Fire and Ice jpb-19

by J. A. Jance

  Big Al held it up and looked at it as if he weren’t sure what it was. “This old thing? Hopefully I won’t have to use it much longer. I kept griping to Molly about how much my knees hurt. She asked me if I was going to complain about it all my life or have them fixed. Now I’ve got two bionic knees. This is the second one. No telling what Homeland Security will say the next time I try to get on a plane.” With that he turned and limped back into their cozy living room. “Come on in,” he said to me. “Mol, do you mind getting us some coffee?”

  Molly left without a word. Big Al took a seat in an easy chair with tall arms and then set his cane down next to him, carefully making sure it was within easy reach. “So what’s this all about?” he asked. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “You know I’ve gone to work for S.H.I.T.?” I asked.

  Big Al nodded. “For the Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. I heard you’re working with that wild and crazy guy from up in Bellingham. What’s his name again?”

  “Harry I. Ball,” I said.

  “That’s right. Good old Harry. People used to complain about him…”

  “They still do,” I said with a smile.

  “…but as far as I could tell, he always struck me as a pretty squared-away guy.”

  “He is,” I said.

  Big Al straightened in his chair. “It’s been a long time, Beau,” he said. “So what’s up? What brings you here?”

  It was a fair question that deserved a fair answer.

  “Tom Wojeck,” I said. “I seem to remember the two of you were partners at one time. What can you tell me about him?”

  “You mean to tell me he’s still alive?” Big Al asked, looking surprised. “I thought he died a long time ago.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s still around. As a matter of fact, I saw him just last night. He seems to have done very well for himself. Lives in a mansion out by Black Diamond with a woman named Mama Rose Brotsky.”

  Molly came into the room carrying two mugs of coffee. “Who’s still around?” she asked.

  “Tommy,” Big Al told her. “Tommy Wojeck.”

  “And he’s got a girlfriend?” Molly asked. “That figures.”

  Molly Lindstrom’s disapproval was obvious, but I had to ask. “What do you mean?”

  “He was married at one time,” she said, “but that never kept him from fooling around.”

  Big Al nodded. “Tommy liked to walk the wild side.”

  “I’ll say,” Molly agreed. “Believe you me, he didn’t do that poor wife of his any favors.” With that, she turned on her heel and left the room.

  “How so?” I asked.

  Big Al sighed. “He got himself involved with a gentlemen’s club down in Tacoma.”

  “You mean a strip club?”

  “Yes. That’s what it was really. Word about Tommy’s extracurricular activities got back to the department up here. Internal Affairs was gearing up to do an investigation, but he quit before they had a chance. Not quit exactly. In the middle of all that, he got sick. The powers that be decided they’d be better off medically retiring him rather than putting on a dog-and-pony show and airing all that departmental dirty laundry in public. So they sent Tommy down the road with a one-hundred-percent disability. No muss, no fuss. Besides, they all probably thought he’d be dead and gone within a matter of months. But then he fooled them,” Big Al added with a shrug. “When he didn’t die on schedule the way he was supposed to, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it.”

  I thought about the man I had seen in Black Diamond the night before. He hadn’t looked like someone who needed to be on one-hundred-percent disability.

  “That’s medical science for you,” Big Al continued. “What they did to fix my knees wasn’t remotely possible not all that long ago. It’s the same thing with AIDS. People still come down with it, I’m sure, but not as many are dying of it now as there were when it first showed up back in the eighties. Or maybe they’re just not dying as fast-at least not in this country.”

  “You’re telling me Tom Wojeck has AIDS?”

  “Sure,” Big Al said. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “No,” I said. “I had no idea.”

  But I did now.

  When it came time to leave Big Al’s house a little while later, he walked me as far as the door. On a table in the front entry sat a framed photo of a handsome young black man. The suit and tie meant it was probably a senior photo. Big Al caught me studying it.

  “That’s Benjy,” he said in answer to my unasked question. “His daddy would be so proud of him. He’s going to Gonzaga in the fall on a full basketball scholarship.”

