Downfall

by J. A. Jance

  “No,” Travis declared. “That’s not true. It can’t be true.”

  “Unfortunately, it is,” Joanna insisted. “It turns out you’re only one of a long string of what older people might refer to as Susan Nelson’s ‘boy toys.’ She was playing with you, Travis. She was never as serious about you as you were about her.”

  “There were others?” he asked faintly. “Really?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “I can’t believe it,” Travis said, shaking his head. At which point he buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. Allison’s need to comfort her son finally overrode her disapproval of what he’d done. Rising from her chair, she hurried over to Travis and held him close, while a stony-eyed Jeremy stayed where he was, staring at them.

  “So did you kill Susan Nelson?” Joanna asked when Travis finally quieted.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I loved her.”

  “But you don’t have an alibi,” Joanna pointed out. “Let me ask you this. Do you happen to own a blue-and-white hoodie?”

  “Of course,” Travis answered at once. “Almost everyone at school has one of those.”

  “Where’s yours?” Joanna asked.

  “In my bedroom.”

  “Would you mind getting it for me?”

  “Look,” Jeremy interjected. “I think this has gone far enough. If you want to ask him anything else, Sheriff Brady, we’re going to have to insist on having an attorney present. And if you want his sweatshirt, we should probably see a warrant.”

  “Of course,” Joanna agreed, but by then Travis had already sprung to his feet.

  “No, Dad,” he said. “I didn’t do this. If there’s a chance my hoodie will help clear my name, I want Sheriff Brady to have it.”

  He hurried out of the room, returning empty-handed a moment or so later with a puzzled expression on his face. “It’s not there,” he said. “I must have left it at school. It’s probably in my locker. Sorry.”

  Except it wasn’t in his locker. Joanna already knew that for sure.

  “There’s one other thing you can do to help us,” Joanna said, reaching into her purse and extracting an evidence bag already stocked with a cheek swab. “The fact that Susan had sexual relations with a number of people besides you has given us a whole list of suspects that we’ll need to eliminate. And with the baby involved, we need to establish paternity.”

  “But I’m the father,” Travis insisted. “I already told you that.”

  “We’ll need a cheek swab to prove it,” Joanna said.

  “A cheek swab?” Jeremy objected angrily, his eyes as hard as ever. “No way! I already told you, Sheriff Brady, if you want anything more from Travis, we’ll need to see a warrant.”

  “No, Dad, they don’t need a warrant,” Travis declared, speaking for himself and reaching for the proffered evidence bag at the same time. “I’ll be glad to do a cheek swab. The baby’s mine, and I want to prove it. As for murdering Susan? I didn’t do it, and I’ll be glad to take a lie detector test to prove that, too. I intend to clear my name.”

  Jeremy sat with his arms crossed looking on in what appeared to be cold fury as Travis removed the swab from the baggie and ran it across the inside of his cheek. Finished, he returned the swab to the bag and handed it back to Joanna.

  “Thank you,” she said, slipping it into her purse. “Detective Waters and I will be going now. But for the record, Travis, are you right- or left-handed?”

  “Right,” he said, immediately raising his right hand in the air. “Why?”

  “Just wondering,” Joanna said.

  When they let themselves out onto the front porch, Joanna was surprised to find that Travis had followed them. “I’m glad you told my parents about this,” he said quietly as the front door closed behind them. “I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t figure out what to say. Now how do I go back inside and face them?”

  “You have to understand that what Susan Nelson did to you and the others was utterly reprehensible,” Joanna told him. “You’re a juvenile. That means she was a pedophile and that makes you a victim of a crime called statutory rape. Recovering from something like this is never easy, and the only way to do it is to bring the whole mess out into the open. Keeping secrets is far harder on all concerned than letting them go. Your parents love you, Travis. Trust them. They only want what’s best for you.”

  After a moment, Travis nodded. “I guess,” he said, looking and sounding unconvinced. “But tell me about the baby. Susan never told me what it was. She said it was too soon to tell. Was it a boy or a girl?”

