Paradise Lost (13 page)

“No, never mind,” Joanna told her. “I have a possible relative of the presumed Apache Pass victim with me. We’re meeting with Doc Winfield for an ID. When we finish with that, I’ll most likely go back to Phoenix.”

“So Chief Deputy Montoya is still in charge?” Tica asked.

“That’s right. Ever since Dick Voland left, Frank’s been itching to run an investigation. Looks to me like he’s doing a good job of it.”

Minutes later, Joanna wheeled the Civvie in under the portico of the office of the Cochise County Medical Examiner. The building, a former grocery store turned mortuary turned
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morgue, still bore a strong resemblance to its short-lived and unsuccessful mortuary incarnation, a connection Maggie recognized at once.

“They’ve already sent Connie to a funeral home?” she asked. “You told me we were going to the morgue.”

“This is the morgue. It used to be a funeral home,” Joanna explained, pulling in and parking under the covered driveway. “A company called Dearest Departures went out of business several years ago. Some bright-eyed county bureaucrat, intent on saving the local taxpayers a bundle of money, bought the building out of bankruptcy and remodeled it into a new facility for our incoming medical examiner. His name is George Winfield, by the way,” she added. “Dr.

George Winfield.”

Joanna got out of the car. Then, remembering Maggie’s ban-daged hands wouldn’t allow her to operate the door handle, Joanna hurried around the Crown Victoria to let her passenger out.

Once on her feet, Maggie leaned briefly against the side of the car, as if she wasn’t quite capable of standing on her own. Concerned, Joanna reached out and offered to take Maggie’s arm. “Are you all right, Ms. MacFerson?” she asked.

Maggie bit her lip. “Maybe it won’t be her after all,” she said, as tears welled in her eyes.

“Connie’s only forty-three, for God’s sake. She turned forty-three in March. That’s too young.”

“You’re right,” Joanna said gently. “It’s far too young. Will you be all right with this?”

As she watched, Maggie MacFerson nodded, straightened her shoulders, and drew away from both the car and Joanna’s proffered assistance. “I’m a reporter,” she said determinedly. “This isn’t the first dead body I’ve ever seen, and it won’t be the last.”

Joanna led the way to the door. Because George Winfield’s Dodge Caravan was parked in its designated spot, she knew her stepfather was already there. She also knew that after hours, when George worked alone, he usually kept the outside door locked, buzzing visitors in only after they rang the bell and identified themselves over an intercom.

Joanna did so. George Winfield came to the door looking capa-ble and handsome in his white lab coat. “Good evening, Sheriff Brady,” he said.

By mutual agreement, when meeting in a work setting, Joanna and her stepfather addressed each other by their formal titles. Maintaining a strictly business approach made it simpler for all concerned.

Joanna nodded in return. “This is Maggie MacFerson,” she said. “And this is Cochise County’s medical examiner, Dr. George Winfield.”

George held out his hand in a solicitous, gentlemanly fashion, then, noticing the bandages on Maggie’s hands, he withdrew it at once. “Connie is ... was my sister.” She faltered.

“I’m so sorry—” George began, but Maggie pulled herself together and cut him off in mid-sentence.

“Don’t,” she said, holding up one hand in protest. “Let’s get this over with.”

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“Of course,” he said. “This way, please.”

He led the two women into a side room that must have once served as a small chapel. George had had a window installed along one wall. Opening a curtain on that allowed grieving family members to view their loved ones without having to venture into the brightly lit, sterile chill of the morgue itself. Joanna and Maggie MacFerson waited for several minutes in a silence softened only by the muted whisper of an air-conditioning fan.

Eventually George pulled the curtain open, revealing the loaded gurney that he had rolled up beside the window. Winfield reap geared on the other side of the window after he had pulled aside the curtain. Maggie stood up and leaned against the double-paned window. Slowly George Winfield drew back a corner of-the sheet, revealing a stark-white face.

Standing next to Maggie, Joanna felt the woman’s body sullen and heard her sharp intake of breath. “It’s her,” she whispered. “It’s Connie.”

With that, Maggie turned and fled the room. Joanna stayed long enough to nod in George’s direction, then she followed Maggie out into the reception area, where she had dropped into a chair.

