Downfall

by J. A. Jance

  “With everything that’s happened, Casey’s pretty busy at the moment,” Sunny stammered. “I’m not sure I should interrupt.”

  “Then get Chief Deputy Hadlock on the horn. Now!”

  Cratering, Sunny turned and reached for her phone. Butch was about to ask what was so urgent, but Robin silenced his question with an imperious shake of her head. Sunny stood with her back to them, murmuring inaudibly into the phone. Finally, she turned back to face them.

  “Chief Deputy Hadlock will be right out,” she said.

  The chief deputy who marched through the security door a few moments later was anything but a cool customer. His sparse gray hair, often worn in a self-conscious comb-over, stood on end. He looked more distraught than commanding and more than slightly overwhelmed.

  He focused entirely on Butch. “This is a terrible turn of events, Mr. Dixon,” he said. “Unfortunately, someone evidently attacked Sheriff Brady, Tased her, and abducted her out in the back parking lot.”

  “Who?” Butch demanded. “This is the sheriff’s department, for Pete’s sake. Don’t you have surveillance tapes?”

  “We do,” Tom Hadlock replied, “but the assailant was wearing a hoodie at the time of the attack. We can’t identify him. Even so, this is an evolving situation, and you really shouldn’t be here. Please go home. We’ll contact you the moment we have news.” With that, he turned his attention on Agent Watkins. “As for your request to see Casey? Ms. Ledford is quite busy at the moment trying to get a line on some AFIDs. It’s mission critical that we ID them, but she’s not getting much traction with Taser International.”

  “I believe I can help with that,” Robin interjected. “Or, rather, my boss can. Bruce Ryder, Tucson’s special agent in charge, went to college with one of the head honchos at TI. Roommates, I believe. That’s one way to jump to the head of the AFIDs line. Now, do we get to see Casey or not?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tom said. “Right this way.” He led them to a locked security door and keyed in the entry code. “Do you need me to come along, or can I get back to my crime scene?”

  “Go do what you need to do,” Robin told him. “I know my way to the lab.”

  By the time they arrived at the door to the laboratory, Robin had her boss on the phone and was bringing him up-to-date. Inside the lab, they found Casey seated at her desk with a telephone clamped to her ear while she used the eraser of a pencil to pound out an impatient drumbeat on the Formica surface.

  “I’m on hold right now, and have been forever,” she explained, shaking her head in annoyance. “And if I ever do get off the phone, I’m terribly busy.”

  In reply, Robin simply handed her cell phone to Casey. “It’s on speaker,” she said. “My boss, Bruce Ryder, the Tucson sector’s special agent in charge, is on the line.”

  Casey attempted to pass the phone back, but Robin stepped out of reach. “Bruce, I’m putting Casey Ledford on the phone. She’s with Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “But what . . . ?” Casey began.

  “If you want to jump-start your AFIDs search,” Robin told her, “you’re going to need some horsepower. Bruce Ryder is someone who can deliver it. He’s longtime personal friends with the CFO of Taser International. They were college roommates.”

  “All right,” Casey said with a resigned sigh. “But someone else is going to have to sit on hold.” Once Robin had Casey’s phone in hand, the criminalist immediately launched off on a detailed explanation of what had happened, but Ryder cut her short.

  “Robin already briefed me,” he said. “I fully understand the urgency of the situation. I take it you’ve already captured a legible image of one of the AFIDs?”

  “Yes, sir,” Casey replied.

  “Good,” Ryder said. “E-mail it to me. Robin can give you my address. Once I have it in hand, I’ll get right on this.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Casey breathed.

  “Think nothing of it,” he said. “We’re all in this together. By the way, in my spare time, I’ll be praying for Sheriff Brady.”

  “Thank you for that, too,” Casey added. “We all are.”

  As the two women exchanged phones, Robin’s rang again. “Agent Watkins here,” she said. “Already? And there’s a partial match?” She listened for some time. “All right, then. Yes, please forward all your results to Casey Ledford at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department, but I really appreciate the call.”

  “A partial match on what?” Casey asked.

  “On one of the DNA profiles.”

  “Which one?”

