Downfall (2016)

by J. A. Jance

  There were nods all around the room. Just then a cell phone rang and Tom Hadlock grabbed for his shirt pocket. He pulled out the device and held it to his ear for a moment. Putting it away again, he glanced at Joanna then held up his hand, waiting to be recognized.

  “What is it?” Joanna asked.

  “That was Chief Montoya,” he replied. “Susan Nelson’s Honda Accord has been located in an abandoned gravel pit off Dake Road on the outskirts of Sierra Vista. Someone using the gravel pit for target practice heard about the case on the noon news and wondered if the blue Honda he saw in the gravel pit was the same one the cops were looking for. Turns out, they are one and the same.”

  “Is the gravel pit within walking distance of the SVSSE campus?” she asked.

  A moment after passing along Joanna’s question, Tom nodded. “Affirmative on that,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. Deb, you keep working background checks on the two victims and see if you can find any points of connection between them. There must be something. Dave, get yourself back up the mountain. Come to think of it, don’t just take any deputy. Grab Terry Gregovich and Spike. Give Spike a whiff of Desirée’s bedroll and turn him loose on Geronimo. A four-footed German shepherd will be able to do better on that mountain than either you or Terry. Casey, you go on out to Sierra Vista with the Double C’s and take a look at that Honda. Once you finish the on-site inspection, have it towed back here to the impound lot so you can go over it inch by inch. And tomorrow morning, eight thirty sharp, I want all three detectives on campus at SVSSE and ready to rumble. Got it, people? Now let’s hit the bricks.”

  They all nodded and began gathering up to go. Joanna followed them out. At the back of the room a single untouched pasty still lay on the tray. She looked at the crusty pastry and tried to walk past it, but that didn’t work. Succumbing, she picked it up, put it on a plate, and carried it back to her office.

  After all, she told herself, setting the plate down on her desk, I really am eating for two.

  CHAPTER 8

  ONCE IN HER OFFICE, JOANNA IMMEDIATELY DIALED THE ME’S OFFICE. It took some time to talk her way past Madge Livingston, Kendra Baldwin’s combination clerk/receptionist. In the old days, talking to gravel-voiced Madge was like running into a brick wall. While working for both George Winfield and his successor ME, Guy Machett, Madge had functioned more as a repeller of callers and visitors than a greeter of same. During the tenure of Dr. Baldwin, however, the cantankerous old woman seemed to have undergone a personality transplant. She wasn’t all sweetness and light, but she was now a whole lot easier to get along with.

  This time, upon hearing Joanna’s voice on the phone, the usually tough-as-nails Madge promptly burst into tears. “I just can’t believe that wonderful man is dead,” she sobbed. “George Winfield was, without a doubt, the best boss I ever had, bar none.” She paused long enough to blow her nose. “I’ve heard the funerals will be private. I do hope I’m invited. I’d like to be.”

  “Of course,” Joanna said. “You’re on the list.”

  Madge wasn’t currently on the list because so far there was no list. Norm Higgins had asked Joanna to prepare one, but with everything else going on, she had yet to start. Opening her iPad, she went to notes and created a new file titled Funeral Invitees. As a consequence, Madge Livingston’s name ended up being the first one listed.

  “Could I speak to Dr. Baldwin, please?” Joanna asked. “It’s about one of the autopsies she did this morning.”

  “You’re working, then?” Madge asked in apparent disbelief. “Even after what happened to your mother and Doc Winfield?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said wearily. “I am working, and if I could just speak to the ME, it would be a huge help.”

  “All right,” Madge relented. “I’ll put you through.”

  “Hey,” Kendra Baldwin said when she came on the line. “What’s up?”

  By then Joanna had the line drawings from Susan Nolan’s autopsy sitting in front of her. “I’m looking at Susan Nolan’s drawing. You noted some bruising on her upper arm on the left-hand side.”

  “Yes,” Kendra said. “Those weren’t caused by the fall. Almost a complete handprint.”

  “Did you swab it for DNA?”

  “Absolutely,” Kendra said. “We swabbed every square inch of skin we could find. Those and her clothing will need to be sent to the crime lab in Tucson for DNA testing and profiling. Even if the guy was wearing gloves, her attacker may have left some cast-off DNA on her clothing. Oh, and Terry Gregovich just called, asking if I’d let him take one of Desirée Wilburton’s hiking boots and Susan Nelson’s one tennis shoe so he and Spike could go back to the mountain and track down the actual crime scene as opposed to the landing site. He’s coming to pick them up right now. I’m assuming that’s okay with you as long as we maintain the chain of evidence.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “That’s just what we need.”

  “By the way, the bodies will be ready for release tomorrow morning. Do you want to notify the families or should I?”

  Joanna thought about that, remembering Reverend Nelson’s unforgiving rage when he had told them about finding condoms in his wife’s bedside table. Was it possible he had also learned she was pregnant, most likely by someone other than himself? If the condoms had enraged him, it was more than possible that news of Susan’s pregnancy might have pushed him over the edge. Joanna wanted at least one of the detectives assigned to the case to be there with her when Reverend Nelson heard the pregnancy news. They’d already asked him about his nonexistent alibi for the night on which his wife had died. Did he have a better one for the time on Saturday afternoon when they now knew Susan Nelson had been taken from the school grounds?

