Paradise Lost

Joanna finally broke the lingering silence. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Are you mad at me?” Jenny returned.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

Jenny bit her lip. She had chewed on it so much during the course of the interview that morning that it looked chapped and swollen. “For not telling Grandma and Grandpa about Dora talking to Chris on the phone. I didn’t think she was serious about running away. I thought she was just talking big again, you know, like bragging. But maybe, if I had told ...”

Joanna went over to Jenny’s chair and knelt in front of her. “Jenny, honey, you’re going to have to decide that what happened wasn’t your fault. And now that we know a little more about what went on, it probably isn’t Grandma Lathrop’s fault, either. From what you said, it’s clear Dora Matthews was determined to run away. She would have done it anyway, whether she was at our house or at her own home up in Bisbee or in foster care.”

“You really think so?” Jenny asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“What about Chris? Do you think he’s the one who killed her?”

“It could be,” Joanna said. “At this point in the investigation, anything is possible.”

There was a knock on Joanna’s private entrance. “Is that them?” Jenny asked. “Mr. Kimball and Dora’s mother?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t want to see them,” Jenny said urgently.

“Of course you don’t,” Joanna said. “Come on. You can wait outside in the lobby with Kristin. Butch will be here in a few minutes to pick you up.”

Still clutching her book, Jenny retreated, closing the lobby door behind her, while Joanna went to open the outside door. Through the security peephole Joanna saw Burton Kimball, overdressed as usual in his customary suit and tie. With him was a desperately thin woman who must have been about Joanna’s age but who looked much older. Sally Matthews was gaunt and looked worn in her bottom-of-the-barrel thrift-store clothing. A loose-fitting baggy dress two sizes too large covered her bony, emaciated frame. On her feet was a pair of old flip-flops. Bedraggled, ill cut brown hair dangled around a thin face that was mostly obscured by a huge pair of sunglasses. In one knotted fist she clutched a soggy hanky.

“Good morning, Sheriff Brady,” Burton Kimball said when Joanna opened the door. “May we come in?”

Joanna held the door open and beckoned them inside. By the time she returned to her desk, she found that Sally Matthews had shed her sunglasses to reveal a haggard, homely, and entirely makeup-free face.

“You can go ahead and put me under arrest if you want,” Sally said, in a harsh voice that trembled with suppressed emotion. “I don’t give a damn what happens to me. All I know is, your depart­ment took charge of my daughter, and now Dora is dead. Who’s responsible for that, Joanna Brady? Are you the one?”

As she spoke, the agitated Sally Matthews had leaned so far forward in her chair that, for a moment, Joanna was afraid she was going to clamber across the expanse of desk that separated them. It must have seemed that way to Burton Kimball as well. He laid a restraining hand on his client’s arm. “Easy,” he said. “Take it easy.”

“I won’t take it easy,” Sally Matthews hissed, shrugging away his hand. “I want to know who killed my daughter.”

“So do I,” Joanna breathed. “Believe me, so do I.”

She punched the intercom button. “Kristin,” she said when her secretary answered. “Would you please have Chief Deputy Mon­toya come to my office?”

When she looked back at Sally Matthews, the woman had dis­solved into tears, sobbing into a large men’s handkerchief that had most likely come from Burton Kimball’s pocket. From the way Jaime Carbajal had described the Matthews’s home, Joanna knew Sally wouldn’t have won any Mother of the Year awards. Still, there was no denying that the woman was overwhelmed by grief at the loss of her only daughter.

Before Joanna could say anything to comfort Silly, there was a sharp knock at her door. Turning, Joanna expected to sere Frank Montoya. Instead, Kristin stood in the doorway, beckoning frantically to Joanna.

“It you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Joanna said. She got up and walked over to the door. Kristin drew her into the lobby and then closed the door after them.

“What’s the matter?” Joanna said.

“You’d better go out front,” Kristin said, speaking in an urgent whisper. “All hell’s broken loose out there.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“From what I can tell, right after Frank’s news conference, one of those photographers from the Arizona Reporter tried to jump in and get a picture of Jenny as Butch was leading her out of the building. I think Butch grabbed the camera out of the guy’s hands and lobbed it into the parking lot. He and Jenny are both in Frank’s office.”

Joanna could barely believe her ears. “They’re not hurt, are they?” she demanded.

“No, they’re fine,” Kristin answered quickly. “But the photographer is out in the public lobby raising hell. He wants somebody to arrest Butch for assault and battery. And then there’s Ron Haskell. He’s here waiting ...”

Joanna looked across the room and saw Ron Haskell sitting forlornly on the lobby loveseat. Stifling her own roiling emotions, she walked across the room to him and shook hands. “Thank you for conning, Mr. Haskell. As you can see, there’s a bit of an emergency going on right now. If you don’t mind, I’ll have my secretary here take you back to speak to one of our evidence technicians.”

Joanna turned back to Kristin. “Take him to see Casey Ledford,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. “She’ll need to take fingerprints from him. We’ll need to collect DNA samples as well.”

With that, Joanna Brady headed for her chief deputy’s office, where, with the public brawl now over, her husband and daughter were waiting.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By early afternoon, Joanna was in her office and elbow-deep in paperwork. Kristin Gregovich had gone out for an early lunch and had returned with a tuna sandwich for Joanna, the half-eaten remains of which lingered on her correspondence littered desk. With two separate murder investigations under way, it was difficult for Joanna to stay focused on the routine administrative matters that had to be handled—duty rosters to approve and vacation schedules to be juggled, as well as making shift-coverage arrangements around Yolanda Cañedo’s extended sick leave.

Looking over the schedule, Joanna was reminded of her stop at University Medical Center. Picking up her phone, Joanna dialed Frank’s number. “All the inmates and all the jail employees made and signed get-well cards for Yolanda Cañedo,” she said. “Have the deputies done anything similar?”

“Not that I know of,” Frank replied.

“Is Deputy Galloway on duty?”

“He should be. Why?”

“If you can track him down, let him know I need to see him.”

Deputy Kenneth W. Galloway was one of Joanna’s problem children. He was the nephew and namesake of another Cochise County deputy, Ken Galloway. Ken Galloway the elder had been part of the corrupt administration that had preceded Joanna’s. He had died as a result of injuries suffered in a car accident during a high-speed car chase. A coroner’s inquest had ruled his death acci­dental, but years later, many members of the Galloway clan still held Joanna Brady personally responsible for his death.

At the time of his uncle’s death, Ken W, as he was called, was fresh out of the academy. He was still far too young and naive to have been involved in any of his uncle’s underhanded dealings. After her election, Joanna had allowed Ken W. to stay on with the depart­ment. He had been a capable enough deputy, but he had never made any pretense of loyalty to Joanna or her administration. His obvious antipathy to Joanna made him a natural for membership in and eventual leadership of Local 83 of the National Federation of Deputy Sheriffs, where he had recently been elected president.

Months earlier, one of Joanna’s decisions had resulted in saving Deputy Galloway’s life, but if she had thought that would make her relationship with the union leader any smoother, she had soon been disabused of the notion. More than half hoping Frank wouldn’t find the man, Joanna returned to the morass on her desk.

One whole stack was devoted to requests for civic appearances: Rotary and Kiwanis meetings where she was asked to be the guest speaker; a call-in talk show on a radio station in Sierra Vista, where she would be joined on the air by a group of Latino activists who were concerned about racial profiling by various members of the law enforcement community, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department included; and Elfrida High School, which wanted to know it she would be the main speaker at its career-day program.

As Joanna penciled one obligation after another into her rapidly filling calendar, she realized that even without having offi­cially announced her candidacy, as far as the people of Cochise County were concerned, she was already running for reelection. Every appearance put her in front of voters. Eventually she would have to make an official announcement one way or the other. Right that minute she wasn’t sure what she would do. The morning’s confrontation between Butch and photographer Owen Faulk of the Arizona Reporter had left her feeling as though the most important pieces of her world were at war with one another.

Butch Dixon had yet to come to terms with the idea that being married to Arizona’s only sitting female sheriff meant giving up all claim to anonymity. The incident with Owen Faulk wasn’t the first time Butch had bridled at the unaccustomed and unwelcome intrusion of the press in their lives, but it was certainly the most serious. The fact that Butch had been protecting Jenny made it easy for Joanna to forgive his overreaction, but she doubted that the rest of the world would be equally understanding.

Dealing with that volatile situation had required Joanna’s personal intervention and all her diplomatic skill. First Joanna had had to persuade Butch to cool it. Then she’d had to soothe Jenny, who, after her grueling interview with the Double Cs, was even more traumatized. And, after all that, she’d had to smooth Owen Faulk’s ruffled feathers, managing to dodge a potential liability suit in the process. She had offered assurances that Faulk’s expensive equipment, if broken, would be repaired or replaced. Since the photographer had accepted her offer without any argument, Joanna surmised that Owen Faulk realized that he, too, had been out of line.

So that thorny problem was solved for the time being, but deal­ing with it had taken Joanna’s attention away from her job and away from the conference room, where Sally Matthews, with Burton Kimball present, was still being interviewed by Raul Enemas, a detective with the City of Bisbee Police Department, and Frank Bonham, one of the officers from the Multi-Jurisdiction Force, along with a representative from the county attorney’s office. By the time Joanna had finished handling the photographer uproar, the interview with Sally Matthews had been in process for well over an hour. Joanna had known better than to walk in and inter­rupt, and it bothered her that, all this time later, it was still going on without her.

Realizing she’d have to content herself with reading the tran­script, Joanna had gone into her office and tackled her logjam of waiting correspondence, only to be interrupted shortly thereafter by Casey Ledford poking her head into her office.

“Mr. Haskell is outside,” Casey told Joanna. “Kristin suggested I bring him back by here so one of the detectives could interview him.”

“That would be great except for one small glitch,” Joanna replied. “At the moment we’re fresh out of detectives.”

“What should I do with him then?”

“Let me talk to him.”

Ron Haskell looked up when Joanna entered the lobby. “Both my detectives are busy this afternoon,” she told him. “Are you planning on going back out to Pathway to Paradise?”

Haskell shook his head. “Amos Parker gave me the boot. He said that since I had violated Pathway rules and was insisting on leaving again without completing my course of treatment, that he’s keeping my money, but I’m not welcome to return. He had me pack up my stuff before I left this morning. I drove into Bisbee on my own.”

“Will you be staying here then?”

Again Ron Haskell shook his head. “I just heard that Connie’s sister, Maggie, is still in town. She’s saying all kinds of wild things about me and making lots of unfounded allegations. I think it’s a bad idea for me to be here when she is. Not only that,” he added, as his eyes filled with tears, “I guess I need to plan Connie’s funeral.”

Knowing Maggie MacFerson’s penchant for carrying loaded weapons, Joanna Brady heartily concurred with Ron Haskell’s decision to leave town. “That’s probably wise,” she said. “Your going home, that is.”

“From what I’ve heard, Maggie seems to think I’m responsible for what happened to Connie,” Ron added. “And she’s right there, you know. I am responsible even if I didn’t kill her myself. I’m the one who made the phone call and asked her to come down to Paradise to see me. If it hadn’t been for that, she’d most likely still be at home—safe and alive. But Connie was my wife, Sheriff Brady. I loved her.” His voice cracked with emotion.

While Ron Haskell struggled with his ragged emotions, Joanna thought about how difficult it would be for her already over-worked detectives to schedule an interview with him once he had returned to Phoenix, two hundred miles away.

Time to make like the Little Red Hen and do it myself, she thought.

“I expected my homicide investigators to be here this afternoon, but they were called to Tucson this morning,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go ahead and ask you a few questions myself.”

“Sure,” Haskell said. “I guess that would be fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Do you want an attorney to be present?”

“I don’t really need one. I didn’t kill my wife, if that’s what you mean.”

“All right, but I’ll need to record our interview and have another officer present when I do it,” Joanna told him.

“Fine,” Ron Haskell said.

Joanna went out of her office and knocked on Frank Montoya’s door. “Care to join me playing detective?” she asked. “Ron Haskell is here and ready to be questioned, except Ernie and Jaime are both in Tucson.”

“Where should we do it?” Frank asked.

“The interview room is still busy with the Sally Matthews bunch. I guess it’ll have to be in my office.”

When Joanna reentered the room, Ron Haskell was standing by the large open window and staring up at the expanse of ocotillo-dotted limestone cliffs that formed the background to the Cochise County Justice Center.

“I really did love Connie, you know,” he said softly, as Joanna returned to her desk. “I never intended to do that—love her, you see. And I didn’t at first. Maggie must have figured that out. She didn’t like me the moment she first laid eyes on me. She said right off the bat that all I was after was Connie’s money, and to begin with, money was all I wanted. Why not? I’d had to struggle all my life. I went to school on scholarships and had to fight and work for everything I got while Connie was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Other than taking care of her folks when they got old and sick, she never had to work a day in her life. When we got married, she had money—enough, I suppose, so the two of us would have been comfortable as long as we didn’t do anything too wild or crazy.

