Judgment Call (34 page)

“There may not be any streets above OK Street,” Eleanor corrected, “but there are houses, and that's what these are—refurbished miners' shacks that are accessible by stairs only. The rates at Miner's Camp are dirt cheap for that very reason. If you're lugging your own suitcase up B Hill to get to your room, the higher you go, the more affordable the rate.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Joanna said, taking the paper. “Now, can you make me a copy of this?”

“I've got things to do,” Eleanor said. “You'll have to do that yourself. The copy machine is over by the window.”

It took what seemed like a very long time for the ancient copy machine to come on and spit out a copy of the roster. Once it had, Joanna hurried to the door of the school as Deb Howell pulled up outside in her Tahoe.

“Where to?” Deb asked as Joanna climbed into the patrol car and fastened her seat belt.

“Miner's Camp Lodge on OK Street.”

“That's where Richard Reed is staying?”

“Supposedly,” Joanna said. “At least according to the roster Maggie had in the file.”

Shaking her head, Deb put the Tahoe in gear. “That property—including the main house, a parking lot on OK Street, and three additional cabins—was listed for sale when I bought my new place at the far end of Brewery Gulch. I didn't realize someone was dumb enough to buy it.”

“They not only bought it,” Joanna said, “they're evidently running it.”

Since the Brewery Gulch/OK Street part of Bisbee was Detective Howell's home turf, she had no difficulty navigating to the parking lot at Miner's Camp Lodge, where a series of threatening signs insisted that parking was for
REGISTERED GUESTS ONLY. ALL OTHERS TOWED AWAY AT OWNER'S EXPENSE.

On a street where parking was at a premium, a lot that would have held six cars held only one, a wizened VW bug with enough rust damage on the underside to indicate it was a recent arrival from much snowier climes.

“It looks like they're not exactly doing land-office business,” Joanna said as Deb pulled into a spot in the almost deserted lot. “Leave your flashers on just in case.”

The building next door, another aging wooden structure, boasted a sign that said
OFFICE
along with an arrow that pointed up a steep set of stairs. Before they could start up them, however, a woman appeared on a landing ten steps above them. She was dressed from head to foot in Spandex and looked like she was ready to take off on a bicycle at a moment's notice.

“You can't park there,” she said, pointing a finger at the offending Tahoe. “Didn't you read the sign? Everybody thinks they can park here for free.”

Joanna pulled out her badge wallet. “This is police business,” she said. “I'm Sheriff Joanna Brady and this is Homicide Detective Deb Howell. We need to speak to one of your guests.”

“You must mean Richard Reed,” the woman said. “He's the only guest staying here at the moment.”

With that, she darted down the steep flight of steps with all the grace of a bighorn sheep. The muscles on her calves looked like she did those stairs, all of them, several times a day with no apparent difficulty.

“Is that his car?” Joanna pointed at the rusty VW.

“No. That's mine. Mr. Reed is driving a Honda, a blue CR-V with California plates. Since his car isn't here, he's probably out painting somewhere, or maybe not painting since today is the last day of the conference. He's due to check out tomorrow, but I can tell you for sure that he isn't in his room right now. I was just up there changing the bedding and replacing his towels.”

“I'm sorry,” Joanna said. “I didn't catch your name.”

“Denise,” she said, holding out a tanned, leather-tough hand. “Denise Fuller. My partner and I are relatively new here in town.”

“You're sure Mr. Reed's vehicle had California plates?” Joanna asked.

“Absolutely.” With that Denise Fuller reached into an invisible pocket and withdrew an iPhone. “I can even give you the number on the plate.”

With just that much notice Deb had a notebook and pen in hand, ready to take dictation. Denise read off the plate number while Deb wrote it down.

“I always keep a list with me so I can be sure that the people parking here are registered guests,” Denise explained. “There isn't much parking on this street, and I make it my business to make sure that what's on the registration form matches what's on the vehicle. With Mr. Reed, for example, I discovered that he had inadvertently transposed two letters. Maybe he's dyslexic or something. I've done that myself on occasion.”

From across the canyon, Joanna heard the sound of a wailing siren on some emergency vehicle. She knew what county sirens sounded like and the sirens on the local ambulance service. This was most likely a City of Bisbee patrol car. That meant whatever was happening was the city's problem, not hers.

Joanna gave Deb a brief nod. Understanding Joanna's unspoken command to check out the vehicle registration, the detective took herself out of the conversation, heading for the Tahoe with her phone to her ear. Meanwhile Joanna turned back to Denise Fuller.

“So the number you just gave Detective Howell is the one on Mr. Reed's vehicle, not the one on his registration form?”

Denise Fuller smiled a toothy smile. “They're both the same now,” she said. “I fixed the registration form.”

A second siren joined the first, and maybe that of an ambulance as well, both of them echoing back and forth across the narrow confines of Tombstone Canyon.

Joanna shut out the noise and concentrated on Denise Fuller. “You're telling us that Mr. Reed has been here all week?” Joanna asked.

“Let's just say he paid for the whole week,” Denise said with a knowing wink. “From the looks of the bedding, I'd say he hasn't been here much of the time. Some people rent rooms from us and then don't want to admit that they can't handle going up and down those seventy-eight stairs. I do it every day, carrying loads of laundry back and forth. I'm used to it. I'm guessing Mr. Reed wasn't willing to admit that and ended up finding somewhere else to stay that didn't entail climbing stairs. Part of the problem is the altitude. People come here thinking that Bisbee is in the desert. They don't realize that it's a mile-high desert.”

Down by the Tahoe, Deb Howell was nodding emphatically. Then she looked up, caught Joanna's eye, and motioned for her to come. Immediately.

“What?” Joanna said as Debra held the phone away from her ear, motioning that she was on hold.