  Notifying him that the body was ready to be released was as good an excuse as any to speak to him again, without running the risk of his being officially regarded as a suspect in his wife’s homicide. This was a conversation Joanna could have with the man without having to read him his rights.

  “No,” she said finally. “My investigators and I have already spoken to him in person and to family members of both victims. We’ll be glad to handle that part of the notification process. Everyone’s doing other things right now, but I’ll make sure someone speaks to Reverend Nelson if not before day’s end, then first thing in the morning.”

  “Anything else you need from me?” Kendra asked.

  “Not just now.”

  Ending the call, Joanna looked at her watch. Telling Reverend Nelson that his wife’s remains were ready for release wasn’t exactly mission critical. Rather than heading for Sierra Vista right that minute, she turned back to her iPad. She spent the next half hour combing through her contacts list and creating a separate directory of the fifty or so people who would be invited to the funeral. She struggled when it came to Marliss Shackleford’s name. Marliss and Eleanor Lathrop had always been great pals. Much as Joanna despised the woman, she knew that the snub of not inviting the reporter to the funeral would be far more costly to her personally than the irritation of having her present. After all, Marliss was already one of Joanna’s most outspoken critics. If she was snubbed and barred from the funeral, it would make a bad situation that much worse.

  Once the list of invitees was complete—or as close to complete as Joanna could make it—she e-mailed the collection of names and addresses to Norm Higgins along with a copy to Butch in case he wanted to make any additions or corrections. Then, with her people still busy at their appointed tasks, she settled in to tend to some of her own. She started by letting Tom Hadlock know that due to the funeral situation, she would once again need him to sub for her at Friday’s board-of-supervisors meeting.

  She contacted both of the remaining applicants for the jail chef job and set separate appointments for them to come in for final interviews the following week, interviews that would include samples of their cooking—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—prepared in the jail kitchen with the staples and
supplies that were usually on hand. Joanna had learned there was often a big difference in quality between what people said they could cook and what they actually could.

  She went over the briefings of what had gone on in her absence. She studied the shift schedules Tom had prepared and signed off on additional vacation requests. Finally, with most of the day-to-day stuff handled, she settled back to study the speaking request she had received from the National Association of Female Sheriffs.

  There were approximately three thousand sheriffs in the country at any given time, and Joanna was more aware than most that fewer than fifty of them were female. As someone who was in the process of seeking her third term in office, she was regarded as an “old-timer.” The association wanted Joanna at the gathering as an elder, of sorts, in hopes that what she related of her own experiences on the job would provide encouragement for those coming after her. The conference was being held in Phoenix in August—during the dead of summer, when hotel rates would be dirt cheap. On the surface, all of that was good news. The bad news? Joanna would be there with a babe in arms. How well would that work? And then there was that other important variable to be considered—what if she lost the election?

  She had yet to make up her mind when there was a tap on the door. She looked up to see Marianne Maculyea framed by the doorway. “Anyone here interested in having a brief chaplain visit?” she asked with a smile.

  Joanna and Marianne had been best friends since junior high. Not only was the Reverend Marianne Maculyea the pastor of Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, which Joanna and Butch attended, she was also a trained police and fire chaplain.

  “Anytime,” Joanna said, standing and hurrying over to embrace her friend before leading her to the visitors’ chairs, where they sank down side by side.

  “How are you doing?” Marianne asked.

  “At least you didn’t start out by saying how surprised you are to find me working under the circumstances,” Joanna observed.

  “You’re right about that,” Marianne replied. “I’m not the least bit surprised, but even for you, dealing with two funerals and a double homicide at the same time seems like a bit much.”

  “Maybe it is,” Joanna admitted. “My brother and his wife are flying in from DC today and coming to dinner at the house. I’m not looking forward to seeing him. He has every right to be here, of course, but having him in town is going to bring up all those tired old rumors about his being a product of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Not that it should matter, especially with both of my parents dead, but still.”

  Marianne knew all about Joanna’s mixed feelings concerning her long-lost brother and Eleanor’s fair-haired-boy treatment of same.

  “That’s actually why I stopped by,” Marianne said. “I wanted to show you a rough draft of what I intend to say about Bob Brundage at the service. Since it’s going to be private, most of the people will probably be aware of his connection to your mother, correct?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “So that’s the premise I’m going on,” Marianne continued. “I’ll simply assume that everybody in the room already has a grasp of the complexities of the situation and not make any attempt to explain it. Here, look at this and tell me what you think.”

  With that, Marianne handed her iPad, already opened to a document, over to Joanna, who immediately started reading:

  Today we celebrate the lives and passings of two remarkable people, a loving couple who were brave enough to take a second chance on love late in life.

  Eleanor Lathrop Winfield, the widow of longtime Cochise County sheriff D. H. Lathrop, was a lifetime resident of Cochise County and the mother of two children—a daughter, Sheriff Joanna Brady, of Bisbee, Arizona, and a son, Bob Brundage, of Manassas, Virginia.

