by J. A. Jance
“He died sometime around midnight,” George answered. “The bruising on his back would be consistent with his being shoved from behind and propelled forward with considerable force, most likely by a blunt object of some kind—a round blunt object, the business end of a baseball bat perhaps. I was surprised by the amount of animal hair I found on his clothing—make that on the front of his clothing. Do Moe and Daisy have a number of pets?”
“The animals didn’t belong to Moe and Daisy,” Joanna answered grimly. “They were victims, too. They were dropped off the ledge alive and left to die. There were four animals in all. Three of them were already dead when Junior landed on top of them. The fourth, a kitten, is still alive—mutilated and badly injured but still alive. Millicent Ross is working to save it. We’ve also sent evidence from both the living kitten and the dead animals to the State Patrol crime lab in Tucson in hopes of locating human DNA.”
George sipped his coffee reflectively. “It sounds to me as though you’re dealing with a serial killer’s starter kit and a starter victim, too.”
“That thought crossed my mind,” Joanna agreed. “Is there any chance Guy’s murder and Junior’s are related?”
George shook his head. “I don’t think so. The two incidents are very different. What happened to Junior is consistent with an unprovoked attack. His back was turned. No defensive wounds at all. I’d say he was taken completely by surprise.”
“Do you think his killer might have been someone he knew?” Joanna asked.
“Possibly,” George agreed. “Guy Machett, on the other hand, tried to fight off his attackers. He had a number of visible defensive wounds, and I should be able to get scrapings from under his fingernails.”
“What about the burns?” Joanna asked. “If we locate the weapon, do you think you’ll be able to match his wounds to that?”
“Possibly,” George said, “although I’m not sure. If you locate the weapon, however, there may be DNA evidence on it as well as on the duct tape that was used to secure him to the chair. Did you find any rolls of tape at the scene?”
“Only remnants,” Joanna answered. “There weren’t any rolls in Guy’s garage, either. I don’t think Dr. Machett was a DIY kind of person.”
“So we’re operating on the assumption that the killers came prepared with both the tape and the stun gun.”
Joanna nodded. “We’re also hoping that some of the perpetrators’ DNA will show up on the tape, too. After all, that’s what duct tape does—it sticks to things.”
“Since Guy is mentioned by name in the article in the Sun, I assume that means you’ve located his next of kin?”
“No such luck.” Joanna went on to explain everything Amos Franklin had told her about Guy’s family and about the sister who had mysteriously disappeared.
“In other words, after the autopsy, I won’t be releasing the body to a mortuary?”
“Not for the time being,” Joanna said. “Not until we find some kind of family connection.”
Their food came. Moe had mixed up the orders. Joanna waited until his back was turned before she traded her platter of over-easy eggs for George’s over-hard. Considering what was coming, Joanna surprised herself by falling on her food as though she was starving—because she was. The paltry nourishment from last night’s peanut butter sandwich had long since disappeared. When the bill came, George grabbed it first and insisted on paying. Ten minutes later, they pulled their respective vehicles into the parking lot at the M.E.’s office. They found Detective Keller, already green around the gills, pacing nervously back and forth in front of the office door.
“You took long enough,” he grumbled.
Matt made it through the cataloguing of the visible wounds and the fingernail scraping, but once the first major incision was made, the detective bailed. “I told you he was a newbie,” George said under his breath over the sound of Matt’s retching from the lab’s restroom. Gritting her teeth to choke back her own nausea, Joanna nodded and held her ground.
Sometime later George finally nodded more to himself than to anyone else. “Just as I suspected. Guy Machett drowned. The bruising on the back of his neck suggests that he drowned because someone bodily held his head under water.”
By then Matt had eased his way back into the room and stood warily on the perimeter. “It’s homicide, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” George told him, snapping off his gloves. “Definitely a homicide.”
Joanna let herself out the back door. She stood next to her Yukon in the parking lot behind the morgue, grateful for the blue sky arching overhead and for the heat of the late morning sun shining down on her body.
