To Hatred Turned by Ken Englade Page A

vengeful, perhaps mentally disturbed woman seeking revenge against her husband and her sister? Seeking to buy time to do some quick investigating, he asked Carol to come back and see him again a few days later. Not happy with the idea, but knowing she had no other choice, Carol agreed. At the same time, he knew he was going to need a lot more facts before he could wrap things up.
    When Carol returned for a second meeting, McGowan asked her just how serious she was in her determination to blow the whistle on her husband and her sister. Was she resolute enough, he wanted to know, to really help put a noose around Joy’s neck? Would she help police trap Joy?
    Carol blinked rapidly. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes seemed as large as silver dollars. Tears welled up and she took a long time to answer. “Yes,” she said finally.
    McGowan exhaled in relief. So much for Step One. “Would you be willing to wear a wire?” he asked. “Would you be willing to help us record your sister talking about her part in the murder and attempted murder?”
    Again Carol hesitated, but again she said yes.
    McGowan nodded solemnly. “Okay,” he said, “let’s work out a plan.”
    At Carol’s request, Joy met her in a busy suburban restaurant, JoJo’s, one of a number of outlets of the popular Dallas chain. Carol showed up carrying a briefcase, which, as casually as possible, she laid on the table. Inside the case, unknown to Joy, was a tape recorder.
    She and Joy talked for almost an hour. Afterward, Carol was delighted with the way things had gone; she thought she had gotten Joy to make more than enough admissions to insure her arrest. What she was particularly pleased with, she told McGowan, beaming, was the look of complete shock on Joy’s face when Carol told her she was married to Bill Garland.
    But McGowan had bad news for her. The conversation between the two was all but obliterated by background noise; the tape was unusable. Carol was going to have to do it again.
    Carol paled when she heard the news. Trying to entice Joy to make self-damaging statements on tape was dangerous enough the first time, she felt, but to repeat the performance was flirting with lunacy. She blew up, cursing and screaming. When McGowan finally got her calmed down enough to listen to him without flying off the handle, he explained that he knew he was asking a lot of her but he would not make the request unless it was absolutely necessary.
    “You don’t think I like having to ask you to go back and do it again, do you?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he pushed on. “But you are the only one who can help us with this. We desperately need your help. If you don’t help us, the chances of getting Joy are pretty slim. We’ll do everything we can to protect you, but we don’t think you’re in immediate danger.”
    Carol opened her mouth to protest, so McGowan spoke quickly.
    “I mean, I don’t think she’s going to attack you right there. And if you can get her to incriminate herself, we’ll arrest her and slap her in jail and there’s not much she can do to you from there.”
    Carol considered what the detective had said. She really was pissed off at Joy and her husband. And she really could use the reward money. Besides, she figured, McGowan probably was right. If Joy was in jail, there was not much she could do to her, especially if her connections to Bill Garland were broken.
    “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll do it.”
    McGowan gave her a lopsided grin. “I’ll arrange it,” he said.
    Several days later the sisters met again, this time in a room in a seedy motel in a somewhat less than desirable section of the city, a locale that was so unlike a place Carol normally would have chosen that McGowan figured it would give credibility to her claim that she was hiding from her husband.

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    Although Joy had agreed to the meeting, she was suspicious from the beginning. The first thing she did when she walked into the room was