Justice Denied

showered in my bathroom, I went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Todd was there, eating cold leftover pizza. He didn’t say a word about Mel, and neither did I.

Todd gave me a choice of two different stacks of paper, one with reprints of articles on Destry Hennessey and the other, far larger, devoted to Anita Bowdin. I picked the Anita option and retreated to my recliner to go to work.

What I read to begin with was mostly one puff piece after another, many of them dealing with Anita’s work in founding and maintaining the SASAC. Tired of reading the same thing over and over, I skipped to what Analise Kim would have referred to as the FIFO-First In First Out-program and skipped back to the earliest one I could find, a New York Times feature article that profiled a group of six exceptionally brilliant female students, all of whom had enrolled in prestigious colleges at a time when most of their contemporaries were just venturing into high school.

Anita Bowdin, daughter of a university physics professor and an insurance executive, was one of the six very young women. All of them came from upper-crust, privileged backgrounds. All of them voiced concerns about whether or not they’d be able to fit in with the older students around them. All of them expressed some worry about being able to keep up with the course work. All of them credited teachers for encouraging them to strive. I was struck by the one Anita Bowdin mentioned-Sister Helen Thomas of Sisters of the Sacred Heart School, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

So Anita Bowdin had attended a parochial school. Was that a connection? Did the fact that Anita Bowdin had attended Catholic schools as a child have something to do with the fact that a mysterious nun was somehow involved in our series of homicides?

The next media mention of Anita Bowdin came two years later, in the July 7 issue of Ann Arbor News, where she was mentioned in her father’s obituary.

Private funeral services will be held today at 2:00 p.m. at St. Claire Catholic Church for noted University of Michigan physics professor Armand P. Bowdin, who died unexpectedly in his home late last week.

Died unexpectedly in his home. In the old days, when journalism was a more gentlemanly pursuit, those words constituted media shorthand and media newspeak for suicide. They were used primarily when either the deceased or his survivors had enough media pull that no one wanted to mention that the dead guy pulled his own plug.

The rest of the article was a mostly laudatory recitation of his educational and employment background. Anita’s name came at the very end, where she and her mother, Rachel Bowdin, were listed as survivors.

Those two snippets of Anita Bowdin’s history were as far as I’d managed to make it when Mel finally emerged from the bedroom. She was not only dressed-she was dressed to the nines: heels, panty hose, skirt, silk blouse, and blazer. Every hair was in place. Her makeup was impeccable. In other words, she was clothed in the full armor of God and ready to take on all comers.

“All right,” she said coolly, ignoring me and looking Todd straight in the eye. “What have we got?”

Wordlessly he passed Mel the Destry Hennessey file. She took that and a cup of coffee and headed for the window seat. For the next several mintues the atmosphere in the room was thick with tension. It was a relief when my phone rang.

“Detective Beaumont?”

“Yes.”

“Detective Donner here, Ambrose Donner with Bountiful PD. Sorry I wasn’t able to get that composite from the Escobar case off to you yesterday like I said I would. Turns out I ran into, shall we say, a few difficulties.”

“I know how that goes,” I said, and I did. He meant that somebody with a wad of brass on his uniform had decided sending the composite wasn’t going to happen. “That’s all right,” I added. “I was tied up all day yesterday on another case.”

“I can send it now,” Donner said. He sounded pissed. “Is that fax number you gave me still good?”

“Sure,” I said. “Send away.”

“While I was at it,” Donner continued, “I read through the case file, just for the hell of it. Did I tell you about the thread?”

“The black thread?” I asked. “Yes, you mentioned it.”

“The Utah State Police Crime Lab did some analysis of it. They sent word to all convents operated by the Catholic Church in the state of Utah, asking whether or not one of their members had gone missing and also asking for samples of fabric used in the sisters’ habits. Every single convent responded. None of them reported any of their members to be missing. There are only a few convents-eighteen, to be exact-where the nuns still wear habits. All eighteen sent fabric samples, but there wasn’t a single match. Not even close. So what I’m asking is this, Detective Beaumont. Are you looking for a Catholic nun who’s been reported missing? There’s nothing I’d like more than to clear this case and tell the guy who’s running the show here that he’s all wet.”

Working with other jurisdictions involves a lot of horse-trading. They give you something, you give them something in return. Donner deserved to get something back.

“We’re actually looking at the nun more as a possible doer than we are a missing person,” I said.

“No kidding,” Donner murmured.

“We’ve got a couple other cases here on our end where an unidentified nun has been seen in the vicinity of a homicide.”

“That would shed a whole new light on things, wouldn’t it,” Donner said. “So I’ll ship you that composite as soon as we’re off the phone. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

“What about the Escobar file?” I asked.

“I’ll copy what I can and ship that to you as well. What about Hammond?”

“Hammond?” I asked.

“Phyllis Elaine Hammond, the old lady Escobar killed. I’ve got some friends at Salt Lake PD. I might be able to get that file sent to you as well.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“On one condition. Promise me that if and when you resolve this thing, you’ll keep me in the loop.”

“Not only in the loop,” I said. “I’ll make sure you get credit where credit is due.”

I put down the phone and sat there waiting for the fax machine to come to life. “Did you call Ross yet?” Mel asked.

“I was stalling on that,” I admitted. “I’m not wild about telling him one of his favorite people, a criminalist he personally hired and mentored, is bent.”

“You’d better call him all the same,” Mel told me. “We may think confiscating those tampered rape kits is a bad idea, but Ross Connors may think differently about that.”

“Wouldn’t you like to make the call?” I offered.

“Do I look stupid or something?” Mel returned. “Not on your life. You do it.”

So I did. While the fax machine began clicking and clacking, I dialed Ross’s office and was thrilled to be told the attorney general was in a meeting.

“Any message?” his secretary asked.

“Naw,” I said. “I’ll get back to him later.”

“Coward,” Mel said when I hung up the phone.

I waited until the fax machine shot the piece of paper into the tray. Then I picked the composite up. Beneath it was a second fax, the ballistics information Ralph had managed to wheedle out of the authorities down in Cancun. I took both faxes along with me as I headed to the kitchen for a coffee refill. Mel must have emptied her mug at about the same time. I had put the composite down on the counter and was pouring my coffee when Mel joined me. She set her cup down and picked up the piece of paper. What I heard next was a sharp intake of breath.

“Damn!” Mel muttered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I know her,” Mel said. “I’ve seen this woman before.”

“Where?” I demanded.

“On the trip to Mexico.”

“She was there?” I asked. “She’s one of the board members?”

“No,” Mel answered. “She’s one of the pilots-one of the two pilots on Anita Bowdin’s private jet.”

Life keeps reminding me that things have changed. “The pilot was a woman?” I asked, blurting out the