Judgment Call

by J. A. Jance

  “Will that ever happen with Denny and me?”

  Jenny was clearly nuts about her baby half brother and had been since the day he was born. Joanna smiled at her daughter and shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Never in a million years.”

  Jenny leaned over and stared at the photo—clearly a mug shot—that was visible on Joanna’s computer screen.

  “Is that him?”

  “No,” Joanna said, “that’s a guy named David Fredericks.”

  “What did David Fredericks do?” Jenny asked.

  The question wasn’t a surprise. The presence of a mug shot made it clear that he must have done something.

  “He was the drunk driver who hit and killed my father, your grandfather, when I was about your age.” Joanna realized then that Jenny knew more about George Winfield, her stepgrandfather, than she did about her birth grandfather. One reason for that probably had to do with Joanna’s continuing reluctance to talk about it.

  “Were you there when it happened?” Jenny asked.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Did you see it?”

  Joanna hesitated before she answered but only for a moment. “Yes,” she said.

  “So why are you looking at his picture now?” Jenny asked.

  “Because things that happened a long time ago have a way of coming back to bite you in the butt.”

  “Sort of like Ms. Highsmith’s brother.”

  “Exactly,” Joanna said.

  “Is that what you’re going to do with this guy?” Jenny asked. “Get revenge?”

  “I don’t know,” Joanna said. “I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. I guess I’m more curious than anything else.”

  Dennis came out of the bathroom then, still damp from his bath, wearing his jammies and ready for his night-night kiss. When first Dennis and then Jenny slipped off to bed, Joanna returned to her computer. Now that she had David Fredericks’s name, she put that into her search engine. Moments later, she hit the jackpot. There was an article about David Fredericks in a magazine called Trucking Today. It was accompanied by two photos. One was the same unvarnished mug shot she had seen in the online articles written shortly after her father’s death. In those, Fredericks appeared to be an angry young man somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties. The other one looked to be an official company portrait of an at-ease, smiling, and well-to-do middle-aged business executive.

  Twenty years ago, David Fredericks was released from the Arizona State Prison in Florence where, before being paroled on good behavior, he had served twenty-eight months of a five-year sentence for vehicular homicide. Unlike many of his fellow parolees, David Fredericks emerged from prison determined to turn his life around.

  “While I was locked up, what I missed more than anything was the open road. I was also a guy with a felony conviction. I needed a job, but people weren’t exactly falling all over themselves to hire me, so I decided to hire myself.”

  He sent himself to school and got a commercial driver’s license. After patching together enough financial help to buy a rig of his own, he went to work hauling oversize equipment from one side of the country to the other. Two weeks ago, the company he built from scratch with that first vehicle was swallowed up in a deal that business analysts say is worth $7.5 million in Dave Fredericks’s pocket.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to turn my life around if there hadn’t been people who had faith in me and who gave me a hand up when I was down and out. That’s one of the reasons I’m involved in a program that helps released inmates find meaningful work after they get out of prison. If they’re doing something they love, they’re a lot less likely to end up back in the slammer.”

  Mr. Fredericks met Donna, his wife of seventeen years, when he was driving a truck and she was working as a waitress at a truck stop in Nebraska.

  “Every time he came through town,” Donna says now with a smile, “he’d say, ‘When are you going to give all this up and marry me?’ Finally he wore me down, and I had to say yes.”

  The couple and their three adopted children live in Sahuarita, south of Tucson.

  Joanna was still staring at the computer screen when her cell phone rang. “Hi, boss,” Jaime Carbajal said. “I thought you’d want us to bring you up-to-date. We found James Cameron’s CR-V parked in one of the lots by the Rec Center. It’s a treasure trove. We found a thirty-eight, which we’re hoping will turn out to be the murder weapon in the Highsmith case. We also found duct tape and a dress shirt with bloodstains on the arm.”

  “Sounds good,” Joanna said.

