“Grandma Lathrop is responsible,” Jenny insisted bitterly. “Why couldn’t she just mind her own business?”
“I’m sure Grandma Lathrop thought she was doing the right thing—what she thought was best for Dora.”
“It wasn’t,” Jenny said.
They sat in silence for a few moments. “I didn’t really like Dora very much,” Jenny admitted finally in a small voice. “I mean, we weren’t friends or anything. I didn’t even want to sleep in the same tent with her. I was only with her because Mrs. Lambert said I had to be. But then, after Dora was here at the ranch that day with Grandpa and Grandma, she acted different—not as smart-alecky. I could see Dora just wanted to be a regular kid, like anybody else.”
Just like you, Joanna thought.
“Dora cried like crazy when that woman came to take her away, Mom,” Jenny continued. “She cried and cried and didn’t want to go. Is that why she’s dead, because Grandma and Grandpa Brady let that woman take her away?”
“Grandpa and Grandma didn’t have a choice about that, Jenny,” Joanna said gently. “When somebody from CPS shows up to take charge of a child, that’s the way it is. It’s the law, and the child goes.”
“You mean if Grandpa and Grandma had tried to keep her they would have been breaking the law?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I wish they had,” Jenny said quietly.
“So do I,” Joanna told her. “God knows, so do I.”
There was another long silence. Again Jenny was the first to speak. “But even if I didn’t like Dora Matthews, I didn’t want her dead. And why do there have to be so many dead people, Mom?” Jenny asked, turning at last to face her mother. “How come? First Dad, then Esther Daniels, then Clayton Rhodes, and now Dora. Are we a curse or something? All people have to do is know us, and that means they’re going to die.”
Jenny lay on her back on the bottom bunk, absently tracing the outlines of the upper bunk’s springs with her finger. Meanwhile Joanna searched her heart, hoping to find the connection that had existed only two nights earlier between herself and her daughter, when Joanna had been the one lying on the bottom bunk and Jenny had been in the one on top. The problem was that connection had been forged before Dora was dead; before Sheriff Joanna Brady—who had sworn to serve and protect people like Dora Matthews—had failed to do either one.
“It seems like that to me sometimes, too.” With her heart breaking, that was the best Joanna could manage. “But dying’s part of living, Jen,” she added. “It’s something that happens to everyone sooner or later.”
“Thirteen’s too young to die,” Jenny objected. “That’s all Dora was, thirteen—a year older than me.”
A momentary chill passed through Joanna’s body as she saw in her mind’s eye the still and crumpled figure of a child lying lifeless in a sandy wash out along Highway 90. “You’re right,” she agreed. “Thirteen is much too young. That’s why we have to do everything in our power to find out who killed her.”
“You said she was hit by a car and that maybe it was just an accident,” Jenny said. “Was it?”
“That’s how it looks so far,” Joanna said, although that answer wasn’t entirely truthful. Hours of searching the highway had failed to turn up any sign of where the collision might have occurred as well as any trace of Dora Matthews’s missing tennis shoe.
“When’s the autopsy?” Jenny asked.
Jennifer Ann Brady had lived in a house centered on law enforcement from the day she was born. As in most homes, dinnertime conversation had revolved around what was happening in those two vitally important areas of their lives—school and work. In the Brady household, those work-related conversations had featured confrontations with real-life criminals and killers. There were discussions of prosecutions won and lost, of bad guys put away or sometimes let go. Young as she was, Jenny knew far too much about crime and punishment. And, with Eleanor’s fairly recent marriage to George Winfield, discussions of autopsies were now equally commonplace. In that moment, Joanna wished it were otherwise.
“I believe he’s doing it tonight.”
Jenny absorbed that information without comment. “What about Dora’s mother?” she asked after a pause. “Does she know yet?”
Every question as well as every answer drove home Joanna’s sense of failure. “No,” she said. “And I can’t imagine having to tell her any more than I can imagine what I’d do if something terrible happened to you.”
“Will Mrs. Matthews have to go to jail even if Dora is dead?”
