by J. A. Jance
“Sounds familiar,” Ernie allowed.
“Do you remember any of the details?”
“Like I said, it’s been a long time,” Ernie said.
“Yes,” Joanna said. “It has. Thanks.”
She hurried to the office door. Sylvia Roark was still pulling envelopes out of the cart. “How are you doing?” Joanna asked.
“Okay,” Sylvia mumbled.
“Not on the mail,” Joanna corrected. “I mean, how are you doing on the microfiche project?”
“I can’t do anything on it if I’m here,” Sylvia sputtered. “I thought you said I should—”
“Not right now,” Joanna said quickly. “I don’t mean today. I mean in general. How far have you gotten?”
“Only the mid-eighties, I guess,” Sylvia said. “I’m working backward, and it takes time, you know. I can work on it only an hour or two a day, but I’m doing the best—”
Without waiting for Sylvia to finish, Joanna headed for the mail room. Tucked into a far corner sat the clumsy old microfiche machine next to its multiple-drawered file. Pulling out the one marked “1979—1981,” Joanna settled herself in front of the screen and went to work.
I SAT IN THE CONFERENCE room twiddling my thumbs for the next twenty minutes. Finally Frank Montoya showed up. Wordlessly he handed me back the piece of paper on which I had scribbled the unknown telephone number. “Who’s Francine Connors?” he asked.
“The Washington State Attorney General’s wife,” I told him. “Why?”
“I’d say the man has a problem then,” Frank Montoya replied. “The cell phone in question is registered to her.”
Frank exited the room, leaving me feeling as though he had poured a bucket of cold water down my back. Ross Connors had been looking for a leak in his department and among his trusted advisers. It was clear to me now that the problem had been far closer to him—in his own home! Francine Connors had been carrying on a long-distance relationship with the husband of one of her friends. In the process, she had not simply betrayed her husband, she had also helped murder Latisha Wall.
I popped my head back out of the conference room. Chief Deputy Montoya had not yet made it to his office. “Hey, Frank,” I called. “One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to need a log on that one, too.”
“No kidding,” he replied. “I’ve already ordered it. I’ll bring it to you as soon as I can.”
While waiting, I struggled with my conscience, wondering what to do. Under the circumstances, nothing seemed clear-cut. Was my first responsibility to my boss? Did I have an obligation to call Ross Connors and tell him my as yet unproved suspicions? But if I did that, wasn’t I dodging my responsibilities to Latisha Wall? Most of my adult life has been spent tracking killers. If Francine Connors had betrayed a protected witness’s whereabouts, then she was as guilty of Latisha Wall’s murder as the man who had poisoned her.
Francine Connors was the dishonorable wife of a man sworn to uphold the laws of Washington State. How would Ross Connors react? Would he listen to what I had to say and do what had to be done, or would he try to save his wife? In a tiny corner of my mind, I wondered if that was why I was here. Was it possible Ross Connors already had his own suspicions about Francine’s possible involvement? Had he sent me to Arizona hoping against hope that I wouldn’t discover the truth about what had gone on? Was that why, when I first brought up Maddern’s name, Ross had said so little?
Finally, I picked up the phone in the conference room. Pulling a battered ticket folder out of my pocket, I dialed the toll-free number for Alaska Airlines.
“When’s the next flight from Tucson to Seattle?” I asked.
“There’s one this afternoon at three-thirty,” I was told. The conference room clock said it was already ten past two. I was a good hundred miles away from the airport and without a vehicle. “That one won’t work,” I said. “When’s the next flight?”
“Tomorrow morning at seven.”
I reserved a seat on that flight. I had finished and was putting the phone down when Joanna Brady appeared at the conference room door. She stepped inside, flipped up the occupied sign and pulled the door shut behind her. Her face was set; her eyes chips of dark green slate. Something was up.
“Did Frank tell you?” I asked.
“Tell me what?”
“He’s waiting for the next set of telephone-toll logs, but it looks as though my boss’s wife has been carrying on a clandestine affair with one of UPPI’s big-name attorneys back East. I’m guessing that’s how they learned of Latisha Wall’s whereabouts. As soon as they knew, they must have sent Jack Brampton here to rub her out.”
Joanna relaxed a little. “You’ve caught them then,” she breathed, but she didn’t sound nearly as pleased about it as I would have expected.
“Frank’s the one who did it,” I said. “I’ve never seen anybody who can work with the phone company the way he does.”
Joanna nodded absently, as though she wasn’t really paying attention. She had taken a seat at the conference table. Sitting directly across from her, I noticed a long, jagged scar on her cheek for the first time. She probably usually covered it with makeup, but now her face was pale. The scar stood out vividly against her white skin, making me wonder what had caused it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Joanna put a slim file folder down on the table, but she made no move to hand it to me. “You said earlier that you and Anne Rowland Corley’s attorney . . .”
I wished she wouldn’t keep using Anne’s maiden name. I hated having Anne’s name linked to her father’s.
“Ralph Ames,” I supplied. “The attorney’s name is Ralph Ames.”
“That the two of you cleared all the cases,” she continued.
