Exit Wounds jb-11

by J. A. Jance

  “I’m sorry to have to say this,” Joanna said gently, “but it is true, Ms. Mossman.”

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  Andrea Mossman sank into an overstuffed easy chair covered in a fabric with a pattern of bright-pink peony blossoms and yellow butterflies. “I was about to get dressed and come to Bisbee to talk to you,” she said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “May I sit down?” Joanna asked.

  Andrea nodded woodenly and motioned Joanna onto a small bright yellow leather couch.

  On her way out of the office, Sheriff Brady had paused long enough to collect a pocket-size tape recorder. She pulled it out of her purse and set it on a nearby end table. Then she took out her cell phone and switched it off.

  “Do you mind if I record this conversation?” she asked.

  “No,” Andrea said. “Go ahead.”

  Joanna switched on the recorder. After identifying herself and giving the time and date, she introduced Andrea Mossman. “And you know why I’m here?” she asked.

  “Of course I do,” Andrea replied. She stopped long enough to force down a sob. “It’s because all of this is my fault.”

  “Your fault?” Joanna asked. “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m the one who heard what Pam and Carmen were looking for,” Andrea said in a rush. “One of my clients-one of the former Brethren women whose children I helped counsel and who ended up living in L.A.-somehow learned that Pam Davis and Carmen Ortega were looking for a way to do a story-an insider’s story-on The Brethren and what goes on with them.” Andrea paused and looked closely at Joanna’s face. “You do know what goes on, don’t you?”

  Joanna nodded. “I have a pretty good idea,” she said grimly. “Your grandmother told me some of it, but I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

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  Andrea Mossman’s face darkened. “Among The Brethren, women are nothing, and girls are less than that. They’re pieces of property, to be traded back and forth. And abused. For some of the girls, it’s the first thing they remember. For others, it’s the first thing they forget.

  “Pam had heard about me through that former client. She contacted me and asked if I would help her put together a story on The Brethren. That same client has a son named Josiah who still lives in the family compound up in northern Arizona-out on what they call the Arizona Strip. He helped his mother get out, and he’s functioned as a spy for us ever since. Among The Brethren, boys are given far more freedom to come and go than women and girls are-it’s a lot like the Taliban that way. Josiah has been able to smuggle messages in and out for us. It was through him that I found out about …”

  “Cecilia’s wedding?” Joanna suggested quietly.

  Andrea glanced quickly at Joanna’s face, then she nodded. “You know about that, too-about my father’s other family?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you Josiah’s name,” Andrea said. “If anyone finds out he helped us …”

  “He’d be in danger, too?” Joanna asked.

  “What do you think?” Andrea broke off. After a minute or so, she went on. “If it hadn’t been for Josiah, I wouldn’t have known what was going on. I didn’t think I could stop it, but Pam and Carmen convinced me that if they could film the wedding itself and make it public, maybe there would be enough publicity so we could bring Cecilia out of there and try to give her some kind of normal life. They said they needed enough damning evidence to blow The Brethren sky-high-something 306

  so compelling that even the mainstream media would be forced to pick it up.”

  “So you made arrangements for Josiah to help Pam and Carmen film the wedding.”

  Andrea nodded.

  ‘And how did you contact them?” Joanna asked.

  “Once or twice I emailed them, but usually I used a phone card and pay phones. I didn’t want to have anything traceable back to me.”

  “One of my detectives found your e-mail address in Pam Davis’s e-mail address book,”

  Joanna said.

  Andrea’s face darkened. “I warned Pam about how dangerous these people can be,” she said softly. “But I don’t think she believed me.”

  “Tell me about Carol,” Joanna urged. “I’m assuming you’re the one who put Pam and Carmen in touch with her.”

  Andrea nodded again. “Everything I have-everything I own-this house, my education, my car, my independence-I owe to Carol. She’s the one who saved us-Stella and me.

  She really did bring us out of the wilderness. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably have been sold off into indentured servitude in some family compound the same way Cecilia has been. But Carol called Grandma and made arrangements for train tickets.

