J.A. Jance - Dead Wrong

“Butch,” Joanna cautioned, “I may be pregnant, but I’m not an invalid.”

“And I don’t want you to be, either.”

“Have fun,” Joanna said.

“I will,” Butch returned. “Don’t work too hard.”

Joanna closed her phone. “He’s worried about you?” Jaime asked.

“I guess.”

“I remember how it was when Delcia was pregnant with Pepe,” Jaime said. “I kept worrying and worrying. Delcia was fine the whole time. I was a wreck.”

Joanna laughed. “Sounds familiar,” she said.

They were quiet for a few minutes before Jaime asked, “Is this what you always wanted?”

“Having a baby?” Joanna asked.

“No. Being a cop,” Jaime said with a laugh. “Because of your dad, I mean.”

“I was proud of him,” Joanna returned, after a moment’s thought. “I thought what he did was important, and I thought he treated people fairly. And I was proud of Andy, too, but I never really thought about being a cop myself, not until after Andy’s funeral when someone suggested that I run in his stead. So I guess you could say I stumbled into it. Now, though, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Jaime nodded. “Me, either,” he said.

Anna Marie Crystal’s house was a modest bungalow on Short Street, a block-long fragment of street a single block off Fry Boulevard, Sierra Vista‘s main drag. It was a small clapboard affair with a screened-in front porch. Tucked in behind a collection of strip malls, the house resembled some of the older houses from up in Old Bisbee. It was easy for Joanna to assume that it predated the reopening of Fort Huachuca in the early fifties. The yard, surrounded by a four-foot chain-link fence, looked clean and well tended in the glow of the security lights from the loading docks of the businesses across the street.

With Jaime walking just behind her, Joanna opened the gate and made her way up to the porch, where a single yellow light illuminated an old-fashioned buzzer-style bell. As soon as she punched it, a small dog began barking furiously inside the house.

“Fritz,” a woman’s voice ordered from behind the front door. “Quiet now. Come here!” And then a moment later, “Who is it?”

“We’re police officers,” Joanna responded. “I’m Sheriff Brady. Detective Carbajal is with me. May we come in?”

Several locks clicked before the inside door opened cautiously to reveal a gray-haired woman clutching what appeared to be a tiny silky terrier mix in one arm. A high-volume television set blared somewhere in the background.

“Police?” she asked, peering out at them. “What’s wrong? Has something happened-a robbery or something? With all the people coming and going from that 7-Eleven on the corner, you just never can tell.”

“Are you Mrs. Crystal?”

The woman nodded.

“It’s not a robbery,” Joanna assured her. “But we do need to speak to you.”

After unhooking the screen door, Anna Marie took Joanna’s proffered ID wallet and carried it back inside the house. She put the dog on the floor and then studied Joanna’s ID in the illumination from an overhead light. Meanwhile the dog raced back to the screen door and resumed barking. Joanna held the screen door shut to keep the dog from bursting outside.

“Fritz,” the woman ordered. “Stop that right now. Come here.”

Fritz, of course, paid no attention. Finally the woman returned to the porch, scooped the dog back into her arms. “He doesn’t mind very well,” she said. “Wait right here while I lock him in the kitchen.”

Returning from incarcerating the animal, Anna Marie Crystal held the door open. “Sorry about that,” she said. “He’s a little spoiled. Come in.”

Joanna and Jaime entered a room that reeked of years of uninterrupted cigarette smoking. The massive green glass ashtray on the coffee table was full, but not to the point of overflowing. There were doilies everywhere-beaded ones on the coffee table and on the end tables and crocheted ones on the backs of the couch and chairs. A bookshelf against one wall was lined with what looked like a complete collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

Anna Marie was a tall, scrawny woman with an ill-fitting set of dentures. She motioned the two officers onto an old-fashioned sectional that was far too big for the size of the room, then hurried across the room, where she used a knob to switch off the blaring television set. “Now then, Sheriff Brady,” she said determinedly, “tell me. What’s this all about?”

Jaime looked questioningly at Joanna. Nodding, she took the lead. “Detective Jaime Carbajal is one of my homicide detectives,” she said. “I’m afraid we may have some bad news for you.”

“Homicide?” Anna Marie repeated, her gaunt face paling. “You mean someone’s been murdered?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “The body was found early this morning on Border Road between Paul’s Spur and Bisbee Junction. The victim has been identified as Bradley Evans, your former son-in-law.”

The skin of Anna Marie’s face tightened into a grimace, revealing a glimpse of the angular skull beneath her wrinkled flesh. For a moment she said nothing. “So he’s dead then?” she asked at last. “That no-good son of a bitch is finally dead?”

“Yes,” Joanna said.

“What happened?”

“He was stabbed to death.”

“Good!” Anna Marie exclaimed bitterly, taking a seat in a wingback chair across from them. “It’s about damned time! Bradley Evans murdered my daughter. Why on earth would you think hearing he’s dead would be bad news for me? It’s what I’ve been praying for every day of my life since 1978. Twenty-five years to life! He murdered Lisa and her baby and all he got was twenty-five years! How the judge could give him that and then look at himself in the mirror I can’t imagine!”

With her hands shaking, Anna Marie shook a cigarette out of a packet of Camels on the coffee table, lit it, and then pulled the ashtray within easy reach.

“So you weren’t close?” Joanna asked.

Anna Marie blew an indignant plume of smoke into the air. “Close!” she exclaimed. “Don’t even think such a thing! Of course we weren’t close.”

“But he listed you as his next of kin.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m no kin of his at all.”

“He also named you as the beneficiary of his group life insurance policy. It’s a small death benefit, but-”

“Just because he put my name down on a piece of paper doesn’t mean I have to take the money!” Anna Marie declared. “Blood money is what I call it. He probably thought that by leaving me something I’d forgive him for what he did, but I won’t. Not ever. No matter what. I hope he rots in hell.”

It wasn’t at all the kind of next-of-kin notification Joanna had expected. Instead of a grieving relative, she was faced with this daunting old woman whose whole body bristled with righteous indignation.

“So he hasn’t been in touch with you since his release?” Joanna asked.

“Absolutely not. He wouldn’t dare. If he’d shown up here, I would have shot him myself. I have a gun, you know. An old thirty-aught-six. My husband used to hunt. I kept the gun after he died. I know how to use it, and believe me, if Bradley Evans had turned up anywhere within range, I would have plugged him full of lead. They’d have had to drag him off my porch in one of those zip-up body bags.”

Listening to the old woman rant, Joanna had no doubt that she meant every word. Anna Marie Crystal’s fury with her daughter’s killer was still white hot more than two decades after Lisa Marie Evans’s death.

“Tell me about your daughter,” Joanna said.

Anna Marie blew another cloud of smoke. Her face softened. “She was such a sweet, sweet girl,” she said. “She met Bradley over at the bar that used to be right there by the main gate. You remember the one.”