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t come here,” she said. “You didn’t clear any cases here.”
It was a statement more than a question. My heart gave a lurch.
“As far as we knew there weren’t any cases here,” I said, “other than Anne’s father, that is. With the whole family dead by then . . .”
“You said she kept a written record?”
“Yes, in the form of a manuscript. Why?”
“Was Bill Woodruff’s name in it?” Joanna asked.
“Bill Woodruff? Not that I remember. Who’s he?”
“You mean who was he,” Joanna corrected. “Years ago he used to be the Cochise County Coroner—before he disappeared, that is. He wasn’t declared officially dead until three years later, but I’m sure now that he died much earlier than that. He was also the man who ruled Patty Rowland’s death an accident and Roger Rowland’s a suicide.”
She spun the file folder across the table to me then. “Check the dates yourself,” she added. “Bill Woodruff disappeared within three weeks of Anne Rowland Corley’s release from the hospital in Phoenix.”
Joanna left the room, leaving me to pick up the pieces of my heart. In the file I found several pages copied from a missing persons report. From the bare bones of what was written there I learned that Bill Woodruff had gone on a fishing trip to a town in Mexico, where he was reportedly seen in several bars in the company of a young woman—a strikingly beautiful young woman—after which neither of them were ever seen again.
I’m always accusing Maxwell Cole of editorializing. Since he writes a newspaper column, I suppose he’s entitled to put his opinions right there in print for all to see. But the truth is, cops editorialize, too. Couched in the supposedly nonemotional declaration of fact and allegation that passes for cop-talk and cop-write, I recognized what the long-ago investigator had obviously concluded. A few terse but nevertheless disparaging remarks about Bill Woodruff’s wife, Belinda, revealed the investigator’s opinion that the missing man might well have had good reason to walk away from a shrewish, carping wife—walk away and simply disappear.
Unlike that original investigator, I saw Anne Corley’s troubled face
leap toward me out of the telling words in the report: “strikingly beautiful.” That was Anne, all right—strikingly beautiful. And ultimately dangerous. Bill Woodruff must have thought he was about to get lucky and have himself a harmless little fling. I’m sure he had no idea he was dealing with the now-grown and incredibly vengeful little girl his official reports had once betrayed.
That much Anne had told me herself. Her written manuscript had alleged that her sister Patty hadn’t really died as a result of an accidental fall. She had been tortured and abused and finally savagely beaten. And both of Anne’s parents, along with her father’s cronies—the police chief and the local coroner—had conspired together to cover it up, just as Anita Rowland and Woodruff had concealed Anne’s role in her father’s supposed suicide.
It’s hard to be angry with someone who’s been dead for years. But I was. A riot of fury boiled up in my heart because Anne had done it to me again, damn her! She had left me a manuscript that, according to her, told me the whole truth. Clearly she had left out a few things—a few important things—and had suckered me one more time. And that brought me back to the central question I have about Anne Corley: Did she ever really love me, or did I just make it all up? Because, if she had loved me, wouldn’t she have told me everything?
There was a discreet tap on the door. I looked up from staring at a paper I was no longer seeing as Joanna Brady came into the room, once again closing the door behind her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I assumed you knew, but I can see from your face—you had no idea.”
I shook my head. “It happened within weeks of her being released from the hospital, just prior to her marriage to Milton Corley,” I said. “How do you suppose she did it? How did she pull it off?”
Joanna shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said kindly. “But remember, we could both be wrong. We don’t have any actual proof. It might have been someone else.”
I wasn’t prepared to give either Anne or me that kind of break. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Then you’re right,” Joanna said finally. “The real miscarriage of justice happened when they released her. And you were right about something else, too,” she added. “Look.”
She’d been holding something in her hand, but I had been too preoccupied to notice. Now she passed me a new set of phone logs. Putting on my reading glasses, I scanned through the listings. They included literally dozens of phone calls from Francine Connors’s cell phone to Winnetka, Illinois. Some I recognized as going to Louis Maddern’s office number, while a few of the others went to his residence. Most of them, however, had been placed to a third number I didn’t recognize.
“Maddern’s cell phone?” I asked.
Joanna nodded. “You’ve got it,” she said. “Frank just checked.”
The last call had been placed on Sunday night. Looking at the time, I realized it had been placed within minutes of my call to the Connors’s home. That one, lasting over an hour, originated from Francine’s cell phone. After that there was nothing.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly what had gone on during that critical call. I was sure Francine Connors had answered the phone and had asked who was calling. Had I told her who I was? I couldn’t remember, but I wondered now if she had somehow stayed on the line and listened in on my conversation with her husband. I tried to recall exactly what Ross had said. The only thing that stuck in my head was that he had planned on calling in the FBI to track down the leak.
Bearing all that in mind, there could be no question about what I had to do next. “May I use this phone?” I asked, although I had already used it once without having asked for Sheriff Brady’s permission.
“Sure,” Joanna said. “Go right ahead. Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” I told her. “That’s not necessary.”
