Devil’s Claw

CHAPTER 6

When Joanna arrived at the crime scene, her Blazer was third in line, behind both Frank Montoya’s Crown Victoria and Detective Carbajal’s Ford Econoline van. Frank Montoya, Jaime Carbajal, and another man Joanna didn’t recognize stood pointing off the road into a brush-clogged drainage ditch.

“I know it would have been better if we hadn’t had to disturb the crime scene,” the unidentified man was explaining to Detective Carbajal. “But as long as there was a chance of saving her, I figured that took higher priority than preserving evidence.”

“This is the spot then?” Joanna asked, walking up behind them.

The three men turned to face her. “Sheriff Brady,” Frank said. “Yes, this is it. Down in the culvert. And this is Hal Witter, the man who found the victim.”

Joanna held out her hand. From her height of five feet four, Hal Witter seemed tall. He was silver-haired and in his mid-to-late sixties. Distinguished-looking, he carried himself with the straight-backed bearing of a military officer.

“Glad to meet you, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I’ve had some dealings with your office over traffic concerns for our various Volksmarches, but I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting you in person.”

“You say the victim was hidden in the culvert?” Joanna asked.

Hal Witter nodded. “Completely out of sight. I’m guessing she was there but unconscious this morning when we all walked past. It’s a miracle we didn’t miss her this afternoon as well. I was bringing up the rear. That’s my self-imposed task assignment. I keep an eye out for stragglers. In Volksmarching, everybody walks at their own pace. I don’t want to rush anybody, so I give everyone else plenty of space and let them go on ahead.

“I was walking by myself when I heard a moan. At first I was afraid one of my marchers was sick or hurt-that maybe someone had fallen and twisted an ankle. Sprains are pretty common at these kinds of events. As soon as I saw all the blood, though, I knew getting help ASAP was a matter of life and death. I used my cell phone. The cops and medics who showed up did what they could for the poor woman and then called in a helicopter. But I guess she was too far gone. Mr. Montoya here tells me she didn’t make it.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s right.”

Witter shook his head. “It’s too bad, but I was afraid that’s what would happen. I’ve seen gunshot wounds before. This one didn’t look survivable.”

“Where’s that?” Joanna asked. “Where have you seen gunshot wounds?”

“In the service,” he said. “I was in Korea and Vietnam both. Something like this brings that other stuff back-stuff I wish I’d forgotten.”

As he turned away from her, Joanna noticed him brushing away a tear. Wanting to give the man some privacy, she focused her attention on Jaime Carbajal. Armed with a camera, the young detective had clambered down into the ditch and was snapping pictures around the entrance to the culvert.

“It’s real sandy down here, Sheriff Brady,” he reported. “And it looks like the EMTs pretty well tore things up getting her out of here. I doubt we’re going to get any useful pictures out of this, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get any usable footprints.”

“Do the best you can, Jaime,” Joanna told him.

By then it seemed Hal Witter had regained his composure, so Joanna redirected her attention to him. “Since you were first on the scene, Mr. Witter, is there anything you saw to begin with that may have been disturbed by all the coming and going?”

Witter frowned. “You might want to check the weeds here. See where they’re mashed down? I suspect she was pushed or thrown out of a vehicle, rolled down into the ditch, and then dragged into the culvert. That’s just my initial impression.”

Joanna looked up and down the road. If a vehicle had been there once, now there was no sign of it. Other than the three parked official sheriff’s department vehicles, the road was totally deserted in both directions as far as the eye could see.

For the next several minutes, Joanna and Frank Montoya scrutinized the winter-brittle grass along the roadside. As Hal Witter had suggested, broken stalks testified to the fact that something sizable had rolled from the roadway down into the ditch. Careful not to step inside the area, Frank and Joanna marked it off with a boundary of yellow crime-scene tape so it could be searched later for any kind of trace evidence.

Finished with that, Joanna turned back to Hal Witter. “You found no identification?” she asked.

