by J. A. Jance
“Should I go see him?” Becky asked.
“We should both go see him,” Joanna said.
“Want me to set up the interview with Pima County?”
“No,” Joanna said. “I’ll do that once I know exactly when I’ll get there, and I’ll bring Deb Howell along. We’ll all go see him together. You locate your earring. I’ll locate mine. Then we’ll put the screws to him.”
“Wait a minute,” Becky said. “You’re not thinking of trying to offer some kind of plea deal, are you? We’re not authorized—”
“Absolutely not,” Joanna said. “No plea agreement of any kind. I’m going to give this poor mope an opportunity to tell us the truth about what happened. We’ll let him know that he’s already been linked to Wanda’s murder. If he doesn’t come clean about that one, he’s likely to be held responsible for Wayne Hamm’s death as well.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to bluff him into confessing with a pair of earrings?” Becky Ramsey asked. “That’s not much of a hand.”
“Let’s add in a couple of face cards,” Joanna said. “Bring along any photos you happen to have of Wayne Hamm.”
“As in crime scene photos?”
“Absolutely,” Joanna said.
She stopped by the evidence room long enough to go through the Wanda Mappin evidence box and emerged carrying a copy of the photo Dave Hollicker had taken of the earring that had been found with Wanda Mappin’s remains, as well as a photo of the diamond-studded locket. Along with those she collected a set of crime scene photos and a picture of a much younger Wanda, one her mother had submitted as part of the original missing persons report. With the file folder of photos in hand, Joanna dialed Deb Howell’s extension.
“What are you doing?”
“Paperwork,” Detective Howell admitted. “Mounds of it. Stacks of it. There wasn’t time yesterday.”
“And there probably won’t be time for it today, either,” Joanna said. “Let’s take a ride.”
“Where to?” Deb asked, sounding relieved.
“Tucson,” Joanna told her. “To the Pima County Jail. I want to pay a visit to your good friend Billy Carmichael. You drive. I need to make some calls.”
The first one was to Pima County Sheriff William Forsythe. Joanna’s interactions with Bill Forsythe had never been particularly cordial, especially after she had cleaned his clock in the formerly boys-only annual poker game at the Arizona Sheriffs Association meeting in Page several years earlier. Now, though, on her way to interview an inmate in Forsythe’s jail, she owed the man the courtesy of a phone call.
“I hear you’re dealing with some mighty tough stuff, Sheriff Brady,” Forsythe said, once she had him on the line. “Losing a deputy that way is hell. If there’s anything at all my department can do to help out, just say so. In fact, as soon as you know when the funeral is, give me a call. I can probably have some of my off-duty officers head down there to handle routine patrol duties while your guys attend the services. Mutual aid and all that. In fact, I may even be able to send along some admin folks so your office people can attend the funeral as well. And I have a line on the bagpipers we’ve used in the past.”
This may have been Joanna’s first line-of-duty fallen-officer funeral, but clearly Bill Forsythe had already been there and done that. His gruff and entirely unanticipated offers of help caught Joanna off guard. Maybe the thin blue line wasn’t as thin as she sometimes thought it to be.
“Thank you,” she murmured at last. “That’s very kind.”
“Have your chief deputy contact my administrative assistant,” Forsythe said easily. “We’ll get those shifts covered. Now what can I do for you today?”
“Detective Ramsey from Tucson PD and I are working to link two separate cases together. We need to interview one of your jail inmates, a guy named Billy Carmichael. We’re on our way to see him right now.”
“What’s your ETA?” Forsythe wanted to know. “I’ll call my jail commander and let him know you’re coming. I’ll also have him book an interview and make arrangements to bring Carmichael out of lockup. That way he’ll be there ready to go by the time you get there.”
As Joanna finished the call, she couldn’t help marveling at how things had changed in the space of a few short years. The acceptance she had earned from people like Chief Alvin Bernard and Bill Forsythe hadn’t come easily. Now that she had it, she realized that it was possible she had opened doors for other women who might want to follow in her footsteps.
Joanna closed her phone and turned to Deb. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a preview of Mr. Carmichael.”
“Not all that bright,” Deb said at once. “Whatever was going on, he was a grunt. He certainly wasn’t the brains of the outfit.”
“What’s his connection to Flannigan Foundation?”
“I asked him that yesterday,” Deb said. “He claimed he’d never heard of them.”
“We already know that’s a lie,” Joanna said. “That’ll be as good a place as any to start.”
As they crossed the Divide heading for Tucson, Joanna saw a group of vehicles pulled off on either side of the road. Joanna slowed, expecting to find the remains of a recent car wreck. Instead of wreckage, however, they found people standing with cameras pointed up the mountainside. Days of record-breaking storms had done their magic. Today a tumultuous waterfall roared off the mountainside at a spot where the red-rock cliffs were usually dry as bone.
It was beautiful. It was inspiring. It’s something Dan Sloan never lived to see, Joanna thought sadly.
They met up with Detective Ramsey in the Pima County Jail’s utilitarian public lobby, where a quick visual comparison of the two earring photos seemed to indicate they were a pair. Minutes later they were joined by a uniformed guard. After helping the visitors deposit their weapons in individual lockers, he led them to a small room adjoining the interview room, which gave them a view of a gaunt young man in a jail jumpsuit sitting at a metal table and drumming his fingers nervously on the table’s surface.
