Downfall (2016)

by J. A. Jance

  Joanna parked in her usual spot behind the building and entered through the private keypad-activated door that opened directly into her office. When she turned on the light and saw stacks of paper covering the entire surface of her desk, she was heartsick. Paperwork was the bane of her existence. It appeared on her desk every day, generally properly organized by her secretary, Kristin Gregovich. Joanna made it a point to handle that day’s dose that very day, if possible—but once a week’s worth had accumulated, it seemed utterly overwhelming.

  Without bothering to touch even so much as a piece of paper, Joanna sat down, pulled out her phone, and looked at her waiting messages. The most recent was from Deb Howell. Interview with the victim’s mother is done. Call me.

  Joanna did so at once. “What’s the story?” she asked when Detective Howell answered.

  “I don’t like doing next-of-kin notifications,” Deb said.

  Having recently been on the receiving end of one of those, Joanna understood why. “Nobody does,” she murmured. “They’re no fun.”

  “No,” Deb agreed. “Not at all, especially since Desirée was Roberta’s only child. She was evidently a brilliant girl. Somewhere along the way, the husband and father announced that now that his daughter was grown, he had lived a lie long enough. He was gay and he was out of there. See ya.”

  “Tough on everybody involved,” Joanna said.

  “Roberta took her divorce settlement, hired a mover, and came west to join her daughter. She had enough money that she probably could have bought a house up in the foothills. Instead, she purchased a run-down apartment house on Fourth Avenue—a place that had been a mansion back in the early 1900s which had later been carved into separate units. Roberta paid cash for the place and then rehabbed it from top to bottom. In the process, she created separate living spaces for both her daughter and herself, along with three additional efficiency units that, because of the house’s proximity to the university, she’s able to rent out with no difficulty.”

  “Sounds like a smart woman as well as a smart daughter,” Joanna observed, “but what’s a microbiologist doing camping out at the base of Geronimo?”

  “Studying hedgehog cactus,” Deb answered. “Fendler’s hedgehog in particular.”

  “Never heard of it,” Joanna replied.

  “Roberta told me about them. They’re sort of like barrel cactus, only skinnier. From what I understand, when it comes to being studied, cactus are pretty low on the totem pole. They’ve been sorted out and given names and species assignments based on a somewhat arbitrary basis without taking into consideration differences in genetic makeup between samples that are similar but should have been assigned to an altogether different species.”

  “This whole discussion is over my pay grade,” Joanna said, “and what does the Finger’s hedgehog—”

  “Fendler’s,” Deb corrected.

  “What does whatever it is have to do with our victim?”

  “Desirée Wilburton has spent most of the summer traveling and camping in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico taking DNA samples of whatever Fendler’s hedgehogs she could find. She called her mother two days ago and was really excited. Desirée said she had climbed to the top of a small knoll near Bisbee and found a group of cactus that were so isolated from any others growing in the nearby desert that she thought she may have stumbled upon a brand-new species. Desirée told her mother that she was calling from up on the knoll itself because she didn’t have any cell service down at her campsite.”

  “That’s for sure,” Joanna said.

  “That phone call, made about four o’clock on Friday afternoon, was the last time Roberta heard from her daughter. She said Desirée usually called her on Sundays when she’d go into town long enough to clean up, buy groceries, and do laundry. When she didn’t call on Sunday, Roberta didn’t worry about it all that much because her daughter had, what she called, an independent streak. But then today, when Roberta realized she hadn’t heard a word since Friday, she did start worrying—afraid that something out of the ordinary might have happened—that Desirée might have taken a fall or been bitten by a rattlesnake, something that has actually happened on two previous occasions.”

  “Two rattlesnake bites and she was still out camping on her own?” Joanna said. “Not only did Desirée have an independent streak, she must have been tough as nails.”

  “I’ll say,” Deb agreed. “Rattlesnakes scare the hell out of me. Anyway, Roberta had made up her mind that if she didn’t hear something from Desirée by tomorrow morning, she was going to run up the flag to us and ask us to go looking.”

  “Which was at least three days too late,” Joanna said.

  “Did Dr. Baldwin give you a preliminary time of death?”

  “Estimated only, sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Autopsies are scheduled starting tomorrow, nine A.M. Did Roberta mention anything about her daughter being involved in any kind of romantic relationship?”

  “She told me some but not much,” Deb replied. “Desirée was engaged last year to a fellow grad student. He got his Ph.D. and went off to work in Australia. She wanted to finish her degree and wasn’t all that wild about Australia, so they broke off the engagement. The way Roberta told it, I gathered that the breakup was fairly low-key and amicable—no huge drama. I have the ex-fiancé’s contact info, though, and I’ll be verifying that he was safely on the other side of the pond when all this went down.”

  “Any hints from the mother that Desirée might be AC/DC and play both sides of the fence?”

  “No, none,” Deb replied. “Why?”

  “That’s Ernie’s pet theory at the moment—that the two victims were involved in some kind of romantic relationship. Once we have a warrant and gain access to Desirée’s phone records, they may lead us directly to the identity of the second victim.”

  “Have you checked missing-persons reports?” Deb asked.

