Her use of subterfuge may well account for the ongoing conspiracy of silence on the part of many police agencies involved. Although there are no doubt other cases to which Anne Rowland Corley was connected, it has been impossible to track down any additional ones in which she was directly involved. Only a diligent search of public records finally uncovered the list of acknowledged victims that accompanies this story. It’s likely there are other victims whose cases remain unsolved.

Six years ago, as a homicide detective for Seattle PD, J.P. Beaumont was investigating the abuse and death of a five-year-old child, Angela Barstogi. Suspects in that case included the child’s mother, Suzanne Barstogi, and the mother’s spiritual adviser, Michael Brodie, a dictatorial, self-styled religious leader whose followers in a sect called Faith Tabernacle did whatever he required of them.

Like his counterparts in Bangor, Maine, and Red Bluff, California, Detective Beaumont found himself befriended by a disturbingly beautiful woman who expressed an interest in the case. Shortly thereafter, the two prime suspects were found shot to death in a Seattle-area church. A day later, a man who turned out to be the real killer in the Angela Barstogi homicide investigation was also found murdered. Hours later, Anne Rowland Corley herself was shot dead.

”This was clearly a woman who felt violated and betrayed by the very people who should have protected her,” says August Benson, professor of criminal psychology at the University of Colorado. “When the people who should have offered protection failed her, Anne Rowland Corley took matters into her own hands.”

Joanna paused in her reading and glanced at the accompanying photo and the sidebar. The Anne Rowland Corley pictured in a posed black-and-white portrait was a lovely young woman with long dark hair and a reserved smile.

No wonder cops talked to her, Joanna thought. And no wonder J.P. Beaumont fell so hard.

Joanna was about to return to her reading when the phone rang. “Sheriff Brady?” Tica Romero, the day-shift dispatcher, asked.

“Yes. What’s up?”

“We’ve got a situation unfolding just west of Miracle Valley, out by Palominas. An unidentified intruder walked up to what he thought was an unoccupied house. He broke in and stole some food from the kitchen of Paul and Billyann Lozier’s place on River Trail Road. Then he went out to a corral, saddled up one of their horses, and took off. Billyann’s mother, Alma Wingate, was in an upstairs bedroom and saw the whole thing. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a phone with her at the time and couldn’t call 911 until after he left.”

“Undocumented alien?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tica replied. “For one thing, the guy on the horse seemed to be headed south, not north. For another, from the description Mrs. Wingate gave me, the suspect might very well be the guy on our APB. She said he was tall and skinny, with a single gray braid hanging down the middle of his back.”

“You’re right,” Joanna breathed. “Sounds like Jack Brampton.”

“I’ve got units on their way,” Tica continued, “but they’re clear over by Benson. It’ll take time for them to reach the scene. The problem is, the border fence is only four miles away, and it looks like that’s where the perp is headed. As of now, he’s got a ten-minute head start.”

Joanna Brady was already on her feet. “Give me the address,” she urged. “We’ll get on this right away. I’m a lot closer than Benson. I’ll take a couple of cars and a squad of officers along with me. Thanks for letting me know, Tica. And how about calling out Terry Gregovich and Spike? If we lose him, Spike may be able to track him down.”

“Will do,” Tica said.

Pulling on her Kevlar vest, Joanna raced to the conference room. “Okay, guys,” she announced. “On the double. Somebody who looks like Jack Brampton just stole a horse from a corral between Palominas and Miracle Valley. According to an eyewitness, the guy who did it is headed for the Mexican border. Let’s get rolling.”

I CAME DRAGGING IN LATE, feeling like hell and ashamed to think that I had overslept – again. By the time I showed up, I had already missed the morning briefing. Frank Montoya introduced me to a guy named Ernie Carpenter, Detective Carbajal’s homicide counterpart, who had evidently just finished interviewing the two little boys who had found Dee Canfield’s body.

Ernie Carpenter was around my age, which made him by far the oldest officer I had met in the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. He was a big bear of a man with a pair of bushy eyebrows and a knuckle-crushing handshake. In other words, Ernie was my kind of guy. After introductions were out of the way, Frank Montoya passed both Ernie and me two tall stacks of computer-generated printouts.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Background on your friends at UPPI,” Frank told me. “I downloaded it from the Internet and thought you might find it interesting. They’re even more litigious than I thought they were when we found out about that law firm in Illinois yesterday.”

As I settled in to read, I realized this was information I should and could have had from the beginning. If Ross Connors had wanted to keep a lid on things, he couldn’t have chosen better when he entrusted the problem to Harry I. Ball and me. Of the two of us, I’d be hard-pressed to decide which one was less likely to go surfing the Internet.

But, as Frank Montoya said, the material was interesting. UPPI had ventured into prison construction and management when the field was booming, but whoever drew up their business plan had failed to predict the sudden drop in crime at the end of the nineties that would leave them holding thousands of unoccupied and shoddily built prison beds.

To make up for their own bad planning, they had tried to staunch the flow of red ink by filing breach-of-contract suits in twelve different states, all of them still pending. Although one article hinted that at least one UPPI executive was suspected of having links to organized crime, no firm connections had ever been established.

Lost in the material, I paid no attention as people came and went from the conference room. Ernie Carpenter and I were the only ones left when Joanna Brady burst in a while later to tell us that something was going down at a place called Palominas. When she first mentioned a stolen horse, I thought she was joking. But as soon as she said the suspected horse thief was most likely Jack Brampton, Ernie and I dropped what we were doing and headed for the door.

I was two steps down the hallway when she stopped me. “Wait a minute, Beau,” she said. “Where’s your vest?”

“Not on me.”

“You’d better go see Frank Montoya then,” she said. “You’re sure as hell not riding along without one.”

“But…” I began.

“No buts,” she said. “My way or the highway.”

With that, she turned and sprinted away, leaving me with a whole mouthful of unspoken arguments still superglued to my tongue.