Devil’s Claw

CHAPTER 15

When Joanna turned off I-10 onto Speedway Boulevard, the speed limit was signed at 35 miles per hour. Most traffic, including not one but two City of Tucson patrol cars, whizzed around Joanna at ten to fifteen miles above the posted limit. Meanwhile, knowing she’d be turning right somewhere beyond Fourth Avenue, Joanna stayed in the right hand lane stuck behind a Nebraska-licensed Buick whose snowbird driver was content to drive at five miles under.

I guess they got the name right when they called it Speedway, she thought.

Number 458 was one of those old stucco places that dated from the twenties or thirties. Most of the remaining houses on that stretch of Speedway seemed to come from that same pre-air-conditioning era and had been built along the same lines, with cavernously shaded front porches designed to keep out the worst of the afternoon sun. In the fifties and sixties, most of those old houses had fallen on hard times and decrepitude. Many had been carved up into boardinghouse-style living spaces for students attending the University of Arizona a few miles to the east.

It was possible there had been a similar house on the lot just to the west of number 458. If so, all sign of it had been erased, bulldozed into oblivion to make way for a smoothly paved parking lot that came complete with accents of blooming bright-pink verbena. Joanna parked her Blazer between a boxy bright-red Cadillac and a white Nissan Sentra.

Walking past them, Joanna forced herself to notice details about them-the gold emblem on the Caddy’s trunk and the smashed left rear fender on the Sentra. That was one part of Joanna’s law-enforcement training that was still giving her trouble. She constantly had to battle herself to notice and identify the vehicles she saw around her.

Walking from the lot to the office, Joanna found that in its new incarnation as a professional office, the former residence boasted a desert-friendly but beautifully Xeriscaped front yard that was alive with an abundance of drought-resistant blooms-verbena, purple sage, and desert poppies, accented here and there by clumps of prickly pear, agave, and barrel cactus. Not a single stray weed poked its nervy head out of the red-gravel-covered earth. Joanna knew from looking at it that, in the middle of the city, that kind of artfully created and impeccably maintained “natural” landscaping didn’t come cheap.

Bathed in shadow from afternoon sun, the magnificent hand-carved mahogany front door with its brass-plated handle contained an oval of etched, leaded glass. The door may not have been part of the house’s original equipment, but the look of it left little doubt that the house and door were full contemporaries, and if the door had been expensive back then, now it was even more so. Stenciled onto the glass in blocky gold letters were the words melanie j. goodson, attorney at law.

Pressing down the old-fashioned thumb latch, Joanna let herself into dusky, air-conditioned comfort. The entryway floor was shiny, high-gloss hard wood. It was covered with a Navajo rug that spoke of both age and money. Joanna had seen rugs like that before, but the people she knew who owned those Native American treasures had long since declared them far too valuable to continue using them on floors.

“May I help you?” Behind the reception desk was a mid-twenties woman with a headful of loose auburn hair. She was decked out in suitably serious business attire-blazer, skirt, silk shirt, and heels. If it hadn’t been for the seven or eight pierced earrings decorating both ears and a mouthful of very expensive orthodontia, Joanna might have taken her for Melanie Goodson herself.

“I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady from down in Cochise County,” she announced, pulling out her ID. “I’d like very much to speak to Ms. Goodson.”

“I don’t remember Ms. Goodson having an appointment scheduled with anyone by that name for today.” While the young woman ran a black-enameled fingernail down the page of a leather-bound appointment calendar to check, Joanna did her best to ignore the unfortunate and noticeable lisp caused by her braces.

No doubt the receptionist was intimately familiar with her boss’s schedule. Hers was a form question worthy of nothing more than a form answer. “No,” Joanna said, swallowing a bubble of annoyance. “One of my deputies had an appointment to see her earlier this afternoon, but he found it necessary to cancel. I’m sure Ms. Goodson will want to see me,” she added. “It’s about her missing vehicle.”

“So someone has found it then?” a husky female voice asked from an open-doored office. “When will I be able to have it back? I hate driving rentals.”

Joanna looked up in time to see a woman appear in a doorway just to the left of the reception desk. She was tall and good-looking but tending to be heavyset. Her highlighted hair was precision-cut in a timeless bob. She wore an ivory silk blouse with a pair of custom-made slacks, and her fingers carried a full contingent of heavily jeweled rings. Here’s a high-maintenance woman if I ever saw one, Joanna thought. Stylish and expensive both.