  George Winfield, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a widower who moved to Bisbee after losing both his wife, Annie, and his daughter, Abigail, to cervical cancer. While working as the Cochise County medical examiner, George met Eleanor Lathrop. The two of them hit it off and fell in love. They eloped and were married in a private ceremony in Las Vegas.

  Returning to Bisbee, they made their home in Eleanor’s longtime residence on Campbell Avenue while using an RV to commute back and forth to George’s cabin near Big Stone Lake in Minnesota during the summers.

  They traveled many miles together and somehow it seems right that they are embarking on this final journey together as well. Yes, their unexpected deaths last week are a tragedy to those they leave behind, but the love they shared while they were here was an inspiration and a blessing to those around them.

  Handing the iPad back to Marianne, Joanna tried unsuccessfully to stifle a sob. Marianne went back to the door and closed it before gathering Joanna into her arms, soothing and rocking her as though she were a child.

  “Sorry to be so stupid,” Joanna murmured at last, pulling away. “What you wrote was just right. Not too sweet. None of the ‘loving mother’ crap. Thank you for that, by the way.”

  “I left those words out just for you,” Marianne said. “I know Eleanor loved you, but she did so in her own peculiar fashion. The problem is, your mother was someone who wanted to do everything by the book—the way things had always been done—and she could never quite bring herself to appreciate a daughter who insisted on coloring outside the lines. Mine, either,” she added quietly.

  Joanna looked at her friend and knew it was true. Marianne’s situation with her own mother was every bit as complicated as Joanna’s had been with Eleanor.

  “So here’s the deal,” Marianne went on. “You’re not just mourning the loss of your mother. You’re also mourning the loss of a relationship that never became quite what either one of you wanted. Given enough time, that might have happened one day. Now it never will. You not only lost your mother, Joanna. You also lost what might have been.”

  Joanna’s tears flowed again, a gusher this time. “That’s what I was thinking about all the way to Phoenix,” she blubbered. “I kept thinking about all the things I needed to say I was sorry for. I wanted to put them all right, somehow, and I never had the chance. They took her into surgery, and she never woke up. I never got the chance to take back any of those ugly things I never should have said.”

  “Which brings us back to Bob Brundage,” Marianne said. “I understand the whole dynamic with Bob. He shows up out of the blue and somehow forms the kind of unconditional love relationship with your mother that you never had. But tonight when you’re having dinner, remember that your mother’s embracing of Bob had less to do with him and more to do with her. Being forced to give up that first child must have been a terrible loss for her—an unbearable loss. So it’s easy to understand her incredible joy when, by a seeming miracle and against all odds, that lost child was finally returned to her.”

  “You’re starting to sound a lot like Butch,” Joanna said.

  “Butch is a smart man,” Marianne replied with a smile. “None of this is Bob’s fault or yours, either. So here’s an idea. Tonight at dinner, instead of having to regret being unable to take back something said in anger or sorrow or whatever, how about if you try not saying it in the first place? The regrettable things you don’t say are things you never have to take back later on.”

  “Got it,” Joanna said, sniffling. “The thing is, I know Bob really is a great guy. If he weren’t my brother, I wouldn’t mind so much.”

  They both laughed then. Chuckled more than laughed, but it was a way of putting the subject to rest.

  There was a light tap on the closed door. “Sheriff Brady,” Kristin said tentatively, “I hate to disturb you, but Detective Waters is on the phone. He needs to speak to you. And there’s an FBI agent out here in the lobby waiting to speak to you as well.”

  “Great,” Joanna said with a sigh. “I can just imagine how well that will go.”

  Marianne stood up. “I’ll let you get to it, then,” she said, “but if you need to talk, call me.”

  “I will,” Joanna said. “Thank
you.”

  CHAPTER 9

  RETURNING TO HER DESK, JOANNA PUNCHED THE BLINKING HOLD number on her landline and picked up the receiver. “Detective Waters?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ian said. “Thanks for taking my call. Mr. McVey is dragging his feet.”

  “Who is Mr. McVey?”

  “The principal of SVSSE. He says there’s no way he’s sending out notices to the parents that their children are about to be interviewed by the cops, and he’s refusing to grant permission for us to conduct any of the interviews on school property. He said, and I quote, ‘Having cops overrun the school is just like what happened in Nazi Germany.’”

  “Nazi Germany? Are you kidding? He thinks we’re running a police state here? Is he aware that this is a homicide investigation and that a member of his faculty was murdered by someone who marched her off the school grounds wearing a sweatshirt with the school’s logo on it?”

  “Yes, I told him all that.”

  “Give me his number,” Joanna said. “Let me give him a call. What’s his first name?”

  “Marvin.”

  “Okay,” Joanna said, jotting down the number. “Let me handle him.”

  A moment later a receptionist answered, “Sierra Vista School of Scholastic Excellence, where all our students are given the tools it takes to succeed.”

  And no doubt they’re all above average, too, Joanna thought, unimpressed by the school’s overly optimistic motto.

  “Mr. McVey, please,” Joanna said when it was her turn to speak.

  “May I say who’s calling?”