Devil's ClawJ

by J. A. Jance

  “What’s up?” Frank demanded, following her into the supply room. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a man in my office who says his name is Jerry Reed. He claims he’s a special investigator for the U.S. Attorney General. He comes to us armed with a subpoena and demanding that we hand over Sandra Ridder’s diskette.”

  With that, Joanna passed Frank the phone. “I’ve placed a call to the Attorney General’s office in D.C. You talk to whoever answers, and don’t put down the phone until you find out whether or not Special Agent Jerry Reed is legitimate.”

  “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

  “Give him the disk.” Joanna reached up to a top shelf and pulled down a single computer disk—a blue one—from a box of blanks.

  Frank’s eyes widened. “You’re going to give him a phony?”

  Joanna nodded. “Why not? What’s he going to do, pop it into my computer to check it out before he ever leaves my office? If it turns out Reed is for real, we’ll tell him I made a mistake, and that our evidence clerk gave me the wrong disk. If he isn’t—”

  “Hello,” Frank was saying into the phone. “No, this isn’t Sheriff Brady. I’m her chief deputy, Frank Montoya. We have a serious incident unfolding here that may involve one of your investigators. I probably need to speak to someone in Operations.”

  Leaving Frank to sort through the layers of Federal officialdom, Joanna started back toward her office. Outside the door, Kristin flagged Joanna down and handed over the receiver from Kristin’s desk phone. “I know you’re in a hurry, but I think you’re going to want to take this.”

  “Hello.”

  “Sheriff Brady,” Larry Kendrick said. “Deputy Pakin just arrived at the Yates’ place out in the Dragoons. He says Deputy Galloway’s patrol car is there, but he’s not. Neither is Catherine Yates, although her vehicle is there as well. He says her house looks as though it’s been ransacked, and there are signs of a struggle.”

  Like a zoom photo lens shifting into focus, Joanna suddenly felt as though she knew what was going on. “Listen, Larry,” she said urgently. “Call down to Motor Pool. Tell Danny Garner someone’s going to be leaving the department in the next few minutes. I have no idea what kind of a vehicle he’s driving, but before he goes, I want at least one and preferably two sets of spike strips laid down across the entrance to the Justice Complex. If I’m wrong about this and we’ve got the wrong guy, we’ll owe the Feds a new set of tires. If I’m right, we may save several lives.”

  “How do we know the guy you want is the only one who’ll run over the strips?”

  “We don’t,” Joanna replied. “Depending on how long he takes to leave, we may be buying a whole bunch of people new sets of tires. Just do it.”

  Glancing down at the diskette in her hand, Joanna realized something was missing. Returning to her office with a naked computer disk and trying to pass that off as the real one wasn’t going to cut it. She hurried across to the conference-room door, poked her head into the room, and motioned Ernie Carpenter away from the interview.

  “What the hell do you want?” the detective demanded irritably once he was outside and had shut the door. “Sheriff Brady, you know better than to interrupt—”

  “Shut up and give me an evidence bag,” Joanna said. “And a label, too. Date it yesterday, and sign Frank’s name to it.”

  “Me sign Frank’s name? Are you crazy?”

  “Hurry, Ernie. There’s not much time. A man’s going to be leaving my office any minute. I want you and Jaime Carbajal out in the parking lot in a car and ready to follow him. Whatever you do, don’t drive out the front entrance. Danny Garner is laying down two sets of tire spikes. When the guy gets out of his vehicle, nab him.”

  “On what charges?”

  “How about impersonating an officer, for openers?”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying Jaime and I are supposed to quit right in the middle of the interview and go chase after this other guy?” Ernie asked. “Who the hell is he?”

  “It’s possible he may be a Federal agent,” Joanna said. “But I don’t think so. Now please, Ernie, just do as I say.”

  Exasperated and shaking his head in disapproval, Ernie Carpenter handed over the doctored evidence bag and then headed back into the conference room for Jaime. Joanna dropped the disk into the bag and then hurried back to her office. Inside, after closing the door behind her, she found Jerry Reed standing next to the window studying the birds milling around the outdoor feeder that had been a gift from Angie Kellogg.

  “It took you long enough,” Reed said testily.

  “Sorry about that. We’re breaking in a new evidence clerk,” Joanna said with what she hoped was a convincing sigh. She handed him the evidence bag with the disk clearly visible. “Our old guy retired,” she continued. “He could find stuff with his eyes shut. This new one is taking her own sweet time to get acclimated.”

  Reed seemed greatly relieved once the bag was in his hand. “I’d better be going then,” he said, sidling toward the door.

  Wanting a few more minutes for her assets to get in position, Joanna stalled for time. “As I told you earlier, the disk you’re holding is part of one of our homicide investigations. I’m sure you know that procedures are everything these days. I’d appreciate it if you’d sign and date this receipt which shows you’re taking charge of the disk. I also need to know where and how to contact you if and when our case comes to trial.”

  “I already told you, Sheriff Brady,” Reed objected. “The contents of this disk are top secret. I couldn’t possibly testify about them in open court.”

