Shoot Don't Shoot

by J. A. Jance

  “Such goings-on!” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “And in front of company, too. Jenny, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Eleanor picked up the newspaper and handed it over to a still-coughing Joanna. “If you’re willing to let your daughter see this kind of filth at her tender age, then you’re going to have to be the one to give it to her. I certainly won’t be a party to it.”

  Joanna took the paper and stuffed it into her purse.

  “And you’d better decide what you want to order,” Eleanor continued. “Bob and I have already made up our minds. We had plenty of time to study the menus before you got here.”

  Obligingly, Joanna picked up her menu and began looking at it. She held it high enough that it concealed her mouth where the corners of her lips kept curving up into an irrepressible smile.

  Bob Brundage may have been a colonel in the United States Army, but he was also an inveterate tease. Even now, while Joanna studied the menu, he managed to elicit another tiny giggle of laughter from Eleanor Lathrop, although the previous flap had barely ended.

  To Joanna’s surprise, instead of still being angry, Eleanor was smiling and gazing fondly at Bob Brundage. Her doting eyes seemed to caress him, lingering on him as if trying to memorize every feature of his face, every detail of the way he held his coffee cup or moved his hand.

  And while Eleanor studied Bob Brundage, Joanna studied her mother. That adoring look seemed to come from someone totally different from the woman Joanna had always known her mother to be. Gazing at her long-lost son, Eleanor seemed softer somehow, more relaxed. With a shock, Joanna realized that Eva Lou Brady had been right all along. Eleanor was different because there was a new man in her life. In all their lives.

  “What can I get you?” a waitress asked.

  How about a little baked crow? Joanna wondered. “I’ll have the tuna sandwich on white and a cup of soup,” she said. “What kind of soup is it?”

  “Turkey noodle,” the waitress said. “What else would it be? After all, it is the day after Thanksgiving, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “It certainly is.”

  The remainder of the meal passed uneventfully. When it was over, Joanna said her good-byes to both Bob Brundage and to her mother while standing in the Hohokam’s spacious lobby. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay another night, Mother?”

  “Heavens no. I have to get back home.”

  Joanna turned to Bob Brundage. They stood looking at one another awkwardly. Neither of them seemed to know what to do or say. Finally, Joanna held out her hand. “It’s been nice meeting you,” she said.

  The words seemed wooden and hopelessly inadequate, but with Eleanor looking on anxiously, it was the best Joanna could do.

  “Same here,” he returned.

  Jenny, unaffected by grown-up awkwardness, suffered no such restraint. When Bob Brundage bent down to her level, she grabbed him around the neck and planted a hearty kiss on his tanned cheek. “I hope you come back to visit again,” she said. “I want you to meet Tigger and Sadie.”

  “We’ll see,” Bob Brundage said, smiling and ruffling her frizzy hair. “We’ll have to see about that.”

  Back in the room, Ceci and Jenny disappeared into the bathroom to change into bathing suits, while Joanna extracted Eleanor’s folded newspaper from her purse. She wasted no time in searching out the article Eleanor Lathrop had forbidden her granddaughter to read:

  A Tempe police officer was seriously injured early Thanksgiving morning and a former longtime Chandler area police officer is dead in the aftermath of what investigators are calling a bizarre kidnapping/suicide plot.

  After being kidnapped from her dormitory room at the Arizona Police Officers Academy in Peoria, Officer Leann Jessup jumped from a moving vehicle at the intersection of Olive and Grand avenues while attempting to escape from her assailant. A carload of passing teenagers, coming home from a party, narrowly avoided hitting the gravely injured woman when her partially clad body tumbled from a moving pickup and landed on the pavement directly in front of them.

  Two of the youths followed the speeding pickup and managed to provide information that led investigators back to the APOA campus itself and to David Willis Thompson, a former Chandler police officer who has been the on-site director of the statewide law enforcement training facility for the past several years.

