She pursed her lips and sighed. “Look, the chief wants this case solved, yesterday, and he’s not happy with the progress that’s been made up to this point. The assistant chiefs are blaming the captains who are trying to shift the blame to the lieutenants. Some are blaming the undercover people, and they’re kicking the narcotics detectives under the bus. Both of those units are saying if we still had school resource officers, they would have known what was going on in their schools. Instead of working together, they’re all wasting time making sure they or their people aren’t responsible. They’re looking for scapegoats, so you definitely need to keep your noses clean on this one.”

  She glared pointedly at me when she said it, which reminded me of something she probably wasn’t going to want to hear. “Oh, yeah. That reminds me.” I paused, scratched my head, and gathered my thoughts.

  Kate groaned, put her head on the back of her chair, and stared at the ceiling. I had a hard time hearing her when she mumbled, “Do I want to hear this?”

  “Probably not.” I hoped she’d say never mind and send us on our way.

  Instead, she brought her head forward and laid her hands on the arms of her chair. “Go ahead.” Her fingers tapped out a rhythm only she could hear.

  “I have it from an excellent source that the bigger drug traffickers in the city have no idea where the Devil’s Breath is coming from. It’s not coming from them.”

  Kate rubbed her eyes, put her elbows on the desk, and rested her forehead on the tips of her fingers. After what seemed longer than necessary to digest my information, she said, “Okay, you guys have your assignments. If you find out anything more, let me know.”

  My boss is no dummy, and I guess she figured that if she didn't know where the information had come from, she couldn't tell anyone where we got it.

  Casey got up, hesitated a second, and then snapped her fingers. "Oh yeah. Did Assistant Director Crawford tell you Alex and I have switched dogs?"

  "She told me." The irritation in her voice said she hadn’t been happy with her chat with AD Crawford.

  I'd stepped out of her cubicle, but her tone made me turn back. I stared at her, wondering what Crawford had done to piss her off. When she picked up her phone and started punching in a phone number, I returned to my desk to see if I had any new cases in my inbox. There weren't any, but Sharon, our unit's administrative assistant, had left a message on my desk saying Charlie Carter had returned my call. I glanced up at Casey. "I guess Carter did call me back."

  I picked up the phone and punched in the number he'd given in the message. When a man answered, I pinched the phone between my ear and shoulder and grabbed a pen and paper. "Hello. Could I speak to Mr. Charlie Carter, please?"

  The man's voice sounded raspy and tired. "This is Charlie Carter."

  "Mr. Carter, this is Detective Wolfe with the Tucson Police Department. I'm investigating what happened to Tommy, and I was hoping we could set up a time to meet at your convenience?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kate grab her briefcase and head out.

  "Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever ya need." His words were a bit slurred, but I figured that was maybe the result of some physical problem, like a stroke or some kind of illness. We agreed to meet that afternoon in his office, and I gave Casey a thumb's up before disconnecting. "Three o'clock today. You wanna come?"

  "Yeah, I have a few things I need to catch up on here, but I definitely want to go." She pulled the pile of paper out of her in-basket and dumped them onto her desk in her typical scatter system of filing. I'd never be able to keep track of my cases that way, but it seemed to work for her.

  I checked my own in-basket and pulled out those cases needing a closing supplement. Pulling up the supplement screen on my computer, I began to write.

  Chapter 19

  Two hours later, I was returning to my desk after leaving five closing supplements in Kate's in-basket when my cellphone rang with a generic ringtone. I pulled it out of my pocket and was surprised to see Pipes calling again. I hit send. "Hi. Long time no talk."

  My adrenaline spiked when all I heard was the sound of things crashing in the background and panicked squawks from Sage. I yelled into the phone as I ran to my desk to grab my keys and radio. "Pipes?"

  I thought I heard glass breaking and more squawking accompanied by frantic wing flapping. I hooked my radio onto my belt and yelled, "Captain! Come." I ran for the door and was relieved to hear his nails scrambling on the tile floor behind me. I continued to yell into the phone, praying Pipes was back at the abandoned church and I'd be able to get to her on time.

