Page 56 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

When Joanna left the interview room, she wanted nothing more than to go home and take a shower.

After spending three and a half hours locked in a room reeking of evil personified, she felt completely depleted.

She was stunned by the callous disregard Stephen Roper had exhibited toward his victims. His chilling lack of empathy combined with his mentioning having voices inside his head might be indicative of mental illness of some kind, but as far as she was concerned, even if Stephen Roper was crazy as a bedbug, that didn’t give him a get-out-of-jail-free card, not on her watch.

It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning, but she felt exhausted. She was tempted to go home and crawl back into bed, but that wasn’t an option. Instead she returned the banker’s box to its proper location in the evidence room and headed for her office.

Since it was Saturday, the place was relatively deserted.

Feeling the need to get away from Roper’s all-encompassing darkness, she walked past Kristin’s empty desk and through her own office without even pausing.

Letting herself out through her private entrance, she spent the next half hour pacing the parking lot under a bright blue sky while breathing in the brisk December air. Eventually she began to feel better.

Listening to the gut-wrenching confession had cleared six homicides, including one that had never been regarded as a homicide in the first place.

But all those other evidence bags in the banker’s box meant that there was still more work to do—starting with that stack of as-yet-unreturned calls.

Rolling up her mental shirtsleeves, she prepared to make that first phone call, but one from Butch came in first.

“Where’d you go at o-dark-thirty?” he asked. “Who’s dead?”

That was what middle-of-the-night phone calls usually meant in Joanna’s life—a homicide had most likely occurred or maybe a serious-injury automobile accident.

“Roper was demanding to see me because he wanted to confess.”

“Confess?” Butch repeated. “I thought you said he had an attorney coming.”

“He did and probably still does, but he changed his mind about talking. It was a three-and-a-half-hour ordeal of sitting with someone who, to my way of thinking, is the devil himself. He talked about murdering people as casually as you might mention running into someone at the store, and he did so without a shred of remorse. I’ve met a few killers in my time, but Stephen Roper is an absolute monster. ”

“Are you okay?”

“I am now. Well, better, maybe. I took myself outside for a walk. Now I’m back in the office. By my count, that meeting with him cleared six cases, but there are still more unsolved ones than there are solved.”

“So you’ll be working today?”

“Seems like.”

“Me, too,” he said.

Off the phone, Joanna reached for the stack of messages. The topmost one was from Robert Moody, the sheriff of Elko County, Nevada. He had given Kristin both a work number and a cell phone number. Since this was Saturday, Joanna tried that one first.

“Sheriff Moody,” he answered.

“This is Sheriff Joanna Brady returning your call. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner,” she added, “but yesterday was a pretty hectic day around here.”

“No problem,” Moody said. “That happens. About your BOLO, though. We’ve got a cold case from 1981 that fits your criteria—manual strangulation, no sign of sexual assault, disposal in a body of water, and something missing from the deceased.”

“Tell me,” Joanna urged.

“Name was Janice Jensen. Her daddy, Arthur Jensen, was sheriff at the time she disappeared. She was eighteen years old. She had just graduated from high school and was working nights at the bowling alley here in town before heading off to the University of Nevada in Las Vegas in the fall. The family lived on a ranch a ways out of town. When her parents woke up in the morning and discovered she hadn’t come home, they went looking.

Found her car broken down on the highway a couple miles from home.

There was no sign of a struggle in the car.

She just vanished. A week later her body was found dumped in a dry creek bed about thirty miles from here. ”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Joanna observed. “Were you part of the original investigation?”

“Me?” Sheriff Moody replied with a laugh. “Hell no, I was only in kindergarten at the time, but since her daddy was sheriff, you’d better believe this case is still open. When your BOLO came through, our cold case guy was all over it. We both spent all day yesterday reading through the file.”

“So what was missing?”

“A class ring—not hers, her boyfriend’s.

Janice and Kenneth Norris were high school sweethearts and had been going steady for years.

They wore each other’s rings on chains around their necks sort of as promise rings.

Kenny was questioned at the time, but he was going to summer school in Vegas, so he had an airtight alibi and was immediately ruled out.

No other suspects were ever identified. We have three other unsolved homicides on the books, but, because of her daddy, Janice’s is the one that hurts the most.”

Joanna thought about the collection of class rings she’d seen earlier in the banker’s box, but she didn’t want to say anything out of line that might raise unwarranted hopes.

“Excuse me, Sheriff Moody,” Joanna said. “Something’s just come up. Can I call you back?”

“Sure.”

Joanna made tracks back to the evidence room and rifled through the banker’s box until she located the rings.

Three of them were small and most likely belonged to girls, but one was much larger.

Joanna tried peering at it through the intervening plastic.

She could make out that there were letters engraved in gold mounted in the middle of a square-shaped blue stone.

More letters were engraved on either side of the stone but it was impossible to decipher any of them.

Finally, Joanna resorted to using the flashlight on her iPhone to make them more readable.

The letters EHS were the ones in the center of the stone.

As for the others? The one on the left was a K, and the one on the right was an N.

Joanna was still in the evidence room holding the bag when she called Sheriff Moody back.

“Hello again,” he said.

