Downfall (2016)

by J. A. Jance

  “You’re saying you killed both of them?” Joanna asked. “Susan Nelson and Desirée Wilburton?”

  “Had to,” Jeremy replied nonchalantly. “I drove Susan in the back way, from the rifle range. I figured that made for the least chance of being spotted. I had no idea anyone else would be there. Susan screamed like crazy when I pushed her off the cliff. Pretty soon I saw a flashlight darting around down below and some other woman calling up, asking me what was wrong and did I need help? I told her I did. That my girlfriend had fallen and I needed help getting her down.”

  “So when Desirée showed up to help, you shoved her off the cliff, too?”

  “Didn’t have a choice,” Jeremy said. “Had to. She had a phone with her. I couldn’t risk having her calling 911. I needed to get away.”

  Joanna shook her head. That was the connection—that there wasn’t one? Like Joanna’s father changing the tire for a stranded motorist, Desirée Wilburton had perished for no other crime than trying to be a Good Samaritan.

  They drove in silence past the looming darkness of the tailings dump, with the lights of Bisbee’s Warren neighborhood brightening the sky ahead of them. Part of the heavenly glow came from the lights at the Warren Ballpark, where, no doubt, high school football practice was well under way.

  When the left-hand turn signal came on again and they started up Yuma Trail, Joanna finally tumbled to what was happening. Suddenly she knew exactly where they were going. Some suspects are compelled to revisit the scenes of their crimes. Clearly the same thing was happening here with Jeremy Stock.

  “You’re taking me to Geronimo?” she asked.

  “Sure thing,” Jeremy answered. “When Grandpa Meynard used to take me and my friends up there, especially at night, he liked to tell us scary ghost stories. The ones he liked best were the ones that ended with the words ‘the rest you know.’ And now you do, too.”

  CHAPTER 31

  BUTCH DIXON WAS PISSED—ROYALLY AND COMPLETELY PISSED. IN terms of travel time, it was less than ten minutes from Joanna’s office at the Justice Center on Highway 80 to the house at High Lonesome Ranch. When she had told him on the phone that she was coming straight home, he had been dumb enough to believe her. He had gone ahead and put food on the table. For one thing, it was ready. Jim Bob and Eva Lou, longtime retirees, were used to eating earlier in the afternoon, so starting to eat at six thirty meant it was already well past their usual dinnertime. Bob and Marcie were still on East Coast time. As far as their interior clocks were concerned, it was verging on ten P.M. Jenny and Denny were hungry, too.

  It wasn’t as though he had spent the afternoon slaving over a hot stove. Making green chili casserole was duck soup to him. Heating up tamales, refritos, and tortillas and getting them on the table wasn’t a big deal, either, but doing that while also greeting people, serving beverages, and trying to carry on three different conversations wasn’t easy.

  And now, with dinner almost over, Joanna’s place at the table was still empty while he tried to entertain his wife’s shirttail relatives—her former in-laws and the brother she barely knew.

  When the landline phone rang just as Butch finished cleaning his plate, he was relieved to have a legitimate reason to jump up and answer it.

  “Hey, Butch,” Casey Ledford said, “I hate to intrude on your evening, but could I speak to Sheriff Brady, please? I’ve got some news she’s going to want to hear.”

  “You’d be welcome to speak to her if she were here,” Butch replied a little too curtly. “As far as I know, she’s still at the department.”

  “That’s funny,” Casey said. “I just peeked at her office. Her lights are off.”

  Butch’s throat constricted. Those were words cop-related families everywhere dreaded hearing—that for some reason their law enforcement loved one wasn’t where he or she was supposed to be. Even more feared would be the awful late-night phone call or the piercing middle-of-the-night doorbell ring that always preceded the official arrival of the worst possible news.

  Butch looked back toward the table. Jenny, smoothly assuming the role of hostess, was in the midst of an entertaining tale about dropping Maggie off at her new stable. Hoping that no one at the table was listening in, he tried to speak to Casey without letting his voice betray his roiling emotions.