  I yelled to Sharon, momentarily forgetting we couldn't get a location from a cell phone. "Get commo to trace this call! Tell them to let me know what address it comes back to." I ran out the door without waiting for an answer. I wasn't surprised to hear Casey ram into the door behind me.

  She and Peanut followed me and Captain into the stairwell. As we took the stairs to the underground parking two at a time, Casey shouted, "Who's Pipes?"

  "I'll tell you in the car." I almost knocked down a detective who'd just opened the door from the second level of the garage. I pushed past him and called back over my shoulder, "Sorry."

  I still had the phone to my ear.

  The sound of crashing had stopped, but Sage continued squawking at the top of his lungs.

  "Pipes! Answer me! Where are you? Can you tell me where you are?" I had a dim hope that if she was only beaten up or on the floor, she'd hear me and yell the answer, any answer, to my questions.

  I jerked open the driver's door and shouted at Captain, "Get in!"

  He didn't flinch away even though he'd only been lying next to my desk for a couple of hours. Scrambling onto the floorboard, he hopped up onto my seat and immediately clambered into the backseat without me having to say anything.

  The passenger door flew open as I jumped into my seat, and Peanut leaped onto the center console from the ground and took her place on the back seat next to Captain. They both stared at me intently and seemed to understand we were on high alert. Their expressions said they intended to do whatever they could to assist us.

  Casey jumped in and pulled her seat belt on as I squealed out of the parking space, shoved the gearshift into drive, and gunned the engine. Our tires fishtailed on the cement floor, but I corrected for it and raced out of the garage.

  I thrust the phone at Casey. "Here. Listen and see if you can hear anything. Tell me if she's saying anything." I hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. "Fuck."

  Casey listened and then asked again, "Who’s Pipes?"

  "She's a homeless woman who camps out near Thomason. She’s been trying to figure out who's been drugging the kids."

  "And you didn't tell Kate or me about her because...?" There was irritation behind her words, and I realized I’d made a mistake keeping Pipes from her. Always quick on the uptake, she began putting things together in her mind. “Pipes, as in what Lak mentioned in your living room? You knew he wasn’t referring to the pipes in the fence, didn’t you?” She’d moved from irritated to pissed off.

  "No. Not at that point. I guessed, but I didn’t know for sure. I should have said something, but I wasn't really sure how she fit in. I still don’t know if she does. I was gonna tell you when I put some more things together in my head. You know I hate to muddy the waters with my hair-brained ideas until I'm sure they might help." So far, I'd only hit yellow and green lights and was making good time to the church. We skidded around the corner into the neighborhood, and I gunned the engine again, thankful no one else was on the street.

  Casey stuck her finger in one ear, closed her eyes, and listened to the cellphone. "There's a parrot or something screaming and breaking things."

  "She has a Macaw. Sage." We fishtailed into the parking lot and skidded up to the church. I bailed out and ran for the doors with Captain running flat out next to my left ankle. I rammed my back into the wall on the left side of the door and drew my weapon. Captain immediately lay down behind me, ready and alert.

  Casey did the same on the right side. Peanut copied Captain and lay down behind her.

  The last time I'd come, the front door was hanging by a hinge. Now it lay flat on the cracked pavement, completely off the frame. I heard Sage squawking but nothing else. "Pipes? Are you in there? It's Alex."

  We got no answer, so I looked at Casey. I pointed first to my chest and then to her.

  She nodded.

  I rolled in through the door, covering to the left and then straight ahead.

  Casey came after me and covered to the right.

  I was peripherally aware of the dogs sticking to our sides like glue. We moved up on the outsides of the pews, and when I reached the second to the front on the left, I knelt to get a good look into the back room before leaving cover. I inched forward, crouching to keep behind the solid wooden pews.

  Captain crawled forward on his belly.

  I heard him give a low growl, and I put my hand on his head. "Shhh."

