Partner In Crime

Twenty

HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS twenty-twenty. What Joanna Brady and I probably should have done the moment we saw Jack Brampton was grab him by his legs and drag his body back under the fence. Unfortunately, we were so relieved to be alive that neither of us figured that out until it was too late. By then, the federales had arrived on the scene, and all bets were off.

I worked the Seattle PD Homicide Unit for the better part of two decades. In all that time, I never had to bring a dead suspect’s body back across an international border. I was about to get a firsthand lesson, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Sheriff Brady spoke. Frank Montoya translated. The federales listened and shook their heads. One of them caught sight of the packets of money spilling out of the fallen backpack. At that point the head-shaking became even more adamant. I believe the applicable term would be “No way, José.” Right then I knew how it was going to play out. Without the personal intervention of Vicente Fox, or even God himself, Jack Brampton wasn’t coming back across the border anytime soon. Neither was the money.

Frustrated beyond belief, I went plowing back down the river, gathering hundred-, fifty-, and twenty-dollar bills as I went. I had a whole fistful of them by the time Joanna Brady, her face clouded with anger, caught up with me. I glanced back at what should have been an official crime scene in time to see the Mexican officers summarily load Jack Brampton’s body onto a stretcher and cart him away, right along with his backpack.

“Which do you want to take back?” she demanded. “Princess or the Blazer?”

“Princess?” I repeated.

“The horse,” she said impatiently. “The horse’s name is Princess.”

I had far more faith in my ability to drive a Blazer than I did with my skill on a horse. For one thing, just inside the border fence on the U.S. side, I had spotted a reasonably serviceable roadway someone had carved through the desert. I suspected it had been put there for the convenience of passing Border Patrol vehicles and agents, and it looked to be in better condition than either of the narrow tracks I had driven on earlier.

“I’ll drive,” I said. “What about the money?” I added, showing her the wad of bills I held in my hand.

“Give it to Frank,” she said. “He’ll have deputies gather what they can and bring it back to the department. I’ll be more than happy to put it in the confiscated-funds account.”

Without another word, Joanna tossed me the keys, then she stalked off toward the Blazer. Once there, she pulled a gallon-sized plastic bottle of water out of the luggage compartment and poured it into a hard hat she evidently kept on hand in an equipment locker. Holding the water-filled hard hat in front of her, she moved cautiously toward the horse, making soothing clucking sounds as she did so.

As a city-born-and-bred boy, I figured the animal would take off. Instead, Princess pricked up her ears, trotted straight over to Joanna, and gratefully buried her muzzle in the water. By the time Princess had drunk her fill, Joanna had the creature’s bridle firmly in hand. Without a word, Sheriff Brady vaulted easily into the saddle. As she rode past, she tossed me the hard hat.

“Put it back in the Blazer, would you?”

“Sure thing,” I said.

Watching her ride away, I remembered what Harry I. Ball had said all those days earlier about Joanna Brady being a latter-day Annie Oakley. As it turned out, he hadn’t been far from wrong.

JOANNA DELIVERED PRINCESS BACK to the Lozier place. By then someone had contacted Billyann Lozier at work, and she had come home to be with her mother. Alma Wingate, worn out by all the excitement, was back up in her bedroom lying down. Billyann was ecstatic to see Princess. She ran across the road to greet them when Joanna and the horse emerged from the riverbed. With tears running down her cheeks, Billyann Lozier buried her face in the horse’s long black mane.

“Thank you so much for bringing her home, Sheriff Brady,” Billyann murmured. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. After what Mother told me, I didn’t think I’d ever see Princess again.”

“You’re welcome,” Joanna said.

Returning the horse safely was the single bright spot in the day’s events. Joanna should have been happy knowing that Jack Brampton was done for. He would never be able to harm anyone else. The problem was, he had died without revealing anything about the people he had worked for – the people who had provided the money that the wind had blown out of his backpack. As far as Joanna was concerned, the job of apprehending the killer was only half done.

Not only that, but from the ham-fisted way the federales were handling the situation, Joanna doubted she and her investigators would learn anything more from the effects on the dead man’s body. Plus, she didn’t even know if Jack Brampton had gone to his death with an additional supply of sodium azide still in his possession, although Frank had apprised the Mexican officers of the possibility.

