It took only half an hour for both Frank and Jaime to converge on Joanna’s office. For the next hour or so, they pumped Serenity for information.

“Did your mother tell you anything in particular about Warren Gibson?” Jaime Carbajal asked.

“Just that he was good with his hands. He could put up drywall, plaster, install wiring, and do any number of things she would have had to spend money on otherwise.”

“She didn’t say where he came from?”

“Not that I remember. At the beginning, I think she maybe hired him to do a couple of days’ worth of odd jobs. Before very long, though, he had moved in with her. As far as Mother was concerned, that’s typical. It also goes a long way to explain why I was a twenty-six-year-old virgin when I got married.”

The sardonic self-deprecation in that sentence lodged like a sharp-edged pebble in Joanna Brady’s heart. Dee Canfield and her daughter had spent a lifetime locked in almost mortal combat. Serenity Granger’s strategy had been to look at what her mother did and then do the opposite. The same was true for Joanna and Eleanor Lathrop.

What will happen with Jenny? Joanna wondered. Since I’m a cop, does that mean she’s destined to end up a crook? Or will she really turn into a veterinarian?

Joanna was drawn out of her reverie, not by the continuing questions and answers, but by a sudden urgent knocking on her office door. Why was it that just when she had something important going on – just when she needed a little peace and quiet – her office turned into Grand Central Station?

Not wanting to disrupt Jaime’s interview with Serenity Granger, Joanna hurried to the door. Casey Ledford stood outside holding several pieces of computer-generated printouts.

“What is it, Casey? We’ve got an important interview going on in here.”

“Yes, I know.” Casey nodded. “Lupe told me, but this is important, too. I got a hit from one of the prints I took off a hammer I found in a drawer up at Castle Rock Gallery. Everything else was pretty clean, but whoever wiped the place down must have forgotten about the hammer or maybe didn’t see it. Anyway, here’s the guy’s rap sheet. I thought you’d want to check it out.”

Joanna took the paper and looked at the mug shot. The name said Jack Brampton, but the photo was clearly Dee Canfield’s boyfriend, the man known around Bisbee as Warren Gibson. Joanna’s memory flashed back to when she had last seen him, standing in Castle Rock Gallery, glaring threateningly at Bobo Jenkins and tapping the head of a hammer – perhaps the very same one – in the open palm of his hand. Brampton had served twenty-one months in a medium-security Illinois prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while driving drunk. He had previously worked as a pharmaceutical salesman.

That might be enough for him to know something about sodium azide, Joanna thought. Enough to make him very dangerous.

“Good work, Casey,” she said. “Can I keep this?”

Casey nodded. “Sure. I’m making copies for everyone who’ll be coming to the one-o’clock meeting.”

“Terrific. Drop one off with Dispatch as you go. I want an APB out on this guy ASAP. He’s got a good head start on us, so we may have a tough time catching up. We’ll assume, for right now, that he’s still driving Deidre Canfield’s Pinto. It’s distinctive enough that it shouldn’t be hard to find.”

While Casey hurried away, Joanna turned back into her office. The interview was coming to an end. Serenity Granger, purse in hand, stood just inside the door. “So you think it’s going to be several days before Mother’s body can be released?”

“Several for sure,” Jaime Carbajal said. “First there’ll have to be an autopsy. The medical examiner won’t release the body until well after that. If I were you, I’d find a hotel room where you can settle in and wait.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Probably the Copper Queen back uptown in Old Bisbee,” he told her. “But regardless of where you stay, please let us know where you’ll be.”

Serenity Granger nodded. “Of course,” she said.

Joanna wished Jaime Carbajal hadn’t suggested the Copper Queen. Pretty soon everyone staying at the old hotel would be connected to this case, one way or the other. But she didn’t voice her objection aloud. After all, the only thing Joanna wanted was for Serenity Granger to leave her office. The information about Warren Gibson’s criminal past was far too important to blurt out with a civilian present, even if that civilian was vitally concerned with finding the person under investigation.

“I’ll walk you to the lobby,” Frank Montoya offered.

“Don’t bother,” Serenity said, turning him down. “I can find my way.”

As soon as the door closed behind her, both Frank and Jaime turned to Joanna expectantly. “All right,” Frank said. “Give.”

Joanna handed him the paper. “Warren Gibson’s real name is Jack Brampton,” she said. “He’s an ex – pharmaceutical salesman who’s done time for DWI and involuntary manslaughter. Casey’s made copies of the rap sheet so we’ll have them available for the task force meeting at one. I want everybody there. I also want copies available of everything we have so far, including a written report of what we’ve just learned from Serenity Granger. By the way, Beaumont will be here for the meeting.”

Both men looked at Joanna. “Since when?” Jaime asked.

“Since last night when I invited him,” Joanna said.

Jaime shook his head. “Great,” he muttered. “Guess I’d better get started typing my report, then.”

Jaime stalked from the room. Joanna glanced at Frank to see if he shared Jaime’s opinion about including Beaumont in the task force. If the chief deputy disapproved, it didn’t show. He walked over to Joanna’s desk and retrieved a pile of papers he’d brought along with him into her office.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Copies of everything we had up to this morning. Even with Beaumont included, there’ll be enough to go around. I thought you might want to go over them yourself before the meeting.”

“Thanks, Frank. You’re good at keeping me on track. I really appreciate it.”

“And then there’s this.” He removed a fat manila envelope from the bottom of the stack and passed it over as well.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A present,” he said. “It’s the information you asked me to track down on Anne Rowland Corley,” Frank told her. “There’s quite a bit of it – probably too much to read between now and one o’clock, but you might want to skim through some of it. If what I’m picking up is anything close to accurate, whoever sent Special Investigator Beaumont to Bisbee wasn’t doing the poor guy any favors.”

Joanna pulled out the topmost clipping and glanced at it. The article, dated several years earlier, was taken from the Seattle Times. It reported that a special internal investigation conducted by the Seattle Police Department had concluded that a deranged Anne Corley had died three weeks earlier as a result of a single gunshot wound, fired by her husband of one day, Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont. The fatal shooting had occurred at a place called Snoqualmie Falls State Park. Anne Corley’s death had now been officially ruled as self-defense, and Detective Beaumont had been recalled from administrative leave.

Putting the paper down, Joanna stared at her chief deputy. “It sounds to me like cop-assisted suicide,” she said.

Frank Montoya shrugged his shoulders. “Or husband-assisted suicide,” he said. “Take your pick. Now I’d better get going, too. I’m working on the telephone information you asked me to get, but weekends aren’t the best time to do that.”

He went out then, closing the door behind him. Meanwhile, Joanna shuffled through the contents of the envelope. Looking at the dates, she realized that at the time Anne Rowland Corley died, Joanna had been a working wife with a husband, a young child, and a ranch to look after. In addition to her full-time job as office manager for the Davis Insurance Agency in Bisbee, she had been making a two-hundred-mile commute back and forth to Tucson twice a week while she finished up her bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona. No wonder Anne Rowland Corley’s death hadn’t made a noticeable blip on Joanna’s mental radar.