Paradise Lost (37 page)

“Will do.”

Joanna put down the microphone, leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let out her breath.

“Way to go, Boss,” Frank said. “Running an operation like that by radio is a little like giving somebody a haircut over the phone, but you made it work. Congrats.”

A few minutes later, Frank turned the Crown Victoria onto I-10 east of Benson. With the emergency over, he had now slowed to the posted legal limit, and the Civvie dawdled along at a mere seventy-five. By the timethey made a U-turn across the median, they could see that backed-up traffic from both sides of the freeway was now approaching the scene. Frank and Joanna’s Civvie was the third police vehicle in a clot of shoulder-parked vehicles lined up behind the massive RV.

As soon as Joanna stepped out of the car, she went straight to her two deputies. “Good job,”

she told them.

Matt Raymond still seemed a little shaken by the experience. “It could have been a whole lot worse,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “I know,” she said. “Believe me, I know.”

“I haven’t talked to the woman much, but she’s begging us to change her tire and let her drive on into Tucson,” Matt Raymond said. “She claims she’s got a deal to sell the Marathon, but she has to deliver it to the dealer by one o’clock this afternoon. Otherwise, he rescinds his offer to buy.”

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“I’ll talk to her,” Joanna said. “She’s under arrest for murder. She’s not in any position to be selling a motor home.”

“I tried to tell her that myself,” Matt said. “I don’t think she was listening.”

Joanna looked up as a speeding eighteen-wheeler blew past in a burst of hot air, followed by a long, unbroken line of other vehicles. “We need to get this mess off the road. It’s not safe for any of us. Is this thing drivable, or are we going to need a tow truck?” she asked, looking down at the mangled flat.

“All we have to do is change the tire,” Matt Raymond replied.

Joanna walked over to the idling Bronco that was Matt Raymond’s marked patrol car. There Irma Sorenson, a white-haired unassuming lady with a pair of thick glasses perched on her nose, sat handcuffed in the backseat. She looked like somebody’s grand-mother, not a cold-blooded killer.

“Mrs. Sorenson?” Joanna said. “I’m Sheriff Brady. Having all these vehicles parked on the shoulder of the freeway is causing a hazard. We need to move them. Would it be all right if one of my deputies changed that tire?”

“Please,” Irma said. “I don’t know where the jack and spare are. I’m sure they’re in one of those locked compartments. The keys are still in the ignition.”

“So you don’t mind if my officers enter your vehicle? We don’t have a search warrant.”

“You don’t need a search warrant,” Irma said. “I’m giving you permission to enter. If you need me to sign something, give it to me and I’ll sign. And if you’ll just let me take it on up to Tucson, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. But I have to sell this thing, and I have to sell it today.”

“Because it contains evidence?” Joanna asked.

“No. Because I need the money. I’m going to need a lawyer.”

Joanna closed the car door and walked back to where her deputies stood waiting. “She says the keys are in the ignition. You have permission to get the keys and change the flat tire, but whatever you do, don’t touch anything else. You got that?”

Raymond and Lindsey nodded. Together they set about finding the keys, locating the jack and spare, and changing the tire.

“Frank, do you happen to have that miniature tape recorder of yours in your pocket?”

“Sure do, why?”

“Bring it,” Joanna said. “I want you to Mirandize Mrs. Sorenson. And I want that recorded as well.”

“You don’t think she’s going to confess, do you?”

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“Yes, I do.” Feeling half-guilty about what she was about to do, Joanna led the way back to the car. “Mrs. Sorenson, you told me a minute ago that it we let you keep your appointment with the RV dealer in Tucson, that you would tell us everything we want to know. Is that true?”

Irma Sorenson nodded.

“We’ll have to record your answers.”

“That’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

“This is my chief deputy, Frank Montoya. I’d like him to switch on his recorder and read you your rights.”

“Sure,” Irma said. “Go ahead.”

Frank and Joanna sat in the front seat of the Bronco. Irma remained in the back.

“So what happened?” Joanna asked, once the legal formalities had been handled.

“I killed him,” Irma said simply and without blinking. “I shot my son in the middle of the forehead.”

“Why?”

“Because he was going to kill me,” Irma replied. “I know he was. I knew too much about what he had done. He just didn’t know I had the gun.”