  “Maybe you could go back and check again,” he suggested quietly. “I spoke to her half an hour or so ago, and she told me she was leaving right then. She should have been here by now.”

  “Do you mind holding while I go look?” Casey asked.

  “Sure,” Butch replied. “I’ll hold.”

  He waited—for a long time. There was no elevator music playing on the line with intermittent cheery-voiced announcements telling him, “Your call is very important to us.” And the longer he waited, the more he understood that something untoward had happened—something bad.

  When Casey finally returned to the line, she was breathless—as though she’d just run a sprint—and her voice was guarded. “I’m afraid something’s terribly wrong,” she said. “Sheriff Brady’s Yukon is there, and so are her purse, briefcase, and phone—scattered all over the sidewalk. From the evidence I’m seeing on the ground, she may have been Tasered.”

  Butch’s heart constricted. He wanted to speak, but didn’t trust his voice to work properly.

  “I need to go now,” Casey continued. “We’re seeing AFIDs on the sidewalk in front of her parking place, and I need to see if I can get someone from Taser International to help me identify them.”

  Butch understood that in cop-speak AFIDs were Anti-Felon Identification tags—tiny pieces of material that resembled confetti that could be used to identify each individual Taser.

  “But where is she?” a desperate Butch demanded when he was finally able to speak, but by then the phone line was empty. Casey was already gone. For a time, he stood still listening to the buzzing hum of the dial tone before carefully returning the receiver to its charger. Something about his manner must have alerted Bob Brundage. When Butch turned around, Bob was eyeing him suspiciously. Then, without asking any questions, Bob rose from his chair. “You guys stay put,” he told the others. “I’ll help Butch clear.”

  Moments later, in the relative privacy of the kitchen and under the noisy cover of rinsing dishes, Bob asked, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “It’s Joanna,” Butch managed. “She’s gone missing from her office.”

  “Missing?” Bob echoed.

  Butch nodded miserably. “It looks as though she was assaulted out in the parking lot as she left the office to come home.”

  Bob simply shouldered Butch aside. “Let me handle the dishes,” he said. “You go do whatever you need to do. Marcie and I will stay here with the kids.”

  Butch didn’t hang around waiting for a second offer. He poked his head into the dining room. “I have to go out for a while,” he said, offering no further explanation. “I’ll be back soon. You guys go ahead and have dessert.”

  Opening the garage door, Butch discovered Bob’s rented Taurus was parked directly behind his Subaru. Rather than return to the dining room and ask Bob to move it, he grabbed the key fob to Joanna’s Enclave from the collection of keys hanging on the laundry room pegboard. Moments later, he peeled out of the driveway in Joanna’s SUV rather than his own, leaving behind a billowing cloud of dust.

  Minutes after entering the highway, he rounded the barrier of low hills that separated the ranch from the Justice Center. Long before he could make out the buildings themselves, he saw the distinctive red and blue glow of emergency lights pulsing behind what he knew to be Joanna’s office. Gripping the steering wheel that much tighter, he shoved the gas pedal all the way to the floor and drove like hell.

  He didn’t worry about being stopped for speeding. He didn’t need to. He already knew that every cop in the immediate area was otherwise engaged.

  CHAPTER 32

  JEREMY STOCK HAD GONE TOTALLY SILENT, SO JOANNA SAT QUIETLY, too, trying t
o evaluate her situation. She had a weapon, yes, but there was no way for her to reach it—not with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  When she was little, she’d loved playing agility games with her dad. One of them had consisted of holding a broomstick at knee level and then trying to step over it forwards and backwards. Her father had been in his forties by the time Joanna was born. After years of working in the mines, his knees weren’t as good as they had once been, and soon Joanna was far better at what they called the “broom game” than D.H. Lathrop. Back then she had been limber enough to step through the handcuffs, but not now—not with that bulging lump of baby stuck in her midsection.

  The only way her Glock could come into play was if Jeremy removed the cuffs. At the moment, as they bounced along the rough dirt track between Warren and the base of Geronimo, it seemed to Joanna the idea of his actually removing the cuffs was little more than a pipe dream, not unlike ponying up two bucks on a winning lottery ticket. The odds of either one happening were equally unlikely.

