Devil’s Claw

CHAPTER 5

As usual, Sadie and Tigger came racing down the road to greet the car and follow it into the yard. While Jenny took the two gamboling dogs and darted inside to change into jeans and riding boots, Joanna and Butch busied themselves with unloading the car. “What’s her name again?” Butch said, nodding in the direction of the stalled Lincoln.

“Reba Singleton,” Joanna replied.

“And she really is Clayton Rhodes’ only daughter?”

“That’s my understanding.”

Butch shook his head. “It’s hard to accept someone like her being related to him. Clayton always struck me as being the salt of the earth. Reba, on the other hand, acts like a first-class bitch. What do you suppose she meant with that comment about you and George Winfield having a conflict of interest?”

Away from Reba’s bristling anger, Joanna was attempting to practice letting go. She shrugged in response to Butch’s question. “Who cares what Reba Singleton says?” she returned. “After a sudden and unexpected death, survivors sometimes go nuts for a while and make all kinds of crazy accusations. They try to blame anybody and everybody for whatever it is that’s happened in order to keep from having to blame themselves.

“I don’t think Reba and her father were especially close. In fact, I seem to remember some big family hassle about the time Molly Rhodes died. Molly was Reba’s mother. I don’t recall any of the quarrel’s gory details right offhand, but whatever it was was serious enough that I don’t think she and Clayton ever patched things up. Which means that right this minute Reba Singleton is walking around in a world of hurt. She’s packing a full load of guilt and regret, and she’s looking for someplace to dump it.”

“Preferably on you.”

Joanna smiled. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m tough enough to take it.”

Jenny came out of the house wearing her jeans, boots, and hat, and carrying the cordless phone. “It’s for you,” she said, handing the receiver to her mother.

“Who is it?” Joanna asked.

“Who else?” Jenny returned sourly. “Work.”

While Jenny collected her new bridle and then went into the barn to retrieve Kiddo, Joanna turned her full attention to the phone. “Sheriff Brady here,” she said.

“Hi, Joanna,” Chief Deputy Frank Montoya said. “Sorry to bother you on your day off, but it’s a probable homicide. And we have a standing order that you’re to be contacted-”

“Did you say ”probable‘?“ Joanna said, interrupting him.

“Yes. The victim was shot and is currently being airlifted to Tucson. According to Lance Pakin, the first officer on the scene, she’s in real bad shape and isn’t likely to make it.”

“Who is it?”

“We have no idea at the moment. The man who found her was walking by and happened to see her lying in a ditch. He doesn’t look or sound like a suspect. In fact, if it wasn’t for him, she probably would be dead by now.”

Jenny emerged from the barn leading her sorrel gelding. She led Kiddo over to where Butch stood holding the new saddle blanket at the ready. Joanna turned away from them and walked several steps toward the house as she spoke into the phone.

“Where and when did this happen?”

“Near the entrance to Cochise Stronghold,” Frank Montoya replied. “Not inside the monument itself, but between there and Pearce.”

Cochise Stronghold, in the Dragoon Mountains, was an easily defended cliff-bound hideaway where the Apache chieftain Cochise had often retreated with his wandering band of followers. It was now a national monument. In the winter these days Cochise Stronghold was stocked with a new population of wanderers-an ever-changing assortment of RV-driving retirees. In the summer the demographics changed as retirees were replaced by campers with school-aged children who pulled into the camping area and stayed as long as the law allowed.

“Since I was already in the neighborhood assisting a deputy on a runaway call,” Frank continued, “it only took a matter of minutes for Lance Pakin and me to get here as well. In fact, we got to the scene before the EMTs did. Lance and I applied as much first aid as we could, but I’m afraid the EMTs are right in saying that the victim isn’t going to make it.”

“What happened to her?”

“It looks as though she was shot in the lower back. She was hit once at least and maybe more. She appears to have lost a good deal of blood and was hanging by a thread as they loaded her into the Med-evac helicopter.”

Joanna sighed as she lost all hope of being able to stay home and spend a quiet evening with Butch and Jenny. “You mentioned something about a runaway? What’s that all about?” Joanna asked.