  I felt a lump in my throat, remembering a very different little boy, in the aftermath of a horrific home invasion that had left the rest of his family dead. I could still picture him in the pulsing lights of emergency vehicles, clutching a Teddy Bear Patrol teddy bear. That plush bear had been his only source of comfort on what was and would always be the worst night of his life. I was thrilled to know that he was all right now; that he had grown up and was moving forward.

  “I’m glad he stays in touch,” I said.

  Big Al nodded. “Me, too,” he said.

  As I headed south on I-5, some things about Tom Wojeck that hadn’t been clear to me before made sense now. I suspected that Mama Rose Brotsky had used her lottery megamillion windfall to keep herself alive and to keep Tom Wojeck alive as well. They were probably both walking medical miracles. But they were also both connected to a murder victim who had died while pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Tom Wojeck had told us he had cleaned out Marina Aguirre’s apartment. I had a feeling there might be a few telling details that he had left out of that story, however, and I wanted to find out what they were.

  After being out of the office for a day and a half, Joanna was behind the eight ball when it came to paperwork. Shuffling through it to get an idea of what was lurking there, she came across Lester Attwood’s preliminary autopsy report. She scanned through it and learned that the victim’s body had shown signs of multiple contusions and abrasions as well as numerous broken bones, all of which were consistent with having been struck several times by several different moving vehicles. None of those were fatal wounds. What had actually killed him was being left facedown and unconscious in the sand. Cause of death was suffocation.

  When Joanna reached the line with Dr. Machett’s florid signature, she picked up her phone. The M.E. answered, but he wasn’t happy to hear from her. “I can’t believe how much damage that crazy old battle-ax did to the van when she pulled me out of the sand. It’s at least a thousand bucks’ worth of body work.”

  And you think that’s my fault? Joanna thought. That’s what you get for not waiting for a regular tow truck!

  “Sorry to hear it,” she said, hoping she sounded more sympathetic than she felt. She went on to give Guy Machett an overview of the problems at the Caring Friends facility, ending with the fact that the body of another possible victim might need to be exhumed.

  “Why wasn’t an autopsy done at the time?” Machett wanted to know. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, you know.”

  Joanna ignored the man’s condescending sarcasm. “From what Detective Howell told me,” she said, “the woman was supposedly under a doctor’s care at the time she died. Family members were informed that, since she had died of natural causes, if they wanted an autopsy it would have to be done at their expense. They couldn’t afford it. Now that there’s a possibility of wrongdoing on the caregiver’s part, however, all bets are off.”

  “All right,” Machett agreed reluctantly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good,” Joanna said. “We’ll put Detective Howell in charge of this case since she’s already had some interaction with the family. I’ll have her contact you to work out the details-necessary court orders and so forth. In the meantime, Detective Carbajal will be doing some of the Caring Friends interviewing and helping Ernie Ca
rpenter with the Attwood homicide.”

  Joanna knew that at that very moment Ernie was on his way to interview Lester Attwood’s former girlfriend in Benson. While Jaime awaited the arrival of the backup security tape from Action Trail Adventures, he was hoping to interview Alma DeLong and Sylvia Cameron, who, as far as Joanna knew, were still being held in the Cochise County Jail.

  With only three detectives in her department, dealing with two cases at once meant that her investigative unit was acting at full capacity. And so was she. Once she finished with the phone call to Machett, she turned to her daily deluge of paperwork.

  During her years as sheriff, Joanna had learned to love the investigative part of the work-bringing down bad guys and putting them away. The administrative part of the job? Not so much.

  An hour later, she had pretty much cleared the decks when, with a tap on her door, Jaime let himself into her office.

  “We’ve got the backup file from the security company at Action Trails,” he said. “I loaded it onto a disc. Want to take a look?”

  “Sure,” Joanna said. “Let’s see it.”