  “That’s not the half of it. We also found a blowgun. It looks like the darts have been altered so they could be loaded with some kind of liquid, most likely bear tranquilizer, an unused bottle of which we also found in the vehicle. Company records show that two weeks ago tranquilizer doses matching that batch number were shipped to James Gunnar Cameron of Palo Alto, California. We also found Debra Highsmith’s missing cell phone and her computers, along with her calendars, which are, as far as we can tell, nothing but calendars.”

  Joanna was surprised. “All this incriminating stuff was in his car? He just left it there for us to find?”

  “Yup,” Jaime replied. “I think he meant what he told you up there on Juniper Flats. He had no intention of getting away. Once he took out his sister and his grandmother, his job was done. He didn’t care what happened afterward. Still doesn’t.”

  “Has he asked for an attorney?”

  “Not so far, and Deb and I have had him in the interview room for the better part of an hour.” Jaime paused then added, “Have you heard from Arlee Jones yet?”

  “No,” Joanna answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “He called the department thinking you’d be here. When you weren’t, he asked to speak to Deb or me. He wanted us to run up the flag to him immediately if Cameron asked for an attorney. In the meantime, Arlee will probably call you next. He’s got some bright idea about doing a plea bargain.”

  Joanna was surprised. “A plea bargain? Already? So far we’ve got three people dead. We don’t even know if all the victims who were injured on the sidewalk are going to survive. How can he possibly be talking plea bargain this early in the game?”

  “Beats me,” Jaime said, “but I thought you should have a heads-up.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said.

  Sure enough, when her phone rang again five minutes later, the county attorney was on the line.

  “I understand you and your people have had quite a day of it,” Arlee said, sounding hearty and enthusiastic in the hail-fellow-well-met fashion that only career politicians can ever fully master.

  “Make that several days,” Joanna said dryly, “and it’s not over yet.”

  “You’re right,” Arlee said. “That’s why I’m calling—with an opportunity for all of us to have it be over.”

  “I assume that means you’re looking at a plea bargain?”

  “Exactly. If we go for first-degree homicide in the Highsmith and Oliphant cases, we’re talking about a possible death penalty trial. Undoubtedly that will attract big criminal defense guns from all over hell and gone. Cochise County will end up footing the bill for a multimillion-dollar trial that we can’t afford. Besides, what happens if some doe-eyed defense attorney comes up with the brainy idea that Mr. Cameron is actually nuts—which I’m quite sure he is, by the way. They might end up getting the guy off on an insanity plea. That’s something I don’t want to see happen, and I doubt you do, either.”

  “If James Cameron is nuts, maybe that’s why we have insanity pleas,” Joanna suggested.

  “Come on, Sheriff Brady,” Arlee Jones said dismissively. “Don’t be naive. What I’m prepared to do is take the death penalty off the table in exchange for life without parole. The good thing about plea bargains is there’s no appeal. It can’t be tossed out on some kind of technicality.”

  “One count?” Joanna asked.

  “No, three. All of them first degre
e. The guy who was hit on the sidewalk died while Cameron was in the process of committing a felony. That means it’s automatically bumped up from vehicular homicide to murder one. I’m also expecting that Cameron will plead guilty to one count of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent, as well as five counts of vehicular assault. Settling all those charges in one fell swoop is going to be huge—for your department, for Alvin Bernard’s department, and for mine as well. Think of all the man-hours we’ll be saving in paperwork alone if we take him down with what we have right now.”

  On the one hand, Joanna knew Arlee was rushing things. He wanted to have his plea bargain in place before James Cameron came to his senses and decided what he really wanted was a lawyer who might manage to beat the rap completely.

  On the other hand, Joanna understood that the prosecutor had her between a rock and a hard place. If she didn’t agree with the plea bargain plan, Arlee Jones would spend the next several months making life miserable for her and her investigators. She knew that her grounds for arresting Cameron were solid, but beyond that, the ball was in the prosecutor’s court. As long as James Cameron stayed in custody for the remainder of his life, that was probably the best possible outcome for society in general and for Isadora Creswell in particular.

