Shoot, Don't Shoot (32 page)

“What other case?” Sutton asked.

Joanna became even less open. “It’s one Carol Strong and I are working on together.”

“Carol Strong?” he asked. “You mean that little bitty detective from Peoria?”

Little bitty? Joanna wondered. If Carol Strong had that kind of interdepartmental reputation, things could go one of two ways. Either Sutton held Carol Strong in high enough mutual esteem that he could afford to joke about his pint-sized counterpart, or else he held her in absolute contempt. There would be no middle ground. And based on that, Sutton would either tell Joanna what she needed to know right away, or else he would force her to fight her way through a morass of conflicting interdepartmental channels.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Joanna agreed reluctantly.

Neil Sutton audibly relaxed on the phone. “Well, sure,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? What is it you two ladies need?”

Joanna took a deep breath. Here she was, a novice and an outsider, about to send up her first little meager hunch in front of a seasoned detective, one whose official turf she was unofficially invading. What if he simply squashed her idea flat, the way Joanna might smash an unsuspecting spider that ventured into her kitchen?

“What was she wearing?” Joanna asked.

“Wearing? Nothing,” Sutton answered at once. “Not a stitch.”

“Nothing at all?” Joanna asked, dismayed that the answer wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. “But I just watched the television report. I’m sure it said ‘partially clad.’ “

“Oh, that,” Sutton replied. “That was just for the papers and for the television cameras. She wearing a pair of pantyhose all right, but weren’t covering anything useful, if you what I mean.”

Joanna felt her heartbeat quicken in her throat. Maybe her hunch wasn’t so far off the mark after all. She tried not to let her voice betray her growing excitement.

“Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what the pantyhose
were
covering,” Joanna said.

“Oh, sorry,” Neil Sutton responded. “No offense intended. Her husband used her own pantyhose tie her up. Did a hell of a job of it, too, for a college professor. Must have studied knots back when was a Boy Scout. He had her bent over backwards with her hands and feet together. Must have left her that way for a long damn time before he killed her. Autopsy showed that at the time of death there was hardly any circulation left in any of her extremities.”

Sutton paused for a moment. When Joanna said nothing, he added, “Sorry. I suppose I could have spared you some of the gory details. Any of this sound familiar?”

“It’s possible,” Joanna said evasively. “We’ll have to check it out. Where will you be if I need to get back to you?”

“Right here at my desk,” he answered. “I’m way behind on my paper. I won’t get out of here any before six or seven.”

It was a struggle, but Joanna managed to keep her tone suitably light and casual. “Good,” she said. “If any of this checks out, I’ll be in touch.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Heart pounding with excitement, Joanna dialed Carol Strong’s numbers—both home and office—and ended up reaching voice mail at home and a receptionist at the office.

“What time is she expected?” Joanna asked.

“Detective Strong is scheduled from four to midnight today,” the receptionist said. “May I take a message?”

What Joanna had to say wasn’t something she wanted to leave in message form, electronic or otherwise. “No,” she answered. “I’ll call back then.”

Disappointed, Joanna put down the phone. It was barely twelve-thirty. That meant it could be as long as three and a half hours before she could reach Carol Strong. If that was the case, what was the most profitable use she could make of the intervening time?

Reaching for pencil and paper, Joanna drew a series of boxes, to each of which she assigned a name that showed the people involved. Serena and Jorge Grijalva. Rhonda and Dean Norton. Leann Jessup and Dave Thompson. She drew arrows between each of the couples and then studied the paper trying to search for patterns, to see what, if any they all had in common.

The use of pantyhose for restraints was the most obvious. In the upper-right-hand corner of the page, she wrote the word “pantyhose.”

What else? Both Serena and Rhonda had been bludgeoned to death. No stab wounds. No guns wounds. Bludgeoned. Leann Jessup hadn’t died but there were no wounds to indicate the presence of either a knife or a gun. In the corner, she wrote: “Bludgeon (2) ? (1).”

In each case, there had been a plausible suspect who became the immediate focus of the investigation. Both Jorge Grijalva and Professor Dean Norton had a history of domestic violence. So did Dave Thompson, for that matter. That became the third notation: “Domestic violence.”

