Unfinished Business

by J. A. Jance

  “We’ll go into details in a moment,” Ali said. “Armed with what he’d learned, Mr. Beaumont then reached out to a woman named Chloe Bannerman, JFA’s point person in the state of Washington. Ms. Bannerman would very much like to speak to you, and I told her I’d have you give her a call this morning.”

  Unsure of what was being said or where this was going, Mateo shifted in his seat. “Who is this woman?” he asked. “And why exactly does she want to speak to me?”

  “As I said, JFA specializes in overturning wrongful convictions,” Ali said. “She’d like very much to discuss your case.”

  Mateo’s heart thumped. For a moment he could think of nothing to say. “Someone wants to discuss my case?” he stammered stupidly.

  “Would you like me to give her a call?” Ali offered. “I’d be happy to put her on speaker.”

  Mateo’s head was spinning. “Sure,” he said at last. “See if you can reach her.”

  Moments later Chloe Bannerman’s cheerful voice filled the room. “Good morning, Mr. Vega,” she said. “I’m happy to meet you.”

  “Me, too,” Mateo mumbled.

  “I assume Ms. Reynolds has told you that after some back-and-forth discussion with the executive committee Justice for All may be interested in looking into your case.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mateo said. “She told me that.”

  “So let me ask you a question, Mr. Vega. Does the name Josiah Young ring any bells?”

  Mateo had to think about that before he answered. “Sure,” he said finally. “He’s a lifer in the joint. I didn’t know him personally, but I remember him. He’s the asshole everybody inside calls Tattoo Man. He has ink all over his body. Why?”

  “I believe Mr. Young’s stepbrother, one Andrew Little, was a friend of yours.”

  Mateo’s head went back to those long-ago times. He hadn’t thought about Andy in years. The party on the beach was the last time he’d seen or spoken to his onetime best friend.

  “Right,” he said. “Andy and I were friends back then, but I had no idea he and Josiah are related.”

  “Would it surprise you if I told you that Mr. Young was a guest at the same beach party you and Emily attended on the night she disappeared?”

  “He was there?” Mateo croaked, tumbling at last to the implications.

  “He was,” Chloe Bannerman confirmed. “You might have seen him at the party, but without the inked face. That came later.”

  “How can you be sure?” Mateo asked.

  “Because Mr. Young’s DNA was found on the clothing Emily was wearing at the time she was murdered. The crime lab obtained two separate profiles, but for some reason no DNA samples obtained from that crime scene—his or yours—were ever entered into CODIS. If Mr. Young’s had been, and if he’d been connected to Emily’s homicide in a timely manner, four other young women might well be alive today and you most likely would never have gone to prison.”

  Mateo sat frozen in stunned silence, barely able to breathe.

  “Are you there, Mr. Vega?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” he managed.

  “Mr. Young’s presence at the Tarrant crime scene and his subsequent criminal behavior cast grave doubts on the validity of your conviction, so I’m wondering if you would be interested in having JFA look into this matter for you.”

  “How much would it cost?”

  “Nothing at all up front,” Chloe assured him. “If JFA were to end up winning a wrongful-imprisonment judgment against the state of Washington, we would of course receive a portion of any resulting settlement. The details of that arrangement would be laid out in the retainer paperwork required in order for us to represent you—if you’re interested, that is.”

  “I’m interested,” Mateo croaked.

  “Very well,” Chloe said. “I can overnight the documents or I could e-mail a set via DocuSign. Which do you prefer?”

  “Why don’t you e-mail the DocuSign material to him here at the office?” Ali suggested. “That will speed up the process, if that’s okay with you, Mateo.”

  “It’s okay,” Mateo answered, speaking barely above a hoarse whisper. “Thank you.”

  With that he fled—first B.’s office, then the building, and finally the office park itself. He managed to hold himself in check long enough to make it back to the privacy of his RV. There he fell onto the bed and buried his face in the pillow. Only then did he finally let a torrent of tears spill out—tears of gratitude. After all those years of his trying to tell people he hadn’t murdered Emily, someone somewhere finally believed him.

  |CHAPTER 61|

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  As expected, Mel was more than happy to have me back home that night. The next afternoon I was once again prowling Irish wolfhound rescue sites on the Internet when Chloe Bannerman called.