“Which one of you is going in with him?” the guard asked.
“We all are,” Joanna answered at once.
“But it’s a very small space,” the guard objected. “Are you sure—”
“The more crowded it is, the less wiggle room Mr. Carmichael will have.”
“All right,” the guard agreed reluctantly. “If you’ll give me a minute, I can bring in a couple more chairs.”
“That’s not necessary,” Joanna said. “One of us will sit. The others will stand. It’ll be fine.”
She led the others into the room and then took the empty chair opposite Carmichael while Deb and Becky Ramsey assumed positions next to the one-way mirror. Without a word, Joanna dropped her collection of photos on the table and said absolutely nothing. As the silence lengthened, Carmichael stared curiously at what he could see of the photos. Finally, he nodded toward Detective Howell.
“I know who she is,” he said. “She was here yesterday talking about some kind of fingerprint crap and a dead body that I don’t know nothin’ about. But who are you?” he demanded of Joanna. “And who’s she?” He pointed at Detective Ramsey.
“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Detective Ramsey is with Tucson PD. This interview is being recorded, by the way.” She nodded toward the video equipment attached to the wall just under the ceiling. “We’re investigating the disappearance of this man.”
She extracted the crime scene photo of Wayne’s gore-spattered body from the stack and slid it toward him across the table. There was no way to disguise the shock of recognition that flashed in Billy Carmichael’s eyes.
“So you knew Wayne Hamm?” she asked casually.
“I didn’t say that,” Carmichael replied.
“You didn’t have to,” Joanna returned with a smile. “I could see that you did. And because of these,” she added, plucking out the two earring photos, “we can now link you to two separate homicides.”
“Two,” he echoed faintly.
“Two,” Joanna repeated. She extracted Wanda Mappin’s photo from the stack. “You see her?”
Carmichael glanced at the photo and then looked away. “What about her?”
“This is one homicide victim. Her name is Wanda Mappin. We found her bones in the plastic bag with your fingerprint on it. And this earring—one of a pair of earrings—was found in the bag along with her remains. And this identical earring”—she produced the other earring photo and pushed it over to Carmichael—“this one we found among the personal effects of our other victim, Wayne Leroy Hamm, who, as it turns out, was shot by a startled homeowner when he broke into her home.”
“Like I already said,” Carmichael grumbled. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“But the two deaths are related,” Joanna insisted. “We know that because of the pair of earrings, and we’re guessing that if you were involved in the one murder—and we have physical evidence linking you to that one—that you probably also know about the other one as well.”
“But I didn’t do it,” Carmichael insisted suddenly. “All I did was help Tommy dump the body. She was already dead. If she would have just shut the hell up about it—if she would’ve let it go—nothing would have happened to her. She wouldn’t be dead. I mean, who cares if there’s one less retard in the world?”
“You mean she wouldn’t shut up about Wayne,” Joanna said. “About him being gone.”
Billy gave Joanna an appraising look, then he nodded. “Tommy said that’s all she would talk about. For weeks. People were starting to get suspicious. He had to do something.”
“Tommy,” Joanna said. “Who’s Tommy?”
“If I tell you, will you make sure I don’t get charged with this?” Billy asked. “With the murder, I mean. I swear I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. All I did was help Tommy get rid of the body. We took it down to Bisbee and buried it. The tape came loose. There was stuff leaking out. I helped tape it back shut. But I didn’t kill her.”
“Who’s Tommy?” Joanna asked again.
“Tom Bidahl,” Billy answered. “My ex-roommate. He had a sweet deal going. He used those guys—guys like Wayne—for recon.”
“Excuse me?” Joanna asked.
“You know. To scope out places,” Billy answered. “To figure out which places were locked up tight and which ones weren’t and would be good to rob. Tom would turn Wayne loose in a neighborhood to check things out. Once Tom’s crew knew which houses were easy marks, in they went; no muss, no fuss. If Wayne or one of the other dopes got caught in the process, so what? They’re not competent. They can’t be tried and convicted of anything. Those poor bastards have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. All Tom had to say was that they got out and went wandering on their own. That worked fine, right up until Wayne got the bright idea to go solo and got himself killed in the process. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if Wanda had just kept her mouth shut. She kept harping on it and harping on it until people started asking questions. That’s when Tom decided to do something. He put her out of her misery. I mean, he had to, didn’t he.”
“And how did you get roped into helping?” Joanna asked.
Billy Carmichael shrugged. “I sell stuff. I used to sell stuff. On eBay. For a percentage. Most people don’t care where something comes from as long as they’re getting a bargain.”
“In other words, you were Tom Bidahl’s fence.”
Billy nodded. “I guess so,” he agreed. “But like I said, I had nothing to do with killing this woman. She was already dead. You understand that, right?”
“Absolutely,” Joanna agreed. “I understand that completely. But where’s Tom Bidahl now? Whatever happened to him? You’re not still roommates, are you?”