I searched through my wallet until I once again located the list of Ross Connors’s telephone numbers. By then I should have known them by heart, but I didn’t. I dialed his office number first.
“Attorney General Connors’s Office,” a crisp voice replied. “May I help you?”
“Mr. Connors, please.”
“I’m sorry, he’s not in. May I take a message?”
“No,” I said. “That’s all right.”
I dialed his cell-phone number. After ringing several times, the call went to voice mail. Hanging up, I tried the home number last. A woman answered. I wasn’t sure, but the voice didn’t sound like Francine Connors’s voice.
“Ross, please,” I said easily, hoping to pass for an acquaintance if not a friend.
“He’s not here,” the woman said, her voice quavering slightly. “He’s at the hospital. I’m Christine Connors, Ross’s mother. Is there a message?”
“Hospital?” I asked. “Has something happened to him? Is he ill?”
“Oh,” she said. “You must not have heard then. It’s not Ross. He’s fine. At least he’s okay. No, it’s Francine.”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead. She and Ross went to lunch together. He had a wonderful time, and he thought Francine did, too. But then, when she came home, and, without even changing her clothes, she went out in the backyard and just . . . just . . .” Christine Connors stifled a tiny sob. “The gardener was working out front. He heard the shot and came running. He called an ambulance and they took her to the hospital, but they couldn’t save her. I can’t imagine why she’d do such a thing. I just can’t.”
I was stunned. I remembered the sound of tinkling glassware in the background—the sounds of fine dining at a luncheon meeting. I hadn’t thought that Francine might be there, but she must have been. And from that and the call on Sunday night, she must have known the jig was up.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured into the phone. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Well, if you’ll leave your name, I’ll be sure to let Ross know you called.”
“No,” I told her. “Don’t bother. I’ll be in touch.”
When I put down the phone, Joanna Brady was staring at my face. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” she said.
IN NO MORE THAN TEN MINUTES, J.P. Beaumont looked as though he had aged ten years.
“Is there anything I can do?” Joanna asked.
Beaumont shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “No, wait. There is something. I’m going to need a ride. First I have to go to the hotel and check out. Then I need a lift as far as Tucson. My plane’s first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Come on,” Joanna said. “We’ll take my Civvie.”
Beaumont followed her through the building and out the office door without exchanging a word with anyone. Only when he was fastening the seat belt in Joanna’s Crown Victoria did he have second thoughts.
“That was rude,” he said. “I should go back in and tell Frank how much I appreciated his help.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna told him. “I’ll pass it along.”
“He’s a good man to have on your team.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I know.”
When they reached the entrance to the Justice Center, Joanna sat there, hesitating, even though there was no traffic coming in either direction. Finally, making up her mind, she turned left.
“Wait a minute,” Beau objected. “Where are we going? I thought the Copper Queen was the other direction. I need to check out.”
“We’re taking a detour,” Joanna told him. “There’s something I want to show you.”
After heading east for a mile or so, she turned right onto a road labeled warren cutoff.
“What’s Warren?” he asked.
“It’s another Bisbee neighborhood,” she explained. “Until the 1950s, when Bisbee was incorporated, Warren and all these other places were separate towns.”
“Oh,” he said and lapsed into silence.
Coming into town, Joanna turned right at the first intersection and then gunned the Civvie up and over two short but relatively steep hills. At the top of th
e second one the road curved, first to the left and then back to the right. Beyond the curve, Joanna pulled over onto the shoulder, stopped the car, and got out. Beaumont followed.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Joanna pointed to a massive brown stucco mansion lurking behind a curtain of twenty-foot-high oleander. The house stood at the top end of what had once been the lush green of Vista Park. Now the park was little more than a desert wasteland—a long, desolate expanse of dry grass and boulders with houses facing it on either side.
“I thought you’d want to see this,” Joanna told him quietly. “This was Roger Rowland’s house. It’s where Anne Rowland Corley grew up.”
She saw him swallow hard. Tears welled in his eyes. A sob caught in his throat. There was nothing for her to do but try to comfort the man. As she wrapped her arms around him, hot tears dribbled down his cheeks and ran through her hair. His arms closed around her as well. As they stood there holding each other, it seemed to Joanna like the most natural thing in the world.
Twenty-two
I DON’T KNOW WHAT came over me. It was more than a momentary lapse. I remember crying like that when my mother died of breast cancer, and again when my first wife, Karen, succumbed to the disease, too. But Anne Corley had been gone for a very long time.
I should have thought that by now the hurt of losing her would have been scabbed over and covered with a protective layer of scar tissue. Still, seeing the house she grew up in—a mansion of a place that must have seemed more like a prison than a home—hit me hard. It sat there obscured behind a thick, decades-old oleander hedge. That planted green barrier had provided far more than simple privacy for the troubled family that had once lived behind it. Evil, murder, and incipient insanity had resided there along with the woman I loved.
It was only when I started to pull myself together that I realized I was standing in broad daylight with both arms wrapped tightly around Sheriff Joanna Brady. And with her arms wrapped around me, too. It was a shock when I noticed I didn’t want to move away. Pulsing electricity seemed to arc between us.