“Are you all right?” Joanna asked.

“What on earth did he do to her? Dying’s too good for the son of a bitch!” Maggie growled.

“Now take me someplace where I can have a drink.”

Joanna understood at once that this time a Burger King soda would hardly suffice. “Really, Ms.

MacFerson,” Joanna began. “Don’t you think—”

“I think I need a drink,” Maggie interrupted. “If you won’t take me to get one, then I’ll find one myself.” With that, she got up and marched out the door. George Winfield entered the reception room just in time to hear the last of that exchange.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Maggie wants a drink,” Joanna explained. “Which, if you ask me, is the last thing she needs about now. She was so drunk earlier this afternoon that she didn’t remember my telling her that her sis-ter was dead, and she didn’t remember cutting her hands with pieces from a broken glass, either.”

“She was functioning in a blackout?” George asked.

“Must have been,” Joanna replied. “That’s the only thing I can figure.”

“How long has it been since she’s had a drink?”

“A couple of hours,” Joanna replied with a shrug. “Several, actually.”

“If I were you, then,” George said, “I’d get her the drink she wants right away. If she’s enough of a problem drinker that she’s suffering blackouts, I’d advise not cutting off her supply of alcohol. She could go into DTs and die on you.”

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Joanna was stunned. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. Her body is most likely accustomed to functioning with a certain level of booze in it. If you take the alcohol away suddenly, without her being under a doctor’s care, you risk triggering a case of DTs that could possibly kill her.”

“In that case,” Joanna said, “I’d best go buy the lady a drink. I’ll have Maggie call you later to give you all the relevant information, date of birth and all that. Before I go, I have to ask. Frank gave me the high points on your autopsy results—that Connie Haskell was beaten, raped, and tortured. Anything else?”

George Winfield shook his head. “Isn’t that enough? Whoever did this is a real psycho.”

“DNA evidence?” Joanna asked.

“Plenty of that. Either the guy didn’t think he’d get caught or else he didn’t care. Whichever the case, he sure as hell didn’t use a condom. And you’d better catch up with him soon,” George added. “If you don’t, I’m guessing he’ll do it again.”

On that grim note, Joanna started to leave. Before she made it to the door, George stopped her. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” he said. “Not about this,” he added hurriedly.

“It’s another matter entirely.”

“Something about Mother?” Joanna asked.

“Well, yes,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Look, George,” Joanna said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry here. Could you stop beating around the bush and tell toe what’s going on?”

“Eleanor called CPS early this afternoon.”

“She did what?”

“Ellie called Child Protective Services. She was concerned about Dora being out at the ranch, so she called CPS. An investigator went to Sally Matthews’s house up in Tombstone Canyon. No one was home, but she went nosing around in the backyard, where she saw enough telltale debris to make her suspicious. She tracked down a judge. This evening she cane back with a search warrant and reinforcements.” George paused.

In her mind’s eye, Joanna once again saw the pulsing emergency lights flashing off the sides of the canyon as she drove through the Bisbee end of the Mule Mountain Tunnel. “Don’t tell me Sally Matthews is dead, too,” Joanna breathed.

“No, I don’t suppose so,” George said. “Nothing like that. At least not as far as we know.”

Joanna wanted to shake the man to stop his hemming and haw-ing. “What do we know?” she demanded.

“It looks like Sally Matthews has been running a meth lab in her house, the old Pommer place up Tombstone Canyon. The Department of Public Safety Haz-Mat guys are up there right now,
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trying to clean it up.”

“What about Dora?” Joanna asked.

“That’s the part I didn’t want to tell you.” George Winfield shook his head sadly. “Jim Bob called me a few minutes ago. That same CPS caseworker just showed up out at the ranch and demanded that Jim Bob and Eva Lou hand Dora over to her. Which Jim Bob and Eva Lou did, of course—hand her over, that is. The caseworker told them they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Dora’s headed for a foster home out in Sierra Vista. I guess both Dora and Jenny were pretty upset.”

“I should think so,” Joanna said. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yes,” George Winfield admitted. “I’m afraid I would.”

Joanna turned on her heel and started away. Then she stopped and turned back. “There are times when that wife of yours is a meddlesome—” She bit off the rest of the sentence.