“But then she made it too easy for inc. She gave me free rein with running the finances—turned them over to me completely. About that time is when I came up with the bright idea that I could turn that tidy little sum of hers into a real fortune for both of us.”

“I take it that didn’t work?” Joanna asked dryly.

Ron nodded miserably in agreement. “I got hooked into day­trading—tech stocks and IPOs mostly. I figured it was just a matter of time before I’d hit it big, but I ended up taking a bath. Connie’s money slipped through my fingers like melted butter. And that only made me try harder and lose more. It turned into a kind of sickness.”

“Which is how you ended up at Pathway?”

“Yes.”

Frank came in then, carrying a tape recorder which he set up on Joanna’s desk. “Tell us about last Thursday,” Joanna said to Ron Haskell, after Mirandizing him and going through the drill of start­ing the recording and identifying the participants.

“I called Connie,” Ron Haskell said. “I went down to the gen­eral store in Portal a little before noon. I called her at home without having Amos Parker’s express permission to do so. Clients at Pathway aren’t allowed to have any contact with their families until Amos gives the go-ahead, but I wanted to talk to her right then. I needed to tell her what had happened and explain what was going on. By then I was sure she had to know the money was gone, but I wanted to see her in person.”

“What money?” Joanna asked.

“Her money,” Ron Haskell said. “The money her parents left her. I had lost it all playing the stock market, and I wanted to tell her about it face-to-face.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No. She wasn’t home. I left a message on her machine,” Haskell said. “I asked her to come down to Pathway that evening so I could see her. I planned to slip out to the road and meet her there—to catch her and flag her down before she ever made it to the guard shack. That was my plan.”

“But then you got put in isolation,” Joanna offered.

Haskell shook his head. “No,” he said. “That was what I intended. I counted on being put in isolation. Otherwise there are chores for clients to do and work sessions to attend. When you’re in isolation, you’re left totally alone. I figured that once it was dark, I’d be able to slip off and meet her without anyone being the wiser.”

“You’re telling us that when you went to make your illicit phone call, you actually planned on being caught?” Joanna asked.

“Absolutely.”

“What happened?”

“It worked out just the way I wanted it to. As soon as it was dark, I made my way out of the isolation cabin and back to the road. I stationed myself in a ditch just the other side of Portal—between Portal and the entrance to Pathway. I waited all night, but Connie never showed up. When she didn’t, I was hurt. I figured that she’d decided not to bother; that she’d found out about the money and had just written me off. When you told me she’d tried to come see me after all, I ...”

Ron Haskell’s voice broke and he lapsed into silence. Joanna’s mind was racing. She had thought his being in isolation had given Haskell an airtight alibi, but she had been wrong. In fact, just as Ernie Carpenter had suggested, it had actually been the opposite. Caroline Parker had told them Haskell had been left alone from Thursday on. That meant he could have been AWOL from Path-way to Paradise for the better part of four days without anyone being the wiser. That would have given him plenty of time to murder his wife and dispose of her body. It also meant that he had no alibi for the night Dora Matthews was murdered, either.

“How long did you stay away from the cabin?’’ Joanna asked.

“I came back just before sunrise Friday morning. I had sat on the ground all night long, so my back was killing me, and I was heartsick that Connie hadn’t shown up. I was sure she loved me enough that she’d come talk to me and at least give me a chance to explain, but by the time I came back to the cabin that morning, I finally had to come face-to-face with the fact that I’d really lost her. That’s why it hurt so much when I found out she had tried to come see me after all. She really did try, after everything I had done.”

“While you were waiting by the road,” Frank said, “did you see any other vehicles?”

“A couple, I guess.”

“Anything distinctive about them? Anything that stands out in your mind?”

“Not really. The cars I saw go by were most likely going on up to Paradise—the village of Paradise, I mean. I’ve been told there are a few cabins up there and one or two B and Bs. One of them did stop at the guard shack for a few minutes, but then whoever it was left again almost right away. I figured whoever it was must have been lost and that they had stopped to ask directions.”

“What about insurance?” Joanna asked.

“Insurance?” Ron Haskell repeated. “We had health insurance, and long-term care—”

“What about life insurance?”

“There isn’t much of that,” he said. “Stephen Richardson, Connie’s old man, was the old-fashioned type, not somebody you’d find out pushing for equal rights for women or equal insurance, either. There was a sizable insurance policy on him when he died, but all he carried on Claudia, his wife, was a small five-­thousand-dollar paid-up whole-life policy. Connie told me one time that her father had started ten-thousand-dollar policies on each of his daughters, but Maggie cashed hers in as soon as he turned ownership of the policy over to her. Connie still had hers.”

“For ten thousand dollars?” Joanna asked.

Ron Haskell nodded. “Not very much, is it?” he returned.

“But you’re the sole beneficiary?”

“Yes,” he said. “At least I think I am. That policy was paid up, so it’s not like we were getting bills for premiums right and left. I know Connie talked about changing the beneficiary designation from her sister over to me right after we got married, but I’m not sure whether or not she ever got around to doing it.”

“And that’s all the insurance there is—just that one policy?” Joanna asked.

Ron Haskell met Joanna’s gaze and held it without wavering. “As far as I know, there was only that one. There’s one on me for Connie’s benefit but not the other way around. I know you’re thinking I killed her for her money,” he said accusingly. “But I didn’t. I didn’t have to. When it came to money, Connie had already given me everything, Sheriff Brady. What was hers was mine. I was doing day-trades and looking for a way to give back what she’d already given me. By the time it was over, I sure as hell wasn’t looking for a way to get more.”

“Did your wife have any enemies?”

“How would she? Connie hardly ever left the house.”

“Do you have any enemies, Mr. Haskell?” Joanna asked. “Someone who might think that by getting to her they could get to you?”

He shook his head. “Not that I know of other than Maggie MacFerson, if you want to count her.”

The room was silent for some time before Ron Haskell once again met Joanna’s gaze. “If you’re asking me all these questions,” he said, “it must mean you still don’t have any idea who killed her.”

Joanna nodded. “It’s true,” she said.

“But last night, when I talked to you out at Pathway, you said something about a series of carjackings. What about those?”

“Nobody died in any of those incidents,” Joanna replied. “In fact, with all of the previous cases there weren’t even any serious injuries.”

“And nobody was raped,” Haskell added bleakly.

“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Nobody else was raped.”

“Anything else then?” Ron asked. “Any other questions?”

Joanna glanced in Frank’s direction. He shook his head. “Not that I can think of at the moment,” Joanna said. “But this is just a preliminary session. I’m sure my detectives will have more ques­tions later. When you get back to Phoenix, you’ll be staying at your house?”

“If I can get in,” he said. “There’s always a chance that Connie or Maggie changed the locks, but yes, that’s where I expect to be.” “If you’re not, you’ll let us know?”

“Right,” he said, but he made no effort to rise.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Haskell?”

Ron nodded. “When I came in this morning, I had to fight my way through a whole bunch of reporters, including some that I’m sure were from Maggie’s paper.” He looked longingly at Joanna’s private entrance. “Is there any way you could get me back to my car out in the parking lot without my having to walk through them again?”

“Sure,” Joanna said. “You can go out this way. Chief Deputy Montoya here will give you a ride directly to your car.”

“Thanks,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I’d really appreci­ate it.”

After Frank left with Ron Haskell in tow, Joanna sat at her desk, rewinding the tape and mulling over the interview. On the one hand, Connie Haskell’s widowed husband seemed genuinely grief-stricken that his wife was dead, and it didn’t look as though he stood to profit from her death. Ron Haskell may not have said so directly, but he had certainly implied that, considering the amounts of money he had squandered playing the stock market, a ten­-thousand-dollar life insurance policy was a mere drop in the bucket and certainly not worth the risk of committing a murder. It also struck Joanna that he obviously held himself responsible for Connie Haskell’s death though all the while claiming that he himself had not been directly involved.

Those items were all on the plus side of the ledger. On the other side was the possibility that Ron Haskell could have had some other motivation besides money for wanting his wife out of the way, like maybe an as yet undiscovered girlfriend who might be impatient and well-heeled besides. Someone like that might make someone like Ron Haskell eager to be rid of a now impoverished wife. Haskell’s once seemingly airtight alibi now leaked like a sieve. He had chosen a course of action—a premeditated course of action—that had placed him in an isolated cabin from which he knew he would be able to sneak away at will and without being detected.

Forced to acknowledge that her original assumption about the isolation cabin had been blown out of the water, Joanna now won­dered if some of her other ideas about Ron Haskell were equally erroneous. He had volunteered to conic in for DNA testing. Joanna had thought of that as an indicator of his innocence that it showed confidence that Ron Haskell knew his genetic markers would have nothing iii common with the rape-kit material collected during Doc Winfield’s autopsy of Connie Haskell. However, what if Ron Haskell had decided to divest himself of his wife by hiring someone else to do his dirty work? In that case, somebody else’s DNA would show up on the body. Ron Haskell wouldn’t be implicated.

Joanna picked up her phone and dialed Casey Ledford. “What do you think about Ron Haskell?” she asked.

“He seemed nice enough,” Casey replied. “Upset that his wife is dead, but eager to cooperate and wanting to find out who killed her. I took his prints, by the way,” she added. “For elimination purposes. Just looking at them visually, I can see they do match some of the partial prints I found in Connie Haskell’s Lincoln, but the ones I saw were mostly old and overlaid by far more recent ones. Based on that alone, I’d have to say that, unless he was wearing gloves, Ron Haskell hasn’t been in his wife’s car for weeks or even months.”

“Too bad,” Joanna said with a sigh. “I was hoping we were getting someplace.”

“Sorry about that,” Casey Ledford said.

Joanna had put down the phone and was still sitting and thinking about what Casey had said when it rang again. “Hi, George,” she said when she heard the medical examiner’s voice on the line. “What’s up?”

“Have you had a chance to talk to your mother yet?” he asked.

When George called Eleanor Lathrop “your mother” rather than his pet name, Ellie, Joanna recognized it as a storm warning. Not so far,” Joanna answered guiltily. “It’s been pretty busy around here today. I haven’t had a chance.”

“She left the house this morning before I woke up and she didn’t bother starting the coffee before she left. She was supposed to join me for lunch, but she didn’t show up,” George said. “I checked a few minutes ago, and she still isn’t home. Or, if she is, she isn’t answering the phone. I thought maybe the two of you had gotten together, and that’s why she ended up forgetting our lunch date.”

Who has time for lunch? Joanna thought. She said, “Sorry, George. I haven’t heard from her at all.”

“Well, if you do,” Doc Winfield said, “have her give me a call. I’m worried about her, Joanna. She was really agitated about this Dora Matthews thing. I’ve never seen her quite so upset.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna reassured her stepfather. “I’m sure mother will be just fine.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll let you go.”

“No, wait. I have a question for you, too. Do you think Dora Matthews and Connie Haskell were killed by the same person?”

“No,” George Winfield said at once.

His abrupt, no-nonsense answer flooded Joanna with relief. It opened the door to the possibility that perhaps the two homicides—Connie’s and Dora’s—weren’t related after all. If that was the case, maybe Jenny wasn’t a target, either.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“For one thing, because the two deaths were so dissimilar,” George Winfield replied. “The person who killed Connie Haskell wasn’t afraid of getting down and dirty about it. He was more than just brutal, and most of it was done while she was still alive. Her killer wasn’t the least bit worried about being bloodied in the process. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he enjoyed it.

“On the other hand, Dora Matthews’s killer went about doing 1e job in an almost fastidious fashion. That death wasn’t messy. I’d bet money that Dora’s killer was an inexperienced first-timer who is downright squeamish about even seeing blood, to say nothing of wearing it. The other guy isn’t, Joanna. Once you identify Connie Haskell’s killer, I’m convinced you’ll discover that he’s done this before, maybe even more than once.”

“And he’ll do it again if we don’t catch him first,” Joanna returned.

“You’ve got that right,” George said. “Sorry, there’s another call. It may be Ellie. But please, Joanna. I need you to talk to her.”

“I’ll call her,” Joanna said. “I promise.”

She punched down the button and was getting ready to dial her mother when Frank came rushing back into her office. “We just hit pay dirt,” he said, waving a piece of paper over her head. “I finally got a call back from the phone company about that pay phone in Tucson. It belongs to some little private company that operates a small network of pay phones only in the Tucson area. That’s why it took longer to track down the calls than it would have otherwise. But there is some good news. Another call was made from that pay phone within thirty seconds of the end of Alice Miller’s 911 call.”

“Really,” Joanna breathed. “Where to?”

“A place called Quartzite East.”

“Isn’t that a new RV park off I-10 in Bowie?”

