Dead Wrong

by Janice Kay Johnson

  "Surely you knew this when you asked her out."

  "You'd think, wouldn't you? But when conversation is general in big groups you don't always remember who contributes what. She was fun, pretty, had a nice laugh. So on impulse I asked if she wanted to have dinner. This was…I don't know. Maybe six weeks ago. The next weekend we had drinks and she came to a gallery opening with me. Afterward she wanted us to join Marcie and Dirk Whittaker at Sister's, that new brew-house. I made an excuse and left her there. End of romance."

  The lieutenant asked, "Did you sleep with her, Travis?"

  His eyebrows rose. "Does it matter?"

  "We're gaining the impression that she tended to end her evenings in someone or other's beds. I guess I'm asking if that was true."

  Expression conflicted, he appeared to be thinking furiously. "Okay," he said at last. "After our first date, she came home with me. Are you asking me to rate her performance?"

  Lieutenant Patton gave a crooked smile. "No. What I'm trying to determine is whether she would readily have agreed to leave a bar with someone Wednesday night."

  He was quiet for a moment. "Yeah. I think maybe she would. My take is, Amy liked sex. Or maybe what she liked was having a guy. She always seemed to be looking."

  The lieutenant nodded. "Thank you for your honesty."

  Forehead still creased, he asked, "Why would anyone want to kill Amy? She liked sex, sure. But to the best of my knowledge, she never hurt anyone."

  "Knowingly."

  He shrugged in concession. "Let me put it like this. I think she went out of her way not to hurt anyone."

  Face drawn, Lieutenant Patton said, "Travis, I want you to think back. Way back. Do you know of anyone who has harbored a grudge against Will? Anyone who is still around town?"

  He straightened, gripped the back of his chair. His gaze locked with Meg Patton's. "Will? What does…" He uttered a guttural obscenity. "Amy wasn't murdered like Gilly, was she?"

  "There were…similarities."

  He swore again. "You told Will?"

  She nodded.

  "How's he taking it?"

  "I don't know," the lieutenant said in a voice Trina had never heard from her. "As I'm sure you're aware, he doesn't open up to me much."

  "Why didn't that idiot call me?" He shoved himself to his feet, hesitated, then sat back down. "No. God. I can't think of anyone who hated Will like that. Everybody liked him." He shook his head as if he were trying to clear it. "Mendoza was convicted. I called damn near every night during the trial! Will told me about the evidence!"

  "Ricky always said there was another explanation. That he left her alive." The pencil in the lieutenant's hand snapped. She didn't seem to notice. Her voice had become raw. "What if he did?"

  "God." Travis scrubbed his hand over his face. "Is Will still at his dad's? He hasn't found a place?"

  "I don't know."

  "I'll talk to him tonight." He stood then, and squeezed Lieutenant Patton's shoulder. "Hey, Will's mom. You're super cop. You'll find out who did this."

  Her smile hurt to look at. "Thanks, Travis. You're a good kid."

  His laugh wasn't any more real than her smile. "When I want to shed a few years, I just come see you."

  She watched as he left the room, then met Trina's eyes. "I've known him since he was fourteen."

  "Wasn't he around during the trial?"

  "No, he was in Europe training for the World Cup tour. He had an exciting life in those days. Val d'Isere, Innsbruck, St. Moritz…Will would get postcards. Travis won the opening downhill of the season that year, at Chamonix. I remember how excited Will was." She fell silent for a moment. "Gillian was killed that spring. Travis was in Japan that week. By the time the trial started, he was back in Europe training for the next winter."

  That's why she'd felt comfortable telling him as much as she had, Trina realized. He might be the only friend of Will's his mother could trust.

  The lieutenant's gaze sharpened. "Trina, I'm going to have you go see Mendoza in Salem. You have a fresh eye."

  Trina kept her mixed excitement and trepidation out of her voice. "Do I tell him about this murder?"

  "Why not? But first, learn what you can about his friends, cousins, nephews. Anyone who might care enough to think of a sick way to get him off."

  "Or who wants to be just like Ricky," Trina said slowly.