  “I guess you’ll do what you have to do,” she said finally.

  She had yet to put down the phone when it rang again. This time her chief deputy was on the line. “I’m on my way to Tucson with Cameron’s DNA sample,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Did he cause any trouble?”

  “Nope, none at all. Went as quiet as a lamb. Have you heard anything about the grandmother’s condition?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Once I drop off the sample, do you want me to go by TMC to check on her?”

  “Might be a good idea,” Joanna said.

  “Oh,” Tom added. “Maggie Oliphant’s daughter called the department. When you weren’t in, the switchboard put her call through to me. She’ll be in town tomorrow to start making final arrangements. Her brother is flying in from London. He won’t be here until Wednesday at the earliest.”

  “Sounds like Bisbee is going to be funeral central this week.”

  “Yes, the school district is bringing in a whole armload of grief counselors to have at the high school tomorrow morning. The world is sure different. When I was a kid and somebody died, we talked to our parents. We didn’t talk to grief counselors.”

  “You’re right,” Joanna said with a sigh. “The world really has changed.”

  “Staff meeting at eight in the morning?”

  “Eight sharp.”

  Butch came into the dining room just then carrying two glasses of wine. The two side-by-side photos were still plastered across Joanna’s computer screen. He passed her one of the glasses and then sat down beside her to peer at the photos.

  “Isadora’s grandson?” Butch asked, pointing at the portrait of the middle-aged man and making the same mistake Jenny had made.

  “That’s David Fredericks,” Joanna answered. “He’s the guy who killed my father.”

  “Any obvious connections back to Freddy Holder’s in-laws?”

  “Not obvious, but possible,” Joanna said. “He served twenty-eight months in Florence. When he got out, he managed to start a trucking company doing long-haul trips of oversize construction equipment—a company he sold two years ago for a sizable seven-figure sum—seven and a half million bucks. Guess who uses oversize construction equipment? Mining companies, that’s who,” she concluded, answering her own question.

  “You’re thinking Wayne Stevens might have sent some of that business in Mr. Fredericks’s direction?” Butch asked. “Thus turning an ex-con into an unlikely success story.”

  “It’s worth following up,” Joanna said.

  “Is Mad Dog’s widow still in town?” Butch asked after a pause.

  “As far as I know she is,” Joanna replied. “I believe Nelda Muncey lives over in Briggs in their old company house, one she and Mad Dog bought once the mines shut down.”

  “Your dad’s journal said that no one besides him was in the room when Mad Dog confessed to killing Fred Holder.”

  “What are you saying?” Joanna asked.

  “That there’s a good chance Nelda had no knowledge of what her husband had been up to.”

  “There’s always a chance she did, too,” Joanna replied.

  “I’m wondering, though, is it fair to Nelda to bring all this stuff up after such a long time?” Butch asked.

  “What’s fair?” Joanna retorted. “My father’s still dead, isn’t he? If Wayne Stevens was somehow behind my father’s death, then the man got away with murder.”

  “Wayne Stevens is dead, too,” Butch pointed out. “No amount of legal maneuvering is going to put him in jail for that crime now. So is Mad Dog. David Fredericks has already served his time in prison. Because of double jeopardy, he can’t be tried again for the same crime, so what’s the point? Reopening the case will certainly hurt Nelda Muncey, someone your father seemed to think was nothing but an innocent bystander. It’s also going to throw you and your mother right back into all that ugly emotional turmoil. I’m not saying one way or the other, but I’m wondering if that’s what you want to do.”

  Joanna shook her head. “I don’t know, either,” she said. “I’m going to have to think about it.”

  “I believe your father referred to it as a judgment call. The call he made at the time was to go straight to Wayne Stevens’s office and raise hell about it instead of letting it be. I’m not so sure that was a good idea then, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea now,” Butch added thoughtfully. “There’s a reason people say you should let sleeping dogs lie.”