“Margaret Mendoza just got a name on that plate number. You're not going to believe it.”

“What?”

“Richard Reed's CR-V is registered to one James Gunnar Cameron of Palo Alto, California,” Deb said. “Wasn't Cameron Isadora's former daughter-in-law's maiden name, the one she took back when she returned to Indiana?”

Joanna felt the blood drain from her face. “You mean Richard Reed is really Debra Highsmith's long-lost half brother, Isadora's grandson?”

“That's how it looks. With a name like Gunnar, it couldn't very well be anyone but him, could it? But what's he doing here?” Deb asked. “Why here? Why now?”

“It's obvious, isn't it?” Joanna answered. “He came here to kill his sister.”

“How did he find her?” Deb asked. She signaled to Joanna that Margaret Mendoza was back on the line.

“Okay,” she said into the phone. “No criminal record other than traffic infractions. You can get me a list of those later. In the meantime, give me his address.” Joanna waited while Deb scribbled a long series of notes.

Joanna thought back to everything they had learned about the man known as Richard Reed. He had come to the Plein Air conference at the last minute, apparently dropping everything to come for a weeklong stay. Paying cash for his tuition. Paying cash for his room. Coming to town under a pseudonym. Pretending to be an artist when he wasn't even a talented amateur. It was all beginning to add up, and Joanna didn't like where it was going.

By then Joanna had her own iPhone out and was googling James Gunnar Cameron. He turned out to be Professor James Cameron of Stanford University, with a doctorate in computer science engineering, one of the country's best-known experts in developing facial recognition software.

Over the years Joanna had taken several continuing education classes that dealt with cold cases—cases that involved using artistic techniques to artificially age both suspects and missing persons. The resulting sketches had shown how someone might look decades after they had disappeared from view. What Joanna had learned in those classes was that although facial features changed over time, the foundations did not; the basic bone structure did not. If James Gunnar Cameron, once James Creswell, was an expert in facial recognition …

Then it came to her. Only a few weeks earlier, Marty Pembroke's “Die, Bitch” video had shown up on YouTube. The video that had gone viral. Nobody had needed to be listed as Marty's friend on Facebook to watch it. The video had been out there on the Internet for all to see. Suddenly Debra Highsmith, a woman who had done her best to keep her presence out of all kinds of electronic media, was all over it. If Jimmy had been prowling the Internet systematically, using facial recognition software in hopes of locating his sister, Martin Pembroke's video meant he had finally hit pay dirt. Once he had done that, he moved heaven and earth to come to Bisbee. To murder his long-lost sister? Why? What kind of sense did that make?

While Joanna had been lost in thought, the two sirens had turned into a cacophony. It seemed as though every emergency vehicle inside the city had suddenly been summoned to some incident down on Main Street, where they had converged in a spot that was totally invisible behind a collection of intervening buildings.

Deb was still on the phone with Records. “Switch over to Tica if you can,” Joanna suggested, almost having to shout over the racket of the continuing emergency response. “See if she knows what's going on here in Old Bisbee. Find out if they need officers from my department to render assistance.”

It took longer than Joanna would have expected to get through to Dispatch.

“Hey, Tica,” Deb began. Then she fell utterly silent. A moment later, she handed the phone over to Joanna. “You need to hear this,” she said.

The dismayed look on Detective Howell's ashen face spoke volumes. Joanna took the phone at once. “What?” she said.

“There's been a carjacking at the Copper Queen,” Tica said. “The hotel, not the hospital. An elderly woman was sitting in a limo while the driver carried her bags into the lobby. While the driver's back was turned, someone jumped into the limo and took off in it with the woman still inside. So far the woman hasn't been identified,” Tica continued.

Maybe no one else knew who the victim was, but Joanna did. How many limos were dropping elderly passengers off at the Copper Queen Hotel on that particular day?

“We're hearing all kinds of sirens …”

“The carjacker raced away from the hotel. First he turned down Subway, then he ran the stop sign at Main Street. Halfway up the street he lost control for some reason. He drove the limo up onto the sidewalk and smashed into a group of pedestrians who were gathered outside one of the galleries. The scene is chaotic. One suspected fatality and several injuries, some of them serious. EMTs are on the scene. More are coming.”

“What about the limo?”

“Hit-and-run. The guy stepped on the gas and kept right on going. One of the victims didn't fall off the hood of the limo until it rounded the curve up by Castle Rock. He's the fatality.”

“You put out an APB?” Joanna asked.

“Already done. That's what I was doing when Deb was trying to call in.”

“I want every available officer we have on alert to help with this, whether they're currently on duty or not,” Joanna ordered. “How long ago did it happen?”

“The first call came in to 911 seven minutes ago.”

Joanna thought about times and distances. If the guy was northbound through town, the first turnoff would have been at the top of Tombstone Canyon where Cameron could get on Highway 80 in either direction—northbound or southbound. Enough time had already elapsed that he would already have reached that intersection. If he had turned southbound, even on the highway he wouldn't have had enough time to get all the way back downtown.

“We need roadblocks, ASAP,” Joanna said into the phone. “Where's Jaime?”

“Back at his desk, I think.”

“Tell him to take one other officer and set up a roadblock at Lavender Pit. If the guy doubles back through town on the highway, we need to nail him before he gets to Lowell or the Traffic Circle. From there, the bad guy will have a lot more choices and be harder to find. Call Chief Deputy Hadlock at home and let him know we need him to come in and hold down the fort. Call me back after that.”

By then Deb was already at the wheel, with the engine running. “Where to?” she asked as Joanna jumped into the passenger seat. Joanna's Yukon was still parked at Horace Mann. With traffic on Main Street stopped, it might have been possible to go up and over School Hill to get it, but she didn't want to take the time.