Damage Control (31 page)

“Should I go see him?” Becky asked.

“We should both go see him,” Joanna said.

“Want me to set up the interview with Pima County?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I’ll do that once I know exactly when I’ll get there, and I’ll bring Deb Howell along. We’ll all go see him together. You locate your earring. I’ll locate mine. Then we’ll put the screws to him.”

“Wait a minute,” Becky said. “You’re not thinking of trying to offer some kind of plea deal, are you? We’re not authorized—”

“Absolutely not,” Joanna said. “No plea agreement of any kind. I’m going to give this poor mope an opportunity to tell us the truth about what happened. We’ll let him know that he’s already been linked to Wanda’s murder. If he doesn’t come clean about that one, he’s likely to be held responsible for Wayne Hamm’s death as well.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to bluff him into confessing with a pair of earrings?” Becky Ramsey asked. “That’s not much of a hand.”

“Let’s add in a couple of face cards,” Joanna said. “Bring along any photos you happen to have of Wayne Hamm.”

“As in crime scene photos?”

“Absolutely,” Joanna said.

She stopped by the evidence room long enough to go through the Wanda Mappin evidence box and emerged carrying a copy of the photo Dave Hollicker had taken of the earring that had been found with Wanda Mappin’s remains, as well as a photo of the diamond-studded locket. Along with those she collected a set of crime scene photos and a picture of a much younger Wanda, one her mother had submitted as part of the original missing persons report. With the file folder of photos in hand, Joanna dialed Deb Howell’s extension.

“What are you doing?”

“Paperwork,” Detective Howell admitted. “Mounds of it. Stacks of it. There wasn’t time yesterday.”

“And there probably won’t be time for it today, either,” Joanna said. “Let’s take a ride.”

“Where to?” Deb asked, sounding relieved.

“Tucson,” Joanna told her. “To the Pima County Jail. I want to pay a visit to your good friend Billy Carmichael. You drive. I need to make some calls.”

The first one was to Pima County Sheriff William Forsythe. Joanna’s interactions with Bill Forsythe had never been particularly cordial, especially after she had cleaned his clock in the formerly boys-only annual poker game at the Arizona Sheriffs Association meeting in Page several years earlier. Now, though, on her way to interview an inmate in Forsythe’s jail, she owed the man the courtesy of a phone call.

“I hear you’re dealing with some mighty tough stuff, Sheriff Brady,” Forsythe said, once she had him on the line. “Losing a deputy that way is hell. If there’s anything at all my department can do to help out, just say so. In fact, as soon as you know when
the funeral is, give me a call. I can probably have some of my off-duty officers head down there to handle routine patrol duties while your guys attend the services. Mutual aid and all that. In fact, I may even be able to send along some admin folks so your office people can attend the funeral as well. And I have a line on the bagpipers we’ve used in the past.”

This may have been Joanna’s first line-of-duty fallen-officer funeral, but clearly Bill Forsythe had already been there and done that. His gruff and entirely unanticipated offers of help caught Joanna off guard. Maybe the thin blue line wasn’t as thin as she sometimes thought it to be.

“Thank you,” she murmured at last. “That’s very kind.”

“Have your chief deputy contact my administrative assistant,” Forsythe said easily. “We’ll get those shifts covered. Now what can I do for you today?”

“Detective Ramsey from Tucson PD and I are working to link two separate cases together. We need to interview one of your jail inmates, a guy named Billy Carmichael. We’re on our way to see him right now.”

“What’s your ETA?” Forsythe wanted to know. “I’ll call my jail commander and let him know you’re coming. I’ll also have him book an interview and make arrangements to bring Carmichael out of lockup. That way he’ll be there ready to go by the time you get there.”

As Joanna finished the call, she couldn’t help marveling at how things had changed in the space of a few short years. The acceptance she had earned from people like Chief Alvin Bernard and Bill Forsythe hadn’t come easily. Now that she had it, she realized that it was possible she had opened doors for other women who might want to follow in her footsteps.

Joanna closed her phone and turned to Deb. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a preview of Mr. Carmichael.”

“Not all that bright,” Deb said at once. “Whatever was going on, he was a grunt. He certainly wasn’t the brains of the outfit.”

“What’s his connection to Flannigan Foundation?”

“I asked him that yesterday,” Deb said. “He claimed he’d never heard of them.”

“We already know that’s a lie,” Joanna said. “That’ll be as good a place as any to start.”

As they crossed the Divide heading for Tucson, Joanna saw a group of vehicles pulled off on either side of the road. Joanna slowed, expecting to find the remains of a recent car wreck. Instead of wreckage, however, they found people standing with cameras pointed up the mountainside. Days of record-breaking storms had done their magic. Today a tumultuous waterfall roared off the mountainside at a spot where the red-rock cliffs were usually dry as bone.

