Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [105]
“I don’t suppose this can wait until after I finish the puzzle, can it?” Irma asked.
“No,” Joanna said, glancing at the empty expanse of open puzzle. “I’m afraid we need what information you can offer a little sooner than that.”
“Oh, all right,” Irma said impatiently. “You might want to go over to the desk and get me some pieces of paper and a pencil. Meet me at that table over there.” She pointed to a table in the still empty TV alcove. “That way we won’t disturb any of the puzzle pieces.”
While Joanna hustled off to the receptionist’s desk, Irma produced a folded walker from under her chair. She was just tottering up to the second table when Joanna returned. Joanna reached to help Irma onto a chair, but Irma pushed her hand away.
“Leave me alone and turn off that TV set,” she snapped. “With all that noise, I can barely hear myself think.”
Chastened, Joanna located the remote and turned off the television. Then she took a seat at the table and pushed paper and pencil in front of Irma. When she was seated, Irma once again stowed her walker, picked up the pencil and began to draw, frowning and biting her lower lip in total concentration. Joanna watched while Irma drew a series of shaky rectangles on the first sheet of paper. Then she began to label each of them.
“This is the way the desks were arranged when you first came into the building,” she explained. “It’s easier for me to remember where people were located than it is for me to remember their names. Nona Cooper sat here, for instance,” Irma said, pointing at one of the first rectangles she had drawn. “And the door was right next to her, so you had to come in past her desk. She always had a picture of her little boy on her desk. I believe his name was Randolph, but she called him Randy, and he was cute as a button. He died, though. Got drafted into the army right out of high school and died in Vietnam in 1967. Poor Nona. She never got over it. She died in ’76, just a year or so after she got laid off. Committed suicide. Can’t say I blame her.”
Joanna had her notebook out by then. Sorry she hadn’t brought spare tapes and grateful to be proficient in shorthand, she made swift notes of everything Irma said.
“Would Nona Cooper have been given one of the weapons from the safe?” Joanna asked.
Irma shook her head. “Certainly not,” she huffed. “Randy was killed by sniper fire. Nona wouldn’t have had a gun in her house on a bet.”
Joanna and Irma worked that way for the better part of an hour, with Irma drawing and labeling individual desks in the various rooms, all the while delivering thumbnail sketches of each desk’s respective occupant. Irma had begun drawing the fourth and final room when Joanna’s cell phone rang.
“What an annoying sound,” Irma grumbled upon hearing the distinctive rooster crow. “You should get yourself a phone with a nicer ring than that.”
Answering quickly, Joanna got up and moved out of earshot. “What’s up?” she asked her chief deputy.
“Fandango’s lawyer told them to go the search warrant route. Jaime’s on his way to pick up a warrant right now, then he’ll head for the airport in Tucson. He should be able to catch a flight out to L.A. this evening, but he’ll have to stay over until tomorrow morning to execute the warrant.”
“This sounds expensive,” Joanna said. “Isn’t there any other way to do it?”
“Not really,” Frank said. “For one thing, Carmen Ortega had downloaded some of what she had filmed into an attachment and e-mailed it to Fandango. We don’t have the equipment it would take to download it. For another, Fandango has a networked computer system for keeping track of calendars and expenses. Again, you have to use their equipment to access it. Not only that, if any of the threats are there, we want them to be admissible in court.”
“Okay, okay,” Joanna agreed. “I get it.”
“Dr. Lawrence, the ME from Hidalgo County, is faxing over his preliminary report, but Ernie’s been on the phone with him. Detective