by J. A. Jance
“I already knew that,” Joanna said. “Lucy told me.”
Frank made a face. “Nothing like spoiling a guy’s fun,” he grumbled.
“What else?” Joanna asked.
“Ernie Carpenter spent all afternoon working with his connections at Fort Huachuca.”
“And?”
“There’s no official record that Sandra Ridder ever worked on post. We have anecdotal evidence that she worked there. That’s what people have told us. If so, however, every single official reference to her has been deleted from the computer records. Right this minute there isn’t even so much as a parking pass with her name on it.”
“That’s crazy,” Joanna said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe not,” Frank replied. “But consider this. The hacker who lifted those encrypted codes was no lightweight. How hard would it be for someone like him to delete a person’s job and personnel records?”
“Not very,” Joanna said after a moment’s thought. “In fact, probably not hard at all.”
“That’s what I thought,” Frank said.
“Sheriff Brady?” Jaime queried.
“Yes.”
“I just heard about what happened at your house,” Jaime Carbajal said. “Is everyone okay?”
Joanna found the switch from case to case—from official to personal—jarring and disconcerting at the same time. “We’re all fine,” Joanna answered after a moment. “Except for the dogs. They’re still at the vet’s. The last I heard, Dr. Ross couldn’t tell if they’re going to make it or not.”
“How bad is the damage to your place? And is Reba Singleton really the one who’s responsible?”
“The damage is pretty bad,” Joanna conceded, flashing back to her last look at her devastated kitchen. “And yes, Reba did do it, but she’s been handled. As of now, I’m convinced she’s no longer a threat to herself or others. Even so, her attorney in California requested that she be checked into a hospital for evaluation. And no, we’re not placing her under arrest at this time. What’s going on with you?”
“I’ve spent the whole afternoon here with Catherine Yates—ever since the funeral. So far, there’s been no sign of trouble. She was overjoyed to hear Lucy has been found, and she’s frantic to see her granddaughter. She’s willing to come see her tonight if that’s possible.”
Gauging her own diminished personal resources, Joanna shook her head. She had been through far too much that day to think through all the ramifications of sending someone back to Holy Trinity to pave the way for a late-night visit from Catherine Yates. And Lucy Ridder had been through too much as well. Right that second, Joanna hoped Lucy was bedded down and sleeping in the peaceful warmth and safety of one of Holy Trinity’s retreat accommodations.
“No,” Joanna said. “Tell her the reunion will have to wait until tomorrow. I interviewed Lucy myself, but only partially. We were interrupted halfway through. I want you and Ernie to have a chance to talk to Lucy in person before anyone else does, although, since she’s a juvenile, we may have to allow the grandmother to be present while we talk to her. What Lucy has to tell us is going to be important, Jaime. She witnessed her mother’s murder, and she may be able to ID the killer.”
“Whoa! You mean she saw it go down?”
“That’s what she said. So in addition to an interview, we’ll need a composite drawing as well. As an eyewitness we have an obligation to keep Lucy safe, which is what she is right now. Tell Catherine Yates if she wants to discuss this with me, she should come to my office first thing tomorrow morning.”
“We’ve been talking all day. She’s been telling me . . .”
As Jaime began speaking, the Bronco Joanna was riding in emerged from the mesquite grove on High Lonesome Ranch and came to a stop behind the group of vehicles parked bumper to bumper outside Joanna’s fenced yard. If anything, more people were in attendance now than had been earlier, when Frank Montoya and Joanna had set off for Rhodes Ranch.
“Where did all these yahoos come from?” Frank muttered.
“Look, Jaime,” Joanna interrupted. “I can’t talk anymore right now. I can’t even think, and you’ve been on duty far too long as well. Have Tica send someone out to relieve you. I’ll see you at the briefing in the morning. All right?”
“Fine.”
“Good call,” Frank said, as Joanna returned the radio microphone to its holder. “I was afraid you were going to send someone back over to Saint David. We can all do only so much, and that goes for you personally as well. Are you sure you should be at the briefing in the morning? Shouldn’t you take the day off and tend to this mess?”
Joanna was touched by his concern. She shook her head. “Mess or no mess, I’ll be at the office in the morning,” she told him. “I’m still getting married on Saturday afternoon, and I’m still taking Friday and all next week off for my honeymoon. You can bet your butt I’ll be at the briefing tomorrow morning.”
“Suit yourself,” Frank said.
From inside Joanna’s house came periodic flashes of light, indicating one of the crime-scene techs was taking photographs. The burst of adrenaline that had fueled her body and kept Joanna going through the Reba Singleton crisis seemed to dissipate, leaving her drained and exhausted.
“Frank, please go tell whoever’s taking those pictures to stop,” Joanna said wearily. “If we do end up prosecuting this case, the evidence the crime techs have now—fingerprints, photos, and whatever else—will have to do. I want everyone to clear out of here. Now.”