  Under normal circumstances it might have been too soon to tell, Joanna thought, but an autopsy table was a lot different from a visit to your local OB/GYN.

  “A boy,” Joanna answered. A wave of incredible grief washed across Travis’s face—grief for an unborn child he would never have a chance to care for or hold or love. DNA had not yet confirmed the question of paternity, but Travis’s grief was real enough. Joanna reached out and gave the boy a quick hug. Under the circumstances, that single hug didn’t seem like nearly enough, but it was the best she could do.

  As she and Detective Waters drove away from the house, Joanna watched in the rearview mirror. When they turned the corner, the devastated figure of Travis still stood, as if frozen solid, on the front porch. Joanna understood his delay. As long as he remained outside, he could put off facing his father’s wrath.

  Joanna glanced over at Ian Waters, realizing suddenly that he had said not one word during the course of the interview. “You’ve been very quiet,” she said. “Why didn’t you speak up?”

  “Because you were handling it so well, and I didn’t see how a contribution from me would make the situation any better,” he replied. “But tell me. How many more interviews like this are we going to have to do?”

  “Maybe as many as fifteen or so,” Joanna told him, “and those are just the ones with the paper trail. There may well be more.”

  “Great,” Ian muttered. “Is there a chance I can get Chief Montoya to pull me off the case before we have to do the next one?”

  “No way,” Joanna told him. “You’re in this for the full-meal deal.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s only two thirty, which means there’s probably enough time to do another one before we call it a day. In fact, I already have someone in mind.”

  “Awesome,” Ian muttered.

  Ignoring him, Joanna reached for her radio and called Larry. “I need someone to look in the murder book. Go through the SVSSE interviews from yesterday and find the contact information for Kevin Thomas and for his mother, Colonel Karenna Thomas. Text me their collection of phone numbers as soon as you can.”

  “Who’s Kevin Thomas?” Ian asked once the radio transmission ended.

  “Up until this morning, he was my confidential informant.”

  “What changed?”

  “Remember all those handwritten messages I told you we found hidden in Susan Nelson’s linen drawer? One of them was signed by someone named ‘Kev,’ who could very well be Kevin Thomas.”

  “So we need to tell his mother and probably get another swab?” Ian grumbled.

  “That’s right,” Joanna said. “Come to think of it, I have a deal you’re not going to be able to refuse. If you’ll take Travis Stock’s DNA sample to the crime lab in Tucson and then write up the Stock interview, I’ll let you off the hook and handle the Thomas interview on my own.”

  “You’re right,” Ian said, sounding relieved. “If you’re giving me a choice of writing up a report or putting another family through hell, that’s a deal I can’t refuse.”

  CHAPTER 27

  JOANNA DROVE STRAIGHT BACK TO SIERRA VISTA PD. IAN IMMEDIATELY disappeared to do her bidding and write up the report, while she was ushered into Frank Montoya’s private office. “How did it go?” he asked.

  “Not fun,” Joanna said. “Not at all. Jeremy and Allison are heartbroken, of course, and so is Travis. I don’t think he had any ide
a there were other boys involved. Despite what we told him, he’s still clinging to the belief that he was Susan Nelson’s one true love. He’s really broken up about losing her and about losing the baby, too. I think he genuinely wanted to be a part of the child’s life.”

  A text came in just then, giving her a listing of Colonel Thomas’s phone numbers. “I’m going to need to make a call,” she said.

  “To arrange the next interview?” Frank asked.

  Joanna nodded. “Would you mind if I did it here?”

  “No problem,” Frank said. “Make yourself at home. I’ll give you some privacy and find somewhere else to hang out for the next little while.” With that, Chief Montoya got up from behind his desk and left the room while Joanna punched in the number listed as Colonel Thomas’s office number. The secretary who answered the call immediately put it through.

  “Colonel Thomas,” Karenna said.

  “Sheriff Brady here,” Joanna replied. “Something has come up, and I’d really like to speak to you this afternoon if it’s at all possible.”

  “You want to speak to me or to Kevin?” Colonel Thomas asked.

  “To you,” Joanna answered. “Preferably without Kevin.”