Frank nodded. “Relatively new,” he corrected. “It opened last year. It’s a joke, named after the real Quartzite, that mostly migra­tory motor-home town on the other side of the state. That’s where the next phone call went—to the office at Quartzite East.”

“Good work, Frank,” Joanna said. “Our mysterious Alice Miller may net live at Quartzite East, but she sure as hell knows someone who does. What say you and I head out there ourselves?”

“My car or yours?” Frank asked.

“Let’s take yours,” Joanna said.

“I’ll have to go down to the Motor Pool and fill it with gas.”

“You do that,” Joanna told him. “I’ll be right there.”

Going back for her purse, Joanna found Deputy Galloway standing by Kristin’s desk. “You wanted to see me?” he asked. Joanna nodded and ushered him into her office. “I wanted to talk to you about Yolanda Cañedo,” she said as Galloway took a seat.

“What about her?”

“You know she’s back in the hospital?”

“I guess,” he said in a nonchalant tone that said he wasn’t par­ticularly concerned one way or the other.

“Are the deputies as a group going to do anything about it?” “Like what?”

“Like sending a group card or flowers. Or like offering to look after the kids during off-hours to give Leon and the grandparents a break. Or like showing up at one of the boys’ Little League games to cheer them on.”

Deputy Galloway shrugged. “Why should we?” he asked. “Yolanda doesn’t even belong to the local. Besides, she’s a ...”

“She’s a what?” Joanna asked.

“She’s just a matron in the jail.”

“Yes,” Joanna replied evenly but her green eyes were shedding sparks. “She is, and it turns out all the jail inmates and the people who work there got together to send her get-well wishes. It seems to me the deputies shouldn’t do any less.”

“You can’t order us to do anything.” Galloway bristled.

“Who said anything about ordering?” Joanna said. “It’s merely a suggestion, Deputy Galloway. A strong suggestion. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re a team here. Yes, Yolanda Cañedo is a jail matron. In your book that may make her somehow less worthy, but let me tell you something. If it weren’t for the people running our jail, you’d only be able to do half your job, and the same would hold true for every other deputy out on a patrol. You wouldn’t be able to arrest anyone, because there wouldn’t be anyplace to put them. So what I’m strongly suggesting, as opposed to ordering, is that some of the deputies may want to make it their business to see that some cards and letters go wending their way to Yolanda in care of University Medical Center in Tucson.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ken Galloway said, standing up. His face was flushed with anger. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” Joanna said quietly. “I think that just about covers it.”

Galloway strode out of her office. With her hands still trembling with anger, Joanna cleared her desk by swiping the remaining paperwork into her briefcase, then she took a stack of correspon­dence due for mailing and/or filing out to Kristin.

“Frank and I are leaving for Bowie,” she told her secretary. “If either Jaime Carbajal or Ernie Carpenter calls in, tell them to try reaching me by cell phone.”

“When will you be back?”

“That remains to be seen,” Joanna said. “How about that bunch of reporters? Are they still parked outside?”

Kristin nodded. “I thought the heat would have driven them away by now, but so far they haven’t budged.”

“Call over to Motor Pool and have Frank pick me up at the back door,” Joanna said. “When we take off, I’d rather not have a swarm of reporters breathing down our necks.”

Back at her desk, she paused long enough to marshal her thoughts before dialing her mother’s number. Three rings later, the answering machine came on. It seemed unlikely that leaving a recorded message would qualify for keeping her promise to George Winfield. She certainly wasn’t about to launch into any detailed discussion of the Dora Matthews situation.

“Hi, Mom,” Joanna said in her most noncommittal and cheer­ful voice. “Just calling to talk for a minute. I’m on my way to Bowie with Frank Montoya. Give me a call on my cell phone if you get a chance. Bye.”

She was waiting in the shaded parking area a few minutes later when Frank came around the building.

“I was thinking,” he said, once she was inside with her seat belt fastened. “We may be making too much of this telephone thing. We don’t know for sure that Alice Miller or whatever her name is really made that second call.”

“Who was it billed to?” Joanna asked.

“It wasn’t. The call to Quartzite East was paid for in cash. The problem is, Alice Miller could very well have put the phone down and someone else was standing next to the phone waiting to pick it up.”

“You could be right,” Joanna said a moment later. “I guess we’ll see when we get there.”

They drove past the collection of air-conditioned press vehicles that were parked in front of the building and from there out through the front gate and onto the highway. Watching in the passenger-side mirror, Joanna was happy to see that no one followe­d them. “It’s like a feeding frenzy, isn’t it,” she said.

Frank nodded. “Since the Arizona Reporter thinks it’s an impor­tant story, everybody else thinks it’s an important story, too.”

“Maybe it is an important story,” Joanna allowed. “Doc Winfield is of the opinion that the guy who killed Connie Haskell was’t a novice.”

“Point taken,” Frank said. “In other words, if he’s done it before, we’d better nail the bastard quick before he does it again.”

“Exactly,” Joanna said, trying to keep the discouragement and dread out of her voice, because she was sure both George Winfield and Frank Montoya were right. If she and her people didn’t catch Connie Haskell’s killer soon enough, he would certainly strike again.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Half an hour later they were nearing Elfrida when Joanna’s cell phone rang. “Hello, Jaime,” she answered “What’s up?”

“I’ve spent the last two hours of my life with a bitch on wheels named Mrs. Richard Bernard—Amy for short.”

“Chris’s mother?”

“Affirmative on that.”

“What about Chris himself? Did you talk to him?” Joanna asked.

“According to Mama Bernard, she has no idea where her son Christopher is at the moment and no idea when he’s expected home, either. He’s evidently out for the afternoon with some pals of his. In addition, she says nobody’s talking to him without both his father and his attorney being present. Ernie and I have tentative appointment with the Bernards for tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. But we did manage to ferret out the connection between Chris Bernard and Dora Matthews.”

“Really. What’s that?”

“When Dora was placed in foster care here in Tucson last sum­mer, the foster family she lived with happened to be the Bernards’ next-door neighbors, some people named Dugan. I can tell you for sure that Mrs. Bernard is still ripped about that. The Bernards live in a very nice, ritzy neighborhood up in the foothills off Tanque Verde. In that neighborhood, they’re the new kids on the block. They happen to have more money than anybody, and they don’t mind flaunting it. When they moved in, they were dismayed to learn that the Dugans—Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dugan, who are the Bernards’ nearest neighbors—happen to be state-approved foster parents with a long history of taking in troubled kids and helping them get a fresh start.

“The Bernards were unhappy about the foster-parent bit and went before the homeowners’ association to complain. They asked the association to keep the Dugans from accepting any more foster children. As Amy Bernard told us, she didn’t like the idea of her son being exposed to those kinds of kids.

“But it turns out the Dugans are nice people who have been doing foster-care work for years. Most of the kids they’ve taken in have gone on to have excellent track records. When the Bernards’ complaint came before the homeowners’ association, the board ruled against them. Caring for foster children may have been against the neighborhood’s official CC and Rs, but that rule had gone unenforced for so long that the board just let it slide.”

“So much for neighborly relations,” Joanna said.

“Let me add,” Jaime continued, “that when it conies to plain old ordinary obnoxiousness, Amy Bernard is a piece of work. She doesn’t approve of the Dugans’ foster-care work, and from the way she acted, she didn’t much like having to talk to a Latino detective, either. It I had been on the homeowners’ board, I probably would have voted against the woman on principle alone. I’m sure she has lots of money—her hubby’s a radiologist—but she’s not exactly Mrs. Congeniality. When we told her Dora Matthews was dead, she said, and I quote, ‘Good riddance. She was nothing but a piece of trash.’ ”

“Not a nice way to talk about the person who was carrying your grandchild,” Joanna said. “And how old is Christopher Bernard?”

“Sixteen,” Jaime answered. “Just turned. According to his mother, he got his driver’s license in April.”

“That makes him three years older than Dora. So my question is, who was being exposed to whom?”

“Exactly,” Jaime Carbajal said.

“What are you doing now?”

“First we have an appointment to go back and talk to the Dugans half an hour from now, when the husband gets home from work. After that, we’ll drop by Sierra Vista on the way home, calk to the kid who claims to have seen Dora Matthews getting into a car on Sunday night. We’ll also go by Walgreens to see what we can find out there.”

For the next several minutes, she briefed Jaime Carbajal on everything that had happened while the two detectives had been otherwise engaged. Once the call ended, Frank turned to her. “Sounds to me as though we may have found ourselves a brand-new prime suspect in the Matthews murder,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “It could be. A sixteen-year-old prime suspect, at that,” she added grimly. “Let me ask you something, frank. What would you do if you were sixteen and your thirteen-year-old girlfriend turned up pregnant?”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t kill her,” Prank said.

“No,” Joanna agreed. “I know you wouldn’t, and neither would I. But from the way Jaime talked about them, I have a feel­ing Christopher Bernard and his parents live in an entirely different universe from the one you and I inhabit. I suspect they don’t believe the rules apply to them.”

“In other words, you think Chris found out Dora was pregnant and decided to get rid of her.”

Joanna nodded.

“Well,” Frank said thoughtfully. “He does have a point.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. Christopher Bernard is sixteen—a juvenile. Supposing he gets sent up for murder. What’s the worst that’ll happen to him?”

Joanna shrugged. “He gets cut loose at twenty-one.”

“Right. And the same thing goes if he’s convicted of statutory rape. He’s out and free as a bird in five years. He’ll probably have his record expunged besides. But think about what happens if his girlfriend has a baby and she can prove paternity. Then little Christopher Bernard and/or his family is stuck for eighteen years of child support, minimum. No time off for good behavior. No hiding behind the rules that apply to juvenile justice. Based on that, a murder that unloads both mother and child might sound like the best possible alternative.”

The very thought of it sickened Joanna. “Please, Frank,” she said. “Just drive. I can’t stand to talk about this anymore. The whole thing is driving me crazy.”

For the next twenty minutes Frank drove while Joanna rode in utter silence. As appalling as it was to consider, what Frank had said sounded all too plausible. A juvenile offender could dodge any kind of criminal behavior tin- more easily than he could escape being ordered to pay child support. Joanna knew there were plenty of deadbeat dads out there who didn’t pay their court-ordered support money, but it was disturbing to think that the justice system was more eager to order teenagers to pay uncollectible child support than it was to hold them accountable for other far more seri­ous offenses.

Whatever happened to motherhood, apple pie, and the American way? she wondered. One case at a time Joanna Brady was learning that what her father had always told her was true. In the criminal justice system, there was always far more gray than there was either black or white.

They hit I-10 just north of Cochise and turned east. They exited at Bowie and followed the directions on a billboard advertising Quartzite East that said: TURN SOUTH ON APACHE PASS ROAD.

Seeing that sign sent a shiver of apprehension down the back of Joanna’s neck. In some way she didn’t as yet understand, the dots between the mysterious Alice Miller and the location of Connie Haskell’s body seemed somehow to be connected.

“I didn’t realize Apache Pass Road came all the way into Bowie” was all she said.

“Oh, sure,” Frank agreed. “I knew that, but then I grew up in Wilcox. You didn’t.”

When they reached the entrance to Quartzite East, it had the look of a family farm turned RV park. The building marked OFFICE was actually an old tin-roofed house that looked as though it dated from the 1880s. Around it grew stately old cottonwoods. A checkerboard of orchards surrounded the house. Laid out among the carefully tended orchards were fifty or so concrete slabs complete with utility hookups. This was early June, so while the trees were laden with green fruit, most of the slabs were empty. By March or April at the latest, most Arizona snowbirds had usually returned home for the summer. As fir as Quartzite Last was con­cerned, however, several had evidently decided to summer over, since a number of spaces were still occupied.

Frank pulled up next to the farmhouse and parked in a place that was designated REGISTRATION ONLY. Just to the right of the house was a clubhouse and swimming pool area surrounded by a tall adobe wall. As soon as Joanna stepped out of the car and closed the door, a man appeared on the far side of the fence. He was wear­ing overalls and carrying a paintbrush.

“Just a second,” he called. “I’ll be right there as soon as I finish cleaning my brush. You might want to go up on the porch and wait for me there.”

Nodding, Joanna and Frank did as directed. A screened-in porch covered the front of the house. Outside the screen, swags of wisteria dripped clusters of dead and dying blooms. Inside the screen sat a line of wooden rocking chairs.

“Take a load off,” Frank said, pushing one of the chairs in Joanna’s direction. They both sat and waited. Several minutes passed before the man from the swimming pool reappeared. He was tall and good-looking, tanned and fit. His paint-spattered clothing had been replaced by a monogrammed golf shirt, a pair of well-worn Dockers, and scuffed loafers. He held out a work-callused hand. “The name’s Brent Hardy,” he said.

“Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she responded. “This is Frank Mon­toya, my chief deputy”

“You’ve found her, haven’t you?” Brent said, easing into a rock­ing chair of his own.

“Found who?” Joanna asked.

