Damage Control (29 page)

“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 touch.”

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 Tuc
son 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.”

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 every
one 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 been—”

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.

“Do you have something for us?” Joanna asked.

Casey nodded. “I managed to get only one decent print from the bloody ones we found on the scene last night. I’ve sent that off to the M.E. in Texas.”

“Good work,” Joanna said as her team members nodded in somber agreement.

“But that’s not all,” Casey added. “There’s something more.”

“What?”

“Late last night I finally found one usable partial on the duct tape from Wanda Mappin’s plastic bags,” she said. “I was in the process of enhancing it when all hell broke loose last night. I finished it just now. As soon as I put the print into AFIS, it came back with a hit.”

“Whose is it?” Joanna asked.

“His name’s Carmichael,” Casey said. “Billy Carmichael. He’s currently being held in the Pima County Jail, where he’s doing six months for breaking and entering.”

Any other time having an AFIS hit in an unsolved homicide would have been cause for celebration and high fives all around.

Not today,
Joanna thought.

“Excellent,” she said. “But what’s Carmichael’s connection to Wanda?”

“No way to tell from this,” Casey said. She stood up and distributed a set of papers that contained Billy Carmichael’s rap sheet. “You can see he’s been in and out of trouble for a long time—drug possession charges, petty theft, and possession of stolen goods. Most of the time he’s gotten away with slaps on the wrist. This is his first stint of doing any real jail time.”

“Want me to go have a talk with him?” Jaime offered.

Wanda Mappin’s case had been Jaime’s originally. Ordinarily doing follow-up interviews would have fallen to him automatically, but Joanna thought the intensity with which Jaime asked the question made it sound like he’d just as soon beat the crap out of anyone who got in his way. Joanna was surprised Jaime had shown up for the briefing and doubted if he should be on duty. In his current condition, turning him loose to interrogate a suspect was completely out of the question.

“No,” Joanna told him. “Deb’s on her way to Tucson to take the food to the crime lab. She can stop off at the Pima County Jail and handle the preliminary interview with Carmichael. You’ve got plenty to do around here.”

“What?” Jaime demanded. “We already know Larry Wolfe is
dead. Surely you don’t expect me to sit around doing stupid paperwork that nobody’s going to worry about—”

“I said Deb will handle it,” Joanna said firmly.

Jaime was pissed but he stifled his anger. “Whatever you say,” he muttered.

“Anything else?” Joanna asked.

Frank raised his hand. “I’ve had a call from Samantha Edwards. She expects to be released from the county hospital later on this morning after her doctor does rounds. She says she’s okay. Once she gets out, she’ll need transportation back to her vehicle so she can drive up to Tucson. I gave her an overview of what happened last night and let her know that Sandra is in TMC.”

“She knows Larry is dead?” Joanna asked.

Frank nodded. “I told her. She said she’d tell Sandra about it. Samantha is also calling the mortuary to put the Beasleys’ memorial service on hold until Sandra gets back on her feet.”

“Where’s Samantha’s car?” Joanna asked.

“Where she left it yesterday morning,” Frank said. “Still parked outside her parents’ house up Tombstone Canyon.”

“Can you take care of having someone pick her up?” Joanna asked.

Frank nodded. “Will do.”

A few minutes later, with the rest of the agenda items cleared, everyone stood to go, but Joanna beat Jaime to the door and kept him from leaving.

“What?” he asked sarcastically. “Shouldn’t I be getting started on all that life-and-death paperwork?”

“How are you doing, Jaime?” Joanna asked. “How are you doing really?”

Grimacing, he didn’t meet her gaze. “Not so hot, I guess,” he admitted ruefully.

“You saw Sunny?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I saw her, and it hurt like hell. She was glad to know the guy who most likely did it was dead, but I don’t see why I had to be the one…”

“It’s going to hurt like hell for a very long time,” Joanna interrupted. “It’s going to hurt you and it’s going to hurt Sunny, but I want you to handle that end of it for us, Jaime. I want you to be the official liaison between our department and Deputy Sloan’s family.”

“But—”

“This isn’t optional,” Joanna said. “It’s an order. I’m guessing you were closer to Danny than anyone else in the department. That means you’re also closer to Sunny. I need you to help us coordinate whatever funeral arrangements she needs to make, so we can help out by doing whatever she wants us to do. Afterward, I want you to stay in touch with her. If she needs help filling out claim forms or filing for Social Security or whatever, I want you in on it. Danny was one of our own. That means Sunny is, too. Understood?”

“Yes,” Jaime said. “I see what you mean.” He reached for the door handle, but Joanna stopped him.

“How’s Luis?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess,” Jaime said with a shrug. “He’s at the house with Delcia and Pepe.”

“Has he heard from his mom?”

“Not a word.”

“Keep me posted on that, too,” Joanna said.

Jaime nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Before the day is out, you’re to go see Father Rowan; not for Sunny—for you.”

He nodded again. “All right, boss,” he said softly. “I will.”