  “Mateo Vega just put JFA on retainer,” she said. “He was completely gobsmacked by the idea that Josiah Young might be responsible for Emily Tarrant’s murder. He remembered him from his time in prison—mostly because of his tattoos, but the two of them had no direct interactions. Mateo never connected the guy called Tattoo Man with someone who attended that long-ago beach party. For one thing, as a teen, I doubt that Josiah Young’s face was covered with all that ink.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed, “so what’s the next step?”

  “JFA will be doing a full-scale investigation into the case—not only about the state’s failure of oversight in regard to uploading the DNA but also into the investigation itself.”

  So much for Hank Norton, I thought.

  “With Young already in prison,” Chloe continued, “there’s no reason to be hush-hush about it. I’ll probably launch a media campaign to see if we can suss out anyone who might be able to offer additional information.”

  “Will you be mentioning me by name?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “That would be my first choice,” I told her.

  “I don’t blame you,” Chloe agreed with a laugh. “This case is going to rattle a bunch of law-enforcement cages. I wouldn’t want to do anything that might make things difficult for Bellingham’s chief of police.”

  So Chloe Bannerman knew about Mel and me? Obviously not much got past her.

  “How long before the media bomb goes off?” I asked.

  “If I have anything to do with it, that will happen sooner rather than later,” she replied.

  That made me smile. I like it when karma finally gets around to biting bad people in the butt, and in my book Hank Norton definitely qualified as bad people.

  |CHAPTER 62|

  At two on Friday afternoon, the auditorium at Sedona High School was packed to the gills. The principal had actually dismissed school an hour early that day in order to avoid having a traffic jam in the parking lot. Reverend Dennis Duncan, pastor of Sedona’s Faith Lutheran Church, would be officiating. Although Bob and Edie had been lifelong members of the congregation, they’d attended church services irregularly during their working years and faithfully in retirement.

  The high school band room, located near the auditorium, was designated as the pre-service gathering place for family members. Smithson’s had made arrangements for a limo to pick Edie and Betsy up from Sedona Shadows and return them there afterward. Everyone else was expected to make their own travel arrangements.

  When B. and Ali showed up at one thirty, Chris, Athena, and the kids were already in attendance. Baby Logan’s first public appearance would be in honor of his great-grandfather’s passing. Colin and Colleen, decked out in their Sunday best, were amazingly subdued. As soon as the two greats (as Edie and Betsy were routinely called) arrived, the twins gravitated in their direction and then stuck to the two women like glue. Observing that from the sidelines, Ali was pleased. All four of them were grieving, and it occurred to Ali that sharing grief was somehow less devastating than facing it alone.

  At ten minutes to two, Althea Smithson, dressed in suitably somber attire, marshaled the famil
y members into a line and escorted them into the auditorium through a side entrance. Once inside they were directed to sit in the front row. As they filed into their places, Ali noticed that the auditorium was full, with every seat taken. A standing-room-only crowd lined the rear of the auditorium. Ali hoped no one would alert the fire department.

  Once she was seated, Ali’s eyes filled with tears when she saw the myriad flower arrangements covering the stage. In the middle of that collection of flowers stood a small table draped with a black cloth. The tabletop held only two items, the first a poster-size photo of Bob Larson dressed in a tux for some shipboard occasion on one of the cruises he and Edie had taken together. In accordance with Bob’s wishes, the second item was a highly polished pine box. Ali was glad Edie had resisted any suggestions that she consider switching over to an urn.

  This was a service rather than a show, so the lights in the auditorium remained up throughout. Someone seated at a keyboard onstage was playing a grim classical piece Ali didn’t recognize. She doubted that that particular bit of introductory music would have been her father’s first choice.