  “We have. So far there’s nothing showing in our department,” Joanna said, “but as soon as you and I are off the phone, I’ll have someone do some checking with other nearby jurisdictions. I’m also expecting Dr. Baldwin to send fingerprint info any moment—if she can lift them, that is. With any kind of luck, that may lead to an identification on victim number two.”

  There was a lull in the conversation. “I’m sort of surprised that you’re working tonight,” Deb said tentatively.

  “Funny,” Joanna replied. “That’s the same thing Marliss Shackleford said to me a little while ago, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. Neither my mother nor George would want me to turn my back on the job I was elected to do—no matter what.

  “They’re gone, Deb,” Joanna continued. “George and Eleanor Winfield are no more. I’ve already been off work for more than a week. My staying home any longer or maybe taking to my bed isn’t going to do a thing to bring them back. Believe me, I shed buckets of tears before Butch and I ever came home from Sedona after the shooting. As far as I’m concerned, I’m all cried out. I also spent the afternoon making funeral arrangements. So right now, when I suspect I won’t be able to sleep anyway, I’m better off being here, wading through paperwork and keeping an eye on the investigation, than I would be at home, tossing and turning and accomplishing nothing.”

  “Got it,” Deb said. “I hear you loud and clear.”

  “But thanks for your concern,” Joanna added. “I really do appreciate it.”

  “If you’re going to be at the office, do you want me to come by there when I get to town?”

  “Go on home,” Joanna urged. “I believe the Double C’s are going to handle the autopsy situation. We’ll have a briefing here about noon tomorrow to figure out what’s to be done.”

  “Okay,” Deb said. “Good night.”

  Joanna hung up the phone and turned to the papers littering her desk. Front and center was a stack of yellow sticky phone messages. Leafing through them, she discovered they were all condolence calls of one kind or another from peo
ple who didn’t necessarily have access to either her home or mobile number. Next to the messages was a pile of sympathy cards as well. Kristin had already slit open all the envelopes. Joanna went through the cards one by one, reading the thoughtful notes that often accompanied them. Most were from people who had been friends of her mother’s rather than friends of Joanna’s, but many of them expressed similar sentiments, saying how proud Eleanor had been of her daughter and of the great job she had been doing as sheriff of Cochise County.

  Instead of offering comfort, the messages in the notes did the exact opposite. They made Joanna cry again. If Eleanor Lathrop Winfield had been so busy telling her friends how proud she was of her daughter, why had she never expressed those same sentiments to Joanna herself? Joanna and her mother had been at odds for much of Joanna’s life. Recently, she had hoped they were finally moving beyond all that old stuff, but now Eleanor’s sudden death had obliterated all opportunities for long-term détente. And that was what Joanna grieved for more than anything—that the closeness she had one day hoped to achieve with her mother would never happen.

  Her e-mail notification alert sounded, first once and immediately thereafter a second time. Unlike paper communications, she’d been able to respond to online ones on the fly, so the listing of unanswered messages had only started earlier this afternoon when she had shut off her phone before entering the mortuary. The sender of the two most recent messages was Kendra Baldwin, copying Joanna with the same sets of computerized fingerprint images the ME was sending to Casey Ledford.

  Joanna picked up her phone and dialed the lab. Casey answered immediately. “Just wanted you to know that I’m in my office if you get any hits on the prints,” Joanna said.

  “I’m looking at them now,” Casey replied. “Dr. Baldwin does good work. These will require only minimal enhancement before I submit them to AFIS. I’ll let you know if anything pops.”

  “Great,” Joanna said.

  “And how are you?”

  Same question but slightly different words. In this case “How are you?” substituted for “Why the hell are you working when your mom just died?” But Joanna’s people were all concerned about her well-being, and she could hardly fault them for that.

  “Okay,” Joanna answered. “Hanging in.”

  “It’s got to be tough.”

  “Yes, it is,” Joanna agreed, “but I’m better off working than I am not working.”

  Once off the phone, Joanna asked the nighttime watch commander to have someone check the missing-persons situation. Then she turned to the mess on her desk. She moved the condolence messages and cards off to the side to be dealt with later, then she waded into the paperwork jungle, scanning through summaries of briefings and police reports. There was nothing outrageous—mostly traffic stops along with a few domestic violence situations. The fates had held off on dealing Cochise County a possible double homicide card until Joanna at least was back in town.

  Tom had sorted the end-of-the-year vacation schedule requests, making sure that shifts would still be adequately covered over the holidays. He had attended the board-of-supervisors meeting in her absence and had come away with a voluminous set of notes. He had approved jail menus for all of September, and had interviewed several people and narrowed the field from ten down to two for the soon-to-be-vacant position of head cook in the jail. Joanna had just launched into her nondepartmental correspondence—including a request for her to speak at the next meeting of the newly formed National Association of Female Sheriffs—when her phone rang.

  “Got something,” Casey said.

  “I’ll be right there,” Joanna answered. Abandoning her desk, she hurried down the corridor to the lab. It was close to midnight by then, but Casey Ledford was still on the job and so was Dave Hollicker.

  “What?” Joanna said.