“I’m Melanie Goodson,” she said, holding out her hand. “Who are you again?”

“Joanna Brady. Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve spoken to one of your deputies.”

“Detective Carbajal?” Joanna suggested.

“Right. That’s the one. I believe I was supposed to see him this afternoon, but he called in and canceled. Come on in.”

Melanie Goodson led Joanna into a spacious, cove-ceilinged office that looked as though it had been carved from two separate rooms. The ornate white molding on the wainscoting, the lush floral draperies and muted grass-cloth wallpaper all announced their quality workmanship. In one corner of the room was a seating area that consisted of a polished coffee table, a wing chair, and an old-fashioned settee. Melanie Goodson settled into the chair and motioned Joanna onto the settee, which turned out to be far better-looking than it was comfortable.

“You never answered my question,” Melanie said, pouring two glasses of ice water from a cut-crystal pitcher into matching glasses.

“What question?” Joanna asked after taking a grateful sip of the water.

“My car. When will I be able to have it back?”

“Probably not for some time. There are bloodstains inside it, Ms. Goodson. My investigators have reason to believe it was used to transport a homicide victim. I have a feeling my crime-scene investigators are going to need to keep it in our secure impound lot for some time. We’ll no doubt need to hang on to it as evidence at least until this case comes to trial.”

“You’re saying whoever killed Sandra did it in my car?”

“I don’t know for sure that’s where the homicide actually took place, but the presence of bloodstains certainly indicates that a seriously wounded individual was in the car. Whether or not that person turns out to be Sandra Ridder remains to be seen.”

Melanie shook her head. “They say no good deed goes unpunished, and it must be true. That’s what I get for picking Sandra Ridder up at the prison gate and bringing her into my own home. Not only did she steal my car the moment my back was turned, she also managed to get herself killed in it. Well, no big deal. Maybe I can get my insurance company to total the damned thing so I can buy a replacement and get on with my life. Once you’ve driven a Lexus, a Caddy doesn’t quite measure up, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course,” Joanna agreed, although, never having driven either a Lexus or a Cadillac, Joanna hadn’t the vaguest idea of why Melanie might find her rented “Caddy” so objectionable. No doubt, Joanna would have found both of them equally acceptable and luxurious.

“Is that what you came to talk to me about?” Melanie asked. “The car?”

“Not entirely. Since I wasn’t directly involved in investigating your vehicle, I don’t know that much about it. Detective Carbajal was on the scene, and he expects to come talk to you about it tomorrow if you can work him into your schedule. No, the main reason I’m here is I wanted to ask you about something that came to my attention an hour or so ago.”

“What’s that?”

“A phone call you received around three o’clock Saturday morning. It was placed from a pay phone.”

“What about it?” Melanie asked, her voice hardening. “How would you know whether or not I received a call in the middle of the night, to say nothing of the fact that it came from a pay phone?”

“From telephone-company phone logs. The one to you was part of a series of calls Lucy Ridder made that night, one right after another. Did she actually speak to you, or did the call go to a machine?”

Melanie Goodson frowned. “There was a call,” she said. “I saw it on caller ID Saturday morning when I got up, about the same time I realized the Lexus was missing. And there was a message on it, sort of, although not a real message. All I heard was a voice-a girl’s voice. She said my name, and then for several seconds she didn’t say anything. There was just this breathing on the phone. I thought for a second or two that it was going to turn into one of those heavy-breathing crank calls. But then, whoever it was hung up without saying anything more.”

“Did you happen to mention this to the Tucson cops when you reported your vehicle missing?”

“Report what?”

“The fact that you had received a strange middle-of-the-night phone call. Did it occur to you that the two events-your stolen car and the phone call-might be related?”

“I had no way of knowing they were,” Melanie Goodson replied. “In fact, I never even considered it. I do a lot of defense work, Sheriff Brady. Phone calls coming in from pay phones at three o’clock in the morning aren’t all that unusual for people like me, especially not on a weekend. No offense, Sheriff Brady, but DUIs are my bread and butter, which means three o’clock on a Saturday morning is a golden time for me.

