“I don’t see—” Joanna began, but Carol Strong cut her off in mid-sentence.
“We found the clothes you mentioned in the bathroom. A sweatshirt, jeans, bra, tennies, socks. Everything was there
“What does that mean?”
Carol shook her head. “If Dave Thompson is the one who did it, what happened to Leann Jessup is my fault.”
“How can that be?”
“Thompson was one of the people at the Roundhouse the night Serena Grijalva was murdered.”
“He was?”
Carol nodded. “His name turned up when we questioned the bartender there. I don’t know Thompson personally. When I transferred back here from California, I did my probation duty, and that was it. I didn’t have to sit through any classes. But half the Peoria force came through Dave Thompson’s program at the APOA. When his name turned up, I didn’t see any connection or any reason to consider him a suspect. Now I can see that I should have. It looks as though Dave Thompson is a very troubled and dangerous man. How did he strike you?”
“As an unreconstituted male chauvinist pig,” Joanna replied. “Leann and I were the only women in the class. He didn’t like having us there, and he made sure we knew it.”
“You mean he was hostile? He picked on you?”
“That’s how it seemed.”
“Did he focus on Leann in particular?”
Joanna thought about that for a moment; then she shook her head. “No. It felt to me as though he was on my case far more than he was on hers, but that could have been an erroneous perception on my part. Leann was a lot more scared of him than I was. If she failed the course, her job was on the line. I’m an elected official. If I flunk, it might make for bad PR, but passing or failing the APOA class doesn’t make that much difference to me.”
“Did he make any off-color suggestions to either one of you?”
“As in sex for grades? No, none of that. Certainly not to me. If he made that kind of an offer to Leann, she never mentioned it to me.”
“Did he threaten either one of you in any way?”
“No, but I know Leann was worried about keeping up. After we attended the vigil on Tuesday, she was worried about falling behind in her reading. That was one of the reasons she didn’t come along to the hotel on Wednesday afternoon.”
“Vigil?” Carol Strong asked. “What vigil?”
“The sponsored by MAVEN down by the capitol. The one for the domestic violence victims. I went because of Serena Grijalva.”
“And Leann went along with you?”
“Not exactly. We went together. She had her own reasons for going. She was the officer who took the missing persons report on the ASU professor’s wife—ex-wife. I can’t remember her name, but they found her body up by Carefree on Monday.”