He shook his head. “None, and I checked, too. There was no purse, but people sometimes wear medical identification tags. There wasn’t one of those, either, but I did find a necklace-a little silver necklace with a strange turquoise-and-silver pendant on it.”

“What kind of pendant?”

“It looked like a devil’s claw,” Hal answered. “You know, those funny two-pronged gourds? It resembled a tiny one of those, with a pearl-sized seed of turquoise showing through from inside the gourd and with the two prongs made of silver. Why someone would walk around wearing a silver devil’s claw around her neck is more than I can figure.”

Joanna glanced in Frank Montoya’s direction and was relieved to see that he was busily taking notes. For the time being, that meant she didn’t have to. She was also relieved to know that the victim was wearing a piece of what sounded like very distinctive jewelry. Something that unusual might possibly make the prompt identification of an unknown victim far more likely than it would be otherwise.

“What did the woman look like?” Joanna asked. “How old was she? Anything you can tell us about her would be a big help.”

“Native American or Hispanic,” Hal Witter said at once. “I’d guess she’s somewhere in her mid-thirties. Dark hair-not really black-and going a little gray around the temples.”

“Wearing?”

“A sweatshirt-a red sweatshirt with nothing on it-no logo, no Walt Disney characters, or anything else. Jeans. Tennis shoes-Keds, I think. No socks. Nothing really memorable or remarkable about any of her clothing.”

“Other than the necklace you already mentioned, was she wearing any other jewelry?”

Hal shook his head. “No watch. No rings, and no sign that she had worn either one recently.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because when you wear a ring long-term, it usually leaves an indentation around the base of the finger. And in this climate, watches and rings both leave pale spots wherever the sun doesn’t reach. There wasn’t one of those either.”

Joanna shot Hal Witter a quizzical look. “That’s pretty observant for a civilian,” she said.

He grinned back at her. “Thanks,” he said. “I trained as a cop once, years ago. After Korea and before I re-upped in the army, I was a trooper in upstate New York.”

“Why’d you quit?” Joanna asked.

“Couldn’t afford it,” he said. “The hours were too long and the pay too low. I figured I was better off back in the army. The pay wasn’t that different, but it came with a place to live and a chow line.”

“Career army then?” she asked.

He nodded. “Retired Special Forces. Colonel.”

Just then Jaime Carbajal’s voice came from behind them, from the far side of the road opposite where he had disappeared into the culvert. “I may have found something after all. Look at this.”

As the three people on the road turned to look, Jaime materialized at the far end of the culvert holding three plastic milk cartons aloft. Two were empty. One still contained a quart or so of water.

“UDAs?” Joanna asked.

“I think so,” Jaime replied.

“But they could have been through here anytime. There’s no way of saying they were here last night, is there?”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” the detective answered. “One of the handles is stained with something that looks a whole lot like blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if it matches up with our victim’s.”

Joanna found the very suggestion chilling. In recent years the steady stream of undocumented aliens coming north from Mexico had turned into a vast flood, one that threatened to overwhelm the resources of local law-enforcement jurisdictions and of the Immigration and Naturalization Service as well. Increased enforcement in one place only caused the flow to move to some other likely crossing point. It seemed to Joanna that as soon as INS officers plugged one hole in the border fence, another opened up a mile or two away.

In the past few months, the UDA crisis had gone from bad to worse. Recently the number of illegals apprehended in rural Cochise County rivaled those captured in San Diego, with far fewer officers and far less money available to deal with the problem. As the number of illegals increased, a vocal group of ranchers whose properties lay on the most traveled routes had been raising a call to arms.