  Thompson’s body was discovered on the campus later on yesterday afternoon. He was found in a vehicle inside a closed garage, where he is thought to have committed suicide. Investigation into cause of death is continuing, and an autopsy has been scheduled.

  Meantime, Leann Jessup is listed in serious but stable condition at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she underwent surgery yesterday for a skull fracture and where she is being treated for numerous cuts and abrasions.

  Thompson, a longtime Chandler police officer, left the force there under a cloud in the aftermath of a serious altercation with his estranged wife in which both she and a female friend were injured.

  In this latest incident, the injured woman and Cochise County Sheriff, Joanna Brady, were the only two women enrolled in a class of twenty-five attending this session of the Arizona Police Officers Academy, an interdepartmental training facility that attracts newly hired police officers from jurisdictions all over the state. Sources close to the case say there is some reason to believe that Ms. Brady was also in danger.

  Melody Daviddottir, local spokeswoman for the National Lesbian Legal Defense Organization, the group that was instrumental in forcing Thompson’s ouster from the Chandler Department of Public Safety, said that it was unfortunate that a man with so many problems could be placed in a position of responsibility where he was likely to encounter lesbian women or women of any kind.

  “Dave Thompson left Chandler because, as a danger to women, he was an embarrassment to his chain of command. He could not have gone from disgrace there to directing the APOA program without the full knowledge and complicity of his former superiors,” Daviddottir said.

  With Thompson now dead, Daviddottir said, her organization is considering filing suit to see to it that those people, whoever they are, should be held accountable for injuries Leann Jessup suffered in the incident with Thompson.

  Lorelie Jessup, mother of the injured woman, expressed dismay that her daughter, a lesbian, had been singled out for attack due to her sexual persuasion. “That won’t stop her,” Mrs. Jessup said. “It might slow her down for a little while, but all Leann ever wanted was to be a police officer. She won’t give up.”

  “How do we look?” Jenny asked, as she and Ceci paraded out of the bathroom in their suits.

  “You look fine.”

  “Grandpa said for us to call when we were ready. He says he’ll watch us.”

  “Good. Go ahead then.”

  As soon as the girls left the room, Joanna returned to the newspaper. Or at least she intended to, but her eyes stopped on two words in the article’s third paragraph: “partially clad.” Carol Strong had said that, except for the pair of pantyhose that had been used to bind her hands and feet, Leann Jessup had been nude. Since when did hand and foot restraints qualify as being partially clad? But the words sounded familiar—strangely familiar—and that bothered her.

  Putting down the newspaper, Joanna picked the television remote control off the coffee table where Jenny had left it and switched on the VCR. Joanna wasn’t nearly as handy with the remote as her daughter was, but after a few minutes of fumbling and running the tape back and forth, she managed to turn the VCR to the very beginning of the taped newscast.

  Once again the anchor was saying, “…longtime ASU economics professor Dean R. Norton was arraigned this afternoon, charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of his estranged wife, Rhonda Weaver Norton. Her partially clad body was found near a power-line construction project southwest of Carefree late last week.”

  Thoughtfully, Joanna switched off the tape and rewound it. Then, for several long seconds, she sat staring at the screen w
ith the fuzzy figure of the news anchor poised once more to begin the ten o’clock news broadcast. Even though she no longer had Juanita Grijalva’s envelope of clippings, Joanna had studied the articles so thoroughly that she had nearly committed them to memory.

  She was almost positive one of the early articles dealing with finding Serena Grijalva’s body had made reference to her being “partially clad.” Of course, in that case, that particular media euphemism had spared Serena’s children from having to endure embarrassing publicity about their dead mother’s nakedness. And the words used no doubt reflected the information disseminated to reporters on that case since, according to Detective Strong, the exact condition of the body—including the pantyhose restraints—had been one of her official holdbacks.