“But if that’s when Lucy Ridder called,” Melanie added, “she was probably looking for her mother. I know Sandra had told someone-her mother, most likely-that she’d be staying with me on Friday night. Lucy probably expected that she’d be able to reach Sandra there. I imagine Lucy was excited at the prospect of seeing Sandra and didn’t want to wait until the next day. I know if I hadn’t seen my mother in eight years, I would have been.”

“Lucy never went to visit her mother while she was in prison?” Joanna asked.

“No, not as far as I know.”

“What about Catherine Yates, Sandra’s mother?”

“Sandra told me that both her mother and her grandmother used to come, until her grandmother got too sick. But never Lucy.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“I didn’t have to. It’s not too hard to figure out. Sandra was ashamed to have her daughter see her in a place like that. Lucy didn’t want to come and Sandra didn’t want her to, so they were in total agreement on that score. But when I picked Sandra up on Friday, she told me she was looking forward to seeing Lucy and explaining things to her.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. I think there were things that occurred between Tom and Sandra Ridder-problems in the marriage-that Sandra refused to discuss with a seven-year-old child. But I think she thought that at fifteen, Lucy might be old enough to understand what all had gone on.”

“What had?”

“Look, Sheriff Brady,” Melanie Goodson said. “I’m sure you know all about the rules of client privilege. I can’t tell you anything more than I just did.”

“I do know about client privilege,” Joanna conceded. “And I’ve seen a number of working defense attorneys, but other than you, I don’t know of one who would drive well over two hundred miles to bring back a client who had just been let out of prison or who then would let the same ex-con spend the night in his or her own home. That strikes me as a little unusual, Ms. Goodson. Care to explain that one to me?”

“Ever hear of guilt?” Melanie asked.

“You mean as in guilty or innocent?”

“No, as in guilty conscience. Sandra Yates Ridder and I go way back. We were friends at college-roommates for two years. It was one of those college things, and we both did it for a time-we went out protesting for NAT-C.”

“The Native American Tribal Council,” Joanna supplied.

Melanie nodded. “I’m part Cree; Sandra was part Apache. We figured it was a way of reclaiming our roots. Sandra even changed her name for a while. She called herself Lozen, after the Warm Springs Apache woman who fought with Victorio and Geronimo. The next thing I knew, she quit school. She told me she was going on the warpath-literally. She dropped out of sight for several years-long enough for me to graduate from the U., go to law school, and pass the bar exam. When I heard from her again, she had gotten herself in some kind of activist hot water and was ready to give up life on the road.

“I had a few contacts by then. Lozen went back to being plain old Sandra Yates and I helped her find a secretarial job out at Fort Huachuca. That’s where she was working when she met Tom Ridder. I attended their wedding and that was the last I heard from her until the night Tom Ridder died. She called me up and told me she needed help. I was at her house the next morning when she reported Tom Ridder’s death, and I was there with her when she surrendered to the police.”

“And to suggest the plea agreement?” Joanna asked.

“Sandy came up with that brilliant idea all on her own. In fact, she insisted on it. And that’s where my guilty conscience comes from. If I had been more experienced or tougher, I never would have let her do that. She was a victim, Sheriff Brady. Her husband had beaten her to a bloody pulp. I should have taken the case to court and used a domestic-abuse defense. If I had played the cards right, even if she’d been found guilty, she would have been locked up for three to five years at most. As it stands, I figure my inexperience cost Sandra Ridder a good five years of her life. My fault, Sheriff Brady. Don’t you think I owed the poor woman a ride home? It’s the least I could do.”

“So why didn’t you take her straight home?” Joanna asked. “On the one hand you said she was eager to get back to her daughter. Why, then, did she stay over, or pretend to stay over in Tucson for that extra night?”

“They let women out of the Manzanita unit in Perryville wearing whatever they happen to have on hand. Sandy showed up wearing a pair of used jeans, a pair of old tennis shoes, and somebody else’s used sweatshirt. She told me she had some money. She wanted to go shopping on Saturday and get herself some decent clothes to wear home. She wanted to buy some makeup, have her hair cut and fixed. I think she wanted to go home looking like a human being instead of some kind of street person.”

“And where was the money coming from to enable this combination makeover and shopping spree?” Joanna asked. “From you?”

“No, although I did offer. Sandy said that wasn’t necessary, that she had enough money to get what she needed. I assumed her mother must have sent it to her, or she earned it and saved it. Prisoners do have jobs, you know.”