It was beautiful. It was inspiring.
It’s something Dan Sloan never lived to see,
Joanna thought sadly.

They met up with Detective Ramsey in the Pima County Jail’s utilitarian public lobby, where a quick visual comparison of the two earring photos seemed to indicate they were a pair. Minutes later they were joined by a uniformed guard. After helping the visitors deposit their weapons in individual lockers, he led them to a small room adjoining the interview room, which gave them a view of a gaunt young man in a jail jumpsuit sitting at a metal table and drumming his fingers nervously on the table’s surface.

“Which one of you is going in with him?” the guard asked.

“We all are,” Joanna answered at once.

“But it’s a very small space,” the guard objected. “Are you sure—”

“The more crowded it is, the less wiggle room Mr. Carmichael will have.”

“All right,” the guard agreed reluctantly. “If you’ll give me a minute, I can bring in a couple more chairs.”

“That’s not necessary,” Joanna said. “One of us will sit. The others will stand. It’ll be fine.”

She led the others into the room and then took the empty chair opposite Carmichael while Deb and Becky Ramsey assumed positions next to the one-way mirror. Without a word, Joanna dropped her collection of photos on the table and said absolutely nothing. As the silence lengthened, Carmichael stared curiously at what he could see of the photos. Finally, he nodded toward Detective Howell.

“I know who she is,” he said. “She was here yesterday talking about some kind of fingerprint crap and a dead body that I don’t know nothin’ about. But who are you?” he demanded of Joanna. “And who’s she?” He pointed at Detective Ramsey.

“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Detective Ramsey is with Tucson PD. This interview is being recorded, by the way.” She nodded toward the video equipment attached to the wall just under the ceiling. “We’re investigating the disappearance of this man.”

She extracted the crime scene photo of Wayne’s gore-spattered body from the stack and slid it toward him across the table. There was no way to disguise the shock of recognition that flashed in Billy Carmichael’s eyes.

“So you knew Wayne Hamm?” she asked casually.

“I didn’t say that,” Carmichael replied.

“You didn’t have to,” Joanna returned with a smile. “I could see that you did. And because of these,” she added, plucking out the two earring photos, “we can now link you to two separate homicides.”

“Two,” he echoed faintly.

“Two,” Joanna repeated. She extracted Wanda Mappin’s photo from the stack. “You see her?”

Carmichael glanced at the photo and then looked away. “What about her?”

“This is one homicide victim. Her name is Wanda Mappin. We found her bones in the plastic bag with your fingerprint on it. And this earring—one of a pair of earrings—was found in the bag along with her remains. And this identical earring”—she produced the other earring photo and pushed it over to Carmichael—“this one we found among the personal effects of our other victim, Wayne Leroy Hamm, who, as it turns out, was shot by a startled homeowner when he broke into her home.”

“Like I already said,” Carmichael grumbled. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“But the two deaths are related,” Joanna insisted. “We know that because of the pair of earrings, and we’re guessing that if you were involved in the one murder—and we have physical evidence linking you to that one—that you probably also know about the other one as well.”

“But I didn’t
do
it,” Carmichael insisted suddenly. “All I did was help Tommy dump the body. She was already dead. If she would have just shut the hell up about it—if she would’ve let it go—nothing would have happened to her. She wouldn’t be dead. I mean, who cares if there’s one less retard in the world?”

“You mean she wouldn’t shut up about Wayne,” Joanna said. “About him being gone.”

Billy gave Joanna an appraising look, then he nodded. “Tommy said that’s all she would talk about. For weeks. People were starting to get suspicious. He had to do something.”

“Tommy,” Joanna said. “Who’s Tommy?”

“If I tell you, will you make sure I don’t get charged with this?” Billy asked. “With the murder, I mean. I swear I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. All I did was help Tommy get rid of the body. We took it down to Bisbee and buried it. The tape came loose. There was stuff leaking out. I helped tape it back shut. But I didn’t kill her.”

“Who’s Tommy?” Joanna asked again.

“Tom Bidahl,” Billy answered. “My ex-roommate. He had a sweet deal going. He used those guys—guys like Wayne—for recon.”

“Excuse me?” Joanna asked.

