Unfinished Business

by J. A. Jance

  “My stepbrother,” Josiah corrected, “not my brother.”

  “So you do remember the party?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “What were you doing in the Seattle area that summer?”

  For the first time, a hint of anger surfaced through Josiah’s blue-inked features. “My mother’s husband thought spending some time with that goody-goody asshole son of his would get me to shape up.” Then, glancing around the interview room and holding up his cuffed hands, he grinned again. “I guess it didn’t quite work out that way.”

  “Your stepbrother would be Andrew Little.”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you strangle Emily Tarrant to death?” Chloe asked.

  That did catch Josiah off guard, and he shot her a piercing look. “What makes you think I did?”

  “Your DNA was found on her clothing.”

  “So? I was down on the beach smoking some grass when she came looking for a hit.”

  “Then you do remember the party?”

  “I suppose, but that’s all that happened. We were sitting there on a dead log smoking a joint when her boyfriend showed up and raised holy hell.”

  “That would be Mateo Vega, a friend of Andrew’s?”

  “I guess.”

  “Maybe you and Emily were doing more than just smoking,” Chloe suggested.

  Another shrug. “Maybe,” he agreed.

  “And after Emily and her boyfriend left the party, did she come back and ask you for a ride home?”

  “Maybe,” he said again. He was playing coy, but Chloe knew she was homing in on him.

  “What happened then? Did you ask her for sex in exchange for the ride and she turned you down?”

  Suddenly Josiah’s anger exploded. “She didn’t just turn me down. She started screaming her head off. Grabbing her by the throat was the only way I could shut her up. Otherwise everybody still at the party would have heard her.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Once she finally quieted down, I threw her body in a blackberry patch.”

  “Once she was dead, you mean,” Chloe said. “Thank you so much, Mr. Young. I believe that’s all I need.”

  “Did you know Emily’s boyfriend ended up in here, too?” Josiah asked. Now he was actually smiling.

  “Really?” Chloe asked. It was her turn to play coy.

  “I never had any dealings with him,” Josiah said. “There was no need, but I always thought it was funny as hell that he got sent up for Emily’s murder and I didn’t.”

  “Mr. Vega served sixteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He doesn’t think it’s funny, Mr. Young, and neither do I,” Chloe replied. “But again, thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” he sneered.

  “You’d be surprised,” Chloe said.

  With that she turned off her phone, stuffed it into her pocket, and picked up her briefcase. At the door she gave it a loud tap. “We’re done here,” she announced to the guard waiting outside. “I’m ready to go.”

  |CHAPTER 64|

  COTTONWOOD, ARIZONA

  On Saturday afternoon, a week after the initial job interview, Mateo was working his first-ever solo shift. Stu had said he should call if anything turned up that he couldn’t handle, but so far that hadn’t happened. He was so engrossed in making sure he followed all the procedures exactly that when his phone rang in his pocket, the sound startled him.

  When he pulled it out and saw the 425 area code, he assumed it was most likely his parole officer calling from a home number rather than his office. On Monday, Mateo had called to check in and had been told that if he was now working out of state, his employer would need to send a written verification so that suitable parole supervision could be set up in that location. Mateo had asked B. to send the notice, but with everything that had been going on during the week, he doubted that had happened.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Vega?”

  He recognized Chloe Bannerman’s voice at once. “Yes,” he said. “It’s me.”

  “I wanted to let you know that I interviewed Josiah Young yesterday afternoon. While we were talking, he admitted on tape to having strangled Emily Tarrant.”

  Mateo’s heart seemed to stop beating. Was it possible that his almost twenty-year nightmare was coming to an end?

  “He did?” Mateo managed at last. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. Based on the paperwork I submitted, including your signed retainer agreement, JFA’s executive committee has voted unanimously in favor of taking on your case. That means we’re totally behind you, Mr. Vega, and we’ll be going to war with the King County prosecutor’s office on this as early as Monday morning. I wanted to give you a heads-up. In case any media people try tracking you down, please refer all of them to me.”

  Mateo finally found a way to breathe again. “Thank you,” he choked. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Chloe said. “It’s not a done deal yet by any means, but we’ve taken the first steps.”

  “I don’t know how to express my gratitude.”

  “You don’t have to,” Chloe said. “This isn’t a job for me. It’s my passion.”

  For a few moments after the call ended, Mateo sat there with the phone in his hand, not quite knowing what to do next. But then he did the only thing that made sense. He dialed his mother’s number in Walla Walla and told her. Mateo was the first person outside of Justice for All to hear what Chloe Bannerman had learned from Josiah Young. Olivia Ortega Vega was number two.

  |CHAPTER 65|

  BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

  Mel is an early riser, even on weekends. I’m not. Now that I can sleep in, I do. When I came out to the kitchen that Sunday morning, she was already up, dressed, and had read the Sunday papers, both the Bellingham Review and the Seattle Times.

  “Did the bombshell wake you up?” she asked, handing me a cup of coffee.

  “What bombshell?” I wondered.