  What else did she have in her favor? After a moment, she remembered. Months earlier, she had prevailed upon the board of supervisors to give her budgetary permission to invest in a fleet management program that came complete with an automated vehicle-location system and computer-assisted dispatch. The system’s cutting-edge GPS capability made life easier for her Bisbee-based dispatchers. When faced with unfolding incidents throughout Joanna’s 6,400-square-mile jurisdiction, the system made it possible for Dispatch to locate and deploy the nearest possible deputy. Only a few months into operation, the system had already cut departmental response times in half. From an administrative standpoint, it had the added advantage of allowing Joanna to know if one of her less reliable deputies was spending his working hours tucked away on some deserted side road, napping his shift away.

  Right now Joanna understood that the new system had the capability of saving her life, but only if someone noticed she was missing, figured out that Jeremy Stock was the most likely culprit, and had brains enough to activate the high-tech system that could locate his vehicle.

  Joanna had told Butch that she was coming straight home. However much time had elapsed, he must be worried by now, but how much longer would it take for him to sound the alarm? Once that happened, the AFIDs, from the Taser, could indeed lead directly to Jeremy’s weapon, but how soon would that happen? When Joanna’s CSIs had sent AFIDs in for examination previously, it had taken weeks for them to get results. This was a matter of life and death, but did anyone else understand that? And even if they did, would it make any difference?

  And then there was the matter of the person in charge—Chief Deputy Hadlock. He was a good guy, and he was growing into his responsibilities as chief deputy, but this would be the first time he would be solely responsible for directing her department’s response to a major incident. What would he do? How would he deploy his assets?

  Tom wasn’t a nuanced kind of guy. Joanna realized, with a sinking sense of dread that when it came time for a final confrontation with Jeremy Stock, Tom’s most likely reaction would be an overreaction. She worried that he would come out in full attack mode—with lights flashing and guns blazing.

  Joanna didn’t doubt that a posse of well-armed officers could take Jeremy Stock down in a hail of gunfire, but she had no wish to be caught in the resulting cross fire. And if bullets were about to fly, where was her Kevlar vest at the moment? That would be back in her office, exactly where she’d left it!

  I can’t risk waiting around for someone to come riding to my rescue, she thought, giving herself a silent pep talk. If it is to be, it is up to me. The Little Red Hen is going to have to do this on her own.

  Just then, as if to underscore her newfound resolve, Baby Sage stirred in her belly and delivered a surprisingly solid kick to Joanna’s lower rib cage. It was exactly what she needed. The baby—Joanna’s baby—was in this fight to the death, too. Awash with relief at knowing Sage was still alive and kicking, Joanna smiled to herself in the dark.

  Okay, then, she vowed silently. I hear you loud and clear, little one. Make that the two of us, then. If it is to be, it is up to us.

  As the Tahoe continued to bounce along, Joanna turned her attention back to the problem at hand—the ongoing hostage negotiation.

  “I didn’t know you grew up in Bisbee,” she said.

  “I didn’t,” Jeremy answered. “What makes you say that?”

  “You know about Geronimo. Locals know about Geronimo. Outsiders usually don’t.”

  “I grew up in Sierra Vista, but my mother was from Bisbee,” Jeremy answered. “Her folks, Gerald and Juanita Meynard, lived on Hazzard. Jerry was an underground miner; Juanita was a housewife. After my mother graduated from high school, she went to work at Fort Huachuca and ended up marrying a soldier she met on post. After my dad got out of the service, they stayed on in Sierra Vista.

  “I used to come stay with Grandpa and Grandma for a few weeks during the summers when school was out. Grandpa and I hiked in the hills together; shot BB guns and his .22; did some prospecting. Then, the summer I turned eleven, he told me he wasn’t up to hiking anymore. The truth is, he wasn’t up to much of anything. A few months later, he was dead. It was years before I found out he got dusted. That’s what killed him. His lungs gave out.”

