Weapons drawn, the three officers and the accompanying German shepherd inched forward, crawling on their bellies. They reached the relative shelter of the wall with no additional shots being fired.
“Stella,” Joanna called. “We know you’re in there. We also know you’re hurt. Give yourself up. Throw out your weapon. Let us help you.”
“I don’t want help,” Stella called back.
“Good work, boss,” Ernie muttered. “You’ve made contact and got her talking.”
“Think of your son,” Joanna said. “Think of Nathan. He loves you and needs you.”
“He doesn’t. I’ve wrecked his life. It’s spoiled. Everything I tried to do is gone.
And it’s all Carol’s fault. And Andrea’s. How could they do that-to me and to Nathan?
Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone? And why did Carol have to decide to go and open her big mouth?”
Stella’s voice came from only a few feet away, from the other side of the roofless wall. Joanna thanked God for the thick concrete that separated them.
“Maybe she was tired of keeping secrets, Stella,” Joanna said.
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“Secrets like that get to be too heavy over the years. They drag you down.”
“I was doing fine. So was Nathan, but now …”
“Pam Davis and Carmen Ortega thought you were Carol, didn’t they?” Joanna called softly. “They came to Carol’s place for their appointment that morning, but Carol was already dead, wasn’t she? You pretended to be her.”
For a few moments, Stella Adams was silent. During the silence Joanna was struck by the peculiar intimacy of their conversation. They might have been girls off on a double date, sharing secrets between locked stalls in a ladies’ rest room. “How did you know that?” Stella asked finally.
Because you all breed true, Joanna felt like saying. Because all of Eddie Mossman’s daughters look like twins. And his son looks just like him.
Far ahead, Joanna caught sight of the winking flash of approaching lights. The additional officers she had summoned were coming toward them from the opposite direction. “Tell Tica we’re talking to the suspect. Tell our backup to stay back until I give the word,” Joanna ordered. Moments later Deputy Gregovich was relaying the information through the radio attached to the shoulder of his uniform.
Meanwhile Joanna turned her attention back to the suspect. Nathan was Stella Adams’s Achilles heel, and that was where Joanna focused her efforts.
“Think about Nathan,” she said. “Turn yourself in.”
“That’s what my father said, too,” Stella returned. ” ‘Think about Nathan.’ But I am thinking about him. Everything I did, I did for him. To protect him.”
“Your father wanted you to turn yourself in?”
Stella erupted in a mirthless chuckle. “Right. That’s what he 339
wanted, but I told him, ‘No way!’ I told him he owed me-he owed us all-but he owed Nathan more than anybody. So, at first, when I asked him, he was willing to help.
He agreed to send the e-mail to try to get Pam and Carmen to back off.”
“You knew they were coming?”
“Sure, I did. Because they wanted to talk to me. After they finished talking to Carol, they were going to interview me, too. But the threat didn’t work. They didn’t back off. Pam and Carmen showed up anyway, so I got rid of them, and Carol, too. Dad was headed back to Mexico from Kingman. When I told him what had happened, he offered to move the bodies for me. He said he’d try to make it look like some pervert had done it.”
That should have been easy for Ed Mossman, Joanna thought.
“So he moved them and stripped them and tied them up,” Stella continued.
“You shot them?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In their car. What a mess! I didn’t think I’d ever get all that blood washed off.
It was everywhere.”
“Where’s the car, Stella?” Joanna asked. “The car you shot them in. Where is it?”
“I ran it off the road, somewhere the other side of Animas. Then I hitchhiked back.
I told the guy who gave me a ride that my husband had beaten me up and that I was going back home to my parents. He believed me, too. Nice guy.”
Her voice was softer now, with a funny dreamlike quality that made it sound as though she was struggling to concentrate and stay connected.
“Sounds like she’s fading some,” Ernie whispered. “I think she really is hurt.”
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“Are you all right, Stella?” Joanna asked. ‘Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
“We can’t leave you,” Joanna returned. “Throw down your weapon and come out. Let us help you.”
“No. If anyone comes near me, I’ll shoot.”
“Mom?”
The sound of Nathan Adams’s voice coming from twenty-five or thirty yards away sent a surge of fear coursing through Joanna’s body. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. Her hands tingled.
“Where’d he come from?” Joanna demanded. “What’s he doing here, and where the hell is he?”
“Off to our right,” Terry Gregovich returned, pointing. “I saw him a second ago.
Now he’s dropped behind some bushes. He must have followed the railroad bed out of town.”
Joanna couldn’t see Nathan Adams, but she could hear him as he dashed forward once more. He must have run the better part of the mile and a half to two miles from his house to the scene. As he drew closer, Joanna heard him panting with exertion.
“Nathan!” Joanna shouted. “Stop. Go back. It isn’t safe!”
But Nathan Adams paid no attention. “Mom,” he gasped. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
Stella, who must not have heard him the first time he spoke, did this time. “Nathan!”
she exclaimed forcefully. “Get out of here! Go back to the house! This is none of your business.”
“But it is my business,” Nathan argued.
“Terry,” Joanna ordered. “Ernie will cover you while I try to keep her talking. You and Spike go get that kid and do whatever it takes to get him out of here!”
Crouching low to the ground, Terry set off with Spike at his heels.
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“I’m sure you don’t want Nathan to get hurt,” Joanna said. “Throw down your weapon, Stella. Let’s finish this.”
“It is finished,” Stella returned. “It’s over. There isn’t anything more to do.”
“Mom, let me be with you,” Nathan pleaded. “Let me help. Please.”
In the pale moonlight Joanna caught a glimpse of Nathan Adams as he tripped over some obstacle and fell to the ground. He started to rise, then crumpled again as Terry Gregovich and Spike tackled the boy and sent him sprawling. After a fierce but brief scuffle, the clump of milling figures lay still.
“No,” Stella said, oblivious to the fact that her son had just been physically prevented from coming any nearer to her. “I don’t want you here, Nathan. Go away.”
“Mom, please.”
“You’re better off without me. Go!”
“Watch yourself,” Ernie muttered in Joanna’s ear. “Sounds like she’s maybe gonna take herself out.”
Joanna nodded. “I think so, too,” she agreed. “How many people will she try to take with her?”
Suddenly the night was blacker. It took a moment for Joanna to realize that the softball game was over. There was a flicker as if someone had thrown a switch. Then the moonlight gleamed that much brighter. Off to the right she spied movement. As her eyes adjusted to the changed light, she was able to make out three figures-two human and one canine-moving back toward town as Deputy Gregovich and Spike hustled Nathan Adams to safety.
They disappeared from view behind a small rise, leaving the desert in an eerie nighttime silence that was broken only by the muted chatter of distant police radios.
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“Stella?” Joanna asked finally.
“What?”
“Are you okay? We know you’re hurt.”