Remains of Innocence

by J. A. Jance

  Without a word, Alvin Bernard produced a pair of handcuffs. He slipped one on Ruth’s thin wrist and fastened the other to the metal railing on her hospital bed.

  “This can’t be happening,” Rebecca hissed. “It’s impossible. You’re crazy. My kids are good kids. They would never do such a thing!”

  “Lucas is lying,” Ruth insisted desperately. “Lucas always does that—he does bad stuff and tries to put the blame on me.”

  Joanna studied her, remembering the purple-haired sweet-faced girl who had sat in the backseat of Joanna’s Yukon the day before, supposedly doing an interview of the local sheriff for her innocent-sounding blog. The old story of a serial killer inserting herself into an investigation was such a cliché that Joanna almost wanted to puke.

  “No such luck, sweetheart,” Joanna said. “This time the blame’s all on you.”

  CHAPTER 32

  AS SOON AS JOANNA LEFT THE HOSPITAL, THE SHAKES HIT HER. IT was all she could do to start the SUV and put it in gear. When her cell phone rang, it took four crows of the rooster to wrestle the damned thing out of her pocket.

  “Where are you?” Kristin asked.

  “Just leaving the hospital. I’m going over to the restaurant to tell Moe and Daisy what’s happened. I want them to hear it from me first. Then I’m coming back to the office. What’s happening there?”

  “Tom Hadlock is putting together a press conference. He’s planning on holding it here since we have more parking than Bisbee PD does. A lot has happened this afternoon. If you have a minute, Tom would like you to give him a briefing.”

  “Okay,” Joanna said.

  “And there are some people here to see you. Liza Machett is in the break room, and Roger Stephens just went out back to have a smoke.”

  “Roger Stephens of the U.S. Marshals Service? What’s he doing here?”

  “I asked him that, but he wouldn’t tell me. He said it was confidential.”

  “Figures,” Joanna said. “He’ll have to wait. I’ll talk to him when I get there, but right now I’ve got something important for you to do. It’s time to celebrate, and we’re having a party. I want you to order a dozen pizzas and put them in the break room. There isn’t a single person in the department who hasn’t put in extra time and effort this week. Besides, I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I’m starving.”

  Talking to Moe and Daisy was tough. Joanna gave them the news in Daisy’s little office just off the kitchen. They were relieved, of course, and Joanna had to refrain from telling them that this was barely the beginning. Signed confessions or not, it would be months or even years from now before Lucas and Ruth Nolan would be held accountable for their crimes. For Moe and Daisy there would be no closure and no way to put the terrible wrong done to their beloved Junior right.

  When Joanna arrived at the Justice Center forty-five minutes later, she wasn’t at all surprised to see two enormous black Cadillac Escalades idling in the no-parking zone directly in front of the sheriff department’s front entrance. The passenger windows were tinted to the point that it was impossible to see if anyone was inside. A guy in a dark suit and tie stood leaning casually against the driver’s door of one vehicle. A woman in a similarly dark pantsuit leaned against the tailgate of the second one.

  Grumbling under her breath, Joanna drove around back only to find a man she assumed to be Roger Stephens, also dressed in a suit and tie, leaning against the building directly in front of her reserved covered parking place. A shiny pair of snakeskin boots peeked out from beneath the hem of his trousers. The sidewalk around his feet was littered with cigarette butts.

  “The smoking area is around to the side of the building,” she said pointedly. “Away from the doors.”

  “There’s no shade over there,” he objected.

  That was true, and it was also deliberate. No shade meant less smoking.

  “What do you want?”

  “I have a name for you,” he said. “Richard Ransom.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A former FBI agent from Boston, Massachusetts, who’s now three small steps down from the secretary of the Treasury. Seems as though, back in the early eighties, Ransom was the only one of the guys involved in the Miller mess who was considered to be squeaky clean. Turns out, that’s only because no one ever came forward to rat him out. He was also on Anson Machett’s payoff delivery route.

