If I was being given my own rest-room key, I had evidently arrived. “Thanks,” I told her. “Now, where do I go?”

“The conference room,” she said. “It’s through that door and three doors down the hall on the left.”

Since it wasn’t yet twelve forty-five, I figured I’d be the first to arrive, but I was wrong. Sheriff Brady was already in the conference room. She sat at the head of a long table with several stacks of paper lined up in front of her. She looked up at me curiously as I entered the room. Her appraisal was so thorough that I wondered for a moment if my fly was unzipped.

“Good afternoon, Special Investigator Beaumont,” she said, motioning me into a chair. “You’re early.”

I took the seat she indicated. She slid one of the stacks in my direction.

“What you have there are copies of everything we’ve come up with so far,” she told me. “You’ll find crime scene reports, preliminary autopsy results, transcripts of interviews, an Internet treatise on poisons in general and sodium azide in particular. If we’re going to be working together, you need to know everything we do.”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

It hurt to have to haul my reading glasses out of my pocket, but I swallowed my pride and did so. The topmost report was the crime scene report from the Latisha Wall murder in Naco. I started to read, but stopped a couple of sentences into it.

“There is one thing,” I said.

Sheriff Brady looked up from her own reading. Under her questioning brow, I caught a glimpse of the banked fire in those vivid green eyes. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Since we’re going to be working together, how about ditching the ‘Special Investigator’ crap? Most people call me Beau. Either that or J.P.”

She studied me for a long time before she answered. “All right,” she said finally. “Beau it is, and I’m Joanna.”

Sixteen

WHEN I WAS IN the eighth grade at Seattle’s Loyal Heights Junior High, my homeroom and social studies teacher, Miss Bond, encouraged me to run for student council. Unfortunately, I won. That year of attending regular and utterly pointless meetings doomed me to a lifetime of hating same. In my twenty-plus years at Seattle PD I had a reputation for dodging meetings – this very kind of meeting – whenever possible.

This particular task force gathering, however, was one I had actually wanted to attend. Since Joanna and I seemed to have a few more minutes before the others were due to arrive, I settled in and read as much of the handout material as I could. I wanted to be prepared. Before, Sheriff Brady’s department had given me no information at all. Now, with someone obviously burning the midnight-copier ink, I’d been given far too much.

One by one, people wandered into the room and were introduced: Casey Ledford, the latent fingerprint tech; Deputy Dave Hollicker, crime scene investigator; and homicide detective Jaime Carbajal. The last to arrive was Chief Deputy Frank Montoya, but I already knew him. As they showed up, I was struck by how young they all were. I could just as well have wandered into a Junior Chamber of Commerce meeting. My understanding about Jaycees is that once a member hits the ripe old age of thirty-five, he’s out on his tush. Self-consciously, I stroked my chin, making sure I had shaved closely enough that morning to erase the stubborn patch of gray whiskers that has lately started sprouting there.

I’m not sure what Joanna’s team of investigators had been told previously about my presence in their midst. None of them went out of his or her way to make me feel welcome. I was grateful when Joanna Brady tackled that issue head-on.

“You’ve all been introduced to Special Investigator Beaumont,” Sheriff Brady said when she stood up at the stroke of 1 P.M. “He’s here as a representative of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, which has a vested interest in seeing that whoever killed Latisha Wall is brought to justice. Since it seems inconceivable that Latisha’s murder and Deidre Canfield’s death are unrelated, this is Mr. Beaumont’s deal as much as it is ours. From here on, he’s to be treated as a full member of this investigation. Any information you give me, you should also give him. Is that clear?”

Sheriff Brady’s crew may have been young, but they were unarguably professional. Uneasy nods of assent passed around the table. None of them were thrilled to have an interloper among them, but no one raised an audible objection.

“Good, then,” Joanna concluded. “Let’s get started.”

Clearly I wasn’t the only one who had put in a relatively sleepless night. Deputy Hollicker looked especially bedraggled, with dark circles under bloodshot eyes. He had spent most of the night processing the Canfield crime scene down in Naco. Scanning through my pile of papers, I noticed that it didn’t contain a written report from him about that. Bearing that in mind, I wasn’t the least surprised when Joanna Brady put him in the hot seat first.

“I’m working on the paper,” he said when she called on him. “I’m sorry my report isn’t ready-”

“Never mind the report,” Joanna Brady said, waving aside his apology. “Just tell us. Did you find anything useful?”

The CSI shook his head miserably. “Not really. Local kids have been messing around in those old cavalry barracks for years. I found all kinds of junk in there – trash, beer bottles, cigarette butts, and gum wrappers. It’s tough to tell what, if anything, might be related.”

“You did say cavalry,” I confirmed. “As in horses?”

“That’s right. The building where the body was found is on the site of an old U.S. Cavalry post that dates from the 1880s,” Joanna Brady explained. “The crime scene is actually one of the old officers’ quarters. What about the stables, Dave? Did you search them, too?”

If I had stumbled into a case where the crime scene turned out to be a cavalry post, maybe I was Rip Van Winkle in reverse.

Hollicker nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Every inch. Detective Carbajal thought we might find another body there – the boyfriend’s, presumably. We didn’t, though.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Joanna said grimly. “There’ll be more about Warren Gibson later. Go on.”

“Deputy Howell and I brought back as much stuff to the lab as we thought might be relevant. Again, it’ll take time to go through it all. I’ll work on it as time allows.”

“Did you talk to Doc Winfield?” Joanna asked.

Dave nodded. “Detective Carbajal and I both did. It was right after the ME arrived on the scene, so he didn’t know much at that point. He did tell us, though, that he’s reasonably certain Dee Canfield died somewhere else. The body was dumped there afterward.”

“What about Dee’s house out in Huachuca Terraces? Did either you or Casey get around to checking it out?”

Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker shook their heads in unison. “Ran out of time,” Dave explained. “I had a deputy put up crime scene tape. I’ll go there later today, right after the meeting.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Moving right along. Let’s talk about Warren Gibson for a minute. Dave, you and Mr. Beaumont probably haven’t heard about this yet, but Ms. Canfield’s daughter from Cheyenne, Wyoming – a woman named Serenity Granger – came to my office this morning. She brought along a copy of an unfinished e-mail that her mother sent her Thursday afternoon. Ms. Granger didn’t actually read the message until yesterday. You should have a copy of that along with your other handouts.”

I shuffled through my paperwork until I located Deidre Canfield’s unfinished missive to her daughter.

“If you check the time,” Joanna Brady was saying, “it’s listed as 4:10:26 P.M. Mountain Standard. Now look at the transcript of Jaime’s interview with Dee Canfield. Look at the last two sentences right at the end.”

After a little more paper shuffling, I located the right passages.