Shoot Don't Shoot

by J. A. Jance

  Carol nodded. “Actually, it could mean any number of things. One of which is that Jorge had an accomplice. The most obvious possibility, however, is that we’ve arrested the wrong man.”

  “But what about all the trace evidence?” Joanna asked. “Where did that come from?”

  Detective Strong shrugged. “Either the evidence is real or it isn’t. Either we found it there because Serena was in the truck at some time or else the evidence is phony, and it was planted there to mislead us, to frame Jorge Grijalva—an innocent man—for the murder of his wife.”

  “Planted,” Joanna echoed. “Who would plant evidence? How would they know how to go about it?”

  “A trained police officer would know,” Carol Strong answered. “Here’s the recipe. You stir in some planted evidence, add in a plausible suspect, and sprinkle it liberally with public-dictated urgency for closing cases in a hurry.” She shrugged. “Add to that an ex-husband who’s willing to cop a plea, and there you go.”

  “Jorge is willing to plead because he doesn’t want to go to court,” Joanna said quietly.

  “If he didn’t kill her, why would he do that?” Carol returned.

  “Because he was afraid the prosecution would bring up Serena’s whoring around. He wanted to protect his kids from hearing about it.”

  Carol shook her head. “The defense would have brought that up, not the prosecution. It’s a hell of a lot harder to convict someone of killing a known prostitute than it is to convict them of killing a nun.”

  There was a momentary lull in the conversation. “If, as you say, the evidence was planted by a cop, do you have any idea what cop?” Joanna asked. “One of yours?”

  “Tell me what you know about Dave Thompson?” Carol said.

  “From the APOA?” Joanna winced, aware her question made her sound like some kind of dunce.

  Carol nodded. “One and the same.”

  Joanna thought for a moment before answering. “He was a cop somewhere around Phoenix….”

  “Chandler,” Carol supplied.

  “I heard a rumor that he got into some kind of hot water. That the Chandler city fathers dumped him by putting him on permanent loan to the APOA.”

  “That’s pretty much right. I talked to the new chief in Chandler just this morning, right before you showed up on campus. The case against Thompson was a domestic. Never came to trial because Thompson’s ex refused to testify. She simply took the kids and left town. This was back in the good old days when there was still a certain tolerance for cops who beat up their wives, but there was enough of a stink that they had to get rid of him.”

  “You’re saying Dave Thompson did this?”

  “Did you ever hear of Tommy Tompkins?” Carol Strong asked.

  Joanna nodded her head impatiently. Talking to Carol Strong was like being led through a maze of riddles. “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “Tommy Tompkins International. He’s the ex-TV evangelist who used to own the property the APOA now occupies, isn’t he? I heard he went to prison on some kind of tax evasion charge.”

  “Right, but what most people don’t know is that the person who brought Tommy to the attention of the IRS was a woman, one of his seminary students, who claimed Tommy had broken into her room in the middle of the night and raped her. No charges were ever filed. TTI bought her off for a lot of money, and that was what raised all the red flags. Randy revivalists are so prevalent these days that it’s become a cliché. These guys paid off so much, so fast, that the IRS auditor figured they must be hiding something. Turns out there was a whole lot more to it than just cooking the books, but I didn’t figure some of it out until tonight.”

  Joanna waited without comment while Carol Strong drew a long breath. “Did you ever wonder about the mirrored tiles on that one whole side of your room?”

  “Not particularly,” Joanna answered. “As part of a decorating scheme, I thought they were odd—a little cold.”

  “They’re odd, all right,” Carol said. “What I discovered tonight is that some of them are two-way mirrors. Mirrors on your side, windows on the other. Someone could see in, but you couldn’t see out. If you go into that little private courtyard between Dave Thompson’s apartment and the dormitory, you’ll see what looks like the door to a storage shed of some kind built into the back of the building. It’s not a storage shed at all. There’s a long, narrow passageway back there that runs the whole length of the building and dead-ends on the far side. It’s only about twenty inches wide, so it’s not recommended for claustrophobics. It’s not big on comfort, and the ventilation stinks. But from the number of cigarette butts we found in there, I’d say Dave Thompson or someone else spent a good deal of his off-hours time in there.”