“Irma,” he said. “Irma Sorenson. Tom and I have been arguing about it ever since Saturday—about whether or not we should call and report her missing. When I saw the cop car pull up, I thought maybe he’d finally come to his senses and called in the cavalry.”

“Who’s Toni?” Frank asked.

“Tom Lowrey’s my partner,” Brent replied. “We run this place together. Irma is one of our guests.”

“And she’s missing?”

“I happen to think she’s missing,” Brent replied. “Tommy’s of the opinion that I’m pushing panic buttons, but then Tom didn’t talk to her on Saturday, and I did. She didn’t sound right on the phone. Something about it was off. Of course, Tom does have a point. Some of our guests are a bit elderly, and a few of them get somewhat confused now and then. Toni thinks Irma called to tell us where she was going, but once she got on the phone, she forgot what she meant to say—that she was going off to visit friends or relatives or something. I say that if she was that confused, maybe she was sick and landed in a hospital. I thought we should report her missing and let the cops find her. Have you?” he asked. “Found her, that is?”

“Tell me about Irma Sorenson,” Joanna said. “When was it you talked to her on the phone?”

“Saturday morning. Sometime around mid-morning, I suppose,” Brent replied. “And her voice sounded funny to me. Shaky. Just not herself. But if you haven’t found her, what’s all this about?”

“We’re actually looking for a woman named Alice Miller,” Joanna said. “She placed a 911 call in Tucson from the same pay phone that was used to call here a few minutes later. We were wondering if there’s a chance Alice Miller and Irma Sorenson are one and the same.”

Brent Hardy shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said.

“When Irma called, what exactly did she say?” Joanna asked.

“That’s the thing. She didn’t say much. She said, ‘Oh, Brent, I’m so glad to hear your voice. I just wanted to tell you . . .’ And then she just stopped. Then, after a moment or two, I heard her say, ‘Oh, never mind.’ Then she mumbled something about a wrong number, but I couldn’t quite make it out. She hung up. That’s all there was to it. As I told you, I tried to convince Tom that it wasn’t right, but he said not to worry. He said she’d turn up sooner or later. She always does.”

“So you haven’t reported her missing.”

“We really don’t have any right,” Brent said. “She isn’t a rela­tive, and this is an RV park, not a jail. Our guests come and go. So many of them have two vehicles—their motor home and then something smaller so they can get around more easily and take short trips without having to move their big rigs. Not that Irma would move hers. Her husband parked it. Once he died, Irma said she wasn’t driving that thing another foot.”

“Her husband died?”

Brent Hardy nodded. “Last December. About three weeks after they arrived. They turned up the last week in November. Originally they planned to stay through the middle of March. But then, when Kurt—that’s Irma’s husband—died of a massive heart attack, Irma asked Tom and me if she could stay on permanently. She said Kurt had sold their farm in South Dakota to buy that ‘damned motor home,’ as she put it. She said he was the one who was supposed to drive it and she didn’t have anyplace else she wanted to go. I guess their son lives somewhere around here, but I’m not sure where.

“This son,” Joanna said. “Have you ever met him? Do you know his name?”

Brent Hardy shook his head. “I’ve never seen him. She talked about going to see him a time or two, but I don’t know it she did or not. As far as I know, he never came here.”

Brent paused and looked from Joanna to Frank. “It’s hot as blue blazes today,” he said. “I need something to drink after working on that pool. Could I get you something?” he asked. “Iced tea, lemonade, sodas?”

“Iced tea would be wonderful,” Joanna said. “No sugar, but lemon if you have it.”

“I’ll have the same,” Frank said.

Brent disappeared into the house. “I think we’ve found our Alice Miller,” Frank said.

Joanna nodded, but before she could say anything more, a late-model Cadillac drove into the yard and stopped next to Frank Montoya’s Crown Victoria. A silver-haired man in his early to mid-sixties stepped out of the car. He hurried up the walkway and onto the porch.

“That’s a police car out there,” he announced. “Is something wrong? Has something happened to Brent?”

“Brent’s fine,” Joanna said, standing up. “He went inside to get something to drink. I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady, and this is my chief deputy, Frank Montoya. We’re here asking some questions about a woman who may be a guest here. Who are you?”

“Tom Lowrey,” the man returned. “My partner and I own this place. What guest?” he added. “And what’s going on?”

Just then Brent came out through the front door carrying a wooden tray on which was a hastily assembled collection of glasses and spoons, a plateful of lemon slices, and a full pitcher of iced tea.

“Tom,” he said upon seeing the new arrival. “I’m glad you’re back. These officers are here asking about Irma. Do you know her son’s name?”

Tom Lowrey shook his head. “All I know is that whenever she talked about him she called him Bobby.”

“Bobby Sorenson?”

“No. I think Sorenson was Irma’s name, but not his,” Tom Lowrey replied. “As I understand it, Bobby was from her first mar­riage. In talking to her, I’ve gathered Kurt and the son didn’t get along very well. In fact, after the funeral, I remember Irma’s feel­ings were hurt because her son didn’t bother to come to the ser­vice.

“That was held here in Bowie?” Joanna asked.

Lowrey shook his head. “Oh, no. The funeral was in South Dakota. I forget the name of the town. We took Irma into Tucson so she could fly home for the funeral. When she came back, we picked her up and brought her home. That’s when she asked if she could stay on permanently. That’s not as uncommon as you might think. The men buy the big RVs so they can see the USA. Then, when they croak out, the women are left with three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of something they’re scared to death to drive, but they can’t get their money back, either. That’s hers over there, by the way,” he added, pointing. “The big bronze-and-black Marathon jobby. I didn’t blame Irma in the least for not wanting to drive it herself, so we told her she could stay.”

“What about the other rigs?” Joanna asked. “Are they occu­pied, too?”

Brent Hardy shook his head. “The owners decided to leave them parked rather than drive them back and forth. Irma’s our only guest in residence at the moment.”

“And you have no idea where her son lives or works?” Both men shook their heads.

“So she has the motor home. Is that her only vehicle?” Joanna asked.

“No, she also drives a Nissan Sentra,” ‘limn said. “Light pink. Irma told us she won it as a prize for selling Mary Kay cosmetics.”

“A pink Nissan Sentra,” Joanna said, writing it down. “With South Dakota plates?”

“No,” Tom answered. He pulled a cigarette pack out of his pocket, extracted one, lit it, and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “Her plates expired sometime in the last month or two. Since she was staying on here, she got Arizona plates.”

“I know exactly when it was,” Brent offered. “April fifteenth, remember? She was bent out of shape because everything came due at the same time. She had to get new plates, get her new driver’s license, and pay off Uncle Sam all on the same day.”

Tom Lowrey laughed. “If I was her, I would have kept the South Dakota plates and license. That way, at least, she wouldn’t have to pay Arizona income tax. But she said, no, she was starting her new life. She wanted all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted. There’s just no fixing some people.”

Frank Montoya got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go check with the Department of Motor Vehicles and see if the son is listed on the licensing records as her next of kin.”

Joanna nodded, and he hurried off the porch. “You said Irma’s husband died?”

“Kurt. It was totally unexpected,” Brent Hardy offered. “The guy looked like he was in fine shape. He wasn’t overweight or any thing like that. He’d been a farmer and had worked hard all his life. One night they were sitting watching TV—they have one of thou little satellite dishes. He fell asleep in front of the set. When the news was over, Irma tried waking hint up and couldn’t. She came running up here, screaming for help. We called the volunteer lire department, and we tried CPR until the EMTs got here, but there was nothing they could do. She wanted them to airlift him into Tucson, but they told her it was no use—that she should save her money.”

“You said he died in December, but you still haven’t seen her son?”

Brent shook his head. “Not much of a son, right? But Tom and I are looking after her. We make sure her water and propane tanks get filled regularly, and we make sure her waste-water tanks get emptied as well.” He grinned. “And then there was the skunk that took up residence under her RV. We had to hire a guy to come in and trap him and take him away. I guess we’re a little more full-service than we planned to be, but Irma’s a nice lady and I don’t mind keeping an eye on her.”

There was a pause in the conversation, and Joanna wasn’t sure what to ask next. “This is a nice place you’ve got here,” she said, changing the subject slightly. “And I’m sure Irma Sorenson appre­ciates your full-service service. How long have you had it, by the way—Quartzite East, that is?”

Brent Hardy shrugged. “The farm itself has been in my family for years. My mother left it to me when she died three years ago. Tom and I sold our place in Santa Cruz and came here to retire, but we didn’t much like being retired, and neither one of us was any good at farming, either. So we decided to do something else. This is the end of our second year. Some of our clients are straight, of course, like Kurt and Irma. But a lot of them aren’t. We keep the welcome mat out for both.”

Joanna nodded. She had already surmised that Brent Hardy and Torn Lowrey were a couple, but she was a little taken aback to find them living and running a business in redneck Bowie. “So how are the locals treating you?” she asked.

“It’s not as though I’m an outlander,” Brent replied with yet another grin. “My mother, Henrietta, taught at Bowie High School for thirty-five years, just as her mother, Geraldine Howard, my grandmother, did before that. Between them, they pretty well fixed it so I can do no wrong. At least, forty years later, I can do no wrong. When I was in high school here, that was another matter. Now I’m back and I’m plugging money into the local economy. That makes me all right. And, since Tommy’s with me, he’s all right, too. Not that people say much of anything about us. It’s pretty much don’t ask/don’t tell, which, for Bowie, is progress.”

A car door slammed and Joanna caught sight of Frank Montoya sprinting back up the walkway. “I’ve got it,” he announced as he stepped onto the porch. “Irma’s son’s name is Whipple, Robert Whipple.”

Joanna frowned. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t that the name of the guard at Pathway to Paradise?”

Frank nodded. “That’s the one.”

“Pathway to Paradise,” Brent said. “Now that you mention it, I do remember Irma saying something about that once, only she just called it Pathway, I think. I got the distinct feeling she thought it was some kind of cult. Is it?”

“Not exactly,” Joanna replied. “But close enough.” She stood up and joined Frank on the steps. “We should be going then,” she added. “Thanks so much for the tea and the information. And if you should happen to hear anything from Irma Sorenson, please contact me or my department right away.” Taking a business card out of her pocket, she handed it over to Brent Hardy.

He looked at it and frowned. “Do you think something’s hap­pened to her or not?” he asked.

That was precisely what Joanna was thinking—that something terrible had happened to Irma Sorenson—but she didn’t want to say so. Not necessarily,” she hedged, but Brent Hardy wasn’t so easily put off.

“When you first got here, you said Irma’s phone call was placed right after a 911 call. What was that all about?”

“There was a call to Tucson’s emergency communications cen­ter about a bloodied vehicle found at Tucson International Airport. That vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car, belonged to a woman named Connie Haskell, who was found murdered in Apache Pass last Friday night.”

“What color Lincoln Town Car?” Tom Lowrey asked suddenly. “And what year?”

“A 1994,” Frank Montoya answered before Joanna had a chance to. “A dark metallic blue.”

“I saw that car,” Tom Lowrey said. “Or at least one like it. I never noticed when it drove up. All I know is there was a dark blue Lincoln Town Car parked right behind Irma’s Nissan early Satur­day morning when I headed into Tucson to get groceries. I didn’t think all that much about it. I saw it and figured Irma must have been entertaining overnight guests. When I came back home around noon, it was gone, of course. So was the Nissan.”

“Are you saying Irma Sorenson is somehow mixed up in this murder thing?” Brent asked. “That’s ridiculous. Preposterous.”

The pieces were tumbling into place in Joanna’s head. It didn’t seem at all preposterous to her. Irma Sorenson was mixed up in it all right, and so was her son. Had Rob Whipple been on guard when Connie Haskell tried to gain admittance to Pathway to Par­adise to see her husband? Had that been Connie’s fatal mistake—speaking to the armed guard stationed in the shack outside the gates of Amos Parker’s treatment center?

“She may be involved,” Joanna said carefully after a momen­tary pause. “It’s also possible that she may be either an unwitting or an unwilling participant. The woman who called herself Alice Miller—the one who made that 91 I call – obviously wanted the car to be frond. From what Mr. Hardy his told ns about his abortive conversation with Irma a few minutes later, I believe she may have been interrupted and wasn’t able to finish saying whatever it was she had intended to say when she called here.”

“So she’s most likely in danger,” Toni Lowrey concluded.

If she’s not already dead, Joanna thought. “Possibly,” Joanna said with a sigh.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Brent asked.

“You’ve already helped more than you know,” Joanna told them. “Whether Connie Haskell’s killer turns out to be Irma’s son or someone else altogether, there’s obviously some connection between your Irma Sorenson and the dead woman’s car. So if you hear anything from her or her son or if she turns up, please call us immediately. I don’t suppose I need to add that these people should be considered dangerous. Whatever you do, make no attempt to detain either of them on your own.”

