by J. A. Jance
Once again something in her father’s journal had brought Joanna up short. D. H. Lathrop had been in some kind of trouble as a juvenile? This was the first Joanna had ever heard of it. Then there was that disconcerting fact that much later on in life he’d carried on a longtime affair with his secretary. Other than that he had always seemed like a straight-up guy.
So what kind of trouble had he gotten into? And had her mother known about that history? According to the final sentence in that passage, probably not.
The phone rang with the M.E.’s name showing in caller ID. “Hey, Kendra,” Joanna said. “What’s up?”
“You’re not going to believe this. I got a hit on Jane Doe. I’ve got an ID on her.”
Joanna was astonished. “Already?” she demanded. “How is that possible? You just did the autopsy yesterday. I thought it took a lot longer than this to create a DNA profile.”
“It does, but the tentative ID didn’t come from DNA. It’s from dental records.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope, our Jane Doe is a sixteen-year-old girl named Amelia Diaz Salazar. She’s from Juárez, south of El Paso. She was living illegally in the U.S. with an aunt, her mother’s sister, a woman named Rosa Moreno. Amelia went missing the evening of July Fourth of this past year. She went out to watch the fireworks with some other kids from her neighborhood and never came home. Her aunt is the one who reported her missing.”
“But how were you able to access her dental records?” Joanna asked.
“When Amelia came to the U.S., she had some tooth problems, so Rosa took her to a free dental clinic that works in conjunction with a homeless shelter in El Paso. Two months or so after Amelia went missing and with the investigation from law enforcement apparently going nowhere, Rosa entered Amelia’s information—dental records included—into NamUs. Her entry is dated September seventeenth. As soon as I uploaded Jane Doe’s information, I got a hit.”
“And dental records don’t lie?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Have you notified the family?” Joanna asked.
“That’s why I’m calling you,” Kendra said. “I tried to get a hold of Tom Hadlock so he could make the call. The problem is, he’s out at the crime scene. He didn’t answer, or maybe they’re having some kind of technical issue with the satphone.”
“It was working earlier,” Joanna said.
“It doesn’t seem to be now,” Kendra told her, “so I was wondering if you’d like to do the next of kin.”
“Like to do it?” Joanna replied. “Certainly not. Need to do it? Yes, absolutely. Do you have contact information for the aunt?”
“It’s right here in the NamUs record.”
“Does it include a cell-phone number?”
“Yes.”
“Text it to me, along with the physical address.”
“Are you going to make the call, or are you going to have someone from El Paso PD drop by to make an in-person notification?”
Joanna thought about that. Given some of the illegal-immigrant issues rampant across the country at the moment, there were a lot of places where having a cop car roll up to the front door of either a residence or a place of employment was not a good idea. But now that Kendra Baldwin had identified their victim, speaking to Amelia’s family was also the next step in solving the case. Here was an opportunity to have whatever information Rosa could provide available in time for Tom’s evening debriefing at the Justice Center.
“I’ll probably handle it myself,” Joanna said.
“I thought you might,” Kendra said. “That’s the other reason I called. I’m sending now.”
A text alert came in on her phone. Off the line Joanna quickly scanned through the material, including the information Rosa had provided on the NamUs filing. Once she was finished, and with Sage still sleeping, Joanna dialed the number listed as Rosa Moreno’s cell phone.
“Mrs. Moreno?” Joanna asked when a woman answered.
“Yes.”
“My name’s Joanna Brady. I’m the sheriff of Cochise County in Arizona.”
“The sheriff?” Rosa repeated. Then, after a momentary pause, she added. “I suppose this is not good news.”
“You’re right, Mrs. Moreno, it is not. In fact, it’s dreadful news. I’m sorry to have to inform you that your niece has been found.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Joanna had signed on to do the notification, but she wasn’t required to supply all the sickening details. Those would come out eventually, but not right now—not in those first breath-robbing moments. Joanna had expected tears or hysterics. Rosa Moreno exhibited none of those. She had long since arrived at the awful conclusion that her niece was most likely dead. The call was merely a confirmation of what the poor woman already knew.