Several isolated ranch owners had been victims of unsophisticated burglaries. They complained that cattle had died after ingesting abandoned plastic bottles that the illegals used to carry life-sustaining water as they walked across long stretches of unforgiving desert. Ranchers reported that faucets on stock tanks had been left open, allowing precious water to drain out, that fences had been cut down, allowing livestock to stray onto roads and highways, and that their properties were littered with human waste. Several of the most vociferous of the frustrated cattlemen had threatened to take the law into their own hands. Their position was that if the government couldn’t be counted on to protect them from foreign invaders, the ranchers would do so themselves and round up any illegal found trespassing on their land.

Joanna knew that she was dealing with an extremely volatile situation, one already rife with threats of vigilante justice. She dreaded what might happen once news of this incident was made public. The specter of armed illegals preying on lone women motorists along deserted stretches of highway might well ignite a whole new style of range war. It wasn’t difficult to see how this added element of fear might provoke a few rabid individuals into shooting first and asking questions later.

Joanna stared at the bloodstained milk cartons as though they were leaking powder kegs.

“We’d better bag them up and get them to the lab,” Joanna said. Her comment proved to be unnecessary, since Detective Carbajal was already doing that very thing.

“Not only that,” Jaime continued as he entered the bagged cartons into the evidence logs. “It looks to me as though this end of the culvert wasn’t disturbed by the EMTs. There are a few tracks just inside here that are probably worth casting. I’ll go get my equipment.”

With Frank Montoya’s help, Detective Carbajal mixed up a batch of plaster of paris and set about making the casts. Meanwhile, Joanna took down the remainder of Hal Witter’s information-his phone number and address in Mesa, along with the names and phone numbers of friends in Bisbee with whom he was planning to stay for the next several days. When she was finished and because it was nearing sundown, Joanna offered the man a ride back into Pearce.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ll walk. I want to finish the event. Accepting a ride would mean it doesn’t count.” He started away.

“One other thing,” Joanna called after him.

“What’s that?”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention any of what you heard or saw here this afternoon. Of course, you’re welcome to let people know that you found the victim. Good Samaritans are always appreciated, but when it comes to disclosing pieces of our investigation that you may have overheard, I’d rather you kept those quiet.”

“Certainly,” he said. “I understand. Holdbacks and all that. No problem, Sheriff Brady. I’ll be more than happy to keep what I’ve heard to myself. I just hope you catch whoever did it. Shooting some poor woman and then leaving her to die in a ditch like a run-over dog isn’t what I call civilized. The sooner those people are off the streets, the better.”

Once Hal Witter walked away, Joanna went over to where her two deputies were working. “I’m assuming the campground up at the Stronghold is full of RVers. Has anyone thought to check with those folks to find out if any of them saw or heard anything unusual last night?”

“We’re on it,” Frank Montoya returned. “Deputy Pakin went up there as soon as the helicopter took off. As far as I know, he’s still up there. I wanted him to get cracking on interviewing possible witnesses in case some of the campers pull up stakes overnight. I don’t want any of them leaving without letting us know what they may have seen.”

“Good work,” Joanna said.

By then the afternoon sun had long since slipped behind the Dragoons. The cliff-lined canyon that had once sheltered Cochise and his warrior band of Apaches was fast fading into deepening shadows. Even though she realized they were losing daylight, Joanna knew better than to try to hurry the painstaking plaster-casting process. Experience had taught her that with proper analysis, footprints can be almost as foolproof as fingerprints in testifying to a suspect’s physical presence at a crime scene.

She spent the next several minutes pacing back and forth. She was considering the possibility of heading back home and leaving Frank in charge when Deputy Lance Pakin came wheeling up in his Blazer.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Mostly no one remembered seeing anything unusual,” Deputy Pakin answered. “I was about to give up when I ran into a guy named Naujokas-Mr. Pete Naujokas of Estes Park, Colorado.”

“What about him?” Joanna asked.

“He and his wife have a winter home in Oro Valley, but they’ve been out here in the park for several days, camping with some friends who are visiting from Colorado. Yesterday afternoon Pete had to go into Tucson on business. He planned on being back here at the RV in time for dinner last night. Things didn’t work out, though. First he was delayed leaving town, then he had car trouble that kept him in Benson for several hours. By the time he finally made it here, it was almost midnight.

