Judgment Call

by J. A. Jance

  Abby disappeared into the interior of the house. Shortly thereafter, from down the hall, they heard Elizabeth’s querulous response. “How long will you be?” she wanted to know. “Will you be back in time to make dinner? If I eat any later than five, I’ll be up all night with indigestion.”

  Deb shook her head. “That woman has the patience of Job.”

  “She needs it, too,” Joanna observed.

  As Joanna and Deb walked out to their respective vehicles, Joanna’s cell phone jangled. Tom Hadlock’s number appeared in her caller ID window. “I have to take this call,” Joanna told Deb. “Why don’t you take Abby with you?”

  “Got it,” Deb said.

  “Hi, Tom,” Joanna said into the phone. “What’s up? Are we making any progress?”

  “Detective Carbajal got hold of the school district office. Didn’t do squat for the next-of-kin problem. The beneficiary on Debra Highsmith’s group insurance is some tree huggers’ group.”

  “A conservation group, then?”

  “Something called the Malpai Borderlands Group. Never heard of them.”

  Joanna had. They were a group of ranchers in the southeastern part of Arizona and the southwestern part of New Mexico who had banded together to fight the forces aligned against them—wind, rain, fire, and cross-border thugs who, along with federal oversight bureaucrats, all seemed determined to put them out of business. Finding themselves shunned by the well-heeled national conservation groups whose one-size-fits-all version of biological diversity ignored the ability of ranchers to earn their livelihoods, the people who formed the Malpai Borderlands Group had developed their own localized solutions to the various problems confronting them.

  They had cleared out forests of invading mesquite trees, allowing the desert to return to its earlier grassland state. They had fought to protect the small band of jaguars that had turned up in their midst. They had waged a life-and-death struggle with marauding drug dealers who had gunned down unarmed ranchers working on their own property. It was in the aftermath of one of those crimes that the Malpai Borderlands Group had first come to the sheriff’s department’s attention.

  “That’s interesting,” Joanna said. “I wonder what’s the connection.”

  “Like I said. Sounds like tree huggers to me.”

  “Not if the tree in question happens to be mesquite,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jaime now?”

  “On his way to the M.E.’s office,” Tom said. “Dr. Machett is about to do the autopsy, and Detective Carbajal will be there to observe.”

  “So things are under control,” Joanna said.

  “Not exactly,” Tom Hadlock replied. “The media natives are restless. Marliss Shackleford is camped out in the public office, raising hell as usual, and my phone is ringing off the hook. I’ve had at least a dozen requests for information from media outlets all over the state in just the last half hour.”

  Joanna could tell from the stress in Tom’s voice that the pressure was starting to get to him. She couldn’t help feeling a little guilty on that score. One of the reasons she had gone along on the Abby Holder interview was that she had wanted to avoid having to deal with Marliss. She didn’t doubt that her presence at the interview had made possible the fact that they now had a search warrant in hand, but Tom’s inexperience was showing and he was obviously in over his head.

  “Sorry to leave you hanging out to dry like that,” Joanna told him. “I know it’s a lot to handle.”

  “What I need to know is this,” he said, sounding exasperated. “Are we making any progress at all on notifying next of kin? Everybody’s demanding that we come out and release the name of the victim. I’ve been doing what I can to stall on releasing information, citing the next-of-kin issue, but it’s not working out very well. I can tell from what reporters are saying to me that they already have Debra Highsmith’s name. It’s apparently common knowledge all over town, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep these people from putting it on the air.”

  It’s common knowledge because my own darling daughter helped spread the word, Joanna thought as a momentary spark of anger shot through her. In a high-profile case like this, what went on in the media was as important as what was going on with the detectives. The photo Jenny had sent to her friend made handling the media far more problematic.