The two men nodded in unison as Joanna left the porch and followed Frank Montoya out to the car. He headed for the driver’s seat, but Joanna stopped him. “I’ll drive,” she said. “You run the mobile communications equipment.”

For months, and in spite of unstinting derision from his fellow officers, Frank Montoya had tinkered with his Crown Victoria, tak­ing it beyond the normal patrol-car computing technology and adding additional state-of-the-art equipment whenever the oppor­tunity presented itself. The chief deputy’s Civvie now boasted a complete mobile office with the latest in wireless Internet and fax connections powered by the department’s newest and most expensive laptop. And the investment of both time and money had paid off. In the last several months, Frank Montoya’s high-tech wizardry had saved the day on more than one occasion. Around the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department, joking references to Frank’s “elec­tronic baby” had been replaced by grudging admiration.

“To do what?” Frank asked.

Joanna got behind the wheel and held out her hand for Frank to pass the keys. “Do you have a cell phone signal?” she asked.

“I get it. You want me to run Rob Whipple’s name through the NCIC database? What makes you think he’ll be there?”

“It’s a long shot, but Doc Winfield says our guy wasn’t a first-timer. I’m thinking maybe he’s been caught before.” With that, Joanna shifted the Crown Victoria into gear and backed out of the parking place.

“And where are we going in the meantime?” Frank asked as he picked up the laptop and turned it on.

“Paradise,” she returned. “We’re going to pay a call on our friend Mr. Rob Whipple. You did get his driver’s license info, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And his address.”

“That too, but do you think going to see him is such a good idea?” Frank asked. “After all, we don’t really have probable cause to arrest the man, and we sure as hell don’t have a search warrant.”

“We’re not going to arrest him,” Joanna returned. “If he’s our man, he may already have taken off for parts unknown. Or, if he is the killer and he’s still hanging around, showing up for work, and acting as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, he may be thinking he’s getting away clean. All I want to do is shake him up a little. Put the fear of God in him. Give him a shove in the right direction and see if we can get him to give himself away.”

Frank shook his head. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “How about calling Jaime and Ernie and letting them know what’s up? They ought to be in on this, you know, Joanna. You and I shouldn’t be off doing this all by ourselves.”

“Jaime and Ernie are in Tucson,” she reminded him. “You can call them, but we’re here—a good hour and a half earlier than they can be. We’re going anyway.”

“But why the big hurry?”

“Because I happen to agree with Mr. Hardy back there. He thinks Irma Sorenson is in danger, and so do I, and I’d a whole lot rather look stupid than hang around doing nothing but wringing my hands until it’s too late.”

Joanna paused uncertainly at the entrance to Quartzite East. “Which way’s faster?” she asked. “Right or left?”

“From here, I’d say down the New Mexico side,” Frank told her.

Joanna nodded. “Time for a little mutual aid,” she said, switch­ing on the flashing light. “Before you start dialing up that database, you’d better call somebody over in New Mexico and let them know we’re coming through.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

With the Civvie’s warning lights flashing, Joanna tore east on I-10 and across the state line into New Mex­ico. By then Frank had alerted the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department and let them know what was happening. Once off the interstate and onto an almost deserted Highway 80, Joanna shoved the gas pedal down and let the speedometer hover around ninety.

“Damn,” Frank muttered finally.

“What’s the matter?”

“I finally managed to dial into the NCIC database, but now I’ve lost the signal. That’s the problem out here in the sticks. Cell-site overage is still too spotty. I’ll have to try again when we get a stronger signal.”

“You could always radio in and have Dispatch run it,” Joanna suggested.

Frank was quiet for a moment but reluctant to give up. “I’ll wait for a better signal,” he said.

Joanna understood completely. He didn’t want someone else to run the computer check any more than she had been eager to call Ernie and Jaime in to contact Rob Whipple.

“What’s the plan in the meantime?” Frank asked.

“We’ll go straight to Pathway,” Joanna said. “Whipple may be there, but I’m guessing he’s taken off. Mostly, I want to talk to Caroline and Amos Parker. I want to know how long Rob Whip­ple has worked for them and where he came from before that. What’s his address again?”

Frank consulted his notes. “Box 78, San Simon/Paradise Star Route, Paradise, Arizona.”

“Get on the radio to Dispatch about that, then. Have them give us an exact location on that address, complete with detailed direc­tions,” Joanna said. “When it’s time to go there, I don’t want to be fumbling around in the dark getting lost. And while you’re at it,” she added, “find out where Ernie and Jaime are. If they’re not on their way, see if there are any other available units who could back us up on this. Better safe than sorry.”

Nodding, Frank picked up the radio microphone. Meanwhile, Joanna drove on with the heightened sense of awareness left behind by all the extra energy flooding her body. The arch of sky overhead took on a deeper shade of blue while the steep green flanks of the Chiricahua Mountains stood out against the sky with a three-dimensional clarity that mimicked one of her old View Master photos.

In her time as sheriff, Joanna Brady had seen enough action to understand what was happening to both her body and her senses. They were gearing up for whatever was to collie, switching into a state of preparedness a sustained red alert. Although Joanna welcomed the sudden burst of energy, she also recognized how long periods of that kind of tension could sometimes backfire. That was how endorphin-fueled hot pursuits sometimes exploded into inci­dents of police violence. In hopes of holding herself in check, she deliberately slowed the Civvie and switched off both siren and lights.

On the passenger side of the car, Frank had relented, swallowed his high-tech pride, and asked Dispatch to check on Rob Whipple’s criminal past. Now he was busily jotting down directions to Whipple’s house located off San Simon/Paradise Road. When the Crown Victoria slowed for no apparent reason, he glanced in Joanna’s direction and nodded approvingly.

“Ask Larry what else is happening,” Joanna said.

Frank relayed the question. “There’s been another car jacking,” Larry Kendrick answered over the radio speaker.

“Where?” Joanna demanded. This time no relay was necessary because she had wrenched the radio microphone out of Frank’s hand and was using it herself.

“The rest area in Texas Canyon.”

“When did it happen, and was anybody hurt?”

“About forty minutes ago,” Kendrick replied. “No one was hurt, but it sounds like the perpetrator was the same guy who did the old guy from El Paso last week. This time it was a couple from Alabama. The husband went in to use the rest room, leaving his wife sitting in the car with both the motor and the air-conditioning running. A guy came running up, opened the door, pulled her out, and threw her on the ground. Then he jumped in and drove off. She had a couple of bruises and abrasions, but that’s about it. Her husband’s upset about losing the car. She’s upset about losing her purse.

“Okay,” Joanna said, shaking her head. “‘That’s it. I’m tired of nickel-and-diming around with this thing. We’re going to put a stop it once and for all! Get hold of Debbie Howell and one of her younger deputies. I know: team her up with Terry Gre­govich and Spike. Have them dress in plain clothes and drive one of the late-model cars we have locked up in the impound yard. I want them to cruise the freeway and stop at every damn rest area for the remainder of their shifts today. In fact, I want them to do the same thing every day until I tell them otherwise. And if they feel like working longer than that, tell them overtime is authorized—as much as they can handle. Have Debbie stay in the car with Spike while Terry uses the phone or the rest room or whatever. If somebody tries to pull a carjacking then, he’ll be in for a rude surprise when a trained police dog comes roaring out of the backseat.”

By then the Civvie had reached the turnoff to Portal. Needing both hands to keep the speeding Crown Victoria on the washboarded surface of the road, Joanna relinquished the microphone to Frank.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said mildly, even though Joanna knew that when it came time to cut checks for the next pay period, Frank would be griping about having to pay the extra overtime. “You still haven’t heard anything from Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal?” Frank asked into the radio.

“I have now. They’re just leaving Tucson on their way to Sierra Vista,” Larry Kendrick replied. “Anything you want me to tell them, or would you like me to patch you through?”

Frank glanced questioningly in Joanna’s direction. “Tell them to go on to Sierra Vista as planned,” Joanna said. “See who else can backup for us.”

After doing so, Frank put the mike back into its clip. “It could be days, you know,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

If the carjacker got away with a vehicle today, it could he days before he comes back looking for another one. How much over time are you planning on paying?”

“As much as it takes,” Joanna answered grimly.

It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, but as they drove toward Portal, the sun slid behind the mountains, sending the eastern side of the Chiricahuas into a shadowy, premature version of dusk. Fifteen minutes later Joanna drove up to the guard shack at Pathway to Paradise. With her shoulders aching from suppressed tension, she waited to see if Rob Whipple would emerge front the shack. She was disappointed when a young, buck-toothed man in his early thirties approached the Crown Victoria instead. His nane tag identified him as Andrew Simms and his cheerful, easygoing manner made him far less menacing than Rob Whipple had been.

“May I help you?” he asked, leaning down to peer in the window.

“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said, presenting her ID. “We’re here to see Caroline Parker.”

“If I could tell her what this is concerning—” Simms began spouting the party line, but Joanna cut him off.

“It concerns urgent police business,” she told him. “I’m not at liberty to disclose anything more.”

She expected an additional argument. Instead, without further objection, Andrew Simms retreated to the guard shack and returned with both the sign-in clipboard and a visitor’s pass for the windshield.

“Just fill this out, if you will,” he said. “Do you know the way, or do you want me to have someone come down to guide you up?”

“We know the way,” Joanna said.

A few minutes later, when the Crown Victoria entered the Pathway to Paradise compound, Caroline Parker was waiting tier them on the front veranda.

“What is it now?” she demanded with a frown. “Ron Haskell’s gone, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

“We want to talk to you about Rob Whipple,” Joanna said.

Caroline’s face grew wary. “What about him?” she asked. “When is he due to work again?” Joanna asked.

Caroline glanced at her watch. “He was supposed to work today, but he traded with Andrew Simms. They’re not permitted to do that without getting prior approval, but since the shift was covered ...”

Joanna felt a hard knot of concern form in her gut. She was right. Rob Whipple had missed work. That meant there was a strong likelihood that he had also fled Joanna’s jurisdiction. “Do you know when he made those arrangements, the ones to cover his shift?” she asked.

Caroline Parker shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have no idea.”

“How long has Rob Whipple worked for you?” Joanna asked.

Caroline shrugged. “A long time. Five or six years. He came as a client to begin with. After he finished his course of treatment, he ended up hiring on to work here. He did grounds maintenance for a year or two. After that he transferred to security. He’s been doing that ever since.”

“What was he treated for?”

Caroline Parker smiled and shook her head. “Come on, Sheriff Brady. Don’t be naive. You know I won’t tell you that.”

“What about his mother?” Joanna asked. “Did you ever meet her? Her name’s Irma Sorenson.”

“Irma, oh yes,” Caroline Parker replied. “I believe I did meet her once, only her name was still Whipple back then. She came to Rob’s family-week program. Unless I’m mistaken, she’s also the one who paid for him to come here in the first place—as a client, that is.”

“You haven’t seen Irma Sorenson since then?”

“No.”

“How many patients do you have here at Pathway to Paradise, Ms. Parker?”

“Clients, not patients,” she corrected. “And not more than thirty at a time. That’s when we’re running at full capacity.”

“Generally speaking, how long do they stay?” Joanna asked.

“Two months. Sometimes longer than that, depending on what’s needed and the kind of progress they’re making.”

“That means that, in the course of a year, you see several hundred different ‘clients’ ?”

“Yes. That’s true.”

“You said Rob Whipple was a patient—excuse me—a ‘client’ here five or six years ago, but you still remember exactly who paid for his course of treatment. Do you remember the details of every client’s bill-paying arrangements so clearly?”

Caroline Parker looked uncomfortable. “Well, no,” she admitted. “I don’t suppose I do.”

“And yet, after all this time, you still remember clearly that Irma Sorenson paid for Rob Whipple’s stay here. Why is that, Ms. Parker?”

“The circumstances were unusual, but I’m not at liberty to dis­close what they were since that would be a breach of Mr. Whipple’s presumption of confidentiality.”

“What would you say it I told you that someone’s life was at stake?” Joanna asked.

“My answer would still have to be the same, Sheriff Brady,” Caroline answered primly. “We don’t do situational ethics here at Pathway to Paradise. Ethics are ethics.”

“And murder is murder,” Joanna returned. She swung back to her chief deputy. “Come on, Frank. Let’s go.”

But Caroline stopped them. “Wait a minute. Are you implying that Rob Whipple had something to do with the murder of Ron Haskell’s wife?”

“I didn’t say that; you did,” Joanna told her. “How come?”

Realizing her error, Caroline Parker shook her head. “I can’t say,” she declared.

“But I can guess,” Joanna said. “What was the sickness that infected Rob Whipple’s soul, Ms. Parker, the one he came here to be cured of? It wasn’t day-trading or lotto fever, was it. I’d guess he liked to hurt women—hurt them first and kill them later. You and your father may be under the happy delusion that your ethical counseling program cured the man of his ailment, but I’m here to tell you it didn’t. I think Rob Whipple has just suffered a major relapse.”

