Judgment Call

by J. A. Jance

  “How long have you known Ms. Highsmith?” Deb asked.

  “She’s worked here for the past seven years. I met her a few months before she came onboard.”

  “You’re the one who hired her?” Deb asked.

  “Yes,” Farraday said, “I am. She had just finished earning her master’s in education at the University of Arizona. She had been an assistant principal in Tucson before that, but Tucson is a really desirable location. It would have taken years for her to move up to a principal’s job there. She came to us highly recommended.”

  “To say nothing of her being a recent graduate,” Joanna observed. “That meant she was also more affordable than someone with years of experience.”

  “That, too,” Farraday admitted. “She may have been inexperienced initially, but she did a good job. No complaints about her job performance.”

  “Other than the Pembrokes’?” Joanna asked.

  “Well, yes,” he agreed. “There was that.”

  “Do you know of anyone who wished her harm?”

  William Farraday crossed his arms. “Other than the Pembrokes? No.”

  Yes, Joanna thought to herself. That’s definitely our next stop.

  CHAPTER 9

  CHIEF BERNARD ARRIVED WITH DETECTIVE KELLER IN TOW AS well as two uniformed officers, followed shortly thereafter by Dave Hollicker and Casey Ledford. Always a gentleman, Chief Bernard offered to take Abby Holder home, and she gladly accepted. For a while Farraday insisted on watching every move the CSIs made.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna told him finally. “This isn’t going to work. You need to go outside and let them do their jobs.”

  “You can’t just throw me out. This is my school,” William Farraday objected.

  “Yes, I can,” Joanna said with a smile. “This may be your school, but it’s my homicide investigation.”

  Grumbling under his breath and citing a need for privacy, Farraday retreated to his car to talk on the phone. When Chief Bernard reappeared, Joanna was involved in bringing the new arrivals up to speed with what they had learned from Abby Holder as well as what they had found in Debra Highsmith’s office.

  Joanna was annoyed that the whole time they were trying to brief him, Matt Keller continued to fiddle with his smartphone. He was almost as bad as the kids in the restaurant.

  At last he stopped and held up the phone. “Here,” he said, handing the device over to Chief Bernard. “Take a look at this.”

  Alvin Bernard had to dig a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket before he could see what was on the phone. When he did, his eyes bulged. “Is that Debra Highsmith?”

  Matt Keller nodded.

  “Where did this come from?” he demanded, passing the phone over to Joanna. On it was a still shot from the video, complete with the DIE, BITCH caption.

  “Go to the next one,” Matt said.

  Joanna did so. She was shaken but not surprised to see the photo Jenny had taken. The caption underneath the second photo said: BITCH DIES.

  “Where did you get this?” Joanna asked, passing the phone along to Deb, who clicked back and forth between the two photos. “From Marty Pembroke’s Facebook page?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Matt said. “It’s gone viral, just like the video. Those two photos and their captions are paired all over the Internet. I entered Debra Highsmith’s name and this is the first thing that came up.”

  “Where did the crime scene photo come from?” Alvin asked again. “How did they get it?”

  “From my daughter, I’m afraid,” Joanna admitted. “Jenny found the body. She took the photo with her cell phone and sent it to a friend while she was waiting for me to show up. Next thing you know it’s on the Internet.”

  “How can this be out on the Net when we haven’t made any kind of official announcement?” Chief Bernard wanted to know.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna said. “Believe me, I’ve already read Jenny the riot act about it.”

  In the meantime, Deb handed the phone back to Matt, who, with a purposeful frown on his face, immediately began fiddling with it again.

  “It could be that our next-of-kin notification is going to be a lot harder than we thought,” he added. “Here, take a look at this.”

  This time he handed the phone directly to Joanna, who read aloud from the screen. “‘Debra Jean Highsmith, born August 15, 1967, Bridgeport, Connecticut. Died September 21, 1967, New York City, New York.’”