“What gun?” Joanna asked sharply. “Where did you get it?”

“From the car,” Irma said. “From that blue Lincoln Rob had me drive to the airport for him. I knew something dead had been in that car. I could smell it, and given Robby’s past . . .” Irma paused then and gulped to suppress a sob. “Given that, I knew what it had to be. I knew it had started all over again, with hint doing what he used to do. The only thing I could think of was to let someone know about the car.”

“But what about the gun?” Joanna prodded.

“That’s what I’m telling you. I knew I had to have a reason tier someone to look at it—at the car, I mean. I couldn’t just call up and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I need someone to go check out a car that’s sitting in the lot at Tucson International because I think maybe someone’s been killed in it.’

No, if an old lady calls in and says that, they’ll probably think she’s a complete wacko and pay no attention. But I thought if I said, `Hey, there’s a car at the airport with blood on it. Somebody needs to go check it out,’ maybe they would. But for that I needed some real blood, so I cut my hand. And it was when I was looking around on the floor of the car for something to use to cut my hand with that I found the gun. It must have belonged to the person Robby killed, the one whose car it was. Anyway, I found the gun on the floor along with an old Bible that was full of hundred-dollar bills. I put them both in my purse. I know it was wrong to take the money. It didn’t belong to me, and I should have left it where it was. But I took the gun just in case I needed it, you see. When you’re dealing with someone like Robby—someone that unpredictable—you just never can tell.”

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“And where is it right now?”

“The gun? It’s still in my purse,” Irma said. “Inside the RV.”

“Getting back to your son,” Joanna said. “You’re saying you wanted him to be caught?” Irma nodded. “Then why didn’t you go ahead and call the Tucson Police Department? You could have turned him in right then instead of going through the ruse of making a phony phone call and pretending to be someone you weren’t.”

“He was my son,” Irma said as though that explained every-thing. “I couldn’t just turn him in.

My heart wouldn’t let me do that.”

“But if you shot him, your heart evidently let you kill him.”

“That was self-defense,” Irma declared.

“You mean Rob Whipple had a weapon, too? He was holding a knife on you or a gun?”

“No. But he was going to kill me all the same. I knew too much. I had driven that car to the airport for him, and I had spent two days cleaning up the blood that was spattered all over that filthy cabin of his. I pretended to believe him when he told me he had hit a deer with his pickup and killed it. He claimed he had cleaned it inside the cabin so the forest rangers wouldn’t see it and nail him for hunting out of season. That’s the thing that really galls me. That he thought I was that stupid. But I knew it was no deer that had died there—it was a woman. It had to be.”

“Why do you say that?” Joanna asked.

Irma shrugged. “That’s who he always went after—women.”

“Did you talk about her with your son?” Joanna asked. “Did you talk about the dead woman?”

“Are you kidding?” Irma asked. “We were both too busy pretending she didn’t exist. Of course we didn’t talk about her. But I knew that as soon as the mess in the cabin was cleaned up and as soon as I had collected the money from selling the RV, Robby would have to get rid of me, too.”

“So he was the one who wanted you to sell the RV?” Joanna asked.

Irma nodded. “It was his idea, and he’s the one who made the deal. We spent all day Sunday and a big part of Sunday evening looking for a dealer who would make me a good enough offer.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said, thinking of Dora Matthews. “You and Robby were together on Sunday?”

“All day, and all night, too. I stayed with him out at the cabin.”

“And he was with you the whole time?”

“The whole time. Until he had to go back to work on Monday. Yesterday, I went back to Tucson and rented a locker at one of those self-storage places where I can store my stuff for the time being. They sell boxes there, too. I brought some of those home and spent most of last
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night taping them together and throwing junk into them. All we have to do is drop them off at the storage unit on the way to the dealer—they’re both on Twenty-second Street—and they’ll all be there waiting when I get out.”

“Out of where?”

“Jail, of course,” Irma replied. “What else would I be talking about? I knew once Robby had me sign over the title, that would be it. Once I had the money in my hand, he wouldn’t need me anymore. So I got to Robby before he had a chance to get to me,” Irma continued without even pausing for breath. “He came home from work that night all upset, saying he’d been fired. I was scared of him. I told him I was going to go back to my place for the evening, back to the RV.

