Seventeen

ABOUT THEN THE MAN IN THE SUIT charged across the yard to meet us. From the irate expression on the attorney’s face I doubted Burton Kimball would be nearly as tractable as Officer Rojas had been.

“All right, Sheriff Brady,” Kimball snapped. “As you can see, we did what you said. We’re out of the house. Now how about telling us what this is about? If the white powder in the box isn’t a drug, what is it?”

Joanna took one more deep breath before she answered. “I’m guessing it’ll turn out to be sodium azide,” she answered. “It’s a deadly poison. We have reason to believe Latisha Wall died as a result of sodium azide poisoning.”

“Never heard of it,” Kimball grunted.

“Not many people have,” Joanna agreed.

“What is it?”

“It’s the propellant used to deploy air bags in vehicles,” she explained. “Sodium azide is more toxic than cyanide. It has no known antidote.”

Bobo Jenkins spoke for the first time. “Did you say Shelley was poisoned?” he croaked. “How’s that possible?”

“We believe the fatal dose was placed in something she drank,” Joanna answered. “Most likely in her iced tea.”

“But how…” Bobo began. Then his face changed as he put it together. “The sweetener packets!” he exclaimed.

Joanna gave him a searching look. Finally, she nodded.

As I said, Bobo Jenkins was a big man. His arms and legs bulged with muscles. As the awfulness of the situation sank in, his knees seemed to buckle. He staggered unsteadily over to the porch steps and dropped down onto the topmost one.

“But I’m the one who put the sweetener in her tea,” he blurted out. “Two packets. That’s what Shelley always took in her iced tea. Two packets. Never any more; never any less. Does that mean I’m the one who killed her?”

“Enough, Bobo,” Burton Kimball interjected. “Don’t say anything more. Not another word.”

If Kimball’s stunned client heard his attorney’s objection, he paid no attention.

“And that’s what you think is here in my house right now, in the box in my laundry room?” Jenkins continued. “You think it’s the same thing? The same poison?”

By then, Kimball was practically beside himself. “Mr. Jenkins, please. No more. Sheriff Brady, you haven’t informed my client of his rights. I must ask that you refrain from asking any more questions, the answers to which may be prejudicial…”

Ignoring the lawyer, Joanna sat down on the porch step next to Bobo Jenkins. “Tell me about today,” she said quietly.

“Today?” He gave her an anguished look, as though not quite comprehending the question.

“Tell me everything that happened,” she urged. “Everything that led up to your finding the box.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Last night I couldn’t sleep.” He said. “I kept tossing and turning and thinking about…” He paused and swallowed hard before continuing. “… about what had happened. I couldn’t believe I’d lost Shelley just like that. I still can’t believe it. Sometimes it seems like it’s got to be some awful nightmare. Eventually, I’ll wake up and she won’t be gone.

“Anyway, after lying in bed for hours, I finally got up about three o’clock this morning. I dressed and went for a run. I ran all the way down to Warren and back. By the time I finished, the sun was just coming up. I showered and went to bed. I finally fell asleep after that and didn’t wake up until a little while ago. I went out to the kitchen to put on some coffee. While I waited for the coffee to finish, I decided to start a load of clothes. That’s when I found that box – a duct-taped box I’d never seen before – sitting there on top of the dryer. The flexible vent duct is connected to it.”

“Did you touch it?”

Jenkins shook his head. “Give me some credit. I’m smarter than that. The box has a window in the top that’s covered with plastic wrap. As soon as I saw the white powder in it, I called Mr. Kimball.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding? When Jaime Carbajal and Frank Montoya interviewed me yesterday morning, they didn’t give out any details, but I could tell from their questions that I was under suspicion – that they thought I was somehow responsible for Shelley’s death. Now I know why. You must have found my fingerprints on the sweetener packets, since I’m the one who poured them into her glass.”

Ignoring that, Joanna responded with yet another question. “When you saw the box, what did you think was in it?” she asked.

Jenkins shrugged. “I assumed it was cocaine. I figured someone was trying to frame me for dealing drugs or something worse.”

“But why would you think someone from my department placed it there?” Joanna asked.

He shook his head as though no explanation should have been necessary. “You’re not a black man considering running for public office in this country,” he said softly. “You’re not being paranoid if people really are out to get you.”

I had been listening to all of this and trying to keep my mouth shut. Now, though, I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents’ worth. “Look. If someone planted the box in Mr. Jenkins’s house, how was it done? Any sign of a break-in? It takes time to rip off a dryer duct and reconnect it.”

“I don’t lock my doors,” Bobo said. “I never have.”

Burton Kimball looked distinctly unhappy about the way the conversation was going, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Nobody paid any attention to him, least of all his client.

“You said you were making coffee,” Joanna mused thoughtfully. “What do you use in it?” she added.

It seemed like an off-the-wall question. At first I couldn’t see where she was going. Bobo Jenkins seemed puzzled as well. “What do you think? Coffee and water,” he said. “What else is there?”

“I mean, how do you take it?” Joanna asked. “Black, or with cream and sugar?”

“Sugar but no cream,” he said. “I’m lactose-intolerant.”

“Where do you keep your sugar?”

“In the fridge,” he said. “If I leave it out on the counter or table, I sometimes have problems with ants. Why?”

Then I understood. The white powder in the duct-taped box. It would have taken time, effort, and ingenuity to put sodium azide in sweetener packets. By comparison, putting a few spoonfuls of it into a sugar bowl would be simple – and just as deadly.

At that moment a deputy I didn’t know – an officer named Matt Raymond – hustled up the steps and into the yard. “What’s happening?” Joanna asked.

“Detective Carbajal says it’s confirmed. The abandoned car definitely belongs to Dee Canfield. It’s on a road that winds through the hills and ends up about half a mile east of here, on the far side of B-Hill.”

I had noticed a big whitewashed “B” on one of the hills as I drove into town for the first time. Now I realized that Bobo Jenkins’s home was on one of the flanks of that selfsame hill. Half a mile away wasn’t very far.

“Which way was the Pinto going when they found it?” Joanna asked. “In or out?”

“Out,” the deputy returned. “Detective Carbajal says it looks like the driver was attempting to turn the vehicle around so he could head back to the highway when he got hung up on a boulder. Broke the axle right in two.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Joanna said. “We’d better get the K-9 unit out there on the double.”

“Already done,” Officer Raymond said. “Deputy Gregovich and Spike are on their way.

Nodding, Joanna turned back to the attorney. “Look, Burton,” she said, “we’ve called in the Haz-Mat team. The fewer people we have hanging around when they get here, the better. How about if you take Mr. Jenkins and go someplace else for a while? Let me know where you are. Someone from the department will notify you when it’s safe for him to return home.”

“I’ll be only too happy to,” Kimball said, still sounding slightly miffed. “Come on, Bobo. Let’s get out of here. We wouldn’t want to be in anyone’s way.”