Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(95)

“I thought custody only happened when people got divorced,” Kendall said quietly.

The comment took Joanna’s breath away. Kendall, too, may might have appeared to be simply observing from the sidelines, but in the course of her seven years this girl and her little brother had seen far too much.

“It means the court decides who’s supposed to take care of minor children like you and Peter,” Joanna explained.

“Like a judge or something?”

“Exactly,” Joanna said.

“But why can’t we just say what we want?” Kendall asked.

Why indeed? And as far as Hogan-based heartbreaks went, that counted as number three.





Chapter 49





When Joanna left the hotel, she went straight to see Frank at Sierra Vista PD so she could be updated on the progress of the investigation. An arson investigator from the ATF had discovered evidence of a flammable liquid—most likely gasoline—inside the charred ruins of the Nite Owl, along with a discarded plastic gas container that had been found in the desert behind the building’s back parking lot.

It was still too early for results on the examination of the other physical evidence taken from either scene, and so far no additional footage of the mysterious SUV had surfaced. Where real progress had been made was in the area of electronic analysis.

While still working at Joanna’s department, Frank Montoya had been her top guy when it came to obtaining cell-phone data, including call history and tracking information. He’d brought those valuable skills along with him to Sierra Vista PD and had passed along everything he knew. Now that transferred knowledge was paying off big time.

Two phones, one belonging to Randy Williams and the other to Madison Hogan, had been found in the wreckage of Madison’s bedroom. Frank’s tech guy—a kid who looked to be straight out of high school—was deep into tracking the devices’ call histories and movements.

Frank led Joanna into the department’s crime-lab facility where all that time-stamped information had been carefully mapped out and charted on a whiteboard, with Madison’s phone represented in red and Randy’s in blue.

The previous evening, starting shortly after Madison’s return from the Justice Center, there’d been a series of phone calls back and forth between the two—with Madison’s calls most likely emanating from her home in Sierra Vista and Randy’s from his place on Hereford Road. Much later in the evening, over the course of half an hour or so, it was possible to follow Randy’s phone’s movements as it traveled from Hereford to Sierra Vista. Starting at 8:30 P.M., both phones began pinging off the same cell tower, one located three hundred yards from Madison’s residence. That’s where both phones remained until CSIs found them in the bloodied wreckage of Madison’s bedroom.

“It looks like they buried the hatchet after their big blowup the night before,” Joanna suggested.

“Evidently,” Frank agreed.

Joanna stared at the board for some time before she spoke. “It looks like Randy came over, they had a drink or two, and then they went to bed, only to be awakened home-invasion style by person or persons unknown, who carted them off to the Nite Owl, where they were subsequently killed.”

“Yep, that’s our current set of assumptions, too,” Frank said.

As they walked from the lab back toward Frank’s office, an urgent text from Tom Hadlock appeared on the screen of Joanna’s phone: Call me!

Most likely more bad news, Joanna thought. The board of supervisors meeting had probably blown up in his face.

“I need to go,” she told Frank.

“Fine,” Frank said, “but I’m not waiting around for the party to hear about what happened in Tucson this morning, and you’re not leaving here until you tell me.”

So she told him, giving him an abbreviated version of the story.

“All things considered,” he said, “it sounds like a happy ending.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “It was a close call with Jenny, and we’re very lucky.”

She wasn’t feeling exceptionally lucky, however, once she got back into her vehicle and dialed Tom’s number.

“I’m guessing our board of supervisors request went south,” she said when he answered.

“Not at all,” he said. “They were surprisingly receptive, and they’re taking it all under advisement—even the bodycam request.”

That was a far better result than Joanna had expected.

“Great job, Tom,” she told him. “I’m so glad to hear it, but your text sounded urgent. What’s up?”

“It’s about Floyd Barco,” he said. “The man was raising hell around here, bouncing off the walls—I mean literally banging his head on a brick wall—and yelling that he’s got to talk to you. He says you’re the boss, and he won’t talk to anyone else. We tried sending him back to his cell, but he was so completely off the charts that I finally had to put him in solitary.”

“What solitary?” Joanna asked. “Our jail doesn’t do solitary.”

“I put him on a suicide watch in one of the interview rooms,” Tom said. “He’s handcuffed to a table with someone checking on him every half hour.”

“When did all this happen?”