“Amelia was the victim of homicidal violence,” Joanna explained carefully. “Her body was found at a remote location in southeastern Arizona.”
“How did you find me?”
“From your listing on NamUs—more specifically, your niece’s dental records. I have a small department, Mrs. Moreno, and at the moment my people are stretched thin. Right now all available personnel are out canvassing the area looking for the killer. There’s a briefing scheduled for later this evening where we’ll be trying to pull all the pieces of the investigation together.
“I’m not the detective assigned to the case, but I am a sworn officer of the law. I know you’ve suffered a terrible shock, and this is a distressing time for someone to be asking questions, but anything you could tell me about Amelia’s disappearance would be a huge help. That way I’d be able to pass the information along to my investigators.”
“Her death is my fault,” Rosa said brokenly. “It’s all my fault.”
“Mrs. Moreno,” Joanna said. “Were you in Arizona this past week when Amelia was murdered?”
“No, of course not. I was here in El Paso, working.”
“Then how could her death be your fault?”
“Because I told my mother she’d be safer here with me than she would be back home in Mexico. It turns out I was wrong.”
The sobs Joanna had been expecting earlier arrived now with a vengeance, bringing the conversation to a halt until they finally subsided.
“If you don’t wish to speak about this right now, I can call you back later,” Joanna told her. “But my people are working hard to solve the case, and knowing what you know about Amelia’s activities and associates in the days leading up to her disappearance could be invaluable in tracking down her killer.”
“Yes,” Rosa said, taking a breath. “Give me a moment.”
Joanna listened while Rosa blew her nose, then came back on the line. “I’m better now,” she said. “I’ll be glad to answer your questions. When I tried to talk to the cops here in El Paso, the detectives wouldn’t give me the time of day. They said Amelia was a runaway, and that was that.”
“How did you get hooked up with NamUs?”
“I kept calling and calling. The detectives kept giving me the runaround, but Mrs. Amado, the lady who answers the phones at El Paso PD, was very kind. I think she felt sorry for me. She’s the one who suggested I put Amelia’s information on the Internet. I don’t have a computer at home. She met up with me at the library and showed me how to log on and create an account.”
“Bless her,” Joanna murmured.
“Yes,” Rosa agreed. “I give thanks for her every day. When we finish talking, I’ll need to call her and tell her what’s happened. But for now what do you need to know?”
“Everything you can tell me about Amelia.”
“Her mother, Andrea, was my baby sister. When she got pregnant, her boyfriend didn’t stick around, and she and the baby ended up going back home to live with my mother outside Juárez. They needed money, so Andrea went to work for one of the maquiladoras in town, sewing children’s clothing. She worked there for almost three years while my mothe
r took care of Amelia. And then one Christmas, when it was time for Andrea to come home, she didn’t show up.”
Rosa paused. “I suppose you heard about all the girls who disappeared in Juárez?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “I’m aware of that situation.”
“Andrea was one of them, and my mother worried that the same thing might happen to Amelia. That’s why I suggested that she come to El Paso to live with me.” Rosa’s voice broke. “I thought I could keep her safe.”
“What can you tell me about her disappearance?”
“She was working with me at the motel—”
“At age sixteen? Shouldn’t she have been in school?”
“She dropped out of school before she ever came to live with me. My boss was paying her under the table, but she was making a lot more money than she would have made back in Mexico, and she was able to send most of it home to my mother. Still, she was so young, and I thought it was important for her to have some fun—some time to be . . . well . . . you know, a girl. So when she made friends with some of the people her age from here in the neighborhood, I was very happy about that. And when she was invited to a party to watch the fireworks, I was happy about that, too. It was her very first Fourth of July. I wanted her to enjoy it.”
