Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [73]
“How do you plan to catch them?”
“The driver’s scared to death. That’s why he won’t give his real name. He knows he killed all those people. I’m hoping we can use those statements to put the squeeze on the driver’s cojones long enough for him to lead us to someone higher up the chain of command.”
“I suppose it could work,” Jaime conceded doubtfully, “but if his lawyer gets wind of it—”
Joanna refused to be dissuaded. “We won’t find out if we don’t try,” she said, cutting Jaime off in mid-objection and abruptly changing the subject. “Now, tell me about the autopsies on the Silver Creek victims. Any idea when those will happen?”
“Monday,” the detective told her. “Doc Winfield says he’ll schedule them pretty much back-to-back.”
Detective Carbajal left a few minutes later, and Joanna spent the remainder of the morning mowing through a mountain of incoming reports and evidence. The results of the SUV driver’s routine Breathalyzer check came back negative. That was no surprise. Driving drunk had never been an issue. Driving crazy was. A preliminary on-site analysis by DPS officers indicated that the Suburban had been traveling in excess of eighty miles per hour when it crashed through the Jersey barrier. That report would later be verified and/or fine-tuned by a computerized analysis.
A while later a faxed copy of Dr. Fran Daly’s preliminary autopsy results on Richard Osmond appeared on Joanna’s desk. That, along with the interviews Ernie and Jaime had conducted with each of Osmond’s current and previous cell mates, indicated that Osmond had died of natural causes resulting from a previously undiagnosed and untreated form of cancer. The evidence appeared to exonerate Joanna Brady’s department from all blame with regard to Osmond’s death, but she knew that what seemed cut-and-dried to her would become far more murky in the hands of an attorney bent on pursuing a wrongful-death claim.
She was still considering that thorny issue when her phone rang.
“Sheriff Trotter here,” her caller said. “I’m not surprised to hear you’re hard at work this morning, Sheriff Brady. Me, too. If our guys had been a little quicker on the draw, that mess at Silver Creek would have happened on my turf instead of yours. Sorry about that.”
“Sure you’re sorry,” Joanna returned. “And the word ‘mess’ doesn’t come close to covering what happened out there.”
“I know, and I know, too, that you’ve got your hands full today, and I’m about to add to it by sending more trouble your way.”
“How’s that?”
“For one thing, we’ve got tentative IDs on our two Jane Does. Their names are Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega, freelance television journalists from L.A. Diego Ortega, Carmen’s brother, is a pilot. He’s flying into Lordsburg later on today to give us a positive ID.”
“Television journalists?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right. Pamela was the on-screen talent. Carmen ran the camera and tech stuff. They worked with a production company called Fandango Productions that sells in-depth pieces to outfits that specialize in female-oriented programming. You might know who they are, but since I never watch that kind of stuff, I hadn’t ever heard of them.”
Joanna liked Randy Trotter and had worked with him on numerous occasions. Even so, she couldn’t help being slightly irked by his automatic assumptions about her.
“I’m not big on watching TV of any kind,” she told him. “I don’t have time, so I don’t know them either.”
Sheriff Trotter hurried on. “According to the brother, Carmen and Pamela won some big cable award a year or so ago for a piece they did on the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. They were going to Tucson to do a new series of interviews.”
Joanna thought about what Edith Mossman had said about Carol Mossman’s shaky finances—about how she had first asked her grandmother for financial help in having her dogs vaccinated. Later she had told Edith