Read Online Dead Wrong by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online

directly to her Crown Victoria and headed for High Lonesome Ranch. With all the dogs closeted inside the house with Jenny, it was unnaturally quiet when she drove up the road to the U-shaped ranch house with itstwo separate wings and parked in her designated garage at the end of the far wing. When she let herself into the family room, however, Lady was at the door waiting to greet her.
    After kicking off her shoes and giving her grateful toes a relaxing wiggle, Joanna did a barefoot inspection of the house. Jenny was asleep in her room with the television set booming away and with both Tigger and Lucky curled up on the bed with her, one dog per side. In the kitchen Joanna found a collection of dirty dishes, along with evidence both of the noodle soup Jenny had eaten for dinner as well as the microwave popcorn she had snacked on later. There were two popcorn bags in the trash. One was empty. The other, clearly overcooked, was full of black cinders. Why the bag hadn’t set the microwave on fire was nothing short of a miracle. Out in the laundry room Joanna found that the dogs had been well taken care of. The water dishes were full of water. The food dishes were empty. In other words, everything was fine.
    For a moment, Joanna considered making herself a late-night cup of cocoa, but then she changed her mind. She was too tired. What she needed was rest instead of a late-night snack. She went into the bedroom, undressed, and tumbled into bed.
    The phone awakened her at 6:07 A.M. “Sheriff Brady?” a hesitant voice said. “Sorry if I’m calling too early.”
    It took Joanna a moment to sort out who was calling. Finally she recognized her caller’s voice. Jeannine Phillips was one of Joanna’s two Animal Control officers. A year earlier, during a series of budgetary cuts, Animal Control had been added to Joanna’s area of responsibility. At first she’d been told it was only a temporary measure, but so far nothing had changed.
    “What is it, Jeannine?” Joanna asked groggily.
    “I woke you up, didn’t I?” Jeannine apologized.
    “It doesn’t matter. What is it?”
    “I found another one.”
    Joanna didn’t need to ask another what. She knew. Three times in the last month, people had reported finding the badly mauled bodies of dead dogs—all of them pit bulls—along roads in the far northeast corner of the county. At first, Joanna’s Animal Control officers had thought they had tangled with something wild—a coyote or a mountain lion or even one of the far rarer jaguars which had, of late, strayed into southern Arizona from the wilds of northern Mexico. When the third dead animal was found, a microchip dog ID had traced it back to Tucson, where it had once belonged to the nephew of a known drug dealer, a man who had twice before been arrested for running a dogfighting ring. It seemed likely that a similar operation was now up and running somewhere in Cochise County.
    “Where?” Joanna asked.
    “San Simon,” Jeannine said. “On I-10 behind the port of entry. A long-haul truck driver parked his rig and went to take a leak. Found the dog in a trash can, except this one isn’t dead,” Jeannine said. “He was chewed all to hell and bloody all over, but he was still breathing. I was going to put him out of his misery. But when I started to lift him out of the garbage can, he tried to lick my hand, and I just couldn’t do it. Then I thought, If he’s made it this far, what if we could pull him through? Maybe we could use him as evidence when we finally nail these bastards.”
    Joanna heard the break in Jeannine Phillips’s voice as she spoke—the hurt, along with an underlying streak of steely determination. “Where is he now?” Joanna asked.
    “In my truck.”
    “Do you really think he can make it?”
    “I don’t know,” Jeannine said. “Like I said, he’s torn up pretty bad, but…”
    “Take him to Dr. Ross,” Joanna said after a moment. “Have her call me and let me know whether or not she