“You know. To scope out places,” Billy answered. “To figure out which places were locked up tight and which ones weren’t and would be good to rob. Tom would turn Wayne loose in a neighborhood to check things out. Once Tom’s crew knew which houses were easy marks, in they went; no muss, no fuss. If Wayne or one of the other dopes got caught in the process, so what? They’re not competent. They can’t be tried and convicted of anything. Those poor bastards have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. All Tom had to say was that they got out and went wandering on their own. That worked fine, right up until Wayne got the bright idea to go solo and got himself killed in the process. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if Wanda had just kept her mouth shut. She kept harping on it and harping on it until people
started asking questions. That’s when Tom decided to do something. He put her out of her misery. I mean, he had to, didn’t he.”

“And how did you get roped into helping?” Joanna asked.

Billy Carmichael shrugged. “I sell stuff. I used to sell stuff. On eBay. For a percentage. Most people don’t care where something comes from as long as they’re getting a bargain.”

“In other words, you were Tom Bidahl’s fence.”

Billy nodded. “I guess so,” he agreed. “But like I said, I had nothing to do with killing this woman. She was already dead. You understand that, right?”

“Absolutely,” Joanna agreed. “I understand that completely. But where’s Tom Bidahl now? Whatever happened to him? You’re not still roommates, are you?”

“Oh, no,” Billy said. “I still live in the same place, an old house just off Euclid. That’s where I’ll go when they let me out of here, but Tom went on to bigger and better things. We were roommates before he ever went to work for Flannigan Foundation. First he was just an hourly attendant for them. Once he got a job as a resident manager, he didn’t need an apartment anymore.”

“Where is he now?”

“I heard he went to work for corporate—for the guy who runs Flannigan.”

“At the Flannigan headquarters?”

Billy nodded.

“Were there other people like Wayne?” Joanna asked. “Other Flannigan clients who got used for recon purposes and then went away once they outlived their usefulness?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

Joanna stood abruptly and began to gather her papers.

“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?” Billy asked. It was a whine more than a question.

“Help you what?”

“Prove that I didn’t do it. That I wasn’t responsible for killing that woman. Tommy’s the one who did it. All I did was—”

“Mr. Carmichael, you talked to us this afternoon of your own free will. We’ll be turning a videotaped copy of everything you said here over to the prosecutors in question. What they eventually decide to do with it is entirely up to them.”

“But I thought we had a deal.”

“That wouldn’t be the first mistake you ever made,” Joanna told Billy. “And I doubt it’ll be your last.”

“But I didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t. I can prove it.”

“And my people are going to be working day and night to prove that you did,” Joanna returned smoothly. “So if somebody happens to be generous enough to give you the opportunity to turn state’s evidence, I’d suggest you do it in a heartbeat.”

“You didn’t read me my rights.”

“Deb Howell read you your rights on this yesterday, didn’t she?”

“Well, yes, she did,” he admitted, “but—”

“But nothing. You agreed to talk to her again today, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“There you are,” Joanna said. “Once Mirandized, always Mirandized. Have a nice day.”

BY THE TIME THEY GOT THEIR WEAPONS AND WERE OUTSIDE AGAIN,
Becky Ramsey was in a fit of temper that had nothing to do with the 104-degree temperature scorching the parking lot pavement.

“What do we do next?” Deb Howell asked.

“We don’t stand around here talking,” Joanna told her. “Not in this heat.”

In the end they settled on stopping at one of Becky Ramsey’s favorite hangouts, the Crossroads on South Fourth. There, in the air-conditioned cool of a Mexican-food dive, they settled in over tacos and iced tea to strategize.

“So if Wanda was murdered in Tucson and dumped in Bisbee,” Becky said, “we should probably bring my homicide guys in on it. By the time they finish grilling Billy Carmichael, we’ll be able to take down Tommy Bidahl.”

Joanna was relieved to be able to hand off the Wanda Mappin murder investigation to someone else. “Sounds good,” Joanna said. “Have whoever’s put in charge of the investigation contact Detective Howell here. She can give them whatever we have.”

“But bringing in Bidahl isn’t going to be the end of it,” Becky declared hotly. “Flannigan Foundation is supposed to be in the business of caring for at-risk people. Instead they’re letting their clients wander around unsupervised and leaving them in situations where they’re even more vulnerable.”

“With two dead that we know about already,” Joanna put in.

Becky nodded. “The organization may have been started with the very best of intentions,” she said, “but those have long since gone by the board. Now Flannigan is being run by a bunch of profiteering creeps who have apparently hired caregivers who are literally getting away with murder.”

“Too many patients and not enough oversight,” Deb Howell said.

“Exactly,” Becky agreed. “But that stops here. I’m going to see to it that someone takes a long hard look at all those halfway houses of theirs and finds out what’s really going on inside them.”

Joanna thought about her encounter with the less than helpful Donald Dietrich.
Yes,
she thought.
There’s a man who deserves a long hard look.