“So she went to watch the fireworks and never came home?” Joanna asked.
“Yes,” Rosa answered. “The next morning, when she wasn’t here, I called the two girls she had gone with. They told me that after the fireworks were over, she wanted to leave, because she had to be up early the next morning to go to work. They wanted to stay later, so Amelia left on her own and never made it home. When I called the police that morning to report her missing, they insisted she had probably run away.”
“Did you talk to the kids from the party?”
“I did. One of the boys said he had noticed a strange vehicle driving around the neighborhood, an SUV of some kind. I passed that information along to the cops, but I don’t think they followed up on it. And now she’s dead. What happens next, Sheriff Brady?” Rosa asked. “How do we get Amelia home so we can bury her? And how do I tell my mother?”
Those were questions without easy answers.
A wail from the nursery announced that Sage was awake and tuning up. Trying to discuss those sensitive issues with a baby crying in the background wasn’t a good idea. Just then Joanna had a moment of inspiration.
“As I mentioned earlier,” Joanna said, “my investigators will be doing a briefing later on this evening. Under normal circumstances we’d probably send an investigator to El Paso to interview you, but these aren’t normal circumstances. We’re worried that there may be other girls out there.”
“Others like Amelia?” Rosa asked.
“Just like Amelia, and if there are, they may be in danger. Having you speak to the investigators this early in the investigation might be a big help. Would it be possible for us to call you back then and put you on speakerphone so they could talk to you directly?”
“If there are other girls in danger, of course I will help,” Rosa agreed at once. “Will you be the one calling me?”
It took no time at all for Joanna to make up her mind about that. “Definitely,” she said. “I’ll be the person on the phone.”
Joanna was close to ending the call when Rosa spoke again. “Thank you for this, Sheriff Brady. Thank you so much.”
Joanna was taken aback. Thank you for what? she wondered. For telling you that Amelia is dead? For bringing you such terrible news?
“Thank you for listening to me,” Rosa said after a pause. “I’m just sorry Amelia had to be dead before anyone was interested.”
“That makes two of us,” Joanna replied.
When the call ended, she hurried into the nursery, scooped up Sage, changed her and fed her. Then, while Denny ate his traditional Sunday-night supper of cocoa, toast, and cheese, Joanna called Carol Sunderson.
“Something’s come up,” she said. “I can take Sage with me, but since tomorrow’s a school day and I don’t know how late I’ll be, would it be okay if I dropped Denny and the dogs off at your house for a sleepover?”
“Sure,” Carol said, “no problem at all, but what’s going on? Are you going in to the office?”
“I am, and I’m taking Sage with me,” Joanna declared. “Since I have it on good authority that babies are now welcome on the floor of the U.S. Senate, having one show up in my conference room at the Justice Center shouldn’t be that big a deal.”
“Hallelujah!” Carol exclaimed. “Praise be.”
That wasn’t at all the reaction Joanna had been expecting.
“Praise be?” Joanna asked. “You’re that happy to be babysitting?”
“Butch and I had a bet,” Carol said with a laugh. “He said you’d make it all the way through your month of maternity leave without going in to the office. I bet him ten bucks that you wouldn’t make two weeks. It looks like I win and he loses.”
The fact that Butch and the grandmotherly Carol were actually wagering money on the likelihood of Joanna’s making a mess of her maternity leave was a bit perturbing.
“Right,” Joanna grumbled. “You can hardly fault me for being predictable.”
Chapter 25
RATHER THAN SET UP IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM OFF THE PUBLIC lobby, where stray reporters might wander in, Tom Hadlock had scheduled the evening briefing for the break room. When Joanna showed up with her diaper bag in one hand and Sage’s infant seat in the other, people were milling around, but the briefing had not yet gotten under way. The countertop next to the coffee machine was covered with several open pizza boxes, and people were helping themselves.