  “Died?” Joanna asked. “Is this someone with the same name? Maybe she’s a relative.”

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This has to be something else, because this Debra Jean Highsmith and our Debra Jean Highsmith have a lot more in common than just their names. They also share the same birth date and Social Security number.”

  “What are we talking about, then?” Deb Howell asked. “Identity theft?”

  “Yes, unless there really is some kind of bureaucratic mix-up going on in Social Security,” Matt said.

  “Which could turn out to be the case,” Alvin Bernard suggested.

  “Possibly,” Matt agreed. “Once the feds get their wires crossed, it’s hell getting them uncrossed. Whatever it is, accidental or deliberate, it’s been going on for a very long time. This was the name our Debra Highsmith was using when she graduated from high school at Good Shepherd Academy in Albuquerque. It’s also who she was when she attended the University of New Mexico and later when she enrolled at the University of Arizona for her master’s degree.”

  Joanna was impressed with Matt Keller’s cybersleuthing. It was right up there with the kinds of wizard things Frank Montoya used to pull off for her. “You found all this out in, what, a little over three hours?”

  “What can I tell you?” Detective Keller asked with a grin. “I’m a connected kind of guy.”

  “Okay,” Joanna said. “If our Debra Highsmith isn’t really Debra Highsmith, who is she?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Chief Bernard said. “I’ll call Dr. Machett and let the M.E.’s office know this latest turn of events. He’ll be taking dental X-rays, so we can put those into the national missing persons database, but this is a problem. How are we supposed to do a next-of-kin notification if the victim isn’t who she pretended to be?”

  “Cell phone records,” Deb Howell suggested. “Once we have those and know who she’s been calling, we may be able to trace back through some of those folks.”

  Keller nodded in agreement. “So what’s our first step, Detective Howell—tackle Marty Pembroke?”

  Joanna was doubly impressed. He had been surfing the Net, but he had also been listening.

  Deb nodded and then turned to Joanna. “Are you going on this one?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I was already part of an earlier, somewhat contentious meeting with him at lunchtime. Marty is less likely to have his guard up if he’s talking to people other than me. If I were you, I wouldn’t bring up the ‘Die, Bitch’ bit. Let him think that you’re in the process of interviewing everybody who knew our victim, students and teachers alike.”

  “That might work for Marty,” Chief Bernard put in, “but only as long as he’s officially a person of interest. If Dr. Pembroke gets wind of it, he’ll raise all kinds of hell.”

  “What do you mean?” Joanna asked.

  “Let’s just say he’s been giving other people here in town plenty of grief, and not just the school district, either. He’s filed planning and zoning complaints. He’s in a beef with his next-door neighbor over an intruding laurel hedge. So if we’re asking Dr. Pembroke’s son questions about Debra Highsmith’s murder and Daddy hears about it, I’d guess he’s not going to like it one little bit. I’d expect him to land on your doorstep with a complaint, most likely with an attorney in tow, in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “So he’s not what you’d call a reasonable kind of guy?” Joanna asked.

  “Hardly.”

  Joanna thought about that fo
r a time. “Okay,” she said at last, “just to be thorough, maybe you should think about establishing Dr. Pembroke’s whereabouts on the night Debra Highsmith died. He got his way with the school district and made the board renege on parts of the suspension Debra Highsmith had given his son, but that doesn’t mean he was happy about it.”

  “Good point,” Keller said. He turned to Deb. “We’d better get cracking then. My car or yours?”

  “We’ll take both,” Deb said.

  “Looks like you’ve got a live one there,” Joanna said to Chief Bernard.

  “Yeah, he’s great when it comes to using the Internet, but he’s not much use when it comes to interviewing suspects.”

  “Give him time,” Joanna said. “He’ll get better.”

  Bernard glanced at his watch. “Speaking of time, don’t you have a press conference coming up in a little over half an hour?”

  “I do,” Joanna said. “The problem is, I know even less now than I did before.”