He got in the car with me. I think he was going to try to stop me. When I pulled the gun out of my purse, you should have seen the surprised look on his face. He just couldn’t believe it. He laughed at me and said, ‘Come on, Mom. Put that thing away. You’re never going to use it.’ But I did. Then I belted him into the car—that’s the law, you know. Passengers have to have their seat belts fastened. Then I drove him off the cliff. In the movies, cars always burst into flame when they go over cliffs. That was what I was hoping this one would do, but it didn’t. It just made a big whanging sound and then a huge cloud of dust rose in the air. That’s all there was to it.”

“And this was when?”

“Night before yesterday. Monday, it must have been. Monday evening.”

Joanna wanted to ask more questions, but right at that moment she could no longer think of any. Shooting her son in cold blood hadn’t bothered Irma Sorenson, but she had been sure to have his seat belt buckled when she sent the Nissan over the cliff.

Shaking her head,, Joanna clicked off therecorder. The criminal mind was more or less understandable; motherhood unfathomable. Insending her son to Pathway to Paradise, Irma Sorenson had hoped to save him. Instead she had lost everything.

“We’re going to do what?” Detective Ernie Carpenter demanded. By the time the Double Cs arrived, the whole cir-cus of Irma’s RV, her son’s pickup, and the collected entourage of police vehicles had moved to the parking lot of a defunct motel east of Benson.

“You heard me,” Joanna told him. “We’re going to drive Mrs. Sorenson into Tucson. First we’re going to drop off her personal possessions at a storage unit and then have her at the dealer’s lot prior to that one o’clock deadline so she can unload her RV. After that, there’ll be plenty of time to take her back to Bisbee and book her.”

“That’s crazy.” Ernie scowled in objection. “The woman has just confessed to the murder of her own son. You’re going to let her unload her stuff at a storage unit and sell off her RV

without even bothering to search it?”

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“Do you happen to have a search warrant on you at the moment?” Joanna asked.

“Well, no,” he admitted.

“Who’s to say we can’t serve the search warrants later, at the RV dealer’s or even at the storage unit, for that matter?”

“But still ...”

“But nothing, Ernie,” Joanna said. “I gave Irma Sorenson my word, and I fully intend to keep it.

In exchange for letting her sell her RV, what do we get? A signed confession that clears not one but two of the three murders that have happened in Cochise County in the last week. That sounds like a good deal to me.”

Ernie Carpenter recognized there was no changing Joanna’s mind. “All right,” he conceded.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can you drive this thing?” Joanna asked, indicating the motor home.

“Sure.”

“Okay, here’s the address of the storage unit, and the ignition key. You drive it there, and I’ll send along a contingent of deputies to do the unpacking. Once the boxes are out of there, come to the dealer—Tex’s RV Corral in the 5700 block of East Twenty-second Street. Frank and I will bring Irma with us and meet you there.”

Grumbling under his breath, Ernie Carpenter stalked off. Joanna went looking for Frank. Two hours later, and a good fifteen minutes before the one o’clock witching hour, a small parade con-sisting of Irma Sorenson’s RV, the towed Dodge Ram, and two police cars pulled into the parking lot at Tex’s RV Corral. A bow-legged man in boots, jeans, Western shirt, and ten-gallon hat saun-tered out of the office.He looked as though he would have been far more at home riding the range than running an RV dealership.

He held out his hand as Ernie Carpenter stepped down from the RV. “Howdy. Tex Mathers is the name,” he said wish an easy going grin. “And you are?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Ernie muttered. “The owner’s the person you need to talk to.

She’s back there.”

Tex Mathers’ grin faded when he saw Irma Sorenson climbing out of the backseat of Deputy Raymond’s Bronco. As, Joanna had directed, Matt Raymond had removed Irma’s handcuffs prior to letting her out of the vehicle.

“This is Mr. Mathers,” Ernie said, as Joanna came forward, bringing Irma along. “He evidently owns the place. And this is Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

Tex Mathers sized Joanna up and down, then he glanced in the direction of the other uniformed officers. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “And why the cops? Mrs. Sorenson didn’t tell you I’m doing anything illegal, did she? Because I’m not. Assuming the rig is in the kind of condition her son said it was in, I’m paying her a fair price. Low blue book, of course, because she wants
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