She sat for a long time, studying the notes. And then it came to her, like the second picture emerging from the visual confusion of an optical illusion. With a physical batterer there to serve as the investigative lightning rod in each of the three separate cases, the real killer could possibly blend into the background and disappear while someone else was convicted of committing his murders. Her hand was shaking as she wrote the fourth note “Handy fall guy
.”

For the first time, the words
serial murderer
edged their way into her head. Was that possible? Would a killer be smart enough to target his victims based on the availability of someone else to take the blame?

Lost in thought, Joanna jumped when the phone at her elbow jangled her out of her concentration.

“Joanna,” a reproving Marliss Shackleford said crossly into the phone, “your mother told me you’d call me back right away.”

Irritated by the interruption, it was all Joanna could do to remain reasonably polite. “I’ve been a little too busy to worry about that picture, if that’s what you’re calling about, Marliss. I’ll try to take care of it next week, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Too busy with the Leann Jessup case?” Marliss asked innocently.

For a guilty moment, Joanna felt as though Marliss, like Jenny, was some kind of mind reader. “You know about that?”

“Certainly. It’s in all the papers. And with you up at the APOA during all these goings-on, I was hoping for a comment on the story from you—one with a local connection, of course.”

Before Marliss finished making her pitch, Joanna was already shaking her head. “I don’t have anything at all to say about that,” she answered. “It’s not my case.”

“But you are involved in it, aren’t you? Eleanor told me that you missed Thanksgiving dinner because—”

“It’s not my mother’s case, either,” Joanna said tersely. “I can’t see how anything she would have to say would have any bearing at all on what’s be happening.”

“Well,” Marliss said. “I just wondered about the woman who was injured. Is Leann Jessup a particular friend of yours?”

“Leann and I are classmates,” Joanna answered. “We’re the only women in that APOA session, naturally we’ve become friends.”

“But she’s, well, you know.... “

“She’s what?” Joanna asked.

Marliss didn’t answer right away. In the long silence that followed Marliss Shackleford’s snide but unfinished question, Joanna finally figured out what the reporter was after, what she was implying but didn’t have nerve enough to say outright.

Of course, the lesbian issue. Since Leann Jessup was a lesbian and since she and Joanna were friends, did that mean Joanna was a lesbian, too?

Knowing an angry denial would only add fuel to the gossip-mill fire, Joanna struggled momentarily to find a suitable response. She was saved by a timely knock on the door.

“Look, Marliss, someone’s here. I’ve got to go.”

Joanna hung up the phone and hurried to the door, where she checked the peephole. Bob Brundage, suitcase in hand, stood outside her door.

“I came by to tell you good-bye in private,” he said, when she opened the door and let him in. “Good-bye and thanks. I couldn’t very well do that with Eleanor hanging on our every word.”

“Thanks?” Joanna repeated. “For what?”

He shrugged. “I can see now that showing up like this was very selfish of me. I was only interested in what I wanted, and I didn’t give a whole lot of thought as to how my arrival would impact one else—you in particular.”

After all those years of being an only child, I confess finding out about you was a bit of a shock,” Joanna admitted. “But it’s all right. I don’t mind, not really. Was Eleanor what you expected?”

Bob shook his head. “Over the years, I had conjured up a very romantic image of the young woman who gave me away—a cross between Cinderella and Snow White. In a way, I’m sorry to give her up. It’s a little like finding out the truth about Santa Claus.”

“What do you mean?” Joanna asked.

“I mean the woman I spent a lifetime imagining is very different from the reality. I’d say Eleanor Lathrop was a lot easier to live with as a figment of my imagination than she is as a real live woman who can’t seem to resist telling you what to do.”

“Oh, that,” Joanna laughed. “You noticed?”

He nodded. “How could I help but?”

“She’s done it for years,” Joanna said. “I’m used to a certain amount of nagging.”

Bob Brundage grinned with that impish smile that made him look for all the world like a much younger Big Hank Lathrop. “So am I,” Bob said, “but I usually get it from higher-ups and then only at work. You get it all the time. You’re very patient with her,” he added. “That’s why I wanted to thank you—for handling my share of Eleanor Lathrop’s nagging all these years—mine and yours as well.”

