“Pardon me,” she said apologetically to Joanna. “In this business somebody my size needs all the help she can get, but these damn shoes are killing my feet.”
For several moments, neither woman said anything while Joanna studied Carol Strong. Her age was difficult to determine. Her skin was generally smooth and clear, although dark circles under her eyes hinted at a world-weariness that went far beyond simple lack of sleep. Here and there a few strands of gray misted through the feathery cloud of black hair that surrounded her face. Her sharply tapered nails were lacquered several layers deep with a brilliant scarlet polish. Everything about the way she looked and dressed seemed to celebrate being female, but there was an underlying toughness about her as well. Joanna sensed that anyone who mistook Carol Strong for just another pretty face was in for a rude awakening.
“Dick Voland told me you had great legs,” Joanna said.
“Who the hell is Dick Voland?” Carol Strong asked in return. “And why was he talking about me.”
“He’s one of my chief deputies,” Joanna explained. “He was the one who helped you when you came down to Paul Spur to pick up Jorge Grijalva. I had planned to come talk to you about that.... “
Carol Strong’s easygoing manner changed abruptly. “About what?” she demanded.
“About Serena and Jorge Grijalva. I know Juanita Grijalva, you see. Jorge’s mother. She asked me to look into things.”
A curtain of wariness dropped over Carol Strong’s face. “And have you?” she asked. “Looked into things, that is?”
There was no sense in being coy about it. “I’ve done some informal nosing around,” Joanna admitted. “I went to see Jorge Monday night down at the Maricopa County Jail. And I picked this up from Butch Dixon, the bartender at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill.”
Taking the yellow pages of Butch’s essay out of her purse, Joanna handed them over to Carol and then waited quietly while the other woman scanned through them. “And?” Carol said finally when she finished reading and pushed the pages back across the desk to Joanna.
“And what?”
“Did you reach any conclusions?”
“Look,” Joanna said. “I’m leaning toward the opinion that Jorge didn’t do it. That’s based on nothing more scientific than intuition, but my conclusions don’t matter one way or the other. I’m not here to hassle you about Jorge. Let’s drop it for the time being. I want to know about Leann Jessup. I assuming I’m here because you think I could be of some help.”
Carol Strong closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she focused directly on Joanna’s face. “We are discussing Leann Jessup,” she said wearily. “We have been all along.”
“But I ...” Joanna began.
Carol passed a weary hand across her forehead. “You’re a newly elected sheriff, but you’ve never been police officer before, right?”
“Yes, but ...”
“Do you know what holdbacks are?”
“Sure. They’re the minute details about a case that never get released to the media—the things that known only to the detectives and the killer. They’re helpful in gaining convictions, and they also help separate out the fruitcakes who habitually call in to confess to something they didn’t do.”
“Right.” Carol Strong nodded. She leaned forward across the desk, her smoky gray eyes crackling with intensity. “Sheriff Brady, what I’m about to tell you is in the strictest confidence. We had plenty of physical evidence in the Grijalva case. Jorge had a new secondhand truck, one he claimed his wife had never ridden in. But when the crime lab went over it, we found trace evidence that Serena had been in the car, including fibers that appear to match the clothing Serena Grijalva was wearing the last time she was seen alive. We also found dirt particles that tested out to be similar to soil near where Serena’s body was found. The murder weapon was a tire iron. With paint particles and wear marks, we’ve managed to verify that the tire iron that was missing from Jorge’s truck at the time we arrested him was the same one we found at the murder scene. Sounds like a pretty open-and‑shut case, doesn’t it?”
This was the first inkling Joanna had of how extensive the case was against Jorge Grijalva. “I didn’t know about any of that,” Joanna admitted. “Certainly not the physical evidence part of it.”
“No, I don’t suppose you did,” Carol Strong agreed. “And there’s no reason you should. It wasn’t a big-name case, and Joe Blow domestic violence is old hat these days. The public is so inured to it that most of the time it doesn’t merit much play in the media. In this particular case, though, I did keep some holdbacks—one in particular was more to spare the children’s feelings than it was for any other reason.”
Carol Strong paused. “Serena Grijalva was naked when we found her. And she was bound with her own pantyhose, trussed with her arms and legs tied behind her in exactly the same way Leann Jessup was found this morning. I may be wrong, but the knots looked identical.”
The crowded little office was silent for some time after that. “How could that be?” Joanna asked finally. “Jorge Grijalva’s still being held in the county jail, isn’t he?”
Carol nodded. “Actually, it could mean any number of things. One of which is that Jorge had an accomplice. The most obvious possibility, however, is that we’ve arrested the wrong man.”
“But what about all the trace evidence?” Joanna asked. “Where did that come from?”
Detective Strong shrugged. “Either the evidence is real or it isn’t. Either we found it there because Serena was in the truck at some time or else the evidence is phony, and it was planted there to mislead us, to frame Jorge Grijalva—an innocent man—for the murder of his wife.”
“Planted,” Joanna echoed. “Who would plant evidence? How would they know how to go about it?”
“A trained police officer would know,” Carol Strong answered. “Here’s the recipe. You stir in some planted evidence, add in a plausible suspect, and sprinkle it liberally with public-dictated urgency for closing cases in a hurry.” She shrugged. “Add to that an ex-husband who’s willing to cop a plea, and there you go.”
“Jorge is willing to plead because he doesn’t want go to court,” Joanna said quietly.
“If he didn’t kill her, why would he do that?” Carol returned.
“Because he was afraid the prosecution would bring up Serena’s whoring around. He wanted to protect his kids from hearing about it.”
Carol shook her head. “The defense would have brought that up, not the prosecution. It’s a hell of a lot harder to convict someone of killing a known prostitute to than it is to convict them of killing a nun.”
There was a momentary lull in the conversation. “If, as you say, the evidence was planted by a cop, do you have any idea what cop?” Joanna asked. “One of yours?”
“Tell me what you know about Dave Thompson?” Carol said.
“From the APOA?” Joanna winced, aware her question made her sound like some kind of dunce.
Carol nodded. “One and the same.”
Joanna thought for a moment before answering. “He was a cop somewhere around Phoenix.... “
“Chandler,” Carol supplied.
“I heard a rumor that he got into some kind of hot water. That the Chandler city fathers dumped him by putting him on permanent loan to the APOA.”
“That’s pretty much right. I talked to the new chief in Chandler just this morning, right before you showed up on campus. The case against Thompson was a domestic. Never came to trial because Thompson’s ex refused to testify. She simply took the kids and left town. This was back in the good old days when there was still a certain tolerance for cops who beat up their wives, but there was enough of a stink that they had to get rid of him.”