  He popped the disc into Joanna’s computer. Several moments later, her screen came to life with a series of ghostly nighttime images. Clearly the security camera was set to record only when there was activity in its field of focus. While Joanna watched, three vehicles came through the gate and past the camera. Two were 4-by-4 trucks with ATVs loaded in the back. The third was a hulking van of some kind. All three vehicles came through the gate one after the other, starting at 12:58 A.M., according to the time stamp in the corner of the screen. Immediately after they entered the property, the gate closed. The vehicles turned to the right and drove off past the point where Joanna had parked her Crown Victoria when Ernie had given her a ride out to the crime scene.

  On the recording the next scene appeared immediately, but the time stamp said 1:10 A.M. In this scene the gate was still closed. Instead, an ATV erupted from somewhere offscreen-most likely from somewhere near Lester Attwood’s trailer. The vehicle crossed the camera’s limited line of vision and then disappeared.

  “Is that Lester Attwood’s ATV?” Joanna asked.

  Jaime nodded. “That’s what Mr. Savage said-that the one on the screen now belongs to our victim. The way I see it, the three vehicles arrive from outside about one A.M. and enter the property. A few minutes later, Mr. Attwood goes rushing off in the same direction. Now watch this.”

  Joanna stared at the screen. A pair of headlights pulled into the camera’s field of focus and stopped. A door opened. A shadowy figure emerged from the vehicle and quickly walked out of the frame. A moment later, Joanna’s screen went blank and returned to her desktop directory.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “That’s when they wrecked the camera?”

  Jaime nodded again.

  “So the people in the three arriving vehicles were up to no good and wanted to destroy the evidence,” Joanna said thoughtfully.

  “That’s how it looks to me.”

  “Can we go back and replay the videos slowly enough to get license plate numbers?”

  “Not from this,” Jaime said. “The resolution isn’t good enough. In order to do that, we’ll have to enhance what’s here. We can try. It probably won’t be easy because we don’t have the right equipment. I’ve got a call into the Department of Public Safety crime lab up in Tucson to see if they can help.”

  “If you were going to get a security camera, doesn’t it stand to reason that you’d get one where the resolution would actually tell you what you need to know?” Joanna asked.

  Jaime shrugged. “There’s that old saying: You can have good, cheap, or quick. Pick any two. I’m guessing the Savage brothers opted for cheap and quick.”

  “Let’s hope the DPS video guys can ride to the rescue on this,” Joanna said as she removed the disc from her computer and handed it back to Jaime. “And what about Alma DeLong? Did you talk to her?”

  Jaime shook his head. “Nope. She lawyered up. I’m guessing, when she goes before the judge, he’ll let her post bail on the assault charge.”

  “That’s probably just as well,” Joanna said. “We can leave her on the loose until we have a better idea about whether we can charge her with anything else. What about the patients?” Joanna added. “How are they?”

  “The two in the hospital at Sierra Vista and the one in Bisbee are all in satisfactory condition. Philippa Brinson has been released. The patient who was transported to Tucson is in the ICU at Tucson Medical Center. She’s listed as critical and may not make it.”

  “What about the nurse?”

  “She’s still in the jail. This is her third DUI in as many years. She’s asking for a public defender.”

  On the one hand, Jaime was just giving her information, but there was something in his guarded tone that warned Joanna something was wrong-something that had nothing to do with what had happened at Caring Friends or at Action Trail Adventures.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  Rubbing his forehead with one hand, Jaime sank back into his chair. For a long moment after that, he stared out the window, disconsolately examining the limestone cliffs that crowned the steep hillsides behind the Cochise County Justice Center.

  “What?” Joanna asked again. Then she remembered the previous day’s difficulty with Jaime’s nephew. “Is this about Luis?”

  Jaime nodded. “I went to the high school late yesterday afternoon and spoke to the principal.”

  “Debra Highsmith isn’t one of my favorites,” Joanna said.

  “Mine, either,” Jaime said. “But she came through this time. The office keeps a comprehensive list of all the padlocks on the lockers-a list of who has which locker and what the combination is. The students and the parents sign a contract at the beginning of the year. If the lock on any given locker isn’t on the official list or on the right locker, the administration has the right to cut it off.”