“Sorry about that,” Matt Keller said, coming out to join her. His color was somewhat better, but she could tell he was embarrassed by his squeamishness. “Chief Bernard asked me to come give him a verbal briefing on the autopsy before we meet up with you and your people at one. I’d better get going, unless there’s something else you want me to do here.”
Down the canyon and just visible on the flank of the hill, Joanna caught a glimpse of St. Dominick’s where Mass had most likely just ended. Moe and Daisy’s place was just up the hill from the church. Beyond that was the house Ruth and Lucas Nolan shared with their mother. Joanna had meant to ask either Marliss or Ruth for the name of Ruth’s blog so she could glance at it before the interview. Now, though, on the off chance that the budding reporter might be able to shed some light on Junior Dowdle’s killer, Joanna wanted that interview to happen sooner than later. Reading the blog entries could wait.
“Go brief your chief,” Joanna said, “but just out of curiosity, did you do in-depth interviews with either Lucas or Ruth Nolan?” Joanna asked.
“Since they live just up the street from Moe and Daisy, I talked to both of them,” Matt said. “Didn’t get much.”
“Ruth showed up at the crime scene with Marliss last night and asked to do an interview with me. I gave her the bum’s rush, but maybe doing the interview would be a good idea. It might give me a chance to ask her some questions as well.”
Once Matt left, Joanna did the same. Driving past St. Dom’s, she noticed that the parking lot was empty. Rebecca Nolan’s house on O’Hara, a small wooden rental with a tin roof, was perched on the hillside ten steps down from street level. When Joanna knocked on the wobbly screen door, Rebecca herself, barefoot and wearing a bathrobe, came to the door.
“Sheriff Brady,” she exclaimed in surprise, peering around the door inside the screen. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping to talk to Ruth,” Joanna said.
“What about?”
“She requested an interview last night,” Joanna said, “for her blog. I was too busy then, but I have some time this morning. Is she available?”
“Oh, my,” Rebecca said with a harsh laugh that sent a fog of boozy breath out through the screen. “Not that blog nonsense again. I’m afraid I’ve unleashed a monster on the world. It was an English writing assignment I gave her and Lucas several months ago. Now she’s gone nuts. I keep telling her that the world isn’t ready for a fourteen-year-old blogger.”
“Who is it, Mom?” Ruth asked from somewhere behind her mother.
Rebecca spun around. “It’s Sheriff Brady,” she grumbled. “I keep telling you that you shouldn’t be bothering important people with requests for interviews.”
“It’s no bother,” Joanna replied, making sure that her voice carried through the open doorway to the ears of the purple-haired girl, standing listening but invisible behind her mother’s back. “I was in the neighborhood and thought, if Ruth was home, perhaps we could do it now.”
“I have time,” Ruth interjected quickly. “Please, Mom. It’s a chance to interview a real sheriff.”
“Oh, I suppose it’s all right,” Rebecca conceded, “but don’t make a pest of yourself. You’re just a kid. There’s no reason Sheriff Brady should bother giving you the time of day.”
With that, Rebecca Nolan disappeared
into the house. As soon as she was out of the way, Ruth’s eager face appeared around the edge of the door. Unlike her mother, Ruth was fully dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.
“Let me go get my phone,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Joanna waited for a few moments on the tiny landing that constituted the house’s front porch. Glancing up at the mountain from where she stood, she could barely see the sharp edges in the rocks that marked the old Glory Hole. When Ruth reappeared, she had put on a pair of flip-flops and was carrying an old-style flip-top cell phone. An orange stripe had been added to her otherwise mostly purple hair, which was pulled back in a multicolored ponytail.
“You really don’t mind?” Ruth asked eagerly.
“No, I don’t,” Joanna said. “Where would you like to do the interview? There’s really no place to sit here. My car is up on the street. Is that all right?”
“The car is fine,” Ruth said.