  "You got it. But beyond that, I want you to get him to tell his story about what happened the night Gillian Pappas was murdered. Just…listen."

  Trina nodded. "Is there anything you want to tell me about him?"

  There was a history here she didn't know.

  But Lieutenant Patton shook her head. "Meet him, hear his story. I don't want to predispose you in any way."

  "I have been reading police reports and the transcript of the trial."

  "But talking to him in person, that's different." She got to her feet. "I'll call over to Salem, we'll set it up for tomorrow."

  "If he'll agree to talk to me."

  She snorted. "Oh, he'll agree. Ricky Mendoza never misses a chance to tell someone he's innocent."

  * * *

  THE APARTMENT WAS DECENT, the rent exorbitant. That was the price you paid for being in a hurry.

  Will unpacked his suitcases and made the bed. After signing the lease that afternoon, he'd visited the storage unit where most of his worldly possessions were stowed and managed to find boxes labeled Bedding and Kitchen. He hoped like hell his coffeemaker was in one of them.

  When the doorbell rang, he abandoned the box of towels on the floor in front of the incredibly tiny linen closet and went to let Travis in. His friend glanced around the blandly furnished living room, wincing at the watercolor print of Juanita Butte that hung above the distressed leather couch and peeled pine end tables.

  "You know, you could have stayed with me."

  "It's looking like I won't be able to buy until spring. You don't need a roommate for months."

  "If I'm not on the ski hill, I'm in the studio. You'd have hardly seen me."

  "This will do." Will nodded toward the kitchen. "Beer?"

  "Sure." Travis waited until he was popping the top of the dark German brew to say, "I talked to your mother today. She told me Amy's murder had similarities to Gillian's."

  "Similarities?" Will made a sharp sound. "More than that. It was damn near a carbon copy. Too close for coincidence."

  "Why didn't you call me? This must have stirred up some hellish memories."

  Will deliberately took a swallow, feeling the cold, bitter beer slide down his throat. The pause enabled him to say almost steadily, "You could say that."

  "Do you need to talk about it?"

  Will looked at his hand gripping the bottle and realized it was shaking. The tremor was fine enough he hoped his friend hadn't noticed.

  "That's all I've been doing! Even Jimmy McCartin called to talk about it!"

  "My fault. I ran into him when I stopped for an espresso on the way up to the hill. I tried to back out the door, but he spotted me before I could make a getaway." His gaze rested on Will's hand. So much for not noticing. "Come on, buddy. Tell me what you're thinking."

  Will turned his back, staring out the small window above the sink. "What is there to say? Some sick son of a bitch thought it would be fun to copy another murder. Maybe it was chance he chose another woman I know. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe he picked her because that's another parallel. Either way…Do you know what he did to her?" Will asked in anguish.

  Travis clasped his upper arm, just briefly, a gesture of support not so different from the reassuring slap on the back when one of them struck out on the ballfield, from the squeeze Will had given his arm when he visited him in the hospital after his career-ending pinwheel down the mountain at Kitzbühel. It meant something.

  "Yeah," Travis said. "I know what he did to her."

  Will felt his friend's scrutiny. He lifted his beer and swallowed.

  "Your mother asked me if I could think of anyone who
hated you."

  Beer went down the wrong way. Still choking, he gasped, "What?"

  "She looked scared, Will."

  Voice thick with fear of a different kind, fear that she was right and he was wrong, Will said, "She's jumping to conclusions."

  "She's looking at all the options. She was up at the Butte talking to Doug."

  "And?"

  "He worked Wednesday night. He told me after he talked to her that he had been with other people until two in the morning or so. And his roommate swears he never left the condo."

  Will set down the bottle on the counter so hard it clunked. "This has to do with Mendoza."

  "But what?"

  "Somebody is trying to get him off. To make everyone think Gilly's killer is still out there."

  Travis would have made a hell of a lawyer. Mild enough to catch you off guard, he could still corner you. "Not many people are sick enough to kill like that. A man would have to enjoy it. You and I are good friends. I'd do a hell of a lot for you. But rape and murder? Nah."