  “Do the best you can, Tom,” Joanna advised her chief deputy as she put the Yukon in gear and pulled in behind Deb Howell’s Tahoe. “We’ve got a search warrant for Debra Highsmith’s office, and we’re on our way to the high school right now to execute it. I’m sorry the school district angle didn’t give us what we needed. I’m hoping we’ll find something in her office that will help us locate her next of kin. Otherwise, we’re out of luck, out of time, and out of ideas. Much as I hate to do things this way, if we haven’t found a family member by the time Machett is done with his autopsy, we’ll have to go ahead and release the name. See if you can find out when he expects to be finished, and schedule a press conference immediately thereafter.”

  “He’s not going to talk to me,” Tom Hadlock said. “You know that, and I know that.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “Unfortunately, you’re right. Let me see what I can do.”

  It was a little before three on Friday afternoon. That meant that Dr. Machett’s secretary, Madge Livingston, was still on duty. “Can you ask Dr. Machett when he thinks he’ll be finished with the autopsy?” Joanna asked when Madge came on the line.

  “No point,” Madge said. “He’ll say these things take time and that they can’t be rushed.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “Two hours flat,” Madge pronounced in her smoke-damaged rasp. “He’ll be done by five on the nose.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s Friday,” Madge answered. “Trust me on that. He’s out of here by five on Friday afternoons, come what may.”

  By then the two-car sheriff’s department caravan had arrived at the chain-link gate blocking the driveway entrance to the school grounds. Abby Holder stepped out of Deb Howell’s Tahoe. With keys in hand, she stooped to unlock the padlock on the security chain that held the swinging gate shut. Once Deb and Joanna were through the entrance, Abby carefully put the chain back in place and refastened the padlock.

  Abby Holder, Joanna noted, was nothing if not thorough.

  As they made their way through the empty parking lot, Joanna called Tom Hadlock back. “Schedule the press conference for five thirty,” she said.

  “He’ll be done that fast?”

  “I have it on the best authority,” Joanna answered.

  “Will you be here for it?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said, again thinking longingly about how much she missed Frank Montoya’s capable presence. “I’ll be there.”

  Disregarding the no-parking zones, Joanna and Deb pulled into the drop-off lane just in front of the school’s main office. Abby used her fistful of keys to let them into the building, then led them inside, switching on lights as she went.

  Joanna fully expected an alarm to sound the moment they entered. None did, although something that appeared to be an alarm keypad was built into the wall right next to the door.

  “What about the alarm?” Joanna asked. “Don’t you need to shut it off  ?”

  Abby laughed. “It’s already turned off,” she said. “Permanently. When it came time for the school district to cut costs, the alarm company contract went away.”

  Abby dropped her purse on the desk Joanna knew to be hers—had always been hers—and then walked as far as the entrance to the principal’s office. There she stopped short.

  “Oh, no!” she wailed, stepping back, groping for the doorjamb, and swaying visibly on her feet. “Oh, no, no, no!”

  “What’s wrong?” Joanna demanded.

  There was a moment of confusion when all three women tried to occupy the doorway at once. Eventually Abby retreated, going back into her office and sinking onto a chair while Joanna and Deb
Howell stood in the doorway and examined the shambles that had once been Debra Highsmith’s office. Furniture was upturned and or smashed. The floor was littered with a layer of loose paper that had been liberated from overturned files and emptied drawers. There was shattered glass everywhere. What looked to have been a glass-fronted bookshelf lay in broken pieces on the floor. Maybe a hundred or so textbooks lay scattered in the debris, but there was nothing—not one volume—that looked like a leather-bound calendar.

  Joanna was already punching Alvin Bernard’s speed-dial number into her phone. “We’re at the high school,” she said tersely when he came on the line. “We came to Debra Highsmith’s office to execute a search warrant, but evidently someone else got here first. The place is a mess.”

  “I’ll send some uniforms right away, but how did this happen? We haven’t had any reports of an alarm going off.”

  “There is no alarm,” Joanna said. “The school board evidently discontinued the service.”

  “Breaking and entering?”