“A fifteen-year-old Elfrida high school girl named Lucinda Ridder disappeared from her grandmother’s house sometime overnight last night, along with her pet hawk. When the grandmother got up this morning, both the girl and the bird were gone. The grandmother, Catherine Yates, made such a fuss with the emergency operators that I finally went over to her place on Middlemarch Road myself. According to Grandma, Lucy’s mother is due home today or tomorrow. Mrs. Yates is frantic that we find Lucy and have her back home by the time her mother arrives. I was at the Yates’ place-the grandmother’s place-trying to explain why we have a twenty-four-hour waiting period on missing-persons reports when the second call came in. I decided to come straight here and check just in case the gunshot victim and Lucy turned out to be one and the same.”

“And was she?”

“No. As I said Lucy Ridder is fifteen years old. I’d guess the shooting victim is somewhere in her mid-to-late thirties.”

“Wait just a minute, Joanna,” Frank said. “There’s a call coming in on the radio.”

While her chief deputy was off the line, Joanna turned back to Butch, Jenny, and the horse. By then Butch had heaved the new saddle onto Kiddo’s back, and Jenny was busy cinching it up. Watching the two of them talking and laughing together, Joanna felt a pang of jealousy. They were having fun while she could feel herself being sucked back into the world of work. It wasn’t fair.

“Joanna?” Frank’s voice came back on the line.

“I’m here. What’s happening?”

“That was the pilot of the Med-evac helicopter. He says the EMTs lost her. She flat-lined on them and they couldn’t bring her back. The pilot wants to know what he should do, continue on into Tucson or head back to Bisbee.”

“Bisbee, I guess,” Joanna said. “That way we only have to pay for one transport instead of two. Have Dispatch let Dr. Winfield know so he can meet the helicopter and pick up the body.”

“You don’t think you should call him yourself?” Montoya asked.

“Are you kidding?” Joanna returned. “If I do that, my mother will hold me personally responsible for wrecking whatever plans she had for this afternoon or evening. Better you should do it, Frank. What have you done about calling detectives?”

Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were her department’s two homicide detectives. Ernie was an old hand-a burly veteran with more than twenty years under his belt. Jaime, in his early thirties, had been promoted from deputy to detective early on during Joanna’s administration.

“Ernie’s out of town this weekend, so Jaime’s up. He was in the middle of coaching his son’s T-ball game when I paged him, but he’s on his way.”

“If Jaime’s on his way,” Joanna said, “I’d better be, too.”

“You don’t have to do that, Joanna,” Frank said. “After all, this is your day off. I think we have things pretty well under control.”

At the time of her election to the office of sheriff, Joanna Brady had lacked any kind of previous law-enforcement experience. After the election there had been some scuttlebutt that she had won solely on the basis of a sympathy vote, that her elective office had been a kind of county-wide consolation prize for having lost her husband in a line-of-duty shooting.

In order to quiet the talk and counter those assumptions-in order to put to rest all speculation that in her tenure as sheriff Joanna Brady would be little more than an administrative figurehead-she had been determined to turn herself into a hands-on police officer. Although not required to do so, she had taken and passed the same police-academy training that was required of her deputies. She had also made it a point to be involved as an active participant in every homicide investigation that occurred on her watch.

Joanna turned back to the corral just as Jenny finished cinching up the saddle. Then, with the help of Butch’s cupped hands, she vaulted onto Kiddo’s back and settled her feet into the stirrups. Nudging the horse’s ribs with the heel of her boot, she wheeled him away from the corral and took off down the road at a swift canter. There was nothing Joanna liked better than sitting on the porch swing and watching her blond-haired daughter and the equally blond-maned horse tear off across the desert. This evening, though, there would be none of that. Just like Jaime Carbajal and his son’s T-ball game, Joanna was about to lose her evening at home with her family.

“I’ll leave here as soon as I go inside and put on my vest,” Joanna told Frank. “It won’t take much longer than half an hour for me to get there.”

Butch walked up just as Joanna clicked off the phone. “That sounds bad,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “I’m going to have to go. We’ve had a homicide out by Cochise Stronghold. No telling how long it’s going to take. I’ll call Jim Bob and Eva Lou and see if Jenny can spend the night there.”

Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady, Jenny’s paternal grandparents, maintained a bedroom in their cozy duplex that was always at Jenny’s disposal. On nights when it looked as though Joanna would be out beyond Jenny’s bedtime, she often left her daughter with them.

“Don’t bother,” Butch said. “I can stay here until you get back. That way so can she.”

“You don’t mind? You took care of her last night, too.”

