Judgment Call (38 page)
Authors: J. A. Jance
WHEN CHIEF BERNARD STOPPED HIS AGING CROWN VICTORIA IN
front of Horace Mann, Eleanor's bright red Miata was parked outside, and she was busy loading what appeared to be a collection of plastic gallon jugs into the tiny trunk.
“Good luck,” Chief Bernard said. “I trust you'll forgive me if I drop you off and keep on going. I've already had one tangle with that woman today. I don't need another one.”
Eleanor stopped loading her trunk long enough to send a disparaging glare after Chief Bernard's departing vehicle. She stood, shaking her head, with both hands planted on her hips. If looks could have killed, Alvin Bernard would have perished on the spot.
“You'd think he could have made some exception for people trying to get to the reception,” Eleanor said, “but no. That's not how it works. They shut down access to everything but local residents, so here I am stuck with gallons of Arizona punch and no telling how many dozens of cookies.”
“Can I help you load something?” Joanna asked.
Eleanor picked up one final jug of punch. “This one won't fit. If you'd take that home, maybe your kids will drink it. Otherwise I'll have to leave it here in the street.”
Joanna obligingly took the jug of punch.
“What on earth am I going to do with all those cookies?”
The boxes of cookies that were stacked next to Eleanor's vehicle were never going to fit in the Miata.
“I could take them home and freeze them, if that would help,” Joanna offered.
“What a good idea,” Eleanor said. “I hate to think of them going to waste.”
Joanna knew that between Debra Highsmith's and Maggie Oliphant's deaths Bisbee would be having at least two major funerals in the next several days. That meant that no matter how many cookies hadn't been consumed at the Plein Air reception, all of them would be put to good use eventually. Joanna knew that but she didn't say it aloud. She was smart enough to realize that she and her mother would both be better off if Eleanor arrived at that conclusion on her own.
Instead, with no further discussion, Joanna and her mother set about loading a small mountain of cookie boxes into the back of Joanna's Yukon.
“I'm sorry the reception turned out to be such a fiasco,” Joanna said.
“Not completely,” Eleanor said. “It could have been worse. Right in the middle of the whole disaster, someone from an art gallery in Tucson sent me a tweet.”
Joanna's jaw dropped. That was her first hint ever that her mother had a Twitter account. Again she managed to keep her mouth shut.
“I don't know how, but he had heard that the suspect might be one of our Plein Air participants, which, unfortunately, I was able to confirm. It turns out he has a guy, a collector, who specializes in the artwork of suspected and convicted killers. It takes all kinds, you know. He asked me if any of the suspect's works were available for sale. I told him we happened to have oneâthe one Richard Reed painted of, it turns out, Debra Highsmith's house. It was in the show and our contract said we could sell it and keep fifty percent of the proceeds. When the tweet came in, it was marked at two thousand dollars. I quadrupled that, and the collector sent through his credit card number. So at least we made some money on the deal and the reception wasn't a complete loss.”
Sheriff Brady had her own set of issues about anyone, most especially her mother's art league, profiting as a result of someone's murder.
Eleanor seemed to read her mind. “Believe me,” she said, “Maggie would have approved. At least we got something out of the guy. Butch helped, too, of course.”
“Butch?” Joanna asked. “He was here?”
“No,” Eleanor said, “but believe me, he helped.”
They finally finished loading the cookies. Joanna was grateful that Eleanor was so preoccupied with her own concerns she didn't ask a single question about what had gone on up on Juniper Flats, and Joanna didn't volunteer. Instead, she took her load of leftover cookies and headed home. She knew that the next day and the day after that and the day after that would be chock-full of paperwork and reports and meetings about what had happened on Main Street as well as what had happened on Juniper Flats. For right then, however, what Joanna needed more than anything was to step away from the job and return to a semblance of normal life.
She needed to reclaim her Sunday. She needed to see her kids and her dogs. She needed to see her husband. She needed to talk to someone who wasn't a fellow cop or a suspect or a victim. She needed to feel like an ordinary human being.
When she got home, however, no dogs greeted her in the yard. When she let herself into the kitchen through the laundry room, the house was uncharacteristically quiet. Dirty dishes from lunch were still on the counter. If Butch had set aside some dinner for her, it wasn't showing, and nobody seemed to be home. She knew too much about too many bad things to not find the oddly silent house disquieting.
“Hello,” she called. “Anybody here?”
“Office,” Butch called.
She went into the office to find Butch leaning back in his chair with both feet propped on the desk, reading one of her father's distinctive leather-bound journals. The bookshelf where the collection of journals usually sat was entirely empty, while the books themselves, some of them showing a trail of yellow Post-it notes, were stacked all over the desk and sofa. If he had managed to help out with the situation at Horace Mann, Joanna didn't see how it was possible.