“As he was coming up the road, he came across a vehicle parked up the road with its flashers flashing. He saw a woman down on her hands and knees by the Cochise Stronghold sign, and he stopped to see if she needed any help. She said everything was fine. She had lost a ring and was using the headlights to look for it. Since she didn’t seem to be in any trouble and since there wasn’t that much he could do to help, he went on his way.”

“What kind of car?” Joanna asked.

“He wasn’t sure. Late model. White. He thought it might have been a Lexus.”

Joanna felt a sudden clutch in her gut. At mention of the word, she realized she had failed to pass along Larry Kendrick’s message about Melanie Goodson’s supposedly stolen Lexus. Now it seemed that a Lexus might play a pivotal part in this case as well.

Finished with their casting job, Frank Montoya and Jaime Carbajal came walking toward Joanna. Between them they carried a collection of several plaster casts.

“What’s this about a Lexus?” Frank Montoya asked as he loaded the casts into boxes in Jaime’s van.

“One was seen near here late last night. Up by the Cochise Stronghold sign. And I believe we now may have a line on our victim,” Joanna answered. “My guess is her name is Sandra Ridder.”

Montoya frowned. “Ridder,” he repeated. “Any relation to Lucinda Ridder, the runaway?”

Joanna nodded. “Sandra is Lucinda’s mother. She was released from prison up in Perryville sometime yesterday afternoon. And it turns out she’s so well-rehabilitated after spending almost eight years in the slammer that she took the first opportunity that presented itself to steal her attorney’s Lexus overnight.”

“When did this all come up and why didn’t I know about it before now?” Frank Montoya demanded.

“Larry Kendrick told me about the bulletin on the stolen Lexus as I was on my way here. I meant to mention it to you as soon as I arrived, but with everything else that was going on, it slipped my mind. It wasn’t until Lance here mentioned a Lexus that I remembered. Exactly how far is it from here to Lucinda’s grandmother’s house?”

“It’s off on Middlemarch Road. Two miles, give or take.”

“Maybe we’d better drop by and see her,” Joanna said.

“Catherine Yates told me her daughter was due home either today or tomorrow,” Frank replied irritably. “But she didn’t say from where-certainly not from prison. All Catherine said was that she wanted Lucy home when her mother got there. Any idea what the mother was in for?”

“Manslaughter. I don’t know any of the details. Just that she got sent up for ten years and served eight.”

“All of which puts Lucy’s disappearance in a whole new light.”

Joanna nodded grimly. “Doesn’t it just,” she said. She turned back to Deputy Pakin. “Lance,” she said, “I’m going to go with Chief Deputy Montoya in his car. You stay here and assist Detective Carbajal. When it’s too dark to see, I’d like you to stay here and keep the crime scene secure until we can get a crew of techs back out here in the morning.”

“Will do,” Deputy Pakin agreed. “What about emergency calls?”

“Call into Dispatch and let them know you’re on assignment. If the need arises, they’ll have to bring in officers from other sectors to cover problems in yours. And when you go off shift, have the Night Watch Commander send someone else out here to take your place.”

“Sure thing.”

Leaving her Blazer parked on the shoulder of the roadway, Joanna followed Frank to his waiting Crown Victoria. Without a word, Frank got in, slammed the car door shut, started the engine, and then rammed the gearshift into drive for a tire-spinning, gravel-spattering U-turn. From the set of Frank’s jaw, Joanna knew her chief deputy was ripped. For the next several minutes they maintained a strained silence, punctuated here and there by radio chatter.

“What’s wrong, Frank?” Joanna asked at last.

He turned and glowered at her. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I feel like you left me out of the loop back there. Like there were things going on that I should have known about and nobody told me.”