Butch nodded. “And there’ll probably be a whole lot more nights just like that in our future. But no, I don’t mind. The only thing I have waiting for me at home is to clean my own house, and I didn’t much want to tackle that anyway. Besides, this way Jenny can ride Kiddo as long as she likes. When she finishes up, I’ll have her help me feed the animals.”

“Well, then,” Joanna said. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Now get going,” he added, giving her an encouraging pat on the butt. “The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be able to finish up and come back home.”

Feeling guilty and relieved both, Joanna hurried into the house. In the bedroom she whipped off her shirt and donned her Kevlar vest. After retrieving her two Glocks from the locked rolltop desk, she put on both her holsters as well as her shirt and then headed for the door. On her way past the phone table, she paused long enough to check her caller ID. The blinking red light announced there were calls, but when she checked the LCD readout and saw there were ten new calls in all, she didn’t even bother to scroll through them. Whatever messages there were would have to wait until Joanna was back home and could deal with them in an orderly, systematic fashion.

Grabbing her purse, the keys to the Blazer, and her recharged cell phone, Joanna hurried outside. Jenny was back. Just beyond the gate to the yard, she sat astride a winded and snorting Kiddo while Butch stood close to the horse’s head, rubbing the long, arched neck.

“I have to go,” Joanna said to her daughter.

Jenny nodded. “I know,” she said dolefully “Butch told me. He says he’s going to stay here to watch me.”

“I didn’t say watch,” Butch corrected. “I said keep you company.”

“It means the same thing.”

Joanna shook her head. The last thing she needed right then was to become entangled in yet another debate about whether or not Jenny was being baby-sat. “You be good,” she said. “And help Butch with the animals.”

“All right,” Jenny grumped. “I will.”

And don’t be such a sourpuss about it, Joanna wanted to add, but she didn’t. There wasn’t much point.

In the Blazer, she started the engine. Before she could back out of her parking space, Butch came over and knocked on the driver’s window. Joanna rolled it down.

“Just because the women in my life are feuding doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a good-bye kiss, does it?”

“No,” she returned, smiling and giving him a peck on the cheek.

“Drive carefully,” he added.

“I will,” she said.

Fifty yards from the wash and out of sight of the limo, Joanna spotted the driver, squatting on his haunches and dejectedly smoking a cigarette. When Joanna drove up behind him and rolled down her window, he stood up.

“Still no tow truck?” she asked.

The driver shook his head. “No such luck. According to the dispatcher, it could be more than an hour before they send somebody out.”

“As I said before, I have a winch on this thing,” Joanna said. “I’m sure I could raise you up enough to get your vehicle out.”

“Thanks, but no, thanks,” he returned. “Madame made it quite clear that she didn’t want any help from you. She’s using my cell phone right now to tell the American Automobile Association exactly what she thinks of their service, and that’s all to the good. If she’s yelling at somebody else, at least I’m not the target.”

“Ms. Singleton did strike me as a little prickly,” Joanna said.

“That’s an understatement if I ever heard one. Just because she flew into Tucson International on somebody’s private jet, she seems to think the whole world is supposed to bow and scrape before her. I’m hoping that Triple-A tow truck takes a long damned time to show up. As long as the battery in that cell phone doesn’t run out of juice, it’s no skin off my nose. After all, I’m being paid by the hour.”

Joanna put the Blazer back in gear. “I’ll be going then,” she said. Suddenly remembering that she was still in possession of Clayton Rhodes’ skeleton key, she stopped long enough to dig it out of her purse.

“By the way,” she added, handing it over to the driver. “This is the key to Ms. Singleton’s father’s house. Under the circumstances it’s probably better if someone besides me gives it to her.”

The driver nodded. “I’m sure you’re right about that,” he said. “See you,” he added with an offhand wave.

Down by the wash, Joanna followed the trail Butch’s Outback had blazed through the sand in order to detour around the stalled Lincoln. Reba Singleton looked up as the Blazer went past, but she made no acknowledgment, and neither did Joanna.

Out on High Lonesome Road, Joanna settled back to drive. The crime scene was a good half hour away, well beyond the little farming community of Elfrida and outside an even smaller hamlet called Pearce. She was about to call into the department for directions, when Larry Kendrick, her lead dispatcher, beat her to the punch.

“Sheriff Brady?”

“Here, Larry. What’s up?”

“I just had a stolen-vehicle alert come in from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, and I thought I should let you know about it right away.”

“What is it?”

“A woman named Melanie Goodson called in early this morning and reported her Lexus stolen. She thinks the person who took it was a guest in her home last night. The name of this alleged car thief is Sandra Ridder.”