“Oh, no,” Billy said. “I still live in the same place, an old house just off Euclid. That’s where I’ll go when they let me out of here, but Tom went on to bigger and better things. We were roommates before he ever went to work for Flannigan Foundation. First he was just an hourly attendant for them. Once he got a job as a resident manager, he didn’t need an apartment anymore.”
“Where is he now?”
“I heard he went to work for corporate—for the guy who runs Flannigan.”
“At the Flannigan headquarters?”
Billy nodded.
“Were there other people like Wayne?” Joanna asked. “Other Flannigan clients who got used for recon purposes and then went away once they outlived their usefulness?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
Joanna stood abruptly and began to gather her papers.
“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?” Billy asked. It was a whine more than a question.
“Help you what?”
“Prove that I didn’t do it. That I wasn’t responsible for killing that woman. Tommy’s the one who did it. All I did was—”
“Mr. Carmichael, you talked to us this afternoon of your own free will. We’ll be turning a videotaped copy of everything you said here over to the prosecutors in question. What they eventually decide to do with it is entirely up to them.”
“But I thought we had a deal.”
“That wouldn’t be the first mistake you ever made,” Joanna told Billy. “And I doubt it’ll be your last.”
“But I didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t. I can prove it.”
“And my people are going to be working day and night to prove that you did,” Joanna returned smoothly. “So if somebody happens to be generous enough to give you the opportunity to turn state’s evidence, I’d suggest you do it in a heartbeat.”
“You didn’t read me my rights.”
“Deb Howell read you your rights on this yesterday, didn’t she?”
“Well, yes, she did,” he admitted, “but—”
“But nothing. You agreed to talk to her again today, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“There you are,” Joanna said. “Once Mirandized, always Mirandized. Have a nice day.”
CHAPTER 20
BY THE TIME THEY GOT THEIR WEAPONS AND WERE OUTSIDE AGAIN, Becky Ramsey was in a fit of temper that had nothing to do with the 104-degree temperature scorching the parking lot pavement.
“What do we do next?” Deb Howell asked.
“We don’t stand around here talking,” Joanna told her. “Not in this heat.”
In the end they settled on stopping at one of Becky Ramsey’s favorite hangouts, the Crossroads on South Fourth. There, in the air-conditioned cool of a Mexican-food dive, they settled in over tacos and iced tea to strategize.
“So if Wanda was murdered in Tucson and dumped in Bisbee,” Becky said, “we should probably bring my homicide guys in on it. By the time they finish grilling Billy Carmichael, we’ll be able to take down Tommy Bidahl.”
Joanna was relieved to be able to hand off the Wanda Mappin murder investigation to someone else. “Sounds good,” Joanna said. “Have whoever’s put in charge of the investigation contact Detective Howell here. She can give them whatever we have.”
“But bringing in Bidahl isn’t going to be the end of it,” Becky declared hotly. “Flannigan Foundation is supposed to be in the business of caring for at-risk people. Instead they’re letting their clients wander around unsupervised and leaving them in situations where they’re even more vulnerable.”
“With two dead that we know about already,” Joanna put in.
Becky nodded. “The organization may have been started with the very best of intentions,” she said, “but those have long since gone by the board. Now Flannigan is being run by a bunch of profiteering creeps who have apparently hired caregivers who are literally getting away with murder.”
“Too many patients and not enough oversight,” Deb Howell said.
“Exactly,” Becky agreed. “But that stops here. I’m going to see to it that someone takes a long hard look at all those halfway houses of theirs and finds out what’s really going on inside them.”
Joanna thought about her encou
nter with the less than helpful Donald Dietrich. Yes, she thought. There’s a man who deserves a long hard look.
Her phone rang then. Frank was on the line telling her that the autopsy had been completed and that Dan Sloan’s funeral had now been confirmed for Saturday morning. She passed along everything Sheriff Forsythe had said about helping out with staffing issues as well as having access to a bagpipe brigade. When she finished the call, Deb was reading a copy of a newspaper article which she passed over to Joanna.
“What’s this?” she asked. “Read it,” Deb told her.
On a cold night in March, Lauren Dayson’s dog, Mojo, alerted her to the presence of an intruder in her bedroom. Terrified by a former boyfriend’s threats of violence, Ms. Dayson was prepared. She pulled a fully loaded weapon out from under her pillow and fired away, shooting the intruder and killing him on the spot.
There was only one problem with this whole scenario—the dead man wasn’t Ms. Dyson’s ex-boyfriend, the man who had actually threatened her with bodily harm. To this day, the intruder she shot dead in her bedroom doorway remains unidentified.
Tucson PD homicide investigators have spent countless hours trying to identify the shooting victim, who was finally buried in an unmarked plot at Evergreen Cemetery in mid-April—a grave Ms. Dayson visits once a week, bringing flowers.
“That’s the part that eats away at me,” she said in a telephone interview. “That I don’t know who he was. I thought I was in danger at the time. Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. Did I shoot some poor guy because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time? I wish I could tell his family how sorry I am. I wish I could explain to them that when you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, you don’t ever get over it. And when someone wanders uninvited into your bedroom in the middle of the night, you may do something you’ll live to regret.”