“If she’s convicted of running a meth lab,” Joanna conceded.
Heaving a sigh, Jenny flopped back over on her side, signaling that the conversation was over. “Come on, Jenny. We probably shouldn’t talk about this anymore tonight. Let’s go out to the kitchen. Butch is making omelettes.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jenny said.
I’m not now, either, Joanna thought. “Well, good night then.”
“Night.”
Joanna returned to the kitchen. Butch looked up from the stove where he was about to flip an omelette. “No luck?” he said.
“None.”
“You look pretty down.”
Joanna nodded. “I talked to Connie Haskell’s husband. I don’t think he did it.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t be absolutely sure because he doesn’t have a real alibi. He was off away from everyone else in an isolation cabin that’s Pathway to Paradise’s version of solitary confinement. He was there from Thursday morning on. Still, Butch, you should have seen how he looked when we drove up. He was expecting his wife to get out of the car. He wasn’t expecting me. He’d have had to be an Academy Award–winning actor to fake the disappointment I saw on his face.”
“I see what you mean,” Butch agreed. “If he’d killed her, he wouldn’t have been expecting her to show up.”
“My point exactly.”
“But what if he is that good an actor?” Butch said after a moment of reflection. “It’s possible, you know.”
Joanna nodded. “You’re right. It is possible, but he also volunteered to come into the department tomorrow and let us take DNA samples. Innocent people volunteer samples. Guilty ones demand lawyers and court orders.”
Butch set Joanna’s plate in front of her and then sat down across the table from her. “What you’re really saying is, you don’t have the foggiest idea who the killer is and you’re afraid Jenny may still be a target.”
“Exactly,” Joanna said.
The omelette was good, but Joanna didn’t do much justice to it. The table was cleared and they were on their way to bed when the blinking light on the caller ID screen caught Joanna’s eye. Without taking messages off the machine, she scrolled through the listed numbers. Marianne Maculyea had called several times, as had Joanna’s mother, Eleanor. There were also several calls from Jenny’s friend Cassie Parks. The contractor who was working with Butch on plans for the new house had called once, as had Arturo Ortiz, Yolanda Cañedo’s father. Two of the calls were designated caller ID–blocked. The only remaining listed name and number were totally unknown to Joanna—a Richard Bernard. He had called on Saturday morning at ten-fifteen.
Wondering if Richard Bernard had left a message, Joanna skimmed through the spiral-ringed message log that was kept next to the phone. In Eva’s neat handwriting was a note saying that Marianne Maculyea had called to remind Joanna that she and Butch were scheduled to be greeters at church the following Sunday morning. There was a written message for Butch to call Quentin Branch, the contractor on their new house. A separate note told Jenny to call Cassie, but there was nothing at all from a Richard Bernard.
Shrugging, Joanna picked up the phone. The broken beeping of the dial tone told her there were messages waiting in the voice-mail system—another one from Cassie to Jenny and one from Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. Again there was nothing at all from Richard Bernard. By then it was too late for Jenny to return Cassie’s call, and Joan
na wasn’t particularly eager to call Eleanor back. Like Jenny, Joanna remained convinced that Grandma Lathrop’s actions had contributed to Dora Matthews’s death. Talking to Eleanor was something Joanna was willing to postpone indefinitely.
Putting down the phone, Joanna was halfway to the door when the telephone rang. Joanna checked caller ID before answering. When she saw her mother’s number listed, Joanna almost didn’t pick up the receiver, but then she thought better of it. Might as well get it over with, she told herself.
To her relief, she heard George Winfield’s voice on the phone rather than her mother’s. “So you are home!” he said.
“Yes,” Joanna told him.
“How’s Jenny?” George asked.
“She’s taking Dora’s death pretty hard,” Joanna said.
“So’s Ellie,” George said. “She’s under the impression that it’s all her fault Dora Matthews is dead—that if she hadn’t interfered by calling Child Protective Services, Dora would still be alive.”