  “Funniest thing, when Anson was coming into witness protection, he never blew the whistle on Richard. There isn’t one mention of him in Anson’s file. Shortly after Lyle came into the program, someone began putting the bite on Mr. Ransom, and he’s been paying the toll ever since. He sent money to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands without ever realizing that Anson Machett was the guy on the receiving end.”

  “So Lyle’s been living in witness protection and making money by blackmailing people?”

  “By blackmailing one person only,” Stephens said. “At least as far as we know right now. Lyle faked the books and laundered his ill-gotten gains by using the blackmail money to make improvements and pay salaries at the Whetstone Retreat. When Cesar Flores’s report about those old bills showed up, it was passed on to Ransom as a routine report. He looked at the evidence, figured out that Anson was probably the blackmailer, and started calling in favors, trying to get a line on where he was.”

  Stephens paused, took one last drag on his smoke, and then tossed the butt on the ground. “How am I doing so far?”

  Joanna stopped and stared at Agent Stephens. “Fine about everything but the smoking,” she said. “How the hell did you put this together so fast?”

  “I didn’t. It turns out Ransom was already under investigation. The FBI—the new FBI—was already working a program on him in a very hush-hush fashion. As soon as I started asking questions about this overnight, it rattled their chains, and they fell all over themselves trying to help me. They had a lot of the pieces, including contacts with various known hit men. They had put most of it together, but they were waiting for the final piece to fall into place before taking Ransom down. You provided that missing piece—Lyle Morton.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s under guard and in one of the cars you saw parked out front,” Stephens said. “People don’t get to stay in witness protection if we find out they’re conducting criminal enterprises. We’ll be flying him back to D.C. tonight.”

  “What about my murder charges?”

  “We’ve located what we believe are the two hit men who were used here. They were placed under arrest in Tucson earlier this afternoon. You’ll get them as the doers for your homicide.”

  “If somebody in the FBI knew this was going down, why didn’t they stop it before Guy Machett was murdered?”

  “Sorry,” Stephens said, shaking his head regretfully. “I can’t answer for the FBI.”

  “What about bringing Ransom here to face conspiracy and homicide charges?”

  Stephens grinned at her. “Not gonna happen,” he said. “You’ll have to take a number and get in line.”

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  “Lyle says his daughter is here—Liza. He wanted to come here to say good-bye. We’re not wheels up for another three hours. I figured what the hell? If she wants to see him, why not?”

  “Does she want to see him?”

  “Beats me. None of your people would talk to me or let me see her. I believe the words your detective used were ‘I can’t possibly divulge that information.’ Was she by any chance listening in on our conversation last night?”

  “It was Detective Howell’s phone,” Joanna told him. “It’s possible we were on speaker at the time.”

  Joanna let herself into her office with Agent Stephens on her six. “Wait here,” she said, pointing at one of the captain’s chairs. “I’ll see if she wants to talk to you or to Anson Machett.”

  Joanna left him there, then detoured into the bullpen, where she found Deb at her desk, pounding away on a keyboard.

&n
bsp; “I heard about Lucas and Ruth,” Deb said. “Great job!”

  “Where’s Liza Machett?”

  “In the break room.”

  “Lyle Morton is outside.”

  “I know,” Deb said. “The marshals have him in custody.”

  “Does she want to talk to him?”

  Deb shrugged her shoulders. “Beats me. Ask her.”

  Joanna started away, then she stopped. “Before I do, what kind of cancer does she have?”

  “None,” Deb said. “As in not any. The bald head and the scarf are part of her disguise.”

  “Disguise?”

  “Somebody put her in touch with a group of people, mostly long-haul truckers, I believe, who help victims of domestic violence escape their abusers. Shaving her head and wearing a scarf was an added bit of camouflage. Nobody stares at cancer patients. It’s rude.”

  “Okay then,” Joanna said.

  She made her way to the break room. Liza Machett, no longer wearing her scarf, was sitting on the frayed sofa, staring up at a flat-screen TV set where Judge Judy was busy declaiming her decision and blasting the two losers who had each accused the other of skipping out on a lease agreement. She looked up as Joanna entered.

