“Most of what we’ve got has already turned up there,” he added blandly. “There’s really not much more I can tell you. Why do you want to know?”
“There may be a connection between that case and another one,” Joanna returned, playing coy herself, not wanting to give away too much.
As soon as Joanna shut up, Sutton’s tone of casual nonchalance changed to on-point interest. Recognizing Sutton’s irritating lack of candor when it surfaced in herself, she wondered if the malady wasn’t possibly catching. Maybe she’d picked it up from the other detective over the phone lines.
“What other case?” Sutton asked.
Joanna became even less open. “It’s one Carol Strong and I are working on together.”
“Carol Strong?” he asked. “You mean that little bitty detective from Peoria?”
Little bitty? Joanna wondered. If Carol Strong had that kind of interdepartmental reputation, things could go one of two ways. Either Sutton held Carol Strong in high enough mutual esteem that he could afford to joke about his pint-sized counterpart, or else he held her in absolute contempt. There would be no middle ground. And based on that, Sutton would either tell Joanna what she needed to know right away, or else he would force her to fight her way through a morass of conflicting interdepartmental channels.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Joanna agreed reluctantly.
Neil Sutton audibly relaxed on the phone. “Well, sure,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? What is it you two ladies need?”
Joanna took a deep breath. Here she was, a novice and an outsider, about to send up her first little meager hunch in front of a seasoned detective, one whose official turf she was unofficially invading. What if he simply squashed her idea flat, the way Joanna might smash an unsuspecting spider that ventured into her kitchen?
“What was she wearing?” Joanna asked.
“Wearing? Nothing,” Sutton answered at once. “Not a stitch.”
“Nothing at all?” Joanna asked, dismayed that the answer wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. “But I just watched the television report. I’m sure it said ‘partially clad.’ “
“Oh, that,” Sutton replied. “That was just for the papers and for the television cameras. She wearing a pair of pantyhose all right, but weren’t covering anything useful, if you what I mean.”
Joanna felt her heartbeat quicken in her throat. Maybe her hunch wasn’t so far off the mark after all. She tried not to let her voice betray her growing excitement.
“Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what the pantyhose were covering,” Joanna said.
“Oh, sorry,” Neil Sutton responded. “No offense intended. Her husband used her own pantyhose tie her up. Did a hell of a job of it, too, for a college professor. Must have studied knots back when was a Boy Scout. He had her bent over backwards with her hands and feet together. Must have left her that way for a long damn time before he killed her. Autopsy showed that at the time of death there was hardly any circulation left in any of her extremities.”
Sutton paused for a moment. When Joanna said nothing, he added, “Sorry. I suppose I could have spared you some of the gory details. Any of this sound familiar?”
“It’s possible,” Joanna said evasively. “We’ll have to check it out. Where will you be if I need to get back to you?”
“Right here at my desk,” he answered. “I’m way behind on my paper. I won’t get out of here any before six or seven.”
It was a struggle, but Joanna managed to keep her tone suitably light and casual. “Good,” she said. “If any of this checks out, I’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Heart pounding with excitement, Joanna dialed Carol Strong’s numbers—both home and office—and ended up reaching voice mail at home and a receptionist at the office.
“What time is she expected?” Joanna asked.
“Detective Strong is scheduled from four to midnight today,” the receptionist said. “May I take a message?”
What Joanna had to say wasn’t something she wanted to leave in message form, electronic or otherwise. “No,” she answered. “I’ll call back then.”
Disappointed, Joanna put down the phone. It was barely twelve-thirty. That meant it could be as long as three and a half hours before she could reach Carol Strong. If that was the case, what was the most profitable use she could make of the intervening time?
Reaching for pencil and paper, Joanna drew a series of boxes, to each of which she assigned a name that showed the people involved. Serena and Jorge Grijalva. Rhonda and Dean Norton. Leann Jessup and Dave Thompson. She drew arrows between each of the couples and then studied the paper trying to search for patterns, to see what, if any they all had in common.
The use of pantyhose for restraints was the most obvious. In the upper-right-hand corner of the page, she wrote the word “pantyhose.”
What else? Both Serena and Rhonda had been bludgeoned to death. No stab wounds. No guns wounds. Bludgeoned. Leann Jessup hadn’t died but there were no wounds to indicate the presence of either a knife or a gun. In the corner, she wrote: “Bludgeon (2) ? (1).”
In each case, there had been a plausible suspect who became the immediate focus of the investigation. Both Jorge Grijalva and Professor Dean Norton had a history of domestic violence. So did Dave Thompson, for that matter. That became the third notation: “Domestic violence.”
She sat for a long time, studying the notes. And then it came to her, like the second picture emerging from the visual confusion of an optical illusion. With a physical batterer there to serve as the investigative lightning rod in each of the three separate cases, the real killer could possibly blend into the background and disappear while someone else was convicted of committing his murders. Her hand was shaking as she wrote the fourth note “Handy fall guy.”
For the first time, the words serial murderer edged their way into her head. Was that possible? Would a killer be smart enough to target his victims based on the availability of someone else to take the blame?
Lost in thought, Joanna jumped when the phone at her elbow jangled her out of her concentration.
“Joanna,” a reproving Marliss Shackleford said crossly into the phone, “your mother told me you’d call me back right away.”
Irritated by the interruption, it was all Joanna could do to remain reasonably polite. “I’ve been a little too busy to worry about that picture, if that’s what you’re calling about, Marliss. I’ll try to take care of it next week, but I’m not making any promises.”
“Too busy with the Leann Jessup case?” Marliss asked innocently.
For a guilty moment, Joanna felt as though Marliss, like Jenny, was some kind of mind reader. “You know about that?”
“Certainly. It’s in all the papers. And with you up at the APOA during all these goings-on, I was hoping for a comment on the story from you—one with a local connection, of course.”
Before Marliss finished making her pitch, Joanna was already shaking her head. “I don’t have anything at all to say about that,” she answered. “It’s not my case.”
“But you are involved in it, aren’t you? Eleanor told me that you missed Thanksgiving dinner because—”
“It’s not my mother’s case, either,” Joanna said tersely. “I can’t see how anything she would have to say would have any bearing at all on what’s be happening.”
“Well,” Marliss said. “I just wondered about the woman who was injured. Is Leann Jessup a particular friend of yours?”
“Leann and I are classmates,” Joanna answered. “We’re the only women in that APOA session, naturally we’ve become friends.”
“But she’s, well, you know.... “
“She’s what?” Joanna asked.