Joanna considered Melanie’s answer. In view of the fact that Catherine Yates claimed to have known nothing at all about her daughter’s impending release until the very day it happened, it seemed unlikely that she had been the source of Sandra Ridder’s cache of cash.

“Why do you think she stole your car?” Joanna asked.

“You’re asking me? I have no idea. I suppose she wanted to go someplace and she didn’t want me to know about it. When I went to bed around ten-thirty, she was tucked away snug as a bug in my guest room. When I woke up the next morning, she and the car were both gone. No note, no explanation, no nothing.”

“Do you have a phone in your bedroom?” Joanna asked.

“Yes, why?”

“So do you turn off the ringer overnight?”

Melanie Goodson paused. “Well, no.”

“If you went to bed at ten-thirty, you must have heard the phone ring at three a.m. So why didn’t you answer? Why did you let the call go to the machine pickup, even though the caller might have been a well-heeled client in need of middle-of-the-night hand-holding over his latest DUI?”

“Come on, Sheriff Brady,” Melanie said. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to make out that I’m a suspect in stealing my own car?”

For no reason Joanna could put a finger on, she had the sudden sense that Melanie Goodson was lying. But why? What was she covering up? For the first time the thought crossed Joanna’s mind that despite Melanie’s claim of long-term friendship, the defense attorney might well have had some connection to Sandra Ridder’s death. The problem was, Joanna understood that if she even hinted at Melanie’s complicity, the entire tenor of the interview would change, with all the potential of what had been said and learned being ruled inadmissible and thrown out. Not wanting to jeopardize something critical to the investigation, Joanna backed off.

“I’m just trying to get a handle on what happened the night Sandra Ridder was killed,” she said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “You say you went to bed at ten-thirty. I have a witness who places Sandra Ridder and your Lexus at the entrance to Cochise Stronghold, seventy miles or so away, at midnight. How did she get there so soon?”

“I always keep my car keys in a drawer in the kitchen,” Melanie replied. “Sandra probably saw me put them away after we came home and knew where to go looking for them. So it’s not like she had to hot-wire the damned thing in order to steal it. And now that the Eastern do-gooder fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit is history, anybody can make seventy miles in an hour and a half. In fact, most people can do it in a lot less than that.”

Joanna glanced at her watch and was astonished to see how much time had passed. There were other nonthreatening questions she might have asked, but it was already after four. Her mother’s command-performance dinner deadline was fast approaching.

“Speaking of speed limits,” she said, rising to her feet, “I need to head out. I have a meeting in Bisbee at six-thirty, and I can’t afford to be late. You’ve been very cooperative, Ms. Goodson. I appreciate it.”

“Glad to help,” Melanie Goodson said.

“And you have a lovely office, but then, I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

“My partner and I like it.”

“Partner?” Joanna asked. “I didn’t know this was a joint practice. There’s only one name stenciled on the front door.”

“My partner’s not an attorney,” Melanie said with a ready smile. “Ed’s a contractor who’s into buying and rehabilitating old houses. He does the heavy stuff-the grunt labor. He gets all the permits, handles all the structural problems, and makes arrangements to bring the plumbing and electrical systems up to code. I oversee all the interior design work. It’s a hobby of mine. In another life or if I hadn’t been able to make it in law school, I might have become an interior designer instead. Once the places are rehabbed, we lease them out. This one happens to be the pick of the litter, which is why I’m here. As you can imagine, the lease rates are quite favorable.”

“Nice workmanship,” Joanna said admiringly as she made her way back to the outside office.

“Thanks,” Melanie Goodson said. “I’m glad you like it.”

Once back in her oven-hot Blazer, Joanna turned the air conditioner on high and rolled down the windows to let some of the heat blow out. While the hot air drained out and even though the clock was ticking, she wrote herself a note: “Have Jaime check with Melanie Goodson’s neighbors to see if we can find out whether or not she really was home and asleep when Sandra Ridder took off in the Lexus.”

Then, having done what she could do, Joanna headed out of town. Traffic wasn’t all that bad getting to and on the freeway, and once she passed the exit to I-19, most of the local commuters disappeared as well. Out in the desert with mostly eighteen-wheelers for company, she dialed into the office. Despite the fact that she had called Kristin’s number directly, the phone was answered by the switchboard operator.

