by J. A. Jance
“Sheriff Brady?” It was a young male voice—tentative, uncertain. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Stashing her purse on the front seat, Joanna turned around. The kid from the court approached her warily, holding the ball in front of him, almost as a shield. Out on the court, seeing him in the glare of the sunlight behind him, his features had been invisible. Now she recognized him. He had come to the Justice Center to interview her for an article he was doing as an assignment for his journalism class. It took a moment for Joanna to recall his name, but remembering names is something every politician has to learn sooner or later, and eventually it came to her.
“Kevin Thomas, right?” she asked, holding out her hand.
Relief at being recognized flashed across his face. He nodded gratefully. “That’s me,” he said. “I’m surprised you remembered.”
“I trust you got a good grade on that assignment?”
“I did, thank you—something like ninety-four points out of a hundred. I sent you a copy, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m sure you did. The problem is, mountains of paperwork cross my desk on a daily basis, so please forgive me if I don’t remember what it said. But what can I do for you today? Is this about your interview?”
Ducking his head, Kevin stared down at his feet. “I didn’t exactly come in for an interview. I was out sick.”
“Since you’re well enough to be out on the basketball court this afternoon, you must be feeling better.”
“Not exactly,” he allowed reluctantly. “I mean, I didn’t stay home today because I was sick. I stayed home because of the interview.”
“Because you didn’t want to talk to us or because your parents didn’t want you to talk to us?” Joanna asked.
“My mom didn’t know about the interviews,” he said. “The school sent the notice to her home e-mail account, and I deleted it from her mailbox before she had a chance to read it.”
“So you didn’t want her to know about it?”
Kevin nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not a snitch, and because I didn’t want to get someone else in trouble.”
“But you want to talk to us now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Mrs. Nelson is dead, and I may know who did it.”
Joanna reached into the Yukon and retrieved her purse. “We’d better go inside, then,” she said. “And we’ll need to call your mother.”
“But she’s at work. Do you have to call her?”
“You’re a juvenile, Kevin. When police officers question juveniles, the parents must be notified. Since you deleted the e-mail, your mother wasn’t aware of this situation earlier. If she chooses not to come and allows us to interview you without her being present, that’s up to her, but we have to give her the option. Okay?”
“I guess,” Kevin said, in a very small voice. “If you have to.”
CHAPTER 16
BACK IN THE LIBRARY, MOST OF THE OTHER WHITEBOARD BARRIERS had been wheeled away. The only interview cubicle that remained relatively intact was the one belonging to Agent Watkins. Since there was someone still inside, Joanna stopped on the far side of the library.
“I need your mom’s phone number,” she told Kevin.
With a reluctant sigh, Kevin spit out a cell-phone number, and Joanna dialed it. “What’s your mom’s name?”
“Karenna Thomas, Karenna with two Ns,” he said. “Colonel Karenna Thomas.”
The female voice answering the phone clearly brooked no nonsense. “Colonel Thomas here,” she said.
“This is Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady,” Joanna explained. “We’re here at the school interviewing students, and we would like to speak to your son.”
“He’s not at school today,” Colonel Thomas answered. “He was ill this morning and stayed home.”
“He seems to have recovered,” Joanna said. “He’s here at school now, and we’d like to speak to him. Since he’s a juvenile, you either need to be present during the interview or you need to send us a signed slip saying that we have permission to speak to him without your being in attendance.”
“What kind of interview?” Colonel Thomas asked. “I know that one of his teachers was murdered over the weekend—Ms. Nelson. Everyone on post was talking about it this morning. Is this about that?”
“Yes.”
“When did she die?”
“We believe the crime occurred late Saturday night.”
“All right, then,” Colonel Thomas said. “Put my son on the phone.”
Clearly Colonel Thomas was accustomed to issuing orders, and she did so now without the niceties of either a please or thank-you. Joanna handed the phone over to Kevin, who grimaced as he placed it to his ear.
What followed was a very one-sided conversation during which Kevin murmured several subdued “no, ma’ams,” and “yes ma’ams.” Finally he handed the phone back to Joanna.
“She’s on post,” he said. “She’ll be here in fifteen minutes, and she said I shouldn’t say anything more to you in the meantime.”
“Fair enough,” Joanna said. “That’s why I called.”
She glanced at her watch. It was now verging on four o’clock. The dinner reservation at Café Roka was for six. Bisbee was close to forty minutes away. High Lonesome Ranch was closer to fifty, more like an hour if you took into consideration driving there, changing clothes, and then getting back uptown to the restaurant in time for dinner. Depending on how soon the interview started and how long it lasted, Joanna most likely would have to show up in her uniform rather than being properly dressed for an evening out.
A man in workaday khakis—most likely the bus driver/janitor—emerged from Agent Watkins’s cubicle. He picked up a cloth push broom that had been leaning against a nearby table and then sauntered out of the room. Agent Watkins appeared, stretching her shoulders.
