Exit Wounds jb-11

by J. A. Jance

  “Your son can’t take Carol’s body anywhere if he isn’t going there himself.”

  Suddenly, despite her lack of food, Edith Mossman straightened in her seat and came to full attention. “What are you saying?” she asked sharply.

  “If someone were to file criminal charges against your son, if he ended up going to jail or prison rather than returning to Mexico, he wouldn’t be able to take his daughter’s body anywhere. It’s my understanding that when it comes to shipping caskets containing human remains across the international border into Mexico, it’s customary to have a relative of the deceased ride along to accompany the body.”

  “You’re saying, if Eddie doesn’t go back to Mexico, then Carol’s body doesn’t go either?”

  Joanna nodded. “It’s not one hundred percent, but it might work.”

  “Tell me what I need to do,” Edith said.

  “First you’re going to have some lunch. Then we’ll talk.”

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  Joanna pulled into the last open parking place at Daisy’s Cafe. Junior Dowdle, Daisy’s adopted developrnentally disabled son, met them at the door with a wide smile and a pair of menus. “Booth or table?” he asked.

  “Booth, please, Junior,” Joanna told him.

  Junior led them to an empty booth and deposited their menus on the table. As he waddled purposefully away, Edith Mossman eyed him suspiciously. “Why would a restaurant hire someone like that?” she asked.

  “It’s his mother’s restaurant,” Joanna explained. “A few years ago, Junior’s guardian abandoned him over in St. David. Moe and Daisy Maxwell took him in. First they were just his foster parents. After the death of Junior’s biological mother, Moe and Daisy officially adopted him. They also taught him how to work here.”

  “Oh,” Edith said, relenting. “I suppose that’s all right then.”

  When Daisy appeared, pad in hand, Joanna ordered a roast beef sandwich while Edith settled on a cheese enchilada. As soon as Daisy walked away from their booth, Edith turned her full attention on Joanna.

  “Now what can I do to help?” she asked.

  Joanna herself had been mulling that very question. “Did any of your granddaughters’

  abuse occur while they were still in the States?” she asked.

  Edith shook her head. “I don’t think so. According to Carol, it started happening after they moved to Mexico. Cynthia, my daughter-in-law, was terribly ill ever before she became pregnant with Kelly. She never should have gotten pregnant that last time, but Eddie insisted. That’s one thing The Brethren do believe in-that they should go forth and multiply. Eddie believed in multiplying in a big way. And so, when Cynthia was too sick to …”

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  Edith paused, searching for the proper word. “… to accommodate his needs any longer, he came to Carol looking for … sexual gratification!

  For several seconds, while Edith Mossman struggled to regain her composure, Joanna had to battle her own sense of outrage. A terrible revulsion assaulted her-a sickness that had nothing to do with current physical reality.

  How could someone do that to his own child? a shaken Joanna wondered. How could he?

  “Carol told me Eddie came to her bed late one night a few months after Cynthia became ill,” Edith Mossman continued at last. “With Cynthia confined to her sickbed in the room next door, he woke Carol up and forced himself on her. He told her that since Cynthia could no longer perform her wifely duties, they were now Carol’s responsibility.

  He said that her mother needed Carol to take her place. He claimed that was what Cynthia wanted!”

  Edith paused again while her eyes brimmed with tears. “So, of course Carol complied.

  What choice did she have?”

  In her years as sheriff, Joanna Brady had encountered more than her share of ugly situations. A year earlier she had struggled to come to terms with the murder of a pregnant and unwed teenager. Dora Matthews had been a sexually precocious classmate of Jenny’s, and it had been tough on Joanna to realize that children Jenny’s age were already sexually active. But the tale Edith Mossman had just related was far more appalling.

  When Joanna tried to speak, the question she was asking stalled in her throat. “How old was Carol at the time?” she managed finally.

  “She’d just turned ten,” Edith answered.

  Months earlier, when thirteen-year-old Jennifer Ann Brady 262

  had crossed the critical line of demarcation that separates girlhood from womanhood, Joanna had responded to the situation by taking her daughter out to dinner alone so they could have a private woman-to-woman discussion of the intricacies of human sexuality. To Joanna’s dismay, Jenny had wasted no time in derailing her mother’s best intentions.

  “Come on, Mom,” Jenny had told her with a dismissive shrug. “I already know all that stuff. They teach us about it at school.”

  Being told about the birds and the bees by your mother or by a respected teacher at school was one thing. To be routinely raped by your own father from age ten on was something else.

  “How long did the incest continue?” Joanna asked.

  “Until Carol was fourteen,” Edith answered. ‘As soon as she had her first period, she got pregnant. When it came time to deliver, she was too small and the baby was too big. The doctor did a cesarean, but it was too late to save the baby. He died.

  Later on the doctor told Carol that her female organs had been damaged and that she’d never be able to have children.”

  Joanna thought about what George Winfield had told her about his autopsy findings.