  When Reverend Duncan stepped up to the lectern, a hushed silence fell over the room. “The opening hymn, ‘Morning Has Broken,’ was always one of Bob Larson’s favorites,” he announced. “You’ll find the words to three verses printed in the program. You may remain seated.”

  The singing started sporadically enough, but eventually the voices joined in a full-throated chorus. Ali didn’t have to read the words from the program, because she knew them by heart. She’d heard her father singing them often enough, uttering them almost under his breath as he wielded spatulas over the hot breakfast grill at the Sugarloaf Café. Ali did her best to sing along: “Morning has broken like the first morning…”

  But a few lines in, her singing voice faltered. As her own vocal cords stopped functioning, she glanced in her mother’s direction, only to see that Edie, too, had fallen silent. The twins kept right on singing.

  Ali sat through the invocation and Scripture reading, hearing very little of it. She was lost in her own world, battling a surprisingly serious case of nerves. At last Reverend Duncan nodded in her direction. “Bob’s daughter, Ali Reynolds, will now share a few words.”

  With that, Ali rose from her seat and walked up the stairs and onto the stage. Once behind the lectern, she took in the room, trying to wrap her mind around the number of people in attendance. Her father hadn’t been famous. He wasn’t a local politician or a fallen law-enforcement officer. He might have been an ordinary man, but the crowd was here nonetheless. She suspected that many of those gathered to honor Bob Larson were people who’d benefited from his kindness over the years and had sent some of those countless messages of appreciation in the last few days.

  In the second row, just behind the family, Ali caught sight of several familiar faces, including Stu Ramey’s. That wasn’t surprising. Her father had lent his beloved Bronco to Stu when he’d needed access to a standard-transmission vehicle while learning to drive. At the very end of that row, Cami sat with her cast-clad leg sticking out into the aisle. Across from her, also in the second row, Sister Anselm rode herd on Cami’s wheelchair.

  As Ali paused momentarily, gathering herself, Sister Anselm caught her eye and sent her an encouraging smile. That small gesture was enough to spur Ali forward. Taking a deep breath, she began.

  “Looking around the room,” she said, “I see people who come from all the different facets of my father’s life. Bob Larson was a large man who made an impact on a number of people, many of whom are here today. Some showed up to honor my dad’s cooking, because Bob Larson made some of the best corned-beef hash ever served in Sedona.”

  That remark was greeted with a few chuckles and a bit of nervous laughter.

  “Others are here,” Ali continued, “because my father gathered firewood and clothing and food for them in times of need. They know that my father was an honorable man whose word was his bond. If Bob Larson made a promise, he kept it. That was simply the way he was.”

  A number of people in the standing-room-only section applauded at that and let out a few loud whoops. Yes, those homeless vets were there to be seen and heard.

  “I’m here,” Ali resumed, “because Bob Larson was a good and loyal husband and partner to my mother for sixty-five-plus years. I’m here because he was an excellent father who taught me the honor to be found in hard work and in doing whatever job you choose to the best of your ability.

  “Bob Larson wasn’t a guy who measured his success by the kind of car he drove—I’m sure many of you remember him tooling around in that old Bronco of his, which, unlike the grandfather clock in that old poem, has somehow managed to outlive him—or the house in which he lived. My parents spent most of their married life together in a humble two-bedroom house out behind the Sugarloaf Café. No, my father’s success is reflected in the number of lifelong friendships he made along the way and in the people he reached out a hand to help.

  “So yes, I’m sorry he’s gone, but he lived a good and honorable life. And I’m grateful we had him for as long as we did.”

  When Ali returned to her spot in the pew, she saw Colleen, snuggled at her great-grandmother’s side, Edie weeping quietly into the child’s carefully braided hair. It was the first time since that day on Milton Albright’s front porch that Ali had seen her mother shed tears.

  As she sat down, B. leaned over to her and whispered, “Good job.”

  She nodded gratefully. “Thank you,” she mouthed back.