  “I thought we’d already put this matter to rest,” Colonel Thomas objected. “As I told you yesterday, Kevin was with me on Saturday—all day Saturday. He couldn’t possibly have been involved in what happened to those two women.”

  “This isn’t about the homicides,” Joanna said quickly. “Some other information has come to light, and I’d like to discuss it with you outside your son’s presence.”

  “I’m working now. Is this really necessary?”

  “Yes, it is. What we’ve learned may well jeopardize your son’s position as a confidential informant. I want you to be fully aware of the situation before anyone speaks to Kevin again.”

  “This sounds serious.”

  “It is serious,” Joanna insisted. “Very.”

  “Well, all right,” Colonel Thomas said in grudging agreement. “Since it’s such a hassle for civilians to get on post, it would probably be easiest if I met you somewhere else. Where are you?”

  “I’m currently at the Sierra Vista Police Department. When you get here, ask to be shown into Chief Montoya’s office. That’s where I’ll be.”

  Left to her own devices, Joanna dialed Casey’s number first. “Thanks for tracking down that information for me. Now I need something else. Could you please sort through the scans from the linen-drawer papers and text me a copy of the one signed by Kev?”

  “Sure,” Casey said. “No trouble. Just let me find it. Okay, here it is. Sending now.”

  Seconds later, Joanna heard a satisfying ding as an incoming message arrived on her phone.

  “Anything else happening there at the moment?” Joanna asked.

  “Lots,” Casey replied. “We’re making progress. After getting your message, Detective Howell seems to have hit the arsenic jackpot up at Sun Sites. First she found a paperback copy of The Poisoner’s Handbook hidden under the mattress in Katherine Hopkins’s bedroom. She must have bought the book from a used-book store. Amazon sells the mass-market edition for more than twelve bucks. Inside this copy there’s a penciled notation of one dollar. I’m guessing we’ll be able to lift Kay’s fingerprints from the chapter devoted to arsenic. As soon as Deb found a partially used four-pound container of rat poison under the kitchen sink, she thought she was home free.”

  “Thought she was home free but wasn’t?” Joanna asked.

  “Exactly. Arsenic used to be called ‘inheritance powder’ because it was so readily available back in the old days. That’s also one of the primary reasons it isn’t easy to come by anymore. I’ve spent the day checking with legitimate purveyors of the stuff to no good effect. None of them can locate any sign of purchases made by Katherine Hopkins of Sun Sites, Arizona. As for current rat poisons? These days most of them are made with warfarin rather than arsenic.”

  “Warfarin?” Joanna asked. “Wait a minute. Isn’t that a medicine of some kind? I believe my mother was on that for a time after she had a blood clot in her leg.”

  “Right,” Casey answered. “It’s a blood thinner. The idea is the rats eat the bait and then crawl off somewhere else. When their blood gets thin enough, they die. Turns out that’s the kind of rat poison Deb found under the sink—one that’s warfarin-based rather than arsenic-based.”

  “So we’re nowhere, then?”

  “Not really,” Casey said. “Wait for it. This gets better. Deb said that when she showed up with the search warrant, the Hopkins place turned out to be a seventy-foot double-wide mobile home stocked to overflowing with antiques—hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. She said it could have qualified as an antiques mall all by itself, with junk piled floor to ceiling: old clocks and radios; appliances; old containers of every kind—baking soda, soup cans, soda cans. In an in-home office, she found records that told her that’s exactly what Hal and Kay Hopkins have been doing ever since they arrived in Sun Sites—running a thriving antiques business out of their home. Incidentally, while Deb was searching the office, she came across several small insurance policies. They only total about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but still, if your home is paid for, that much money could amount to quite a windfall—and Katherine is named as the sole beneficiary for all of them.”

  “When it comes to catching killers and finding motive,” Joanna said, “it’s always good to have a life insurance component in our corner.”

