Judgment Call

by J. A. Jance

  “How come he lost control?”

  “Speed, of course,” Chief Bernard said, “but one of the witnesses reported that it looked like the old woman in the backseat was whacking him on the head with something, maybe a cane.”

  Despite the terrible toll the accident had taken, Joanna felt better knowing that Isadora hadn’t taken the situation lying down. She had been fighting back for everything she was worth. That counted for something, didn’t it?

  “All right then,” Joanna said. “If you get any information from the phone triangulation, let me know. You have my number.”

  “What now?” Deb asked.

  “We’ve missed him,” Joanna said. “We might just as well head back to town.”

  It was as Deb Howell executed a U-turn that Joanna caught sight of the communications towers crowning the top of Juniper Flats, the highest readily accessible point in the Mule Mountains. There were utility access roads on top of the mountain that led to the towers, but no one lived there. Of all those wide-open spaces she had mentioned to Chief Bernard, Juniper Flats was by far the most deserted.

  “Turn around again,” she ordered Deb. “When you get to the Old Divide Road, turn up that.”

  Deb complied. “You think he’s up there?”

  This was just a hunch, after all, but Joanna felt a surprising sense of certainty. “I’d almost be willing to bet on it.”

  Old Divide Road predated the tunnel, and wound along the side of the mountain with permanent no-passing zones laid down as the center line. The road was reasonably well maintained, but it was narrow and treacherous and didn’t allow for any kind of speed. It took almost ten minutes for them to reach the remains of a long-deserted restaurant. A sign covered with graffiti still showed a faded shadow of the original content: THE TOP. Before the building of the tunnel, the Top had been an old-fashioned roadhouse and one of Bisbee’s few fine-dining establishments. Now it was nothing but a burned-out hulk.

  Deb turned off the road and drove past the building and onto a gravel access road. A few yards beyond the building they came to a mangled chain-link gate hanging from a bent metal post where a broken chain and a useless padlock testified that the gate had once been securely fastened.

  As soon as Joanna saw the mangled remains of the gate, she knew she was right. James Gunnar Cameron had indeed come through here. With Isadora and her flailing cane loose in the backseat, he hadn’t been able to risk getting out of the vehicle long enough to open the gate. Instead, he had simply used the powerful bulk of the limo to plow through the puny obstacle.

  By then Joanna was on the phone to her chief deputy. “I need the Emergency Response Team now!” she ordered. “Top of the Divide. I believe the carjacker is on one of the access roads that crisscross Juniper Flats. Those roads are designed for trucks or for serious four-wheel-type vehicles. He won’t get far. When he figures that out, all hell is going to break loose.”

  “Deploying the ERT is going to take time,” Hadlock said. “With everything that’s going on, I’ve got people scattered six ways to Sunday. Traffic on the highway leading in and out of Bisbee has come to a complete stop. It’s a mess out there.”

  “Time is the one thing we don’t have,” Joanna said grimly. “Detective Howell and I are on the scene. Get people here immediately. Make that sooner than immediately!”

  Joanna turned to Deb. “Stay here,” she said. “Let me take a look.” She walked through the gate. The gravel surface left no tracks for her to read, but about fifty yards beyond the gate, a crumpled black bumper with chrome-trim strips lay off to the side of the narrow dirt track. It had been torn loose by the gate but hadn’t fallen off until sometime later.

  Joanna went back to the Tahoe and signaled for Deb to shut it down. Then she called Tom Hadlock again. “Okay, Detective Howell and I are going in. Right now we have the element of surprise on our side. We’re leaving enough room for the ERT to get past Deb’s Tahoe, but be sure they know that there are four people out here—two friendlies, a victim, and a bad guy. Stay on the line. I’m turning my phone on speaker so you’ll be able to hear what’s going on, but maintain silence on your end. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Hadlock replied.

  She turned to Deb. “We may not have time to wait for the ERTs,” she said. “Lock up, turn your phone on silent, bring your shotgun, and let’s go!”