  The closing hymn was another one of Bob’s favorites, “In the Garden.” Following that and just before the benediction, Reverend Duncan suggested that after the service people go to the school cafeteria, where refreshments would be provided by the Ladies’ Auxiliary of Sedona Faith Lutheran.

  For two cents Ali would have gone straight home, but that wasn’t an option. She was Bob Larson’s daughter, and that afternoon her place was at her mother’s side in Sedona High School’s cafeteria, visiting with her father’s mourners.

  |CHAPTER 63|

  MONROE, WASHINGTON

  At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, Chloe Bannerman sat in a locked interview room in the Monroe Correctional Facility awaiting the arrival of Josiah Young. Dressed in a gray pinstripe suit with a spotlessly white high-necked blouse, she looked the part of what she had once been—a no-nonsense high school English teacher who had always worn her long hair in a thick coil at the base of her neck. Once black, her hair was now gunmetal gray, and because it was much thinner now, the coil wasn’t nearly as large as it used to be.

  Chloe was now seventy-three years old. She had come of age at a time when college-bound girls were encouraged to become either teachers or nurses, which was exactly what her trial-lawyer father had expected her to do. She’d complied initially, mostly because she’d always tried to be a dutiful daughter and because her father was paying her way through college, but after two years of teaching she’d called it quits, gone back to school on her own, and become the lawyer she’d always wanted to be. Her father had never forgiven her for that—and vice versa.

  She sat upright with her hands folded calmly on the metal-topped table in front of her. She wasn’t worried about what she would say because she fully expected to let Josiah Young do most of the talking.

  When a guard escorted a heavily shackled Tattoo Man into the room, Chloe knew enough about him that she wasn’t taken aback by either his appearance or the smug expression on his face. He would have swaggered as he entered, but unfortunately the shackles on his legs made swaggering pretty much a nonstarter. Every visible inch of Josiah’s body was covered with a dense layer of tattoos. Even the flesh of his ears and the skin of his shaved skull were inked to the max. In the artificial light of the interview room, Josiah looked as though he had simply turned blue from the inside out.

  Chloe waited patiently while the guard seated the prisoner and secured his handcuffs to the rings welded to the middle of the tab
le.

  “Who exactly are you?” he demanded.

  His arrogant tone told Chloe everything she needed to know about who Josiah was—an insecure adult who had never escaped the misery of being an objectionable, know-it-all teenager. Back in her teaching years, she’d been barely four years older than some of the seniors assigned to her classrooms. Despite the proximity in age, she’d still managed to take some of the worst hotshots down a peg or two. Ironically, it was those in particular—the toughest nuts—who after outgrowing their youthful obnoxiousness had actively sought her out years later to thank her for being strict with them back in high school. Josiah Young, however, hadn’t outgrown being a teenage jerk, and he never would.

  “My name’s Chloe Bannerman,” she answered. “I represent an organization called Justice for All. I’m here to discuss the death of a young woman named Emily Anne Tarrant.”

  Josiah didn’t so much as blink when Chloe mentioned the victim’s name. Instead he lounged back in the chair as far as the handcuffs allowed and shrugged his shoulders. “Be my guest,” he said. Then, with a grin, he added, “Oh, wait, you came all the way out here to see me, so I guess you already are my guest.”

  Chloe knew that anything said in the interview room would be duly recorded on the prison’s surveillance system, but she wanted an audio copy of her own. She pulled out her cell phone and set it on the table next to her. “I hope you don’t mind if I record this conversation.”

  Josiah grinned again. “Not at all. I’m already a three-time loser. How much worse could it be? Feel free to record away.”

  “Very well. This recording is being made at 2:06 p.m. on Friday, April thirteenth, 2018, in the Monroe Correctional Facility, Monroe, Washington. Present in the room are Josiah Alvin Young and Chloe A. Bannerman. Now, tell me, what do you know about Emily Tarrant?”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “That strikes me as strange,” Chloe said, “but allow me to bring you up to speed. Emily Anne Tarrant was murdered in July 2001 after attending a beach party outside Edmonds, Washington. I believe you attended that same party as a guest of your brother Andrew.”