George Winfield sighed. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

Coming out of George Winfield’s office, Joanna sat in her Civvie for a moment, calming herself and catching her breath. The anger she felt toward her interfering mother left her drained and shaken. She wanted to grab her telephone, call Eleanor up, and rail at her for not minding her own business, but yelling at her mother wouldn’t change a thing. Farther up the canyon, emergency lights still flashed and pulsed off the steep hillsides. Somehow, seeing those lights and knowing that the Haz-Mat team was still at work and probably would be for hours propelled her out of her anger-induced paralysis. It was time to focus on a course of action.

There was no question about what had to be done. Not only had Jenny found a body, she had also been traumatized by seeing one of her friends—someone who had done no wrong—taken into what must have seemed like police custody. Joanna had to go to Jenny, the sooner the better. If the choice was between comforting her daughter and attending a wedding with Butch, there was no contest.

But what about Maggie MacFerson? Joanna was the person who had brought Maggie to town, and it was her responsibility to take the woman—drunk or sober—back to Phoenix. The thought of Maggie wandering through a strange town on her own was enough to make Joanna start the engine and put the Crown Victoria in gear.

She caught sight of Maggie several blocks away, trudging determinedly downhill. The white bandages on her hands caught in the beams of passing headlights and glowed like moving, iridescent balloons. Joanna pulled up beside the walking woman and rolled down her window.

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

Maggie MacFerson stopped walking and turned to glare at Joanna through the open window. “I didn’t see any watering holes as we came into town. I figure if I go downhill far enough, I’m bound to run into something.”

“Getin,”Joanna urged. “I’ll give you a lift.”

“No lectures?”

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“No lectures.”

Joanna got out, went around the car, and let Maggie in. Then she fastened her seat belt.

“Thanks,” Maggie said grudgingly. “That was a bitch!”

Joanna knew Maggie didn’t mean getting in and out of the car. She was talking about the ordeal of identifying a murdered loved one. “Yes,” Joanna said. “I know”

“Do you?” Maggie asked sharply.

Joanna nodded. “You interviewed me when I was elected, after my first husband was shot and killed, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Maggie said as the anger drained from her voice. “I forgot. Sorry.” She fell silent then as Joanna struggled to ignore her own rampaging emotions while she drove the narrow winding thoroughfare called Tombstone Canyon. That one exchange had been enough to catapult Joanna back into the unimaginable pain she had lived with immediately after Andy’s murder. She knew too well how much that kind of violent death hurt and the kind of impact it had on the people left behind. Andy’s murder was now three years in the past, but Joanna doubted the pain of it would ever go away entirely.

Maggie ducked her head to look up at the glowing lights from houses perched on the steep hillsides on either side of the street. “The people who live in those places must be half mountain goat,” she said.

Grateful for Maggie’s attempt to defuse the stricken silence, Joanna responded in kind. “If I were you,” she said, “I wouldn’t bother challenging any of them to a stair-climbing contest.”

Coming into the downtown area, Joanna drove straight to the Copper Queen Hotel and pulled up into the loading zone out front. Once again, she went around the car and opened both the door and the seat belt to let Maggie out.

“The bar’s right over there,” Joanna said, nodding her head toward the outside entrance to the hotel’s lounge. “Why don’t you go on inside. I need to check on something.”

While Maggie headed toward the bar, Joanna hurried to the desk. “Do you have any vacancies tonight?” she asked the young woman behind the counter.

“We sure do. What kind of a room?”

“Single. Nonsmoking.”

“For just one night?”

Joanna nodded. The clerk pushed a registration form across the counter. Joanna filled it out with Maggie’s name, and paid for the room with her own credit card. Once she had the key her hand she went into the bar, where Maggie was sitting in front of a glass filled with amber liquid.

Out of deference to her bandaged hands, the bartender had put a long straw in the cocktail glass.

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“Something’s happened at home,” Joanna said, settling on the stool next to Maggie. “I’m going to have to spend some time with my daughter. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve booked a room lilt you here at the Copper Queen, courtesy of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Here’s the key. Tomorrow morning, First thing, I’ll take you back to Phoenix. I hope that’s all right.”