Damage Control

by J. A. Jance

  “Wherever,” Joanna said. “Let’s just do it. I want this over and done with.”

  Frank Montoya usually handled media interaction for Joanna’s department for the very good reason that Joanna had virtually zero tolerance for the task. The most difficult part for her was announcing Deputy Sloan’s name. She had steeled herself to stifle her emotions when she did so, but that was easier in the planning than it was in the delivery. After that, she gave a brief overview: Both Samantha Edwards and Sandra Wolfe had been hospitalized for undisclosed medical reasons. A man who was a person of interest in that case who had fled the area was presumed to be the victim of a car crash that had occurred on I-10 in west Texas. No, his name could not yet be released.

  Once she had finished reciting the information that could be discussed, Joanna had to ward off dozens of questions, rephrased several different ways, asking for details that could not be released. That was the part Frank Montoya excelled at—deflecting those questions with easy good grace. Joanna had to battle to keep her temper under control and to keep from saying what she really meant, as in, “What part of N-O don’t you understand?”

  She was within moments of losing it completely when she was saved by the ringing of her telephone. Pulling the blaring phone from her pocket, she glanced at the screen and saw a number she didn’t recognize. Probably another reporter, she thought, exasperated. Even so, she was glad for even the slimmest of excuses to abandon the bank of microphones and leave the reporters along with their ongoing barrage of questions to Chief Alvin Bernard.

  Joanna melted through the door and went back into the building, answering the call as she went.

  “Is this Sheriff Brady?” a male voice asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Who’s this, and how did you get this number?”

  “From Sheriff Barnes in Texas. I’m Mark Wolfe, Larry’s brother.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss—” Joanna began.

  “Never mind all that,” Mark interrupted. “I just need to know if what Sheriff Barnes told me is true.”

  “That your brother’s dead? We’re trying to confirm that, but—”

  “Not that,” he said impatiently. “I want to know about the rest of it—about Larry shooting a cop and possibly poisoning his father-in-law and attempting to poison his wife and her sister as well.”

  The man sounded upset. If he was convinced of his brother’s innocence, Joanna didn’t want to antagonize him further.

  “We don’t know any of that for sure,” Joanna said. Wary of his fury, she tried to soft-pedal the bad news. “So far it’s all conjecture. My investigators are still working the crime scene. It’s still far too early to be able to say anything definitive. The fact that your brother fled the state immediately after the shooting leads us to believe—”

  But Mark Wolfe wasn’t easily deflected. “What about the poisonings?” he asked determinedly.

  “The alleged poisonings,” Joanna corrected, trying to deescalate the situation. “We don’t know any of that for sure, either. An empty vial that we believe had once contained ketamine was found in his wife’s hotel room. We’ll be doing forensics analysis of any residue in that, as well as of any number of substances taken from Mr. and Mrs. Beasley’s—the in-laws’—home here in Bisbee. We’ll also be conducting toxicology screenings on all possible victims. Once we do that, we’ll have a better idea of what really happened.”

  “I already know what happened,” Mark Wolfe said bitterly. “Larry did it.”

  That wasn’t what Joanna expected to hear. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You think he’s guilty?”

  “Absolutely,” Mark returned. “Guilty as sin. Why wouldn’t he be? He got away with murder at least once before. Why wouldn’t he try it again?”

  “What do you mean, he got away with it?” Joanna asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “My parents,” Mark Wolfe replied. “The hospital listed my mother’s death as heart failure. That may or may not be true, but I’m almost sure Larry helped my father along. He was there with Dad at the time he died. The M.E. in Tampa listed cause of death as an accidental overdose due to a combination of alcohol and an over-the-counter sleeping aid. I know my father, though. Dad never would have done such a thing—not intentionally, and not by accident, either.”

  “You weren’t there at the time it happened?”