Her phone rang then. Frank was on the line telling her that the autopsy had been completed and that Dan Sloan’s funeral had now been confirmed for Saturday morning. She passed along everything Sheriff Forsythe had said about helping out with staffing issues as well as having access to a bagpipe brigade. When she finished the call, Deb was reading a copy of a newspaper article which she passed over to Joanna.

“What’s this?” she asked. “Read it,” Deb told her.

“I have Lauren Dayson’s address,” Detective Ramsey said quietly. “Do you want to go visit her and let her know we’ve identified her victim?”

Joanna’s first instinct was to say no, that she and Deb needed to get back to Bisbee and handle whatever needed handling there. She didn’t, though, and she was glad. Lauren Dayson and Rick Mosier lived in a one-level town house at the far end of Grant, where the ringing doorbell was greeted by the frantic barking of what sounded like a tiny dog.

Mojo,
Joanna thought.

The woman who opened the door was a careworn woman holding a squirming dog. “Ms. Dayson?” Becky asked.

The woman nodded. She was a lithe blonde whose figure said she was probably somewhere in her twenties, but her haggard face made her look far older. “I’m Lauren Dayson,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Police officers,” Becky said, holding out her ID. “I’m Detective Ramsey. This is Sheriff Joanna Brady from Cochise County, and this is one of her detectives, Debra Howell. May we come in?”

“Who is it?” a man’s voice bellowed from somewhere out of sight. “What do they want? And can’t you get that damned dog to be quiet for even a minute?”

Lauren glanced toward a room that must have been a bedroom, but she didn’t reply. “I guess,” she said, opening the door and gesturing the three women into the unit. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about the man you shot,” Joanna said. “Now that we’ve identified him, we thought you’d want to know.”

Clutching the dog close to her body, Lauren Dayson staggered away from the door and dropped onto a couch. “Who was he?” she asked.

They stayed there talking with her for the next forty-five minutes, telling her everything they could about Wayne Leroy Hamm. The whole time they talked, the conversation was interrupted time and again by Rick Mosier summoning Lauren from the living room to the bedroom for one bogus reason or another.

“What an incredible jerk!” Deb exclaimed as they made their way back out to Joanna’s Crown Victoria. “He treats her like crap. Why does she even bother?”

“Guilt,” Joanna replied.

“But why? She didn’t make Rick Mosier dive into the shallow end of a pool. That was his own stupidity.”

“And you didn’t make Danny Sloan walk into that ambush, either,” Joanna reminded her. “You didn’t, Jaime didn’t, and neither did I.”

“Oh,” Deb Howell said quietly, fingering the black band around her badge. “I see what you mean.”

The next few days were hell. Preparing for Dan Sloan’s funeral and then getting through it occupied Joanna’s every waking moment. The day started with an inspiring standing-room-only
service at Saint Dominick’s that came complete with all the necessary pomp and circumstance and what seemed to be hundreds of officers visiting from other jurisdictions. Jaime Carbajal ended the funeral itself by delivering a moving eulogy. After that came those other essential pieces—the wailing bagpipes; the presentation of the folded flag; the last call; and a luncheon at the high school cafeteria put on by firefighters from all over the county.

Much later that afternoon, more than a week after their deaths, Martha and Alfred Beasley were quietly laid to rest as well. The only good thing about their joint memorial service was that their two daughters, both out of the hospital, sat through it all side by side. They were there together and no longer feuding. They said they would be scattering the ashes at the top of Montezuma Pass at sunrise the next morning. Would Samantha and Sandy’s truce last long enough to get though Larry Wolfe’s upcoming funeral? That was anyone’s guess.

At the end of the day Joanna had to conclude that, by any standard, it was way too many funerals in far too short a time.

The following Monday morning, Joanna came out to the kitchen feeling emotionally spent and not nearly ready to start a new week. She was surprised to find several newcomers gathered there—Carol Sunderson and her two grandsons. While the boys mowed through multiple bowls of cereal, Butch was explaining Dennis’s sleeping, eating, and bathing schedule to an attentively listening Carol Sunderson. Within a matter of days, Carol and her boys fit into Butch’s and Joanna’s lives like an essential piece of a picture puzzle that they hadn’t known was missing. By the end of that first week, neither Butch nor Joanna could imagine how they had ever managed without Carol.

On Thursday Dick Voland dropped by Joanna’s office.

“The feds are calling off the dogs,” he said. “You and Butch are in the clear.”

“Really?” Joanna asked.

“Really,” he replied. “So that makes us even. Right?”

“Right,” she said.