  With that Butch drained the last of his wine, then he stood up and kissed the top of Joanna’s head. “Are you coming to bed?” he asked.

  “In a little while.”

  She sat there for a long time, listening to the quiet of their rammed-earth house and staring at the side-by-side photos. Finally, she made up her mind. It took only a few minutes for her to locate David Fredericks’s telephone number in Sahuarita. Once she had it, she didn’t give herself time to change her mind. It was a little before ten—late but not that late. She dialed the number. Once the phone started to ring, Joanna found herself hoping no one would answer, but then someone did. A man’s voice came on the line.

  “Hello,” he said. “David Fredericks here.”

  Joanna took a deep breath. “My name is Joanna Brady,” she said. “I’m the sheriff of Cochise County and—”

  “You’re D. H. Lathrop’s daughter,” he said, finishing the sentence for her. “I’ve been expecting your call for a very long time.”

  CHAPTER 27

  FROM THE TIME JOANNA WAS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, SHE HAD sometimes imagined what it would be like to finally confront the man who had taken her father’s life. Yet that Sunday night, when it finally happened, the conversation was nothing like she had anticipated, because the first words out of his mouth were these:

  “I’m so sorry.”

  That straight-out apology left Joanna with a mouthful of angry things she wanted to express and a sudden inability to say any of them. She had expected denials and weasel words. David Fredericks offered none of those.

  “I was a troubled young man back then,” he said. “I had planned on being career military, but they threw me out for a good reason. Believe me, I earned every bit of that other-than-honorable discharge. I was at loose ends, hanging around with the wrong people and trying to figure out what to do next, when someone suggested I might want to earn some money—a whole lot of money from where I was standing—by killing a crooked cop. It seemed like a good enough idea to me. After all, that’s one of the things they train you to do in the military—kill people.”

  “My father wasn’t a crooked cop,” Joanna objected.

  “I figured that out eventually,” Fredericks said. “At the time, I believed every cop
was a crooked cop, so I took the job. The person paying the bill gave me an article from the local paper that week. Small-town stuff. The reporter probably got paid by the number of names that were mentioned. Anyway, it was all about a Girl Scout troop going on a camping trip to the Chiricahuas—who was taking them there and who was bringing them back. Your father was one of the ones bringing people home. The plan was for me to follow him on his way to the pickup and force him off the road somewhere between Bisbee and the campout. The problem was, I ended up having car trouble that Saturday morning. By the time I caught up with your father, he was already coming back to Bisbee with three girls in the car.”

  “I was one of them,” Joanna said quietly.

  “I know that now, too,” Fredericks said. “Once I saw there were kids in the car, I figured I was screwed. I was being paid to take out one guy. I wasn’t being paid to kill kids, so I backed off. Then I drove past the place where your father had stopped to change someone’s tire. That’s when I saw my chance to get rid of him without hurting anyone else.”

  Joanna listened in silence to Fredericks’s story while unchecked tears streamed down her face. He must have noticed.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she managed. “I’m here.”

  “So that’s what I did, but when I hit him, there was something about the sound of it that was so much worse than I thought it would be,” Fredericks continued. “The plan was for me to take him out and then head for Mexico. The money was supposed to be waiting for me with the owner of a bar in Guaymas. Instead, I got drunk. I wasn’t drunk when I hit him, but I was by the time they picked me up an hour or so later. Not just drunk, but roaring drunk. When they took me in, I tried to tell them that it was a hit job, that someone—a woman—had hired me to do it. I told them about the bar where I was supposed to pick up my money. Turns out, the bar didn’t exist. She didn’t exist. They thought I was hallucinating, operating in a blackout. I told them all about it, but no one believed me.”

  It took a moment before Joanna got it. Ever since she had read the passages in her father’s journal, she had assumed that Wayne Stevens had been behind all of it. Now she wasn’t so sure.