The sharp corners of Caroline’s angular face seemed to blur and soften. She stepped over to the Crown Victoria and leaned against the roof, burying her head in her arms. “Dad fired him,” she said at last in a subdued voice, one that had had all the authority wrung out of it.

“When?” Joanna demanded.

“Last night. Right after you left here, Dad called Rob into the office. He asked Rob point-blank if he was involved in what had happened to Ron Haskell’s wife. Rob denied it, of course, and my father called him a liar. Dad may be blind, but he can see through people when they’re not telling him the truth. And so Dad fired him, just like that. He had me take away Rob’s name badge and weapon—”

“Those didn’t belong to him?”

“No. They’re ours—company-owned, that is. Alter that, Dad sent him packing; told Rob to go away and never come back.”

“Why?” Joanna asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did your father want Rob Whipple to leave?”

“We run a very profitable and well-thought-of program hew, Sheriff Brady,” Caroline said proudly. “When people come here, they’re looking for results. They don’t want to know about our failures.”

“You told us earlier that Rob had gotten Andrew Simms to cover his shift. Now you’re saying your father fired him. Why the discrepancy, and which is the truth? I thought you people didn’t deal in situational ethics.”

Caroline shrugged. “Father wanted to buy some time. He said sending Rob packing would give things a chance to simmer down a little.”

“In other words, to keep from damaging Pathway to Paradise’s reputation and cure rate, you and your father would stoop to any thing, including knowingly turning a murderer loose on the world. Why didn’t you call and tell us what was going on?” Joanna demanded.

“We couldn’t,” Caroline wailed tearfully. “You’ve got to under stand. If we had called, it would have been a breach of confidentiality.”

“You can call it whatever you like,” Joanna hissed back at her. “But once we find out Rob Whipple has killed again, I hope your conscience is clear, Ms. Parker. I hope you and your father will both be able to sleep at night.”

“You just said ‘again,’“ Caroline whispered. “Does that mean someone else is dead, someone other than Ron Haskell’s wife?”

“That’s right,” Joanna said. “Remember Irma Whipple Sorenson, the lady who wrote that check to pay for her son’s treatment? She’s missing and has been ever since Saturday morning, moments after she made an anonymous call, nervously reporting the where­abouts of Connie Haskell’s bloodied vehicle. I’m assuming that she’s already dead, but you and your father had better hope like hell that she died prior to last night and not after, because if Irma was killed after you and your father sent Rob Whipple merrily on his way without calling us, I’m going to see about charging the two of you with being accessories.”

“Accessories?” Caroline Parker repeated weakly. “Us? You can’t do that, can you?”

“I can sure as hell try,” Joanna said grimly.

“But you have no idea what that kind of trauma would do to my father. It would kill him. It would be the end of everything he’s done; everything he’s worked for—everything we’ve both worked for.”

“That may well be,” Joanna returned. “But at least you’ll both be alive, which is more than can be said for Connie Haskell and most likely for Irma Sorenson as well. And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t lose Rob Whipple’s badge or weapon, because if we end up needing them, they’d better be here! Come on, Frank. We’re done.”

“You can’t do that, can you?” Frank asked once they were out of earshot inside the Civvie and buckling their seat belts. Once again, Joanna was driving.

“Do what?”

“Charge Amos and Caroline Parker with being accessories.”

“No, probably not,” Joanna conceded. “But it did my heart a world of good to tell her that we could. I loved seeing that look of sheer astonishment wash across her face, and I’m proud to be the one who put it there. Caroline Parker lied to us. Frank, and I lied right back. Maybe that makes us even.”

“Maybe so,” Frank agreed. “Where to now?”

“Rob Whipple’s house, but I’m guessing he’s not there. Notify Dispatch about where we’re going and find out where those damned backup units are. Then call the DMV and get whatever information they may have on all vehicles belonging to either Rob Whipple or Irma Sorenson. That way, when it comes time to post the APBs, we’ll have the information we need to do it.”

Before Frank could thumb the radio’s talk button, Larry Kendrick’s voice boomed through the car. “We got a hit on Rob Whipple,” he said. “I tried faxing it to you, but it didn’t go through.”

“We’re out of range,” Frank told him. “What does it say?”

“Robert Henry Whipple served twenty-one years in prison iii South Dakota. He was convicted of two counts of rape and one count of attempted murder. He was paroled in 1994. One of the conditions of his release was that he seek treatment as a convicted sex offender.”

“So much for treatment,” Joanna muttered.

While Frank handled the radio, Joanna dealt with the road. From the highway to Portal the washboarded surface had been had enough, but the five miles from Portal to Paradise were even worse. Several times the winding dirt track climbed in and out of the same dry wash and around bluffs of cliff that made for treacherous blind curves on a road that was little more than one car width wide. At last a brown-and-gold Forest Service sign announced that they had arrived in Paradise. Despite the sign, there were no houses or peo­ple in sight, only a long line of twenty or so mailboxes that stood at attention on the far side of the road. It was just after five o’clock in the afternoon, but the false dusk created by being in the shadow of the mountains made it difficult to read the numbers on the boxes. Naturally, Box 78 was the last one in the row.

From that T-shaped intersection, San Simon/Paradise Road veered off to the north. Following the directions Frank had obtained from Dispatch, Joanna followed a new stretch of road that was only slightly worse than the previous one had been. Both of them made her long to be driving her sturdy Blazer rather than picking her way around rocks and boulders in Frank’s relatively low-slung Civvie.

“There,” Frank said, pointing. “Turn left here. From what I was told, the house is just beyond that ridgeline.”

“How about if we stop here and get out and walk?” Joanna sug­gested. “I’d rather our arrival be a surprise. If we drive, we’ll show up trailing a cloud of dust. He’ll see us coming a mile away.”

“It’s okay by me,” Frank said. “But before we leave the car, let me radio our position one last time.”

Joanna drove up the rutted two-track road until she reached a point where a grove of trees crowded in on the roadway. By park­ing in that natural bottleneck, she effectively barricaded the road, making it impossible for anyone else to drive around. Setting the parking brake, Joanna stepped out of the car and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She wasn’t at all surprised to find that once again there was no signal. For the third time in as many hours, the high-tech world had let her department down. Sighing with disgust, she turned off the useless device and shoved it back in her pocket.

When Frank finished with the radio and got out, Joanna locked the doors and passed him the keys. “From here on out, you’re driv­ing,” she said.

“The DMV says Whipple drives a ‘97 Dodge Ram pickup,” Frank told her. “I’ve got the plate number. I told Larry to go ahead and post that APB.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “What about your phone?”

Frank checked his. “Still no signal,” he said.

“I know that,” Joanna told him. “All the same, turn the useless thing off. We may not be able to talk on them, but you can bet they’ll still be able to ring just when we don’t want them to.”

Frank complied, and the two of them set off up the road. As she walked, Joanna was grateful that on this particular day she had cho­sen to wear a uniform complete with khaki trousers and lace-up shoes rather than office attire, which most likely would have included heels and hose, neither of which would have cut it for this rocky, weed-lined hike.

It turned out that Rob Whipple’s house was set much farther back from San Simon/Paradise Road than Dispatch had led them to believe. Joanna and Frank hiked the better part of a mile, cross­ing two ridges rather than one. Between the two ridges lay another sandy creek bed. This one showed signs of numerous tire tracks, but there was no way to tell which ones were coming and which were going. Signaling silently for Frank to follow, Joanna skirted the tracks, leaving them intact for later in case the need should arise to take plaster casts.

At last, panting and sweating, they topped the second steep rise and saw a house—little more than a shabby cabin—nestled in a small clearing below. No vehicle was parked outside, but for safety’s sake they took cover and watched silently for several min­utes before moving forward again. There was no sign of life. Even so, when Joanna set out again, she did so by dodging carefully from tree to tree.

Moving and consciously maintaining cover, Joanna was all too aware of the danger and of their vulnerability. Her breathing quickened and she heard the dull thud of her own heart pulsing in her ears. Once again she found herself utterly aware of everything around her—a dove cooing in the trees just ahead of her; the abra­sive cawing of a crow; the white-noise buzz of cicadas that was noticeable only when, for some reason unknown to her, the racket stopped and then resumed once more. A small puff of cooling breeze caressed the overheated skin of her face.

At any moment, an armed and dangerous Rob Whipple could have materialized out of the house or from between trees in front of her. Given that, it was with some surprise Joanna realized that although she was being careful, she wasn’t necessarily scared. She was doing her job—what she was supposed to do; what others expected of her and what she expected of herself. It was during that silent and stealthy approach to Rob Whipple’s isolated cabin that she realized, for the first time, that she was doing the one thing she had always been meant to do.

Struck by that electrifying thought, Joanna sidled up to the gnarled trunk of a scrub oak and leaned her full weight against it. Standing in the deepening twilight, she suddenly felt closer to both her dead husband and her dead father than she had at any time since their deaths. It was as if she were standing in the presence of both Sheriff D. H. Lathrop and Deputy Andrew Roy Brady and hearing once again what both of them had tried to tell her from time to time—how once they set out on the path to “serve and protect,” it had been impossible for either one of them to do any-thing else.

Joanna’s father had spoken time and again about the importance of “making a contribution” and “doing one’s part.” Andy had insisted that he was in law enforcement because he wanted to make the world “a better place for Jenny to live.” And now Joanna Brady was amazed to realize that she had been bitten by the same idealistic bug. She, too, wanted to make a contribution. There were far too many Connie Haskells and Irma Sorensons who needed to he saved from the many Rob Whipples that were loose in the world.

Still leaning against the tree, Joanna wiped away a trickle of tears that suddenly blurred her vision. She had never been someone who believed in ghosts, yet she sensed ghosts were with her right then, watching and listening.

All right, you two, she vowed silently to her father and Andy. I’ll run for reelection. In the meantime, let me do my job.

Ahead of her and off to the left, Frank Montoya was waving frantically, trying to attract her attention. He had moved forward far enough that he was almost at the edge of the clearing. Now, with broad gestures, he pantomimed that he would creep around to the side of the cabin and try looking in through the window. Nodding for him to go ahead, Joanna looked around her own posit ion while she waited.

She and Frank had moved forward on either side of the road. Eventually he sidled up to the cabin and peered inside. Then he turned back to her. “It’s okay,” he called. “There’s nobody here.”

Looking down, Joanna noticed a faint pair of tire tracks branching from the road and winding off through the trees, leaving behind only the slightest trace in the dense ground-covering layer of dead oak leaves. Curious, she traced the dusty trail of crushed leaves. The snapping and crackling underfoot told her she was leaving a trail of her own. In the deepening twilight she threaded her way between trees and bushes and around freestanding chunks of boulders the size of dishwashers. A quarter of a mile from where she had started, the tracks stopped abruptly at the edge of a rock bound cliff

For a moment, Joanna thought the vehicle had simply reversed directions and returned the way it had come. But then, studying the terrain on her hands and knees, Joanna realized the vehicle had gone over the edge and down the other side. Easing her way to the precipice, Joanna peered down. Immediately she was aware of two things: the form of a vehicle, lying with its still wheels pointed sky-ward, and, rising from the crippled wreck, like a plume of evil smoke, the unmistakable odor of carrion.

“Damn!” Joanna exclaimed. With a heavy heart, she drew back and out of the awful stench which, caught in an updraft, eddied away from the cliff. “Poor Irma,” she whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.”

It was then she heard Frank calling, “Joanna, where did you go? I can’t see you.”

“I’m over here,” she called back. “I found a car. And you’re wrong, Frank. There is somebody here—somebody who’s dead.”

Frank trotted up a few moments later. For the better part of a minute the two of them stood on the edge of the cliff trying to ascertain the best way to climb down. Joanna found herself feeling sick to her stomach.

“I don’t want to look,” she said. “Seeing Irma’s body is likely to make me puke.”

“I’ll go then,” Frank offered. “You stay here.”

But as soon as Joanna said the words, she realized they were wrong—a cop-out. It was her job to look; her sworn duty. “We’ll both go,” she said.

Twenty minutes later Joanna Brady and Frank Montoya finally managed to reach the crumpled remains of Irma Sorenson’s pale pink Nissan. By then it was mostly dark. When they were finally able to approach the driver’s side together, Joanna found it neces­sary to switch on the tiny flashlight she kept clipped to her key ring. Steeling herself for what lay inside, Joanna was astonished to see that the driver’s seat was empty. The passenger seat wasn’t. There, a lone figure, still secured by a seat belt, dangled upside down.

When the beam of light from her flashlight finally settled on the figure’s face, Joanna could barely believe her eyes. “I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed. “I don’t believe it!”

“What?” Frank demanded.

“See for yourself,” she said.

Joanna handed him the flashlight and then let her body slip down beside the crumpled doorframe. The person hanging in Irma Sorenson’s Nissan wasn’t Irma at all. It was her son, Rob Whipple, with what looked like a single bullet hole marring the middle of his forehead.

