Free Rattlesnake Crossing by J. A. Jance Page B

with keys to all the individual cabinets as well. None of the locks have been damaged in the slightest. Not only that, whoever did it also knew lie or she had plenty of lime. This place was cleaned out in a methodical and very thorough manner, probably in the middle of the night and probably in dead silence. Any kind of noise or breakage might have aroused suspicion."
    "To say nothing of Sarah Holcomb," Joanna added.
    Voland frowned. "What was that?"
    "Never mind," Joanna told him. "What about paperwork or a computer, maybe? Any kind of customer lists?"
    "Not so far."
    "What about inventory, sales, or billing information? If we had some of those details, we'd know where to start in order to estimate what's actually missing."
    "That could be a problem. Come take a look," Voland said, gesturing toward the office door. "It's a combination office/storeroom, and from the looks of things, there's not much left there, either."
    Joanna walked as far as the office doorway and stopped. Inside, the drawers to the file cabinet lay scattered around the room, spilling loose papers on the floor in all directions. Other drawers still sat in place in file cabinets, but they appeared to be completely empty, as though someone had simply dumped the contents into a bag or box and carted them away.
    "If there's been a conscious effort to destroy paper trails, we could be dealing with some kind of insurance fraud," Joanna suggested, musing more to herself than to anyone else.
    "It could be," Voland agreed.
    "We'll need to dust the whole place for prints," she added, glancing at her chief deputy.
    "Right," he said. "I've already asked Patrol to send over anyone they can spare to help out with crime-scene investigation. It probably won't do much good, though. I have an idea whoever did this was probably smart enough to wear gloves."
    Joanna looked around the room again. "What about letting ATF in on this? Considering the possible number of weapons involved, we probably should,"
    As expected, any suggestion of involving another jurisdiction, especially a federal agency like Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, elicited an immediate frown of annoyance from Richard Voland. An old-timer with the department, the chief deputy jealously guarded all possible jurisdictional boundaries.
    "Why include them until we have to?" he asked.
    Through working with the MJF and with Adam York of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Joanna was coming to understand that in the new world of law enforcement, cooperation was the name of the game. I wonder if anyone's ever explained that fact of life to the lady from the Pima County Medical Examiner's office, Joanna wondered wryly.
    "Their guys run as much risk of going head to head with whoever took these guns as ours do," she said. "So even though reporting it may not be strictly required, we're going to tell them all the same. Out of courtesy, if nothing else."
    "All right, all right," Voland agreed grudgingly. "I'll take care of it once we get back to the office. So tell me, what all's going on back at the house?"
    "For one thing, Detective Carbajal is working with that lady buzz saw from Pima County, Dr. Fran Daly," Joanna said. "Incidentally, since Dr. Daly fully expected to report to you, she wasn't at all pleased to have me involved."
    "I'm sorry," Voland apologized. "When I was talking to the woman on the phone, I told her as plain as day what the deal was. Where she got the idea that I was in charge, I don't'—"
    Joanna cut him off in mid-apology. "II doesn't matter. What Dr. Daly did or didn't think makes no difference. Whatever her misapprehensions, we've worked them out."
    Trying to change the subject, Joanna glanced around the room and said:
    "It looks to me as though poor old Clyde was a far better shop owner than he was a housekeeper. The house is a pig-sty. You maybe wouldn't want to eat off the floor in here, but it's a whole lot cleaner than the house was. With the added advantage that the shop feels like it's built on a