Dead Wrong

Chapter 21

Once they arrived within sight of the ranch house, for what seemed an interminable length of time no one came or went. The house remained dead still. The only visible movement was the occasional switch of the tethered horse’s tail. As Joanna’s deputies took up defensive positions, she called in to Dispatch.

“Tica,” she said. “See if you can find a listed phone number for Aileen Houlihan.”

“I have an A. Houlihan,” Tica replied. “On Triple H Ranch Road.”

“That’s the one,” Joanna replied. “Give me the number.” When Joanna dialed it, Leslie Markham answered the phone. She sounded unhurried and completely calm.

“This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Is your husband there with you?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Who else is there?”

“Just the three of us-Rory, my mother, and me. Fortunately, I sent the daytime nurse home. The nighttime one hasn’t come on duty yet.”

“Are you all right?” Joanna asked.

“I’m fine,” Leslie returned with amazing coolness. “Rory has a gun, though, and he’s threatening to use it. I told him to go ahead. As far as I’m concerned, dying of a bullet wound is infinitely preferable to dying of HD.”

But you aren’t going to die of Huntington‘s, Joanna wanted to shout.

“Put him on the phone,” she said.

“He won’t touch it,” Leslie said half a minute or so later. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“But I want to talk to him. Does your phone have a speaker option? If so, turn it on.”

“It’s on,” Leslie said. “He can hear you now.”

“Put down your weapon and come out of the house, Rory,” Joanna said. “It’s over. An ambulance is on its way to pick up Mr. Mattias and take him to the hospital, but he told us everything. We know all about you and Ruth and about Lisa Evans and Aileen’s dead baby. He even told us about Bradley Evans.”

That was all a calculated lie. Joaquin Mattias was dead. He hadn’t come close to telling them everything. But D. H. Lathrop had taught his daughter the fine art of bluffing at the same time he was teaching her how to play poker. Joanna Brady was definitely her father’s daughter in that regard.

At first the only thing coming through the phone was silence. Finally Leslie Markham spoke. “What baby?” she asked.

Joanna didn’t allow herself to be diverted into that conversation any more than she could allow herself to look at Dolores.

The discussion of Aileen Houlihan’s murdered baby would have to wait until Leslie’s life was no longer in danger.

“Let your wife go,” Joanna said without responding to Leslie’s question. “If you harm her in any way, Arizona state law will never allow you to inherit, Mr. Markham. You’re already looking at three separate homicide charges. Don’t make it worse.”

Another period of tense silence followed. Again, Leslie was the one who spoke.

“I’m going then,” she announced. “I’m going to walk out.”

“You can’t,” Rory said. “Don’t do it.”

“Why not? Because you’re going to shoot me? Don’t make me laugh. You can’t hurt me any worse than you already have.”

A moment later the screen door opened. As Joanna and the assembled deputies held their collective breaths, Leslie Markham walked to the edge of the porch, where she leaped off, past the startled horse, and then sprinted away from the house. She didn’t stop until she reached Deputy Raymond’s Yukon parked at the far end of the driveway. As she neared the vehicle, Raymond reached around and opened the door behind him, allowing her to dive inside.

“All right, Mr. Markham,” Joanna continued into the phone. “Leslie is here now. She’s safe. Toss down your weapon and come out with your hands up.”

Rory Markham’s wordless reply consisted of a single small click as he disconnected the speakerphone, followed by the chilling sound of a solitary gunshot. They all knew he was dead long before the deputy who had let himself in through the back door sounded out the all clear. When Joanna finally gave herself permission to turn around and look at the women in the backseat, Leslie Markham, sobbing, was being comforted by Dolores Mattias. Seeing them together, Joanna wanted to gather both women into her arms and tell them what she knew-to explain how this series of calamities had befallen them, but there wasn’t time. Not then.

Joanna got out of the Yukon and caught up with Ernie. “We’ll need to curtain off whatever part of the room Markham used to blow his brains out,” she told him. “I know it’s a crime scene, but Leslie and the nurses will have to have access to Aileen.”