  “No need. If the killer had Ms. Highsmith’s keys, all he had to do was let himself in and out.”

  Ending the call, Joanna went into the outside office where Abby Holder sat, fanning her flushed face with a stenographer’s notebook.

  “There are no calendars in the office,” Joanna said. “How many were there?”

  Abby seemed to consider before she answered. “I’m not sure. She’s been here for seven years—almost seven. She used one a year, but there were more than seven. Fifteen maybe?”

  “The calendars are gone. Can you tell if anything else is missing?”

  Abby Holder got unsteadily to her feet and came as far as the doorway. “I don’t know,” she said, shock still visible on her face. “It’s such a mess, it’s hard to tell.”

  “Did Ms. Highsmith keep anything of value in here—jewelry, for instance?”

  “Definitely not,” Abby answered. “She didn’t wear jewelry.”

  Joanna had noticed at the crime scene that there had been no jewelry visible on Debra Highsmith’s body. At the time she had simply assumed that robbery had been part of the motivation for the murder. Now it seemed that the absence of jewelry was more a result of the victim’s personal sense of style than it was of some criminal enterprise.

  “Interesting,” Joanna said with a glance in Deb’s direction. “Why tear up her office when we saw no evidence of this kind of destruction at the victim’s house?”

  “The killer must have known that whatever it was he wanted, Debra Highsmith kept it here at her office rather than at home.”

  “He?” Abby Holder asked. “You know for sure that the killer is a he?”

  “We don’t know anything for sure,” Joanna said.

  “Would you say that as far as faculty members are concerned, you would be the one who was closest to Ms. Highsmith?”

  “I’m staff, not faculty,” Abby replied. “As far as I know, she wasn’t especially close to any of the faculty members. That might have lent itself to playing favorites, or, at least it might have been construed that way.”

  “So who were her friends?”

  “I’m not sure. She didn’t mix her school life with her personal life. It’s no exaggeration to say she was a very private person.”

  Abby Holder might not be able to reconstruct her boss’s social life, but Joanna knew that her cell phone records would make Debra Highsmith’s social network an open book. “We’ll need those cell phone records ASAP,” Joanna said to Deb.

  Abby frowned and looked around the room. “Wait,” she said. “Where are the computers?”

  “As in more than one?” Joanna asked.

  “She had a desktop and a little notebook computer that she carried with her. She used the desktop for school correspondence. The other one was for personal use.”

  “It’s possible there’s some crossover,” Joanna said. “Especially in e-mail accounts.” She turned to Deb. “Her computers are also covered on the warrant, right?”

  Deb nodded. “They are,” she replied, “but we need to be able to find them first. Does the school district have any kind of automatic system-wide backup?”

  “Yes,” Abby said. “The computers back up every day.”

  “I’ll follow up on that, too,” Deb said.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” an irate male voice demanded from the room behind them. “Chief Bernard called me and said there had been a break-in. Why didn’t you call me to begin with, Abby? How dare you bring police officers onto the school grounds without consulting me? It’s outrageous that I should be the last to know.”

  The three women turned as one to face the new arrival, William R. Farraday III, the Bisbee School District’s superintendent of schools. At five six or so, the man was barely four inches taller than Joanna. His diminutive appearance was at odds with both his bellowing voice and his belligerent attitude.

  It was always possible, Joanna supposed, that when Farraday went golfing at the Rob Roy Links maybe he let down his hair enough that members of his foursome could call him Bill. Maybe his wife called him that in the privacy of their own home. On all other occasions, when he was out in public and most especially in a work setting, he was known as Mr. Farraday, with special emphasis on the MISTER part. Joanna had had some dealings with him through the years and thought he was a twit—a vindictive bully who ruled his small bureaucratic fiefdom with an iron fist. It occurred to Joanna that Farraday and Dr. Machett were birds of a feather.

  Since Joanna was evidently more than he wanted to handle, Farraday kept his wrathful gaze focused on Abby Holder.