  “I already know he’s outside,” Liza said quietly. “I know he wants to talk to me. The hell with him. He already told you that he thought I wasn’t his, and the feeling’s mutual. I have no idea who my father is, but it sure as hell isn’t him!”

  Joanna was impressed. Liza may have lost almost everything and everybody, but she hadn’t lost herself. Maybe it was true—the truth had set her free.

  “Okay,” Joanna said. “I’ll go tell him.”

  She reversed course.

  “Wait,” Liza called after her. “What about the money? Do I have to give it back?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned,” Joanna said. “I have it on good authority that the guy who was looking for you and the money is about to be taken into custody.”

  “All right,” Liza said. “Good.”

  “Do you know where you’re staying tonight?” Joanna asked. “There’s a lot to talk over.”

  “Deb . . . Detective Howell said I should stay at the Copper Queen, but I didn’t know if I could—if I’d still have money.”

  “You have money,” Joanna assured her. “Not to worry. Sleep as late as you want. We all have a funeral to attend in the morning. We’ll talk in the afternoon.”

  Joanna went back to her office. Roger Stephens was sitting in the chair where she’d left him, dozing. He started awake when she walked into the room.

  “Liza’s not interested in saying good-bye. She says to tell Anson Machett to go to hell.”

  “Fair enough,” Stephens said, rising to his feet. “Can’t say I blame her.”

  CHAPTER 33

  BY EIGHT THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING, JOANNA WAS IN HER OFFICE. Dressed in her formal uniform, she was trying to sort through the masses of resulting paperwork when Kristin knocked on her door. “There’s someone out here to see you,” she said. “Reverend Derek Nolan.”

  Joanna looked up from her desk. She was a long way from geared up to face down an accused child molester, but if he was here, it was time. “Send him in,” she said, rising. “Ask Detective Carbajal to join us.”

  She suspected that if Jaime didn’t like someone messing with kittens, he would go ballistic over someone who abused children.

  The man who entered Joanna’s office was tall and thin, and he looked a bit timid. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I understand you’re due to go to a funeral. If this is a bad time . . .”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “Have a seat. I’ve asked one of my detectives to sit in on our chat.”

  Derek nodded and eased himself onto one of the visitors’ chairs. “That’s fine. I wanted to know if it would be possible to see my children. The hospital said that Ruth was being kept under a police guard and wasn’t allowed visitors. I believe Lucas is here—in your jail.”

  Joanna returned to her seat and faced Derek. “The charges lodged against your son are very serious, Mr. Nolan. I thought about transferring him to the juvenile detention center, but the victim, Junior Dowdle, was very well liked here in town. Feelings are running high. I thought Lucas would be more secure here than there, at least until his arraignment. He is, of course, being kept segregated from the adult jail population.”

  Derek nodded again. “I understand,” he said. “Will I be able to see him?”

  Joanna remembered the material that Butch had unearthed in Ruth’s blog—entries that indicated that both twins had most likely been subjected to sexual abuse. She was considering how to play this when Jaime tapped on the door and let himself into the room.

  “This is Detective Carbajal,” Joanna said, “and this is Reverend Nolan.” The two men shook hands briefly.

  “Will my daughter be brought here, too, when she’s released from the hospital?” Derek asked.

  “Most likely,” Joanna said.

  Joanna looked from Jaime to Derek. The man may have abused his children, but it hadn’t happened here in Cochise County. If he was brought up on charges in the future, it wouldn’t be her case. That meant she had nothing to lose.

  “Ruth claims you abused her,” Joanna said simply. “She says you molested both her and her brother.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Derek said, nodding quietly. “I expected this. It’s not the first time she’s made that accusation.”

  “You’re saying it’s not true?”

  “Categorically. If you’d like me to take a polygraph test, I’ll be glad to. Name the time and the place.”

  “Why would she say such a thing if it weren’t true?”