  Joanna knew about the ugly reality behind the supposedly inoffensive sounding term “dusted.” It was common usage in Arizona’s copper-mining communities for career miners who developed lung problems. Most of the rest of the country referred to the ailment as the grimmer-sounding black lung disease. No matter how you said it, however, the outcome was usually the same—the miners sickened and died.

  “Gramps always warned me to stay away from working in the mines, although they were mostly closed or closing by then,” Jeremy continued. “That’s one of the reasons I became a cop in the first place. Compared to being a miner, working in law enforcement was a big step up.”

  The fact that Jeremy had just volunteered some information cheered Joanna. Maybe she was making progress after all.

  “But why did you bring Susan Nelson all the way out here to kill her?”

  On the far side of the mesh screen she saw him raise and lower his shoulders as he shrugged. “Seemed like as good a place as any,” he said.

  “I know why you killed Desirée Wilburton—you said it was because she showed up unexpectedly and tried to come to Susan’s aid, but you never told me why you killed Susan.”

  “She wouldn’t get rid of the baby,” Jeremy said. “She absolutely refused.”

  “That’s what this is about—her baby?” Joanna echoed. “As I tried to explain to all of you earlier this afternoon, what happened with Susan Nelson was a crime against Travis. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had gone ahead and had the child, kept it, given it up for adoption, or had an abortion. In the long run, no one would have held it against your son. In fact, if Susan hadn’t died—if we hadn’t become embroiled in a double homicide investigation—there’s a good chance no one would have been the wiser.”

  “Shut up!” Jeremy ordered, pounding the steering wheel in sudden fury. “Just shut the hell up. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  And so Joanna did exactly what he asked—she shut the hell up.

  CHAPTER 33

  WHEN BUTCH PULLED UP TO THE ENTRANCE TO THE JUSTICE CENTER, a cop car with flashing lights ablaze was parked across the roadway, blocking traffic. A deputy he didn’t recognize stood next to it, waving traffic on. He seemed to be involved in an ongoing argument with a woman whose head was topped by a wild mane of hair.

  Crap, Butch told himself. Just what I don’t need right now—Marliss Shackleford!

  He pulled over onto the shoulder just beyond the entrance, put the SUV in park, and vaulted out onto the pavement. He attempted to dodge past the deputy and Marliss, but it didn’t work.

  “Sorry, sir,” the deputy said. “No one’s allowed inside except sworn officers and first responders.�
�

  “I’m Butch Dixon, Sheriff Brady’s husband,” he explained. “One way or the other, I’m going to go find out what’s going on.”

  “Please, Mr. Dixon,” the deputy said. “I have my orders.”

  “What orders?” a female voice demanded. “What’s going on?”

  Butch turned in time to see Agent Watkins approaching from behind.

  “It’s Joanna,” Butch told her. “Someone’s taken her.”

  Unfortunately, Agent Watkins wasn’t the only one listening in. “Someone’s taken Sheriff Brady?” Marliss repeated breathlessly. “Are you saying the sheriff’s been kidnapped?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the deputy began, this time directing his words in Robin’s direction. “No one is allowed inside the Justice Center other than sworn officers.”

  In answer, she pulled out her ID wallet and snapped it open. “I believe that makes me a sworn officer,” she said, “and Mr. Dixon is with me. Come on.”

  Together they walked past the deputy and onto the Justice Center grounds, while Marliss Shackleford’s continued pleas for admittance fell on deaf ears.

  “What the hell is going on?” Robin demanded.

  While they threaded their way through the throng of cop cars, Butch told her what he knew, which turned out to be not much.

  “All right, then,” Robin said. “Stick with me and don’t say a word. Let me ask the questions.”

  Rather than going to the back of the building, which was obviously the center of attention, Robin led the way toward the front door, which was locked. As soon as she spoke a few words into the intercom, the electronic latch clicked open and they were allowed inside. Approaching the front counter, Butch recognized the clerk behind the wall of bulletproof glass the moment he saw her.