  “Between Susan Nelson’s baby’s profile and the DNA sample from Travis Stock, the one Sheriff Brady collected earlier today, and the same one I dropped off at the crime lab a few hours ago.”

  Casey frowned. “But you said it’s only a partial match,” she objected. “How can that be?”

  “Because it turns out Travis Stock isn’t the father of Susan Nelson’s baby. Someone else is—a near male relative of Travis’s—either his father or his grandfather. I’m taking a wild guess here, but it seems doubtful that even if the grandfather is still alive, he’d be the one responsible.”

  “Are you saying Jeremy is the father?” Casey asked in disbelief. “Wait just a minute.” Hanging up on her endless hold, she turned away and pawed through the stacks of loose paper littering her desk. “Here it is,” she said, picking up a single sheet. “This is it—a printout of the report Detective Waters wrote up concerning his and Sheriff Brady’s interview with Travis Stock’s family earlier this afternoon.

  “When it came in, I barely scanned through it, hitting some of the high points, but it says right here that Travis voluntarily submitted a DNA sample over the strenuous objections of his father. And right above that notation, there’s something else. Travis admitted to owning an SVSSE hoodie. He was willing to turn it over as well but was unable to locate it at the time. The surveillance footage of the attack on Sheriff Brady showed someone wearing a hoodie. And now we understand why Jeremy Stock was so adamantly opposed to his son submitting a DNA sample,” Casey added. “He knew it would lead us right back to him.” She reached for her phone again. “I’d better get Chief Deputy Hadlock on the line and let him know what’s up.”

  “There’s something else,” Robin said. “If Travis’s father came after Sheriff Brady, what are the chances he went after some other people, too?”

  It took Butch a moment to fully grasp what she meant. When he did, it hit him like a blow to his gut. “Surely Jeremy Stock wouldn’t harm his own family, would he?” Butch asked, but Robin didn’t answer. She was already scrolling through her contacts list. Finally, she punched in a number and waited for someone to answer.

  “Agent Watkins here, Detective Waters,” she said. “Do you know what’s going on here in Bisbee?” She paused. “Yes, well, actually it’s probably a good thing you didn’t hop in your car and race right over. Things are happening in a hell of a hurry, and I need you to handle something critical on your end. Travis’s DNA sample has revealed that he is not the father of Susan Nelson’s baby.” Another pause. “Yes, that’s correct—Travis is not the father. Most likely Jeremy Stock is. We’re worried that Deputy Stock may have gone off the deep end. It’s possible he’s behind Sheriff Brady’s kidnapping, and God knows what else. I’m worried his family may have come to grief.”

  There was another pause. “Yes,” Robin said. “That’s exactly what’s called for—a welfare check at the Stocks’ home. But please don’t go alone, Detective Waters,” she warned. “Be sure you have plenty of backup.”

  CHAPTER 34

  THE TAHOE CAME TO AN ABRUPT STOP, FARTHER UP THE ROAD from where Joanna had parked three days earlier and close enough to the water hole for streamers of crime-scene tape to be briefly visible in the headlights. Jeremy switched off the engine. For a matter of moments—the better part of a minute—neither he nor Joanna spoke or moved.

  “What happens now?” she asked at last, needing to break the silence.


  “We go for a hike,” Jeremy answered.

  He exited the vehicle, opened the back door, and then roughly manhandled Joanna out onto the ground. In the glow of the dome light, she saw that he held the Taser in his left hand. In that brief instant, she realized this was a near replay if not an exact one of what must have happened to Susan Nelson. Jeremy had escorted his victim away from her classroom, gripping her with his right hand while holding the pocketed and hence invisible Taser in his left.

  The Taser. Even though the darts had been deployed, Joanna knew the weapon could still function as a contact stun gun. After dragging her out of the vehicle, he shoved her face-forward up against the SUV’s tailgate.

  “We’re going to climb up to the top,” he said. “I know you can’t do that with your hands cuffed behind you, so I’m going to fasten them in front. If you try anything at all, I’ll knock you senseless. Understand?”