Ernie nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what we can do.”

As he walked away, Joanna reached back inside and plucked the radio out of its holder. She needed to call Dispatch and let them know what had happened-that they’d need crime scene people and Dr. Winfield and search warrants and all those other necessary things. But as she pushed the button down to speak, she felt the sudden gush of water running down her legs.

“Is everyone all right?” Tica was saying. “Do you need an ambulance?”

“No,” Joanna began. Just then the first contraction hit and hit her hard, taking her breath away. “On second thought,” she said when it ended, “maybe an ambulance is a good idea.”

“I thought the two gunshot victims were both dead,” Tica responded.

“They are dead,” Joanna said. “But I believe I’m going to have this baby, and it could be soon.”

“Ambulance is on its way, Sheriff Brady,” Tica reported back a moment later. “Do you want me to call your husband and have him meet you at the hospital?”

“No,” Joanna replied, “that won’t be necessary. Calling him will give me something to do while I wait.”

While Dennis Lee Dixon lay sleeping in his bassinet, Joanna plucked the clicker off her bedside table and searched through the channels until she located Good Morning America. The last thing Butch had said before he left the hospital at midnight was that Frank Montoya had told them GMA was going to run a feature about what had happened the next morning and that Joanna should be sure to watch.

The orderly came in bringing her breakfast-ghastly oatmeal, cold toast, and something that was supposed to pass for coffee. It made Joanna long for one of Butch’s perfectly cooked over-easy eggs and a side of his crisp bacon. But Dr. Lee had said his policy was that new mothers needed to rest and that he wanted her in the hospital for a full twenty-four hours, so twenty-four hours it would be.

Joanna ate what she could tolerate of her breakfast and waited through the news (bad) and the weather (also bad) and the sports (marginal).

“And now,” Diane Sawyer was saying, “from the southeastern corner of Arizona we have the heartwarming story of how, when faced with the potentially tragic aftermath of a triple homicide at a puppy mill, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady took the law into her own hands in something our on-scene reporter is calling The Pit Bull Penal Project.”“

Joanna’s bedside table rang. “Are you watching?” Butch demanded. “It’s on right now, but I’m TlVOing it, just in case.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “I’m watching. At least I’m trying to.”

As she put down the phone, Joanna caught a fleeting image of herself standing in front of the door to the department with a bank of microphones in front of her. She didn’t hear and didn’t remember what had been said. The only thing that registered was how incredibly pregnant she looked.

The phone rang again as the cameras switched over to a scene of Millicent Ross handing out puppies while the reporter was saying, “… only inmates expected to be in custody for at least the next six weeks are allowed to participate.”

“I can’t believe it!” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield exclaimed. “You’re actually on Good Morning America. Are you watching?”

“Sort of,” Joanna said. “Can I call you back?”

Joanna expected some kind of comment about her missing dinner the night before, but no such diatribe was forthcoming.

“Is the baby all right?” Eleanor went on. “Butch called and told us that everything was fine, but I want to hear it from you so I can stop worrying.”

“The baby’s fine, Mom,” Joanna said. “And so am I, but I’m busy right now. Let me call you back.”

By then the camera was focused on Axel Turnbull. Axel was one of the regular habitues of the Cochise County Jail. He came in several times a year for sentences of longer or shorter duration depending on how drunk and disorderly he’d been and how much property damage he’d caused in the course of his most recent bender.

There he was, sitting in his distinctive red-and-white-striped jail uniform in the exercise yard with a black-and-white pit bull puppy snuggled, sound asleep, under the man’s grizzled chin. “I think I’ll call him Tucker,” Turnbull was saying, “ ‘cause, as you can see, the little guy’s all tuckered out.”

The camera switched back to Diane Sawyer, who was beaming. “We wanted to interview Sheriff Brady for this piece, but we understand she’s in the hospital in Bisbee, where, a few hours after we filmed this piece, she gave birth to a seven-pound, eight-ounce boy. We are told both mother and baby are doing well.”

