“He’ll do it first thing tomorrow, and he’ll give me a call beforehand,” Jaime Carbajal replied. “The good news is that Ernie will be back on duty tomorrow morning. Once he’s back on board, maybe I can have him handle the Verdugo boys’ interviews. At least I’ll have some help covering the bases.”

“Or Mr. Beaumont could help out,” Joanna suggested quietly. With Jaime looking mutinous, she moved to lessen the tension. “Hey, Frank,” she added. “Next time Ernie asks for a whole week off, let him know he’s not allowed to leave town until after he checks with our upcoming homicide scheduler.”

They all laughed at that, even Jaime. The atmosphere in the room relaxed noticeably.

“All right,” she said. “Now for our chemistry lesson.”

WE SPENT THE NEXT HALF hour hearing all about something called sodium azide. Joanna had mentioned it prior to the meeting. Rather than show my ignorance, I had said nothing. It turns out that as far as sodium azide is concerned, ignorance is bliss. Just hearing about the stuff was enough to scare the crap out of me.

Frank Montoya had tracked down an Internet article that explained how various poisons, sodium azide included, present. An ingested poison often exhibits a delayed reaction. The victim isn’t affected until the substance is absorbed into the bloodstream. Inhaled sodium azide goes into the lungs and directly into the blood, where its molecules bond with oxygen molecules and render the oxygen unusable.

The information in Frank’s article was already more than I wanted to know, but it did explain the time lag between when Latisha Wall drank her tea and her death sometime later. What Dave Hollicker had to say about sodium azide’s ready availability was horrifying.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, minutes into his lecture. “You’re saying this stuff – this incredibly dangerous stuff that isn’t even illegal – can be found in damned near every two-car garage in America?”

“That’s right,” Hollicker agreed blandly. “Those canisters are in every car with air bags.”

“So the next kid who gets pissed off at his English teacher in Podunk, USA, can slip some of it into her coffee and knock her off just like that? This is nuts, totally nuts! And nobody’s doing anything about it?”

“Not so far,” Dave Hollicker said. “According to what I’ve learned, there’s currently no plan to regulate sodium azide in any way or even to add a marker substance.”

About that time there was a knock on the conference room door. “Come in,” Joanna called.

Lupe Alvarez stuck her head inside. “Rick Orting, the dispatcher for the city of Bisbee just called, Sheriff Brady. Someone from Phelps Dodge is reporting finding an abandoned multicolored Pinto.”

A charge of excitement surged around the room. “Where is it?” Joanna demanded.

“Between the end of Wood Canyon and Old Bisbee,” Lupe replied. “It’s on one of those company roads, the ones that go out to PD’s new drilling sites north of Lavender Pit. The Pinto’s rear axle is broken. A day-shift watchman found it a little while ago when he was out doing his rounds.”

“Thanks, Lupe,” Joanna said, then turned back to her team of investigators. “Okay, Jaime. You, Casey, and Dave get on this right away.” Without another word, the three of them hustled out of the room.

“What about me, boss?” Frank Montoya asked.

“Even if you’re dealing with second-stringers, you stay here and keep after the phone stuff. We need that information.”

“And me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re with me.”

“Why?”

“So I can keep an eye on you. You’re part of this investigation, but I don’t want to spend the entire afternoon giving you directions and guiding you from one place to another.”

“I have a map…” I began.

“Forget it. Just go get in the car.”

“Yours or mine?”

The disparaging look she gave me told me the question was unworthy of being dignified with an answer. “Come on,” she said.

Rather than going out through the public lobby, Joanna hustled me first to her private office and then out a door that led directly into the parking lot. I started toward the Crown Victoria I knew to be hers.

“Not that one,” she said, stopping me. “We’ll take the Blazer.”

We walked two rows into the parking lot, where she climbed into the driver’s seat of an SUV that had definitely seen better days – from a physical-beauty point of view. However, a powerful engine sprang to life the moment she turned the key in the ignition. The term “ugly but honest!” came to mind.

We drove into town and back toward Old Bisbee. At the far end of the huge layered hole in the ground she explained was Lavender Pit we came to a spot where a group of cop cars, lights flashing, had converged alongside the road. Some of the vehicles were marked city of bisbee; others, sheriff’s department. They were grouped around the entrance to a freshly graded dirt road that led off between the red-rock hills.

We were pulling over to check things out when a call came in over the radio. “Sheriff Brady?”

“Yes, Tica,” she responded. “What is it?”

“I have Burton Kimball on the phone. He needs to talk to you right away.”

Joanna sighed. “Look, Tica. I’m really busy at the moment…”

“He says it’s urgent,” Tica insisted. “Is it all right if I patch him through?”

“I suppose so,” Joanna agreed grudgingly. “Go ahead.”

“Sheriff Brady?” A male voice roared through the radio. Despite having been filtered through both a telephone receiver and the radio, his words buzzed angrily in the air.

“What in the world are you and your people trying to pull now?” he demanded. “I can’t believe you’d stoop so low that you’d go to such incredible lengths. Really, Joanna, I always thought you were above this kind of stunt.”

Whoever Burton Kimball was, he was pissed as hell. In the course of the previous twenty-four hours, I’d seen some pretty strong indications that Sheriff Brady has a temper. I fully expected her to cut loose and give the guy as good as she got. She surprised me.

“Slow down a minute, Burton,” she returned mildly. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone has broken into my client’s house and planted what looks like a cache of drugs here,” he replied. “If you think you can get away with that kind of nonsense…” He paused as if searching for words. “I tell you, Joanna, I’m outraged about this – absolutely outraged!”

She and I hit on the word “drugs” at the same time, and we both jumped to the same conclusion. Why wouldn’t we? Drug or not, sodium azide was the topic of the moment. A few minutes earlier we’d been sitting in a conference room learning all about it.

It was interesting to realize once again that when Joanna Brady was upset, her voice went down instead of up. “What drugs?” she asked urgently but softly. Sitting right next to her, I could barely hear her, but Burton Kimball heard.

“How would I know?” he snapped back. “I didn’t taste it, if that’s what you mean. I wouldn’t know what cocaine tastes like if it walked up and hit me in the face, but since this is a white powder, cocaine is my first assumption.”

I watched while every trace of color drained from Joanna Brady’s face. Her voice didn’t change or falter. “This white powder,” she said calmly, “where exactly is it?”

“In my client’s laundry room,” Burton Kimball replied. “Bobo went out there this afternoon to do some laundry and found it sitting there, right in plain sight on the dryer. It’s in a box that’s been wrapped in duct tape and hooked up to the dryer vent. When he called to tell me about it, I advised him to leave it alone. I tell you, Joanna…”

“Where are you right now?” Joanna interrupted.

“Where am I?” Burton Kimball returned. “Where do you think? I’m at my client’s house, and you can bet I’m staying here until someone comes to collect this stuff and take it away.”