J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“How long was Marco Andrade at Wild Horse Mesa?” I asked.

“He arrived here on October first,” Willison said. “Like I told you before, I knew the guy was trouble as soon as I saw his paperwork, even before he took a swing at one of my guards.”

“And the guard in question?” I asked.

The question was a natural follow-up, and Willison answered it without hesitation. “He wasn’t here. He was on medical leave from October 6 to November 15.”

It wasn’t difficult to look at all the machinations and see the same thing Warden Willison was seeing. Whoever was behind this had worked in the background, pulling strings and manipulating the system so that Andrade could be shipped from a facility where he wasn’t touchable to one where he was. In this case he was better off when he was doing hard time than when he was pressing the easy button. Maybe not better off, really, but safer.

“Were any of Andrade’s known associates in that set of showers at the time?”

“No,” Willison answered. “Not as far as I’ve been able to ascertain. What I do know is that this was a hit-as much as anything the Mafia does-and every bit as deadly.”

I heard the frustration in his voice, and I didn’t blame him for being pissed.

“I’ll talk to Detective Lowell then,” I said. “I assume he has all Andrade’s personal effects?”

“Yes. He’s got everything. By the way, what’s your name again?”

“Beaumont,” I said. “With the Washington State Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team.”

“Lowell can’t very well talk to me about what’s going on,” Willison said. “But he might talk to you. If someone who works here is a crook, I want to know about it. Understand?”

I understood completely.

“You bet,” I said. “If he comes up with a name, I’ll be happy to pass it along.”

By the time the morning briefing started, everyone had already heard about the situation with Jaime’s sister, so it was a subdued group of officers who gathered in the conference room as Joanna brought them up-to-date. With Jaime out on bereavement leave, Joanna was gratified to see how eagerly her remaining officers were to pick up the slack. Ernie Carpenter volunteered to take charge of the DPS photo enhancement project while Debra Howell agreed to take the lead on the situation with Caring Friends.

The briefing was almost over and people were preparing to leave when they heard the sound of raised voices on the other side of the closed door. Hearing the disturbance, Ernie reached over and opened the door. From Joanna’s place at the head of the table she saw a mountain of a man standing in front of Kristin’s desk in the small lobby outside Joanna’s private office.

“I don’t care what she’s doing!” he exclaimed. “I need to see Sheriff Brady now! Understand?”

With that, he slammed his fist into Kristin’s desktop. There was enough force behind the blow that Kristin’s crystal paperweight went skittering off the desk and onto the carpeted floor. Fortunately it didn’t break. Every officer in the conference room was ready to leap to Kristin’s defense, but Joanna beat them to it.

“Excuse me,” she said calmly, walking up behind the man. “What seems to be the problem?”

The man-mountain spun around, whirling to face her. He was six-six if he was an inch, portly and slightly balding. He could have been in his late sixties or early seventies. He was also mad as hell.

“Problem?” he repeated. “You’re damned right there’s a problem. You people want to dig up my mother, and it’s not gonna happen. Understand?”

“That would make you Mr. Fletcher?” Joanna asked. Walking toward him, Joanna paused long enough to retrieve the fallen paperweight and return it to Kristin’s desk. In the meantime her officers emerged from the conference room one by one and edged into the room. Their very presence made it plain that they were all ready and willing to provide backup in case things got out of hand.

“Yes,” the man said. “That’s right. Robert Fletcher. Bobby.”

“Very well, Bobby,” Joanna said. “Let’s go into my office and discuss this. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to invite Detective Howell here to join us. She’s the detective who is most familiar with the situation out at Caring Friends. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

The man seemed surprised and disarmed by her unexpected kindness. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Thank you. That would be very nice.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black. Just black.”

Joanna glanced in Kristin’s direction. Taking a cue from her boss, Kristin marched off to get coffee. Meanwhile Joanna ushered Fletcher into her office and motioned him into one of the captain’s chairs, where he very nearly didn’t fit. Deb took a seat in the other one.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Joanna said.

To her surprise, Bobby’s eyes filled with tears. Nodding, he used a meaty paw to wipe them away. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“How long ago did you lose your mother?” Joanna asked.

“Six months,” he said. “Two months shy of her ninety-second birthday. Of course, mentally she’s been gone much longer than that. Alzheimer’s, you know.”

The office door opened. Kristin came in carrying a cup of coffee. With a wary look in Bobby’s direction, she placed the cup on the desk and then hurried back out as if worried that the man’s temper might flare up once more.

He took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked. “Why do you want to dig her up? Hasn’t she suffered enough? Can’t you leave well enough alone?”

“Some serious deficiencies have come to light at Caring Friends in the last few days,” Joanna explained.

“I know,” he said. “I heard about that. Philippa Brinson took off. I never met her. She must have arrived after Mother…”

The remainder of the sentence drifted away unfinished.

“There were problems with some of the other patients as well,” Joanna continued. “Serious health issues. Helpless patients were left alone and unsupervised. We need to see that the people who did this accept responsibility for their actions.”

“My sister started it, didn’t she,” Bobby declared. “Is Candace the one who came up with the bright idea that you should dig Mother up?”

Joanna glanced in Deb’s direction. Her detective gave a small nod.

“Yes,” Joanna said.

“It figures.”

“So you and your sister aren’t close?”

“You could say that,” Bobby replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

Joanna waited to see if he would say anything more. Finally he did. “Look,” Bobby said, “I admit it. I was stupid when I was young-really stupid. I ran with some bad people and did some really bad things. I ended up doing time. When I got out, I had nothing. I had no job, no education and nowhere to go, so I came home, carrying all my worldly possessions in a single duffel bag. My mother was still living in the little house on Black Knob where Candace and I grew up. She was living there on Social Security and her widow’s pension from PD.”

That meant Bobby’s father had probably been a miner-underground or open-pit-for Phelps Dodge.

“I’ll never forget the look on her face when she opened the door and saw me there. She just beamed. She was so happy to see me. She called me her baby. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve been praying every day that you’d come home and here you are.’ And so I stayed. Like I said, I didn’t have much of an education and I wasn’t really qualified to do anything other than make license plates-I was pretty good at that. But Mother helped me get odd jobs here and there-carrying out groceries at Safeway, cleaning people’s yards and garages, detailing their cars. That way I was able to help with the bills, and we got along fine. For a while. For quite a while.”