  Joanna nodded mutely at this answered prayer. Having the cuffs in front of her would be far better than having them fastened behind, but it wouldn’t be a big help in terms of weaponry. These days, with her protruding belly in the way, leaning over far enough to tie her shoes was a challenge. Ditto for grabbing the Glock out of her ankle holster.

  A moment later, one of the cuffs clicked open. Jeremy spun her around while clutching the arm with the cuff still on it, then he slammed the back of Joanna’s head against the car hard enough to leave her seeing stars and wavering drunkenly on her feet.

  “Give me your other hand!” he ordered. “Now!”

  Still swaying dizzily, Joanna could do nothing but comply. As the second cuff clicked shut, she found herself staring into Jeremy Stock’s throat. There was no moon, but enough starlight beamed down on this empty piece of desert to allow nearby bushes to cast pale shadows on the ground. And there was also enough illumination for her to get a full-on look at her opponent.

  Since Jeremy was a good eight inches taller than her five-foot-four, that meant she was facing the base of his chin. He still wore his uniform. A jagged cut of some kind trailed from the base of his chin and down to his collar, where a dark stain some two inches across marred the khaki fabric. Looking down as he struggled to refasten her cuff, she noticed that the backs of both hands were covered in a wild pattern of scratches.

  Joanna was a cop. She had seen her share of those kinds of injuries and she knew what they meant—that the person wearing them had recently engaged in some kind of life-and-death struggle. Now, with sickening clarity, she understood what must have happened.

  “What have you done?” she demanded. “Did you hurt Allison or Travis? Are they all right?”

  “They’re fine,” he said. “They’re totally fine.”

  But from the empty and coldly dispassionate way in which he delivered the words, she realized at once they weren’t true—couldn’t be true. Travis and Allison weren’t “fine” at all. In fact, they were most likely dead. She remembered the hard-eyed stare with which Jeremy had regarded Travis during that earlier interview. Even then, his plan for what would happen next was most likely under consideration if not already in motion. What was it that had pushed him over the edge—the DNA sample, maybe? He had clearly been furious about that, but why?

  Joanna had thought for a time that if she pleaded with Jeremy to spare her life for the sake of her baby’s, maybe he would let them both live. Now she forced herself to let go of that tiny thread of hope. Pleading for mercy clearly wouldn’t work. Granting mercy wasn’t in Jeremy Stock’s playbook. If he was so deranged at this point that he had sacrificed his own child, he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter hers.

  So rather than beg and plead, she went on the offensive, focusing on the scratches on the backs of his hands—scratches that hadn’t been there earlier in the afternoon. The fact that there had been no defensive wounds on Susan Nelson’s body had made Dr. Baldwin theorize that she had participated in consensual sex before she died. Joanna doubted that was true.

  “We know Susan had sex shortly before her death,” Joanna said. “Traces of DNA were found on her clothing, but how did that happen? Did she want to have sex with you or did you knock her senseless before you raped her?”

  Joanna never saw the blow coming. Jeremy delivered a powerful slap that hit her full across her right cheek and sent her tumbling helplessly to the ground. The way the Taser darts pricked into her made her feel as though she had landed on a piece of cholla. Rolling over onto her side, she tried to cover her belly with her cuffed hands in case he kicked her, but he did not. Instead, grabbing her by the shoulders, he lifted her to her feet and shook her as if she were little more than a rag doll.

  “Susan knew I was furious with her. She thought giving me a piece of tail would settle me down. It didn’t work. When it was over, she got just what she deserved, and you will, too,” he growled. “Now get moving!”

  Still woozy from the blow, Joanna fought to remain upright and put one foot in front of the other. She tasted blood in her mouth and knew that he had loosened at least one and maybe several of her teeth. Already she felt the side of her face swelling. She’d look like hell tomorrow. And then she remembered. Tomorrow was the day of the funeral—her mother’s funeral. If she somehow made it through the night and lived long enough to make it to the mortuary, she knew exactly what a disapproving Eleanor would have said.

  During Joanna’s childhood, there had been very few school or church or Bible school events at which Joanna Lee Lathrop hadn’t shown up with at least one scraped knee or torn elbow or maybe even two of each. Her mother’s comment had never changed.