  They moved forward with Joanna on one side of the narrow road and Deb on the other. They walked along in dead silence, weapons drawn, taking cover under the scrub oak and low-lying juniper that gave the area its name. A hundred yards or so beyond the broken bumper, they came across the tread of a wide passenger car that had delaminated into the dirt. Joanna knew they weren’t far behind it, because the smell of hot rubber still lingered in the air, and a trail of oil or water dribbled along in the middle of the dirt. If Cameron was limping along on three tires and a flat on a vehicle that was losing either oil or water, it wouldn’t be long before they caught up with him.

  Then they did. Joanna spied the limo when a splash of afternoon sunlight glinted off the back window. She held up her hand, signaling for Deb to stop.

  “We’ve made visual contact with the vehicle, but not with the driver or the victim,” Joanna whispered into the phone. “Tell the ERT that we’re about three-quarters of a mile beyond where we left Deb’s Tahoe. The limo appears to have suffered damage. I doubt it’s drivable. We’re going to move closer. Keep silent until I tell you otherwise.”

  Only a few years earlier cell phone reception in the Bisbee area had been spotty at best. Now, due in no small part to the towers just coming into view ahead of them, even a whispered conversation carried loud and clear.

  “Good luck, Sheriff Brady,” Hadlock whispered back. “Our guys are on their way, but I’ll be holding my breath.”

  Me, too, Joanna thought.

  The April air was sunny but cool. Still, Joanna felt cold sweat forming between her shoulder blades and under her arms, soaking through the khaki uniform. It dripped down her forehead and dribbled past her eyes. If there were any predators in the area other than James Gunnar Cameron, Joanna was sure they could smell the fear Joanna’s body shed with every careful step.

  The desert here wasn’t completely silent. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk wheeled in the sky, occasionally letting loose with one of its distinctive shrieks. A flock of crows squawked their noisy objection to the presence of the hawk, while a male quail issued a stern warning to his covey that there was danger about. Joanna was sorry that it was too early in the spring for insects to be on the wing and in the grasses and brush, issuing sounds that might help cover the crack of a tiny broken twig or the telltale crunch of a foot falling on a clump of dried grass.

  Of course, there was a chance that they were too late and that Isadora was already dead. They hadn’t yet heard the sound of a gunshot. Cameron might have used picture-hanging wire to strangle Maggie Oliphant, but Joanna suspected that had been a weapon of convenience. There in the parking lot he’d had to use the first weapon that had come readily to hand, and one that ensured a certain measure of silence. Out here in the middle of nowhere, with silence not as much of a necessity, she suspected that a handgun of some kind would be more likely. A shot from one of those would let them know for sure that they were too late.

  After a few more steps, Joanna heard Isadora’s distinctive voice and breathed a sigh of relief. “Let me go!” Isadora demanded. “You have no right to do this.”

  “I have every right,” he shouted back. “You crazy old battle-ax. What were you thinking, hitting me over the head with your cane like that? It’s a miracle you didn’t kill us both.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t,” Isadora returned. “I would have done the world a favor.”

  They were close enough now for Joanna to see them through a break in the brush. They were in a small clearing, the slender metal structure of a tower soaring above them. Isadora was sitting slightly to the side of the tower, leaning against the crooked trunk of a sc
rub oak. James stood several feet away from her. A spiderweb of shadows from the steel structure overhead covered his body, obscuring some of his features. The wrecked limo sat in the foreground with its air bags deployed and its overheated engine still steaming. Clearly the once fine automobile had reached the end of the line.

  “What are you going to do now,” Isadora taunted, “shoot me like you did Debra or strangle me like you did that other poor woman? You killed her, too, didn’t you?”

  “Shooting’s too good for you,” he said. “I’m going to leave you here to bleed out the same way I did Debra Highsmith.”

  “Why?” Isadora demanded. “What did I ever do to you? What did Debra?”