“How the hell do you think that happened?” Frank Montoya asked.

“The usual way,” Joanna returned. “We’d better go back to the car and change that APB. So much for saving the Irma Sorensons of the world.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By the time Joanna and Frank had climbed back up the cliff and hiked back to the Civvie, they were both beat. Fortunately, by then their requested backup had arrived in the person of Deputy Dave Hollicker. While Frank set about making the necessary notifications, Joanna brought Hollicker up to speed on what had happened.

“I want you to go up to the wash and make plaster casts of the tire tracks you’ll find there,” she told him. “If nothing else, the tracks can tell us which was the last vehicle to drive out this way. The sooner the casting is done, the sooner we’ll be able to get other vehicles in and out to the crime scene. If we’re all on foot, it’s a hell of a long walk.”

Hollicker retrieved his casting kit and set off for the wash just as Frank finished up on the radio. “I talked to Doc Winfield,” he said. “He’s on his way. So are Jaime and Ernie. And I revised the APB. I gave them Irma Sorenson’s name and driver’s license num­ber so they can post her picture. I also said she could be armed and dangerous.”

“Good,” Joanna returned.

Frank went to the trunk and returned with two bottles of water, one of which he handed over to Joanna. “Better have some of this,” he said.

The water was warm, but as soon as Joanna tasted it, she realized how dehydrated she was. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

They both drank silently until the bottles were empty. “Do you really think Irma did it?” Frank asked at last. “Rob Whipple was her son, for God’s sake.”

Joanna nodded.

“How come?”

“How come she did it or how come I think so?”

“Both,” Frank replied.

“The reason Caroline Parker talked to us as much as she did is that both she and her father are grappling with the fact that their supposedly ‘cured’ killer has killed again. I’m guessing Irma reached the same conclusion. She must feel responsible for what her son did. I think I’d feel the same way if I were in her position.”

“Enough to kill your own child?” Frank returned.

Joanna sighed. “Probably not,” she said.

“But aren’t we jumping to conclusions here? We don’t know Irma Sorenson has done anything wrong. For that matter, who’s to say that Ron Haskell didn’t set the whole thing up? Maybe he hired Whipple to unload Connie for him. We still don’t know for sure that Ron Haskell’s in the clear. Maybe he stopped by and took care of Rob Whipple before he came into town to deliver those DNA samples. If there was a conspiracy between them, it’ll be a whole lot more difficult to prove with Whipple out oldie way.”

“I still think Ron Haskell had nothing to do with it,” Joanna insisted.

“Why?” Frank countered. “Because he sounded innocent when we talked to him? He sure as hell isn’t innocent of relieving his wife of her money.”

“That may be true,” Joanna agreed. “But that doesn’t make him a killer.”

“And as for Irma, just because she may have discovered her son had killed again doesn’t mean she’d put him out of his misery like a rabid dog. Not only that, her driver’s license says she’s seventy four years old. How the hell would she get the drop on him?”

“If we ever catch up with her, I guess we’ll have to ask her.”

“But I still can’t understand it,” Frank said. “How does a parent do something like that to her own child?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said wearily. “Maybe it was self-defense. Or maybe she shot her rabid-dog son to save others.”

“Sheriff Brady?” Tica Romero’s radio voice reached them through the open window.

Finishing the last of her water, Joanna got into the Civvie and unclipped the mike. “Sheriff Brady here,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m in for Larry now. Doe Winfield says to ask you if you ever had a chance to speak to your mother.”

Joanna sighed. Wasn’t it enough that she was out in the desert climbing up and down cliffs and finding dead bodies? Expecting her to find time to be a dutiful daughter was asking too much.

“Tell him no,” Joanna said. “I tried calling her, but she wasn’t home.”

“He says she still isn’t home,” Tica relayed a moment later. “He says he’s really worried about her.”

“Tell him I’m worried too, but I’m on the far side of the Chiricahuas at a crime scene right now, and there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it at the moment. But Tica, once you let him know, you might also radio the cars that are out on patrol right now and ask the deputies to keep an eye out for my mother. Eleanor Lathrop Winfield drives a light blue 1999 Buick sedan. I can’t remember the license plate number right off, and don’t ask Doc Winfield for it. Get it from the DMV and put it out to everyone who’s cur­rently on duty”

“Will do, Sheriff Brady.”

“And when you finish with that, would you mind calling out to the ranch and letting Butch know that I won’t be home until later.”

“Sure thing.”

Shaking her head, Joanna went back to where Frank was stand­ing with the heel of one boot hooked on the Civvie’s rear bumper. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“My mother,” Joanna grumbled. “She and Doc Winfield must be having some kind of row. George called me this afternoon and wanted me to talk to her. I tried calling, but she wasn’t home. According to George, Eleanor was upset last night when she heard about what had happened to Dora Matthews. And that’s under­standable. I’m upset about what happened to Dora, too, but my best guess is that Eleanor is pissed at George about something else altogether. She’s decided to teach him a lesson, so she left the house early this morning without making his coffee, and she hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

“Do you think something’s happened to her?” Frank asked.

Joanna shook her head. “It’s not the first time Eleanor’s pulled a stunt like this. She did it to my dad on occasion. It used to drive him nuts. What drives me crazy is the fact that I have to be caught in the middle of it.”

“You’re the daughter,” Frank pointed out. “Sons get off light in that department. Daughters don’t. II you don’t believe MC, ask my sisters.”

The better part of an hour passed before the first additional vehicles arrived. George Winfield was still enough of a newcomer to Cochise County that he had caravanned out to Paradise behind a van driven by one of the crime scene techs.

“So where’s the body?” he demanded as soon as he caught sight of Joanna.

She pointed. “About a mile and a little bit that way and at the bottom of a cliff.”

“Who’s driving?” George asked.

“Nobody’s driving.”

“You mean we have to walk?”

Joanna nodded. “Until Deputy Hollicker has finished taking plaster casts, nobody’s driving in or out.”

“Great,” George Winfield said with a sigh. “When I signed on to be medical examiner around here, I never realized how many bodies we’d have to haul in from out in the boonies. And I sure didn’t understand about the hours. Couldn’t you get your murderers to do their deeds in places that are a little more on the beaten path, Joanna? And it would be nice if it wasn’t almost always the middle of the night when it happens. How about instituting a rule that says all bodies are to be found and investigated during normal office hours only?”

Despite her own weariness, Joanna couldn’t restrain a chuckle. “Stop griping, George,” she said. “Come on. I’ll show you where the body is. Frank, didn’t I see Dave Hollicker again just a minute ago?”

“Yeah. He carne back for more plaster.”

“As long as he’s here, ask him to help carry the Doc’s equipment.”

Using a battery-powered lanterns to light the way, Joanna retraced the path she and Frank had followed earlier. George Winfield trudged along behind her. He was a good thirty years older than Joanna, but he had no apparent difficulty in keeping up with her.

“I can’t imagine what’s happened to your mother,” he groused as they walked. “Maybe she’s been in an accident.”

Joanna chose not to go into the details of Eleanor and D. H. Lathrop’s history of marital discord. “I’m sure Mother’s fine, George,” Joanna said reassuringly. “Did the two of you have a fight?”

“Not really.”

“Look, George,” she said. “If anyone’s an expert on fighting with my mother, I’m it. How not really did you fight?”

“I told her about Dora last night after I came home. I do that—talk to her about my cases. Most of the time it’s okay, but this time, she just went off the deep end about it. I’ve never seen her upset like that before, Joanna. Your mother isn’t what I’d call an hysteri­cal woman, but she was hysterical last night. I did my best to calm her down. I told her she was overreacting, that she was being far more emotional than the situation warranted. I told her she shouldn’t blame herself for what happened. That there was no way anyone could possibly think that Dora Matthews’s death was her fault. That’s when she really lit into me, Joanna. She told me I didn’t understand anything about her. That’s when she took that sleeping pill and went to bed, without even staying up to watch the news, which she usually does every night.

“Maybe Ellie was right,” George Winfield added miserably. “Maybe I don’t understand her.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Ellie was never particularly good friends with Dora’s grandmother, was she?”

“No,” Joanna answered. “She wasn’t.”

“When she found Dora was at your place,” George continued, “she was just livid about that—about the camp-out and the cigarettes and the girls’ being sent home. It sounded to me as though she thought everything that had happened out there was Dora’s fault. So why should she fall apart the moment she hears Dora Matthews is dead? It’s more than I can understand.

“But still, that’s no excuse for her disappearing without saying a word to me about where she was going or when she’d he back. This morning I checked the house to see if she had left me a note. She hadn’t. All day long, I kept calling in for messages. She never called. The whole thing beats me all to hell. And now, just when she might finally show up at home, where am I? Out here hiking to God knows where trying to track down another body. So if Ellie finally gets over being mad at me because of the business with Dora Matthews, by the time I get home she’ll be mad all over again because I’ve been out late one more time.”

He stopped walking and talking both. When Joanna turned to look at him, he shook his head. “Oh, hell, Joanna. I’m just ram­bling on and on. Why don’t you tell me to shut up?”

“Because I thought you needed to talk.”

He sighed. “I suppose you’re right there. But tell me about this case now, and how much farther do we have to walk?”

They had already passed the clearing containing the deserted house. “It’s only another quarter of a mile or so, but then we have to climb down a cliff. The car’s at the bottom of that.”

“And what’s this all about?”

“The victim is a guy named Rob Whipple. Just this afternoon, he_ turned into a suspect in the Connie Haskell homicide. Frank and I were on our way to talk to him when we found him dead.”

“Any idea who killed him?”

“It was probably his mother,” Joanna said. “A woman by the name of Irma Sorenson.”

“I was told this was a car accident. Something about it going over a cliff.”

“The victim is in a car that went over a cliff, but since there’s a bullet in the middle of his forehead, and since he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, I have a feeling he was dead long before the car went over the edge.”

“And you think his own mother did it?” George asked wonder­ingly. “I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand women. But at least I’m still alive—so far.”

“Eleanor’s not going to kill you, George,” Joanna told him. “Even if she’s mad, she’ll get over it.”

George Winfield shook his head. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with her.”

“No, but I’ve done it, and I’ve got the T-shirt!”

About then they reached the edge of the cliff. By the time Dave Hollicker and the two crime scene techs had strung a rope and helped lower George Winfield and his equipment to the ground, Jaime Carbajal and Ernie Carpenter had both shown up, accompa­nied by Frank Montoya.

Ernie peered down over the edge of the cliff and shook his head. “Looks like it’s time for more of Jaime’s crime scene pho­tography. Doc Winfield may have gotten down there, but I’m not climbing down that cliff on a bet.”

“Give me the camera then,” Jaime said. As he headed for the rope, Joanna turned to Ernie.

“Did you guys do any good today?” she asked.

“That depends on what you call good,” he groused. “We talked to Buddy Morns, the kid in Sierra Vista who supposedly saw Dora Matthews get into a car sometime Sunday night. Buddy’s fifteen years old. When I was his age, I knew every make and model of car on the road. When it comes to cars, Buddy Morris is practically useless. He doesn’t know shit from Shinola, if you’ll pardon the expression. He thinks maybe it was a white Lexus he saw, but he’s not sure. Not only that, he couldn’t tell us for certain if it was Dora Matthews he saw getting into the car because he doesn’t really know her, which is hardly surprising since she’d only been in the neighborhood for a little over twenty-four hours.

“Still, Buddy tells us, he thinks the girl was one of the kids front the foster home because they’ve got a special window at the back of the house that they use to sneak in and out of the house at all hours of the night. Why people volunteer to become foster parents in the first place is more than I can understand.

“Anyway, Buddy claims he saw a girl getting in the unknown car with a driver he couldn’t see and the two of them took off in a spray of gravel.”

“What about Walgreens?” Joanna asked.

“Didn’t have time,” Ernie said. “We got the call and carne straight here, but we do have the phone company checking the line at the foster parents’ house to see if Dora may have made any unauthorized phone calls from there. I’ve also asked for them to check the Bernards’ number for any calls going from there to Sierra Vista. Without Frank the phone wizard doing the checking, we probably won’t have results until tomorrow morning, hopefully before our appointment with Christopher Bernard and his Father and his lawyer, and not after. Which reminds me of something else. We were supposed to see them at ten A.M. but there’s a conflict with the doctor. The appointment has now been moved to two o’clock in the afternoon. So that’s all I know, and Frank’s pretty much told me what’s going on here, so why don’t I shut up, go back to the cabin, and get to work.”

With that, Ernie turned and stomped away from them, leaving Joanna and Frank staring at one another in astonishment. “I think that’s more words than I’ve ever heard Ernie Carpenter string together at one time,” Joanna said.

“I didn’t even know he knew that many words,” Frank Montoya agreed.

It was the beginning of another long night. As people showed up and began doing the jobs they were trained to do, it was clear there was little reason for Joanna and Frank to hang around. At nine they finally left the scene for the long drive back to Bisbee.

