode.
“You’ll never believe who DPS sent out—that asshole Dave Newton!” she fumed. “And like the jerk he is, he lit into me right there in public, dressing me down in front of one of my deputies and sending me packing from the crime scene.”
“Wait,” Butch said. “Who’s Dave Newton?” Then, after a pause he added, “Now I remember—Mr. Soccer Ball Guy, right?”
Years earlier a fleeing homicide suspect had carjacked a minivan containing two young children from the Texas Canyon Rest Area on I-10 before heading west. Joanna and a very inexperienced deputy had been several exits ahead of the speeding minivan and had given chase. Since there were only two westbound lanes, Joanna’s department had coordinated with a number of eighteen-wheelers to create a moving roadblock that had forced the suspect onto a secondary road that, unknown to the carjacker, came to a dead end several miles away. Finally, with no choice but to stop, the armed bad guy had attempted to use one of the kids as a human shield, an action that had left Joanna with very few options.
Taking cover behind the van, Joanna had hit the ground. Despite the fact that she was exceedingly pregnant with Denny at the time, she’d lain on her protruding belly and had shot under the body of the minivan, nailing the jerk in the foot and smashing his ankle to bits.
Joanna’s father, D. H. Lathrop, had loved those old black-and-white cowboy movies where the good guy shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. This wasn’t exactly the same thing, but it had done the trick. The kids had been rescued and the handcuffed suspect packed off to a hospital. The injury was serious enough that not only was the killer now spending life in prison without parole, he was doing so with an amputated foot—an outcome Joanna didn’t regret in the least.
But because the incident was an officer-involved shooting, DPS had been called in to investigate, with none other than Detective Newton running the show. During an interview with Joanna, an arrogant Newton had taken issue with her version of events, suggesting that it would have been impossible for “someone in her condition” to lie on her belly and shoot well enough to hit the suspect in the ankle and do so on purpose. That’s when Joanna had issued her soccer-ball challenge.