“Back so soon?” Arturo asked when he answered.
“I’m in the lab talking to my CSIs. They’re on board with the whole idea of doing that vehicle search, but they’re wondering if the border guards are equipped with body cams.”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll find out,” Arturo vowed. “If they don’t have them right now, I’ll figure out a way for them to have body cams by Friday.”
“Okay then,” Joanna said. “Let’s say it’s a go.”
“But will it work?” Dave Hollicker asked, horning in on the conversation.
“Will what work?” Joanna demanded.
“Will evidence obtained that way be admissible in a court of law?” Dave insisted. “If not, we might be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Joanna felt as though Dave had just dumped a bucket of ice water on what had seemed like such a promising idea, but maybe the man had a point.
“That was Dave Hollicker, one of my CSIs,” Joanna explained to Arturo, “and he could be right. Don’t put anything in motion until I check with the county attorney.”
“Okay,” Arturo said. He, too, sounded deflated. “Let me know what you find out.”
Ten minutes later, after a quick phone call to the county attorney’s office, Joanna was on her way to Old Bisbee. As always when pulling into the parking lot on Quality Hill, she found herself thinking about her dad. Back when D.H. Lathrop had been sheriff, his office and the jail, too, had been located right across the street in the basement of the old courthouse. Things were a lot different now.
Cochise County’s longtime prosecutor, Arlee Jones, had passed away from a heart attack the previous summer. Arlee had been absolutely old school and a misogynist to boot, a guy who had taken a dim view of females in law enforcement. He and Joanna had been at loggerheads for much of the time she’d been sheriff. After his passing, the assistant county attorney, Craig Witherspoon, had been appointed to fill out Arlee’s term of office and had been elected in his own right weeks earlier at the same time Joanna had won reelection.
Joanna hadn’t had that many dealings with the new guy, but since Craig was a good forty years younger than Arlee and a couple years younger than Joanna herself, she was hopeful they’d have a somewhat better working relationship, and she drove there with a hopeful heart.
Some of the differences between the two men were apparent the moment Joanna stepped inside Craig Witherspoon’s office. Arlee’swalls had been decorated with ego-boosting framed diplomas and countless awards. Craig’s walls displayed a collection of family photos, including his wife, a young kid in a Little League uniform, and an adorable little girl decked out as a ballerina.
Arlee had always treated Joanna as some kind of interloper. Craig greeted her warmly. “I guess mutual congratulations are in order, Sheriff Brady. Welcome to your fourth term.”
“Congrats to you, too,” she said. “I’m looking forward to working together.”
“Speaking of which, is this about the dead kid found in the San Pedro?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“What’s the deal?”
Joanna spent the next ten minutes laying out the background of the Xavier Delgado case. Craig knew about it, of course, because the assistant county attorney had been at the recovery scene in St. David that miserable Saturday afternoon along with everyone else, but he was unfamiliar with the current state of the investigation. He listened attentively, with his index fingers steepled in front of him, but before Joanna even finished her pitch, he was already shaking his head.
“Sorry,” he said, “but it’s never going to work. In this instance we would have officials from both sides of the border conspiring to effect a warrantless search, and that would be regarded as a violation of Mr. Roper’s constitutional rights. In addition, any evidence that came in as a result of that illegal search, including evidence found later during the execution of any subsequent search warrants, would be considered fruits of the poisonous tree and also be deemed inadmissible.”
Joanna had thought that at last they’d be making some actual headway in the case, but she did her best to hide her disappointment.
“Well,” she said lamely, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I’m sure it did,” Craig agreed. “Your job is to catch the guy. Mine is to make sure we can prove he did it in a court of law.”
“I understand completely,” she said. “I want to prove it, too.”
“What else have you got?” Craig asked.
“Not much,” she admitted. “There’s a possibility that our guy might be a repeat offender, but so far Roper’s got no criminal history.”
“So no prints or DNA on file?” Craig asked.
Joanna nodded. “None at all. We’re hoping to collect some trash DNA to see if we can connect him to any unidentified profiles in CODIS, but otherwise we’re coming up empty.”
“Look,” Craig said, “I happen to agree with you that there’s a good chance Roper’s our guy, and I want him off the streets every bit as much as you do, but suspicions don’t carry the day. We have to be able to prove it. So remember that old story about the tortoise and the hare—slow and steady wins the race.”
