Minor in Possession by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

frownand then with dawning awareness. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d been told.”
    â€œI haven’t been told a goddamned thing except to get my butt up here and bring my car keys along.”
    â€œYour roommate is dead, Detective Beaumont.”
    That stopped me cold. “Dead?” I repeated.
    â€œThat’s right. A rancher just up the road found the body hung up on a mesquite tree along the bank of the river about six-fifteen this morning. That’s why I’m so late getting here. It was right on the boundary, so it took a while to figure out if the body was found in Maricopa or Yavapai County. The line runs right through Don Freeman’s ranch. Don’s an old geezer, ninety-one if he’s a day. He got all confused and thought it was on the Maricopa side. Then, when Mrs. Crenshaw called to report one of her residents missing, we started putting two and two together.”
    The news staggered me. Joey Rothman dead? A parade of one-word questions, detective questions, zinged through my head like so many bouncing Ping-Pong balls in a lottery bottle: How? When? Who? Where?
    â€œYou said they pulled him out of the water. Drowned?”
    Deputy Mike Hanson shook his head. “Nope.”
    â€œWhat then?” I demanded, feeling a clammy sinking in my gut, remembering the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder in the car when I opened the glove box of the Grand AM at four-thirty in the morning, the smell that had told me the Smith andWesson had been fired sometime within the previous few hours, to say nothing of the two missing rounds.
    â€œYou can tell me,” I insisted. “I’m a homicide cop.”
    â€œNot here you’re not,” Hanson replied decisively.
    He didn’t add that here in this god-forsaken corner of Nowhere, Arizona, I was just another one of the suspects. Hanson didn’t have to say it, because I already knew it was true.
    Desperately my mind swung back and forth as I tried to decide on the best path to follow, given the incriminating circumstances. It seemed as though I’d be better off making full disclosure right away than I would be letting Deputy Hanson find out about the gun later—the recently fired gun with my fingerprints on it and hopefully the killer’s as well. If I told Hanson first, it might look a little less as though I was withholding information.
    â€œDeputy Hanson,” I said quietly, “you should probably know that my departmental issue .38 is locked in the glove box.”
    The startled look on Deputy Hanson’s face confirmed my worst suspicions. Joey Rothman hadn’t drowned. Somebody had plugged him. And I knew with dead certainty that the murder weapon had to be my very own Smith and Wesson.
    Just then I heard the sound of laughter and approaching voices. Finished with the Round Robins, early morning Group had broken up. Familymembers from my session and others were on their way to an outlying portable, this one a new addition across the parking lot. The group had to pass down the aisle directly in front of where Deputy Hanson and I were standing.
    Several people gave us curious glances as they went by. Kelly walked past without acknowledging my existence. Karen nodded but didn’t stop. Scott walked past but then turned and came back, frowning.
    â€œDad, is something wrong?”
    â€œNo,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
    Scott smiled. “Good,” he said. He started away again, but stopped once more. “I just wanted to tell you in there that it’s all right. Kelly’s a spoiled brat. She carries on like that all the time, and Dave and Mom let her get away with it. You know how it works.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I know.”
    â€œAnd I…” Scott paused.
    â€œYou what?”
    â€œI just wanted to tell you that I love you,” he said.
    The lump returned to my throat. I grabbed Scott then, right there in the