Paradise Lost jb-9

by J. A. Jance

  After Frank left with Ron Haskell in tow, Joanna sat at her desk, rewinding the tape and mulling over the interview. On the one hand, Connie Haskell’s widowed husband seemed genuinely grief-stricken that his wife was dead, and it didn’t look as though he stood to profit from her death. Ron Haskell may not have said so directly, but he had certainly implied that, considering the amounts of money he had squandered playing the stock market, a ten­-thousand-dollar life insurance policy was a mere drop in the bucket and certainly not worth the risk of committing a murder. It also struck Joanna that he obviously held himself responsible for Connie Haskell’s death though all the while claiming that he himself had not been directly involved.

  Those items were all on the plus side of the ledger. On the other side was the possibility that Ron Haskell could have had some other motivation besides money for wanting his wife out of the way, like maybe an as yet undiscovered girlfriend who might be impatient and well-heeled besides. Someone like that might make someone like Ron Haskell eager to be rid of a now impoverished wife. Haskell’s once seemingly airtight alibi now leaked like a sieve. He had chosen a course of action—a premeditated course of action—that had placed him in an isolated cabin from which he knew he would be able to sneak away at will and without being detected.

  Forced to acknowledge that her original assumption about the isolation cabin had been blown out of the water, Joanna now won­dered if some of her other ideas about Ron Haskell were equally erroneous. He had volunteered to conic in for DNA testing. Joanna had thought of that as an indicator of his innocence that it showed confidence that Ron Haskell knew his genetic markers would have nothing iii common with the rape-kit material collected during Doc Winfield’s autopsy of Connie Haskell. However, what if Ron Haskell had decided to divest himself of his wife by hiring someone else to do his dirty work? In that case, somebody else’s DNA would show up on the body. Ron Haskell wouldn’t be implicated.

  Joanna picked up her phone and dialed Casey Ledford. “What do you think about Ron Haskell?” she asked.

  “He seemed nice enough,” Casey replied. “Upset that his wife is dead, but eager to cooperate and wanting to find out who killed her. I took his prints, by the way,” she added. “For elimination purposes. Just looking at them visually, I can see they do match some of the partial prints I found in Connie Haskell’s Lincoln, but the ones I saw were mostly old and overlaid by far more recent ones. Based on that alone, I’d have to say that, unless he was wearing gloves, Ron Haskell hasn’t been in his wife’s car for weeks or even months.”

  “Too bad,” Joanna said with a sigh. “I was hoping we were getting someplace.”

  “Sorry about that,” Casey Ledford said.

  Joanna had put down the phone and was still sitting and thinking about what Casey had said when it rang again. “Hi, George,” she said when she heard the medical examiner’s voice on the line. “What’s up?”

  “Have you had a chance to talk to your mother yet?” he asked.

  When George called Eleanor Lathrop “your mother” rather than his pet name, Ellie, Joanna recognized it as a storm warning. Not so far,” Joanna answered guiltily. “It’s been pretty busy around here today. I haven’t had a chance.”

  “She left the house this morning before I woke up and she didn’t bother starting the coffee before she left. She was supposed to join me for lunch, but she didn’t show up,” George said. “I checked a few minutes ago, and she still isn’t home. Or, if she is, she isn’t answering the phone. I thought maybe the two of you had gotten together, and that’s why she ended up forgetting our lunch date.”

  Who has time for lunch? Joanna thought. She said, “Sorry, George. I haven’t heard from her at all.”

  “Well, if you do,” Doc Winfield said, “have her give me a call. I’m worried about her, Joanna. She was really agitated about this Dora Matthews thing. I’ve never seen her quite so upset.”

  “Don’t worry,” Joanna reassured her stepfather. “I’m sure mother will be just fine.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll let you go.”

  “No, wait. I have a question for you, too. Do you think Dora Matthews and Connie Haskell were killed by the same person?”

  “No,” George Winfield said at once.

