Partner In Crime

“He’s at the hospital,” Tica Romero replied. “At least Deputy Gregovich is. I don’t know about Spike. Kristin’s about to have her baby.”

“Oh,” a relieved Joanna said. “That explains it.”

Minutes later, while requesting a tow truck to come to retrieve Beau’s damaged Kia, she turned to him and asked, “Where should they take it?”

“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “The rental agreement’s in the glove box. Have the tow-truck driver call Saguaro Discount Rental in Tucson and ask them where they want it. Unless you need it for evidence, that is. If so, you can take it back to your department and have someone dig the bullet out of the passenger seat.”

Joanna shook her head dispiritedly. “Why bother?” she asked. “The shooter’s dead and you’re not. I don’t see any point in wasting time or energy on it.”

“Makes sense to me,” Beaumont agreed.

Sensing that he wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was, Joanna drove for several miles without saying anything more.

“I’m sorry we didn’t catch him,” she said at last. “If your boss thought we were incompetent before-”

“Ross Connors didn’t say anything of the kind,” Beaumont said quickly. “And just for the record, neither did I.”

“Thanks,” Joanna said, and meant it. “What’ll you do now?” she asked. “Head back home?” She was wondering if he’d say anything more about Anne Rowland Corley. He didn’t.

“Probably,” he answered. “With Brampton dead, there’s not much reason to hang around any longer. Although, since Frank went to the trouble of getting those phone logs, I should finish going over them before I leave. I’ll catch a plane back to Seattle tomorrow sometime.”

Riding Princess back to the Lozier place had given Joanna time to mull over what she had read earlier in the Denver Post article. She wanted to talk to Beaumont about it, but her office at the Justice Center was the wrong place to broach the subject. She glanced at her watch.

“It’s after one now,” she said. “I’ll probably have to spend the afternoon on my knees, begging the governor of Arizona to work with the governor of Sonora to get Jack Brampton’s body shipped back to the States. To do that, I’ll need patience, strength, and food. How about grabbing some lunch?”

“Fine,” Beaumont said. “As long as you let the state of Washington buy.”

Feeling a little underhanded, Joanna stopped at Chico’s in Don Luis. Once inside, she ordered tacos for both of them. Her choice of food was actually a test, and Joanna liked the man better for contentedly munching his way through a plate loaded with Chico’s luncheon special.

“Tell me about your wife,” Joanna said quietly as Beau mopped up the last few crumbs of shredded beef and cheese that lingered on his plate.

When he raised his eyes to look at her, J.P. Beaumont’s gaze was suddenly wary. “Which one?” he asked, but it was only a defense mechanism. They both knew Joanna was asking about Anne Corley.

“The second one,” Joanna said.

“What do you want to know?”

“I’ve read the Denver Post article,” she told him. “Frank downloaded it from the Internet.”

“Damn his computer anyway!” Beau muttered. “Why the hell couldn’t he mind his own business? You, too, for that matter?”

“It is my business,” Joanna said. “You asked me about her, remember?”

His expression softened a little. “Well, yes. I suppose I did. I just haven’t had time…”

“As I was reading through the article,” Joanna continued, “something kept bothering me.”

“What’s that?” She heard the tightly controlled anger beneath his question.

“How many cases were there?” she asked. “Besides the two mentioned in the article and the three victims in Seattle, the article hinted there were others. Were there?”

Beau paused before he answered. Finally he nodded. “Several,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter how many. Ralph Ames and I worked with the various jurisdictions and cleared the ones we knew about – the ones Anne had kept a record of. There was no need to make a big deal of it.”

“The article implied that you did it quietly because you were worried about a flurry of wrongful-death suits.”

“That’s not true,” Beau replied shortly. “Anne was dead, for God’s sake. Just as dead as Jack Brampton back there in the riverbed. Ralph and I did it that way so Anne’s name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud any worse than it already had been.”

“Anne’s name?” Joanna asked. “Or yours?”

Beaumont’s face fell. Finally, he nodded bleakly. “That, too,” he admitted.

“My father used to be sheriff here,” Joanna said. “Did you know that?”

“I saw the picture and the name in the display case out in the lobby. I assumed the two of you might be related.”

“Dad always maintained that Anne Rowland got away with murder. He said that by claiming she was crazy and locking her up in a mental institution, Anne’s mother, Anita Rowland, caused a miscarriage of justice.”

“No,” Beau said quietly after a moment. “You’re wrong there. That’s not where justice miscarried. What Anne’s father had done to her big sister – what Anne had been forced to witness as a little girl – drove her over the edge. By the time she killed her father – which she readily admitted – she really was crazy. Locking her up was the right thing to do, but they never should have let her loose. If the legal definition of insanity is an inability to tell right from wrong, Anne never was cured. She was able to see how other people’s actions might be wrong, but never her own.”

“How did she get out then?” Joanna asked. “Why was she released?”

“Because she conned Milton Corley the same way she conned me.”

“The article hinted she might have had something to do with her husband’s death as well.”

“Yes,” Beau said softly. “I’m sure she did. Milton Corley was dying of cancer, but she helped him along. She told me so herself that last day, the day she tried to kill me, too.”

The man’s anguish was so visible, Joanna felt ashamed of herself for prying. “I can see this is terribly hurtful for you,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“No,” he replied. “Don’t be. It’s okay. If I hadn’t wanted to talk to someone about it, I wouldn’t have mentioned her to you that first day. It’s just that sometimes I feel as though Anne never existed at all, as though she’s a figment of my imagination. I knew her for such a short time, you see, and…” He shook his head and didn’t continue.

Joanna slid across the cigarette-marred bench seat. “Come on,” she said gently. “We’d better go.”

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE JUSTICE CENTER, I went straight to the conference room. I was glad no one else was there. I needed some time alone. I sat down in front of the stack of phone logs and put on my reading glasses, but I made no effort to read. The conversation about Anne had rocked me. I was filled with the same kind of apprehension I had felt that May morning as I had driven to Snoqualmie Falls, and in countless dreams since – that there was more to learn about the woman who called herself Anne Corley – more than I would ever want to know.

Finally, because I had to do something to keep from losing it, I picked up the first of the telephone logs.

In terms of excitement, examining telephone logs is right up there with watching paint dry. Or maybe playing with Tinkertoys.

When I was a kid being raised by a single mother in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, we were poor as church mice. One year for Christmas my mother came home from the local Toys for Tots drive with a Tinkertoy set. That’s what I got for Christmas that year – Tinkertoys and a plaid flannel shirt Mother made for me. I remember hating to wear the shirt to school because other kids knew it was homemade.

But the Tinkertoys were a hit. I loved putting the round sticks into those little round knobs with the holes and making them jut out at all different angles. Telephone logs are a lot like that. The numbers are the little round knobs with holes in them. The calls that travel back and forth between them are the sticks.

The first knob was the pay phone that had been used to make the three separate calls to Winnetka, Illinois, on the day Deidre Canfield disappeared. But Frank Montoya is nothing if not thorough. Based on Harve Dowd’s