  Then she hustled us onto the train. She tried her best to get Kelly to come with us, but she wouldn’t. That was awful for Carol. Kelly simply refused to go. If Carol had tried to take her by force, none of the rest of us would have gotten away. So the three of us left and Kelly stayed, God help her. She’s twenty-five now. It breaks my heart to think of the kind of hell her life must be. It broke Carol’s heart, too.”

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  “So Carol saved you,” Joanna breathed.

  Andrea Mossman nodded as tears began to course down her cheeks. She dabbed at them fitfully with a tissue. “She saved us, but she couldn’t save herself. Maybe it’s because Stella and I were younger than Carol was. Somehow we were able to find our sea legs and go on. Once I got into school, I was so hungry to be educated, nothing could stop me. And Stella found Denny, but Carol never found anybody or anything.”

  “Except her dogs,” Joanna offered.

  “Yes,” Andrea agreed. “Her dogs. They were always hungry and needy and mostly discarded purebreds, but she loved them to distraction. She always thought she could take one more, and then one more and one more after that, until it would get to be too much and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. That’s when Grandma would step into the breach again and fix whatever needed fixing.”

  “What about Pam and Carmen?” Joanna urged.

  “When I found out they were willing to pay for some interviews with some of the women who had escaped The Brethren, I thought, why not put them in touch with Carol? Here was a woman-a potentially wonderful, capable woman-whose whole life had been torn apart by what my father and The Brethren did to her. It’s one thing to show a little girl being married off to an ugly old man. That’s bad enough. But when I told Pam and Carmen about Carol, they were interested in doing a story about the long-term ill effects of what The Brethren do. They wanted to interview both Stella and Carol.

  I told them talking to Stella was a bad idea. I knew she wouldn’t be interested, but Carol was in a bind for money.”

  “How did you know she needed money?”

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  “Carol always needed money,” Andrea replied. “This time she had gone so far as to ask me to help, and I didn’t,” Andrea said hopelessly, tears welling up again. “I had some money set aside for a vacation next year, after I finally get my Ph.D. I wasn’t willing to spend it on vaccinating that latest batch of stray dogs. And so I turned her down, but I put Pam and Carmen in touch with Carol instead. Call it guilt on my part, because it’s true, but it was also a way for Carol to have the money she needed without my having to come up with it and without Grandma’s having to do it, either. I thought I was helping, I really did.”

  Andrea paused and stared off into the middle distance. “What happened then?” Joanna urged.

  Andrea swallowed hard. “Carol died. I didn’t know exactly when Pam and Carmen were supposed to see her, so I fooled myself into thinking that Carol’s death was just a random act of violence, that it had nothing at all to do with The Brethren, or with Pam and Carmen, either. And I believed that, right up until this morning, when I talked to Grandma. Then I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That my father killed them, and Carol, too,” Andrea said quietly. ‘And now he wants to take Carol’s body back to M
exico with him. It’s like he’s not willing to let any of us escape, not even in death. I’m afraid he’ll come looking for me next, Sheriff Brady, and if he does-if he even so much as comes near me-I swear to God, I’ll kill him myself.”

  Somehow Joanna understood this was no idle threat. “I wouldn’t advise that, Ms. Mossman,”

  she said. “We currently have your father under surveillance based on the fact that he’s been the object of a previous death threat-one from your grandmother,” she added with a slight smile. “And now one from

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  you. I’m confident that we’re going to find a way to charge him with something. That way he’ll end up in jail rather than going back to Mexico, with or without Carol’s remains. In the meantime, however, I believe it’s possible that you yourself are in danger. Do you have anywhere you can go? Is there anyplace you can stay?”

  “The people I work with have safe houses,” Andrea said quietly.

  “Go to one of them,” Joanna urged. “Just for the time being. Give us a chance to find out exactly what happened to Carol and to Pam and Carmen. It’s early in the investigations. We’re in the process of sorting out the forensics and gathering evidence.