The phone rang again. This time it was Jenny “Mom, did you see it? Were those puppies cute, or what? Oh, and Butch is going to bring me by on my way to school so I can see you and the baby. Does he really have red hair?”

Joanna glanced toward the bassinet. “Definitely,” she answered. “An amazing amount of bright red hair.”

“He takes after you then?”

“We’ll see,” Joanna said.

This time she didn’t even bother to hang up the phone, she just depressed the receiver button with her finger. Sure enough, it rang immediately.

“I told you it would be great publicity,” Frank Montoya told her. “What did you think?”

“I looked very pregnant,” Joanna replied.

“It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, and I’ve already had four requests for interviews with you. People magazine, USA Today, the Arizona Sun, and Newsweek. What do you think?”

“I think I’m on maternity leave, Frank. Besides, you and Millicent Ross were the ones who came up with the idea. You should do the interviews.”

“I’ll tell them I’ll get back to them later,” Frank said.

“You mean you think you’ll be able to talk me into changing my mind. Tell me what happened after I left the Triple H yesterday.”

“I thought you were on maternity leave.”

“Frank…”

“Doc Winfield opened the boxes Joaquin Mattias dug up. His recommendation is that we ship them, boxes and all, to the University of Arizona, where the bones that were inside can be properly examined by a forensic anthropologist. Autopsies for Joaquin Mattias and Rory Markham will be later today. As far as evidence, what we turned up is pretty damning.”

“What’s that?”

“Fingers,” Frank said.

Joanna felt her stomach lurch. “Bradley Evans’s fingers?”

“Presumably. We found ten of them preserved in a half-gallon jar of formaldehyde on a shelf in Rory Markham’s garage. I can’t imagine what possessed him to keep them, and now we’ll never be able to ask him, either. There is a walk-in refrigerator in one of the outbuildings. We’re checking but it looks as though Evans’s body was stored there until they transported it to the dump site. Oops. Another call,” Frank added. “Gotta go.”

When Joanna put down the phone that time, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea was standing in the doorway. “Congratulations,” she said. “I know it’s not visiting hours, but there are times when being a member of the clergy has its advantages. How are you?”

“A little overwhelmed. I’ve just been on national TV”

“I know.” Marianne grinned. “Jeff taped it, but then everybody in town probably taped it as well.”

“It’s all about the dogs, Mari,” Joanna said. “What about the people who died? There was hardly a word about them.”

“What happened to the guy who did it?” Marianne asked.

“You mean Antonio Zavala, the one I shot? He’s at UMC, where the doctors are patching his foot back together. I didn’t want them to take him there because that’s where Jeannine Phillips is. I actually wanted them to bring him here so it would be easier to keep a guard on him. Now I’m glad that didn’t happen. I have guards looking out for Jeannine Phillips. I guess someone else was watching over us.”

Marianne smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I think He was.” She came over to the bed and gave Joanna a hug. “You get some rest now. You’re going to need it.”

But resting was out of the question. By the time Butch took Jenny off to school, the first load of flower arrangements showed up. And they continued to show up. A few came from people Joanna knew, but most came from people she didn’t know-one vase after another.

Once Joanna’s room was overflowing, she started sending the flowers down the hall to other rooms. And still the flowers kept on arriving, except now, with local flower inventories exhausted, the arrangements were coming from shops in Sierra Vista and Benson and even as far away as Tucson.

About two o’clock in the afternoon-after a lunch that was almost as bad as breakfast-Joanna tried nursing Dennis. It wasn’t entirely successful, but Joanna remembered how it had been with Jenny. There had been a learning curve for both Joanna and the baby, and she was sure this was more of the same thing.

Dennis, fed at last and newly diapered, was back in his bassinet. Joanna was drifting into a much-needed nap when the door to her room swished open. She expected to see either Butch or else yet another flower delivery. Instead, Leslie Markham walked into the room.

She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a worn leather jacket, and an enormous pair of sunglasses. Her face, utterly devoid of makeup, was dreadfully pale. She stopped uncertainly just inside the door. Then, after a moment, she turned and started to leave.