“Come on,” she pleaded. “Don’t make a big deal out of this. It was nothing but an oversight on my part. It certainly wasn’t deliberate. We were all busy, Frank, and it slipped my mind. Besides, until Lance brought up the subject of the Lexus, there was no possible way for anyone to see a connection between the two cases.”

“I suppose not,” Frank grumbled, but Joanna could tell he was still provoked, and that made her uneasy. Not only was Frank Montoya her chief deputy, he had long been Joanna’s greatest ally in the department. She could ill afford to offend him.

“Tell me about Catherine Yates,” she said, trying to change the subject. “If she didn’t bother to mention that her daughter was being released from prison, she wasn’t exactly being forthright with you. What’s her story?”

“I don’t know. She’s an Indian-part, anyway. Apache, I believe. She told me that her granddaughter has lived with her for several years. She implied there was some kind of family problem-a sticky divorce or something. But when I asked if Lucy might have gone off to live with her father, she said that wasn’t possible. That he wasn’t in the picture.

“Here’s the turnoff to her place,” Frank added, switching on the turn signal.

“Wait,” Joanna said. “Stop here a minute and let me check something.”

Obligingly, Frank pulled over next to a mailbox on top of a leaning wooden post and put the Ford in neutral. Meanwhile, Joanna plucked Frank’s radio microphone out of its clip and thumbed the “talk” button.

“Larry,” she said when the dispatcher’s voice came through. “When Pima County sent down the information on that stolen Lexus, did they include a rap sheet on Sandra Ridder?”

“Sure did.”

“Does it say what she went to prison for?”

“Man-one. Sentenced to ten years and served almost eight.”

“Does it say who she killed?”

“Yup, her husband, one Thomas Dawson Ridder.”

“Thanks, Larry,” Joanna told him. “That’s a big help. What about a mug shot?”

“We’ve got one of those, too.”

She glanced at Frank. “Is your wireless fax working?”

Frank Montoya had spent months and several thousand drug-enforcement dollars turning his Crown Victoria into a fully equipped mobile office.

He nodded.

“Fax everything you have to Frank’s computer.”

“Will do, Sheriff Brady,” Larry Kendrick replied. “But it’s going to take a couple of minutes. I’m here by myself and another call is just coming in.”

“Take your time, Larry,” she told him. “No rush.”

Putting the microphone down, Joanna turned back to Frank. “Being dead is a damned good reason for the father not being in the picture,” she said. “So what do you think is going on?”

“This is how it looks to me.” Frank held up one hand and began ticking off his fingers. “On the surface of it, it’s easy to say that a marauding band of UDAs is responsible for whatever went on back there and let it go at that. But I’ve got a different idea. How does this sound? First Mommy whacks Daddy, and somebody sees to it that Mommy goes to prison. Later Mommy gets out of prison. As soon as she does, somebody whacks her. Immediately prior to that or else immediately thereafter, Baby Daughter disappears. Sounds to me like one way or the other, we’ve got a whole new set of reasons to go looking for Lucinda Ridder. Either she’s a victim, too, or else she’s something a whole lot worse.”

Sighing, Joanna leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Let’s go. By the time we finish talking to Catherine Yates, we’ll have what we need from Dispatch. In the meantime, I have to say, I hope to God you’re wrong. I don’t want to be stuck tracking down some nice, gun-wielding fifteen-year-old.”

“That’s funny,” Frank said.

“What’s funny?”

“That’s exactly what Catherine Yates told me earlier this afternoon about Lucinda. She said Lucy’s a nice girl.”

“Right,” Joanna returned sarcastically. “I’ll just bet she did. That’s what grandmothers always say-that their particular little darlings are nothing but sweetness and light. I’ll bet if someone had asked Lizzie Borden’s grandmother, she probably would have given the exact same answer: She would have said, ”Little Elizabeth’s an adorable child. She’s just as nice as you please and wouldn’t hurt a fly if her life depended on it.“ ”