This was news. For as long as Joanna could remember, Eleanor Lathrop had made a career of dishing out blame without ever accepting any of it herself. It was one thing for Joanna and Jenny to think Eleanor had overstepped the bounds as far as Dora Matthews was concerned. It was unheard of for Eleanor herself to say so.
“I tried telling her that wasn’t true,” George continued, “but it was like talking to a wall. She wasn’t having any of it. In fact, she took a sleeping pill a little while ago and went to bed. Her going to bed this early is worrisome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so upset. That’s why I’m calling, Joanna. At least it’s one of the reasons. I’m hoping you’ll find time tomorrow to talk to Ellie. Maybe you’ll be able to make her see reason.”
Fat chance, Joanna thought. For once in our lives, it sounds as though Eleanor and I are in total agreement. “I’ll talk to her” was all she said.
“Good.”
Joanna expected George Winfield to sign off. Instead, he launched into another topic. “I know it’s late, and this information will be at your office tomorrow morning in my official autopsy report. But I thought, because of Jenny’s involvement, you’d want to know some of this now. Dora Matthews was pregnant when she died, Joanna. And all those broken bones you saw, were broken postmortem.”
“You’re saying she was dead before she was hit by the car?”
“That’s right. I’m calling the actual cause of death asphyxiation by means of suffocation.”
“And she was pregnant?”
“At least three months along,” George replied.
“But she was only thirteen years old, for God’s sake,” Joanna objected. “Still a child! How could such a thing happen?”
George sighed. “The usual way, I’m sure,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening these days—children having children. Only, in this case, neither child lived.”
“Will we be able to tell who the father is?”
“Sure, if we find him,” George replied. “I saved enough DNA material from the embryo so we can get a match if we need to. Sorry to drop it on you like this, Joanna, but under the circumstances I thought you’d want some time to think this over before tomorrow morning when you’re reading the autopsy report.”
Joanna closed her eyes as she tried to assimilate the information. “So whoever killed Dora just left her body lying in the middle of the road for someone else to hit?”
“I didn’t say she was run over,” George corrected. “And she wasn’t. She was hit by a moving vehicle while she was fully upright. But she wasn’t standing upright under her own power. There were some bits of glass and plastic found on her clothing.There was also a whole collection of black, orange, yellow, and white paint chips on her body and what looks like traces of polypropylene fiber embedded in the flesh of both wrists. I believe her body was tied to something—a Department of Transportation sawhorse, maybe— while the vehicle crashed into her. The lack of bleeding and bruising from those impact wounds would indicate that she was already dead at that point.”
“Whoever did it wanted us to believe Dora Matthews was the victim of an accidental hit-and-run,” Joanna surmised.
“Correct. And since there’s no evidence of a struggle or any defensive wounds, Dora may even have been sedated at the time of suffocation. I’m doing toxicology tests.”
“But toxicology tests take time—weeks, even,” Joanna objected.
“Sorry,” George said. “You’ll just have to live with it. In the meantime, on the chance that there may be some addititional microscopic paint flecks, I’ve preserved all of Dora’s clothing. I sent them back to your department with Jaime Carbajal so your AFIS tech—what’s her name again?”
“Casey Ledford.”
“Right. So Casey can take a look at them. Whoever killed Dora obviously doesn’t know much about forensic science, so I’m guessing he or she wouldn’t have been all that sharp about not leaving fingerprints behind, either.”
“Thanks, George,” she told him. “I think.”
“And you’ll be sure to give your mother a call tomorrow?”
“I promise.”
“Who was that on the phone?” Butch asked once Joanna walked into the bedroom. He was already in bed. Manuscript pages were stacked on top of the sheet while he alternately read and scribbled penciled notes in the margins.
“It was George,” Joanna answered dully. “Calling to give me the news that Dora Matthews was dead before the car hit her. Somebody suffocated her, most likely after drugging her first, and then tried to fake a hit-and-run. George also said that she was three months pregnant when she died.”
“Yikes,” Butch said. “Do you think Jenny knows who the father is?”