Not wanting to make a grand entrance, Joanna sidled into the room and tucked Sage’s infant seat away on a chair in the back corner. Her arrival didn’t go unnoticed, however. As soon as she put down the diaper bag, Tom Hadlock appeared at her side holding a paper plate laden with pizza.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, “pepperoni is your preferred topping.”
“Thank you,” Joanna murmured, “and thank you for remembering. I hope you don’t mind my showing up like this. I don’t want to interfere, but . . .”
“No problem,” Tom said. “I need all the help I can get. We’re just waiting on Dr. Baldwin. Once she makes it here, we’ll settle in and start. The M.E. called earlier and left word on my cell phone saying that she’d ID’d the one victim, but I didn’t hear the message until I was back in town. She said she was going to call you about doing the next-of-kin notification.”
“She did and I did,” Joanna answered. “Our victim is Amelia Diaz Salazar, a sixteen-year-old illegal immigrant from Juárez, who was living with her Aunt Rosa and working in El Paso. Amelia went missing the night of the Fourth of July. She went out to watch fireworks with some neighborhood kids and never came home. When the auntie tried to report her missing, El Paso PD pretty much blew her off. Someone helped Rosa upload Amelia’s information to NamUS, which is where Dr. Baldwin made the connection. The aunt is more than willing to help us, and that’s why I came. It occurred to me that putting her on a speakerphone tonight and letting her talk to the detectives would short-circuit our having to send someone there to interview her.”
“Great idea,” Tom said. “Anything that will speed things up works for me.”
“And since I was the original point of contact, I thought it might be helpful if I was the one who made the call.”
“By all means,” Tom said, “you should be the one doing the talking.”
Someone summoned him from across the room. As he hustled away, a text alert came in on Joanna’s phone. It was from Rochelle Powers.
It’s too cold to go outside to call, so I’m writing a text in my room and will go outside to send it.
I’ve spent the whole afternoon thinking about your case. Sounds like we’re dealing with multiple victims abducted from multiple locations. When we’ve seen serial killers like this in the past, they usually have ready a
ccess to reliable transportation—like railroad lines or interstate highways. Since this guy apparently transports his victims from elsewhere and then holds them captive, train travel doesn’t work.
Get someone to go through the rolls of your local CDLs. I’m betting the guy we’re looking for is a long-haul truck driver.
Joanna responded immediately.
Got it. Thanks. Briefing will be starting soon. I’ll let everybody know.
Just then Deb Howell, the lead investigator on the case, caught sight of Joanna and hurried over to her. “Hey,” she said with a laugh, “you’re on maternity leave. Are you even supposed to be here?”
“I can’t seem to help myself,” Joanna replied.
“So I heard,” Deb said. “According to Tom you’re the one who reeled in the Paxtons and their cadaver dogs, and he said that you might be helping in the profiler department as well.”
“Am helping with the profiler,” Joanna corrected. “Take a look at this.” She turned on her phone, located the text from Rochelle Powers, and handed the device over to Deb.
As Deb read through the text, Joanna continued. “Her name’s Rochelle Powers, and she’s a friend of Robin Watkins from the Tucson office of the FBI. It just so happens that Rochelle is in Arizona on vacation at the moment. She’s willing to help out, but more or less under the radar, because—”
“I know,” Deb said, “because Ted Whipple wouldn’t lift a finger to help us, but a serial killer who happens to be a long-haul trucker would make all kinds of sense.”
Looking across the room, she caught Jaime Carbajal’s eye and beckoned him over. “Hey, boss,” he said, grinning at Joanna as he came. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s helping us out by bringing an FBI profiler to bear on our case,” Deb told him. “So how about seeing what you can do to locate the names and addresses of all the commercial driver’s license holders living in Cochise County.”
“The profiler thinks our killer might be a truck driver?” Jaime asked. Deb nodded. “Okay, then,” Jamie added. “I’ll get right on it.”
As he left the room, Deb turned back to Joanna. “Did the profiler say anything else?”