J. Jance - Dead to Rights

As soon as Joanna uttered the words, Terry Buckwalter’s knees seemed to collapse beneath her. Her breath came out in a gasp, and her well-tanned face turned pale and her lips stark-white, as she sank back down into the driver’s seat of the car.

Seeing Terry’s reaction, Joanna immediately began railing at herself for botching the job. Stingily there must have been some better way to deliver the news than simply saying, “Your husband is dead.” Wasn’t there something else she might have said, something gentler that would have cushioned the blow? Couldn’t she have found some softer words that would have blunted the impact of that starkly life-changing reality?

“Dead?” Terry repeated, as though in a daze and n t quite capable of grasping the word. “You’re saying Bucky is dead?”

Joanna nodded. “The firefighters found him in the back of the barn when they went inside to douse the flames.”

Terry Buckwalter leaned back against the headrest of the seat, momentarily closing her eyes. Joanna expected that any moment a torrent of tears would start, but that didn’t happen.

“How can that be?” Terry murmured. “He was fine when I left at noon. What happened?”

“We won’t know for sure about that until after the autopsy.”

The word “autopsy” seemed to be a catalyst. Terry grasped the steering wheel with both hands and pulled her-self up straight. Since she still hadn’t taken the keys out of the ignition, a hollow bell-like tone was bonging out some internal warning signal. The racket was driving Joanna crazy, but Terry Buckwalter seemed oblivious to it.

“Why an autopsy?” she asked.

Reaching across Terry, Joanna tried to extricate the key, hill it wouldn’t pull free from the ignition. The gesture was enough to let Terry know what Joanna was trying to do. She silenced the ringing bell herself by removing the key with the aid of some hidden steering-column-mounted release.

“Who ordered it?” Terry asked again. “Don’t I have any say lit that?”

“No, you don’t,” Joanna explained. “The autopsy was authorized by Ernie Carpenter. He’s the homicide investigator on the case.”

“Homicide. You’re saying Bucky was murdered?”

Joanna nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s tentative, of course, but that’s the direction the investigation is taking at this time.”

Joanna was still waiting for Terry’s shock to wear off and for the tears to start. For a moment or two it seemed as though they might, but then Terry turned away from Joanna. She pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Hal Morgan’s six-year-old maroon-colored Buick Century.

“It was him, then, wasn’t it,” she said softly. “It has to be him.”

“Hal Morgan?” Joanna asked.

Terry nodded.

“It could be,” Joanna allowed, “but of course we don’t know that for sure. Not yet. The investigation is just now getting underway.”

Without a word, Terry Buckwalter reached into the pocket of her leather bomber jacket and pulled out a scrap of paper, which she handed out the open door to Joanna.

“What’s this?” Joanna asked.

“Read it,” Terry answered. “Hal Morgan said he would kill Bucky, and now he has.”

“Hal Morgan threatened Bucky? Where? When? Nobody told me that this morning.”

“It wasn’t today,” Terry said. “It was last year. In Phoenix. At the courthouse. I saw him once in the hallway outside the courtroom.”

“Wait did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Terry answered. “He gave me that note. Read it.”

Carefully Joanna began opening a tiny piece of paper that had been folded and refolded until it was smaller than an ordinary shirt button. Once unfolded, the scrap of paper was little more than an inch square.

The message itself, written in tiny script and in fading lead pencil, contained what amounted to two words. “Exodus 21:12.”

Joanna studied the note for a moment and then looked back at Terry Buckwalter’s pale face. “Hal Morgan threatened Bucky with a Bible verse?”

Terry nodded. “Yes.”

“What does it say? Offhand, I don’t remember which verse this one is.”

“I didn’t know it either,” Terry said. “Not at first. I looked it up that night in the Gideon Bible in my hotel room.” Closing her eyes, she recited the words from memory. “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.”

“And you kept it?” Joanna asked. “The note, I mean?”

“Yes,” Terry said. “I put it in my makeup case and then I forgot about it. Until this morning. When I was putting on my makeup, I saw it again and I remembered. With Hal Morgan stationed right outside the clinic gates and carrying his ‘wicket sign, I could hardly forget.”

“Why did you put it in your pocket today?” Joanna asked.

“What?” Terry asked. She seemed to have traveled far away.

“You said you’ve had the note in your makeup kit for months, but today you’re carrying it around in your pocket,” Joanna said. “Why is that?”

Terry shrugged. “I meant to talk to Bucky about it.”

“You meant to, but you didn’t?”

Terry shook her head. “I never had a chance. By the time I came over to the clinic from the house, Bucky was already out in the parking lot raising hell. You were there, so you know what that was like. And when we went inside, we got so busy that I never had another opportunity.”

“I’ll need to keep this,” Joanna said, nodding toward the note. “I’ll have to give it to Detective Carpenter.”

“I understand,” Terry said. “It’s all right.”

Carefully refolding the scrap of paper, Joanna dropped it into her own pocket. When she looked down at Terry, the woman was still sitting there with both hands on the steering wheel, staring dry-eyed out through the T-Bird’s bug-spattered windshield.

“Are you all right, Terry?” Joanna asked, concerned that the other woman was going into shock. “Is there someone I can call to come stay here with you?”

Stony-eyed, Terry shook her head and climbed out of the car, shutting the door firmly behind her. “No,” she said. “I don’t need anyone right now. In fact, I should go in and check on the animals, especially on the post-ops. And Tigger, too,” she added. “If Bucky didn’t get around to pulling out those quills, I’ll have to call Dr. Wade down in Douglas and see if he can come help out.”

With that, Terry Buckwalter hurried into the parking lot. A thunderstruck Joanna Brady watched her go. Nothing could have prepared her for Terry’s reaction, or rather, the lack thereof, to news of her husband’s death. It was almost as though Joanna had told her that Rocky had been called out of town for a few days on some reasonably urgent but nun Iife threatening emergency.

Just then Ernie Carpenter, once again wearing his natty suit, emerged from the rest room, lugging his suitcase. “What’s going on?” he asked, examining Joanna’s face. “Has something happened?”

Joanna nodded. “Terry Buckwalter came home a few minutes ago. Someone called the golf course and told her about the fire. I just now informed her that Bucky’s dead.”

“Oh,” Ernie said. “If she’s here, maybe I can talk to her for a few minutes right now. It’ll save me having to make another trip later.”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Joanna asked.

Carpenter’s steel-gray beetle brows knitted themselves into a frown. “Look, Sheriff Brady, I gave you my word. When I interview Mrs. Buckwalter, if it doesn’t look like it’s necessary, I won’t say a word about the condoms. You don’t need to come along and check up on me.”

“It’s not that,” Joanna said.

Still looking at the clinic door through which Terry Buck-waiter had disappeared, Joanna reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded note. “Before you talk to her, there are two things you need to know. Number one, this note is one that Hal Morgan gave Terry Buckwalter in the hallway of the Maricopa County Courthouse last year. She considers it to be a death threat, and so do I.”