  “They’d been damaged all right,” Joanna put in. “Dr. Winfield, the medical examiner, told me that he thought a complete hysterectomy was performed on Carol right along with the cesarean.”

  ‘A hysterectomy?” Edith Mossman gasped. “Carol never mentioned that.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know,” Joanna suggested.

  “They did that to her at age fourteen? That’s criminal.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said quietly. “I couldn’t agree more, but go on. What happened then?”

  “Carol said Eddie left her alone after that. She always 262

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  thought it was because the scar made her too ugly-because the other girls were prettier than she was. I think it’s because my son is a pervert, Sheriff Brady. Fifteen was too old for him. He went right on down the line-from Carol to Andrea, and from Andrea to Stella.”

  ‘And Kelly?”

  “I suppose he abused her, too. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never talked to her about it.”

  ‘And she’s still there,” Joanna said. “In Mexico.”

  Edith nodded. “I believe Eddie married her off to one of his middle-aged Brethren buddies. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen at the time.”

  “I know you told me the other day, but I don’t remember. How old was Carol when she finally ran away?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “You mean, after ten years of living in hell, what finally provoked her to leave?”

  Joanna nodded. “Something like that.”

  “She heard her father making arrangements to marry her off. To someone up in northern Arizona.”

  “In one of the bigamist communities on the Arizona Strip?”

  It was Edith Mossman’s turn to nod. “Somewhere up there,” she agreed. “I don’t know exactly, but that’s the thing. People like my son treat their wives and children-especially their daughters-like chattel. They make all the decisions and no one else is allowed any input. They marry them off to men twice and three times their age, and the girls have no say whatsoever.”

  “You said wives?” Joanna interjected. “As in plural?”

  Again, Edith nodded.

  “And your son has more than one?”

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  “He had three the last I heard, but
that was a long time ago. He could have more by now. The last one I knew about was thirty years younger than he is.”

  “The same age as Kelly?” Joanna asked.

  “Younger,” Edith answered. ‘And that’s what he was going to do to Carol-marry her off to an old buzzard in his sixties who already had four or five wives and a whole raft of children. Eddie told the guy Carol was good at looking after other people’s kids. Somehow Carol overheard the conversation. She must have been eavesdropping.

  That’s when she wrote and asked for my help. Not just for herself, but for her sisters, too. She was afraid her father would send her away and the three younger girls would be left completely unprotected-as much as she could protect them, that is.”

  “So you made arrangements for the girls to come live with you.”

  “That’s right. I managed to wire money to her. She bought train tickets and away they came with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.”

  “But Kelly wouldn’t leave,” Joanna added.

  Edith nodded. “Kelly was the baby and she truly was spoiled. She refused to come along, and it broke Carol’s heart. I don’t believe she ever forgave herself for going off and leaving Kelly there alone.”

  Daisy delivered their plates of food. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. “The kitchen was a little backed up.”

  In fact, Joanna and Edith had been so deep in conversation that they hadn’t noticed the passage of time. And, considering the subject under discussion, the arriving food no longer seemed nearly as appetizing as it had appeared on the menu.

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  “Tell me about those other two dead women,” Edith said at last “You say they were going to interview Carol and put it on television?”

  “That’s what we believe,” Joanna returned. “One of my investigators is checking on that right now.”

  ‘And they were going to pay her for doing this interview, whatever it was?”

  Joanna nodded. “That’s right. They had brought along a check for five thousand dollars.”

  “Carol must have known that payday was coming,” Edith mused. “That’s why she no longer needed my help.”

  Joanna nodded again. “But I don’t think the interview ever took place, or, if it did, the money never changed hands. Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega left California with a company check payable to Carol Mossman in their possession, but no such check has been found-not at your granddaughter’s mobile home and not at the crime scene in New Mexico, either.”

  “But who were they?” Edith asked. “What did they want with Carol?”

  “Before they came here, they had been in northern Arizona looking into The Brethren,”

  Joanna said.

  “Oh,” Edith Mossman said.

  “Diego Ortega, Carmen’s brother, said something about a group called God’s Angels.

  Have you ever heard of them?”

  “Oh, yes,” Edith said. “Of course, I know about them. They’re wonderful.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They’re a support group, sort of like the old Underground Railroad. When women run away from those situations …”

  “From their bigamist husbands,” Joanna supplied.

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  “… they leave with nothing. They have no money, no job skills, nowhere to go. They’ve left everything familiar behind-their families, their homes, and often their own children.”

  “Their religion?” Joanna asked.

  “That, too,” Edith agreed. “And they need a lot of help as they start over. For one thing, they’ve led terribly sheltered and mostly isolated lives, so they don’t know much about the outside world. That’s where God’s Angels come in. They have programs for fleeing wives and for fleeing children, too. I believe that’s the one Andrea is most involved with-the one for children.”

  “Your granddaughter is part of this group?”

  ‘Andrea has always been the smart one in the family. She has a full-time job and goes to school part-time. But on the side, she volunteers as a God’s Angels sponsor.