  His abrupt, no-nonsense answer flooded Joanna with relief. It opened the door to the possibility that perhaps the two homicides—Connie’s and Dora’s—weren’t related after all. If that was the case, maybe Jenny wasn’t a target, either.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “For one thing, because the two deaths were so dissimilar,” George Winfield replied. “The person who killed Connie Haskell wasn’t afraid of getting down and dirty about it. He was more than just brutal, and most of it was done while she was still alive. Her killer wasn’t the least bit worried about being bloodied in the process. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he enjoyed it.

  “On the other hand, Dora Matthews’s killer went about doing 1e job in an almost fastidious fashion. That death wasn’t messy. I’d bet money that Dora’s killer was an inexperienced first-timer who is downright squeamish about even seeing blood, to say nothing of wearing it. The other guy isn’t, Joanna. Once you identify Connie Haskell’s killer, I’m convinced you’ll discover that he’s done this before, maybe even more than once.”

  “And he’ll do it again if we don’t catch him first,” Joanna returned.

  “You’ve got that right,” George said. “Sorry, there’s another call. It may be Ellie. But please, Joanna. I need you to talk to her.”

  “I’ll call her,” Joanna said. “I promise.”

  She punched down the button and was getting ready to dial her mother when Frank came rushing back into her office. “We just hit pay dirt,” he said, waving a piece of paper over her head. “I finally got a call back from the phone company about that pay phone in Tucson. It belongs to some little private company that operates a small network of pay phones only in the Tucson area. That’s why it took longer to track down the calls than it would have otherwise. But there is some good news. Another call was made from that pay phone within thirty seconds of the end of Alice Miller’s 911 call.”

  “Really,” Joanna breathed. “Where to?”

  “A place called Quartzite East.”

  “Isn’t that a new RV park off I-10 in Bowie?”

  Frank nodded. “Relatively new,” he corrected. “It opened last year. It’s a joke, named after the real Quartzite, that mostly migra­tory motor-home town on the other side of the state. That’s where the next phone call went—to the office at Quartzite East.”

  “Good work, Frank,” Joanna said. “Our mysterious Alice Miller may net live at Quartzite East, but she sure as hell knows someone who does. What say you and I head out there ourselves?”

  “My car or yours?” Frank asked.

  “Let’s take yours,” Joanna said.

  “I’ll have to go down to the Motor Pool and fill it with gas.”

  “You do that,” Joanna told him. “I’ll be right there.”

  Going back for her purse, Joanna found Deputy Galloway standing by Kristin’s desk. “You wanted to see me?” he asked. Joanna nodded and ushered him into her office. “I wanted to talk to you about Yolanda Cañedo,” she said as Galloway took a seat.

  “What about her?”

  “You know she’s back in the hospital?”

  “I guess,” he said in a nonchalant tone that said he wasn’t par­ticularly concerned one way or the other.

  “Are the deputies as a group going to do anything about it?” “Like what?”

  “Like sending a group card or flowers. Or like offering to look after the kids during off-hours to give Leon and the grandparents a break. Or like showing up at one of the boys’ Little League games to cheer them on.”

  Deputy Galloway shrugged. “Why should we?” he asked. “Yolanda doesn’t even belong to the local. Besides, she’s a ...”

  “She’s a what?” Joanna
asked.

  “She’s just a matron in the jail.”

  “Yes,” Joanna replied evenly but her green eyes were shedding sparks. “She is, and it turns out all the jail inmates and the people who work there got together to send her get-well wishes. It seems to me the deputies shouldn’t do any less.”

  “You can’t order us to do anything.” Galloway bristled.

  “Who said anything about ordering?” Joanna said. “It’s merely a suggestion, Deputy Galloway. A strong suggestion. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re a team here. Yes, Yolanda Cañedo is a jail matron. In your book that may make her somehow less worthy, but let me tell you something. If it weren’t for the people running our jail, you’d only be able to do half your job, and the same would hold true for every other deputy out on a patrol. You wouldn’t be able to arrest anyone, because there wouldn’t be anyplace to put them. So what I’m strongly suggesting, as opposed to ordering, is that some of the deputies may want to make it their business to see that some cards and letters go wending their way to Yolanda in care of University Medical Center in Tucson.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ken Galloway said, standing up. His face was flushed with anger. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No,” Joanna said quietly. “I think that just about covers it.”

