“Which brings us right back to the Hal Morgan problem,” Joanna put in. “Has Ernie talked to the man?”
“To Morgan? Not that I know of,” Voland replied. “At least he hadn’t the last time I heard from him. My understanding is that Morgan’s doctor still won’t let anyone in the room.”
“If the man’s physical condition is that serious,” Frank Montoya offered, “then it strikes me he’s in no shape to take off under his own steam.”
“In other words,” Joanna said, addressing Frank, “you don’t think the guard is necessary.”
“Not at this time. At least not until he’s either well enough to be released or until we’ve made a decision to charge him. On the other hand, if Dick here insists on having a guard, then he needs to pull someone in off patrol to do that duty. This morning I took a look at Deputy Pakin’s time sheet from yesterday. He pulled an eighteen-hour shift. That’s ridiculous. I hate to think how much we paid per hour to have somebody guarding a bedridden patient who was too sick to move.”
Joanna looked to Dick Voland. “You still have a guard on duty there this morning?”
Voland nodded.
“And it’s someone who was off duty rather than pulling a deputy off patrol?”
The chief deputy squirmed. “Well, yes, but-”
“No buts, Mr. Voland,” Joanna snapped, cutting him off in mid-excuse. “Enough of this. I’m going to go track down Ernie Carpenter. Once I talk to him, I’ll make the call on whether or not the guard is necessary. From now on, who-ever stands guard duty comes from the regular patrol-duty roster. Overtime is out. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Voland responded with just a trace too much emphasis on the “ma’am” part. “You’re the boss,” he added, standing up. “Is that all?”
Joanna glanced at Frank. “I don’t have anything else,” he said.
“That’s all then,” Joanna answered.
A steamed Richard Voland marched out of the office. “He’s not a very good loser, is he,” Frank Montoya observed as the door swung shut.
“It’s not a matter of winning or losing, Frank,” Joanna said, a little dismayed to find herself defending Dick Voland. “Since you’re still here, there must be something on your mind. Tell me.”
“I’ve been hearing some grousing out there among the troops.”
“That’s hardly news. What kind of grousing?”
“Some of the deputies are saying that if you hadn’t sent Deputy Pakin on his way early yesterday morning, Bucky Buckwalter wouldn’t be dead.”
Joanna felt the hot blood rush to her cheeks, but there was no point in denying; the charge. She herself had reached much the same conclusion. “Maybe it’s true,” she ventured quietly
Frank shook his head. “No way. If killing Bucky was Morgan’s whole purpose in coming to town, he would have waited until Pakin left regardless of how long it took. You ordering Pakin to leave had nothing to do with it.”
“Thanks, Frank,” Joanna said. “I appreciate your saying that, but if it turns out that the investigation shows I’m partially responsible for what happened, then I’m prepared to live with the consequences. In the meantime, my deputies are entitled to their opinions.”
“If they’re looking to lay blame,” Frank said, “there’s more than enough to go around.” With that, he opened a fib folder and dropped a sheaf of papers onto Joanna’s already cluttered desk.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Just for the hell of it, I went surfing the net last night. I called up all the press coverage I could find on the Bonnie Morgan case from last year. I also talked to some of the Phoenix P.D. guys who handled the case. You might want to take a look at all this before you make a final decision about stationing a guard at the hospital. Rather than taking a hike, think it’s far more likely that Morgan is going to use this whole thing as a forum for focusing attention on what happened to him and his wife.”
“All this time I thought you were lobbying against posting the guard because you thought Hal Morgan was innocent.”
Frank Montoya shook his head. “I’m a good Catholic boy,” he said. “Anybody who’s been raised Catholic knows, that martyrs always get the best press. So why should we spend money to guard him when he’s going to make far more of a splash by going to jail than he will it we just let him go?”
Joanna smiled. “I’ll try to bear that in mind, but I’ll read through this all the same.” She glanced down at the top artiicle, the headline of which said: “Wrong-Way Driver Kills Pedestrian.” Joanna looked back over at Frank. “Thanks for gathering all this together. Is that all?”
“Pretty much.”
“What’s your game plan for the day?”
Frank checked his watch. “I’ve got a press conference in half an hour. After that I’ll most likely spend the rest of the day working on those budget figures. I’ll probably still be working on them when hell freezes over. What about you?”
Joanna looked at the several separate stacks that covered nost of the surface of her desk. “First I have to deal with a mountain of paper. That’ll probably eat up most of the morning. At noon there’s the annual women’s club luncheon. This is the meeting when they present the department with the framed photo of yours truly for our little photo display out in the lobby. I’m expected to give a speech.”
“That should be fun,” Frank said. “Especially with all this Buckwalter business just hitting the fan.”
“It’s not that. Mother made it a point of coming back from D.C. in time so she could be in attendance at the luncheon. I adore those kinds of events where I get to do double duty-laughter and sheriff at one and the same time.”
Frank chuckled and headed for the door. “Good luck with that,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
Joanna was determined to infuse a little bit of humor into in otherwise grim morning. “It’s just as well,” she said. ‘You’d look pretty funny in two-and-a-quarter-inch heels.”
Once she was alone, Joanna dutifully turned to the stack of correspondence Kristin had indicated was most urgent. Even as she filled out the registration form for the Arizona Sheriff’s Association meeting in Lake Havasu City in two weeks’ time, her eyes kept being drawn to the plain manila folder Frank Montoya had dropped on her desk. Finally, with the form half completed, she pushed it aside and opened the folder.
The first article was a straightforward fatality accident account-who, where, when:
A pedestrian struck by a speeding pickup in a downtown crosswalk has become Phoenix ’s fifth traffic fatality of the new year.
Bonnie Genevieve Morgan, fifty-two, a Wickenburg resident, was run down and killed last night at nine-thirty when a pickup crashed into a pair of pedestrians at the intersection of Third Street and Van Buren. Ms. Morgan and her husband, Halford William Morgan, also of Wickenburg, were returning to their hotel room after attending a movie. Ms. Morgan was pronounced dead at the scene while her husband was uninjured.
The driver of the vehicle, Dr. Amos Buckwalter of Bisbee, was treated for cuts and bruises at Good Samaritan Hospital before being booked into the Maricopa County Jail on suspicion of vehicular homicide. Buckwalter was reportedly in Phoenix to attend the annual meeting of Arizona State Veterinarians’ Association being held at the Phoenix Convention Center.
Investigators at the scene say that the incident is most likely alcohol-related.
Shaking her head, Joanna put clown that page and picked up the next one. Here there was very little text, only a picture of a street sign with a bunch of balloons on strings tied to it. “Balloons, a bouquet of roses, and a single candle mark the corner of the intersection where Wickenburg resident Bonnie Genevieve Morgan died last night in the Phoenix area’s fifth fatality traffic accident of the year.”