  Once again Joanna switched on the tape. The anchor smiled and came back to life. “…Rhonda Weaver Norton. Her partially clad body was found near a power-line construction project southwest of Carefree late last week.”

  Joanna turned off the machine. What did the words partially clad mean when they were applied to Rhonda Weaver? Was it possible they meant the same thing? If Carol Strong had resisted embarrassing two orphaned Hispanic children, what was the likelihood that another investigator might do the same thing in order to spare a grieving mother who was also a well-known, nationally acclaimed artist?

  It was only a vague hunch. Certainly there was nothing definitive enough about the niggling question in Joanna’s head to justify dragging Carol Strong into the discussion. At this point, the possible connection between this new case and the others was dubious at best. But if Joanna could come up with a solid link between them…

  Purposefully, Joanna hurried across the room and retrieved the telephone book from the nightstand drawer. Her experience at the jail on Monday, where she had fought her way up through the chain of command, had convinced her there was no point in starting at the bottom. She called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department and asked to speak with the sheriff himself.

  “Sheriff Austin is on the other line,” the receptionist said. “Can I take a message?”

  “This is Sheriff Joanna Brady,” Joanna answered. “From Cochise County. If you don’t mind, I’ll hold.”

  Wilbur Austin came on the line a few moments later. “Well, hello, Sheriff Brady. Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, but I’m sure we’ll run into one another at the association meeting in Lake Havasu in February. I hear you’ve been having all kinds of problems with this session at the APOA. Someone mentioned it today at lunch. I just heard about it this afternoon. It’s a damn shame, too. Dave Thompson was a helluva nice guy once upon a time. Went a little haywire, I guess, from the sound of things.”

  A little haywire? Joanna thought. I’ll say! But she made no verbal comment. Wilbur Austin’s stream-of-consciousness talk button required very little input from anyone else.

  “I heard, too, that you visited my jail here the other night. Hope my people gave you whatever assistance you needed. Always glad to oblige a fellow officer of the law. Had a few dealings with poor old Walter McFadden from time to time…”

  Austin’s voice trailed off into nothing. Joanna waited, letting the awkward silence linger for some time without making any effort to fill it. Her father had taught her that trick.

  “If you run into a nonstop talker and you need something from that person,” Big Hank Lathrop had advised her once, “just let ’em go ahead and talk until they run out of steam. People like that gab away all the time because they’re afraid of the silence that happens if they ever shut the hell up. If you’re quiet long enough before you ask somebody like that for something, they’ll break their damn necks saying yes.”

  The heavy silence in the telephone receiver settled in until it was almost thick enough to slice. “What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” Wilbur Austin asked finally.

  “I’d like to speak to the lead investigator on the Rhonda Weaver Norton homicide,” Joanna said.

  It worked just the way Big Hank had told his daughter it would, although Austin was cagey. “This wouldn’t happen to have any connection with your visit to my jail the other night, would it?” he asked.

  “It’s too soon to tell,” Joanna admitted. “But it might.”

  “Well, that’ll be Detective Sutton,” Wilbur Austin said. “Neil Sutton. Hang on for a minute, I’ll give you his direct number.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said.

  Moments later, after she dialed the other number, Detective Sutton came on the line.

  “Neil Sutton here,” he said.

  “This is Joanna Brady,” she returned. “I’m the new sheriff down in Cochise County. Sheriff Austin told me to give you a call.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Neil Sutton said. “Now that you mention it, I guess I have heard your name. Or maybe I’ve read it in the newspaper. What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?”

  “I need some information on the Rhonda Weaver Norton murder.”

  “You might try reading the papers,” he suggested, attempting to ditch her in the time-honored fashion of homicide cops everywhere. Longtime detectives usually have a very low regard for meddlesome outsiders who show up asking too many questions about a current pet case.

  “Most of what we’ve got has already turned up there,” he added blandly. “There’s really not much more I can tell you. Why do you want to know?”

  “There may be a connection between that case and another one,” Joanna returned, playing coy herself, not wanting to give away too much.