  “Don’t you mean Alyse?” he asked sarcastically. “Don’t you mean my dear departed older sister Alyse who turned my father in so the CIA could kill him and claim he committed suicide? He never had a trial, you know. They made sure of that. As for what became of Alyse? She simply disappeared. Vanished. How convenient! Mother always said you were behind it somehow, but we could never prove it. We could never figure out how you got Alyse away from the house or where you stowed her afterward.”

  “Your father was the one who was in the wrong,” Isadora said, “and Alyse didn’t turn him in. She happened to see something she shouldn’t have and mentioned it to us. We’re the ones who blew the whistle. We’re the ones who called the authorities—your grandfather and I.”

  “Without Alyse, you wouldn’t have,” James insisted. “Her blabbing to you ended up costing Mother and me everything. We lost the house and the cars. We had to go live with Mother’s parents on the farm. We left Washington, D.C., and ended up living with people who barely had indoor plumbing, even then. You never lifted a finger to help us.”

  “That’s not true,” Isadora said. “I tried to help. I sent letters with checks inside. I sent birthday cards and Christmas presents. Your mother always returned them unopened.”

  “She didn’t,” James said.

  Isadora shook her head and said nothing.

  “Mother committed suicide, you know,” James said after a long pause. “I was ten. Think about how that helped me growing up. The other kids said I had to be some kind of freak to make both my parents commit suicide. I was the smart weird kid, the one with no friends. I hated the other kids. I hated Indiana. I hated my grandparents. They were stupid people. I left there the minute I graduated from high school and never looked back.”

  Joanna was close enough now to see that there was something odd about the left side of James’s face. At first Joanna thought it was only the play of shadows across his features. Now she realized that his face was cut and bleeding. The wreckage of his wire-framed glasses sat perched crookedly on his face, but one of the lenses was missing, and the eye on that side was bloodied and almost swollen shut.

  Seeing the damage, Joanna realized two things at once. There was no way to tell if the air bags had deployed when Cameron plowed into the people on the sidewalk or when he drove through the gate. Whenever it happened, however, the air bags had hit his glasses hard enough to smash them to smithereens. Since he was nearsighted enough to need glasses, that meant he was now at a serious disadvantage. He might be able to see fine out of his right eye, the one on Joanna’s side, but maybe not nearly as well on the side where Deb was approaching.

  “How did you find her?” Isadora asked.

  “It took years,” he said. “I’ve devoted my whole adult life to finding her. I’m what they like to call a visionary in the science of facial recognition, and now you know why. I knew that once the systems could be made to scan online photos that I’d be able to find her eventually. It was only a matter of time. You see, after Mother died, I found a picture of the four of us in a box of my mother’s stuff. I think she sent it out with the Christmas cards that one year. I’m not sure why she kept it, but that’s why I did, and I have it still. I took Alyse’s image from that, and that’s what I used to find her. I’ve had multiple computers scanning the Internet for years, looking for a match. When that video showed up, I knew I had to act fast before you made her disappear again.”

  “What video?” Isadora asked.

  James laughed. “You don’t know about that, do you? She pissed off some kid at her school, and he posted a video of her on the Net. He called it ‘Die, Bitch,’ which I thought was altogether too appropriate. Don’t you?”

  Isadora leveled a cold stare at him and again said nothing.

  Behind her Joanna heard the smallest hint of an approaching siren. That meant that her Emergency Response Team had been summoned and was coming, but at this point in the proceedings, they wouldn’t make it. Not in time. Their help would be too little, too late. By the time they reached the clearing, whatever was going to happen would already have played out.

  Joanna stopped moving, concealing herself behind the final layer of scrub oak before it gave way to the clearing. She couldn’t see Deb, but Joanna knew the detective was still off to the right, invisible behind a thick clump of low-growing juniper. Joanna was standing there, contemplating her next move, when Isadora chose to escalate the situation.

  “Your father may have been my son,” she said calmly, “but he was also a traitor to his country and a coward besides. You’re just like him.”