  The sudden realization sickened Joanna. Of course, the cigarette smoke. Every time she had turned on the exhaust fan in her bathroom, there had been that sudden burst of smoke in the air, and now she knew why. Dave Thompson had been right there, almost in the same room, watching her.

  “That son of a bitch!” Joanna murmured. “That dirty, low-down son of a bitch.”

  “And that’s evidently how he gained entry to Leann Jessup’s room as well. There’s a hidden, half-sized access door into the closet of each of the rooms on the bottom floor. The crack at the top of the door is concealed right under the shelf. The only way to see it would be if you were down on your hands and knees on the floor.

  “An alternate light source examination revealed dirty footprints leading from Leann’s closet to the bathroom. It looks as though he came in and surprised her while she was relaxing in the hot tub. She evidently put up quite a fight. He may have hit her over the head with her hair dryer. We found pieces of shattered hair dryer all over the bathroom, including in the tub. My theory is that he knocked her senseless. He tied her up while she was out cold, and carried her out to his pickup. Do you know his truck?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a white Toyota SR Five, one of those small four-by-fours with a canopy. He tossed her into the back of it, probably planning on taking her else-where to finish the job. He left the campus with her in the back and ended up turning off Olive onto Grand. My guess is he didn’t see the northbound car coming around the curve at the underpass south of Olive. He turned right on a red light and pulled out in front of a car driven by a bunch of high-school-aged kids coming home from a party.

  “In the meantime, Leann must have come to. I believe she was trying to get out of the vehicle while it was stopped for the light. She somehow managed to open the canopy, but when the Toyota accelerated, the sudden movement pitched her out of the truck. With her hands tied behind her, there was nothing to break her fall. She landed on her head and somersaulted at least twice. Her skin looks like it was run through a cheese grater.”

  “That’s appalling!” Joanna murmured.

  Carol nodded and continued. “She came to rest directly in the front of that carload of kids. The other driver’s only seventeen. He left skid marks all over the road, but through some miracle, he managed to avoid hitting her. If he had clobbered her traveling at forty-five or so, she’d have been dead for sure. The kids stopped long enough for some of them to pile out of the backseat. Three of them stayed behind to do what they could for Leann while the driver and one of his buddies took off after the Toyota. I have to give them credit for guts if not for brains. They followed the pickup and got close enough to get a partial license before they lost him somewhere out in Sun City. The kids came back to the scene and turned the number over to the officers on the scene. They called me.”

  “Was she conscious?” Joanna asked. “Could she talk?”

  “No.”

  “If she was naked, how did you know it was Leann?” Joanna asked quietly.

  “Bee stings,”

  “Bee stings?”

  “She’s allergic to them, so allergic that she wears an I.D. bracelet that warns medics that in case of a bee sting they should administer epinephrine to prevent her from going into anaphylactic shock. Th
ere were two phone numbers on it. One was evidently the apartment where Leann used to live. That one’s been disconnected. The other one belongs to Lorelie Jessup, Leann’s mother. The ambulance transported Leann to Arrowhead Community Hospital. From there, she was airlifted to St. Joseph’s. I picked Mrs. Jessup up at home and brought her to the hospital. She’s the one who gave us the positive I.D. and told us Leann was attending the APOA.”

  “And how did you come up with the Dave Thompson connection?”

  “We found the truck. About three o’clock, one of our patrol cars found a white Toyota pickup parked in front of a flooring warehouse a few blocks north of where we found Leann and within walking distance of the APOA. I think he abandoned it there and walked back to his place.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Carol Strong shook her head. “That’s anybody’s guess. He’s not in his apartment. We got a search warrant and went through that, and we’ve also put out an APB. No luck so far.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “When was the last time you saw Leann Jessup?”