The question startled Joanna. “I doubt it,” she said.
“He’s probably some little smart-mouthed twerp from school,” Butch theorized.
That was another disturbing thought, that someone in Jenny’s sixth-grade class at Bisbee’s Lowell School—some boy who might very well be sitting next to Jenny in math or science—might also be the father of Dora Matthews’s unborn child.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Joanna said.
“You’d better,” Butch returned grimly. “We’d all better think about it. If there’s some little shit in the sixth grade who can’t keep his pants zipped, somebody at the school had better wise up and do something about it—before an irate father does it for them.”
As upset as she was, Joanna couldn’t help smiling. “You sound like an irate father yourself,” she said.
“I am, “ Butch returned.
Joanna went into the bathroom. When she emerged, the manuscript and pencil were both gone. It was only then, as she crossed the room to turn out the light, that she noticed the baseball bat leaning against the wall between Butch’s nightstand and the head of the bed.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
“It’s a baseball bat.”
“I can see that. What’s it doing here?”
Butch shrugged. “I ran a bar, remember? Some people believe in Glocks. I believe in baseball bats, and, believe me, I know how to use them. If somebody turns up here looking for Jenny, I’ll be ready.”
“You’d go after someone with a baseball bat?” Joanna asked.
“Wouldn’t you?”
Shaking her head, Joanna switched off the light and climbed into bed beside him. He threw one arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. Joanna lay snuggled next to him, grateful to feel his solid bulk against her, for the sturdiness of his chest against her back, and for the strength in the arm that encircled her.
“Who’s Richard Bernard?” she asked a little later.
“Who?” Butch asked, and Joanna felt guilty when she realized he already must have dozed off.
“Richard Bernard. He called Saturday morning, but he didn’t leave a message. I saw his name on caller ID and figured he was someone you knew.”
“I have no idea,” Butch told her. “Never hea
rd of him.”
“Neither have I,” Joanna said.
“Eva Lou and Jim Bob were here then. Maybe he’s a friend of theirs.”
“Could be,” Joanna said.
Within minutes, Butch was snoring lightly. Tired as she was, Joanna lay awake for what seemed like hours. She tossed from side to side, trying to find a comfortable position and hoping to quiet the paralyzing fear in her mind, the suspicion that a crazed killer was lurking somewhere outside in the dark, hiding and waiting and looking for an opportunity to make Jennifer Ann Brady his next victim.
Operating on a minimum of sleep, it was an edgy Joanna Brady who took her daughter to the Cochise County Justice Center at eight o’clock the next morning. They entered the department using the keypad-operated private entrance that led directly from the parking lot into Joanna’s office.
After having been gone for several days, Joanna knew she’d have mountains of paperwork to attend to. A day like this wasn’t the best time to bring her daughter to work, or to have to deal with the added complication of being present during the course of Jenny’s homicide investigation interview.
“Should I go get you a cup of coffee?” Jenny asked as Joanna dropped her purse onto her desk and eyed the stacks of correspondence awaiting her there.
Jenny had been so quiet on the ride in from High Lonesome Ranch that Joanna’s spirits rose at this hint of normalcy. “Sure,” Joanna said. “That would be great.”
Jenny darted out of the room while Joanna settled in behind her desk. Before she could reach for the first stack of correspondence, the door opened and Kristin Gregovich came into the office. The blond, blue-eyed Kristin greeted her returning boss with a cheerful smile.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Did you have a good trip?”
Kristin was newly married to Joanna’s K-nine officer, Terry Gregovich. She was also pregnant and due to deliver their first baby—a boy—in November. She had survived the first few months of fierce morning sickness and now was far enough along in her pregnancy that she no longer had to keep soda crackers and a glass of Sprite on her desk at all times. She glowed with a happiness and sense of well-being that Joanna usually found endearing. This morning, though, knowing what had happened to Dora Matthews and her unborn baby, Joanna felt a clutch in her gut at the sight of Kristin’s new but still relatively unnecessary maternity smock.
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