J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“Any suggestions?”

“Probably the Copper Queen back uptown in Old Bisbee,” he told her. “But regardless of where you stay, please let us know where you’ll be.”

Serenity Granger nodded. “Of course,” she said.

Joanna wished Jaime Carbajal hadn’t suggested the Copper Queen. Pretty soon everyone staying at the old hotel would be connected to this case, one way or the other. But she didn’t voice her objection aloud. After all, the only thing Joanna wanted was for Serenity Granger to leave her office. The information about Warren Gibson’s criminal past was far too important to blurt out with a civilian present, even if that civilian was vitally concerned with finding the person under investigation.

“I’ll walk you to the lobby,” Frank Montoya offered.

“Don’t bother,” Serenity said, turning him down. “I can find my way.”

As soon as the door closed behind her, both Frank and Jaime turned to Joanna expectantly. “All right,” Frank said. “Give.”

Joanna handed him the paper. “Warren Gibson’s real name is Jack Brampton,” she said. “He’s an ex – pharmaceutical salesman who’s done time for DWI and involuntary manslaughter. Casey’s made copies of the rap sheet so we’ll have them available for the task force meeting at one. I want everybody there. I also want copies available of everything we have so far, including a written report of what we’ve just learned from Serenity Granger. By the way, Beaumont will be here for the meeting.”

Both men looked at Joanna. “Since when?” Jaime asked.

“Since last night when I invited him,” Joanna said.

Jaime shook his head. “Great,” he muttered. “Guess I’d better get started typing my report, then.”

Jaime stalked from the room. Joanna glanced at Frank to see if he shared Jaime’s opinion about including Beaumont in the task force. If the chief deputy disapproved, it didn’t show. He walked over to Joanna’s desk and retrieved a pile of papers he’d brought along with him into her office.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Copies of everything we had up to this morning. Even with Beaumont included, there’ll be enough to go around. I thought you might want to go over them yourself before the meeting.”

“Thanks, Frank. You’re good at keeping me on track. I really appreciate it.”

“And then there’s this.” He removed a fat manila envelope from the bottom of the stack and passed it over as well.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A present,” he said. “It’s the information you asked me to track down on Anne Rowland Corley,” Frank told her. “There’s quite a bit of it – probably too much to read between now and one o’clock, but you might want to skim through some of it. If what I’m picking up is anything close to accurate, whoever sent Special Investigator Beaumont to Bisbee wasn’t doing the poor guy any favors.”

Joanna pulled out the topmost clipping and glanced at it. The article, dated several years earlier, was taken from the Seattle Times . It reported that a special internal investigation conducted by the Seattle Police Department had concluded that a deranged Anne Corley had died three weeks earlier as a result of a single gunshot wound, fired by her husband of one day, Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont. The fatal shooting had occurred at a place called Snoqualmie Falls State Park. Anne Corley’s death had now been officially ruled as self-defense, and Detective Beaumont had been recalled from administrative leave.

Putting the paper down, Joanna stared at her chief deputy. “It sounds to me like cop-assisted suicide,” she said.

Frank Montoya shrugged his shoulders. “Or husband-assisted suicide,” he said. “Take your pick. Now I’d better get going, too. I’m working on the telephone information you asked me to get, but weekends aren’t the best time to do that.”

He went out then, closing the door behind him. Meanwhile, Joanna shuffled through the contents of the envelope. Looking at the dates, she realized that at the time Anne Rowland Corley died, Joanna had been a working wife with a husband, a young child, and a ranch to look after. In addition to her full-time job as office manager for the Davis Insurance Agency in Bisbee, she had been making a two-hundred-mile commute back and forth to Tucson twice a week while she finished up her bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona. No wonder Anne Rowland Corley’s death hadn’t made a noticeable blip on Joanna’s mental radar.

As Frank had suggested, Joanna scanned several more articles from Seattle-area papers. Most of them were from immediately before and after the fatal shooting. One piece was a blatantly snide commentary from a columnist named Maxwell Cole connecting Detective Beaumont with a “mysterious lady in red.” Finally, Joanna came to a much longer, denser article from the Denver Post . This one, running several pages in length, was an in-depth piece that had been part of an investigative series dealing with female serial killers.

A look at the clock told Joanna she was running out of time. Intriguing as the article might be, her first responsibility was to be properly prepared for the upcoming task force meeting. Thoughtfully, Joanna shoved the collection of papers back into the envelope, which she dropped into her briefcase.

From the moment Joanna had met J.P. Beaumont, she had thought of him as a smart-mouthed jerk. Last night, at the Copper Queen, when he had been straight with her and told her about his interview with Marliss Shackleford, she had glimpsed something else about him – that he was probably a good cop, a straight and trustworthy one.

Now, though, she realized there had been something else there as well, a certain indefinable something she had recognized without being able to put her finger on it, a sort of common denominator between the two of them that she couldn’t quite grasp. Now she knew what it was. Beaumont’s wife had died tragically; so had Joanna Brady’s husband. Having survived that kind of event didn’t excuse the man’s smart-mouthed attitude, but it made it a hell of a lot easier to understand.

For the next while Joanna concentrated on reading the material Frank Montoya had brought her. Lost in her work, she jumped when her phone rang and was astonished to see that her clock said it was already twenty minutes to one.

“I’m guessing you won’t be coming home for Sunday dinner, is that right?” Butch asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The time got away from me. I’m due to be in a meeting at one. Save some for me, will you?”

“I already did.”

WITH LARS JENSSEN’S TIMELY INTERVENTION I managed to avoid that first drink. When I finally went to bed around one, I fell right to sleep. The problem is, the dream started almost as soon as I closed my eyes. It’s a dream I’ve had over and over for years. Even in my sleep, it makes me angry. I want to wake up. I don’t want to see it again, and yet there’s always the faint hope that somehow this time it will be different. That it won’t end with the same awful carnage.

I know from interviewing crime scene witnesses that human memory is flawed. Dreams, which are memory once removed, are even more so. The events of the few jewel-like spring days I spent with Anne are jumbled in my dreams, sometimes out of sequence and often out of sync with the way things really played out. The words we said to each other are hazy; the scenes slightly out of focus. Still, they always leave me wrestling with an overriding guilt and with the same unanswered questions: When did I fall in love with her? How did it happen? What else could I have done?

In the dream I usually relive feelings rather than what actually happened: The joy I felt when I asked her to marry me and she said yes. The amazement as I slipped my mother’s treasured engagement ring on her waiting finger and saw how perfectly it fit. There’s the fun of the surprise wedding shower the guys from Seattle PD threw for us down at F. X. McRory’s and the blue-sky perfection of our early-morning wedding.