  As soon as Joanna shut up, Sutton’s tone of casual nonchalance changed to on-point interest. Recognizing Sutton’s irritating lack of candor when it surfaced in herself, she wondered if the malady wasn’t possibly catching. Maybe she’d picked it up from the other detective over the phone lines.

  “What other case?” Sutton asked.

  Joanna became even less open. “It’s one Carol Strong and I are working on together.”

  “Carol Strong?” he asked. “You mean that little bitty detective from Peoria?”

  Little bitty? Joanna wondered. If Carol Strong had that kind of interdepartmental reputation, things could go one of two ways. Either Sutton held Carol Strong in high enough mutual esteem that he could afford to joke about his pint-sized counter-part, or else he held her in absolute contempt. There would be no middle ground. And based on that, Sutton would either tell Joanna what she needed to know right away, or else he would force her to fight her way through a morass of conflicting interdepartmental channels.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Joanna agreed reluctantly.

  Neil Sutton audibly relaxed on the phone. “Well, sure,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? What is it you two ladies need?”

  Joanna took a deep breath. Here she was, a novice and an outsider, about to send up her first little meager hunch in front of a seasoned detective, one whose official turf she was unofficially invading. What if he simply squashed her idea flat, the way Joanna might smash an unsuspecting spider that ventured into her kitchen?

  “What was she wearing?” Joanna asked.

  “Wearing? Nothing,” Sutton answered at once. “Not a stitch.”

  “Nothing at all?” Joanna asked, dismayed that the answer wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. “But I just watched the television report. I’m sure it said ‘partially clad.’”

  “Oh, that,” Sutton replied. “That was just for the papers and for the television cameras. She was wearing a pair of pantyhose all right, but they weren’t covering anything useful, if you know what I mean.”

  Joanna felt her heartbeat quicken in her throat. Maybe her hunch wasn’t so far off the mark after all. She tried not to let her voice betray her growing excitement.

  “Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what the pantyhose were covering,” Joanna said.

  “Oh, sorry,” Neil Sutton responded. “No offense intended. Her husband used her own pantyhose to tie her up. Did a hell of a job of it, too, for a college professor. Must hav
e studied knots back when he was a Boy Scout. He had her bent over backwards with her hands and feet together. Must have left her that way for a long damn time before he killed her. Autopsy showed that at the time of death there was hardly any circulation left in any of her extremities.”

  Sutton paused for a moment. When Joanna said nothing, he added, “Sorry. I suppose I could have spared you some of the gory details. Any of this sound familiar?”

  “It’s possible,” Joanna said evasively. “We’ll have to check it out. Where will you be if I need to get back to you?”

  “Right here at my desk,” he answered. “I’m way behind on my paper. I won’t get out of here any before six or seven.”

  It was a struggle, but Joanna managed to keep her tone suitably light and casual. “Good,” she said. “If any of this checks out, I’ll be in touch.”

  23

  Heart pounding with excitement, Joanna dialed Carol Strong’s numbers—both home and office—and ended up reaching voice mail at home and a receptionist at the office.

  “What time is she expected?” Joanna asked.

  “Detective Strong is scheduled from four to midnight today,” the receptionist said. “May I take a message?”

  What Joanna had to say wasn’t something she wanted to leave in message form, electronic or otherwise. “No,” she answered. “I’ll call back then.”

  Disappointed, Joanna put down the phone. It was barely twelve-thirty. That meant it could be as long as three and a half hours before she could reach Carol Strong. If that was the case, what was the most profitable use she could make of the intervening time?

  Reaching for pencil and paper, Joanna drew a series of boxes, to each of which she assigned a name that showed the people involved. Serena and Jorge Grijalva. Rhonda and Dean Norton. Leann Jessup and Dave Thompson. She drew arrows between each of the couples and then studied the paper trying to search for patterns, to see what, if anything, they all had in common.