twenty-five attending this session of the Arizona Police Officers Academy, an interdepartmental training facility that attracts newly hired police officers from jurisdictions all over the state. Sources close to the case say there is some reason to believe that Ms. Brady was also in danger.
Melody Daviddottir, local spokeswoman for the National Lesbian Legal Defense Organization, the group that was instrumental in forcing Thompson’s ouster from the Chandler Department of Public Safety, said that it was unfortunate that a man with so many problems could be placed in a position of responsibility where he was likely to encounter lesbian women or women of any kind.
“Dave Thompson left Chandler because, as a danger to women, he was an embarrassment to his chain of command. He could not have gone from disgrace there to directing the APOA program without the full knowledge and complicity of his former superiors,” Daviddottir said.
With Thompson now dead, Daviddottir said, her organization is considering filing suit to see to it that those people, whoever they are, should be held accountable for injuries Leann Jessup suffered in the incident with Thompson.
Lorelie Jessup, mother of the injured woman, ex-pressed dismay that her daughter, a lesbian, had been singled out for attack due to her sexual persuasion. “That won’t stop her,” Mrs. Jessup said. “It might slow her down for a little while, but all Leann ever wanted was to be a police officer. She won’t give up.”
“How do we look?” Jenny asked, as she and Ceci paraded out of the bathroom in their suits. “You look fine.”
“Grandpa said for us to call when we were ready. He says he’ll watch us.”
“Good. Go ahead then.”
As soon as the girls left the room, Joanna returned to the newspaper. Or at least she intended to, but her eyes stopped on two words in the article’s third paragraph: “partially clad.” Carol Strong had said that, except for the pair of pantyhose that had been used to bind her hands and feet, Leann Jessup had been nude. Since when did hand and foot restraints qualify as being partially clad? But the words sounded familiar—strangely familiar and that bothered her.
Putting down the newspaper, Joanna picked the television remote control off the coffee table where Jenny had left it and switched on the VCR. Joanna wasn’t nearly as handy with the remote as her daughter was, but after a few minutes of fumbling and running the tape back and forth, she managed to turn the VCR to the very beginning of the taped newscast.
Once again the anchor was saying, “. . . 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.”
Thoughtfully, Joanna switched off the tape and rewound it. Then, for several long seconds, she sat staring at the screen with the fuzzy figure of the news anchor poised once more to begin the ten o’clock news broadcast. Even though she no longer had Juanita Grijalva’s envelope of clippings, Joanna had studied the articles so thoroughly that she had nearly committed them to memory.
She was almost positive one of the early articles dealing with finding Serena Grijalva’s body had made reference to her being “partially clad.” Of Purse, in that case, that particular media euphemism had spared Serena’s children from having to endure embarrassing publicity about their dead mother’s nakedness. And the words used no doubt reflected the information disseminated to reporters on that case since, according to Detective Strong, the exact condition of the body—including the pantyhose restraints—had been one of her official holdbacks.
Once again Joanna switched on the tape. The anchor smiled and came back to life. “... Rhonda Weaver Norton. Her partially clad body was found near a power-line construction project southwest of Carefree late last week.”
Joanna turned off the machine. What did the words partially clad mean when they were applied to Rhonda Weaver? Was it possible they meant the same thing? If Carol Strong had resisted embarrassing two orphaned Hispanic children, what was the likelihood that another investigator might do the same thing in order to spare a grieving mother who was also a well-known, nationally acclaimed artist?
