by J. A. Jance
Joanna handed him the paper. “Warren Gibson’s real name is Jack Brampton,” she said. “He’s an ex—pharmaceutical salesman who’s done time for DWI and involuntary manslaughter. Casey’s made copies of the rap sheet so we’ll have them available for the task force meeting at one. I want everybody there. I also want copies available of everything we have so far, including a written report of what we’ve just learned from Serenity Granger. By the way, Beaumont will be here for the meeting.”
Both men looked at Joanna. “Since when?” Jaime asked.
“Since last night when I invited him,” Joanna said.
Jaime shook his head. “Great,” he muttered. “Guess I’d better get started typing my report, then.”
Jaime stalked from the room. Joanna glanced at Frank to see if he shared Jaime’s opinion about including Beaumont in the task force. If the chief deputy disapproved, it didn’t show. He walked over to Joanna’s desk and retrieved a pile of papers he’d brought along with him into her office.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Copies of everything we had up to this morning. Even with Beaumont included, there’ll be enough to go around. I thought you might want to go over them yourself before the meeting.”
“Thanks, Frank. You’re good at keeping me on track. I really appreciate it.”
“And then there’s this.” He removed a fat manila envelope from the bottom of the stack and passed it over as well.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A present,” he said. “It’s the information you asked me to track down on Anne Rowland Corley,” Frank told her. “There’s quite a bit of it—probably too much to read between now and one o’clock, but you might want to skim through some of it. If what I’m picking up is anything close to accurate, whoever sent Special Investigator Beaumont to Bisbee wasn’t doing the poor guy any favors.”
Joanna pulled out the topmost clipping and glanced at it. The article, dated several years earlier, was taken from the Seattle Times. It reported that a special internal investigation conducted by the Seattle Police Department had concluded that a deranged Anne Corley had died three weeks earlier as a result of a single gunshot wound, fired by her husband of one day, Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont. The fatal shooting had occurred at a place called Snoqualmie Falls State Park. Anne Corley’s death had now been officially ruled as self-defense, and Detective Beaumont had been recalled from administrative leave.
Putting the paper down, Joanna stared at her chief deputy. “It sounds to me like cop-assisted suicide,” she said.
Frank Montoya shrugged his shoulders. “Or husband-assisted suicide,” he said. “Take your pick. Now I’d better get going, too. I’m working on the telephone information you asked me to get, but weekends aren’t the best time to do that.”
He went out then, closing the door behind him. Meanwhile, Joanna shuffled through the contents of the envelope. Looking at the dates, she realized that at the time Anne Rowland Corley died, Joanna had been a working wife with a husband, a young child, and a ranch to look after. In addition to her full-time job as office manager for the Davis Insurance Agency in Bisbee, she had been making a two-hundred-mile commute back and forth to Tucson twice a week while she finished up her bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona. No wonder Anne Rowland Corley’s death hadn’t made a noticeable blip on Joanna’s mental radar.
As Frank had suggested, Joanna scanned several more articles from Seattle-area papers. Most of them were from immediately before and after the fatal shooting. One piece was a blatantly snide commentary from a columnist named Maxwell Cole connecting Detective Beaumont with a “mysterious lady in red.” Finally, Joanna came to a much longer, denser article from the Denver Post. This one, running several pages in length, was an in-depth piece that had been part of an investigative series dealing with female serial killers.
A look at the clock told Joanna she was running out of time. Intriguing as the article might be, her first responsibility was to be properly prepared for the upcoming task force meeting. Thoughtfully, Joanna shoved the collection of papers back into the envelope, which she dropped into her briefcase.
From the moment Joanna had met J.P. Beaumont, she had thought of him as a smart-mouthed jerk. Last night, at the Copper Queen, when he had been straight with her and told her about his interview with Marliss Shackleford, she had glimpsed something else about him—that he was probably a good cop, a straight and trustworthy one.