“This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Where’s Kristin?”

“She went home sick at noon,” the operator said. “Is there anyone else you’d like to speak with?”

“How about Chief Deputy Montoya?”

“One moment.”

“How’s it going, Frank?” she asked when he came on the line.

“We’re not having a real good day around here.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, our canine unit seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I finally broke down and called out Search and Rescue after all. I dispatched a crew out to Texas Canyon. I was afraid if we waited any longer-until however long it takes for Deputy Gregovich to resurface-there wouldn’t be much chance of picking up Lucy Ridder’s trail at the rest area.”

“So with me out and with Kristin home sick…” Joanna began.

“Sick!” Frank snorted. “If she’s sick, she’s sure as hell not home. I went by her folks’ place and checked. Her car wasn’t there. And then, because I have a suspicious mind, I went by Terry’s apartment, too. Guess what? His patrol vehicle is parked out front, and so’s Kristin’s Geo, but Terry’s little four-by-four is nowhere to be seen. So wherever they are, they’re together.”

“What about Terry’s pager?” Joanna asked.

“Turned off.”

“Damn,” Joanna muttered. “I had a feeling this morning that I needed to talk to her about this-to both of them, really-but I was in a hurry and I let it go.”

“Do you want me to handle it?” Frank asked. “I’ll be happy to haul them both on the carpet.”

“No,” Joanna said. “It’s my job, and I’ll do it-first thing in the morning. Give me their home numbers, Frank. I’ll call them both right now and leave messages.”

Frank located the two numbers in the departmental directory and read them off while Joanna jotted them down. “Anything else going on?”

“Ernie Carpenter came in a little while ago. He said they’d just finished up with the Sandra Ridder autopsy. No big surprises there. She died of a gunshot wound from a twenty-two. The doc recovered the slug. It evidently hit soft tissue only, so it’s in fairly good shape. Jaime will bring it up to Tucson tomorrow and drop it off at the Department of Public Safety gun lab for analysis. And yes, I did warn the S and R guys to be careful and wear vests. I told them Lucy Ridder is to be considered armed and dangerous. I also told them that she’s accompanied by a red-tailed hawk. I don’t know whether or not Big Red should be considered dangerous, but I suppose he could be.”

“Anything else?”

“Are you planning to stop by the department on your way home?”

Joanna glanced on her watch. “Not really. I have a date at six-thirty. If I really push it, I’ll just have time to go home and change-”

“That’s why I asked. Butch stopped by a few minutes ago and dropped off some clothes for you to wear. I had him put them in your office.”

“He did what?”

“He dropped off some clothing for you to wear to your mother’s place tonight. He said your mother called and that she especially wanted you to wear some certain outfit. He was worried that you might be running late and not have enough time to go home and change, so he dropped the clothes off here thinking it would save you a few minutes. He also said that he and Jenny will feed the animals, pick up his folks from the RV park, and then meet you at your mother’s place.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Joanna exclaimed. “I’m thirty years old. I’ve been elected sheriff, and I’m being married for the second time. How dare my mother still think she can tell me what to wear? That in itself would be bad enough, but here’s Butch-my fiancé-helping her do it.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on the man if I were you,” Frank said.

“Why not?” Joanna demanded. “What did he say to you to get you on his side?”

“Butch didn’t say a thing,” Frank answered. “He didn’t have to. If I were about to inherit your mother as my mother-in-law, I’m sure I’d jump when she said so, too.”

“We’ll just see about that,” Joanna retorted. “No matter what Eleanor says, I’m sure what I wore to work today will be plenty good enough for my mother, and for meeting my new mother-in-law as well. And if it isn’t,” she added, “Eleanor Lathrop Winfield can go jump in the lake. Or else, she can send me home.”

For a time after ringing off, Joanna was still so torqued with both Butch and her mother that she didn’t trust herself to speak. Finally, after giving herself ten or fifteen miles of driving to settle down, she picked up the phone again and left almost identical messages on answering machines at Terry Gregovich’s apartment and at the home of Kristin Marsten’s parents. “Sheriff Brady. Be in my office tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp. Both of you. No excuses.”

That should settle that hash, Joanna thought grimly. And the only thing I have to worry about in between now and then is doing battle with my mother.