  He immediately quieted, but then I realized he might have been trying to tell me something. I glanced down but didn't know how to ask him why he'd growled.

  I called out again. "Pipes?" I looked to the right, where Casey waited on the other side of the church watching me for directions. I held up my palm, telling her to wait. When she nodded, Captain and I ran forward until we were at the side of the back-room door.

  It was shut, and I motioned for Casey to move up. When she reached the door, she took hold of the doorknob and caught my eye, waiting for the signal to open it.

  I nodded.

  She turned the knob and I kicked the door open with the bottom of my shoe. We repeated what we'd done at the front door—me going in first and to the left and Casey moving to the right.

  Wings and claws flew at my face, barely giving me time to raise my arm and protect my eyes.

  Casey, who has two parrots of her own, somehow managed to grab Sage and toss him out the door into the sanctuary.

  I continued into the room, looking for Pipes and/or her assailant. The room was trashed. Books were strewn across the floor; her bed was upended, and the desk was completely smashed into little pieces. Her phone lay on the floor in the corner. I ran over and picked it up. The cracked screen made it hard to read, but I could see it was still connected to my cell.

  I grabbed one of Pipe's shirts from beneath the mattress and shoved it in Captain's face. "Search, Captain. Search!"

  Captain took a big whiff and then turned and headed for the door.

  I didn't have his leash with me because I forgot to grab it when I ran out of the office. It didn't matter. Since he had the scent, I yelled, "Find her," as I raced after him. I threw the shirt to Casey as I ran past. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her kneel and hold the shirt down for Peanut to smell.

  Sage had been circling the sanctuary in a panic, but when Captain and I raced out the door, he flew above my head and took off for the cemetery.

  My heart stopped when I heard a gunshot in the distance.

  Captain, whose short legs were churning like pistons, had gotten too far ahead of me. I yelled, "Captain! Heel!" To my surprise, he circled back and skidded around behind me at full tilt.

  He began running next to my left heel again.

  I pointed forward and repeated, "Find her."

  He took off again, and I followed as fast as my legs would carry me.

  Suddenly, I saw flashes of green up ahead and realized Sage was pummeling or attacking someone running toward the school. Casey and Peanut had caught up to me, and I pointed to the man and yelled, "You go after Sage and whoever he's attacking! I'm going to try to find Pipes!"

  "Got it." She and Peanut veered off to my right and took off at a full-out sprint.

  I had to call Captain back to me two more times because he was so freaking fast there was no way I could keep up with him. To his credit, both times, he immediately turned and raced back.

  We weren’t that far from the church, but Pipes must have been running a circuitous route because we wound in and around tombstones as Captain kept his nose to the ground and searched his heart out. The last time I called him back, I didn’t wait for him to reach me. When he was still ten yards from me, I pointed and yelled, "Find her." He understood what I needed, and after that, he ran forward and then circled back on his own whenever he got too far ahead. Smart dog.

  We were winding our way toward the gate Megan had admired the night we came looking for Pipes. My heart went into my throat when Captain skidded to a stop next to something that, at a distance, looked like an army jacket lying in a heap next to a grey, tilting gravestone. He plopped into a sit and looked at me.

  As I ran closer, I recognized Pipe's scarred face lying in the dirt.

  Her mouth was half open, and she was breathing like a guppy out of water.

  I moaned, "No, no, no, no." and ran the last few yards to her body. A wet, dark circle of blood was seeping through the back of her camo jacket. I needed to get the jacket off, so I jerked the sleeve from one arm, flipped the coat over her back, and wrestled her other arm from beneath her body. Once I had the jacket free, I wadded it up on top of the bullet hole in her right shoulder and then rolled her over onto it to try to stop the bleeding.

  While I worked, Casey’s disembodied voice sounded on my radio calling for meds and backup.

  Pipes’ eyes opened. She watched as I pulled out my pocketknife, cut off the lower part of my pantleg, wadded it up, and pressed it into the exit wound on her stomach. The shot must have come from above, hitting her shoulder and then angling down. "Don't you die on me, Pipes. Don't you dare die."

