Page 54 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

“Sheriff Brady,” she said.

“Burt Peterson,” the caller said. “Sorry to disturb you.”

Burt was the graveyard jail supervisor.

“No problem,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Stephen Roper is raising all kinds of hell,” Burt replied. “He’s demanding to speak to you right now.”

“In the middle of the night?” Joanna objected. “Can’t this wait until morning?”

“He says not. He claims he’s willing to give a full confession, but only to you, only if you bring his cigar box along—whatever that means, and only if it happens before his lawyer shows up in town sometime later on this morning.”

“Why me?” Joanna asked. “Why not the detectives?”

“No idea,” Burt said. “I’m just passing along what he said, but if he’s willing to give you a confession, I thought you’d want to talk to him.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Joanna replied. “I do. Put him in an interview room, cuff him to the table, and let him sit there and stew in his own juices until I get there. I’m on my way.”

But she wasn’t on her way, not really. Instead, she took her own sweet time, showering before getting dressed, blow-drying her hair, and doing her makeup.

She was pretty sure this was going to be an adversarial situation, and she wanted to be at her best. When she finally left the bathroom, she was relieved to see that Butch had managed to fall back asleep.

Once at the department, it took a while for her to locate the contents of the cigar box.

The evidence bags were no longer on display on the counter in the lab.

Finally, after checking the entry log to the evidence room, Joanna realized Casey had loaded the cigar box and all its bagged contents into a banker’s box and left it all stored in the evidence room, safely under lock and key.

With the banker’s box in hand, she headed for the interview room, where the guard who had accompanied the prisoner from his cell stood waiting patiently just outside the door.

Once she arrived, however, Joanna didn’t immediately enter.

Instead, she stood for several moments, peering into the room through the two-way mirror and sizing up her opponent.

It had been decades since she had encountered Stephen Roper up close and personal.

He appeared to be a perfectly harmless, elderly gentleman.

His narrow, angular face was even narrower than she remembered.

He’d once had a full head of blondish hair.

What little was left of that had turned white rather than silver, but his blue eyes were still as piercing as ever.

Despite his currently difficult circumstances, however, Roper seemed totally at ease.

He leaned back in his chair as far as his cuffed arm allowed and sat with his legs stretched out full length beneath the stainless steel table.

Finished with her examination, Joanna turned to the guard. “Is the video camera turned on?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I activated it as soon as I got him cuffed to the table, and I’ll be here to let you out whenever you’re ready to leave. All you have to do is knock on the door.”

Once the door opened, Roper straightened into an upright posture, grinning as he did so. “Why lookie here,” he said. “If it isn’t little Joanna Lathrop, all grown up now and wearing a badge.”

So that’s how you want to play this , Joanna thought. You’re the teacher and I’m the lowly student? Not on your life! You’re a damned serial killer, you asshole, and this isn’t my first rodeo.

“Hello to you, too, Mr. Roper,” she said, setting the box down on the floor on her side of the table, well out of reach of his long legs. Then she took her own seat, one directly facing his.

“I understand you asked to see me.”

“I did, but where’s my cigar box?”

“The cigar box is right here,” she said, nodding toward the banker’s box, “and so’s everything that was in it, which happens to be quite a haul.

There’s enough evidence in there to put you in prison for the remainder of your miserable life.

But since you specifically asked to see me, and since you’ve already invoked your rights and hired an attorney, I’m going to have to read you the Miranda warning again, just to ascertain that you’re willing to speak to me at this time without your attorney being present. ”

“I already told you...” Roper began.

“Sorry,” she said. “Regardless of what you said, rules are rules. If you’re willing to give me a confession, I want to be sure that it’ll hold up in court. You have the right to remain silent...”

As she read through the familiar phrases, Roper recited them along with her from memory, as though they were doing a responsive reading in church.

“Satisfied?” he sneered when they finished.

“Completely,” she said, “so how do you want to do this, and where do you want to start?”

“We could pretend we’re playing strip poker,” he suggested. “You know, you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

“So I show you something from the box, and you tell me what happened?”

“I suppose,” he said with an indifferent shrug. “You’re the dealer. You call it.”

