Exit Wounds (14 page)

Without glancing in Joanna’s direction, the boy slouched into a nearby chair. “Come on, Mom. Lay off. It’s hot. I drove all around looking for some shade to park in.”

“Mind your manners,” Stella growled at him. Then, to Joanna, she said. “This is my son, Nathan. Nathan, this is Sheriff Brady.”

Scowling, the boy stood up. “Hello,” he said grudgingly. “Glad to meetcha.” His handshake was limp. “Is there a Coke machine around here somewhere?” he asked.

“Just off the lobby,” Joanna told him.

Nathan turned to his mother, who was already fishing a handful of change out of her purse. “Come right back,” she admonished as he turned to go.

Joanna watched the transaction in silence. If Nathan was allowed to drive by himself, he had to be at least sixteen. And if Stella Adams was anywhere near Joanna’s age—somewhere in her early thirties—then she would have been only fourteen or fifteen when Nathan was born, years younger than Joanna herself had been when she gave birth to Jenny.

“He may not look like it,” Stella said to Joanna as her son walked away, “but Nathan’s a good kid. It’s hard to raise good kids these days.”

“Don’t I know it,” Joanna agreed. “Especially once they become teenagers. Now I’d better get going.”

She hurried into the conference room. “Good,” Jaime Carbajal said, reaching for the tape recorder once Joanna had taken a chair. “Now we can get started.”

Jaime began the interview. Edith answered his questions in a surprisingly steady voice, only occasionally biting back tears.

“Tell us about your granddaughter, Carol Mossman,” Jaime began.

“What do you want to know?”

“It’s always helpful to know as much about the victim as possible,” Jaime said gently.

“Carol didn’t have an easy life,” Edith said sadly.

“Why’s that?”

“She had to live with my son, for one thing,” Edith replied. “Carol’s mother, Cynthia, died in childbirth when Kelly was born. Carol was the oldest. She was ten at the time her mother took sick and twelve when Cynthia died in childbirth. A lot of the burden of taking care of her sisters fell on her. That’s a terrible responsibility for someone so young,” Edith added. “Terrible!”

“Where was this?” Jaime asked.

“In Mexico. Obregón,” Edith answered. “Eddie wasn’t much of a student. He never finished high school. He went to work for Phelps Dodge the minute he was old enough. Working underground, he made good money for a while. Then, in 1975, when PD closed down its mining operation, the company would have transferred him somewhere else. Instead, he quit and took his family to live in Mexico.”

“I know Phelps Dodge had operations in Cananea,” Jaime said. “But I don’t remember any near Ciudad Obregón.”

“That’s because there aren’t any,” Edith replied shortly. “Eddie got himself mixed up with some cockamamy religious group called The Brethren. Their headquarters is on a ranch outside Obregón. Eddie and Cynthia took the three girls and went there because they could live on the ranch rent-free. I’m convinced that’s why Cynthia died, by the way. She had M.S. and never should have gotten pregnant that last time. But if she’d been in a hospital here in the States, being treated by a properly trained doctor, she might still be alive to this day.

“At the time, and for a long time afterward, I didn’t know any of this. Eddie and I don’t exactly get along, you see, and we didn’t stay in touch. Then, one day, out of the blue, a letter came from Carol—a postcard, really—asking if she and her sisters could come live with me. Just like that. And I said, ‘Of course. Whatever you need.’ ”

“When was that?” Joanna asked.

“When the girls came home?” Edith asked. Joanna nodded. “Seventeen years ago or so,” Edith said. “Carol had just turned twenty. She told her sisters that she was bringing them home for a visit. Kelly didn’t want to come, and Carol couldn’t make her change her mind. Once they got here, the girls stayed with me and never went back.”

“What happened then?” Jaime asked.

“Well,” Edith said, “Grady was already gone by then, so I did what I could. The girls didn’t have much of an education—only a lick and a promise, so I saw to it that they all got GEDs. Andrea took to schooling like a duck to water. She got her AA degree from Cochise College in Sierra Vista and then went on to the U of A. She’s working on a Ph.D. in psychology and works as a secretary in the Chemistry Department. They give employees a good discount on tuition, you see.

