“You’re saying Dave Thompson did this?”
“Did you ever hear of Tommy Tompkins?” Carol Strong asked.
Joanna nodded her head impatiently. Talking to Carol Strong was like being led through a maze of riddles. “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “Tommy Tompkins International. He’s the ex—TV evangelist who used to own the property the APOA now occupies, isn’t he? I heard he went to prison on some kind of tax evasion charge.”
“Right, but what most people don’t know is that the person who brought Tommy to the attention the IRS was a woman, one of his seminary students who claimed Tommy had broken into her room in the middle of the night and raped her. No charges were ever filed. TTI bought her off for a lot money, and that was what raised all the red flags. Randy revivalists are so prevalent these days that it’s become a cliché. These guys paid off so much so fast, that the IRS auditor figured they must hiding something. Turns out there was a whole lot more to it than just cooking the books, but I didn’t figure some of it out until tonight.”
Joanna waited without comment while Carol Strong drew a long breath. “Did you ever wonder about the mirrored tiles on that one whole side of your room?”
“Not particularly,” Joanna answered. “As part of a decorating scheme, I thought they were odd—a little cold.”
“They’re odd, all right,” Carol said. “What I discovered tonight is that some of them are two-way mirrors. Mirrors on your side, windows on the other. Someone could see in, but you couldn’t see out. If you go into that little private courtyard between Dave Thompson’s apartment and the dormitory, you’ll see what looks like the door to a storage shed of some kind built into the back of the building. It’s not a storage shed at all. There’s a long, narrow passageway back there that runs the whole length of the building and dead-ends on the far side . It’s only about twenty inches wide, so it’s not recommended for claustrophobics. It’s not big on comfort, and the ventilation stinks. But from the number of cigarette butts we found in there, I’d say Dave Thompson or someone else spent a good deal of his off-hours time in there.”
The sudden realization sickened Joanna. Of course, the cigarette smoke. Every time she had turned on the exhaust fan in her bathroom, there had been that sudden burst of smoke in the air, and now she knew why. Dave Thompson had been right there, almost in the same room, watching her.
“That son of a bitch!” Joanna murmured. “That dirty, low-down son of a bitch.”
“And that’s evidently how he gained entry to Leann Jessup’s room as well. There’s a hidden, half-sized access door into the closet of each of the rooms on the bottom floor. The crack at the top of the door is concealed right under the shelf. The only way to see it would be if you were down on your hands and knees on the floor.
“An alternate light source examination revealed dirty footprints leading from Leann’s closet to the bathroom. It looks as though he came in and surprised her while she was relaxing in the hot tub. She evidently put up quite a fight. He may have hit her over the head with her hair dryer. We found pieces of shattered hair dryer all over the bathroom including in the tub. My theory is that he knocked her senseless. He tied her up while she was out cold, and carried her out to his pickup. Do you know his truck?”
“No.”
“It’s a white Toyota SR Five, one of those small four-by-fours with a canopy. He tossed her into the back of it, probably planning on taking her elsewhere to finish the job. He left the campus with her in the back and ended up turning off Olive into Grand. My guess is he didn’t see the northbound car coming around the curve at the underpass south of Olive. He turned right on a red light and pulled out in front of a car driven by a bunch of high-school-aged kids coming home from a party.”
“In the meantime, Leann must have come to. I believe she was trying to get out of the vehicle while it was stopped for the light. She somehow managed to open the canopy, but when the Toyota accelerated, the sudden movement pitched her out of the truck. With her hands tied behind her, there was nothing to break her fall. She landed on her head and somersaulted at least twice. Her skin looks like it was run through a cheese grater.”
“That’s appalling!” Joanna murmured.
CaroI nodded and continued. “She came to rest directly in the front of that carload of kids. The other driver’s only seventeen. He left skid marks all over the road, but through some miracle, he managed to avoid hitting her. If he had clobbered her traveling at forty-five or so, she’d have been dead for sure. The kids stopped long enough for some of them to pile out of the backseat. Three of them stayed behind to do what they could for Leann while the driver and one of his buddies took off the Toyota. I have to give them credit for guts if not for brains. They followed the pickup and got close enough to get a partial license before they lost him somewhere out in Sun City. The kids came back to the scene and turned the number over to the officers on the scene. They called me.”
“Was she conscious?” Joanna asked. “Could she talk.”
“No.”
“If she was naked, how did you know it was Leann?” Joanna asked quietly.
“Bee stings,”
“Bee stings?”
“She’s allergic to them, so allergic that she wears an I.D. bracelet that warns medics that in case of a bee sting they should administer epinephrine to prevent her from going into anaphylactic shock. There were two phone numbers on it. One was evidently the apartment where Leann used to live. That one’s been disconnected. The other one belongs to Lorelie Jessup, Leann’s mother. The ambulance transported Leann to Arrowhead Community Hospital. From there, she was airlifted to St. Joseph’s. I picked Mrs. Jessup up at home and brought her to the hospital. She’s the one who gave us the positive I.D. and told us Leann was attending the APOA.”
“And how did you come up with the Dave Thompson connection?”
“We found the truck. About three o’clock, one of our patrol cars found a white Toyota pickup parked in front of a flooring warehouse a few blocks north of where we found Leann and within walking distance of the APOA. I think he abandoned it there and walked back to his place.”
“Where is he now?”
Carol Strong shook her head. “That’s anybody’s guess. He’s not in his apartment. We got a search warrant and went through that, and we’ve also put out an APB. No luck so far.”
“What can I do to help?”
“When was the last time you saw Leann Jessup?”
“Lunchtime. We went up to the Roundhouse and had a hamburger. That’s when I picked up that stuff from Butch Dixon.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A sweatshirt. An ASU Sun Devil sweatshirt. Yellow and black. Jeans. Tennis shoes. Nikes, I think, and white socks.”
There was a pause while Carol Strong scribbled a note in a notebook. “Panties?” she asked.
“Panties. How would I know if she was wearing panties?”
“Did you ever see her undressed?”
“Once, in the women’s locker room after PT on Tuesday afternoon, when we were both changing.”
“Was she wearing panties then?”
“Yes, but...”
“That was the other holdback,” Carol Strong said gravely. “We found the clothing Serena Grijalva was wearing when she left the bar that night—everything but a pair of panties. I talked to Cecelia, her daughter. She told me that her mother always wore panties.”
“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 except panties. There was a dirty clothes bag spilled on the floor of her closet. We found three sets of clothing in there, including pairs of panties. If she wore a clean set of underwear every day, that means one pair is missing.”