This time when he reached for the door handle, Joanna let him go. She returned to her office and tried to get a start returning phone calls—not only the ones that had come in earlier but also the additional stack that had come in while she was off in the break room and conducting the briefing. The most interesting call was from Detective Rebecca Ramsey of Tucson PD. Joanna returned that one first.

“So sorry to hear about your deputy,” Becky said, once Joanna had identified herself. Dan Sloan’s death was right at the top of that day’s news cycle, and Joanna knew some variation of that theme would be the beginning of every telephone conversation for days to come.

“Thank you,” Joanna said. “It’s pretty tough times around here at the moment. Do you have anything for me?”

“I went to pay a call on your friend Donald Dietrich at Flannigan Foundation,” Becky said with a laugh. “You must have made quite an impression on the man. He wasn’t thrilled to see me to begin with, and when I mentioned your name, my chilly reception turned downright frigid.”

“Not surprised,” Joanna said, because she wasn’t.

“So I told him I’d been assigned to follow up on a missing person who had disappeared from one of his facilities. When I told him I needed Wayne Leroy Hamm’s dental records to put into our missing persons database, he went into a whole song and dance about how he couldn’t possibly give them to me due to client confidentiality concerns. When I threatened to go public with his deliberately stalling the search for one of his missing
clients, he folded. He says he’ll make the dental records available as soon as he can locate them.”

Folded,
Joanna thought, wondering if it was possible Detective Ramsey played poker, as did Joanna. An all-girl, all law-enforcement poker game might be fun sometime, but she let that idea pass.

“As soon as he can locate them?” Joanna asked. “I suppose that means sometime in the far distant future.”

“No,” Becky said. “I gave him twenty-four hours to produce them or I go to the media. Flannigan has a reputation to protect in this town. I don’t think Dietrich’ll risk having his money-raising capability damaged.”

Definitely a poker player,
Joanna thought.

“I’ll let you know if anything comes of it,” Becky continued.

Joanna stayed on in the office until almost one, but by then she could no longer hold her head up. “I’m going home for a nap,” she told Kristin on her way out. “If you need me, call.”

Once at the house, she stripped off her clothes and fell into bed. Then she surprised herself by falling into a deep sleep. Hours later, a loud clap of thunder brought her wide awake. If the noise hadn’t awakened her, Lady would have. Joanna’s spooky little Australian shepherd was terrified of thunderstorms. She vaulted onto the bed and then burrowed, shivering, under the covers to cuddle up next to Joanna. For the next few minutes, while the worst of the storm blew over, Joanna lay there comforting the frightened dog as rain pelted down outside. Finally, with the thunder receding, Joanna booted Lady out of the bed and got up herself.

Wrapping her robe around her, she went out to the kitchen, drawn there by the sound of voices and the smell of burned
bread. There she found Butch at the table plugging a ravenous Dennis full of rice cereal while Jenny, spatula in hand, presided over the stove. On the counter next to the stove top was a platter containing several grilled cheese sandwiches, some of them more than slightly charred.

“Butch is teaching me to cook,” Jenny said happily when her mother appeared in the doorway. “I let the pans get a little too hot.”

“They’ll be fine,” Butch assured her. “Cooking takes practice.” He turned to Joanna. “How are things?” When Joanna had come home earlier, she had been too tired to talk. While she had been asleep, Deputy Sloan’s death was out of her head. Now she could think of nothing else.

She walked over to the fridge and went looking for something to drink, settling on the pitcher of iced tea she found there.

“It was a rough day and it’s going to be a rough week,” she said. “After we eat, I should probably get dressed and go back in for a while.”

“No,” Butch said, using the spoon to scrape some escaping food from Dennis’s chin as the baby greeted his mother with a toothless grin. “It’s been raining for the better part of an hour and the washes are already running. You’ll have to wait until the water goes down again.”

Running several simultaneous murder investigations in the middle of the monsoon season was complicated.

“Here, Mom,” Jenny said. “Try this.” She dropped one of the sandwiches, pretty-side-up, on a plate and set it in front of her mother. “I hope it’s okay,” she added nervously.

It was more than okay. For one thing, the grilled cheeses were
made to Butch’s specifications. That meant there was enough chopped jalapeño to more than offset the taste of charred toast. And since Joanna had eaten nothing since that taste of tamale much earlier in the break room, she quickly scarfed down one whole sandwich and willingly accepted another half.

Jenny put a sandwich-laden plate in front of Butch, then sat down with one of her own. “Are you going to tell her?” Jenny asked.

“Tell me what?” Joanna wanted to know.

“About Mrs. Sunderson,” Jenny said.

Butch shot his stepdaughter a warning look.

“What about her?” Joanna asked.

“I talked to my editor this morning,” Butch replied. “She called as soon as they opened up on the East Coast. She told me that in order to set up any kind of tour appearances, she had to have an answer today. So I talked to Marianne. She brought Mrs. Sunderson down here for an interview just before noon. I hired her on the spot.”