Page 13 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
Dr. Kendra Baldwin, dressed in a hazmat suit and trailed by both Detectives Howell and Raymond, stepped forward to greet Joanna. “What a way to spend Thanksgiving weekend!” she said.
“I’ll say,” Joanna agreed. “What have we got?”
“Our victim is a little boy,” Kendra answered. “Still has his baby teeth so probably five years. Black hair, so Hispanic maybe, and he appears to be fully clothed.”
“Dead for how long?”
“I’d estimate a week at least, but the body hasn’t been in the water for nearly that long. I’m guessing someone tried to bury him in the riverbed...”
“...and the floodwaters brought the bag to the surface and carried it here?” Joanna finished.
Kendra nodded.
“Cause of death?”
“No obvious gunshot or stab wounds. We’ll have to wait until the autopsy to know for sure, but I’m prepared to call this one a homicide from the get-go. I say we pack him up and get him back to the morgue.” With that the ME turned to the two detectives. “This poor kid’s been dead for a while, so there’s no real rush, and I have out-of-town company. Autopsy Monday morning at nine?”
Detectives Deb Howell and Garth Raymond nodded in unison.
“We’ll be there,” Deb said.
With most homicide cases, this would be the time to start canvassing the neighborhood, looking for witnesses and information. However, knowing the cows in the field wouldn’t have much of anything to say in that regard, there wasn’t any point in doing one, so Joanna separated herself from the group and went in search of the crew from the Highway Department. Four guys, using long-handled hooks, were still hauling debris out of the water where it had already formed an eight-foot-tall pile of waterlogged tree branches and junk, which was also stacked in the eastbound lane. Joanna located Bill Snider, the man in charge of the crew, sitting nearby in a pickup, having a smoke, and talking on his radio.
Joanna tapped on the window. “You guys are the ones who found the body?” she asked as soon as he rolled it down.
Snider nodded. “Soon as John Boy zipped open that bag, he barfed his guts out. Stunk like a son of a bitch.”
Welcome to my world, Joanna thought.
“How are things looking as far as the bridge is concerned?” she asked.
“We’re doing our best to keep the river free of debris so water doesn’t dam up against it. The guy who owns that field,” he added, pointing toward the wading cattle, “a Mr. Duvall, he came out with a backhoe and dug a diversion ditch. That’s taking some of the pressure off the bridge. With the rain finally letting up, the old bridge should be okay, but I’m worried about the freshly poured footings on the new one. Some of those may be goners.”
“What about the trash in the middle of the highway?” Joanna asked.
“A dump truck and a front-end loader are coming to haul it away, but that’s going to take another hour at least, so I’ll need your guys directing traffic until then.”
“Fair enough,” Joanna said. “I’ll let my deputies know.”
Back on the bridge, she watched as the body was loaded into the ME’s minivan—Kendra’s so-called body wagon. Moments laterthe canopy came down as well. Once the ME drove away, so did the two detectives. Next Joanna consulted with her two deputies, letting them know they’d need to continue directing traffic until the debris could be hauled away. Once that was done, she headed back to her Interceptor, where she discovered she had company.
The vehicle that had been parked directly in front of hers had moved. Joanna quickly recognized the battered RAV4 parked in its place belonged to one of her least favorite people in the world, local newshound Marliss Shackleford.
A few weeks earlier, Marliss and her then boyfriend had had a falling-out. Afterward he had expressed his anger by smashing her car with a baseball bat, without leaving a single panel of the vehicle undamaged. The incident itself had occurred inside the Bisbee city limits, so it hadn’t been investigated by the sheriff’s department. However, after his arrest, the boyfriend had been unable to post bond, and he was currently one of the inmates contributing to Joanna’s overcrowding problem in the Cochise County Jail.
After the incident, the car had been deemed drivable, so while Marliss waited for her turn with a body shop appointment, she was driving a vehicle that appeared to be one short step away from a wrecking yard. A small part of Joanna Brady’s soul wasn’t sorry that Marliss Shackleford was stuck driving a junker. It was exactly what she deserved.
Previously the woman had been a reporter on the staff of a local newspaper, theBisbee Bee, where her weekly column “Bisbee Buzzings” had often focused on what the columnist perceived as Joanna’s many shortcomings in her handling of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Once the newspaper had bitten the dust, however, Marliss had reinvented herself by starting a website called Cochise County Courier, featuring her twice-weekly crime column, where she continued to be a royal pain in Joanna’s butt. Now the woman herself stood leaning against the hood of Joanna’s Interceptor.
“Hello, Sheriff Brady,” Marliss said. “Dead kid, right?” she added.
“Active investigation,” Joanna muttered through gritted teeth,hoping to put the woman off. “No further comment until after the autopsy, which is scheduled for Monday morning.”
“Come on,” Marliss wheedled. “I already talked to the poor guy who hauled the duffel bag out of the water and zipped it open. I’ll bet he won’t do that again. Any idea who the kid is? Where he came from?”
“I said no comment and I meant it,” Joanna insisted, bypassing Marliss and heading for the Interceptor’s driver’s door, but Marliss trailed after her.
“I’ve been looking online,” Marliss continued, placing one hand on the door to keep Joanna from opening it. “I’m not finding any recent reports of missing kids, so where did this one come from?”
