Page 29 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

The next morning, Joanna had been in her office for only a few minutes when a call came in from the ME.

“Good morning, Kendra,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“The DNA results landed in my inbox this morning,” she said. “It’s a match. Our victim is definitely Elena Delgado’s son, Xavier.”

Joanna had never doubted that would be the finding. Still, hearing the confirmation hurt.

“Will you be handling the next-of-kin notification?” Kendra asked.

Joanna thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, since the body had been found in Cochise County, notifying the family was her department’s responsibility.

In this instance, however, it seemed that having Arturo do the honors would be more appropriate.

For one thing Elena already knew the man, and receiving the news directly from him in her native language might be less difficult for all concerned.

“Captain Pena is in charge of the Federales unit in Naco, Sonora,” she said. “I know he’s acquainted with the victim’s mother. I’ll ask him. I’m pretty sure he’ll be willing to do it.”

“Okay,” Kendra said, “just as long as it gets handled.”

“Once it’s done,” Joanna added, “I’ll schedule the news conference.”

“Good-o,” Kendra said.

When Arturo heard about the DNA results, he wasn’t any more surprised than Joanna had been. As for the notification?

“Of course, I’ll do it,” he agreed, “but I’m not looking forward to it. I know she’s expecting it, but still...”

“Yes,” Joanna said, “it’ll be tough, but it’ll be better if the news comes from someone she actually knows. Thanks in advance. The next thing I need to do is hold a press conference.”

“That won’t be any more fun than doing the notification.”

Joanna laughed. “You’ve got that right.”

She was about to hang up but Arturo stopped her. “One more thing,” he said. “I had a brainstorm overnight. How about this? Stephen Roper has crossed the border countless times.”

“So?” Joanna asked.

“People who cross the border on a regular basis like that are known to all the border guards and are mostly waved through checkpoints with no questions asked. Right now he has no idea that he’s under any kind of suspicion, right?”

“As far as I know,” Joanna replied. “I warned my people that if any word about his being a person of interest gets out to the public, I’ll fire the leaker on the spot. Why do you ask?”

“I have a lot of pull with the border guards,” Arturo continued.

“Just like everybody else around here, they’re up in arms about what happened to Xavier.

So what if I told them that next Friday they should pull Roper and his Free Store truck aside for an extensive search?

They can tell him that it’s routine—that on orders from headquarters they’ve now been directed to pull aside and search every fifteenth or twentieth vehicle, and his is it.

Who knows what’ll happen? They might come up empty, but then again they might not. ”

“But won’t he be suspicious?” Joanna asked.

“I doubt it. They’ll tell him they’re looking for drugs, weapons, or cash.

Besides, he won’t be anywhere near the vehicle during the search itself—drivers have to sit in a waiting room inside the station while the search takes place.

I’ll tell the guards involved to report their findings directly to me, but regardless of what they find, they should leave it where it is and allow Roper to go on his merry way once they’re done. ”

This seemed like a novel but very tempting idea. Joanna’s people would need a search warrant in hand to go through Roper’s vehicle. Border guards don’t need warrants. Searching vehicles for contraband is their job.

“Let me think about this,” she said. “I’ll be back in touch.”

Off the phone with Arturo, Joanna headed for Casey Ledford’s lab. On the way she stopped by Kristin’s desk.

“We’ve got a positive ID on our homicide victim,” she said. “Please send out a mass mailing to our media contacts, letting them know I’ll be holding a press conference this afternoon at four.”

“Will do,” Kristin said.

Joanna found Casey and Dave Hollicker with their noses deep in their computer monitors. “What are you up to?” she asked.

“We’re still doing our deep dive into Stephen Roper. He has an email address, but that’s it. As far as we can tell, he has no social media presence. If we could look at his computer or phone, those might tell a different story, but, as you know, we’ll need warrants.”

“What if there was a way to search his Free Store truck without needing a warrant?” Joanna asked.

“I’m all ears,” Casey said.

“So am I,” Dave added.

Joanna told them about Arturo’s suggestion of having the Mexican border guards do an extensive search of the vehicle. By the time she was finished, Casey was nodding her head.

“You know, Dave and I were just talking about that,” she said.