“Ridder?” Joanna said. “Wait a minute; isn’t Ridder the same name as that of the fifteen-year-old runaway Frank Montoya was just telling me about?”

“It is,” Larry replied. “Sandra Ridder is Lucinda Ridder’s mother. She went to prison for manslaughter and has spent the better part of the last eight years as a guest of the state of Arizona in the women’s unit up at Perryville. She got out yesterday. Melanie Goodson was Sandra’s defense attorney on the manslaughter charge, and the two women were on good-enough terms that Melanie drove up to the prison and picked Sandra Ridder up yesterday when they let her out.

“The Goodson woman was going to bring Sandra on down to her mother’s place-to Catherine Yates’ place-today. Instead, when Melanie Goodson woke up this morning, Sandra Ridder and Melanie Goodson’s Lexus were both among the missing. Goodson called in and reported the theft right away. She told the Pima County officer that Sandra was probably headed this way. Unfortunately, vehicle theft is such a low priority up in the Tucson area that no one got around to shipping the report down to us until just now.”

“From what you said, it sounds as though the two women are friends,” Joanna suggested. “In fact, you’d have to be damned good friends for someone to make a two-hundred-mile round trip to pick up someone who’s just been let out of prison. Isn’t it possible Melanie lent her car to Sandra Ridder and doesn’t want to admit it?”

“According to the report in hand, Ms. Goodson was very firm on that,” Larry Kendrick responded. “She says that Sandra Ridder has been out of circulation for nearly eight years. That means she has no insurance and no valid driver’s license.”

“See there?” Joanna asked. “And if anything happens to the car while Sandra Ridder is driving it-if it ends up in some kind of wreck-Melanie Goodson’s insurance will still be valid as long as she claims the car was being driven without her permission at the time of the accident. This also gives us a pretty good idea of how and why Lucinda Ridder disappeared. As soon as Grandma Yates goes to sleep, Sandra Ridder pulls up in the Lexus-stolen or not-and then she and her daughter drive off into the sunset.”

“Do you want me to call this over to Chief Deputy Montoya?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Don’t bother. I’m almost there now. I’ll tell him myself. In the meantime, give me all the pertinent information on that missing Lexus.”

Driving with one hand, Joanna used her other hand to make a series of quick notes on the notepad that was mounted to the Blazer’s dash. By the time she had jotted down the make, model, and license number of Melanie Goodson’s missing Lexus, Joanna was driving through Elfrida.

Ending the radio transmission, Joanna watched as the little farming community sailed past her windows. Elfrida was a one-horse town, even more so than Bisbee. If gossip-mongers in Elfrida were anything like the ones in Bisbee, having the mother of a local student get out of prison and come to town to retrieve her daughter would be big news. This was the kind of juicy tidbit that could keep jaws flapping for weeks. Maybe Sandra Ridder and Lucinda wanted a little privacy-a little family time to get reacquainted before facing the rest of the community. A desire for privacy was something Joanna Brady could understand, although stealing a car didn’t seem like the right way to go about conducting a mother-daughter reunion.

At Pearce, Joanna turned left and started up toward Cochise Stronghold and the Dragoon Mountains. For a short while the road was paved. Just when the road surface changed to washboarded gravel, Joanna met a group of people-twenty or so-walking in groups of two or three along the sandy shoulder of the road.

Joanna’s initial thought was that this was some kind of protest march. Then she remembered, a group of Volksmarchers had been scheduled to have an event that weekend-a ten-kilometer walk from Pearce to Cochise Stronghold and back. The very thought made Joanna groan. That’s what every homicide investigation needs-several hundred sets of unidentified footprints walking through and over the crime scene.

She picked up her radio and had Larry Kendrick patch her through to Frank Montoya. “Did you know there’s a Volksmarch scheduled for Cochise Stronghold today?” she asked her chief deputy.

“Sure I knew that,” Frank responded. “The guy who’s in charge of the march is named Hal Witter. I thought I told you about him. He’s the one who found the injured woman lying in a ditch.”

“You said someone found her, but you didn’t happen to mention that the guy had a hundred or so people with him when he did it.”

“One hundred three, to be exact,” Frank Montoya replied. “That’s how many people are participating in today’s march, but it turns out Mr. Witter was all by himself when he found the victim.”

“Well, then,” Joanna returned. “I guess we should be thankful for small favors.”