“Hey, Joey,” he said, looking at her over the top of the volume in his hand. “Did anybody ever tell you that your father was a hell of a guy?”
She cleared a space on the sofa and settled on it. “Someone may have mentioned that occasionally,” she said with a smile. “Where is everybody?”
“Carol saw that I was busy with this, so she invited everyone over for popcorn and movies.”
“Dogs, too?”
“Dogs, too. They're probably fine with the popcorn, although I don't suppose they're watching the movies.”
“Busy with what exactly?” Joanna asked.
“Reading your father's journals,” Butch said. “They're a gold mine. There's enough material here for me to write a dozen books.” He closed the book he was reading. “That's my day. George called me a little while ago. I'm almost afraid to ask you about yours. Did you have lunch?”
Joanna shook her head.
“We had leftovers, and the kids ate like they were starvelings. How does a grilled cheese grab you?”
“Grilled cheese sounds great.”
Joanna followed him into the kitchen. While he cleaned up the mess left from lunch, Joanna went out to the garage, unloaded the extra cookies into the freezer, and then brought the gallon of punch inside.
“Leftovers, from the reception that didn't happen. But then, I guess you know all about that. Mom said you were a big help.”
“I try,” Butch said.
While he grilled her sandwich, Joanna gave him a rundown of the whole day. Somehow, in the telling, she neglected to mention putting down her gun and turning her back on an armed assailant. There were some things about her job Butch Dixon didn't need to know. Joanna suspected that there were things in her father's life that might have made it into D. H. Lathrop's journals but which were never the topic of dinnertime conversation, either.
“That's what Debra Highsmith's murder was all about?” Butch asked when Joanna finally ran out of story and energy. “Some kind of long-term family feud?”
“Because James's father committed suicide while in custody, there was never a trial. James's mother evidently turned a technical ânot guilty' into âinnocent of all charges.' She poisoned James against both his grandmother and his missing sister. That's why he came here. To avenge his father's death. Unfortunately, Maggie Oliphant figured out something was off about him. We may never learn what. Once he realized she had started checking out his cover story, that was enough for him to turn her into collateral damage.”
They had been sitting across the table from each other while Joanna gobbled the very welcome cheese-and-jalapeño sandwich. Butch took a deep breath.
“I think your father was collateral damage in another family feud,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Joanna asked.
“Elizabeth and Wayne Stevens,” Butch said. “That's how come he got pushed out of working underground for PD, but there's more to it than that.”
“Wait,” Joanna said. “Are you saying they had something to do with his death?”
“Not at all, but they're the reason he lost his job and ended up going to work for the sheriff's department. He took Abby Holder's side against her parents. He and your mother went to Freddy Holder's funeral, and he spent the rest of his life trying to figure out what had really happened. Come look.”
Butch led Joanna back into the office. “You need to read these,” he said, picking a pair of journals out of the stack. “Take a look at all the Post-it notes. It's like following a trail of bread crumbs. Every time you open to one of the pages marked by a Post-it note, you'll find a passage leading back to Fred and Abby Holder or to her parents, Wayne and Elizabeth. From the moment your father and the other guys dug up Freddy's lifeless body, your dad was convinced there was something fishy about what had happened. Once he and your mother went to Fred Holder's funeralâagainst Wayne Stevens's express wishesâyour father's job was on the line.”
“And he pushed Dad out?” Joanna asked.
“Exactly, or at least that's what your father claims in the journals. He believed they ran him off on so-called safety violations. He was really lucky to be hired on as a deputy. After he was working in law enforcement, he tried again. Once he started asking uncomfortable questions about Fred Holder, they shut him down there, too, but Wayne Stevens didn't have quite the same amount of influence in the sheriff's department that he had in town. It wasn't enough to get your father fired outright, but it was enough to have him ordered to back off. That's why your father ended up running for sheriff.”
“Because of what happened to Fred Holder?”
“Yes,” Butch said. “Your dad was determined to get to the bottom of it.”
Joanna picked up one of the journals at random. From the dates on the cover, she knew it was one that covered the better part of two years after D. H. Lathrop had won election to the office of sheriff. Three different Post-it notes stuck out of the top of the book.
“So all these Post-it notes are references to the Holder situation?” she asked.
Butch nodded. “In the journals he notes whenever he crossed paths with any of the people from that series of eventsâAbby and both her parents as well as Mad Dog Muncey.”
“Did he put them under actual surveillance?”