Joanna led the way back to the Yukon. When she opened the rear passenger door, the girl stopped and stared. The SUV had been rigged out as a patrol vehicle, complete with a protective screen between the front and back seats and again between the backseat and the luggage compartment. That way prisoners and suspects could be transported safely in the backseat without endangering whoever was at the wheel. The vehicle came complete with a full complement of radio transmission gear and an onboard computer. On the passenger side of the drive shaft sat Joanna’s holstered shotgun.
“Can you really shoot that thing?” Ruth asked, pointing at the weapon.
“Can and do,” Joanna replied. “I also have one of these.” She patted the holstered Glock on her hip. “I can shoot this as well. I’m expected to maintain the same kind of shooting proficiency as the rest of my officers.”
“I have to sit in the back, like a prisoner or something?” Ruth asked.
“That’s right,” Joanna replied with a smile. “As long as the shotgun is up front, you have to be in the back.”
“And there really aren’t any door handles back here?”
“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Nobody in back gets out until I let them out.” Closing the door, she walked around to the driver’s door and climbed in. “Now tell me, what did you want to ask?”
When she looked back at Ruth, the girl had her phone out and was using her thumbs to type in a message at what, to Joanna, appeared to be lightning speed. Joanna’s texting skills weren’t up to recording an entire interview.
“Did you always want to be sheriff?” Ruth asked.
“Not really,” Joanna answered. “My husband wanted to be sheriff. He died in a line-of-duty shooting and the people elected me in his place. In other words, my becoming sheriff was more or less an accident. That was seven years ago now, though, and it turns out I love it.”
“What’s the worst thing about being sheriff?”
“Having to tell someone their loved one is dead.”
“Like Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell with Junior?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the best thing?”
“Locking up a serious criminal and knowing that society is protected from additional harm from that individual for a very long time.”
“Like lock them up and throw away the key?”
Joanna laughed. “Exactly.”
“Were you an only child?”
The unexpected question wasn’t an easy one to answer. Joanna’s older brother had been born before her parents married and had been given up for adoption. She hadn’t met him until long after her father was dead and she herself was an adult.
“Yes,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I was raised as an only child.”
“I wish I was,” Ruth said pensively. “Lucas is the perfect one. I’m not. He’s way smarter than I am, especially at math. I’m better at English, though, and I read more than he does.”
“We can’t all be good at all things,” Joanna said. “For instance, I’m not nearly as good at texting as you are.”
Ruth shrugged. “Maybe I just practice more.” She paused for a moment as if thinking about the next question. “Do you think you’ll be able to find out what happened to Junior?”
“You need to understand that even the sheriff isn’t allowed to comment on an active investigation. I guess I have to say, ‘No comment’ to that one.”
Ruth’s face broke into a grin. “I heard you say that to Marliss last night, but I’ve never had anyone say it to me before. It almost feels like I’m a real reporter or something.”
“Aren’t you?” Joanna asked.
“I guess.”
“But you asked about Junior like you knew him. Did you?”
“I felt sorry for him,” Ruth said. “When we first moved here, I’d see him out walking sometimes, but then his parents started locking him in at night. I think they were afraid that he’d get lost or something. At night, when the windows were open, I could hear him crying sometimes. A couple of times, when it was really bad, I went over and sang to him to help settle him down.”
Joanna was stunned. “You sang to him?”
Ruth nodded. “I sang some of the songs we learned in Sunday school before Mom made us stop going. You know the ones I mean, ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ He really liked those.”
Joanna felt a shock of recognition. She remembered Moe and Daisy saying something about Junior claiming he’d sometimes had nighttime visitors. Daisy had insisted the phantom visitors were hallucinations, but now Joanna knew that wasn’t true. Junior had had at least one nocturnal visitor. Joanna wondered if there were others.
“Did you go there often?” Joanna asked. “To sing to him, I mean.”
“Not often,” Ruth answered, “just a couple of times.”
“Did you ever see Junior hanging out with anyone?” Joanna asked.
