Long Time Gone by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

is, both a blessing and a curse in my life.
    I left the door to my unit open and went out into the hallway to wait for Ron to emerge from the elevator. Actually, I was a little surprised that he would drop by without calling first. Years ago a work-related accident left him a paraplegic. Getting himself in and out of his wheelchair and the chair in and out of his Camry isn’t an easy task.
    Eventually the elevator doors opened to reveal him sitting inside. As soon as I saw his face, I knew something was wrong.
    “It’s Rosemary,” he said at once. “She’s dead.”
    Rosemary was Ron’s ex-wife. She had been gone from Ron’s life long before I ever met him. One night while he was working the graveyard shift at Seattle PD, Rosemary had split the scene, taking their two young daughters, Tracy and Heather, along for the ride. The three of them had ended up living on some far-out, pot-growing commune in the wilds of eastern Oregon. With the help of Ralph Ames, my friend and attorney, Ron eventually managed to extricate the girls from their wayward mother’s indifferent care, leaving her in a sort of drug-induced free fall. The last I remembered hearing about Rosemary Peters had been several years earlier. She had been headed into treatment and was trying to get her life in order.
    “I’m so sorry, Ron,” I said, and meant it. “What happened? Did she OD?”
    Ron shook his head. “She was murdered,” he said. “Somebody shot her.” Grasping the wheels of his chair, he pushed away from the elevators and headed for my unit. I followed him inside and closed the door.
    “When?” I asked, sounding like a newspaper reporter looking for those elusive four Ws. “Where?”
    “Sometime over the weekend,” he said. “Down in Tacoma. They found her body by the water yesterday. It took until today for them to identify her. Two Tacoma homicide detectives came by the office a little while ago to let me know. Oh, God, Beau. What the hell am I going to tell the girls?”
    The girls. Heather and Tracy. They’re fifteen and seventeen now, but whenever I hear their names without having them right there in front of me, I always picture them the way they were the first day I saw them. Once Ralph Ames had enlisted in Ron’s custody battle, I watched from the sidelines while the attorney worked what I would later come to realize was his customary magic. First Ralph managed to convince a judge to grant Ron full custody of the two girls. Court order in hand, Ralph had flown down to Pendleton, Oregon, and personally retrieved Heather and Tracy from the commune where they had been living.
    Ron and I were waiting at the airport when their flight landed at Sea-Tac. Ralph came off the Jetway leading Tracy with one hand and packing Heather on his other hip. I had first met Ralph when he showed up in Seattle as Anne’s attorney, and he’s the kind of guy you love to hate. No matter what, his trousers are always properly creased, his hair is always neatly in place, and his ties are usually spotless. Not that day, though. For the first and only time in my life I saw him looking frazzled and disheveled. Single-handedly looking after the girls had taken its toll on both him and his clothing. His expensive yellow tie was marred by a long dark dribble of chocolate, but with Heather nestled up under his chin, he seemed totally unconcerned about the un-sightly, and no doubt permanent, stain.
    Heather and Tracy wormed their way into my heart that day, just as they had into Ralph’s. And that was permanent, too, all these years later.
    “You just come straight out and tell them,” I advised Ron. “They’re sensible, smart girls. You and Amy have done a great job raising them. They’ll be able to handle the news.”
    I sat down in the recliner so Ron and I would be on the same level. He looked totally distraught—more so than I would have expected given the fact that he and Rosemary had been divorced for the better part of fourteen