  Galloway strode out of her office. With her hands still trembling with anger, Joanna cleared her desk by swiping the remaining paperwork into her briefcase, then she took a stack of correspon­dence due for mailing and/or filing out to Kristin.

  “Frank and I are leaving for Bowie,” she told her secretary. “If either Jaime Carbajal or Ernie Carpenter calls in, tell them to try reaching me by cell phone.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “That remains to be seen,” Joanna said. “How about that bunch of reporters? Are they still parked outside?”

  Kristin nodded. “I thought the heat would have driven them away by now, but so far they haven’t budged.”

  “Call over to Motor Pool and have Frank pick me up at the back door,” Joanna said. “When we take off, I’d rather not have a swarm of reporters breathing down our necks.”

  Back at her desk, she paused long enough to marshal her thoughts before dialing her mother’s number. Three rings later, the answering machine came on. It seemed unlikely that leaving a recorded message would qualify for keeping her promise to George Winfield. She certainly wasn’t about to launch into any detailed discussion of the Dora Matthews situation.

  “Hi, Mom,” Joanna said in her most noncommittal and cheer­ful voice. “Just calling to talk for a minute. I’m on my way to Bowie with Frank Montoya. Give me a call on my cell phone if you get a chance. Bye.”

  She was waiting in the shaded parking area a few minutes later when Frank came around the building.

  “I was thinking,” he said, once she was inside with her seat belt fastened. “We may be making too much of this telephone thing. We don’t know for sure that Alice Miller or whatever her name is really made that second call.”

  “Who was it billed to?” Joanna asked.

  “It wasn’t. The call to Quartzite East was paid for in cash. The problem is, Alice Miller could very well have put the phone down and someone else was standing next to the phone waiting to pick it up.”

  “You could be right,” Joanna said a moment later. “I guess we’ll see when we get there.”

  They drove past the collection of air-conditioned press vehicles that were parked in front of the building and from there out through the front gate and onto the highway. Watching in the passenger-side mirror, Joanna was happy to see that no one followe­d them. “It’s like a feeding frenzy, isn’t it,” she said.

  Frank nodded. “Since the Arizona Reporter thinks it’s an impor­tant story, everybody else thinks it’s an important story, too.”

  “Maybe it is an important story,” Joanna allowed. “Doc Winfield is of the opinion that the guy who killed Connie Haskell was’t a novice.”

  “Point taken,” Frank said. “In other words, if he’s done it before, we’d better nail the bastard quick before he does it again.”

  “Exactly,” Joanna said, trying to keep the discouragement and dread out of her voice, because she was sure both George Winfield and Frank Montoya were right. If she and her people didn’t catch Connie Haskell’s killer soon enough, he would certainly strike again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Half an hour later they were nearing Elfrida when Joanna’s cell phone rang. “Hello, Jaime,” she answered “What’s up?”

  “I’ve spent the last two hours of my life with a bitch on wheels named Mrs. Richard Bernard—Amy for short.”

  “Chris’s mother?”

  “Affirmative on that.”

  “What about Chris himself? Did you talk to him?” Joanna asked.

  “According to Mama Bernard, she has no idea where her son Christopher is at the moment and no idea when he’s expected home, either. He’s evidently out for the afternoon with some pals of his. In addition, she says nobody’s talking to him without both his father and his attorney being present. Ernie and I have tentative appointment with the Bernards for tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. But we did manage to ferret out the connection between Chris Bernard and Dora Matthews.”

  “Really. What’s that?”