“Specifically, about what we discussed in our meeting yesterday about how Roper managed to smuggle Xavier across the border. We’re assuming that he’d been knocked unconscious.

But he might also have been drugged. Something like horse tranquilizer would have worked, but that would require the use of a hypodermic of some kind.

If I were a little kid and someone tried to poke me with a needle, I’d raise all kinds of hell, but a drug that could be dissolved in a soda would work, too. ”

“Like a date rape drug maybe?” Joanna asked.

Casey nodded. “Some of those can also be inhaled in powdered form, but so can chloroform, too. That’s readily available since you can make it at home with ordinary household ingredients.

“So if the border guards’ search happened to turn up something suspicious in liquid or powder form, and if they could collect a sample and give it to me, I have a whole library of test kits here in the lab that will identify the substance.”

“In other words, you think this is a good idea?” Joanna asked.

“I do.”

At that point, Dave spoke up, adding in his two cents. “Do the border guards have body cams?”

Joanna shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

“Because if they do, and if the search came up with any kind of damning evidence, we’ll need to have an incontrovertible record of the whole thing to hold up in court.”

With that, Joanna reached for her phone and put the call on speaker.

“Back so soon?” Arturo asked when he answered.

“I’m in the lab talking to my CSIs. They’re on board with the whole idea of doing that vehicle search, but they’re wondering if the border guards are equipped with body cams.”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll find out,” Arturo vowed. “If they don’t have them right now, I’ll figure out a way for them to have body cams by Friday.”

“Okay then,” Joanna said. “Let’s say it’s a go.”

“But will it work?” Dave Hollicker asked, horning in on the conversation.

“Will what work?” Joanna demanded.

“Will evidence obtained that way be admissible in a court of law?” Dave insisted. “If not, we might be shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Joanna felt as though Dave had just dumped a bucket of ice water on what had seemed like such a promising idea, but maybe the man had a point.

“That was Dave Hollicker, one of my CSIs,” Joanna explained to Arturo, “and he could be right. Don’t put anything in motion until I check with the county attorney.”

“Okay,” Arturo said. He, too, sounded deflated. “Let me know what you find out.”

Ten minutes later, after a quick phone call to the county attorney’s office, Joanna was on her way to Old Bisbee.

As always when pulling into the parking lot on Quality Hill, she found herself thinking about her dad.

Back when D.H. Lathrop had been sheriff, his office and the jail, too, had been located right across the street in the basement of the old courthouse. Things were a lot different now.

Cochise County’s longtime prosecutor, Arlee Jones, had passed away from a heart attack the previous summer.

Arlee had been absolutely old school and a misogynist to boot, a guy who had taken a dim view of females in law enforcement.

He and Joanna had been at loggerheads for much of the time she’d been sheriff.

After his passing, the assistant county attorney, Craig Witherspoon, had been appointed to fill out Arlee’s term of office and had been elected in his own right weeks earlier at the same time Joanna had won reelection.

Joanna hadn’t had that many dealings with the new guy, but since Craig was a good forty years younger than Arlee and a couple years younger than Joanna herself, she was hopeful they’d have a somewhat better working relationship, and she drove there with a hopeful heart.

Some of the differences between the two men were apparent the moment Joanna stepped inside Craig Witherspoon’s office.

Arlee’s walls had been decorated with ego-boosting framed diplomas and countless awards.

Craig’s walls displayed a collection of family photos, including his wife, a young kid in a Little League uniform, and an adorable little girl decked out as a ballerina.

Arlee had always treated Joanna as some kind of interloper. Craig greeted her warmly. “I guess mutual congratulations are in order, Sheriff Brady. Welcome to your fourth term.”

“Congrats to you, too,” she said. “I’m looking forward to working together.”

“Speaking of which, is this about the dead kid found in the San Pedro?” he asked.

Joanna nodded. “Yes, it is.”

“What’s the deal?”

Joanna spent the next ten minutes laying out the background of the Xavier Delgado case.

Craig knew about it, of course, because the assistant county attorney had been at the recovery scene in St. David that miserable Saturday afternoon along with everyone else, but he was unfamiliar with the current state of the investigation.

He listened attentively, with his index fingers steepled in front of him, but before Joanna even finished her pitch, he was already shaking his head.