  “Please don’t misunderstand,” Joanna said with a smile. “We’d merely want you to testify as to the existence of the disk. We certainly wouldn’t require you to divulge the actual contents.”

  Reed sighed. “Very well,” he said.

  Making a huge show of it, he took the receipt Joanna offered him. Then he pulled out a fountain pen and scribbled his name, the date, and a telephone number across the receipt. “Thank you so much,” Joanna said. “Believe me, my department and I are always happy to be of service.”

  She walked Jerry Reed to the door and then escorted him all the way to the public lobby. Halfway down the hall, Lucy Ridder was emerging from the women’s rest room. Reed rushed past her without a sideways glance, but Joanna caught the look of utter terror that passed across the girl’s face. She gasped and started to say something, but Joanna silenced her with a shake of her head and a finger to her own lips.

  “We’ll see you then, Mr. Reed,” she said, once he was safely out of the hall and beyond the locking security door. “Drive carefully.”

  Closing the door behind him and making sure it was properly latched, Joanna turned back to Lucy. “That was him, wasn’t it?”

  Lucy Ridder nodded. “That’s the man who killed my mother,” she said.

  Just then Frank Montoya came racing down the hall. “Where is he?” he demanded. “You didn’t let him get away, did you? I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s phony as a three-dollar bill.”

  “He won’t get away,” Joanna returned. “Right about now, he should be driving over the tire spikes I had Danny Garner put down just inside the gates to the Justice Complex. Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal should be Johnny-on-the-spot to pick him up.”

  Frank stopped and looked at her. “How’d you do that?” he asked.

  Joanna tapped the side of her head. “Kidneys,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind,” Joanna said with a laugh. “It’s the punch line to an old shaggy-dog story Marianne Maculyea taught me when we were in sixth grade.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Right,” Joanna agreed. “It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t now. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  About that time, Joanna’s cell phone rang in Frank’s hand. With a disgusted shake of his head, he handed it over to her.

&nbs
p; “Mom?” Jenny sobbed into the phone. “Is that you?”

  “Jenny. What’s the matter? Where are you?”

  “In the principal’s office. We got out of school early today because it’s a teacher-in-service day. I went to Butch’s house, but the door is locked and nobody’s home. Grandma and Grandpa aren’t home either. Everybody’s too busy today, and they just forgot all about me. Nobody even loves me.”

  “That’s not true, Jenny. We do love you, and you’re right. We are busy. Just stay there in the office. I’ll be down to get you as soon as I can.”

  “Good,” Jenny sniffled. “When can we go get the dogs?”

  Listening to her weeping child made Joanna’s heart hurt. She could remember times when Eleanor had been busy as well. “If it’s not one thing,” she used to say, “it’s three others.”

  “I don’t know what time exactly,” Joanna said. “But it’ll be before dinner. You can count on that.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Joanna and Jenny picked up the dogs and took them home to High Lonesome Ranch. Out in the front yard stood an overflowing Dumpster, but Joanna chose not to go near enough to see the unsalvageable debris. There was no point in it. Instead, tentatively, she made her way into the house.

  “What do you think?” Butch asked.

  The mess was gone. The broken glassware and food had been cleaned up and carted away. Someone had replaced the sliced cord on the back of the refrigerator. It was plugged in and humming away in an otherwise almost empty kitchen. The walls and ceiling had been scrubbed down, although shadows of mustard and stains of hot sauce remained visible. Those wouldn’t disappear until after a coat or two of paint. The cupboard doors and drawer fronts were mostly missing, and the broken shelves were still broken. The rest of the house was in much the same condition. With the better part of the furniture hauled away, the place had a strange, unoccupied echo to it as Joanna and Butch walked from room to room. Only Jenny’s room remained the same as it had been before.

  “Amazing,” Joanna murmured. “How did you do all this?”

  “I had good help,” Butch replied. “I still can’t believe how hard people slaved away. I was afraid Jim Bob was going to work himself into a coronary. No matter what I said, he wouldn’t stop or even slow down. Jeff Daniels and your brother were the same way, and my father was no slouch, either. Marianne was here with Ruth for a while, but with all the broken glass lying around, we decided it was best for her to go back home. Besides, the woman’s eight and a half months pregnant and in no condition to be hauling broken furniture outside to a Dumpster. The stuff that isn’t broken we packed in boxes, but I’m afraid there isn’t much of that.”

  Joanna nodded. “Thank goodness all the photo albums Mom gave us—the ones she kept nagging us about and the ones Jenny and I have been working on a little at a time—were in the top of the closet in Jenny’s room, which means they weren’t touched. If we’d lost them, they would have been irreplaceable. Everything else is replaceable.”

  “Still,” Butch said gently, putting his arm around her shoulders. “It’s a hell of a loss.”

  “It would have been a lot worse if I’d had to face the job of cleaning up on my own,” Joanna told him. “Thank you, Butch. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “Yes, I do,” he said.