  Savagely, not wanting to hear the logic, Will said, "You've been talking to my father."

  "You know better than that."

  Will closed his eyes. Travis had stuck with him through the worst. And now he was being a jackass.

  "Yeah. I know better. I'm sorry."

  Travis just shook his head. "No need. Are you going to be able to start work with this hanging over you?"

  "Yeah." Tension arced through him as if live wires were sparking. "I need to be busy. What am I supposed to do? Sit here and watch soap operas while I wonder if some other woman is being stalked?"

  Relentless in his own way, Travis said, "If this guy stalked Amy, then that means he chose her. It had to be her. Why?"

  "I don't know!" Will all but shouted. He paced a couple of steps, turned back, bounced his fist on the counter. "I don't know. I was using a figure of speech. Probably nobody is being stalked. Chances are the killer just grabbed Amy because she was available…"

  "Has your mom figured out where she was snatched from?"

  "Not as far as I know."

  "Then maybe she wasn't all that available." Travis still leaned against the edge of the counter, seemingly relaxed, but his eyes were both watchful and compassionate. "You know, maybe the guy picked her. Maybe he had to plan how to lure her to him."

  "Which brings us back to me." Will swore under his breath. "What did you tell her?"

  "Her?"

  "My mother."

  "That I couldn't think of anyone who hates your guts."

  "That's the kind of thing I'd know."

  Travis gestured with the beer bottle. "I'm not so sure. If somebody is targeting women because you loved them, he hates you bad. It's not like this guy is telling the world what an asshole Will Patton is. This is something that eats at him. Takes the stomach lining, then his soul."

  "I've put people away…"

  "But you hadn't, back when Gilly was killed."

  "Mendoza…"

  "We're just supposing."

  "That he didn't kill her."

  "Or that somebody, somehow, put him up to it. Maybe it took that somebody six years to work up the nerve to do the dirty work himself."

  Will wanted to reject a suggestion so unlikely, but he'd spent enough years in the D.A.'s office to know anything was possible.

  "Do you remember that guy who set the fires because he blamed my grandfather for his mom's death?"

  Travis accepted the seeming non sequitor. "I remember."

  The first fire had been set inside a pickup truck chosen because it looked exactly like Police Chief Ed Patton's. The worst was Aunt Abby's townhouse. She'd barely escaped with her life. Even Will, just sixteen, had been targeted. His bike, parked outside the grocery store, had been squirted with gasoline and set afire.

  He remembered how he'd felt, knowing someone had been watching him, following him, hating him. For a while, until they caught the guy, Will had lived with the heightened perceptions of a soldier in a war zone. He'd searched the faces of people in line at the store or sitting in the bleachers at basketball games, been painfully conscious of anyone walking behind him, of every driver behind the wheel of an approaching car. It was like looking through a magnifying glass, so that his vision was both abnormally sharp and a little skewed. He hadn't trusted that anything was as it seemed.

  If he bought into this theory, he would once again feel like an infantryman walking down the street in Fallujah and realizing he'd forgotten to put on his body armor. The smiles of old friends would look like the veiled faces of Iraqi women whose dark eyes were unreadable to that soldier.

  Even with friends, he'd have to wonder what he wasn't seeing, what he might have done to provoke hatred so virulent.

  He didn't want to revisit that kind of paranoia. Every cell in his body rejected the idea that someone he knew, maybe even someone he'd gone to school with, could do something so hideous.

  He unclenched his jaw. "You're reaching. All of you are reaching. This doesn't have anything to do with me. It has to do with that sick bastard who murdered Gilly, may he rot in prison until the gates of hell open for him."

  "You may be right." Travis opened the refrigerator and handed Will another beer as if it were an olive branch. "Let's just hope we find out before another woman gets murdered."

  "Amen to that," Will agreed, and popped the lid from the bottle. Goddamn it, but his hand was still shaking.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE ONLY MAXIMUM SECURITY prison in Oregon, the penitentiary complex in Salem was sprawling and impressive. Trina had never had reason to visit it before. Even at the county jail, she didn't like hearing metal doors closing behind her. The idea of being shut in forever gave her the willies. Today, she felt uneasy from the moment she drove in the gates.