“It’s all right,” Joanna said. “I’m not asleep.”

Leslie removed the glasses. Dark shadows surrounded her eyes-eyes that had wept too much and slept too little. “I’m so sorry, Sheriff Brady. I shouldn’t have disturbed you…”

“You’re not disturbing me,” Joanna returned. “I’m sorry, too, about everything that happened. If you’ll get in touch with my chief deputy, Frank Montoya, I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to assist you.”

“He already has,” Leslie said. “I came to Bisbee to talk to Dr. Winfield. I wanted to have some idea of when he’ll be able to release the body-bodies, actually; Joaquin Mattias’s, too. Dolores and I need to know so we can decide on services, that kind of thing. He said it’ll probably be several days.”

“That’s how these things go,” Joanna said. “It usually takes longer than you would expect.”

“Everyone in your department has been very kind,” Leslie continued. “Mr. Carpenter, your detective, told me about…” She paused and bit her lip. “He told me about what they found up by the old cabin,” she added. “About the two boxes and what was in them and what he thinks happened. He showed me the picture, too, the picture of Lisa Marie Evans. When I looked at it, I couldn’t tell if I was looking in a mirror or if I was seeing a ghost. A little bit of both, I guess.”

She paused again. This time it was more than a minute before she gathered herself enough to go on. Joanna wanted to hug the poor woman and comfort her, but Leslie Markham was too far out of reach. She remained just inside the doorway, as if what she really wanted to do was bolt out of the room and back down the corridor.

“I came to ask a favor,” she said at last.

“I’m sure Chief Deputy Montoya would be happy-”

“No, I need to ask you, Sheriff Brady,” Leslie said determinedly. “I need to ask you woman-to-woman. I want you to keep your people from trying to question my mother.”

“Mrs. Markham,” Joanna began. “We’re talking about several different homicides and a suicide here. My investigators need to get to the bottom of what happened and what caused it.”

“My mother used to take me to that cabin!” Leslie Markham broke in forcefully. “That’s where we’d go on horseback sometimes, just the two of us. Do you think she would have taken me there if she’d had any idea that her own dead baby was buried in that exact spot? She was terrified for me every minute, terrified that someday I’d come down with HD just the way she did and the way her mother did, too. Do you think she would have been so petrified if she’d had any idea at all that I wasn’t her own?”

“But how could she not know?” Joanna asked.

“Ruth Houlihan didn’t want her daughter giving birth to a baby at risk of developing HD,” Leslie answered. “She was also a nurse. I have no doubt she gave Aileen drugs of some kind, probably something that induced labor. I’ve done some checking on the Internet. Those kinds of drugs were available back then.

“Once Aileen’s baby was born, Ruth made the switch and then took Aileen and me to the hospital, leaving Rory and Joaquin to clean up the mess and take care of pinning the blame on Bradley Evans.

“Please, Sheriff Brady,” Leslie begged. “Aileen Houlihan is the only mother I’ve ever known. She won’t be around much longer. Let her die in peace. She doesn’t watch the news or listen to the radio. What’s going on outside her room-the things the news reporters are saying-stays outside her room, but if your detectives go there questioning her…”

“They won’t,” Joanna said. “I’ll see that they don’t.”

“Thank you,” Leslie said. “Thank you so much.

“And then there’s one more thing,” Leslie said. “One more favor.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not ready to do it now,” Leslie said. “Not until the DNA reports confirm it and probably not until after my mother is gone, but when it’s time, I’d like someone from your office-Mr. Montoya or Mr. Carpenter or someone-to take me to meet Lisa Marie Evans’s mother. Is that possible? I could go on my own, I suppose, but I think it would be better if there were someone there to introduce me-someone official.”

Joanna thought about her father, who had somehow felt that the wheels of justice had been spinning out of control when Bradley Evans went to prison for murder. And she thought about Butch and Frank telling her she would flunk maternity leave. And she thought about doing what needed to be done.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Joanna said, “let me know. I’ll be happy to go with you. In fact, I’d be honored.”