  That means she counsels individual women and whatever children they may have brought with them when they ran away. She tries to help the women gain a toehold on life away from their former lifestyle. Otherwise they’re in danger of going back.”

  “They’re like refugees,” Joanna observed.

  “Pretty much,” Edith agreed.

  There was a short pause in the conversation during which both women concentrated on their food. Joanna moved her sandwich around on the plate rather than eating much of it.

  “If Andrea is part of that group,” Joanna began, “what about Stella?”

  “Oh, no. Not Stella. She found herself a husband-a very nice husband, by the way.

  She’s always been the strong one. She’s not big on support groups, either. Once she made up her mind to, she put all that other business behind her. I think Andrea tried 267

  to get her to help out with some of the God’s Angels programs, but Stella wasn’t interested. She said she was over it, and she wanted to stay that way.”

  Joanna decided to switch subjects. “What did your son do for Phelps Dodge when he worked there?” she asked.

  “Drove a truck,” Edith answered at once. “Those big dump trucks they used to haul waste from the pit out to the tailings dump.”

  “He never worked in the General Office?”

  “Oh, no. Are you kidding? Eddie Mossman never had an office job in his life. He didn’t have the education for a desk job, to say nothing of the mindset.”

  “What about your daughter-in-law?”

  “Cynthia? The poor girl was a mousy little thing who never worked outside the home.

  If she had-if she’d had a job and money of her own-maybe she could have left Eddie just like some of those other women are doing, but back then, there wouldn’t have been anyone like God’s Angels to help her. As far as Cynthia was concerned, Eddie was the head of the family, and his word was law. She did as she was told. If I’d had any idea about what was really going on, I would have tried to do something, but I didn’t know. Not at the time. Not until it was too late to do any good. But why are you asking about Eddie’s job? What does his job with PD have to do with any of this?”

  Joanna wasn’t prepared to reveal details about the unusual weapon information that had telegraphed the connection between Carol Mossman’s death and the murders in New Mexico.

  “Just wondering,” she said. A moment later she added, “When did you first hear that your son was in town?”

  “Yesterday,” Edith said. “Yesterday afternoon. He phoned 268

  and ordered me to call the mortuary and tell them that Carol’s body should be released to him rather than to me. I told him to go fly a kite, that I’d already made the arrangements. He said I couldn’t do that, that she was his daughter and he’d have the final say. I told him to go ahead and try.”

  “Did he happen to mention how he found out about Carol’s murder?”

  “No.”

  “Or when he came to town?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me that, either. You have to understand, Sheriff Brady, it wasn’t a pleasant phone call. He was yelling at me the whole time, and I was yelling right back.”

  It was time for Joanna to ask the critical question straight out. “Mrs. Mossman,”

  Joanna said, “do you think it’s possible that your son murdered his own daughter?”

  “You mean, do I think Eddie killed Carol?” Edith shook her head. “No, I doubt that’s possible, but I almost wish he had. At least that way, I’d have the satisfaction of seeing him shipped off to prison for the rest of his life, the way he deserves.

  You see, Sheriff Brady, I wrestled with that same question myself all last night.

  If Eddie was the one who murdered Carol, why on earth would he come back here to try and claim her body? Why not just go straight back to Mexico and stay there? Nobody’s going to bother going all the way down to Ob
regon to bring him back. Eddie’s stupid, but surely he’s not that stupid. Besides, what would be his motive to kill her?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want Carol to go public with her story,” Joanna suggested.

  “Why would he object to that?” Edith asked. “Eddie’s proud of the way he lives. He doesn’t think he has anything to be ashamed of. As far as he’s concerned, he’s right and everybody

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  else is wrong. And since the people he hangs around with all hold the same beliefs, why would he care?”

  “Maybe some of them care,” Joanna said. “There are other Brethren, aren’t there?

  Maybe some of the ones who live in this country aren’t interested in being quite so blatant about it. Maybe one of them wanted to keep the interview from taking place.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Edith said, pushing her plate away.

  “Wasn’t the enchilada any good?” Daisy asked when she came to pick up their dirty dishes. “I’d be glad to get you something else.”

  Edith shook her head. “The food was fine,” she said. “For some reason, I seem to have lost my appetite.”

  Daisy looked at Joanna’s plate. “You, too?” she asked.

  “Me, too,” Joanna said.

  She paid for their virtually uneaten lunches and was helping Edith Mossman into the Civvie when her cell phone rang. Joanna answered the call while stowing Edith’s walker in the backseat. “Just a minute, Jaime,” she told Detective Carbajal. “Let me start the engine. As hot as it is, I can’t leave Edith Mossman sitting there with no air-conditioning.”

  “Okay, boss,” Jaime said when she returned to the phone. “Here’s the deal. We’ve turned Mr. Mossman over to Deputy Howell. She’ll keep an eye on him. He wasn’t thrilled about having a bodyguard hanging around, but when we told him his life had been threatened, he warmed up to the idea. Just exactly how serious is this threat?”