“That’s the last of them,” she remarked; then, after looking at her watch, she frowned in Joanna’s direction. “Don’t you have a dinner engagement?” she asked. “I thought you left a long time ago.”
“I did, but something came up and I’ve been delayed,” Joanna replied. “This is Kevin Thomas. Kevin, this is Agent Robin Watkins of the FBI. She’s helping my department with the investigation into Mrs. Nelson’s death. Kevin here skipped school today because he didn’t want to talk to us. Now he does. We’re waiting for his mother. She works on post and is on her way here now.”
“All right,” Robin said.
“Colonel Thomas gave her son strict instructions that he’s not to speak to us until she arrives, but perhaps you and I could share a word in private.”
Leaving Kevin alone, Joanna led the way into the cubicle.
“What’s going on?” Agent Watkins asked.
“Kevin says he thinks he knows who did this,” Joanna whispered urgently. “We need to handle him with kid gloves. We can’t afford to spook him or his mother. If Colonel Thomas decides that her son needs to lawyer up, we may never hear what he has to say. He doesn’t want to be a snitch.”
“If he knows who did this,” Robin agreed, “we definitely need to hear what he has to say. Do you know anything about him?”
“A little. He came to the Justice Center and interviewed me for a journalism-class assignment last year. Seemed like a good enough kid.”
Robin nodded. “He looked a little skittish. Should we go out, chat him up a bit, and maybe break the ice?”
“Only if whatever is said can’t possibly be construed as a formal interview.”
“Remember me at dinner last night?” Robin said with a grin. “Breaking the ice is one of my best tricks.”
They left the cubicle together. A dejected Kevin sat at a table loaded with four immense desktop computers—old-fashioned clunky things. With the basketball still clutched to his chest, he looked completely out of place and ill at ease.
“Do you play?” Robin asked,
plucking the ball out of his hand and twirling it expertly on one finger for a moment before passing it back.
“Not really,” he said. “I’m on the varsity team, but that’s mostly because I’m tall rather than because I’m any good. SVSSE is a small school, and that’s who we play—other small schools.”
“What year are you?”
“A senior.”
“Got plans to go to college?”
Kevin nodded. “My mom has me lined up to go to the University of Arizona,” he answered. “She says ROTC is the only way to go. She says since it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.”
“Smart mom,” Robin said brightly. “So the military is the family business. Same thing happened to me. I’m FBI because my dad was FBI. Or maybe in spite of the fact that my dad was FBI. That works sometimes, too.”
Kevin frowned. “Really?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s the main reason I did it. He said I’d never make the grade.”
“But you did anyway?”
“You bet.”
“Okay, then,” Kevin said.
For the first time, the boy seemed to relax. The smallest of grins appeared in the corners of his mouth. He stretched his long legs out under the table. Just as Agent Watkins had promised, the ice was officially broken. When Colonel Thomas, in full-dress uniform, marched into the library a few minutes later, she seemingly outranked everyone there, but she was definitely facing a united front of opposition. She might have arrived expecting to stifle the conversation, but everyone else, Kevin included, wanted to talk.
Colonel Thomas made straight for her son, without acknowledging anyone else’s presence. “Just so you know, young man,” she warned with a soul-searing glare, “there will be grave consequences for your having interfered with my receiving an official notification from the school.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“And if you ditch school again for any reason, I will be shipping you off on the first available flight, and you can spend the remainder of your senior year with your father at Fort Bliss. You got that, mister?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“All right, then,” she said, turning her glower full on Joanna. “You’re Sheriff Brady?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Joanna said. She couldn’t help herself. Karenna Thomas was a woman whose very presence required “yes, ma’am” responses.
“Then let’s get to it,” Colonel Thomas said briskly. “I don’t have all day.”
There was no one else in the library at that point. Without any further discussion, Joanna and Robin made a joint decision to conduct the interview right where they were rather than returning to the last remaining cubicle. Kevin seemed to be at ease where he was, and they didn’t want to do anything that would disturb him.
“All right, then, Sheriff Brady,” Karenna said. “Before anything more is said, you need to know that Kevin and I were together all day on Saturday. We drove up to Tucson around noon so I could introduce him to an old classmate of mine who is the new commander of the U of A’s ROTC program. We had a late dinner and came home around nine thirty or ten. I’ll be glad to give you the particulars of our trip. I wanted you to know that up front.”
“I’m glad to know you’ll be able to account for Kevin’s whereabouts on the day in question,” Joanna said, “but he’s not under investigation at this time. Your son actually sought us out, Colonel Thomas. He claims to have some idea of who might be responsible for Mrs. Nelson’s homicide.”
Colonel Thomas eyed her son. “Is that true?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Since you were with me at the time, Kevin, you can rest assured that nothing you’re going to say to these ladies here will be in any way incriminating as far as you’re concerned.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But it’s your duty as a responsible citizen to cooperate with law enforcement and tell them whatever you know. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was equally clear from the get-go that Colonel Thomas was putting herself in charge of the interview. Cops conducting a conversation with a juvenile would, of necessity, have been more light-handed, but that kind of restraint was not required of mothers. With that in mind, Joanna sat back and let Karenna Thomas run with it. If necessary, she and Agent Watkins could always play good cop to Colonel Thomas’s bad cop.