  The utter contempt of the insult had its intended effect. With breathtaking speed, James closed the distance between them. As his raised foot connected with Isadora’s hip, Joanna heard the sickening and unmistakable crack of splintering bone. Isadora groaned in pain, but she didn’t let up.

  “Yes,” she added through gritted teeth. “You’re exactly like your father.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Joanna couldn’t help but feel a surge of admiration. Isadora may have looked frail—as though a strong wind could have blown her over—but she was tough as nails.

  Up to that moment, there had been no sign of a weapon in the confrontation, but just then one appeared, as though on cue. Evidently James Gunnar Cameron was a killer who felt no need to stick with any previously used MO. Instead of drawing a handgun or producing a length of picture wire, he pulled a switchblade out of the pocket of his jacket. It flicked open with a chilling click that sent a shiver of dread down Joanna’s spine.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Isadora gasped.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t care about getting away with it. I’m going to end it here and now. With you and your precious Alyse wiped from the face of the earth, it’ll all be over. It won’t matter what happens to me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Isadora said. Her voice was suddenly clear and surprisingly calm. “It won’t be over, James. It will never be over. Debra had a son. His name is Michael. Everything I have will go to him.”

  That unwelcome news seemed to push James over the edge. “You’re lying,” he screeched back at her. “Debra Highsmith never had any children. I know. I checked!”

  He held the raised knife by the handle. Before he could drive it home, Joanna chose that moment to step into view.

  “Drop the knife,” she ordered. “Get on the ground.”

  Startled, his one good eye jerked in Joanna’s direction, but he didn’t drop the knife. Instead, he reached down, grabbed Isadora by the collar of her jacket one-handed, and dragged her upright. One of Isadora’s legs, the one he had kicked, dangled at a crazy angle. She howled in agony.

  “No,” James countered, now holding the knife at Isadora’s throat. “You drop it. You can’t shoot me without shooting her. You wouldn’t want to do that to a helpless old lady, now would you?”

  He stared at Joanna through his one good eye, squinting into the sun. Behind him Joanna caught sight of a slight movement. That meant Debra was closing in on him, coming at him from behind. Joanna’s whole purpose now was to keep his focus on her no matter what.

  “He’s a monster,” Isadora screamed. “Go ahead. Shoot him!”

  With Debra behind him, Joanna couldn’t have risked a shot a
nyway. Instead, she made a production of carefully leaning over and depositing her Glock on the ground at her feet. It was a calculated risk. If he slit Isadora’s throat or if he charged at Joanna with the knife, either one or both of them might well be dead before Debra could make her move. Joanna was wearing her vest, but she knew that Kevlar offers far more protection from bullets than it does from knives. What she needed was some way to keep him occupied and talking rather than launching a deadly attack.

  “Kick the gun here,” he said.

  Joanna complied. Her well-placed kick sent the gun skidding across the intervening open ground. It came to a stop at his feet. By then she had come up with what she hoped would be a plausible ruse. Once the gun stopped moving, Joanna simply turned her back on the man. She looked back the way she had come, trying to make it appear as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “It’s okay, Michael,” she called to the empty landscape behind her. “You can come out now. I want you to meet your great-grandmother and your uncle.”

  She stood there in the breathless silence with her back turned to James, counting on a combination of shock and curiosity about Michael Hirales, a man who wasn’t there, to stall James Cameron long enough for Debra to make her move. Joanna had no way of knowing if her performance was good enough. There was always a chance that the long, thin blade would slice first into Isadora’s throat and then into Joanna’s back.

  “Michael,” Joanna called again. “Come on!”

  Just then she heard a heavy thwack as the butt of Deb’s shotgun slammed into the back of James’s head. He groaned. As he fell to the ground, Joanna turned. At first, all she saw was a tangled heap of limbs, with James’s body clearly on top. For a time Joanna thought she had misjudged the situation—and that while her back was turned, James had turned the blade on his grandmother. Instead, after a long moment, the old woman wiggled to life and began to squirm out from under James’s dead weight. She scrabbled away from her fallen grandson, dragging her useless leg behind her.