“You’re welcome,” Joanna said.

This time Bob Brundage was the one who held out his hand. “See you again,” he said.

“When?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. The next time I’m out this way on business, I suppose,” he said a little wistfully.

“You and your wife could come for Christmas if you wanted to,” Joanna offered. “It’ll be our first Christmas without Andy, so I can’t make any guarantees of what it’ll be like, but I’m sure it’ll be okay. I’ve been told I cook a mean turkey.”

Bob looked both hopeful and dubious. “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I wouldn’t mind. Besides, we could pull a fast one on Eleanor and not tell you were coming until you showed up. She loves to pull surprises on everyone else, but she hates it when someone puts one over on her.”

“That’s worth some thought then, isn’t it?” Bob’s eyes twinkled. “Marcie and I will talk it over and let you know, but right now I’d better go. Eleanor’s waiting downstairs to take me to the plane.”

Joanna escorted him as far as the door and then watched as he walked down the hall. “Hey, Bob,” she called to him, when he reached the elevator lobby.

He turned and looked back. “What?”

“For a brother,” she said, “you’re not too bad.”

He grinned and waved and disappeared into the elevator. Joanna turned back into the room. Making her way back to the desk, she expected it would be difficult to return to her train of thought after all the interruptions. Instead, the moment she picked up the paper, she was back inside the case though she had never left it.

Marliss had called in the midst of the words
serial killer.
Coming back to her notes, Joanna knew she was right. It wasn’t a matter of guessing. She
knew.
Proving it was something else.

Joanna still wanted to reach Carol, but it was too soon to try again, so she picked up the paper and resumed studying it once more. Assuming her theory was correct—assuming there was only one killer in all this—where was the connection? How did all those people tie together? What was the common link?

Joanna started a new list in the upper-left-hand corner of the paper: “Cops (2).” Divorced? First she wrote down: “3.” Then, reconsidering what Lorelie Jessup had said about Leann’s breakup with her long-term friend, Joanna Xed out the three and wrote in: “4 of 4.”

What else? Joanna stared at the paper for a long time without being able to think of anything more to add. Finally, it hit her: The Roundhouse Bar and Grill. According to Butch Dixon, Serena, Jorge, and Dave Thompson had all been in the Roundhouse the night Serena died. And Joanna herself had taken Leann there. That meant only two people on the list, Rhonda and Dean Norton, hadn’t been there, although they might have.

Dean Norton had been a professor at the ASU West campus, which was just a few miles away on Thunderbird. Maybe he and Rhonda had turned up in the Roundhouse on occasion, along with everybody else. After a moment, Joanna realized that there was one way to find out for sure.

Ejecting Lorelie’s tape from the VCR, Joanna dropped it into her purse. She made it as far as the door before she stopped short. She wasn’t on duty, but she was working.

One of the lessons Dave Thompson had harped on over and over again in those first few days of instruction was the importance of officer safety. It would have been easy to dismiss the advice of a likely Peeping Tom who was also suspected of attacking Leann Jessup. But now Joanna was living with the growing suspicion that somehow Dave Thompson was also a victim. If that turned out to be the case, maybe his advice merited some attention.

Putting down the purse and unbuttoning her shirt, she slipped the Kevlar vest on over her bra. She had ordered her own custom-made set of soft body armor, but until it arrived, she was stuck wearing Andy’s ill-fitting and uncomfortable castoff vest. By the time she put on a jacket that was roomy enough to cover both the vest and her shoulder-holstered Colt, she felt like a hulking uniformed football player. In comparison, Carol Strong’s small-of-back holster had disappeared completely, even on her thin, slender frame.

Joanna stopped by the pool long enough to tell Jim Bob and Jenny she was going out for a while; then she drove straight to the Roundhouse. As expected, Butch Dixon was on duty. He brought her drink without any of his accustomed camaraderie. Only when he set it in front of her did she realize she had screwed up.

If the Roundhouse was a common denominator, that meant so was Butch Dixon. What if he .. .

Joanna took a sip of her drink. “This tastes more like diet Coke than Diet Pepsi.”