“What’s this all about?”
“It’s about Travis,” Kevin said quietly.
“Travis Stock?” Colonel Thomas asked.
Kevin nodded.
At the mention of Travis’s name, a bolt of electricity shot through Joanna’s body. She sat up straighter in her chair, hardly believing what she’d just heard. Travis was Jeremy Stock’s son—the child of one of her sworn deputies. Everything she had ever heard or known about Travis said that he was a good kid—a responsible kid. How was it possible for someone like him to have been caught up in Susan Nelson’s kidnapping and murder?
“He and Mrs. Nelson were . . . well . . . you know . . .” Kevin ducked his head, looking miserable, while a bright red flush spread up his neck, past his bony Adam’s apple, and onto his face.
“No, I don’t know,” Colonel Thomas declared. “How about if you tell me?”
“They were like . . . you know . . . doing it.”
“You mean the two of them were involved?” Agent Watkins put in gently, taking some of the pressure off the embarrassed young man. Kevin nodded gratefully.
“You mean they were having sex?” Colonel Thomas demanded, giving her son no quarter.
Joanna could tell that Karenna Thomas was a force to be reckoned with—a blunt force at that. The idea that she was putting her son through hell right then seemed to be the last thing on her mind.
“Yes,” Kevin said in a small voice.
“And?”
“And she got pregnant,” Kevin said. This time his words came out in a rush. “When it happened, Mrs. Nelson was furious with Travis. She blamed him for the whole thing. Said he must have screwed up with the . . . you know . . . the . . .”
“The condom?” Agent Watkins supplied, once again coming to Kevin’s rescue.
Kevin nodded gratefully.
“What happened then?” Colonel Thomas demanded.
Joanna had to give the woman credit. The fact that she had zero doubt that her son had anything to do with the homicides gave her free rein, and she seemed determined to extract every bit of pertinent information Kevin might have to offer.
“Trav told me that he asked her to marry him. He wanted her to divorce her husband and marry him. He said he’d get two jobs or even three, if that’s what it took. She just laughed at him. She said that if they did that, she’d never be able to teach again. Besides, as far as the world was concerned, the baby would be her husband’s child—like a miracle child—because Mr. Nelson would never humiliate himself in public by divorcing her.”
Yes, Joanna thought. One of those very unusual post-vasectomy miracles. “She thought that no one would be the wiser?” she asked.
“Yes,” Kevin said with a nod, “except for Travis.”
“What was his reaction?”
Kevin shrugged. “He was hurt, I guess, and confused. I mean she wanted things to go on just the way they had before. She still wanted to see him.”
“So she didn’t want to break off the affair?” Agent Watkins asked.
“Not at all. She didn’t even want him to quit the debate team. The trouble is, Trav wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told her that the kid was his, and he was determined to be involved in the baby’s life no matter what. He usually had tutoring sessions with her on Saturday evenings, tutoring and other stuff. He told me that he was going to see her that night and tell her straight out that he was going to go to her husband.”
“And spill the beans?”
“Yes.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“Friday afternoon after school. Except
he must have changed his mind. Instead he ended up going along with some friends to a U of A football game in Tucson on Saturday afternoon. That’s one thing I couldn’t understand. Trav wanted to be a father, but he still wanted to be a kid himself and go to football games and stuff.”
“Did he go to the game?” Colonel Thomas demanded.
“I guess,” Kevin said uncertainly.
“You and Travis must be very close for him to have told you about all this,” Robin suggested quietly.
Kevin nodded. “He’s my best friend—since we moved here when I was in junior high. Me and Trav played on the same soccer team. His dad was our coach. This summer I could tell something was really bothering him. I kept asking him what was wrong, and he finally told me.”
“Did you tell anyone else?” Joanna asked.
“He asked me not to—made me promise—so no. Except for right now. I haven’t told anyone else.”
“You do understand what was going on here,” Joanna interjected. “If what you’ve told us about Travis’s story is true, Mrs. Nelson was a pedophile—a child molester—who took advantage of her position of authority in Travis’s life to exploit him sexually.”
“But Travis said it was all his idea—that Mrs. Nelson just went along with it.”
“We’re talking statutory rape here,” Joanna explained. “That’s the legal terminology when an adult has sexual relations with someone who’s under the age of consent. It’s also against the law. Of course, that’s what she’d claim—that their relationship was consensual. It’s also predictable that she’d say that whatever had happened was somehow the victim’s fault. That’s how pedophiles work. They groom inexperienced young people and manipulate them into doing whatever the abuser wants. Mrs. Nelson was a woman in her thirties. How long ago did this start?”
“Last year,” Kevin said, “just after Trav joined the debate team.”