Now, though, she realized there had been something else there as well, a certain indefinable something she had recognized without being able to put her finger on it, a sort of common denominator between the two of them that she couldn’t quite grasp. Now she knew what it was. Beaumont’s wife had died tragically; so had Joanna Brady’s husband. Having survived that kind of event didn’t excuse the man’s smart-mouthed attitude, but it made it a hell of a lot easier to understand.
For the next while Joanna concentrated on reading the material Frank Montoya had brought her. Lost in her work, she jumped when her phone rang and was astonished to see that her clock said it was already twenty minutes to one.
“I’m guessing you won’t be coming home for Sunday dinner, is that right?” Butch asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The time got away from me. I’m due to be in a meeting at one. Save some for me, will you?”
“I already did.”
WITH LARS JENSSEN’S TIMELY INTERVENTION I managed to avoid that first drink. When I finally went to bed around one, I fell right to sleep. The problem is, the dream started almost as soon as I closed my eyes. It’s a dream I’ve had over and over for years. Even in my sleep, it makes me angry. I want to wake up. I don’t want to see it again, and yet there’s always the faint hope that somehow this time it will be different. That it won’t end with the same awful carnage.
I know from interviewing crime scene witnesses that human memory is flawed. Dreams, which are memory once removed, are even more so. The events of the few jewel-like spring days I spent with Anne are jumbled in my dreams, sometimes out of sequence and often out of sync with the way things really played out. The words we said to each other are hazy; the scenes slightly out of focus. Still, they always leave me wrestling with an overriding guilt and with the same unanswered questions: When did I fall in love with her? How did it happen? What else could I have done?
In the dream I usually relive feelings rather than what actually happened: The joy I felt when I asked her to marry me and she said yes. The amazement as I slipped my mother’s treasured engagement ring on her waiting finger and saw how perfectly it fit. There’s the fun of the surprise wedding shower the guys from Seattle PD threw for us down at F. X. McRory’s and the blue-sky perfection of our early-morning wedding.
But then a cloud moves between us and the sun. The scene darkens. Sometimes I manage to wake myself up here, but it doesn’t matter. When I fall back asleep, the dream will be there again, cued up and waiting at the exact same place.
I’m in the interview room on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building, listening to that poor, terrified phone company service rep. “I left a message,” he tells me hopelessly. “I left a message with your wife. Didn’t you get it?” But, of course, I didn’t get it. I didn’t have a wife then—not until that very morning in Myrtle Edwards Park.
The scene goes darker still. I’m driving toward North Bend, toward Snoqualmie Falls, squinting through a daytime blackness no headlights can penetrate. I try to fight off the yawning chasm of despair that threatens to engulf me, because I know by then—know beyond a reasonable doubt—that Anne Corley is a killer. A murderer. People are dead, and it’s all because of me. My fault. My responsibility.
And then I walk into the restaurant. She’s seated across a crowded room from the door. Sometimes she’s wearing her vibrant turquoise wedding dress. Sometimes she’s in a jogging suit. Sometimes she’s swathed all in black. This time it’s the bright blue dress. Our eyes meet over the heads o
f the other carefree, unsuspecting diners. The look she gives me is electric, chilling.
This is another point in the dream where I sometimes manage to wake myself up. I used to have a drink—make that another drink. Now I go to the bathroom and have a glass of plain water. But it’s no use. Whatever I do, I’m trapped in the dream’s inevitability. When I close my eyes again, she’s there waiting for me, beckoning to me from across the room.
The dream usually skips that last conversation. And I know why. Even when I’m awake, I can’t remember it exactly, and I consider that a blessing. It would be too painful to remember. She simply stands up and leaves. As she maneuvers through the tables, I see the gun in her hand—a gun no one else can see—and know it as my own.
Next we’re racing down the path toward the pool at the bottom of the falls. She’s ahead of me. There are people in my way—gimpy, slow-moving tourists going up, coming down. I thrust past them, push them out of my way. And then we’re at the bottom. She turns to face me. I see her raising the gun and feel the bullet smash into my shoulder. I fall—fall forever. And then, once I land, I fire, too.