  “Lunchtime. We went up to the Roundhouse and had a hamburger. That’s when I picked up that stuff from Butch Dixon.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A sweatshirt. An ASU Sun Devil sweatshirt. Yellow and black. Jeans. Tennis shoes. Nikes, I think, and white socks.”

  There was a pause while Carol Strong scribbled a note in a notebook. “Panties?” she asked.

  “Panties. How would I know if she was wearing panties?”

  “Did you ever see her undressed?”

  “Once, in the women’s locker room after PT on Tuesday afternoon, when we were both changing.”

  “Was she wearing panties then?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “That was the other holdback,” Carol Strong said gravely. “We found the clothing Serena Grijalva was wearing when she left the bar that night—everything but a pair of panties. I talked to Cecelia, her daughter. She told me that her mother always wore panties.”

  “I don’t see—” Joanna began, but Carol Strong cut her off in mid-sentence.

  “We found the clothes you mentioned in the bathroom. A sweatshirt, jeans, bra, tennies, socks. Everything was there except panties. There was a dirty clothes bag spilled on the floor of her closet. We found three sets of clothing in there, including three pairs of panties. If she wore a clean set of underwear every day, that means one pair is missing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Carol shook her head. “If Dave Thompson is the one who did it, what happened to Leann Jessup is my fault.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Thompson was one of the people at the Roundhouse the night Serena Grijalva was murdered.”

  “He was?”

  Carol nodded. “His name turned up when we questioned the bartender there. I don’t know Thompson personally. When I transferred back here from California, I did my probation duty, and that was it. I didn’t have to sit through any classes. But half the Peoria force came through Dave Thompson’s program at the APOA. When his name turned up, I didn’t see any connection or any reason to consider him a suspect. Now I can see that I should have. It looks as though Dave Thompson is a very troubled and dangerous man. How did he strike you?”

  “As an unreconstituted male chauvinist pig,” Joanna replied. “Leann and I were the only women in the class. He didn’t like having us there, and he made sure we knew it.”

  “You mean he was hostile? He picked on you?”

  “That’s how it seemed.”

  “Did he focus on Leann in particular?”

  Joanna thought about that for a moment; then she shook her head. “No. It felt to me as though he was on my case far more than he was on hers, but that could have been an erroneous perception on my part. Leann was a lot more scared of him than I was. If she failed the course, her job was on the line. I’m an elected official. If I flunk, it might make for bad PR, but passing or failing the APOA class doesn’t make that much difference to me.”

  “Did he make any off-color suggestions to either one of you?”

  “As in sex for grades? No, none of that. Certainly not to me. If he made that kind of an offer to Leann, she never mentioned it to me.”

  “Did he threaten either one of you in any way?”

  “No, but I know Leann was worried about keeping up. After we attended the vigil on Tuesday, she was worried about falling behind in her reading. That was one of the reasons she didn’t come along with me to the hotel on Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Vigil?” Carol Strong asked. “What vigil?”

  “The one sponsored by MAVEN down by the capitol. The one for the domestic violence victims. I went because of Serena Grijalva.”

  “And Leann went along with you?”

  “Not exactly. We went together. She had her own reasons for going. She was the officer who took the missing persons report on the ASU professor’s wife—ex-wife. I can’t remember her name, but they found her body up by Carefree on Monday.”

  Carol Strong nodded. “I know which one you mean.”

  “It hit Leann hard for some reason. Maybe it was too close to what happened to her own mother. Evidently, there was some problem with domestic violence in Leann’s family as well. Anyway, we went, and then we both ended up on TV. A female reporter was there. She spotted me and did an on-the-spot interview. When the reporter discovered Leann was a cop, too, she interviewed her as well. Leann’s mother taped the news broadcast. I have a copy if you’d like to see it.”

  “Eventually,” Carol said.