  For obvious reasons the pre-rehearsal-dinner dinner, which had originally been slated for High Lonesome Ranch, had been moved to a different venue. The party ended up being held at George and Eleanor Winfield’s house on Campbell Avenue, but the menu remained the same—an all-you-can-eat pizza feast from Bisbee’s Pizza Palace. The dinner guests, most of them exhausted from a day of heavy physical labor, arrived tired, hungry, and thirsty but ready to switch gears from clean-up crew to wedding-festivity attendees.

  The four women who had been dispatched to Tucson earlier in the day didn’t pull into the carport until after the pizza had been delivered. They, too, seemed tired but happy. “We shopped till we dropped,” Eva Lou announced, massaging her feet.

  “We could have done more,” Eleanor put in, “but Butch said not to. Take a look at what we brought, Joanna. Tell us what you think.”

  One at a time Joanna rummaged through the bags. There were several new sets of underwear—none of it quite as racy as the ones Joanna had been given during Sunday afternoon’s shower, but it was still all very nice. There were two dresses that, with the addition of a blazer, would be fine for work. There were two lovely blouses, two pairs of slacks, and three pairs of shoes—including a replacement of the wedding shoes to match the dress that was scheduled to arrive the following afternoon. There was enough new clothing in the shopping bags to see Joanna through several days, but not much beyond that. On thinking about it, Joanna decided that was fine. Nice as these selections were, she much preferred doing her own shopping.

  “Don’t you want to try these things on?” Eleanor suggested.

  Joanna looked around at a roomful of expectant people and begged off. “Please, Mom,” she said. “They’re wonderful, and all the sizes look perfect, but I’m worn out. Couldn’t we pass on the fashion show for tonight?”

  “I’m sure that will be just fine, won’t it, Ellie,” George Winfield said before his wife could answer. “Besides, the food is here and getting cold. Time to eat.”

  “I suppose,” Eleanor agreed, although Joanna could see she wasn’t thrilled about it.

  Marianne Maculyea and Jeff Daniels arrived shortly thereafter. Marianne’s eyes were red, as was her nose. “You look awful,” Joanna said, after Jeff took Ruth out to the kitchen to fill a plate. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve spent the afternoon crying.”

  “I have.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “After Ruth and I got home from the ranch, I put her down for a nap. I was just starting to pick up the house when the doorbell rang. There was a strange woman standing on the front porch, someone I had never seen before. She gave me this.”

  Marianne reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter.

  “What is it?” Joanna asked.

  “Read it.”

  Joanna looked down at the envelope. The return address said “E. Maculyea, P.O. Box 8751, Safford, Arizona.” “Your mother?” Joanna asked.

  Marianne nodded wordlessly. From the time Marianne Maculyea had left the Catholic Church in order to become a Methodist minister, she had been at war with her parents, Timothy and Evangeline. There had been a partial thaw in hostilities at the time Jeff and Marianne had lost Ruth’s twin, Esther. Marianne’s father had come to both the hospital and funeral. Her mother had not. For years, being at war with their respective mothers had been one of the glues that had held Joanna and Marianne’s friendship together.

  “Read it,” Marianne said.

  Joanna unfolded the letter and read:

  Dear Marianne,

  This letter will introduce you to Julie Erickson. She is a nanny who lives in Tucson. Your father and I know two different families for whom she has worked in the past ten years. Please interview her and get to know her. If you decide she would fit in with yours and Jeff’s needs, please let us know. After the baby is born, your father and I will pay Julie’s wages for a six-month period. That should give you enough time to get back on your feet.

  Love,

  Mom

  Joanna looked up from the letter. “Did you like her?” she asked.

  “The nanny?” Marianne returned. “She was wonderful. Perfect. In fact, she was still there when Ruth woke up. The two of them hit it off right away, and you know how standoffish Ruth can be with strangers sometimes. It’s a miracle, Joanna. An answer to a prayer.”

  “Yes,” Joanna agreed, giving her friend a hug. “It’s an answer to more than one.”

  CHAPTER 29

  At nine o’clock Friday morning, Frank was in Joanna’s office for the morning briefing. “As soon as we’re done with this, I’m leaving,” she tol
d him. “I worked all day yesterday. I’m not working today.”

  “Right,” he said. “You stumble into a hornet’s nest that’s going to create jurisdictional wrangling from here to next Tuesday, and you bail out on me.”

  “I can’t help that.” Joanna grinned. She was feeling good that morning. On top of the world. “If you ever decide to get married,” she added, “remind me that I owe you that extra half day off. Now, what’s the deal? How are Ken Galloway and Catherine Yates doing, for starters?”

  “Catherine Yates is still under observation at Copper Queen Hospital. Deputy Galloway is out and fine. We’re lucky they were found when they were. If you hadn’t put down the spike strips and if your phony Agent Reed had managed to make it off departmental grounds, they might well have suffocated before someone found them and hauled them out of his trunk. I think he planned to use them as bargaining chips if need be, but you outfoxed him there, Joanna. Jaime and Ernie nailed Ed Masters before he had a chance to get away.”