  “Chloe Bannerman’s,” she answered, handing me the front section of the Times. The headline said it all:

  GROUP SEEKS TO OVERTURN 2002 HOMICIDE CONVICTION

  Justice for All, a nationally known wrongful-conviction group, has agreed to fight what they call a botched investigation and mishandled evidence that erroneously sent an innocent man to prison for sixteen years for a homicide he did not commit.

  According to JFA spokeswoman and attorney Chloe Bannerman, Mr. Juan Mateo Vega, on the advice of his original public defender, pled guilty to a charge of second-degree murder in 2002 in order to avoid the possibility of a far longer prison sentence had the case gone to trial.

  Mr. Vega served a total of sixteen years for the murder of Emily Anne Tarrant, whose body was found in a blackberry bush near the scene of a beach party outside the community of Edmonds, Washington.

  Mr. Vega and the victim had both attended the party and were observed having an acrimonious quarrel while there. Mr. Vega said that the argument continued as they left for home. Shortly thereafter the victim exited his vehicle and was never seen alive again. When she didn’t return home, Mr. Vega reported her missing the following day.

  Ms. Tarrant’s body was located two days later. The ensuing investigation into her death was led by Detective Henry Norton, then the King County Sheriff’s Office’s lead investigator, who has since retired.

  Ms. Bannerman maintains that tunnel vision on the part of investigators led them to focus completely on Mr. Vega without looking at any other viable suspects. She claims that DNA evidence that might have exonerated her client was mishandled by the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

  “DNA evidence from the Emily Tarrant crime scene was never uploaded to CODIS, the national database that maintains the DNA profiles of criminal offenders, as well as unidentified ones taken from crime scenes. Had the DNA been properly uploaded at the time, it would have led investigators to Josiah Alvin Young, who has recently admitt
ed to strangling Ms. Tarrant.

  “Mr. Young is currently incarcerated in the Monroe Correctional Facility, where he is serving three consecutive life sentences on three separate convictions of forcible rape and murder. Mr. Young is also the prime suspect in a fourth homicide case currently pending in Idaho.

  “Since Mr. Young was also in attendance at that 2001 beach party, a more thorough investigation from King County investigators might have led to his arrest, thus preventing the subsequent homicides of at least four other innocent young women.”

  Ms. Bannerman went on to say that the state’s failure to properly upload the DNA profiles to CODIS in a timely fashion most likely contributed to those other deaths.

  Mr. Vega was released on parole in May 2017, having served sixteen years in prison, and he remains on parole today. Ms. Bannerman says she fully expects Justice for All to file a wrongful-conviction suit against the state of Washington, seeking financial restitution for all the years Mr. Vega spent in prison.

  “I remember Hank Norton from our days with SHIT,” Mel observed when I looked up after finishing the article. “I thought he was a worm the first time I met him, and clearly I wasn’t wrong. Chloe Bannerman sounds like a pretty awesome sort.”

  “She is,” I agreed. “She most certainly is.”

  With that I took my coffee and headed for the family room.

  “Where are you going?” Mel asked. “Don’t you want some breakfast?”

  “Eventually yes,” I said. “But first I’m going to fire up my computer and send that article to Ali Reynolds so she can pass it along to Mateo.”

  “I doubt she’ll need to,” Mel replied. “Unless I miss my guess, Chloe Bannerman will have sent the news to her client long before she contacted the Seattle Times.”

  It turns out Mel was right on that score. Mateo already knew, and so did Ali Reynolds. I was the one who was late to the party.

  |CHAPTER 66|

  MONROE, WASHINGTON

  On Sunday mornings the mess hall at the Monroe Correctional Facility was as quiet as it ever got—which is to say not very. But on this particular morning, there was an unidentifiable buzz in the air that was intense enough to penetrate through Pop Johnson’s single-minded concentration as he sat at a table reading Brad Thor’s most recent thriller.

  In his previous life, Henry Mansfield Johnson hadn’t been into reading. Mateo Vega had changed all that. For the five years they were cellmates, Mateo had spent every waking moment reading the thick technical volumes he dragged in from the prison library. Then one day he had tossed a worn paperback onto Pop’s cot—Radigan by Louis L’Amour. Within the matter of a few chapters, Pop was hooked. The story took him to places he’d never been and now would never go. Almost magically, they transported him beyond the walls of his cell, and suddenly Pop Johnson became something he’d never expected to be—a reader.

  Because Mateo worked in the prison library, he was able to lay hands on new books long before anyone else could. By the time Mateo was paroled, Pop, too, was working in Mrs. Ancell’s library, where he found that the fastest way to the woman’s heart was to be a devoted reader. In Mateo’s absence Pop still had first dibs on new books. He much preferred hardbacks to paperbacks, but not for reasons Mrs. Ancell would have found endearing. Over time Pop became something of a legend because he always had a book with him wherever he went—and that included the mess hall.

  One of the reasons Mateo and Pop had gotten along as cellmates was that neither of them made waves. They steered clear of troublemakers, but they weren’t to be trifled with either. If someone tried to push one of them around, they had each other’s back.

  There was a definite hierarchy in the seating arrangements in the mess hall, and Pop always gravitated to the least popular table in the room—the one farthest from the serving line. He had finished the powdered-egg slop that passed for breakfast and had his head buried in the book when the tension in the room finally broke through his concentration.