  “No. There had been some bad blood between Larry and my parents—a dispute that had gone on for years. Although my father never disinherited Larry, they didn’t speak for a long time. Then, when my mother ended up in the hospital that last time, Larry came riding home, and both my parents welcomed him with open arms. The whole prodigal-son bit just pissed the hell out of me. After Mom’s funeral in Kansas City, I came back to Saint Louis. Larry took Dad back to Florida. The next thing I knew, he was dead. Larry didn’t bother contacting me until after he’d had Dad cremated. When I finally heard about it, I went to Tampa and raised hell. I tried to convince the local authorities to open an investigation, but they wouldn’t. They told me lots of old people come to Florida to die. I even tried talking to the local prosecutor. He declined to press charges.”

  Mark stopped for a moment. “Now, though,” he said when he resumed speaking, “if what Sheriff Barnes told me is true, several more people are dead or in the hospital. What happened to them is all my fault.”

  Joanna Brady, who was currently dealing with her own self-recrimination issues, couldn’t quite connect the dots. “You can’t possibly hold yourself responsible for what a prosecutor did or didn’t do.”

  “It’s what I did,” Mark Wolfe said. “I hired a private eye and did some checking around. I found out my brother was in a financial bind. He needed his inheritance sooner rather than later, but since I’m the executor, I’ve been stalling—because I could. Because I wanted to stick it to him; because I wanted to rub his nose in it. I knew how desperate Larry was—how badly he needed the money. I, more than anyone else, understood exactly what he was capable of. Now, because of me—”

  Mark’s voice broke and he couldn’t go on. Joanna waited patiently on the phone, giving the man a chance to pull himself back together.

  “So tell me about his wife,” he said. “Sandy. She’s his second wife. Although they’ve been married for years, I’ve never met the woman. Is she going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Joanna answered honestly. “She received a massive overdose of ketamine. She’s been airlifted to a hospital in Tucson.”

  “And her sister?”

  “We think Samantha Edwards received a somewhat smaller dose. She’s hospitalized right now, too, but she’s probably going to be all right.”

  “Thank God,” Mark said. “Do you have my number?”

  “No,” Joanna said. “And I can’t take it down right now. If you’d call my office—”

  “Of course,” Mark said. “Please ask Sandy and her sister to be in touch with me when they can. I’ll do whatever I can to help. And Sheriff Brady, I’m so very sorry about your deputy.”

  “I know,” Joanna said. “I am, too. And I’m sure that my investigators are going to need to talk to you as well.”

  “As I said, I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “Did your brother have a dentist?” Joanna asked quickly.

  “A dentist?” Mark Wolfe repeated. “I wouldn’t know about that. We’ve been out of touch for years.”

  “Not a current dentist,” Joanna said. “An old one. One he might have gone to when he was a kid.”

  “Dr. Randall,” Mark Wolfe answered at once. “Kansas City, Missouri. We went to Doc Randall until we both graduated from college.”

  “Is he still in business?” Joanna asked.

  “Old Doc Randall has been dead for years,” Mark replied. “I believe his granddaughter is running the practice now. Do you want the number? I don’t have it right now, but I’m sure I can get it.”

  “Good,” Joanna said. “Someone from my department will be in t
ouch.”

  Joanna closed her phone and then slipped out the side entrance, intent on getting back to her office, where she knew a huge tangle of officer-involved-in-shooting paperwork would be waiting. Joanna was dismayed to find Marliss Shackleford leaning against the front bumper of her Crown Vic.

  “Any comment on Deputy Sloan’s death now?” Marliss asked, notebook at the ready.

  Joanna stared at the woman, wanting nothing more than to rip into the reporter and give her a piece of her mind. But then Joanna thought about Dan Sloan and about Sunny. This wasn’t the time to allow herself to be suckered into some kind of petty grudge match.

  “Deputy Dan Sloan’s death is a terrible tragedy,” Joanna said with as much dignity as she could muster. “He will be missed.”

  With that, she got in the car, closed the door, and drove away. When Joanna reached the Justice Center she discovered that not all the media crews had stayed focused on the scheduled press conference at Bisbee PD. There were plenty of reporters milling around in her parking lot as well. She was glad to be able to park out back and duck into her office unnoticed.

