Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [127]
“I was doing fine. So was Nathan, but now…”
“Pam Davis and Carmen Ortega thought you were Carol, didn’t they?” Joanna called softly. “They came to Carol’s place for their appointment that morning, but Carol was already dead, wasn’t she? You pretended to be her.”
For a few moments, Stella Adams was silent. During the silence Joanna was struck by the peculiar intimacy of their conversation. They might have been girls off on a double date, sharing secrets between locked stalls in a ladies’ rest room. “How did you know that?” Stella asked finally.
Because you all breed true, Joanna felt like saying. Because all of Eddie Mossman’s daughters look like twins. And his son looks just like him.
Far ahead, Joanna caught sight of the winking flash of approaching lights. The additional officers she had summoned were coming toward them from the opposite direction. “Tell Tica we’re talking to the suspect. Tell our backup to stay back until I give the word,” Joanna ordered. Moments later Deputy Gregovich was relaying the information through the radio attached to the shoulder of his uniform.
Meanwhile Joanna turned her attention back to the suspect. Nathan was Stella Adams’s Achilles heel, and that was where Joanna focused her efforts.
“Think about Nathan,” she said. “Turn yourself in.”
“That’s what my father said, too,” Stella returned. “ ‘Think about Nathan.’ But I am thinking about him. Everything I did, I did for him. To protect him.”
“Your father wanted you to turn yourself in?”
Stella erupted in a mirthless chuckle. “Right. That’s what he wanted, but I told him, ‘No way!’ I told him he owed me—he owed us all—but he owed Nathan more than anybody. So, at first, when I asked him, he was willing to help. He agreed to send the e-mail to try to get Pam and Carmen to back off.”
“You knew they were coming?”
“Sure, I did. Because they wanted to talk to me. After they finished talking to Carol, they were going to interview me, too. But the threat didn’t work. They didn’t back off. Pam and Carmen showed up anyway, so I got rid of them, and Carol, too. Dad was headed back to Mexico from Kingman. When I told him what had happened, he offered to move the bodies for me. He said he’d try to make it look like some pervert had done it.”
That should have been easy for Ed Mossman, Joanna thought.
“So he moved them and stripped them and tied them up,” Stella continued.
“You shot them?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In their car. What a mess! I didn’t think I’d ever get all that blood washed off. It was everywhere.”
“Where’s the car, Stella?” Joanna asked. “The car you shot them in. Where is it?”
“I ran it off the road, somewhere the other side of Animas. Then I hitchhiked back. I told the guy who gave me a ride that my husband had beaten me up and that I was going back home to my parents. He believed me, too. Nice guy.”
Her voice was softer now, with a funny dreamlike quality that made it sound as though she was struggling to concentrate and stay connected.
“Sounds like she’s fading some,” Ernie whispered. “I think she really is hurt.”
“Are you all right, Stella?” Joanna asked. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
“We can’t leave you,” Joanna returned. “Throw down your weapon and come out. Let us help you.”
“No. If anyone comes near me, I’ll shoot.”
“Mom?”
The sound of Nathan Adams’s voice coming from twenty-five or thirty yards away sent a surge of fear coursing through Joanna’s body. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. Her hands tingled.
“Where’d he come from?” Joanna demanded. “What’s he doing here, and where the hell is he?”
“Off to our right,” Terry Gregovich returned, pointing. “I saw him a second ago. Now he’s dropped behind some bushes. He must have followed the railroad bed out of town.”
Joanna couldn’t see Nathan Adams, but she could hear him as he dashed forward once more. He must have run the better part of the mile and a half to two miles from his house to the scene. As he drew closer,