It was only when Joanna was standing in Paul and Billyann Lozier’s front yard that she realized one of the backup deputies she had summoned had yet to appear. The others had both been sent down to join Chief Deputy Montoya and Ernie in searching for more of the scattered money. The K-9 Unit, however, wasn’t with them.

Once Beaumont handed over the keys to the Blazer and they were headed into town, Joanna got on the radio to Dispatch. “Tica,” she said, “whatever happened to Deputy Gregovich? He never showed up.”

“He’s at the hospital,” Tica Romero replied. “At least Deputy Gregovich is. I don’t know about Spike. Kristin’s about to have her baby.”

“Oh,” a relieved Joanna said. “That explains it.”

Minutes later, while requesting a tow truck to come to retrieve Beau’s damaged Kia, she turned to him and asked, “Where should they take it?”

“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “The rental agreement’s in the glove box. Have the tow-truck driver call Saguaro Discount Rental in Tucson and ask them where they want it. Unless you need it for evidence, that is. If so, you can take it back to your department and have someone dig the bullet out of the passenger seat.”

Joanna shook her head dispiritedly. “Why bother?” she asked. “The shooter’s dead and you’re not. I don’t see any point in wasting time or energy on it.”

“Makes sense to me,” Beaumont agreed.

Sensing that he wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was, Joanna drove for several miles without saying anything more.

“I’m sorry we didn’t catch him,” she said at last. “If your boss thought we were incompetent before-”

“Ross Connors didn’t say anything of the kind,” Beaumont said quickly. “And just for the record, neither did I.”

“Thanks,” Joanna said, and meant it. “What’ll you do now?” she asked. “Head back home?” She was wondering if he’d say anything more about Anne Rowland Corley. He didn’t.

“Probably,” he answered. “With Brampton dead, there’s not much reason to hang around any longer. Although, since Frank went to the trouble of getting those phone logs, I should finish going over them before I leave. I’ll catch a plane back to Seattle tomorrow sometime.”

Riding Princess back to the Lozier place had given Joanna time to mull over what she had read earlier in the Denver Post article. She wanted to talk to Beaumont about it, but her office at the Justice Center was the wrong place to broach the subject. She glanced at her watch.

“It’s after one now,” she said. “I’ll probably have to spend the afternoon on my knees, begging the governor of Arizona to work with the governor of Sonora to get Jack Brampton’s body shipped back to the States. To do that, I’ll need patience, strength, and food. How about grabbing some lunch?”

“Fine,” Beaumont said. “As long as you let the state of Washington buy.”

Feeling a little underhanded, Joanna stopped at Chico’s in Don Luis. Once inside, she ordered tacos for both of them. Her choice of food was actually a test, and Joanna liked the man better for contentedly munching his way through a plate loaded with Chico’s luncheon special.

“Tell me about your wife,” Joanna said quietly as Beau mopped up the last few crumbs of shredded beef and cheese that lingered on his plate.

When he raised his eyes to look at her, J.P. Beaumont’s gaze was suddenly wary. “Which one?” he asked, but it was only a defense mechanism. They both knew Joanna was asking about Anne Corley.

“The second one,” Joanna said.

“What do you want to know?”

“I’ve read the Denver Post article,” she told him. “Frank downloaded it from the Internet.”

“Damn his computer anyway!” Beau muttered. “Why the hell couldn’t he mind his own business? You, too, for that matter?”

“It is my business,” Joanna said. “You asked me about her, remember?”

His expression softened a little. “Well, yes. I suppose I did. I just haven’t had time…”

“As I was reading through the article,” Joanna continued, “something kept bothering me.”

“What’s that?” She heard the tightly controlled anger beneath his question.

“How many cases were there?” she asked. “Besides the two mentioned in the article and the three victims in Seattle, the article hinted there were others. Were there?”

Beau paused before he answered. Finally he nodded. “Several,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter how many. Ralph Ames and I worked with the various jurisdictions and cleared the ones we knew about – the ones Anne had kept a record of. There was no need to make a big deal of it.”