  “What in the world were you thinking, Abby?” he demanded.

  Terrified of the man and looking as though she wanted to sink through the floor, Abby shook her head and didn’t answer.

  “We were executing a search warrant regarding the Highsmith homicide,” Joanna explained, quickly coming to Abby’s defense. “We were engaged in interviewing Ms. Holder at the time our warrant came through. She was kind enough to offer to accompany us to the school and use her keys to give us access to the office area. When we saw the interior of Ms. Highsmith’s office, we immediately called in a report to the Bisbee Police Department. Their officers should be here any moment.”

  Joanna carefully avoided mentioning to Mr. Farraday that their obtaining the office search warrant was due in large part to information that had come to them from Abby Holder. Joanna already knew Abby’s financial situation dictated that she was in no position to retire, much less to have her employment terminated. As a consequence, Joanna tried to draw Farraday’s attention to herself and away from the hapless secretary.

  “So far, the only items we can determine to be missing are Ms. Highsmith’s computers—a desktop and a laptop,” Joanna continued. “Those and several years’ worth of personal calendars.”

  “The laptop was hers, but the desktop is definitely school property,” Farraday said. “As is the broken furniture. We’ll have to file an insurance claim first thing, and somebody’s going to have to clean this place up before school starts on Monday morning.”

  The look Farraday turned on Abby Holder then made it clear that he regarded the cleanup process as someone else’s responsibility—most likely hers. It didn’t earn him any points in Joanna’s book that the school superintendent seemed far more concerned about property damage than he was about the death of his longtime employee. Even worse, he apparently had zero empathy for how the murder of Abby’s supervisor might affect someone who had spent years working closely with Debra Highsmith.

  “I don’t see any broken outside windows. How exactly did the culprit or culprits gain access to the office?” he demanded. “Did they just walk into the building or what? Why weren’t they caught?”

  “We’re working on the theory that whoever did this is also responsible for Ms. Highsmith’s murder. Since her keys weren’t found at the crime scene, it seems likely that the killer has her keys and used them to gain access here. If the
school’s alarm system had been functioning, just having her keys wouldn’t have been enough, not without the disarm code. I may be wrong, but don’t I remember hearing something about the school district discontinuing its contract with the alarm company?”

  Joanna’s question laid the blame squarely where it belonged—on the superintendent’s none-too-broad shoulders—without betraying Abby Holder as the one who had mentioned the situation with the discontinued alarm.

  At least Farraday didn’t try to deny it. “We had to,” he said quickly. “There was a problem. They were taking undue advantage of our situation.”

  “Now the bad guys have taken advantage of it, too,” Joanna observed. “As far as the cleanup is concerned? That’s going to have to wait until after my people have a chance to do a thorough crime scene investigation.”

  “Why your people?” Farraday wanted to know. “You’re county. The school is inside the city limits. Shouldn’t the Bisbee Police Department be handling the investigation?”

  Joanna suspected that Farraday thought he had more ink with Alvin Bernard’s department than he did with hers. No doubt he was hoping for a little better control of the narrative. Joanna didn’t give him any.

  “In Debra Highsmith’s homicide, we have crime scenes in both the city and the county. As a consequence the investigation is being handled as a joint operation. My people will be handling the forensics. Detective Howell here is the lead investigator.”

  When it came to playing poker, D. H. Lathrop had taught his daughter well. When she called Farraday’s bluff, he folded.

  “All right, all right,” he said, shaking his head. “Carry on.”

  While Joanna had engaged Farraday in conversation, Deb had been on the phone to the department, summoning the CSIs.

  “They’re on their way,” Deb said.

  Joanna nodded and then turned back to Farraday. “While we wait for my CSI team, it might be helpful if Detective Howell and I asked you a few questions.”

  He sighed. “I don’t suppose I have any choice in the matter.”

  He did have a choice, but neither Deb nor Joanna bothered mentioning that fact.