  The question-and-answer process continued for some time after that. Finally, Carol Strong sighed and looked at her watch.

  “No wonder I’m tired. It’s eleven o’clock—six hours after my usual bedtime, and I’m due in at six tonight. Will you be at the Hohokam all weekend if I need to get back to you?”

  “Until Sunday.”

  “I’ll call you there if I need to ask you anything else. Do you mind if I make a copy of what Butch Dixon wrote for you? It’s not that different from what he told me to begin with, but considering what’s happened, I’d better take a look at everything related to Serena Grijalva’s case and try to see what, if anything, I missed the first time through.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll go disconnect Jenny from the VCR.”

  Joanna had lost all track of time and was surprised by how much time had passed. When she went into the training room, she was surprised to hear her own voice coming from the VCR. Jenny was watching the tape.

  “I just saw Ceci on TV,” Jenny said. “She looked real sad.”

  “She was sad, but why are you watching that? I thought you were going to watch E.T.”

  “I did. It’s over already. You were gone a long time.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re done now. Come on.”

  Jenny expertly ejected the tape from the machine and put it back into the box. “Do you think Ceci got to see herself?”

  “I don’t know,” Joanna answered. “You can ask her tomorrow. If not, maybe you can show her the tape.”

  Carol Strong met them in the hallway, handed Joanna back her papers, and then showed them out of the building. “That lady isn’t very big to be a detective, is she?” Jenny asked. “With her shoes off, she’s not much bigger than me.”

  “Than I,” Joanna corrected. “Am tall is understood. You wouldn’t say me am tall. But detectives use their brains a whole lot more than their muscles.”

  “Well, she seems nice,” Jenny said, as they walked down the sidewalk toward the Blazer.

  “She does to me, too,” Joanna replied.

  But if Jorge Grijalva was innocent of killing Serena, Joanna could see why, tiny or not, he might think of Detective Carol Strong as a witch.

  As they left the city parking lot, something was bothering Joanna. She couldn’t remember seeing Leann Jessup’s Ford Fiesta in the parking lot. It was possible that it had been there, parked invisibly among the co
llection of police vehicles. Just to make sure, Joanna took a detour past the APOA campus. Except for a single patrol car stationed near the gate, the parking lot was completely deserted. Joanna got out of her car long enough to speak to the uniformed officer.

  “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady,” Joanna introduced herself, flipping out both her badge and I.D. “I’m working with Detective Strong on this case. Can you tell me if there was a bright red Ford Fiesta here this morning when officers first arrived? I’m wondering if it’s missing or if maybe someone ordered it impounded.”

  The patrol officer spent several minutes checking back and forth by radio before he finally came up negative.

  “You might have Detective Strong add that to her APB on Dave Thompson. The vehicle is probably registered in Leann Jessup’s name. If he’s missing and the car is, too, chances are pretty good that they’ll turn up together.”

  Again the officer returned to his radio. “Dispatch says Detective Strong’s gone home to get some sleep. Do you want them to wake her up to give her the message, or should they let her sleep?”

  “Tell them they can give it to her after she wakes up.”

  Joanna returned to her Blazer. “What are we going to do now?” Jenny asked. “I still haven’t been swimming.”

  “We have one more stop,” Joanna said. “I want to drop by the hospital just long enough to say hello and to find out how Leann is.”

  “Do we have to?” Jenny whined.

  “Yes,” Joanna answered.

  Something in her mother’s voice warned Jenny not to argue. The child sat back in the passenger seat and crossed her arms. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “But I hope it doesn’t take too long.”

  19

  Shadowed by Jenny, Joanna wandered around the corridors of St. Joseph’s Hospital for some time before she finally located the proper waiting room. There were only two other people in the room when they entered. A woman sat on a couch, weeping quietly into a hanky. A grim-faced man in his late twenties stood nearby. Both people looked up anxiously when the door opened. Seeing a woman and a child, they both looked away.