  “Look at this,” Casey said, turning on her PowerPoint and projecting two-foot-high images of two fingerprints onto a screen over a worktable. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “They look the same to me,” Joanna said.

  “That’s because they are the same—the print from the right-hand index finger of the unidentified victim. When I ran Dr. Baldwin’s prints through AFIS, I got nothing,” Casey explained. “Then I tried the FBI’s Integrated Fingerprint Identification System. And voilà—here were are—Susan Marie Nelson, of 4440 East Busby Drive, Sierra Vista, AZ. Her prints went into the system during a routine background check for something called the Sierra Vista School for Scholastic Excellence. It says here that she’s married to one Drexel Maynard Nelson of the same address.”

  “By the way,” Dave Hollicker put in, speaking from behind a computer screen that completely obscured his face. “The SVSSE is a charter school that’s been in business for about ten years now. Very highly rated. They’ve walked off with the title for the Arizona Debate Team Challenge three out of the past five years. I only mention that because Susan Marie Nelson is listed as the debate coach.”

  “This is Monday night,” Joanna said thinking aloud. “The victim died on Saturday or Sunday at the latest. Has anyone filed a missing-persons report, and if not, why not?”

  “No missing-persons reports so far,” Casey answered. “Someone already checked.”

  “And there’s no mistake about the ID on this,” Joanna said, reaching for a phone. “The print for sure belongs to Susan Marie Nelson?”

  “Yes,” Casey said. “I ran it by a criminalist at the crime lab up in Tucson just to be sure.”

  “All right, then,” Joanna said, dialing Detective Howell’s number. “Are you back yet?”

  “Close,” Deb answered. “I’m on the far side of the divide. How come?”

  “Don’t go home,” Joanna advised. “I’ll need you to come to the department. You have another next of kin to do tonight, and I’m doing a ride-along.”

  “You’ve identified the second victim?”

  “We believe so. Casey made the ID using fingerprints from an old background check. The victim’s name is Susan Marie Nelson. She’s a married teacher at a charter school in Sierra Vista.”

  “If she’s married, why no missing-persons report?” Deb asked.

  “That’s exactly what I want to know,” Joanna said, “and I’m going to wake up Sierra Vista’s chief of police and ask him the same question.”

  “Won’t Frank Montoya mind your dragging him out of bed at this ungodly hour?”

  “He’ll mind a lot more if we end up conducting an investigation inside his jurisdiction without letting him know beforehand.”

  “Okay,” Deb said. “See you as soon as I can get there.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Joanna said to Dave and Casey. “You did good work.”

  Back in the corridor, she located Frank’s cell number and punched it. A very groggy Frank Montoya answered. “Hello.”

  “Sorry to wake you,” Joanna said. “Hope I didn’t disturb anyone else.”

  “LuAnn’s at the hospital,” Frank said. “And the kids could sleep through an atomic bomb blast.”

  Joanna always blamed the city of Sierra Vista for luring Frank away from her department, but the situation was more complicated than just a job offer. Frank had fallen hard for and married Dr. LuAnn Marcowitz, an emergency room physician at the hospital in town. And the kids in question were LuAnn’s two teenagers, Greta and Gabriel.

  “So what’s up?” Frank asked.

  “We’re investigating a suspected double homicide that happened east of Warren. We’re pretty sure both victims died sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning. Fingerprints have identified one of them as being a Sierra Vista resident named Susan Marie Nelson, but we can’t find any trace of a missing-persons report.”

  “Crap!” Frank Montoya muttered.

  “What do you mean, ‘crap’?” Joanna asked.

  “Reverend Nelson tried to file a missing-persons report on Sunday afternoon after church, but when he started filling us in on the details, the detective taking the information dete
rmined that it was likely his wife had gone off on her own. The detective is the one who made the call not to file the report until after my department’s suggested forty-eight-hour wait had elapsed.”

  “Did you say Reverend Nelson?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes, Drexel Nelson runs a small nondenominational church called Holy Redeemer Chapel out of a mobile home on Busby Drive here in town. Susan is his wife.”

  “Filling in what details exactly?” Joanna asked.

  “The marriage has evidently been going through a rough patch. Reverend Nelson told my detective, Ian Waters, that he and Susan had a huge quarrel on Saturday afternoon. Not quite knock-down-and-drag-out, but close. At least that’s how he described it. He said she left the house in a huff to go to school for a tutoring session and never came home. Based on that information, Ian concluded that it was likely she had gone missing of her own volition.”

  “The school in question being the Sierra Vista School for Scholastic Excellence?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s the one. She teaches there—taught there—during the school year and held weekend tutoring sessions with students from there on a year-round basis. Detective Waters did have a patrol car go by the school to check. No sign of her vehicle. When he mentioned the situation to me, I couldn’t fault his assumption that Susan Nelson probably went off on her own somewhere to cool off.”

  “And ended up getting murdered,” Joanna observed. “As for Reverend Nelson? What did he have to say concerning his whereabouts on Saturday and Sunday?”

  “Claimed he was home alone on Saturday night, working on his sermon, and on Sunday morning he was at church.”

  “So once the ME gives a time of death, it’s likely he has no alibi,” Joanna asserted.