  When I looked into her face, her lips parted in a sickly imitation of the intelligent, amused, and more than slightly jaded smile I’d liked so much the first time I’d met her. She whispered something I couldn't hear.

  I spoke around the lump choking the breath from my lungs, "What? I couldn't hear you."

  As a tear slid from her eye and rolled down the side of her cheek, she turned toward the massive tree where I'd first seen her gliding out of the darkness on the swing her aunt had hung for her little girl. Her lips moved without sound, and then her eyes focused on mine. This time her words came riding on the waves of her last, silent breath. "…the monstrous crying of wind."

  I watched her closely, willing her chest to rise again. It didn't. I felt for a pulse, waiting to feel something, anything, to tell me she was still alive. Nothing. Releasing the pressure on her stomach, I grabbed the back of one of my hands with the other and began CPR.

  Blood pumped from her stomach with each compression until Casey ran up, grabbed my wadded pantleg, and once more applied pressure to the wound. She'd been a paramedic in another life, and even though we both knew it was hopeless, she whispered the count with me as I willed life back into a lifeless body.

  Performing an endless number of CPR compressions is exhausting, no matter what kind of shape the rescuer is in. As my breathing became labored, I vaguely wondered how long it would take meds to arrive. Even though I knew trying to bring her back was pointless, there was no way I’d stop, because if there was even a remote possibility she could live, I was going to give her that chance.

  To her credit, Casey breathed air into Pipes’ lungs every thirty compressions. Not many cops would do that for a homeless woman, but I think she could sense my anguish and desperation and did it more for me than for Pipes. Tears were streaming down my face when the medics finally arrived. I moved back as one man took over the compressions and the other assessed the wounds. I think that, like us, they knew it was hopeless, but they did what they do and scooped her onto a gurney and rushed her away.

  I watched them wheel her out of the cemetery and into the church parking lot before staring at the blood covering my hands. Sunlight shone down through the trees and my mind was having a hard time reconciling the cheerful bright sunshine with the darkness churning inside me. Tucking my hands beneath my armpits, I paced from one gravestone to the next, running through the last half hour wondering what I could have done differently to save a woman who’d already lived through enough anguish in her lifetime.

  I ended up back at the swing tree, and I turned and kicked the trunk over and over and over again, grunting each time my foot crashed into a root or sent pieces of bark flying. That wasn’t hurting enough, so I growled and pulled my fist back, intending to punch the tree as hard as I possibly could. Someone wound their arm around mine in the middle of the swing, and my anger carried their body forward and into the tree before they were able to completely stop the blow.

  “Whoa, Alex. Easy.” Either Kate had heard Casey on the radio or Casey had called her because my sergeant pulled me away before I could break my hand on the trunk.

  I jerked out of her grasp, turned my back to her, and raised my fists into the air. I yelled a protracted, “Fuck!” that echoed through the treetops.

  Kate stepped in front of me and caught my eye. She held up a calming hand as though soothing an angry horse. “Easy.”

  My breathing was coming in ragged gasps. I wiped my tears on my shoulder and angrily turned away from her again.

  A grey-haired uniform officer came running through the gate, and Kate stopped him before he got too close. “Jake. Cordon off the scene and keep the other officers away for right now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He turned and headed back to his car to get a roll of crime scene tape.

  Casey walked over to us. “There’s another scene in the church. I’ll handle that one and when the patrol sergeant arrives, I’ll brief him on what I know.”

  “Thank you.” Kate nodded and then took my arm and pointed toward the back of the cemetery. “Come on.”

  We walked up and down the lines of tombstones until my head began to clear. When I pulled in a deep, shaky breath, she leaned on a red marble stone and caught my eye. “Talk to me.”

  All I could do at the moment was shake my head over and over. I ran my hands up into my hair, grabbed two fistfuls, and squatted with my face in my forearms. I couldn’t believe that quirky, funny young woman with the expressive, sparkling green eyes was dead.