  “When Dora was placed in foster care here in Tucson last sum­mer, the foster family she lived with happened to be the Bernards’ next-door neighbors, some people named Dugan. I can tell you for sure that Mrs. Bernard is still ripped about that. The Bernards live in a very nice, ritzy neighborhood up in the foothills off Tanque Verde. In that neighborhood, they’re the new kids on the block. They happen to have more money than anybody, and they don’t mind flaunting it. When they moved in, they were dismayed to learn that the Dugans—Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dugan, who are the Bernards’ nearest neighbors—happen to be state-approved foster parents with a long history of taking in troubled kids and helping them get a fresh start.

  “The Bernards were unhappy about the foster-parent bit and went before the homeowners’ association to complain. They asked the association to keep the Dugans from accepting any more foster children. As Amy Bernard told us, she didn’t like the idea of her son being exposed to those kinds of kids.

  “But it turns out the Dugans are nice people who have been doing foster-care work for years. Most of the kids they’ve taken in have gone on to have excellent track records. When the Bernards’ complaint came before the homeowners’ association, the board ruled against them. Caring for foster children may have been against the neighborhood’s official CC and Rs, but that rule had gone unenforced for so long that the board just let it slide.”

  “So much for neighborly relations,” Joanna said.

  “Let me add,” Jaime continued, “that when it conies to plain old ordinary obnoxiousness, Amy Bernard is a piece of work. She doesn’t approve of the Dugans’ foster-care work, and from the way she acted, she didn’t much like having to talk to a Latino detective, either. It I had been on the homeowners’ board, I probably would have voted against the woman on principle alone. I’m sure she has lots of money—her hubby’s a radiologist—but she’s not exactly Mrs. Congeniality. When we told her Dora Matthews was dead, she said, and I quote, ‘Good riddance. She was nothing but a piece of trash.’ ”

  “Not a nice way to talk about the person who was carrying your grandchild,” Joanna said. “And how old is Christopher Bernard?”

  “Sixteen,” Jaime answered. “Just turned. According to his mother, he got his driver’s license in April.”

  “That makes him three years older than Dora. So my question is, who was being exposed to whom?”

  “Exactly,” Jaime Carbajal said.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “First we have an appointment to go back and talk to the Dugans half an hour from now, when the husband gets home from work. After that, we’ll drop by Sierra Vista on the way home, calk to the kid who claims to hav
e seen Dora Matthews getting into a car on Sunday night. We’ll also go by Walgreens to see what we can find out there.”

  For the next several minutes, she briefed Jaime Carbajal on everything that had happened while the two detectives had been otherwise engaged. Once the call ended, Frank turned to her. “Sounds to me as though we may have found ourselves a brand-new prime suspect in the Matthews murder,” he said.

  Joanna nodded. “It could be. A sixteen-year-old prime suspect, at that,” she added grimly. “Let me ask you something, frank. What would you do if you were sixteen and your thirteen-year-old girlfriend turned up pregnant?”

  “I sure as hell wouldn’t kill her,” Prank said.

  “No,” Joanna agreed. “I know you wouldn’t, and neither would I. But from the way Jaime talked about them, I have a feel­ing Christopher Bernard and his parents live in an entirely different universe from the one you and I inhabit. I suspect they don’t believe the rules apply to them.”

  “In other words, you think Chris found out Dora was pregnant and decided to get rid of her.”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Well,” Frank said thoughtfully. “He does have a point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. Christopher Bernard is sixteen—a juvenile. Supposing he gets sent up for murder. What’s the worst that’ll happen to him?”

  Joanna shrugged. “He gets cut loose at twenty-one.”

  “Right. And the same thing goes if he’s convicted of statutory rape. He’s out and free as a bird in five years. He’ll probably have his record expunged besides. But think about what happens if his girlfriend has a baby and she can prove paternity. Then little Christopher Bernard and/or his family is stuck for eighteen years of child support, minimum. No time off for good behavior. No hiding behind the rules that apply to juvenile justice. Based on that, a murder that unloads both mother and child might sound like the best possible alternative.”

  The very thought of it sickened Joanna. “Please, Frank,” she said. “Just drive. I can’t stand to talk about this anymore. The whole thing is driving me crazy.”