Friday of that week was when Joanna was finally able to go before the Board of Supervisors and get permission to retool Animal Control with Jeannine Phillips in charge. That Friday was also George Winfield’s last day on the job. Until a permanent replacement was hired, the county would be contracting with other medical examiners in the area.

George and Eleanor came to High Lonesome Ranch that night for a farewell dinner.

“You’re all packed up, then?” Butch asked as they sat around the dining room table eating some of Carol Sunderson’s freshly made peach cobbler.

“Yup,” George said. “Packed and ready to rumble. When we get home tonight, I’ll put my car on the trickle charger in the garage and we’ll bring Ellie’s along on the tow bar. We’ll be up and out bright and early in the morning. It’s going to be fun.”

Joanna glanced at her mother’s shadowless face. Eleanor was actually glowing. In fact, Joanna had never seen her happier.

The realization that George and her grandmother were really going away had finally penetrated Jenny’s world, and she wasn’t at all happy about it. “I’m going to miss you,” she said almost tearfully. “Are you sure you’ll be back in time for Thanksgiving?”

“Definitely,” Eleanor declared. “We wouldn’t think of being
anywhere else. Jim Bob and Eva Lou have already invited us to have Thanksgiving dinner with all of you at their place.” With that she turned to her son-in-law. “Did you make this cobbler?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted. “Carol made it.”

“I thought so,” Eleanor said. “It’s not nearly as good as yours.”

Later, when it was time to say good-bye, Eleanor hugged Joanna close. “You’ve got a good one there,” she said. “Be sure to treat him that way.”

“You’ve certainly brought my mother around,” Joanna said to Butch as they lay in bed that night.

“Eleanor’s not so hard to figure out,” Butch said. “As long as I make you happy, she’s happy.”

“George seems to have her number, too.”

“Yes, he does,” Butch agreed. “They’re both having a ball.”

Moments later, Butch was snoring. Joanna lay awake thinking about all that. From the outside, it seemed as though George had quit working because Eleanor had pressured him into doing so, but since they both seemed so ridiculously happy with what they were doing now, did it really matter what had caused it? Wasn’t it likely that George had been ready to quit all along and had just been waiting for some kind of catalyst? And if it was that easy for George to make Eleanor Lathrop happy, why hadn’t Hank Lathrop been able to do the same thing?

That was the real question—the one that stayed with Joanna for the rest of the night. By the time she finally fell asleep, she knew she would have to ask it. The next morning she got up and dressed in plainclothes rather than a uniform, but it was clear she had no intention of hanging around the house.

“It’s Saturday,” Jenny objected. “Do you
have
to go in?”

Joanna nodded, but that wasn’t quite true. She drove straight past the Justice Center and up to Old Bisbee. About ten past ten she pulled up in front of the small wood frame house at 305 Quality Hill. Mona Tipton’s house. Kristin hadn’t looked up the information for her. Joanna had found it herself.

Now, though, peering at the house, Joanna paused, filled with uncertainty and a sense of disloyalty, too. This was none of her business. Her father’s love life was his love life. And if Hank Lathrop had betrayed her mother once long ago, what did it matter? And yet Joanna understood that she had based much of her adult antagonism toward her mother on her father’s presumed perfection. In her mind, Hank had always been the wronged party. Maybe it was time to set the record straight by finding out the truth of the matter. That was the only way Joanna was going to get over it once and for all.

Finally, she climbed out of the car and made her way up the short flight of stairs. She rang the bell and then waited as someone called, “I’m coming. I’m coming. Who is—?”

When Mona Tipton opened the door, she stopped in midsentence. “Oh,” she added after a pause. “It’s you. Come on in. I wondered if you’d ever get around to asking me about your dad. Have a seat. Would you like some coffee? I just made a new pot.”

That was surreal. Here Joanna was in the home of the woman who had been her father’s lover, and Mona was offering her coffee as if this were a perfectly normal event. As though their meeting like this was nothing out of the ordinary.

“No, thanks,” Joanna said. “I’m fine.” Although she wasn’t fine. She was
anything
but fine.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go get mine, then,” Mona said. “There’s no sense in letting it get cold.”

Mona returned with a cup that announced she had donated money to NPR. She was still an attractive woman. Her dark hair, now broken by several strips of white, was pulled back in a French twist that was held in place by a pair of old-fashioned tortoiseshell combs. She was slender and graceful enough that Joanna found herself wondering if maybe she had been a dancer once. And even on this Saturday morning at home, she was wearing a skirt and blouse, stockings, and a pair of low heels.

“I can see how you had to wait until your mother left town before you could come see me,” Mona said. “What is it you want to know?”