  “You’re saying you went through Luis’s locker?” Joanna asked.

  Jaime nodded bleakly, and Joanna’s heart sank. She knew a lot of bad stuff had a way of turning up in high school lockers these days, everything from illicit drugs to illicit weapons.

  “I take it you found something?”

  “It’s a letter,” Jaime said. “A letter Luis wrote to his father in prison, asking if he knew where his mother was.”

  “That’s hardly surprising,” Joanna said. “In fact, under the circumstances, I’d be surprised if he didn’t try to find her. Luis could have had lots worse things in his locker.”

  “The letter hadn’t been opened until I opened it,” Jaime continued. “Someone at the prison had sent the envelope back to Luis with the word D-E-C-E-A-S-E-D written across the address in big red letters.”

  Joanna was appalled. “Luis’s father is dead and that’s how the poor kid found out about it?”

  Jaime nodded. “Whoever crossed out the address had no idea who Luis was. The return address is to a PO box in Bisbee-a PO box Luis rented in his mother’s name and without my knowledge, by the way. He evidently forged his mother’s name to make it work, and he was using the address to try to find her-to find Marcella. I guess he didn’t want Delcia and me to know what he was up to.”

  “How long ago did the letter come?”

  “A month ago,” Jaime said. “Which is about the time things started going downhill with him at school. Before that he had been doing fine. After this came, he fell apart.”

  “And when did his father die?” Joanna asked. “Were you able to find that out?”

  “I called California first thing this morning and spoke to the warden’s office,” Jaime said. “Marco Andrade died the last week in October. On October 31. Someone shanked him in the shower. According to the corrections officer I spoke to, they have no idea who’s responsible. It was a medium security facility with more drug dealers than anything else.”

  “Why wasn’t Luis notified?” Joanna asked.


  “That’s what I wanted to know as well,” Jaime said. “Marcella is listed on Marco’s prison records as his next of kin, but the address he gave was her old one. When she and Luis moved down here from Tucson, she didn’t tell anyone where she was going and she didn’t leave a forwarding address, either.”

  “Because she didn’t want to be found,” Joanna added.

  Jaime nodded. “Because she and Marco had evidently ripped off money from one of their fellow drug dealers or maybe from one of their drug suppliers. I don’t know which. At any rate, according to the warden’s office, they did attempt to notify the family about Marco’s death.”

  “But they didn’t try very hard,” Joanna added.

  “Exactly,” Jaime agreed. “But if whoever did this was able to get to Marco inside the walls of the prison, what if they decide to come after Luis? Any bad guy who gets a look at Marcella’s missing persons report will know everything he needs to know. If she was reported missing from here, this is the logical place to find her son. Bisbee’s a small town. If somebody comes here looking for Luis, they won’t have much trouble finding him.”

  “In hopes he might still have the missing money,” Joanna said.

  Jaime nodded again.

  “Did you tell the warden’s office that Luis is your nephew?”

  “I didn’t even mention Luis,” Jaime replied.

  “I seem to remember your telling me about one of Marco’s drug-dealing pals in particular…” Joanna began.

  “That’s right,” Jaime said. “His name is Juan Francisco Castro. His street name is Paco. He used to live in Tucson and was a minor player for the Cervantes gang out of Cananea. Supposedly he’s the one Marco and Marcella ripped off.”

  “Where’s Paco now?” Joanna asked.

  “He seems to have disappeared. I have some pals inside Tucson PD, and I’ve made some discreet inquiries. No one seems to have any idea where Paco is at the moment. For all I know, he could be dead or he may have gone back to Mexico.”

  “Is there a chance he landed in the same prison where Marco died?” Joanna asked.

  Jaime shook his head. “Nope. I already asked. That would have been too easy.” For several long moments they sat in silence. Finally Jaime continued. “So what do I do about Luis?” he asked glumly. “How do I handle this?”