  It was only a little past seven when she got there, but she was surprised to find Kristin, black band on her wrist, already at her desk and fielding phone calls.

  As soon as she put her purse down, Joanna called home. Jenny answered. “I heard, Mom,” Jenny said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m back at the office now. I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

  “Here’s Butch,” Jenny said.

  “Hi, Joey,” he said. “Sounds like you had a pretty bad night.”

  It hadn’t been the worst night of Joanna’s life. That would have been the night Andy was shot, but it was certainly the worst night of her career.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, it was.”

  “You’re at the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come home when you can. You can’t go without sleep forever.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know.”

  As the call to Butch ended, Kristin came into Joanna’s office and dropped a stack of message slips onto the desk. “Terry was coming in early this morning, and I did, too. I thought you’d need me, and I was right. The phone’s been ringing off the hook, everyone’s calling because…” Kristin stopped speaking. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Joanna remembered seeing Terry Gregovich and his eighty-five-pound German shepherd, Spike, standing at attention with a group of fellow Cochise County officers as she had followed Dan Sloan’s gurney down Tombstone Canyon.

  “Thank you for coming in, Kristin,” Joanna said. “It was a bad night and it’s going to be a worse day.” She picked up the stack of messages and shuffled through them. There were calls she would have to return, but right that moment, she wasn’t ready. She looked up Mark Wolfe’s number on her incoming-call list, jotted it down, and passed it over to Kristin. “This is Larry Wolfe’s brother’s number. His name is Mark. Give him a call a little later. He’ll give you the number of a dentist’s office where we may be able to get Larry Wolfe’s dental records. Once you have the number, hand it off to Ernie or Deb. They’ll know what to do.”

  Nodding, Kristin took the note. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked. “According to the front office, people have been coming by all night long, bringing food. The break room is full of casseroles.”

  The way Joanna felt right then, she didn’t want any food, but she knew she needed it. “That’s probably a good idea,” she said.

  Pushing her tired and achingly stiff body away from her desk, Joanna rose and followed Kristin down the hall to the break room. “Have a seat,” Kristin said, then brought Joanna a cup of freshly brewed coffee. “And let me get you a plate. We have biscuits, tamales, three different kinds of quiche, tamale pie, and green chili casserole. Butch brought that. He dropped it off just after I got here.”

  Following Kristin’s orders, Joanna sank gratefully onto one of the hard plastic chairs. Her secretary bustled around the room, filling a plate, putting it in the microwave, gathering plastic silverware. While she was doing that, Joanna stared up at the photo on the wall over her head. The blonde was still there, staring back.

  Please, Joanna found herself praying silently, please don’t let there be any surprises like this for Sunny Sloan.

  Kristin set the steaming plate in front of Joanna. There were two tamales, one red and one green, some of Butch’s casserole, and a chunk of quiche that looked like it was probably from Costco.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t go home for a while?” Kristin asked. “I mean, you look—”

  “Awful?” Joanna finished for her.

  Embarrassed, Kristin ducked her head and nodded.

  “No,” Joanna said, using a plastic fork to cut into the red tamale. “I have to be here. As soon as I finish eating, I need to talk to Jaime, but I’m curious about something. That blonde there in the picture, the one at the end of the front row. I can’t quite place her. Who is she?”

  Kristin went over to the picture and squinted up at it. “Oh, her,” she said. “What was her name again? Sue…Suzy…No, Suzanne. That’s it. I remember now. Suzanne Quayle. She was working here as a dispatcher, but she quit right after all that bad stuff happened with Sheriff McFadden. I think she moved to Tucson not long after that and hired on as a 911 operator up there. I’m pretty sure I heard she has a little boy. He must be five or six by now. Why?”

  A little boy? Joanna thought as her stomach clenched into a hard ball. It was all she could do to keep that first bite of tamale where it belonged. Andy had a little boy? Was that possible?

  Suddenly Joanna was in an emotional free fall. Andy had been dead for years, but the hurt of this potential betrayal was astonishingly present. Her heart pounded in her chest. She thought she was going to hyperventilate.