  Once we make our case, that will be plenty of time for you to come out of hiding.”

  Andrea nodded. “You’re right,” she said. ‘And I will. But you should probably talk to Stella, too. If I’m in danger, so is she.” She paused. “But there is one thing,”

  she added.

  “What’s that?” Joanna asked.

  “If you can, don’t mention to her that I’m the one who put Pam and Carmen in touch with Carol. Stella’s done a better job than any of us at putting the past behind her and getting on with her life.”

  Joanna nodded. She switched off the tape recorder and then stood to go. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a business card. “Call me tomorrow and let me know you’re okay and where you are so I can be in touch with you if I need to.”

  “I will,” Andrea said. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  Outside, early-afternoon Tucson temperatures scorched sidewalks, softened pavements, and made the door handle and steering wheel of the Civvie too hot to touch, but Joanna barely noticed. Her whole being simmered with contempt for a wormy 310

  little weasel named Eddie Mossman-a man whose betrayal of his daughters went against everything Joanna herself believed in and held dear.

  “We’ll get you, you lousy bastard,” she vowed aloud once she eased herself down on the skin-searing seat. “One way or another, we’re taking you down.”

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  On the hundred-mile drive back to Bisbee, a bank of beautifully mountainous thunderclouds, fat with the promise of still more much-needed rain, piled up over the mountainous silhouettes of the Chiricahuas and Dragoons. After only two days of summer monsoons, the shoulders of the highway were already tinged with green, as dormant seeds of grass and weeds sprang to life.

  Ordinarily, Joanna Brady would have reveled in this summer miracle, but today she was as blind to the desert’s annual transformation as, earlier, she had been unaware of Tucson’s heat. With her mind focused totally on the job, her initially angry resolve to deal with Eddie Mossman gradually evolved into questions of strategy.

  What was her duty here? What was her responsibility as sheriff, and what was required of her as a human being? Although as yet there was no physical evidence to support such a theory, Andrea Mossman -was clearly operating under the 312

  assumption that her father, Ed Mossman, had murdered his own daughter, Carol, and that he posed a danger to his other surviving children as well.

  Andrea had asked Joanna to warn Stella. What kind of connection existed between Stella and her father? Were the two of them on better terms than he had been with Carol and Andrea? Ed Mossman claimed Stella was the one who had notified him of Carol’s death. Stella might have placed calls from someplace other than her own home, but Joanna had little reason to doubt that Stella Adams’s telephone records, once found, would back up that claim. Unless, of course, Ed Mossman had already been only too well aware of his daughter’s murder.

  How do you go about delivering this kind of news? Joanna asked herself. It was hard enough to tell someone that their loved one was somehow unexpectedly dead. What could she say-what should she say-to Stella Adams? And how could she go about warning Stella without necessarily revealing that Ed Mossman was coming into view as a prime suspect in three separate homicides?

  The safety of Stella Adams and her family was important, but so was Joanna’s responsibility-her duty-to bring a killer to justice. Her investigators were counting on Sheriff Brady to conduct herself in a fashion that didn’t interfere with the successful resolution of the case. So were the voters of Cochise County. Now was no time for her to go Lone Rangering into a situation that might very well blow up in her face.

  Joanna glanced at the clock on the dash. Two o’clock. That meant that both Frank Montoya and Ernie Carpenter might still be up to their eyeballs in the Ramon Sandoval meeting. This was no time to interrupt them, either.

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  She radioed into Dispatch. “See if you can hook me up with Deputy Howell,” Joanna told Tica Romero. “I want to know how she’s doing with keeping an eye on Ed Mossman.”

  When her phone rang a few minutes later, she thought it might be Debbie Howell getting back to her. Instead it was Butch. “Where are you?” he asked, sounding annoyed.

  “Coming back from Tucson.”

  “You missed your appointment with Dr. Lee.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  An accusation, really.

  “Yes,” Joanna admitted. “I did. I had to cancel it. Something came up-something important.”