“The article implied that you did it quietly because you were worried about a flurry of wrongful-death suits.”

“That’s not true,” Beau replied shortly. “Anne was dead, for God’s sake. Just as dead as Jack Brampton back there in the riverbed. Ralph and I did it that way so Anne’s name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud any worse than it already had been.”

“Anne’s name?” Joanna asked. “Or yours?”

Beaumont’s face fell. Finally, he nodded bleakly. “That, too,” he admitted.

“My father used to be sheriff here,” Joanna said. “Did you know that?”

“I saw the picture and the name in the display case out in the lobby. I assumed the two of you might be related.”

“Dad always maintained that Anne Rowland got away with murder. He said that by claiming she was crazy and locking her up in a mental institution, Anne’s mother, Anita Rowland, caused a miscarriage of justice.”

“No,” Beau said quietly after a moment. “You’re wrong there. That’s not where justice miscarried. What Anne’s father had done to her big sister – what Anne had been forced to witness as a little girl – drove her over the edge. By the time she killed her father – which she readily admitted – she really was crazy. Locking her up was the right thing to do, but they never should have let her loose. If the legal definition of insanity is an inability to tell right from wrong, Anne never was cured. She was able to see how other people’s actions might be wrong, but never her own.”

“How did she get out then?” Joanna asked. “Why was she released?”

“Because she conned Milton Corley the same way she conned me.”

“The article hinted she might have had something to do with her husband’s death as well.”

“Yes,” Beau said softly. “I’m sure she did. Milton Corley was dying of cancer, but she helped him along. She told me so herself that last day, the day she tried to kill me, too.”

The man’s anguish was so visible, Joanna felt ashamed of herself for prying. “I can see this is terribly hurtful for you,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“No,” he replied. “Don’t be. It’s okay. If I hadn’t wanted to talk to someone about it, I wouldn’t have mentioned her to you that first day. It’s just that sometimes I feel as though Anne never existed at all, as though she’s a figment of my imagination. I knew her for such a short time, you see, and…” He shook his head and didn’t continue.

Joanna slid across the cigarette-marred bench seat. “Come on,” she said gently. “We’d better go.”

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE JUSTICE CENTER, I went straight to the conference room. I was glad no one else was there. I needed some time alone. I sat down in front of the stack of phone logs and put on my reading glasses, but I made no effort to read. The conversation about Anne had rocked me. I was filled with the same kind of apprehension I had felt that May morning as I had driven to Snoqualmie Falls, and in countless dreams since – that there was more to learn about the woman who called herself Anne Corley – more than I would ever want to know.

Finally, because I had to do something to keep from losing it, I picked up the first of the telephone logs.

In terms of excitement, examining telephone logs is right up there with watching paint dry. Or maybe playing with Tinkertoys.

When I was a kid being raised by a single mother in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, we were poor as church mice. One year for Christmas my mother came home from the local Toys for Tots drive with a Tinkertoy set. That’s what I got for Christmas that year – Tinkertoys and a plaid flannel shirt Mother made for me. I remember hating to wear the shirt to school because other kids knew it was homemade.

But the Tinkertoys were a hit. I loved putting the round sticks into those little round knobs with the holes and making them jut out at all different angles. Telephone logs are a lot like that. The numbers are the little round knobs with holes in them. The calls that travel back and forth between them are the sticks.

The first knob was the pay phone that had been used to make the three separate calls to Winnetka, Illinois, on the day Deidre Canfield disappeared. But Frank Montoya is nothing if not thorough. Based on Harve Dowd’s observation that Jack Brampton had used the phones on numerous occasions, Frank had collected phone logs for both of the post-office pay phones over a period of several months – for as long as Jack Brampton had been in the area. Scanning through those, I found two more calls had been placed to Winnetka, Illinois – both of those to the offices of Maddern, Maddern, and Peek.

The next set of knobs were the two phone numbers in Illinois. Because of the volume of calls, I started with the log for the residence number first. The logs were arranged in order of the most recent calls first. I worked my way down list after list after list until I could barely see straight. Until I felt myself starting to doze in the chair. And then I saw it. The words “Olympia, Washington,” leaped off the page and brought me bolt upright and wide awake.