  Was it possible that everyone in town had known Suzanne Quayle was pregnant when she left town? Did that mean everyone also knew who the father was? Everyone, that is, except Andrew Roy Brady’s wife!

  “Are you all right?” Kristin asked, concern in her voice and on her face.

  Joanna shrugged and tried to act as though she wasn’t overly interested. “It’s just that I know most of the rest of the people in that photo,” she said as offhandedly as she could manage. “She’s somebody I didn’t recognize.”

  “That’s because she quit the department long before you got here,” Kristin said.

  Yes, Joanna thought. For good reason, and I’m pretty sure I can figure out what that reason was.

  As two of the front-office clerks came into the break room, Joanna pushed her plate aside. “Thanks, Kristin,” she said, “but I’m afraid I can’t eat anything right now.”

  CHAPTER 18

  JOANNA STAGGERED BACK TO HER OFFICE, WHERE SHE NO LONGER had time to agonize over personal considerations. There was too much to do. Just after eight, her people turned up for a hurriedly assembled morning briefing. Everyone had been out working most of the night. The men were unshaven. Deb’s makeup was a shambles; her long hair was a tangled mess. Without checking a mirror, Joanna knew she was in a similarly bedraggled condition. They gathered around the table in their rumpled clothing, swilling coffee and looking shell-shocked and weary.

  Of all of them, Jaime Carbajal was in by far the worst shape. The death of Deputy Sloan, Jaime’s protégé, had left the detective devastated and angry. Drumming his fingers impatiently on the table and looking ready to explode, he listened along with everyone else while Joanna brought them up-to-date on what she had learned from Mark Wolfe.

  “I’m sure Larry’s brother is right,” Ernie observed when she finished. “If the guy got away with it once, he figured he’d be able to do so again. It’s a good thing he’s dead, though. For sure he was never going to be brought to trial over what happened to his father, and I doubt we would have been able to make charges stick with Alfred and Martha Beasley, either. So our only shot at him would have b
een—”

  With a glance at Jaime’s thunderous face, Ernie wisely chose to shut up.

  Yes, Joanna thought. Our only shot at convicting him would have been for killing Dan Sloan, and we probably wouldn’t have been able to prove premeditation.

  “Where are we on crime scene investigation?” Joanna asked.

  “We’ve had Larry Wolfe’s pickup towed to our impound yard,” Dave Hollicker told her. “We’ve found what looks like blood smear on the steering wheel and tiny shards of glass in the driver’s foot well. It’s going to take time to sort it all out.”

  Joanna nodded and turned to Deb. “What about the food from the Beasleys’ refrigerator?” she asked. “What’s happening with that?”

  “I’ve called the DPS Crime Lab in Tucson and let them know I’ll be bringing it to them today,” Deb Howell replied. “They’ll test everything, but I’m betting the most likely culprit will turn out to be Alfred’s chocolate syrup. I’ve already called that company in Montreal, Tante Marie’s Toppings. I’ve ordered another jar of the same stuff to be FedExed directly to the crime lab. They’ll need that for comparison.

  “And I’ve been reading up on ketamine. Long-term use can lead to short-term memory loss and mental confusion. The same kind of symptoms we’ve been told Alfred Beasley was exhibiting.”

  “The same kind of symptoms as the poor man’s worst nightmare,” Joanna said. “No wonder he thought he was coming down with Alzheimer’s. What happens with a massive dose?”

  “Everything from psychotic episodes to complete respiratory failure.”

  “Do we have any idea where the drug came from?” Joanna asked.

  Dave Hollicker was the one who answered. “I’m checking with the manufacturer on the vial we found in the hotel bathroom,” he said. “They’re looking into tracking the serial number. It’s possible Larry just hopped the prescription bus, rode down to Nogales, and bought it over the counter.”

  Just then Casey Ledford let herself into the room and closed the door. She looked as tired as the rest of the people in the room, but she was smiling when no one else was.