“I’m standing in our evidence room here in Bisbee, Arizona, and I’m holding what I believe to be Kenneth Norris’s class ring in my hand. The letters EHS are on the middle of the stone, and the initials K and N are on either side of the stone.”

“You’re frigging kidding me!” Moody exclaimed.

“I’m not,” Joanna told him. “We’ve arrested a man named Stephen Roper, someone we believe to be a prolific serial killer. Yesterday, when we took him into custody, we found what’s apparently his trophy case. The ring I’m holding in my hand is one of four class rings found in his collection.”

“Who is this guy?” Moody asked.

“Someone who’s lived here in town for decades. He taught during the school year while spending the summers prowling the country for potential victims. What time of year did Janice Jensen die?”

“June 16, 1981.”

“So that would fit our guy’s time frame.”

“And he was a schoolteacher?” Moody confirmed.

“Believe it or not, I was in his English class my senior year in high school.”

“Ouch,” Moody said, “but you’re sure it’s him?”

“Early this morning he gave me a full confession to six different homicides in five different locations. He’s being held in my jail, but he won’t be officially charged until Monday. I can promise you this, though, with that many cases pending, he’s not going to be released on bond any time soon.”

“So I can go tell Ida?”

“Who’s Ida?”

“Janice’s mother. Her father passed away ten years ago.

Ida lives in an assisted living facility right here in town, but she calls our department every year on June sixteenth to ask if we have any leads.

She’s going to be overjoyed, and so will Kenny, Janice’s boyfriend.

Once he graduated from school, he came back home and established a law practice here.

He’s married and has a couple of kids, but I know from talking to Ida that he still stays in touch with her. Can I give them your number?”

“Of course,” Joanna said. “They’re welcome to call me, but I probably won’t have anything more to add to what you already know until sometime next week.”

“Sheriff Brady?” Joanna heard her name being broadcast over the intercom. “Please report to the front lobby.”

“Sorry, I have to go now,” Joanna told Moody.

“I’m sure you do,” he replied, “but believe me, Sheriff Brady, you have our community’s heartfelt gratitude.”

Being able to finally supply answers to a mother who had been grieving the loss of her child for more than forty years put a bit of a spring back in Joanna’s step as she left the evidence room and headed for the lobby.

Since it wasn’t open to the public on weekends, Joanna was surprised to be summoned there.

As soon as she stepped through the door, she saw a guy wearing a suit that had probably set him back several thousand dollars.

He was staring at the photo of the little girl with her wagonload of Girl Scout cookies.

She knew immediately he had to be Stephen Roper’s once-and-now-most-likely-former attorney, Ralph Whitmer.

“Good morning,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Brady. May I help you?”

“Is that you?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the photograph.

“A long time ago,” she answered.

“Did it ever occur to you that, if you were planning on becoming a sheriff, maybe you should have been studying up on the United States Constitution as opposed to hawking Girl Scout cookies?”

Joanna bristled at his condescension, but she kept her voice steady. “By that I’m assuming you’re referring to a person’s right to remain silent and to have an attorney present during the course of police questioning?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m well aware of both of those, Mr. Whitmer,” she said. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to join me in my office, there’s something I’d like you to see.” She led him into her office and asked him to be seated in one of the visitors’ chairs on the far side of her desk.

Body cams had been a long time coming to her department, but once they were there, Joanna had made it her business to learn how to access individual files so she’d be able to play them back and make her own assessment about whatever had gone on.

When someone was threatening a lawsuit claiming police brutality, it was really helpful to be able to know for certain if the accusation had any merit.

She had no difficulty locating Burt Peterson’s footage from the night before and queuing it up to a 4:30 a.m. time frame.

She found the point where Burt’s motion-activated camera came online as he left the jail’s administration office.

At that point, she turned her desktop’s monitor around so it faced the other way.

By the time she was seated next to Whitmer, Burt’s body cam indicated he was walking down a corridor with barred cells on either side.

In the background someone could be heard yelling indecipherable words and banging on the bars of a cell.

“What are you showing me?” Whitmer asked, although the answer should have been obvious.

“This is footage taken in my jail early this morning. Just be patient.”

Burt came to a stop in front of a particular cell. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Roper?” he asked.

At that point the banging and yelling ceased. “I already told you. I want to see Sheriff Brady, and I want to see her now.”

“Sheriff Brady isn’t here at the moment. When she comes in, I’ll be sure to let her know that you’re anxious to speak to her.”

“Anxious, my ass!” Roper exclaimed. “You get that bitch on the phone and tell her that I’m willing to give her a full confession right now, but only to her, only if she brings my cigar box, and only if it happens before my asshole attorney shows up in town later today.”

“All right,” Burt said. “Let me see what I can do.”

Joanna turned to Whitmer. “Does that sound like a forced confession to you?” she asked.

Whitmer said nothing, so Joanna rose from her chair and returned to her keyboard on the far side of her desk.

“If you’d like, I can also access the footage of my interview with him during which he confessed to six different homicides.

Where, as you’ll be able to see, I begin by repeating his Miranda warning. Would you like me to start there?”

“Screw it!” Whitmer muttered, rising to his feet. “I’m done here.”

“Yes, you certainly are,” Joanna agreed with a smile. “I trust you can find your way out.”