Ahead of the Bronco, illuminated in the headlights, Marliss Shackleford came hotfooting it toward them. Suddenly Joanna was struck by her own vulnerability. It was one thing to be tackled by the press in her role as sheriff. That was an assumed risk—part of the game. It was something else entirely to be targeted because you were the innocent and unwilling victim of someone else’s act of violence.
“That goes double for her,” Joanna added, nodding in the approaching reporter’s direction as Frank exited the vehicle. “I want Marliss Shackleford out of here before now, if that’s possible.”
Frank laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. Does that mean you’re not granting interviews?” he added, slipping smoothly from chief deputy into his other departmental function—that of Media Relations officer.
“Right,” Joanna said. “My only comment is no comment, and I’m not setting foot outside this vehicle or rolling down the window until you get rid of her.”
Joanna watched while Frank and Marliss engaged in a long, heated debate. With the windows closed, it was impossible to hear exactly what was being said, but from Marliss’ wild gesticulations it was pretty clear what was going on. Finally, with a departing wordless glare in Joanna’s direction, Marliss stalked away.
Seconds after Frank walked off as well, Butch showed up and opened the car door. Joanna tumbled out of the Bronco and into his arms. She had been tough and strong long enough. Now all she wanted was to be held and comforted and told everything would be all right. Butch Dixon was happy to oblige.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”
“To your house?”
“Where else? I certainly can’t leave you here.”
“Shouldn’t I go inside and get a nightgown for tonight and something to change into tomorrow morning?”
“Sweetie pie,” he said. “The whole time you’ve been gone, I’ve been inside your house and looking over the damage. What you’re wearing is what you’ve got.”
“There’s nothing left?”
“Nothing salvageable. But there is some good news.”
“What’s that?”
“I talked to Dr. Ross a few minutes ago. She says she thinks both dogs are going to pull through. Come on.”
Joanna looked up at Butch through suddenly tear-dimmed eyes. That was just about the time a photographer from The Bisbee Bee caught the two of them in mid-embrace. Joanna started to object, but Butch took her hand.
“Forget it,” he said.
“They got what they came for. Let them have it.”
“Wait,” she said. “What about Kristin? I’m sure she was planning on spending the night tonight as well.”
Butch nodded. “Fortunately for Kristin, all her stuff was in Jenny’s room, which means it’s fine. She’ll be spending the night at Terry’s. I don’t think she minded very much,” he added with a smile.
An hour later, with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and single stiff Scotch under her belt, Joanna lay next to Butch in the queen-sized bed of his Saginaw-neighborhood home. “Remember, we weren’t going to have any more sleep-overs before the wedding,” she said wistfully.
“This isn’t a sleep-over,” Butch returned. “You’re a refugee.”
“With all this going on, maybe we should postpone the wedding,” Joanna hinted.
“No.”
“The honeymoon, then. What if we took it later?”
“No. If anything, we need the honeymoon more than ever.”
“But, Butch. How are we going to get the mess cleaned up? It’s so much—”
“Don’t you mean how am I going to clean up the mess? Well, you don’t have to. As the guy on that “Red Green Show” says, we’re all in this together. I’ve talked to a whole lot of people tonight. When Frank Montoya came back and shut down the crime-scene investigation, people were ready to go to work cleaning up right then.
“I sent everyone home tonight, but they’ll be back first thing in the morning. Jeff and Marianne will be there. Angie Kellogg and her boyfriend, that parrot guy. Jim Bob and Eva Lou. My folks. Your brother and his wife, to say nothing of your mother and who knows who else. And the fact that all those people will be doing salvage and cleanup means you don’t have to. You go to the department and do what you have to do in order for us to be out of town next week. Besides, it’s not going to be that bad. Except for the bathroom and kitchen the repairs are mostly cosmetic. Once we clean things up and dry the place out, it will be livable again. But maybe we don’t want to do that.”
“Don’t want to do what?”
“Live there. I’ve been reading articles in newspapers and magazines about a contractor from Tucson, a guy named Quentin Branch, who specializes in building rammed-earth houses. The house is actually constructed so the walls are made of layers of compacted dirt. A lot of time, whatever soil needs to be moved from the site in order to make way for construction can be worked into the construction of the house itself rather than having to be hauled off in dump trucks. Due to the miracle of natural insulation, rammed-earth houses are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. If we did that and built from scratch, we’d be starting married life fresh in a place that didn’t belong to somebody else first, either to you and Andy, or to me. It could be our place, Joanna, yours and mine.”
“It sounds like you’ve been giving this idea a lot of thought,” she said quietly.
“I have,” Butch admitted. “Long before what happened today. I’ve been worried about how all our furniture was going to fit into one place. How we’d all survive with that one bathroom and still be friends, to say nothing of lovers.”
“You were worried about that?” Joanna asked. Butch nodded. “So was I. I couldn’t figure out how it would work, but now it’s not nearly such a problem since all my furniture is wrecked.”