  “Right,” Casey agreed. “So anyway, Deb and I were on the phone. I was in the process of giving her the bad news about the rat bait in the kitchen when she saw it right there in the living room. She was standing in front of one of those glass-fronted antique étagères. The shelves were full of all kinds of old-timey medicine bottles—Hadacol, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing, you name it.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Joanna objected. “Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing isn’t old. I buy it at Safeway. In fact, I keep a bottle of it in the laundry room at all times. It’s great for scorpion stings.”

  “According to Deb, the bottles in the cabinet all came from a very long time ago rather than something you’d purchase recently at your local Safeway. At any rate, she was standing there studying the living room shelves when she noticed a tin canister up on the very top shelf—a red canister with three white skulls and crossbones painted on the sides. When she got it down, the top said ‘Rat Rid: the Farmer’s Friend.’”

  “You’re kidding,” Joanna said. “An antique canister with arsenic still inside?”

  “You betcha. Deb estimates there’s about a pound or so of a powdery substance stored inside a Tupperware container.”

  “I doubt the Tupperware was part of the original storage plan,” Joanna said.

  “Probably not,” Casey agreed. “Deb used her patrol car’s chemkit to test the powder. Turns out it’s arsenic all right—showed up yellow on her test strip. It’s most likely not pure arsenic. The powder probably contains a filler of some kind—cornmeal or flour, maybe—something to attract the rats’ attention in the first place.”

  “No wonder Katherine Hopkins’s name didn’t show up among the lists of legitimate purchasers from one of the current arsenic sources,” Joanna said. “She probably picked the canister up at a yard sale or an estate sale where the person selling it had no idea there was anything left inside. From where I sit, Kay was ready to be done with an ornery husband—and she had both means and opportunity. I’m guessing she tried using the arsenic—enough to put Hal in the hospital but not enough to kill him outright. So she gave up on that and whacked him with the golf club instead. The use of arsenic shows premeditation on her part. That should be good enough for murder in the second degree at least—maybe even first.”

  “You’d think so,” Casey said, “but we have a slight problem with that.”

  “What problem?”

  “According to Detective Howell, Kay�
��s attorney has already reached out to the county attorney, asking for a plea deal.”

  “What kind of plea deal?” Joanna asked.

  “Manslaughter.”

  “That’s all?” Joanna demanded. “Shouldn’t she also be facing additional charges of attempted murder?”

  “That’s what would happen if it was up to you or me,” Casey answered. “Unfortunately, Arlee Jones gets to call this shot.”

  Arlee Jones was the local county attorney, and most of the time he and Joanna weren’t necessarily in agreement. Arlee was a wheeler-dealer who was big on plea deals that sidestepped long-drawn-out courtroom proceedings. He liked getting results in a hurry rather than going to all the time, trouble, and effort of actually trying cases. Joanna knew at once that Casey was right. Arlee would be more than happy to take Katherine Hopkins’s partial confession at face value because a simple manslaughter plea would get her off his docket with no muss or fuss.

  “I’ll call him as soon as we’re off the phone,” Joanna said. “Anything new on the Nelson case?”

  “We’ve tentatively identified a couple of the linen-drawer boys,” Casey said. “The Double C’s are in the process of tracking down and speaking to the boys’ parents. I told Ernie that you’d already handled the Stocks and would most likely take care of Colonel Thomas.”

  “All right, then, I’d better move on to Mr. Jones.”

  “Good luck with that,” Casey said, “but I’m not holding my breath.”

  CHAPTER 28

  WHEN JOANNA CALLED, ARLEE JONES WAS NOT THE LEAST BIT happy to hear from her. “I suppose this is all about the Sun Sites case,” he grumbled. “Detective Howell has been in touch asking me to hold off on offering any kind of plea deal, but I don’t see why I should. Supposedly, Detective Howell found some kind of rat poison in the Hopkinses’ home, but that’s hardly a crime. I happen to have rat poison in my home, too. The damned rats keep getting into the garage and eating everything in sight, including the wiring on my Porsche. It’s evidently wrapped in some kind of vegetable-based plastic. Were you aware that’s how they make some plastics these days? I’m sure it’s all part of this newfangled all-things-green kind of thing. As far as I’m concerned, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”