  “Wing it,” Alvin Bernard said. “You should be able to do that with no problem. I used to play poker with your dad. He could bluff like crazy. It looks to me like you’re a chip off the old block.”

  William Farraday returned, went back into Debra Highsmith’s office, and came out a short time later, still fuming. “The way those two are working, it’s going to take hours.”

  Joanna felt like telling him that’s what it took to be a CSI—supreme attention to detail, for both what was at the crime scene and what was missing. She settled for changing the subject.

  “When you hire new principals and teachers, do you run background checks?”

  Farraday frowned before he answered. “Didn’t used to,” he said. “We do now.”

  “Did you run one on Debra Highsmith?”

  “I’m sure at the time we hired her we checked her school transcripts and that sort of thing, but we didn’t institute the background searches until two years ago after the school district in San Manuel ended up hiring a registered sex offender. That situation got everybody’s attention.”

  “I’ll bet it did,” Joanna said. “What about teachers and administrators who were already here?”

  “They were grandfathered in,” Farraday said. “The union saw to it that background checks applied to new hires only. Why, have you found something unsavory in Ms. Highsmith’s past?”

  That’s the problem, Joanna thought. We know nothing about her past.

  “Just wondering,” Joanna said aloud. “We’re trying to put the bits and pieces together. One more thing. I believe I was told the beneficiary of her group insurance policy is the Malpai Borderlands Group. Do you have any idea what her connection might be to those folks?”

  “None at all,” Farraday said. “Most of the time employees name their spouses or children as their beneficiaries, but we certainly don’t discriminate against people who don’t have regular family members when it comes to beneficiary arrangements. The person being insured gets to name the beneficiary.”

  Having worked for Milo Davis at the Davis Insurance Agency for several years, Joanna was well aware of that.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Farraday. You’ve been most helpful.”

  Unaccustomed to being dismissed, he seemed a little surprised, but Joanna didn’t hang around long enough to check out his reaction. Instead, she went back into the office, where she paused in the doorway long enough to catch Casey Ledford’s eye. Casey stopped what she was doing and came over to the door.

  “What’s up?”

  “I know it’s already looking like a very long day, but when you leave here, I’m going to need you to stop by Ms. Highsmith’s place in San Jose Estates. When the city cops went by there yesterday, they thought they had a missing person case. They had no idea that she was a homicide victim. I have a feeling their forensics work was less than adequate.”

  “Do you think?” Casey returned with a wry smile. “You want Dave and me to give the whole place a going over?”

  “Please, and if it’s overtime, it’s overtime or comp time, your choice.”

  Joanna already knew that Casey, a single mom, would most likely choose comp time, while Dave, with a wife, a mortgage, and a baby on the way, would most likely take the money. Of the two, Joanna preferred comp time because it was easier on the budget.

  Leaving them to it, Joanna checked her watch and headed back to the Justice Center. She wasn’t looking forward to the press conference, especially since she was concerned there would be questions about Jenny’s photo. Leaving Tom Hadlock to deal with those wouldn’t be fair.

  As Joanna drove through the parking lot toward her covered reserved parking place in the back, she spotted a bright red Miata tucked in neatly among the collection of media vans. It was parked with the top down, near the front door. Joanna knew it had to be her mother’s. Eleanor Lathrop drove the only red Miata in town. Joanna had considerable experience in handling dangerous crooks, but dealing with her mother was often tougher.

  “Crap,” Joanna said aloud. Having her mother show up at the office was not unheard of, but with a complicated press conference due to start in the next half hour or so, Joanna needed some time to pull her thoughts together. In truth, her relationship with her mother was somewhat better now that Eleanor and George spent nearly half the year tooling around the country in their RV. Their May 1 estimated departure date was only a few weeks away, and for Joanna, it couldn’t come soon enough.

  She ducked inside through the back door that opened directly into her office. Once she put down her purse, she picked up her phone and dialed Kristin. “I take it my mother is here?”

