Joanna glanced up to find Leann Jessup shaking her head in dismay over something she had read in the paper.
“Who was behind what?” Joanna asked. “Is something wrong?”
Tight-lipped, Leann didn’t answer. Instead, she flipped the opened newspaper across the table. “It’s the lead story,” she said. “Page one.”
Joanna picked up the paper. The story at the top of the page was datelined Tempe.
The battered and partially clad body of a woman found in the desert outside Carefree last week has been identified as that of Rhonda Weaver Norton, the estranged and missing wife of Arizona State University economics professor, Dr. Dean R. Norton.
According to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office, Ms. Norton died as a result of homicidal violence. The victim was reported missing last week by her attorney, Abigail Weismann, when she failed to show up for an appointment. When Ms. Weismann was unable to locate her client at her apartment, the attorney called the Tempe police saying she was concerned for Ms. Norton’s safety.
Two weeks ago Ms. Weismann obtained a no-contact order on Ms. Norton’s behalf. The court document ordered her estranged husband to have no further dealings with his wife, either in person or by telephone.
Reached at his Tempe residence, Professor Norton refused comment other than saying he was deeply shocked and saddened by news of his wife’s death.
The investigation is continuing, but according to usually reliable sources inside the Tempe Police Department, Professor Norton is being considered a person of interest.... see Missing, pg. B-4.
Instead of finishing the article, Joanna looked up Leann Jessup’s pained face.
“I took the missing person call,” Leann explained. “Afterward, I checked the professor’s address for priors. Bingo. Guess what? Three domestics reported within the last three months. The son of a bitch killed her. He probably figures since he’s a middle-aged white guy with a nice time and a good job, that the cops’ll let him off. And the thing that pisses the hell out of me is that he’s probably right.”
“Three separate priors?” Joanna asked. “When the officers responded each of those other times, was he ever arrested?”
“Not once.”
“Why not?” Joanna asked.
Leann Jessup’s attractive lips curled into a disdainful and decidedly unattractive sneer. “Are you kidding? You read what he does for a living.”
Joanna consulted the article to be sure. “He’s a professor at ASU,” she returned. “What difference does that make?”
“The university is Tempe’s bread and butter. The professors who work and live there can do no wrong.”
“Surely that doesn’t include getting away murder.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you,” Leann answered bitterly. As she spoke, she thumbed through the pages until she located the continuation of the article. “Do you want me to read aloud?” she asked.
Joanna nodded. “Sure,” she said.
Lael Weaver Gastone, mother of the slain woman, was in seclusion at her home in Sedona, but her husband, Jean Paul Gastone, told reporters that women like his stepdaughter—women married to violent men—need more than court documents to protect them.
“Our daughter would have been better off if she had ignored the lawyers and judges in the court system and spent the same amount of money on a .357 Magnum,” he said from the porch of his mountaintop home.
Much the same sentiment was echoed hours later by Matilda Hirales-Steinowitz, spokeswoman for a group called MAVEN, the Maricopa Anti-Violence Empowerment Network, an umbrella organization comprising several different battered women’s advocacy groups.
“Handing a woman something called a protective order and telling her that will fix things is a bad joke, almost as bad as the giving the emperor his nonexistent new clothes and telling him to wear them in public. If a man doesn’t respect his wife—a living, breathing human being—why would he respect a piece of paper?”
Ms. Hirales-Steinowitz stated that crimes against women, particularly domestic-partner homicides, have increased dramatically in Arizona in recent years. According to her, MAVEN has scheduled a candlelight vigil to be held starting at eight tonight on the steps of the Arizona State Capitol building In downtown Phoenix.
MAVEN hopes the vigil will draw public attention not only to what happened to Rhonda Norton but also to the other sixteen women who have died as a result of suspected domestic violence in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the course of this year.
Michelle Greer Dobson, a friend and former classmate of the slain woman, attended Wickenburg High School with Rhonda Weaver Norton. According to Dobson, the victim, class valedictorian in 1983, was exceptionally bright during her teenage years.
“Rhonda was always the smartest girl—the smartest person—in our class when it came to cracking the books. She went to Arizona State University on a full-ride scholarship. As soon as she ran into that professor down there at the university, she was hooked. I don’t think she ever looked at another boy our age.”
According to Ms. Dobson, Rhonda Weaver met Professor Norton when she took his class in microeconomics as an ASU undergraduate student nine years ago. Norton divorced his first wife the following summer. He married Rhonda Weaver a short time later. It was his third marriage and her first. They have no children.
Leann Jessup finished reading and put the paper down on the table. “This crap makes me sick. We should have been able to do more. I agree with what the man in the article said. The system let down, although I guess it’s not fair to second-guess the guys who took those other calls. After all, we weren’t there. If I had been, maybe I would have done something differently.”
“Maybe,” Joanna said. “And maybe not. In that shoot/don’t shoot scenario yesterday, I evidently pulled the same boner the responding officer did. If that had been a real life situation, I would have plugged that poor little kid, sure as hell.”
Folding the paper, Leann shoved it into her purse and then stood up. “It’s almost time for class,” she said. “We’d better get going.”
Joanna glanced around the room and was surprised to find it nearly empty. Only one student remained in the room, a guy from Flagstaff who was still talking on the telephone. He and his wife were having a heated argument over what she should do about a broken washing machine while he was away at school. The public nature of the lounge telephone made no allowances for domestic privacy.
Joanna and Leann cleared their table and head for class. Determinedly, Leann Jessup changed the subject. “It’s going to be a long day,” she said. “I’ve been up since four. The train woke me.”
“What train?” Joanna asked. “I didn’t hear any train.”
“You must have been sleeping the sleep of dead,” Leann said. “It was so loud that I thought we were having an earthquake.”
Outside the classroom a small group of smokers clustered around a single, stand-alone ashtray. Grinding out his own cigarette butt, Dave Thompson began urging the others to come inside. Other than the guy from Flagstaff, Joanna and Leann were the last people to enter.
Something about the searching look Dave gave her made Joanna feel distinctly uneasy. Leann evidently noticed it as well.
“Oops,” she whispered, as they ducked between other students’ chairs and tables to reach their own. “The head honcho looks a little surly today. We’d better be on our best behavior.”
Moments later, Dave Thompson closed the door behind the last straggler and marched forward to e podium. “I hope you’ve all read last night’s assignment, boys and girls,” he said. “We’re going to spend the morning discussing some of the material on the worldwide history of law enforcement as well as some additional material on law enforcement here in the great state of Arizona. I’m a great believer in the idea that you can’t tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”