“Stella wasn’t much of a student, but she had a baby to support, so she got a job waiting tables at PoFolks in Sierra Vista. That’s where she met Denny, her husband. Couldn’t have met a nicer guy, as dependable as the day is long. He drives a FedEx truck. He and Stella got married when Nathan was three. Denny’s the only father little Nate has ever known.”

“And Carol?” Jaime asked.

A pained expression crossed Edith Mossman’s face. She shook her head sadly. “Carol never quite managed to cope,” she said. “She bounced from one bad job to another, and no matter where she lived, she always ended up taking in a pack of dogs. It’s hard to find a decent place to live when you have five or six or seven dogs living with you.”

“You mean she’s done this before—gathered up a bunch of stray dogs?”

Edith nodded. “And then she’d get evicted and the next thing I knew she’d have lost her job and she and the dogs would be living on the streets or in her car. That’s how come I finally let her move into Grady’s and my mobile. That way I could be sure that, no matter what kind of mess the place turned into, at least she’d have a roof over her head.”

“In other words,” Joanna said, “whenever Carol got into some kind of financial or legal difficulty, she came to you for help.”

“There wasn’t anyone else for her to turn to.”

“Including two weeks ago, when she received the citation about this latest batch of dogs?” Joanna asked.

“That’s right. And, like I said to you the other day, I told her I wouldn’t be able to help out until after the first of the month, when my social security check showed up. In the meantime, she called me from work one afternoon and told me not to worry about it—that she’d made arrangements to get the money from someplace else.”

“Did she say where this money was supposed to come from?”

Edith shook her head. “No. At least not to me she didn’t.”

“So even though she told you she had the situation covered,” Joanna said, “you came on out to her house with your checkbook at the ready anyway. How come?”

“Because when Carol said she didn’t need the money anymore, I didn’t necessarily believe her,” Edith replied. “You see, she wasn’t a person who was always one hundred percent truthful. She was more than happy to tell lies when it suited her or when she was trying to save face. Carol may not have had much else going for her, but I’ll tell you this much—she did have her pride. When it comes to that, Carol was a Mossman through and through.”

So is pride what killed her?
Joanna wondered.
Being poor and proud can sometimes be a lethal combination.

Seven

T he interview with Edith Mossman went on for sometime after that, but Joanna had a difficult time concentrating. Her early-morning English muffins had long since worn off. Her stomach was growling so loudly that she worried Edith might hear it.

The questions droned on and on. Did Carol have any enemies? No. Boyfriend? If Carol had a boyfriend, Edith knew nothing about it. How long had she worked in her present position? About six months. Had Carol had any difficulties at work, either with supervisors, fellow employees, or customers? Not that she had mentioned to Edith.

Taken individually, the answers to all of Jaime’s questions seemed inconsequential. Together, they formed a picture of who Carol Mossman was and who her associates had been. The hope was that one or another of those slender threads would help lead investigators to the killer. When Edith finally complained of fatigue, Jaime immediately offered to break for lunch.

“You mean there’s more?” Edith demanded. “What else can you possibly want to know?”

“We need to know everything,” Jaime told her. “Everything you can tell us.”

“It’ll have to wait, then,” Edith said. “I’ll go over to Stella’s house and take a little nap. I’m no spring chicken, you know. If I don’t get my rest, I’m the next best thing to worthless. Maybe, after that, I’ll feel up to talking some more. Right now I’m completely worn out.”

Me, too,
Joanna thought.

“Sure thing,” Jaime said. “Later this afternoon will be fine.”

Twenty minutes later, Joanna slid into a booth at Daisy’s, across the table from where Marianne Maculyea was already sitting.

“How are you doing?” Marianne asked.

“Fine until I smelled the food,” Joanna said.

“Queasy?”

“You could say that.”

“Try the chicken noodle soup,” Marianne suggested. “When I was pregnant, chicken noodle was one of the few things that didn’t bounce back up the moment I swallowed it.”

“I take it you’ve forgiven me for not telling you first thing?” Joanna asked.

Marianne grinned at her. “Let’s just say I’m over it,” she said. “I’m thrilled to know Jeffy is going to have someone to play with.”

“You may be over it, but I’m not,” Joanna said. “I’m still pissed at Marliss.”