“Not all of it,” Butch said. “Jim Bob and I were talking about how to repair the damage to the dining room table and the buffet. But going back to what we were talking about—what would you think of the idea of building a new place?”
“I guess we could think about it,” Joanna conceded. “After all, thinking doesn’t cost anything.”
At nine o’clock the next morning, feeling grubby in her clothing from the previous day, Sheriff Joanna Brady hurried into the conference room just in time for the morning briefing. Frank Montoya and the two detectives were already present and drinking coffee.
“Hi, guys,” Joanna said, trying to keep things on a businesslike basis. She knew from meeting with Kristin Marsten a few minutes earlier that on the morning after the disaster at High Lonesome Ranch expressions of sympathy tended to erode her emotional control.
“Sorry I’m late,” she announced breezily. “I just got off the phone with Lucy Ridder. I’ve made arrangements for her to come here to be interviewed by Frank and Ernie and to do the composite drawing. I was in such a hurry yesterday that I forgot to bring Sister Celeste back here to the department to pick up her car. Right this minute, it’s still out in the parking lot, so she’ll be coming along with Lucy. That way, she can give Lucy some moral support and pick up her car at the same time. And since Sister Celeste already met you, Frank, I told her you’re the one who will come to Saint David to pick them up.”
“Good enough,” Frank said. “How soon?”
“As soon as you can get to Saint David after we finish up here. So where do we stand?”
“I already told Jaime about the computer thing,” Ernie Carpenter offered. “About Sandra Ridder’s work record being erased out at Fort Huachuca. He has some thoughts on the subject.”
All eyes in the room focused on Jaime Carbajal. “Which are?” Joanna urged.
“I started to tell you about this last night. When I was talking to Catherine Yates yesterday afternoon, she finally admitted that she hadn’t been entirely truthful when she spoke to us earlier. She told us she knew weeks earlier that Sandra was due to be released from prison. It seems somebody from the Justice Department came to Sandra several months ago. Whoever it was told her that somebody had finally gotten around to investigating allegations of security leaks that had occurred at Fort Huachuca back in the early nineties.
“He told her that investigators had somehow tied her into a plot that involved the lifting of top-secret command and control codes from STRATCOM for delivery to the Iraqis. The agent from the Justice Department offered her a sweet deal—an early out, full immunity from prosecution, and witness-protection status if she would tell them everything she knew. Sandra Ridder was nobody’s dummy. According to Catherine, she agreed to the deal and then upped the ante by offering to deliver an actual diskette containing encrypted codes in exchange for an extra cash bonus.”
“Any idea which agent made the deal?”
Jaime Carbajal shook his head. “None. My guess is that something like this is going to be damned difficult to trace from this end or from the bottom up.”
Joanna nodded. “Full-immunity packages don’t get passed out by lower-echelon players. I’ll give Adam York a call over at DEA. He may have some idea as to where we should start looking. But here’s my real concern: Why didn’t Catherine Yates bother to tell us any of this earlier?”
“She was afraid to,” Jaime answered. “Sandra had sworn her to secrecy. She told her mother that the other people involved—the people she used to work with—would kill her in a minute if they knew she was spilling the beans. She said that’s what they did to Tom Ridder. He found one of the disks before she had a chance to deliver it. Ridder hid the diskette and threatened to blow the whistle on the entire Fort Huachuca operation. Whoever was running the show tried to get the diskette back, but Ridder wouldn’t tell where he’d hidden it. So they killed him, and convinced Sandra to take the fall for it. They told her that if she didn’t plead guilty to Tom’s death and keep the conspirators’ involvement out of it, they’d kill Lucy the same way they killed Tom Ridder.”
“And she believed them?” Joanna said.
“Evidently. If I’d been in her shoes, I think I would have, too.”
“You’re saying Sandra Ridder spent all those years in prison in order to protect her daughter—to save Lucy’s life?”
“That’s what Catherine Yates told me.”
“Assuming she’s telling the truth now, that is,” Joanna said. “At this point, I’m not sure I’d believe a word she says. What do you think, Ernie? Does any of this relate to what you told us about Sandra Ridder’s civil-service existence being erased from Fort Huachuca records
?”
“Possibly,” Ernie Carpenter replied. “It could be part of a witness-protection protocol. I’m not entirely sure how that stuff works.”
“Another question for our source at Justice whenever we manage to find one,” Joanna said. “One other thing keeps bothering me. I know what our pet hacker said about even old encryption codes being valuable. Still, how valuable can they be? Three people are dead right now, and it could easily have been four.
“Melanie Goodson has to have been involved from the get-go. When Lucy placed those three rest-area calls that night, she thought she was calling people who would help her. And two out of the three—Sister Celeste and Jay Quick—did try to help. I’m guessing Melanie Goodson traced the call—possibly through caller ID—and then sent somebody out to the rest area looking for Lucy.”