  “She told me she was going out to the lobby to talk to Marliss Shackleford.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. “My two favorite people in the same place at the same time. Did my mother mention what this was about?”

  “She said something about tomorrow night.”

  “What’s tomorrow night?” Joanna asked. Then she remembered. The gala. Her mother was a pal of Maggie Oliphant, the mover and shaker behind the Bisbee Art League. Eleanor had asked if Joanna and Butch would be attending the gala. Joanna had offered to make a donation, but she had turned down the invitation. She worked too many hours during the week to want to spend weekend evenings away from her family if she didn’t have to.

  “First things first,” Joanna said. “I have to get through Friday before I can think about Saturday. Have you heard anything from Jaime?”

  “Yes, he’s on his way down the canyon now.”

  “Good. Tell him to ring the bell on my back door and come in that way. I need to talk to him before I talk to the press.”

  “She’s back, isn’t she.”

  Joanna heard her mother’s voice in the background. Putting Kristin on the spot wasn’t fair, either. Eleanor Lathrop was Joanna’s problem. “Go ahead and send her in,” Joanna said with a sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Eleanor waltzed into her daughter’s office as if she owned the place. Unable to help herself, she paused long enough to run a finger across Joanna’s small conference table, looking for dust. Thanks to Kristin, there wasn’t any.

  Way to go, Kristin, Joanna thought. Aloud and as brightly as she could manage she said, “Hi, Mom. What brings you here?”

  “Is there any reason I shouldn’t stop by to see my darling daughter?”

  There were plenty of reasons, not the least of which being that said daughter was busy working. There had been a homicide on her watch, and she needed to keep after it.

  “No reason,” Joanna said, hoping that her voice remained even and that her face was unreadable. “What’s up?”

  “Milo and Fanny Davis’s daughter-in-law had an emergency cesarean up in Phoenix last night,” Eleanor said. “They just left to go help their son look after the other two kids. Three kids under the age of five. If that isn’t a family-planning nightmare, I don’t know what is.”

  Joanna still held her former boss in high esteem. “Milo is great with ki
ds,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll be able to handle it.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Eleanor sniffed. “The problem is, they were supposed to sit at our table tomorrow night. Since I’m on the committee, Maggie will be beside herself if there are empty places at my table. I’m hoping you and Butch will agree to come in their place. The food should be excellent. Prime rib at the Rob Roy is always top drawer. As an elected official, it’s always good to be seen out and about and doing your civic duty.”

  Joanna was getting ready to decline when Eleanor added the knockout punch. “I called Butch first. He says he’ll be glad to dust off his tux for the evening, but that it’s up to you.”

  This wasn’t the first time Eleanor had played divide and conquer by going to Butch behind Joanna’s back, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  “We’d have to get a sitter,” Joanna said, making the most obvious objection.

  “Handled,” Eleanor said. “I already talked to Jenny. She’ll be glad to take care of her brother to earn some extra spending money. I’ll order pizza for them, and I’ll pay the bill for that, too.”

  “In other words, you really want us to come,” Joanna said.

  “Well, yes,” Eleanor said. “You do hold a certain position in the community, and it would be a good idea to be seen in public when you’re wearing something besides a uniform and a handgun.”

  Joanna got it. Eleanor was proud of her, but she probably would have been happier with Joanna in a more traditional “women’s work” job. As for Butch, since his mother was more of a case than Joanna’s was, he always capitulated when Eleanor showed up as a paragon of sweetness and light. If he hadn’t meant what he’d said about going to the gala, he wouldn’t have said it. He wasn’t in the habit of leaving Joanna to be the bad guy.

  “Okay,” Joanna said. “If it’s okay with Butch, it’s okay with me.”

  “Thank you,” Eleanor said. “Maggie Oliphant is having a conniption fit about this particular dinner. She needs it to be a huge success, and she’s worried that it won’t be. Having empty places at the tables when she’s already given the final head count would make it that much worse.”