J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“I can’t do anything on it if I’m here,” Sylvia sputtered. “I thought you said I should-”

“Not right now,” Joanna said quickly. “I don’t mean today. I mean in general. How far have you gotten?”

“Only the mid-eighties, I guess,” Sylvia said. “I’m working backward, and it takes time, you know. I can work on it only an hour or two a day, but I’m doing the best-”

Without waiting for Sylvia to finish, Joanna headed for the mail room. Tucked into a far corner sat the clumsy old microfiche machine next to its multiple-drawered file. Pulling out the one marked “1979 – 1981,” Joanna settled herself in front of the screen and went to work.

I SAT IN THE CONFERENCE room twiddling my thumbs for the next twenty minutes. Finally Frank Montoya showed up. Wordlessly he handed me back the piece of paper on which I had scribbled the unknown telephone number. “Who’s Francine Connors?” he asked.

“The Washington State Attorney General’s wife,” I told him. “Why?”

“I’d say the man has a problem then,” Frank Montoya replied. “The cell phone in question is registered to her.”

Frank exited the room, leaving me feeling as though he had poured a bucket of cold water down my back. Ross Connors had been looking for a leak in his department and among his trusted advisers. It was clear to me now that the problem had been far closer to him – in his own home! Francine Connors had been carrying on a long-distance relationship with the husband of one of her friends. In the process, she had not simply betrayed her husband, she had also helped murder Latisha Wall.

I popped my head back out of the conference room. Chief Deputy Montoya had not yet made it to his office. “Hey, Frank,” I called. “One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to need a log on that one, too.”

“No kidding,” he replied. “I’ve already ordered it. I’ll bring it to you as soon as I can.”

While waiting, I struggled with my conscience, wondering what to do. Under the circumstances, nothing seemed clear-cut. Was my first responsibility to my boss? Did I have an obligation to call Ross Connors and tell him my as yet unproved suspicions? But if I did that, wasn’t I dodging my responsibilities to Latisha Wall? Most of my adult life has been spent tracking killers. If Francine Connors had betrayed a protected witness’s whereabouts, then she was as guilty of Latisha Wall’s murder as the man who had poisoned her.

Francine Connors was the dishonorable wife of a man sworn to uphold the laws of Washington State. How would Ross Connors react? Would he listen to what I had to say and do what had to be done, or would he try to save his wife? In a tiny corner of my mind, I wondered if that was why I was here. Was it possible Ross Connors already had his own suspicions about Francine’s possible involvement? Had he sent me to Arizona hoping against hope that I wouldn’t discover the truth about what had gone on? Was that why, when I first brought up Maddern’s name, Ross had said so little?

Finally, I picked up the phone in the conference room. Pulling a battered ticket folder out of my pocket, I dialed the toll-free number for Alaska Airlines.

“When’s the next flight from Tucson to Seattle?” I asked.

“There’s one this afternoon at three-thirty,” I was told. The conference room clock said it was already ten past two. I was a good hundred miles away from the airport and without a vehicle. “That one won’t work,” I said. “When’s the next flight?”

“Tomorrow morning at seven.”

I reserved a seat on that flight. I had finished and was putting the phone down when Joanna Brady appeared at the conference room door. She stepped inside, flipped up the occupied sign and pulled the door shut behind her. Her face was set; her eyes chips of dark green slate. Something was up.

“Did Frank tell you?” I asked.

“Tell me what?”

“He’s waiting for the next set of telephone-toll logs, but it looks as though my boss’s wife has been carrying on a clandestine affair with one of UPPI’s big-name attorneys back East. I’m guessing that’s how they learned of Latisha Wall’s whereabouts. As soon as they knew, they must have sent Jack Brampton here to rub her out.”

Joanna relaxed a little. “You’ve caught them then,” she breathed, but she didn’t sound nearly as pleased about it as I would have expected.

“Frank’s the one who did it,” I said. “I’ve never seen anybody who can work with the phone company the way he does.”

Joanna nodded absently, as though she wasn’t really paying attention. She had taken a seat at the conference table. Sitting directly across from her, I noticed a long, jagged scar on her cheek for the first time. She probably usually covered it with makeup, but now her face was pale. The scar stood out vividly against her white skin, making me wonder what had caused it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Joanna put a slim file folder down on the table, but she made no move to hand it to me. “You said earlier that you and Anne Rowland Corley’s attorney…”

I wished she wouldn’t keep using Anne’s maiden name. I hated having Anne’s name linked to her father’s.

“Ralph Ames,” I supplied. “The attorney’s name is Ralph Ames.”

“That the two of you cleared all the cases,” she continued.

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t come here,” she said. “You didn’t clear any cases here.”

It was a statement more than a question. My heart gave a lurch.

“As far as we knew there weren’t any cases here,” I said, “other than Anne’s father, that is. With the whole family dead by then…”

“You said she kept a written record?”

“Yes, in the form of a manuscript. Why?”

“Was Bill Woodruff’s name in it?” Joanna asked.

“Bill Woodruff? Not that I remember. Who’s he?”

“You mean who was he,” Joanna corrected. “Years ago he used to be the Cochise County Coroner – before he disappeared, that is. He wasn’t declared officially dead until three years later, but I’m sure now that he died much earlier than that. He was also the man who ruled Patty Rowland’s death an accident and Roger Rowland’s a suicide.”

She spun the file folder across the table to me then. “Check the dates yourself,” she added. “Bill Woodruff disappeared within three weeks of Anne Rowland Corley’s release from the hospital in Phoenix.”

Joanna left the room, leaving me to pick up the pieces of my heart. In the file I found several pages copied from a missing persons report. From the bare bones of what was written there I learned that Bill Woodruff had gone on a fishing trip to a town in Mexico, where he was reportedly seen in several bars in the company of a young woman – a strikingly beautiful young woman – after which neither of them were ever seen again.

I’m always accusing Maxwell Cole of editorializing. Since he writes a newspaper column, I suppose he’s entitled to put his opinions right there in print for all to see. But the truth is, cops editorialize, too. Couched in the supposedly nonemotional declaration of fact and allegation that passes for cop-talk and cop-write, I recognized what the long-ago investigator had obviously concluded. A few terse but nevertheless disparaging remarks about Bill Woodruff’s wife, Belinda, revealed the investigator’s opinion that the missing man might well have had good reason to walk away from a shrewish, carping wife – walk away and simply disappear.

Unlike that original investigator, I saw Anne Corley’s troubled face leap toward me out of the telling words in the report: “strikingly beautiful.” That was Anne, all right – strikingly beautiful. And ultimately dangerous. Bill Woodruff must have thought he was about to get lucky and have himself a harmless little fling. I’m sure he had no idea he was dealing with the now-grown and incredibly vengeful little girl his official reports had once betrayed.