“Chronological order then?” Joanna asked.

“I suppose.”

Roper’s casual responses led her to believe that he had no idea how much she knew, but thanks to the BOLO and Dan Hogan’s phone call, she knew a hell of a lot more than he thought.

She dug through the box until she located the bag that contained Lucille Hawkins’s wedding band.

Holding it in her hand, she considered what to do next.

What she really wanted to do was put the ring down on the table just beyond Roper’s reach so he wouldn’t be able to touch it.

But then she thought about why he’d collected all those trinkets in the first place.

No doubt he’d done so in order to remember and savor each of those individual crimes.

Maybe now that he was prepared to talk, allowing him to handle his treasured touchstones one last time might help him recall details that would otherwise be forgotten.

“How about we start with first things first?” she asked, putting the bag with the ring in it down on the table before deliberately pushing it over to him.

She fully expected Roper to pick it up and study it.

Instead, he drew away from it as if it were a coiled rattler.

But when he raised his eyes to look at Joanna, she saw an expression on his face that she wasn’t expecting—a look of complete astonishment.

Lucille Hawkins’s death had been declared an accident for close to seventy years.

No one had ever hinted it might have been a murder, but his involuntary response to seeing it made her realize that he was dismayed to learn that someone as insignificant as Joanna Lathrop Brady had unearthed one of his most closely guarded secrets.

“Well?” Joanna prompted, as the silence between them lengthened. “You had her ring in the cigar box along with everything else, so are you going to tell me what happened to her or not?”

Another long pause followed before he answered. “She was a hateful bitch,” he snarled at last. “She bossed me around every chance she got.”

“She was also your grandmother,” Joanna observed. “You were eleven years old and probably needed bossing.”

“She wasn’t my real grandmother,” Roper retorted. “She was only my step-grandmother, and she treated me like shit.”

“So you killed her?”

Roper’s response was an unconcerned shrug.

“How?”

“She fell off the front steps,” he answered. “It was an accident. I found her lying there and took her ring, then I called the cops.”

Joanna picked up the evidence bag, tossed it into the banker’s box, and then made as if to put the lid back on the box.

“Wait,” Roper objected. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Why?”

“Because I came to hear a confession—a complete confession,” Joanna told him. “I didn’t show up at this ungodly hour of the morning to sit here and listen to a bunch of lies, so either tell me exactly how Lucille Hawkins fell off those steps, or I’m out of here.”

“I tripped her,” he said.

“How?”

“I strung some fishing line between the top posts of the banisters on the front steps, then I told her that a raccoon had gotten to her cat and she needed to come quick. She rushed out in such a hurry that she never saw the string. She tripped over it, and down she went, just like that.” He slammed the palm of his free hand on the tabletop for emphasis.

“Didn’t the string cut into her legs?” Joanna asked. “Why didn’t the autopsy mention that?”

“She always wore boots, and not ladies’ fashion boots, either, but clunky men’s work boots. She stomped around town in those looking like a clown straight out of a circus. The other kids made fun of her and teased me about it.”

“So you decided to murder her.”

“I guess,” he said.

Good enough , Joanna thought. Confession number one.

She paused long enough to consult her iPad and review the notes she’d made during her conversation with Dan Hogan.

Then she dug through the evidence bags until she located the one containing Brian Olson’s Cub Scout Wolf pin.

Looking at that put a lump in Joanna’s throat.

Her own son, Dennis, had started out in Cubs and had earned a Wolf pin, too, although when he’d been old enough to join the Boy Scouts, he’d opted for 4-H instead.

“What about this?” Joanna asked, holding up the bag. “By my count, this should be number two.”

This time she was gratified when Roper actually shifted uncomfortably in his chair before answering.

“It belonged to a kid,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed, “a boy named Brian Olson who disappeared from the Polk County Fair in Fertile, Minnesota, your hometown, in 1961. You were sixteen years old at the time. His body was found a few days later in Arthur Lake. I don’t know the actual location of the farm where you used to live, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t far from where Brian’s body was found. ”

Joanna paused and waited. “So?” she prodded finally.

“So what?” Roper asked.