“Being here brings it all back, I guess,” he said. “My colossal failure in life. The funny thing is, I didn’t see it coming even though one of my fraternity brothers from the U of A tried to warn me. Dudley told me he thought I was getting in over my head, only I didn’t believe him. Old Dud was of the opinion that marrying a rich man’s daughter was a bad idea. Turns out he was right. Which brings us, I suppose, to Leslie. What’s going on with her? What’s this about stalking? I’m willing to bet it has a lot more to do with that slime bucket named Rory Markham than it does with me.”
“I take it you don’t approve of your son-in-law?” Joanna asked casually.
“Look,” Lawrence Tazewell said. “Aileen wrote me out of my daughter’s life a long time ago. I’ve had no contact with Leslie at all since she was little, but I still care, and I try to keep track of what’s going on with her. When I found out she had married Rory Markham, I assumed it was Rory’s son. I knew he had at least one. I didn’t find out until much later that wasn’t the case. When I learned she had married the father instead, the Rory I knew, I couldn’t believe it. Why would someone like Leslie, a girl in her twenties, want to hook up with an old goat almost as old as her father?”
Joanna had her own ideas about why Leslie had married Rory Markham. “So you and he knew each other?” she asked.
“I knew him slightly but Rory and my ex have been pals forever,” Tazewell answered finally. “Maybe even more than pals on occasion. I suspect Aileen is the one who engineered the whole thing.”
Joanna was thunderstruck. “You’re saying your wife allowed your daughter to marry one of her ex- boyfriends?”
“Encouraged probably more than allowed,” Tazewell replied. “In fact, she probably manipulated the whole transaction and poor Leslie probably still hasn’t figured it out. Aileen’s like that, you see-someone who always gets her way. That’s one of the reasons I divorced her.”
“But-” Joanna began. Lawrence Tazewell stopped her mid-objection.
“Look,” he said. “Just because someone gives birth doesn’t make her a decent mother-present company excepted, of course. Now tell me about this stalking business. You say the guy was taking pictures. Do you have any idea who it is?”
Joanna hadn’t expected the interview to progress this far without being back at the department and having someone else to witness and record exactly what was said, but she was into it now, and there was no turning back.
“His name is Evans,” Joanna answered. “Bradley Evans.”
She glanced in Tazewell’s direction to see if there was any visible reaction to this revelation, but there was nothing-no sign of recognition or even interest.
“And he is?”
“An ex-con,” Joanna said. “And he’s dead. Someone murdered him last week.”
“A friend of Rory’s?” Tazewell asked.
“No,” Joanna said. “Not as far as we’ve been able to determine. You may know him, though.”
“Me?” Tazewell asked. “How would I know the man?”
“You’re the one who sent him to prison.”
“What’s the man’s name again?”
“Bradley Evans. He went to prison in 1978 for the murder of his pregnant wife. You were the judge who accepted his plea agreement and imposed the prison sentence.”
“Wait a minute. I think I do remember now. The guy was an ex-soldier from Fort Huachuca, right? He copped a plea even though no one ever found his wife’s body.”
Joanna nodded.
“And you’re right. I’m the one who imposed his sentence. It wasn’t a good time for me, though. I barely remember the proceedings. But what would he have against Leslie?”
By then Joanna was pulling into the Justice Center complex. “Let’s talk about it when we get inside,” she said.
“All this is new?” Tazewell asked.
Joanna nodded. “Relatively,” she said.
“When I was here everything was still located in the courthouse up in Old Bisbee-the jail, the sheriff’s department, the courts.”
“Times change,” Joanna said. “Come on in.” She ushered him into her office through her private entrance and offered him a chair. “Would you mind excusing me?” she asked. “Nature calls-urgently.”
Tazewell smiled. “I understand,” he said. “Take your time.”
Leaving him alone in her office, Joanna hurried to the rest room and then back to Frank’s office. “Got him?” Frank asked.
“He’s in my office. Do you have anything for me?”
“Not yet,” Frank answered. “Nothing on the blood work, if that’s what you mean. Trying to get the crime lab moving on this is like pulling teeth.”
“Having a supreme court justice sitting in my office may be our secret weapon on that score,” Joanna said. “Care to join us?”
Nodding, Frank followed Joanna from his office to hers. After introductions, the three of them settled into chairs around the small conference table in the corner of the room. “What can you tell me about your former wife’s friends?” Joanna asked.
“What friends?” Lawrence Tazewell asked with a snort of derision. “Rory was the only one I knew of, and he was a chum of hers from grade school on. Rory earned money by working on the Triple H during the summers and on weekends. Aileen was totally preoccupied with her parents and her horses. In that order. Her father came first, her mother second, the horses third.”
“What about Leslie?”
“A distant fourth. They hired the wife of one of the Triple H ranch hands to look after her.”
“Did you sue for custody?” Joanna asked. “If you knew your ex-wife wasn’t much of a mother and that your daughter was being raised by a paid caregiver, I should think you would have tried to gain custody.”
Lawrence Tazewell said nothing for a very long time. Instead of answering, he stared out the window at the gray limestone cliffs rising in the distance. “No,” he said finally. “I wasn’t tough enough. I took the easy way out. Aileen said she wanted a divorce, so I gave it to her. And Max made it worth my while to get out and not to rock the boat.”
“Max?” Frank Montoya asked.
“Maxfield Houlihan,” Tazewell answered. “Aileen’s father. Once she made it clear she wanted to be rid of me, Max did whatever he could to make it happen. And I have to hand it to the man. Max Houlihan may have looked like a rube, but he was surprisingly well connected. With the clear understanding that I would go away and stay away, Max pulled a few choice strings. I ended up being offered a great position with a law firm up in Phoenix, one that was far too lucrative to turn down. And that position inevitably resulted in where I am today.”
“You’re saying that it’s because of your ex-father-in-law’s string pulling that you’re a supreme court justice?”
“He didn’t get me the appointment,” Tazewell said. “I got that on my own, but that first job he obtained for me was certainly a springboard to bigger and better things. It put me on a fast track in a way being a superior court judge in Cochise County never would have. But, yes, that is what happened. I’ve felt guilty about it for years. I paid my child support every month, but other than that, I stayed out of Aileen’s and Leslie’s lives. I didn’t want to be involved. I had already lost them once, and I didn’t want to face losing them again. Over the years I’ve tried to make up for my shortcomings with Leslie by doing my level best to be a good father to my present wife Sharon’s two daughters.”
There was something in Tazewell’s demeanor that made Joanna think he was leaving something out. “What do you mean, lose them again?” she asked.
“HD,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Huntington’s disease,” Tazewell answered.
“I’ve never heard of it,” Joanna said. “What is it?”
“It’s a degenerative disease,” he said. “It’s hereditary and incurable. They used to call it Huntington’s chorea