“Jason,” Ruth said at once. “Jason Radner.”
Noticing movement at the corner of her eye, Joanna saw a towheaded boy, Ruth’s brother, Lucas, bound up the stairs. He came over to the Yukon and pressed his face against the rear passenger window.
“Mom says you should come inside,” he said to Ruth. “Now,” he added. “She says you should stop wasting the sheriff’s time.”
Joanna climbed out of the Yukon, came around the vehicle, and opened the back door so Ruth could exit.
“Thank you,” Ruth said. “Should I send you what I write about you?”
“Please,” Joanna answered, “or you could just send me the link to your blog. You can find my work e-mail address on the sheriff’s department website.”
Ruth nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do that.”
By then Lucas had already disappeared down the stairs with Ruth trailing behind. Joanna remembered how she had trotted up the stairs, eager to be out of the house. She didn’t seem nearly as happy to be going back inside.
Watching her go, Joanna felt a certain sadness. She hoped that neither Jenny nor Dennis would ever feel that way about her—that one of them was wanted and the other was not.
It was clear to her that Ruth Nolan was at war with her mother. Joanna had considerable experience in that kind of intergenerational conflict. In Ruth’s case, dyeing her hair purple and singing “Jesus Loves Me” were both acts of rebellion, ones that most likely carried about the same weight in terms of motherly disapproval.
Shaking her head, Joanna put the Yukon in gear and headed out. It was almost time for the meeting she had called, and she didn’t want to be late.
CHAPTER 18
IT WAS JUST AFTER SUNRISE WHEN KIMI SUE AND OXMAN’S RIG pulled into the Trux-Travel truck stop outside Denver. Overnight the immense flatness of the Great Plains had been replaced by the soaring Rockies. When Liza climbed down from her overhead berth into the mountainous chill, she felt stiff and sore as her body protested the long hours of confinement. Kimi Sue had shown Liza how to exercise her ankles to keep them from swelling, and that seemed to be working.
“Y
ou might want to bring your stuff inside,” Kimi Sue suggested. “William is your next ride, but he won’t be here for another hour and a half. Grab a shower and some breakfast. William drives a tanker truck. We told him he should look for the lady with the bright blue head scarf.”
After bidding Kimi Sue good-bye, Liza immediately took a shower. Because she didn’t have to shampoo or rinse her hair, showering was a surprisingly fast process. Dressed in a change of clothing, she ventured out into the truckers’ lounge. Once again, there was a bank of computers—three of them this time—situated along one wall. Since most of the truckers seemed to be focused on their own laptops, iPads, or iPhones, the idle PCs sat there in lonely, unused splendor.
Availing herself of one of those, Liza did a preliminary search for used car dealerships in Albuquerque. Kimi Sue had told her that the next driver would be going all the way to I-10, but Liza had already decided that she’d cut herself loose from the Underground Railway in Albuquerque and find her own transportation from there to Bisbee.
After locating several possible dealerships and jotting down the addresses, she gave herself permission to check out the news from Great Barrington. The headline on the Herald’s website took Liza’s breath away: BELOVED RESTAURATEUR, CLIFFORD SMALL, DEAD AT AGE 53.
Local restaurant icon, Clifford (Candy) Small, age 53, was found dead in the burned-out ruins of his house just after 7 AM today. The Great Barrington Fire Department has labeled the fire suspicious. The incident is being investigated by both local fire and police departments.
This is breaking news. No further details are available at this time.
Astonished and horrified, Liza read through the brief piece again. Then, before anyone could read the story over her shoulder, she closed the website, erased her history, and fled the room. Outside, she paced back and forth in the chill air. Candy was dead, too? Why, because he had helped her? What other reason could there be? That made his death Liza’s fault, too. Awash in guilt, she realized that if she was a person of interest in Olivia’s case, she would most likely be one in this case as well. That meant the authorities would ramp up their search for her, and so would whoever else was after her. Liza had no doubt that those people were behind this new fire, the one in which Candy had perished.