The call had been placed two months earlier at ten o’clock in the morning and had lasted for forty minutes. Excited now, I scanned faster. Three weeks before that was another call. A month before that was another. All of the calls were placed to the same 360 prefix number. Shaking my head, I extracted my wallet from my pocket and pulled out the list of telephone numbers, and there it was. That 360 number was the unlisted home number for Ross Alan Connors.

“What the hell does this mean?” I asked myself aloud.

Actually, the answer seemed pretty clear. I remembered that long empty silence when I had told Ross about the phone calls to the Illinois law firm. Now I had to face the possibility that Washington State Attorney General Ross Connors was actually involved in the plot that had resulted in the death of his own witness.

I’ve never been long on patience. Cooler heads might have paused for a moment or two of consideration. Not me. There was a phone on a table at the far end of the conference room. I grabbed the receiver off the hook and dialed in Ross Connors’s office number, only to be told he was out to lunch. Next I tried his cell phone. As soon as he answered, I heard the tinkle of glassware and the muted hum of background conversation. Connors was in a public place – some fine dining establishment, no doubt – and most likely with friends or associates. It wasn’t the best venue for me to try forcing him to tell me the truth, but I wasn’t willing to wait any longer. If my boss was a crook, I wanted to know it right then so I could deliver my verbal resignation on the spot.

“Beau,” he said when he recognized my voice. “I really can’t talk right now-”

“Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but the suspect we were looking for, Jack Brampton, is dead,” I told him. “He died this morning making a run for the Mexican border. I thought you’d want to know.”

“You’re absolutely right!” Ross Connors exclaimed. “I do want to know about that. Good work. Anything else?”

“Answer me one question,” I growled into the phone. “Why didn’t you come clean with me when I told you about Maddern, Maddern, and Peek? Louis Maddern is obviously a friend of yours.”

He excused himself from the table and didn’t speak again until he was outside the restaurant. “Louis really isn’t a friend of mine,” he said. “The Madderns are closer to Francine. She’s known Madeline since college, since she was Madeline Springer, in fact. The girls were sorority sisters together. Lou can be a bit of a pill sometimes, but I suppose he’s all right. Why? What’s going on?”

Sorority sisters, I thought. That might explain those widely spaced, long-winded phone calls. It could be they were nothing more than that, the totally harmless chatting of a pair of old friends, but still….

“Probably nothing,” I said.

“Well,” Connors said. “I should get back to my guests. I’ll be back in my office about three. Why don’t you give me a callback then.”

“Sure,” I told him. “Will do.”

I put down the phone. I’ve spent most of my adult life working as a homicide detective, and I can usually spot a liar a mile away. J.P. Beaumont’s gut-instinct opinions carry about the same weight in a court of law as polygraph results do – which means they’re widely regarded as totally unreliable.

The problem for me right then was that my gut instinct didn’t think Ross Alan Connors was lying. True, he hadn’t answered my question in front of his guests, but nowadays that was considered to be polite cell-phone behavior. Still, he had sounded glad to hear from me and delighted that Jack Brampton had been run to ground. He didn’t sound to me like someone with some dark, hidden secret.

I should have been ecstatic about thinking my boss wasn’t a crook after all, but I wasn’t. Because if his relationship to Madeline and Louis Maddern was totally harmless, then I was getting nowhere fast.

I went back to my place at the table and returned to the telephone logs. The law firm logged hundreds of phone calls a day, which meant I was dealing with a huge stack of pages. I lit into scanning them with renewed vigor, but instead of starting from the most recent ones, I decided to go to the end of the list and begin there. Halfway through the fourth page, Olympia, Washington, began appearing again. Not one call or two, but dozens of them, some only a minute or two long, some that lasted for forty or fifty minutes.

That pattern was obvious almost immediately. None of the calls were placed earlier than 11 A.M. central time, which would have been 9 A.M. Pacific. And none were placed later than 5 P.M. Pacific. And, although they all went to the same number in Olympia, it wasn’t one of the numbers I had on my Ross Connors contact list. I guessed then where this was most likely leading, but before I did anything about it, I wanted to be absolutely sure.