“Not really,” Butch said. “At least, not officially. Even so, he made it his business to run into them more than you'd think would happen even in a small town. More than once he mentions thinking that eventually he was going to get a break in the case, and finally he did.”
“When?” Joanna asked.
“That's the problem,” Butch said, looking hesitant. “The break didn't come until a week before he died.”
“How?”
“Mad Dog Muncey's wife, Nelda, came to see your father at the sheriff's department. She told him that her husband was in the hospital and most likely dying of emphysema. Mad Dog said he wanted to speak to your father, and so your father went to the hospital. Do you want to read the entries for yourself?”
Joanna shook her head. Once, much earlier, Joanna had ventured into that particular volumeâthe last oneâof her father's journals. In the process, she had discovered the unwelcome news that for years before D. H. Lathrop died, he had carried on a love affair with someone other than his wife. The fact that one of the last entries mentioned his giving up the other woman in favor of not losing his daughter had done nothing to ease the hurt and shock Joanna had felt when she learned about her father's duplicity. Butch held it out to her, but knowing it was the same book, Joanna couldn't quite bring herself to touch it.
“Tell me,” she said.
“I'll read it to you,” Butch said. He reopened the book and started to read:
Nelda Muncey came by to see me today. She didn't make an appointment or come into the office. She caught up with me outside as I was parking my car. She told me Mad Dog was in the hospital and wanted to talk to me. I knew he'd been dusted and had emphysema, but until I got to the hospital, I had no idea how bad it was. He's on oxygen and IV painkillers and weighs maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. He used to be double that. Made me realize I was lucky to get out of the mines when I did.
On the way to the hospital I kept thinking, “This is it.” When we got there, Nelda started to come into his room with me, but Mad Dog waved her away. “Go on out and shut the door,” he told her. “Just me and D.H. We're the only ones who need to be here.”
He waited until she shut the door. “She told you I'm dying?”
I shook my head, but all you had to do was look at the man to know it was close to the end.
“I done it,” he said.
Just like thatâwith no introduction, no discussion of what he was talking about. It was like we'd been having this conversation all along for more than twenty years.
“I knew that one stope was shakyâthat the support beams had come loose during shutdown. I put a come-along on one of them beams, then I sent Freddy into the stope to get something I said I'd left in there. When he went inside, I gave the come-along a yank and the whole thing caved in. The rest of us were lucky that whole damn shaft didn't come down on top of us.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked.
“Confession's good for the soul,” he said. “I don't want to meet my Maker with this on my conscience. I done it. I'm sorry.”
“I know you got a new car out of the deal,” I said. “So who put you up to itâWayne Stevens?”
I could see that he was getting tired, that the conversation was wearing him down.
“Nelda don't know nothin' about any of this,” he said. “If'n I tell you that, her life won't be worth a plugged nickel. You find out the answer, I'll say straight out yes or no, but whatever you find can't come from me. You hear?”
He reached over and rang the little buzzer that was pinned to his pillow. A nurse came in, so did Nelda, and that was the end of it.
I was pissed when I left the hospital. It was what I'd always knownâthat he was the one responsible, the triggerman. In the old days Mad Dog Muncey wasn't scared of anyone or anything, leastways not for himself, but now he was scared for Nelda. She'd just gotten a new job at the company store, and he was afraid she'd lose it. There are only a couple of people in town who wield that kind of power, and Wayne Stevens is one of them.
It was a judgment call. At that point there was nothing about Mad Dog's supposed confession that would have held up in a court of law. There weren't any witnesses to what he'd said. It would be my word alone. So I'll have to find something to corroborate what Mad Dog said, but right that minute, I wanted more than anything for Wayne Stevens to know that the jig was upâthat after years of getting away with murder he wasn't going to be dodging that bullet any longer.
Instead of lying low, I decided to beard the lion in his den. I went straight thereâto the general officeâand marched right into Stevens's private office, past his secretary who was chasing after me saying I couldn't go in there, but I did anyway.
Stevens was on his phone when I went inside, and he took his own sweet time getting off. “Good morning, Sheriff Lathrop,” he says to me, cool as can be. “This is an unexpected visit. I don't believe I see your name in my appointment book. What can I do for you?”
“I just came from Mad Dog Muncey's room at the hospital,” I said. “He told me the whole story.”
“What story would that be?”
“I know who's behind the hit on Freddy Holder.”
“Now, now,” Stevens said to me. “No one around here is going to put any stock in the ravings of a dying man.”
“I put stock in it, Mr. Stevens, and I intend to prove it. If it's the last thing I do.”
So help me God, I will!