I’m a good shot. An excellent shot. I shoot to disarm, not to kill. But she’s standing on wet, moss-covered rocks. As I pull the trigger, she somehow loses her footing. She slips, and the motion moves her ever so slightly. My bullet misses her arm and slams into her breast. As she falls, a crimson stain blossoms across the fabric of whatever she’s wearing.
In the Copper Queen Hotel that night, that’s when I woke up—sweaty, shaken, and filled with remorse. I stayed awake for hours after that, fearing that the dream would come again the moment I closed my eyes. The sun was just rising when I finally went back to sleep. Thankfully, the dream did not return.
WHEN I FINALLY STAGGERED DOWNSTAIRS late that Sunday morning, I was as bleary-eyed and hungover as in my worst drinking and stinking days. I barely made it into the dining room before they stopped serving breakfast at eleven. As soon as I finished eating, I headed for the Cochise County Justice Center. It was just twelve-thirty when I arrived there for the one o’clock meeting. Still not sure of what my reception would be, I opted for being prompt. After all, Sheriff Brady may have relented enough to allow me inside the investigation, but I didn’t want to do anything that would screw things up.
The same lady I had met the day before, Lupe Alvarez, manned the front desk. She greeted me with a smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Beaumont. Sheriff Brady asked me to give you this to use while you’re here.”
She handed me a badge that had my name on it, along with the initials MJF. The other side contained a magnetic strip.
“What’s MJF?” I asked.
“The Multi-Jurisdiction Force,” Lupe explained. “When members of the MJF work joint-ops out of our building, it’s easier to give them badges so they can come and go as they please without our having to buzz them in and out. The card works on all the lobby security doors. Also the rest rooms,” she added.
If I was being given my own rest-room key, I had evidently arrived. “Thanks,” I told her. “Now, where do I go?”
“The conference room,” she said. “It’s through that door and three doors down the hall on the left.”
Since it wasn’t yet twelve forty-five, I figured I’d be the first to arrive, but I was wrong. Sheriff Brady was already in the conference room. She sat at the head of a long table with several stacks of paper lined up in front of her. She looked up at me curiously as I entered the room. Her appraisal was so thorough that I wondered for a moment if my fly was unzipped.
“Good afternoon, Special Investigator Beaumont,” she said, motioning me into a chair. “You’re early.”
I took the seat she indicated. She slid one of the stacks in my direction.
“What you have there are copies of everything we’ve come up with so far,” she told me. “You’ll find crime scene reports, preliminary autopsy results, transcripts of interviews, an Internet treatise on poisons in general and sodium azide in particular. If we’re going to be working together, you need to know everything we do.”
“Thanks,” I said, and meant it.
It hurt to have to haul my reading glasses out of my pocket, but I swallowed my pride and did so. The topmost report was the crime scene report from the Latisha Wall murder in Naco. I started to read, but stopped a couple of sentences into it.
“There is one thing,” I said.
Sheriff Brady looked up from her own reading. Under her questioning brow, I caught a glimpse of the banked fire in those vivid green eyes. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Since we’re going to be working together, how about ditching the ‘Special Investigator’ crap? Most people call me Beau. Either that or J.P.”
She studied me for a long time before she answered. “All right,” she said finally. “Beau it is, and I’m Joanna.”
Sixteen
WHEN I WAS IN the eighth grade at Seattle’s Loyal Heights Junior High, my homeroom and social studies teacher, Miss Bond, encouraged me to run for student council. Unfortunately, I won. That year of attending regular and utterly pointless meetings doomed me to a lifetime of hating same. In my twenty-plus years at Seattle PD I had a reputation for dodging meetings—this very kind of meeting—whenever possible.
This particular task force gathering, however, was one I had actually wanted to attend. Since Joanna and I seemed to have a few more minutes before the others were due to arrive, I settled in and read as much of the handout material as I could. I wanted to be prepared. Before, Sheriff Brady’s department had given me no information at all. Now, with someone obviously burning the midnight-copier ink, I’d been given far too much.