Even as she said it, Joanna knew she was putting Marianne in a difficult situation, since Marliss Shackleford was also a member of the Reverend Maculyea’s flock at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.

“Don’t be,” Marianne advised. “Marliss was just doing her job. Or what she sees as doing her job.”

Daisy Maxwell, owner of Daisy’s Café, approached the booth with pad and pencil in hand, ready to take their order.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff Brady,” she said with a smile. “And congratulations. What’ll it be, now that you’re eating for two?”

Word is definitely out,
Joanna thought.

“My friend here recommends the chicken noodle soup,” Joanna replied. “I guess I’m having that.”

“And you?” she asked Marianne.

Once again, Marianne favored Joanna with an impish grin. “Well,” she said, “since I’m not the one who’s expecting, I’ll have a hamburger. With fries!”

Forty-five minutes later, Joanna was back in her office when Ernie Carpenter knocked on the doorjamb. “Back from Tucson already?” she asked.

He nodded, came into the room, and eased his portly frame into one of the chairs. “If the jail’s still under lockdown,” he said, “I think you can tell Tom Hadlock to ease up.”

“How come?” Joanna asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“Fran Daly’s preliminary conclusion is that Richard Osmond died of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.”

Joanna closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer of thanksgiving that George Winfield had wisely suggested bringing in an unbiased third-party medical examiner. The same information coming from Joanna’s own stepfather would have been far easier to view with skepticism.

“Undiagnosed?” she asked. “You mean Richard Osmond was that sick and no one had any idea?”

Ernie nodded. “According to Doc Daly, that’s the way pancreatic cancer works sometimes. It’s like a time bomb that goes off with zero advance warning. Even if doctors find it, Fran says there’s not that much that can be done about it.”

“What I want to know is whether or not
we
had any warning,” Joanna declared, emphasizing the first person plural pronoun. “Whether the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had any warning.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to Frank, Richard Osmond has a child with a girlfriend whose father is a litigious kind of guy. Before Frank even finished doing the next-of-kin notification, Gabriel Gomez was already threatening us with a wrongful-death lawsuit. I want to know for sure that we’re covered on this, Ernie. I want you to check the jail records and find out if Osmond ever asked to go to the infirmary on a sick call or asked to see a doctor. I also want you to check with the two guys in his cell; what are their names again?”

Ernie hauled out a pad of paper and checked his notes. “Brad Calhoun and John Braxton,” he supplied.

“I want you to see if Osmond ever complained to either one of them about not feeling well. I want those interviews conducted immediately, properly witnessed and recorded. Understand?”

“Got it, boss,” Ernie replied. “What’s Jaime up to right now?”

“As far as I know, he’s waiting for Edith Mossman to wake up from her nap so he can finish doing her second interview. Maybe you can squeeze in talks with Braxton and Calhoun before that happens.”

Ernie nodded. “We’ll get right on it,” he said.

As Ernie rose to do her bidding, it occurred to Joanna that she owed this man, some twenty-five years her senior, the courtesy of personally informing him about what was going on.

“By the way, Ernie,” she said, “I’ll probably have Frank put out an official bulletin, but there’s something I need to tell you.”

“About the baby, you mean?” he asked.

Joanna nodded.

“Not to worry. Rose read me the article from the paper this morning. I should have mentioned it earlier. I guess congratulations are in order.”

Marliss strikes again,
Joanna thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

Ernie frowned. “You’re not planning on quitting, are you?”

“No. Definitely not.”

A slow smile crossed Ernie Carpenter’s broad face. “Good,” he said. “Glad to hear it. I’m just getting used to working with you. It’d be a shame to lose you now.”

As soon as Ernie left her office, Joanna picked up her phone. “Frank,” she said, “I think we should send out a special department-wide bulletin as soon as possible. We need to let people know what’s going on vis-à-vis my pregnancy.”

“I’m on it,” Frank told her. “I’ve got a rough draft almost ready to go.”

“You’re a mind reader,” Joanna said. “I’m free whenever you are.”

She was working on her never-ending pile of paperwork several minutes later when David Hollicker came rushing through her door. “What’s up?” she asked.

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“What?”

“NIBIN just got a hit on the Mossman casings.”