  “What’s going on?” he asked the guy next to him.

  “Didn’t you hear? It was all over TV news this morning. Some hotshot woman lawyer is coming after Tattoo Man—says he’s the one who killed the girl your old roomie, Mateo, got sent up for.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  Pop looked around the large, noisy room. Tattoo Man always sat at the very best table, the one closest to the end of the serving line. The people seated there could just as well have been put out with a rubber stamp—a blue rubber stamp at that. They were all inked from head to toe, but it was clear from Josiah Young’s superior attitude that he considered himself to be the leader of that particular pack.

  The fury Pop Johnson felt in that moment left him shaken. Emily Tarrant’s real killer had been here in the same prison with Mateo for years without anyone knowing the truth? A young man—a good man—had been robbed of a big chunk of his life due to a crime committed by that tattoo-covered pile of crap? Pop remembered what Mateo had said before he left—that he was going to find a job, yes, but that his primary goal was to find Emily’s real killer. And all the while the murderer in question had been right here in the same prison.

  Pop didn’t have to think about what he was going to do next. It wasn’t as though his actions were premeditated. He tucked Brad Thor’s book under his arm, picked up his tray, and headed for the dishwashing stand and the line of garbage cans that just happened to be on the far side of Tattoo Man’s reserved table.

  Once Mateo was released and Pop had been left to his own devices, he’d set about fashioning what he expected to be a defensive weapon, using a discarded toothbrush as the base. One end had been sharpened to form a stiff, three-inch-long plastic needle. The other end had been cross-filed to create a rough surface. And that shank was the reason Pop Johnson only read hardback books these days, preferably brand-new hardbacks.

  A queer old guy dragging a steady stream of books around didn’t appear to be much of a threat. Initially guards had thumbed through the pages to make sure Pop wasn’t using the books to transport some kind of contraband. Eventually they got tired of looking and just left him alone.

  The problem was, all the guards ever checked were the pages themselves. They never delved into the spines, and new-book spines were still stiff enough that Pop could shove the shank inside, concealing it completely. The rough, cross-filed surface acted as a piece of hard plastic Velcro, hanging up on the bound pages under the cover. Pop could pull the weapon out easily enough, but it never fell out of its own accord.

  He walked slowly and carefully as befitting his age. He’d read enough books that he knew exactly where his weapon would do the most damage—at the top of Tattoo Man’s neck, just at the base of his skull. A single upward thrust into Josiah Young’s medulla would take him out. Lacking the brain function necessary to control breathing, Tattoo Man would be dead in a matter of seconds, and justice would finally be served right there in the mess hall.

  Had any evidence at all against Josiah Young been presented in a court of law? No. Had he been found guilty by a jury of his peers? No, but in this case Pop Johnson was prepared to function as judge, jury, and executioner all at once, with no plea deals available.

  Pop was sure his wouldn’t be the only weapon at the scene, but that hardly deterred him. He had served more than forty years of his two life sentences. This was his forever get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Pausing after emptying his tray into the trash, he kept his back turned to the room long enough to extract his shank from the book binding. When he turned around, he was less than five quick steps from Tattoo Man’s back. He covered the ground quickly, before anyone even noticed he was moving in that direction. And as soon as the shank plunged deep into the unprotected flesh at the base of Josiah Young’s skull, Pop knew he’d hit his target.

  For a moment the room seemed to freeze in place, and then all hell broke loose. Josiah’s seatmates and henchmen rose up in fury as their dead leader fell face-first into his e
mpty serving tray. They came after Pop, but he didn’t bother trying to run, because he knew that not escaping was his best hope for escape.

  Someone else’s shank cut into him, slicing open his abdomen. It hurt like hell, but all Pop could do was laugh. The jackass might be killing him, but he was giving him a way out, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  Alarms sounded as guards poured into the room, using batons and tasers to break up the melee. Eventually one of them knelt over Pop. “Hang on, old-timer,” he said. “Help is coming.”

  “Is he dead?” Pop whispered back.

  “Yes,” the guard replied. “I think so.”

  “Good,” Pop said. “I just finished me some unfinished business.”

  |CHAPTER 67|

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  After an amazingly tough week, B. and Ali had spent the weekend resting and regrouping. Monday found them both back at work. Sister Anselm assured them that Cami’s hands had recovered enough that they’d been able to remove the bandages. By the end of the week, she expected that their temporarily wheelchair-bound employee could be back on the job on a limited basis, although she would still need some help getting around, both at home and at work.

  With Cami’s expected return in mind, B. set about rearranging his scrubbed appointments from the previous week. As for Ali? With tax returns due today, she was glad she and the accountant had ironed out all the details weeks earlier. Thankfully, there would be no last-minute filings today. As she started on the accumulated mess on her desk, an anxious Shirley appeared in her doorway.

  “An investigator from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, a Detective William Margate, is out at the reception desk,” Shirley said. “He wants to talk to Mateo. I asked him what it’s about. He said it’s confidential. What should I do?”

  “Bring him here to my office,” Ali said. “Is Mateo in the lab?”