  She showed her credentials and surrendered her weapon, then allowed herself to be escorted to a glassed-in visitor room, furnished only with a single wood table in the middle and two chairs. Grateful she'd been allowed a "contact" visit and wouldn't have to attempt to interview Ricardo Mendoza through a telephone and thick glass, she set the tape recorder and her notebook on the table. Then, while waiting for him to be brought, she prowled the room. Trina prayed that Lieutenant Patton was right and he'd be eager to talk to her. She'd feel like a failure if she had to go back and admit she couldn't get him to open up.

  A guard escorted a handcuffed inmate past the windows looking into the hall. The inmate shuffled with head bent, lank blond hair shielding his face. A moment later, a man and woman passed, both carrying briefcases and wearing dark suits. Attorneys.

  Trina wondered if Will Patton had come here to see inmates when he was an assistant D.A. in Portland. She'd heard that he was a hotshot there, quickly advancing from prosecuting misdemeanors and doing prelims to Domestic Violence and then Major Crimes. Supposedly he hadn't lost a trial.

  So why on earth would he quit and take a job in Butte County, where half a dozen assistant D.A.s handled the entire caseload? Did he think he could make it to District Attorney faster on his own home turf? Most D.A.s seemed to end up being appointed to the bench. Maybe he wanted to be a judge so bad, he'd grabbed for the fastest route.

  Or maybe something had gone wrong and his standing had sunk. Will Patton, she suspected, wasn't the man to hang his head and accept a demotion to some unit like Consumer Protection or Juvenile Crime. He might have to handle those cases in Butte County—all the D.A.s did—but he'd also get a shot at the big cases. The headliners. The ones that would put his face on the nightly news.

  More footsteps in the hall. Why was she thinking about Will Patton? Trina turned to face the door.

  She'd seen the photo taken of Ricardo Mendoza when he was booked. Not much more than a kid, he'd stared at the camera with a mix of defiance, fear and feigned indifference. The man who nodded at the guard and stepped into the room had changed in ways that had more to do with being an inmate than with the six years that had passed.

  In
the blue prison garb, he looked thin and tough. A scar, pale against swarthy skin, curled from his temple onto his cheek. No longer the cocky young man, he was still handsome despite the disfigurement, the complete lack of expression on his face and the lines carved by bitterness. She thought she saw a flicker of interest in his dark eyes as he studied her, but that might be because she was a woman, not because of her mission or her job.

  "Mr. Mendoza," she said. "I'm Detective Giallombardo. Thank you for agreeing to see me."

  "It's not like I have anything else to do." He went to the chair on the far side of the table, facing the glass wall and the guard who waited outside the room.

  Trina sat across from him.

  When she didn't immediately begin, he said, "You here to find out what makes me tick, so you'll be able to catch other guys like me?"

  He was curious after all. She was interested, too, in the irony in his voice.

  "I'm actually hoping you'll tell me about the night Gillian Pappas died."

  His body jerked. Good, she'd surprised him.

  "What's the point of that?"

  "I've read your testimony. I'm hoping to hear what happened, as well as you can recollect it. Including anything you weren't able to say in the courtroom." She held up her hand when he started to speak. "I promise, I'll tell you why, but I'd like to hear your story first, un-colored by what I have to say."

  She'd thought his face expressionless. Now, for a moment, emotions she could only guess at boiled to the surface. Finally, he gave a jerky nod.

  "Like I said, I got nothing better to do."

  "Thank you. Do you mind if I tape the interview?"

  He shrugged. "Why would I?"

  Trina turned on the recorder and had him repeat his consent. Then she began. "When did you move to Elk Springs?"

  He answered her questions, explaining that his father was a migrant worker, but legal, and that he, Ricky, had been born in this country. His parents still followed the harvests: strawberries, peas, apples, even tulip bulbs in Skagit County in Washington State. He had managed to graduate from high school and learn some mechanics along the way. Two years before Gillian Pappas's murder, Ricardo Mendoza had gotten a job in Elk Springs, at an auto body repair shop.