  “Wouldn’t you know,” she’d say, shaking her head in despair. “Here you are looking like something the cat dragged in. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  Joanna realized that if she and Sage somehow made it through this awful night and came out alive into the light of day, Eleanor would be totally justified in saying the same thing. Except since Eleanor wouldn’t be there to deliver those words, Joanna would have to do so herself.

  And suddenly, despite everything that was going on, she felt the beginning of a very inappropriate giggle bubble upward in her throat. She realized that if she could laugh in the face of all this, maybe she was as deranged as Jeremy. But the giggle came anyway. She couldn’t stop it.

  “What’s so funny?” Jeremy demanded, shoving her from behind and making her struggle to retain her balance.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  But she knew one thing about that inappropriate attack of laughter. It was symbolic of something else—of a determination to overcome and live.

  One way or the other, Joanna Brady intended to do exactly that.

  CHAPTER 35

  “I’M GOING TO GO OUTSIDE AND SEE WHAT’S GOING ON,” ROBIN ANNOUNCED.

  “I’m with you,” Butch told her.

  “No,” Robin said. “You should stay here in the lab, out of the way.”

  “Like bloody hell!” he retorted. When he followed her out of the lab, Agent Watkins didn’t object.

  They never made it as far as the crime scene. The administrative end of the hallway was a beehive of activity as personnel from the cordoned-off crime scene outside hurried into the building and filed into the conference room. By the time Robin and Butch reached the doorway, the room was filled beyond capacity. With a standing-room-only crowd, Robin and Butch squeezed in barely far enough to allow Casey Ledford to tuck in behind them.

  A grim-faced Chief Deputy Hadlock made his way to the lectern. “All right, folks, quiet down, and listen up,” he ordered, “I want everyone on the same page. We have reason to believe that the person who took Sheriff Brady hostage is one of our own—Deputy Jeremy Stock. In the course of the last several hours, a number of facts have come to light.

  “We have evidence that suggests that for a considerable period of time, one of our homicide victims—Susan Nelson—was a sexual predator preying on young male students attending SVSSE. One of her victims, nam
ely Travis Stock, believed he was the father of Susan’s unborn baby. Through DNA profiling, we’ve now established that a near relative of Travis’s rather than Travis himself is the baby’s actual father. Jeremy’s father has been deceased for years. That leaves us to believe that Deputy Stock fathered Susan Nelson’s child. The same DNA profile turned up on clothing found at Susan Nelson’s homicide scene.

  “Sheriff Brady was abducted earlier this evening, apparently when she left the building to go to her car. We’ve found evidence that suggests that a Taser was used in the attack. Agent Robin Watkins of the FBI and the Tucson special agent in charge, Bruce Ryder, are assisting us in attempting to identify the AFIDs found at the scene. That will take time, of course, but for now the assumption is that Jeremy used his department-issued Taser in order to overpower her.”

  Hadlock paused momentarily to consult his notes while the room remained locked in hushed silence. Before he could continue, the jarring ring of a cell phone shattered the silence. The chief deputy looked on impatiently while Agent Watkins dug the offending device out of her pocket. She glanced at it. Then, rather than leaving the room, she took the call and listened for several long moments before nodding and hanging up.

  “Well?” Tom Hadlock inquired. “Is it what we thought?”

  Robin nodded. “They’re dead,” she said quietly.

  “Both of them?”

  Robin nodded again.

  Tom Hadlock closed his eyes and gritted his teeth before speaking again. “A short time ago, officers from Sierra Vista PD were dispatched to Jeremy Stock’s home. Apparently both Allison and Travis Stock are deceased.”

  Audible gasps shot through the crowded room.

  “Quiet,” Tom ordered. “Bearing that in mind, I believe it’s reasonable to assume that the perpetrator behind all these atrocities, including the attack on Sheriff Brady earlier this evening, can be none other than Deputy Stock. I’m hereby issuing an APB. I cannot stress this enough. If you encounter him, Jeremy must be regarded as armed and dangerous. You may still consider him a fellow officer and friend, but he is to be approached with extreme caution.