"Not six or seven times. None of those blows looked like enough to kill him, but they probably rendered him unconscious. The bag and the belt were probably added later to finish the job. I'd say you'd better check both of them for prints."

"We will," Joanna said. "I'll have my evidence techs go to work on them first thing tomorrow morning. What about time of death?"

"Sunday night or Monday morning. The room was cool enough that it slowed decomposition."

The call ended a few seconds later, and she switched off the phone.

"Bad news, huh?" Butch asked.

Joanna nodded. "Very bad news," she replied. "For several people," she added. "One of our recent murder victims turns out to have had AIDS, and there's a good chance he didn't know it. That means that most likely none of the people who've been hanging around with him knew it, either."

"Too bad for them," Butch observed.

After that, Butch and Joanna drove for several blocks in silence.

"Life used to be much simpler, didn't it?" Butch Dixon said at last. "Back in the old days, I mean."

"Yes," Joanna agreed. "Much simpler."

They reached the hospital parking garage a few minutes later. "Just let me out here," she said.

Are you going back up?"

Joanna thought about it. "No," she said finally. "I think I'll just get in my car and go home."

"Drive carefully," Butch said.

"You, too."

"See you tomorrow, then," he added. "Maybe we can get together after work and I can show you the house." "Okay," she said. "I'd like that."

Sitting there with her fingers on the door handle, Joanna was wondering what to say next when Butch leaned over and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, but one that was spiced with a combination of tequila, salt, and cilantro and more than a trace of salsa. It was a soul-warming kiss that drew her into it, and before Joanna thought about it, she was kissing him back.

When Joanna left University Medical Center, she had every intention of going straight home. But as she drove down I-10 toward Benson, she couldn't get what Belle Philips had said out of her mind: "Talk to Ruben Ramos.”

Because of the Arizona Organization of Chiefs of Police, Joanna did know a little about Benson's police chief, Ruben Ramos-the broad outline, at any rate. She knew, for example, that he was Benson-born and -bred. He had started out as a lowly patrolman in Benson, joining the city police force right after high school and commuting on a part-time basis to the university in Tucson, where he had eventually earned a degree in criminal justice. He had risen through the ranks and had been chief for five or six years. Other than that, she knew

Turning off the freeway, she started down the hill into Benson. A few seconds later, she spotted a city patrol car parked off to the side of the road just beyond the bowling alley. She drove past, then reconsidered. After making a U-turn in the middle of the highway, she back up the hill to the patrol car.

"Can I help you, lady?" the officer asked, shining a flashlight in Joanna's eyes without bothering to set foot outside the comfort of his air-conditioned vehicle.

Joanna whipped out her badge. "I'm Sheriff Brady," she said. "I was wondering if it would be possible to talk to Chief Ramos."

"Is this important? After all, it's the middle of the night."

"You have a dispatcher, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have Dispatch call Chief Ramos on the phone. Tell him I have to talk to him and that I'll be glad to come by his house if need be. Tell him it's about his son."

With a shrug of his shoulders, the officer reached for his radio. After several exchanges back and forth, he returned it to its clip. "The chief says he'll come here. He wants you to wait."

That struck Joanna as odd. Had she been awakened in the middle of the night by a fellow law enforcement officer needing to speak to her in person, she would probably have asked him to stop by the house or the department. A middle-of-the-night rendezvous in a deserted summertime parking lot would not have been her first choice.

A minute or two later, an emergency call of some kind came in. With lights flashing, the patrol car sped off to answer it, leaving Joanna alone in the lot. She waited there for another five minutes or so until an unmarked, two-year-old Crown Victoria pulled up beside her. She recognized Ruben Ramos as soon as he rolled down the window.

"Let's cut to the chase," he said without preamble. "What's Frankie done now?"

"I'm sure by now you've heard about Clyde Philips-"

"Look," Ramos interrupted, "when you're a cop, you raise your kids under a damn microscope, And with three of the four, it worked fine. But Frankie's something else. I just didn't want it on his record, okay? The kid's got a hard enough row to hoe without that."

"You didn't want what on his record?"

"It wasn't that big a deal," Ramos continued. "Booze only, no drugs, nothing like that. If there had been drugs there, too, well, that would have been another story. But kids have been getting adults to buy their booze ever since Prohibition went out the window. Frankie was drinking. So what? He would have had a Minor in Possession and that would have been the extent of it. And Clyde would have been charged with providing alcohol to a minor and maybe an open container. I talked to a few people," Ruben added. "And the paperwork ended up not going anywhere. Maybe it was illegal. Hell, I know it was illegal, but I don't know too many fathers who wouldn't do that for one of their kids. If they could, that is."

Taken aback, Joanna realized there was a yawning gulf between what she had come to discuss with Chief Ruben Ramos and what he thought she had come to discuss. "You think that's what this is all about?" she asked. "That I asked to see you because your son was caught in possession of alcohol?"

"Isn't it?"

Joanna shook her head.

Ruben stared at her, his eyes narrowing. "Wait a minute here, you don't think Frankie had something to do with what happened to Clyde Philips, do you? You can't be serous. It couldn't be." He looked incredulous.

"Tell me about the MIP," Joanna said.

"Somebody put you up to this, somebody who's out to get me," Ramos muttered. "Who is it? Somebody on the City Council? I probably shouldn't even be talking to you without having an attorney present."

"Chief Ramos, I am not out to get you. I'm dealing with a series of homicides-four, to be exact, including Clyde Philips. A serial killer is loose in Cochise County. I need your help and your son's help as well."

"What kind of help?"

"You've told me yourself that Frankie had some connection to Clyde Philips. I suspect the killer did, too. All I want from your son is for him to give us the names of some of Clyde's other pals. Was there anyone besides Frankie involved in the incident where your son wasn't arrested?"

Ramos shook his head. "No, it was just the two of them. They were driving back to Frankie's place and Clyde missed a turn. They went into a ditch. No damage. According to what I was told, Clyde wasn't all that drunk. It wasn't that big a deal. At least that's what Eddy said."

"Eddy?" Joanna repeated. "You mean Eddy Sandoval?"

"Come on, Sheriff Brady," Ruben Ramos said. "Don't climb Eddy's frame about all this. He and I go back a long way. He knew about some of the problems Alicia and I have had with Frankie. He was just trying to help out."

Joanna wasn't impressed. "Look, Chief, if I've got a deputy looking the other way at drunk-driving offenses, then my department has a serious problem, one I need to address. But for right now, catching a killer takes precedence over everything else. Just tell me what happened."