  Derek Nolan sighed. “Because my daughter is evil,” he said. “Utterly evil. Both my children are.”

  “This sounds suspiciously like an abuser attempting to push the blame off on his victims.”

  Derek pursed his lips. “Rebecca and I met and started dating in high school. She was a year older than I was. She went off to college a year ahead of me and went completely wild—drinking, drugs, you name it, she did it, so we broke up. A couple of years later, someone told me she’d gone through treatment and cleaned up her act. Eventually we got back together, married, and had the twins. A few years later, I was working as an accountant in Dallas when I realized that what I really wanted to do was be a minister. We moved to Missouri and I started going to seminary. That’s when she fell off the wagon.”

  “A relapse?” Joanna asked.

  “Big-time,” Derek said. “And not just drinking and drugs, either. I found out she was screwing around behind my back. I started to divorce her. She begged me to take her back, so I gave her another chance. I thought when I got my first assignment and we moved away from the friends who were such a bad influence on her that things would get better. They didn’t.”

  “Geographical cures hardly ever work,” Jaime observed.

  Derek nodded. “And it got worse and worse. She came into some money—a small inheritance from her grandmother—and she was off and running again. She didn’t care how it looked or how it would affect me or the kids. Finally, she gave me no choice. I divorced her.

  “Then one day last spring, she came into my office at the church and told me that she and her boyfriend were moving to Bisbee, Arizona. The boyfriend was bad news, a sometime silversmith with a drug habit. I told her she couldn’t—that we had joint custody of the kids and that she couldn’t take them out of state without my written permission, which I wasn’t going to give. That night, I found this under my pillow.”

  He reached into the pocket of his sports jacket, pulled out a worn envelope, and handed it over. Looking at it, Joanna saw the word “Daddy” scrawled in pencil.

  “Open it,” Derek urged. “Read it.”

  Joanna opened the envelope and extracted a piece of lined notebook paper. “If you don’t let us go to Arizona, I’ll go to the cops and tell them you moleste
d me and tortured Lucas. Let us go or else.”

  The note was unsigned. Joanna looked back at Derek when she finished reading it. “This is Ruth’s handwriting?”

  Derek nodded. Two tears leaked out from under his eyelids and ran down his cheeks. He brushed them away with his sleeve. “I never touched her, I swear,” he said. “Not once. Not ever. And I never hurt Lucas, either. The next day, I tried to talk to her about it. Ruth looked at me with those icy blue eyes of hers and said, ‘They’ll believe me, Daddy. They’ll never believe you.’

  “That’s when I realized how truly wicked she was, but I also knew she was right. I wouldn’t even have to be found guilty in a court of law. Just being accused of such a thing would mean that I’d lose my job and my life. They’d never give me another church. So I signed the permission document and they left to come here.”

  Joanna studied his face. There was no tell—only anguish. And this was the same story Lucas had told—that Ruth lied when she didn’t get her way.

  “Tell me about Billy Rojas,” she said quietly.

  “Billy? He was one of the kids from church. A sad case—wheelchair bound, not much of a family life. I was proud when Ruth and Lucas took him under their wing, but then he died. The three of them were out in the desert behind our house. There was a flash flood. The bank gave way and Billy drowned.”

  “Your children are killers, Reverend Nolan,” Joanna said. “They keep trophies. We found the probable murder weapon in the Dowdle case hidden under the floorboards in Lucas’s room and we found the victim’s rabbit’s foot hidden under the floorboards in Ruth’s room. We found other things there as well, including a watch that I believe belonged to Billy Rojas.”

  For a moment Joanna gazed at Derek’s shock-stricken eyes across the expanse of desk. “They had Billy’s watch?” he asked numbly.

  Joanna nodded.

  “You’re saying they’re responsible for Billy’s death, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God,” Derek breathed, shaking his head and almost sliding off the chair in grief. “I’m sorry,” he murmured over and over. “So sorry for everything. I thought I had done a better job of raising them than that.”