“I can take you straight home if you want,” Frank offered. “It’s on the way.”

“No, thanks,” Joanna told him. “I’d rather go by the depart­ment and pick up my car.”

“Suit yourself,” Frank said.

When they reached the department, Joanna knew that if she even set foot inside her office she’d be trapped, and it would be hours before she got back out again. Instead, she simply exited Frank Montoya’s Civvie and climbed into her own.

As Joanna drove from the justice center toward High Lonesome Ranch, she felt a sense of letdown and disappointment wash over her, draining the last of the waning energy out of her body. In a matter of days, three different homicides had occurred within the boundaries of Cochise County.

Three! Joanna lectured herself. Connie Haskell, Dora Matthews, and now Rob Whipple. If my department is supposed to be serving and protecting, we’re not doing a very good job of it.

She turned off onto High Lonesome Road and drove through the series of three steep arroyos that made the approach to the ranch feel more like a roller coaster than a road. As she crested the final rise, the Civvie’s headlights bounced oil the headlights of a car parked next to Joanna’s mailbox.

A sudden bolt of fear set Joanna’s fingertips tingling and her heart racing. This was the same deserted stretch of roadway where a drug dealer’s hit man had lain in wait to slaughter Andy. Easing her Glock out of its holster, Joanna laid it on the seat beside her. Then, knowing that whoever was waiting in the darkness would be blinded by the sudden light, she switched on her high beams and roared forward. Only as she drew even with the parked car did she recognize her mother’s Buick and slam on the brakes. The speeding Crown Victoria fishtailed back and forth on the rough gravel surface before she finally managed to wrestle it under control and bring it to a stop fifty feet beyond where she had intended.

With her hands shaking and her heart still pounding in her throat, Joanna threw the car into reverse. By the time she reached the mailbox, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield was already out of her car and standing beside the roadway.

“Why on earth were you driving so fast?” she demanded when Joanna rolled down her window. “Do you always speed that way when you’re coming home late at night? You could have been killed, you know “

Having Eleanor go on the attack was so amazingly normal—so incredibly usual—that it was all Joanna could do to keep From laughing aloud.

“What are you doing here, Mother?” she asked.

“Waiting for you. What do you think? And why are you so late?”

“I just left George at a crime scene over by Paradise, Mom,” Joanna said. “He’s upset because he hasn’t heard from you. He says you’ve been among the missing all day, and he’s worried. He’s afraid you’re mad at him. Are you?”

To Joanna’s surprise, Eleanor’s strong facial features suddenly crumpled as she dissolved into tears. Astonished, Joanna flung open the door. Clambering out of the car, she pulled the weeping woman into her arms. She held her mother close and rocked her back and forth as though she were a child. Eleanor had always been taller than her daughter, but Joanna realized with a shock that Eleanor had somehow shrunk and now they were almost the same size. Through their mutual layers of clothing, Eleanor’s body felt surprisingly bony and fragile.

“What’s wrong, Morn?” Joanna begged. “Please tell me what’s the matter.”

“I tried to tell George,” Eleanor croaked through her tears. “I tried to tell him, but he just didn’t understand. I couldn’t make him understand.”

“Tell me, Mom.”

Coming from across the desert, Joanna heard the joyous yips from Sadie and Tigger, who had no doubt heard the sound of the familiar engine and were coming to welcome their mistress home.

“Let’s get back in my car before the dogs get here,” Joanna urged. “Then I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

To Joanna’s surprise, Eleanor didn’t object. Instead, she leaned against her daughter and allowed herself to be led. Joanna opened the door. Before letting her mother in, she reached over and brushed her unholstered Glock under the seat of the car. After helping Eleanor inside, Joanna stopped at the trunk long enough to retrieve two bottles of water. She regained the inside of the car just as Sadie and Tigger burst through the mesquite and came racing toward them. The dogs circled the car madly, three times each. Then, finding it immovable, they gave up and went bounding off through the underbrush after some other, more interesting, prey.

Joanna passed the bottled water to her mother. “This should probably be something stronger, Mom, but its the best I can do at the moment.”

Eleanor took the bottle, opened it, and downed a long grateful swallow.

“So what is it?” Joanna asked after a moment. “Tell me.”

Eleanor sighed and closed her eyes. “It was had enough to know Dora was dead,” she began shakily. “As soon as George told me that, I knew that was all my fault. I mean it’s obvious that Dora was perfectly content to be out here at the ranch with Eva Lou and Jim Bob. If I had only let things be ...”

“That’s not true,” Joanna said. “Dora wasn’t happy at all. Hive you talked to Jenny today? Have you spoken to Butch?”

Eleanor shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to anyone. I was too ashamed.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Joanna told her. “The reason Dora didn’t want to go with the woman from Child Protective Services was that she had already made arrangements for her boyfriend to conic pick her up later that same night at her mother’s house up in Old Bisbee.”

“He was?” Eleanor asked. “Her boyfriend really was going to come get her?”

“Yes. At least that’s what we were told. His name is Christopher Bernard. He’s sixteen years old and lives up in Tucson. Ernie Car­penter and Jaime Carbajal will be interviewing hiss tomorrow afternoon.”

“Do they think he may have had something to do with Dora’s death?”

“Possibly,” Joanna said. “Although, at this point, no one knows anything for sure.”

“Oh, dear,” Eleanor said. “That poor girl, that poor, poor girl.” With that, Eleanor once again burst into uncontrollable sobs.

Joanna was baffled. She had thought that what she had said would make her mother feel better, but it was clearly having the opposite effect. For several minutes, she let her mother cry without making any effort to stop her. Finally Eleanor took a deep shud­dering breath and the sobs let up.

“Mother,” Joanna said. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you see?” Eleanor pleaded. “George told me Dora was pregnant. Thirteen and pregnant. Unfortunately, I know exactly how that felt. Of course, I was a little older than that when it hap­pened to me, but not all that much older, and every bit as alone. Your father loved me and would have married me then, if my par­ents would have stood for it and given permission, but they wouldn’t. I’ve never felt so lost, Joanna. Never in my whole life. And knowing that’s what was going on with poor Dora Matthews brought it all back to me, that whole awful feeling of not knowing where to go or what to do or whom to turn to for help.

“I’ve spent the rest of my life blocking out that terrible time, but when George told me about Dora, a floodgate opened and it all came rushing back. Like it was yesterday. No, that’s not true. Like it was today, like it was happening to me all over again. I know George didn’t mean to upset me when he told me about Dora. He couldn’t have seen how I’d react, but I just had to get away for a while, and not just from him, either. I had to get away from every-one. I had to be off by myself so I could think things through. You do understand, don’t you, Joanna? Please tell me you do.”

Joanna shut her eyes momentarily to squeeze back her own tears. She had once been through the exact sane anguish when she, too, had found herself pregnant and unmarried. She had been old enough that she and Andy had been able to marry without parental consent, but at the time and for years afterward, it had never occurred to Joanna that her mother might possibly have lived through a similar ordeal. She had needed her mother’s help and had been no more able to ask for it than Eleanor had been to give it.

Joanna and Eleanor had battled over all kinds of things in the years after Joanna’s overly hasty marriage to Andy Brady, but the underlying foundation for most of those hostilities had been Joanna’s feeling of betrayal, Joanna’s belief that Eleanor hadn’t been there for her when she had needed her most. For years she had endured Eleanor’s constant criticism without realizing that her mother’s finger-pointing had been a ruse to conceal her own long-held secret—the baby Eleanor had borne and given up for adoption prior to her marriage to Big Hank Lathrop. It wasn’t until that long-lost child, a grown-up and nearly middle-aged Bob Brundage, had come searching for his birth parents that Joanna had finally learned the truth as well as the depth of her mother’s hypocrisy.

Instead of forming a bond between mother and daughter, Bob Brundage’s appearance had made things worse. For Joanna, learning of her brother’s existence and her mother’s youthful indiscre­tion constituted yet another betrayal on Eleanor’s part. And now, after years of continual warfare, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield had come suing for peace and pleading for understanding, asking for the kind of absolution she herself had never been able to grant.

Joanna’s first instinct was to say, “No way!” But then she thought about Marianne Maculyea. For years her friend had been estranged from her own mother. Only now, after years of separation, Evangeline Maculyea had finally come around. It had taken the death of one grandchild and the birth of another, but Mari­anne’s mother had finally opened the door to a reconciliation. It was, as Marianne had told Joanna, “the right thing to do.” And so was this.

“I do understand,” Joanna said quietly.

“Would that boy have married Dora, do you think?” Eleanor whispered, making Joanna wonder if she had even heard. “Not right now, of course,” Eleanor added. “Dora was only thirteen, so she would have been too young. But maybe later, when she was older, this Chris could have married her the same way your father married me.” She paused before saying what before would have been unthinkable. “The same way Andy married you.”

Joanna wanted to answer, but her voice caught in her throat. She thought about what Jaime had said on the phone about Christopher Bernard and his family. Much as she would have liked to believe in the fairy tale, it didn’t seem likely that Chris Bernard was cut from the same cloth as either D. H. Lathrop or Andrew Roy Brady.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Joanna finally managed. “I honestly don’t know”

“I hope so,” Eleanor returned, wiping new tears from her eyes. “I hope he cared about her that much. I suppose that’s a stupid thing to say, isn’t it. George said something about my being overly emotional about this, and it’s true. But I hope Christopher really did care. I hope Dora found someone to love her even for a little while because it doesn’t sound as though that mother of hers has sense enough to come in out of the rain.”

Joanna sighed. This was far more like the Eleanor Lathrop Winfield she knew. “I hope so, too,” she said.

Eleanor straightened now, as though everything was settled. The emotional laundry had been washed and dried and could now be safely folded and put away.

“Well,” she added, “I suppose I ought to head home now. You said George had been called out to a crime scene? How late do you think he’ll be?”

“Most likely not that much later. Because of where the body is, they probably won’t be able to retrieve it before morning.”

“Had he eaten any dinner before he left?” Eleanor asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Probably not. The man’s smart as a whip, but when it comes to sensible things like eating at reasonable hours, he’s utterly hopeless. So I’d better be going then,” Eleanor continued. “That way I can have a little something ready for him when he gets home.”

She turned to Joanna, took her daughter’s hand, and squeezed it. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m glad we had this little talk. I’m feeling ever so much better.”

Joanna reached over and gave her mother a hug. “I’m glad we had this talk, too. Now go on home. George was worried sick about you. He’ll be delighted to find you at home. Just don’t tell him I told you so.”

Eleanor frowned. “Do you think I should try explaining any of this to him? I’m afraid he’ll think I’ve lost my marbles.”

“Try him,” Joanna Brady urged gently. “As you said, George is a very smart man. He might just surprise you.”

Without another word, Eleanor got out of the car. She marched back to her Buick, got in, started it and drove off without a second glance. Shaking her head in wonder, Joanna turned and watched her drive away. Then, starting the Civvie, Joanna headed up the dirt road that led into the ranch. Before she made it all the way into the yard, Sadie and Tigger reappeared to reprise their earlier greeting.

By the time Joanna had parked the car, Butch was standing on the back porch waiting for her.

“It’s about time you got here,” he said. “The dogs went rushing off a little while ago. I thought it was you coming, but then the dogs came back without you.”

“It was me,” Joanna said.

“But that must have been fifteen or twenty minutes ago,” Butch aid. “What did you do, stop to read the mail?”

“Eleanor was there waiting for me.”

“What for?”

“She needed to talk.”

“What about?”

“Dora Matthews.”

“I suppose she still thinks it’s all her fault.”

Joanna thought about that. Butch was a good man and, in his awn way, every bit as smart as George Winfield. And yet, Joanna wasn’t the least bit sure he would understand what had happened that night between Joanna Brady and Eleanor Lathrop Winfield any more than George had understood what was going on with his own wife.

“Something like that,” Joanna said, peering around the kitchen. “Now is there anything around here to eat? I’m starved.”

That’s when she saw the blueprints unrolled all over the kitchen able. It was also when she belatedly remembered that evening’s scheduled appointment with Quentin Branch. “Oh, Butch,” she aid. “I’m so sorry. I forgot all about it.”

“I noticed,” he said. “But the way things are going, I guess I’d better get used to being stood up.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was a quarter past seven when Butch shook Joanna awake the next morning. “Time to rise and shine,” he said. “Coffee’s on the nightstand, and breakfast is in five.” Grateful that he wasn’t holding a grudge over last night’s missed appointment, she gave him a warm smile. “Thanks,” she said.

Struggling out of bed, Joanna staggered into the bathroom. She felt as though she had tied one on the night before, although she’d had nothing at all to drink. But between the forced-march hike and climbing up and down the cliff face, there was no part of her body that didn’t hurt. Not only that; tired as she’d been, once she went to bed, she hadn’t slept. