Shoot / Don't Shoot

then I’ll take you up to the room.”

While the girls wandered off for a quick tour of the hotel, Joanna headed back to the room. She felt tired. She’d been awake much of the night, worrying about whether or not Dave Thompson had acted alone. Up in the room, she found the telephone message light blinking. On the voice-mail recording, she heard Lorelie Jessup.

“I just now came home from the hospital,” Lorelie said. “Kim brought me here so I could sleep in a bed for a while. From your call this morning, I thought you’d want to know that Leann’s doing better, but she’s still not able to talk. They’ve upgraded her condition to serious. I did speak with her doctor. He says that with the kinds of injuries received, it’s unlikely she’ll have any recollection of events leading up to what happened. He says short-term memory is usually the first casu­alty, so I doubt she’ll be able to help you. If you need to talk to me, here’s my number, but don’t call right away. It’s ten o’clock. I’m going to bed as soon as I get off the phone.”

Relieved that Leann was better, Joanna erased the message and replaced the receiver. But, she knew that the doctor was most likely right. The critical hours both immediately before and after a severe trauma or a skull-fracturing accident can often be wiped out of a victim’s memory banks. That meant Leann Jessup would probably be of little or no help in establishing the identity of her attacker.

Jenny’s electronic key clicked in the door lock and the girls bustled into the room. Jenny gave Ceci a quick tour of the room and then dragged her back to the television set. “We’ll watch the news tape before we go to lunch and Snow White after,” Jenny said, expertly shoving a tape into the VCR. Clearly, she was enjoying the opportunity to boss the listless Cecelia around. “And we’ll go swimming right after lunch.”

“You’d better get with it, then,” Joanna said. “It’s only a few minutes before we’re supposed to meet Grandma Lathrop and Colonel Brundage.”

As Jenny fooled with the tape, running it backward and forward to find the right spot, Joanna watched Ceci Grijalva closely, worrying about the child’s possible reaction to the emotionally wrench­ing material she was about to see.

“In our lead story tonight,” the television anchor said smoothly into the camera, “longtime ASU eco­nomics professor Dean R. Norton was arraigned this afternoon, charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of his estranged wife, Rhonda Weaver Norton. Her partially clad body was found near a power-line construction project southwest of Carefree late last week.

“Here’s reporter Jill January with the first of two related stories on tonight’s newscast. Later on this half hour, Jill will be back with another story concerning a local group determined to do something about the increasing numbers of Valley homicide cases resulting from domestic violence.”

The picture on the screen switched to the figure of a young woman standing posed, microphone in hand, on the steps of a building Joanna instantly recognized as the Maricopa County Courthouse. Only when the camera zoomed in for a close-up did she realize the reporter was the same young woman who had thrust a microphone in Joanna’s face as she and Leann Jessup were filing out of the MAVEN-sponsored vigil.

The photographed face of a good-looking young woman flashed across the screen. “A month ago, Rhonda Weaver Norton moved out of the upscale home she shared with ASU economics professor Dean Norton,” Jill January said. “She moved into a furnished studio apartment in Tempe. At the time, Rhonda told her mother that she feared for her life. She claimed that her husband had threatened to kill her if she went through with plans to leave him.”

While what looked like a yearbook head-shot of a balding and smiling middle-aged man filled the screen, the reporter continued talking. “This afternoon, Professor Norton was arraigned in Maricopa County Superior Court, charged with first-degree murder in the bludgeon slaying of his estranged    wife. Rhonda Norton had been missing for three days when her badly beaten body was found by a Salt River Project utilities installation crew working on a power line south of Carefree.

“Judge Roseann Blacksmith, citing the gravity of the case, ordered Professor Norton held without bond. Trial was set for February eighteenth.

“Rhonda Norton’s mother, well-known Sedona?area pastel artist Lael Weaver Gaston, was in the courtroom today to witness her former son-in-law’s arraignment. She expressed the hope that the prosecutor’s office would seek either the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole.

“At the Maricopa County Courthouse, I’m Jill January