  “This baby’s important, too,” Butch said. “Dr. Lee’s office just called to verify that the appointment has been reset for tomorrow morning at ten. I told his receptionist that you’d be there on time if I have to bring you in myself.”

  “I’ll be there,” Joanna said. There was a long pause. “Any word from Drew Mabrey?”

  Joanna added, more to fill up the uneasy silence than anything else.

  “Nothing,” Butch said. “But I’ve got better things to do than just hang out by the telephone waiting for it to ring.”

  That was when Joanna figured out that the annoyance in Butch’s voice had far more to do with his case of nerves about what was going on with the manuscript than it did with his being upset about her missing a doctor’s appointment. During the long months when Drew Mabrey had reported one rejection after another, Butch had resigned himself to the idea that the manuscript might never be sold. Now, with a glimmer of hope, the anxiety was excruciating.

  “Will you be home for dinner?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Joanna replied, without mentioning the fact that she 314

  had missed lunch altogether. “I’ll be home as close to six as I can make it.”

  Tica radioed back only seconds after Joanna finished the call with Butch. “Deputy Howell says to tell you Mr. Mossman has been holed up in his room out at San Jose Lodge all afternoon. She says she’s been keeping an eye on him, and he isn’t going anywhere without her.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. “Tell her to keep up the good work.”

  By then the towering clouds had mounded ever higher in the sky. When she came through St. David, a black curtain of rain had settled over the Dragoons, completely obliterating the mountain range from view. By the time Joanna started through Tombstone sixteen miles later, rain was pelting so hard against the windshield that the wipers barely made a dent in the water. Even at the posted limit of twenty-five miles per hour, she could hardly see to drive. At least an inch of water covered the roadway, and every passing vehicle raised a blinding spray in its wake.

  Then, as suddenly as Joanna had driven into the cloudburst, she emerged on the far side of it into blazingly bright sunlight that turned the pavement surface a shimmering silver. Switching off the air-conditi
oning, she opened the windows and left them open. In the aftermath of the storm, outside temperatures had dropped a good twenty degrees. The distinctively refreshing smell of summer rain on sun-warmed creosote bushes washed through the Civvie. It wasn’t enough to dispel all her concerns about the impending visit with Stella Adams, but it helped.

  When Joanna reached the Divide outside Bisbee, the storm clouds had been replaced by bright blue, rain-washed skies. The pavement on the road was still slightly wet, while hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascaded down the rocky cliffs of the Mule Mountains.

  On both sides of the Divide, washes ran bank to bank with 315

  muddy, swiftly moving water. As a lifelong resident of southern Arizona, Joanna knew how treacherous those fast-moving floods of water could be. Every year someone, usually a hapless visitor from out of state, would drown after being surprised by floodwaters from a downpour that had happened miles away.

  Ignoring the turnoff to the Justice Center, Joanna drove straight to Stella and Denny Adams’s home on Arizona Street, just across from Warren Ballpark. There were no cars parked in the driveway or on the street in front of the low-slung iron fence, but Joanna parked along a concrete-lined drainage ditch. It, too, was running with several inches of swiftly moving water. Then she walked across a narrow footbridge, through a gate, and up onto the front porch, where she rang the doorbell.

  Inside she heard the muffled sound of a television set tuned to something that sounded like MTV Moments after the doorbell rang, the TV set was silenced. A few seconds after that, the door opened and there stood Nathan Adams. The sight of him was enough to take Joanna’s breath away. When she had first seen Eddie Mossman, she remembered that he had looked familiar somehow, even though she was certain she had never seen the man before. Now she knew why. Nathan Adams looked just like Eddie Mossman-just like his grandfather.

  Or was it also, Joanna wondered for the first time, just like his father? No one had said as much. No one had admitted that, at the time Carol Mossman had fled Mexico with her two younger sisters, Stella might have been pregnant with her own father’s child. And the simple fact that no one had mentioned it made Joanna wonder that much more whether it was true.