One by one, people wandered into the room and were introduced: Casey Ledford, the latent fingerprint tech; Deputy Dave Hollicker, crime scene investigator; and homicide detective Jaime Carbajal. The last to arrive was Chief Deputy Frank Montoya, but I already knew him. As they showed up, I was struck by how young they all were. I could just as well have wandered into a Junior Chamber of Commerce meeting. My understanding about Jaycees is that once a member hits the ripe old age of thirty-five, he’s out on his tush. Self-consciously, I stroked my chin, making sure I had shaved closely enough that morning to erase the stubborn patch of gray whiskers that has lately started sprouting there.
I’m not sure what Joanna’s team of investigators had been told previously about my presence in their midst. None of them went out of his or her way to make me feel welcome. I was grateful when Joanna Brady tackled that issue head-on.
“You’ve all been introduced to Special Investigator Beaumont,” Sheriff Brady said when she stood up at the stroke of 1 P.M. “He’s here as a representative of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, which has a vested interest in seeing that whoever killed Latisha Wall is brought to justice. Since it seems inconceivable that Latisha’s murder and Deidre Canfield’s death are unrelated, this is Mr. Beaumont’s deal as much as it is ours. From here on, he’s to be treated as a full member of this investigation. Any information you give me, you should also give him. Is that clear?”
Sheriff Brady’s crew may have been young, but they were unarguably professional. Uneasy nods of assent passed around the table. None of them were thrilled to have an interloper among them, but no one raised an audible objection.
“Good, then,” Joanna concluded. “Let’s get started.”
Clearly I wasn’t the only one who had put in a relatively sleepless night. Deputy Hollicker looked especially bedraggled, with dark circles under bloodshot eyes. He had spent most of the night processing the Canfield crime scene down in Naco. Scanning through my pile of papers, I noticed that it didn’t contain a written report from him about that. Bearing that in mind, I wasn’t the least surprised when Joanna Brady put him in the hot seat first.
“I’m working on the paper,” he said when she called on him. “I’m sorry my report isn’t ready—”
“Never mind the report,” Joanna Brady said, waving aside his a
pology. “Just tell us. Did you find anything useful?”
The CSI shook his head miserably. “Not really. Local kids have been messing around in those old cavalry barracks for years. I found all kinds of junk in there—trash, beer bottles, cigarette butts, and gum wrappers. It’s tough to tell what, if anything, might be related.”
“You did say cavalry,” I confirmed. “As in horses?”
“That’s right. The building where the body was found is on the site of an old U.S. Cavalry post that dates from the 1880s,” Joanna Brady explained. “The crime scene is actually one of the old officers’ quarters. What about the stables, Dave? Did you search them, too?”
If I had stumbled into a case where the crime scene turned out to be a cavalry post, maybe I was Rip Van Winkle in reverse.
Hollicker nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Every inch. Detective Carbajal thought we might find another body there—the boyfriend’s, presumably. We didn’t, though.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Joanna said grimly. “There’ll be more about Warren Gibson later. Go on.”
“Deputy Howell and I brought back as much stuff to the lab as we thought might be relevant. Again, it’ll take time to go through it all. I’ll work on it as time allows.”
“Did you talk to Doc Winfield?” Joanna asked.
Dave nodded. “Detective Carbajal and I both did. It was right after the ME arrived on the scene, so he didn’t know much at that point. He did tell us, though, that he’s reasonably certain Dee Canfield died somewhere else. The body was dumped there afterward.”
“What about Dee’s house out in Huachuca Terraces? Did either you or Casey get around to checking it out?”
Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker shook their heads in unison. “Ran out of time,” Dave explained. “I had a deputy put up crime scene tape. I’ll go there later today, right after the meeting.”
“Good,” Joanna said. “Moving right along. Let’s talk about Warren Gibson for a minute. Dave, you and Mr. Beaumont probably haven’t heard about this yet, but Ms. Canfield’s daughter from Cheyenne, Wyoming—a woman named Serenity Granger—came to my office this morning. She brought along a copy of an unfinished e-mail that her mother sent her Thursday afternoon. Ms. Granger didn’t actually read the message until yesterday. You should have a copy of that along with your other handouts.”
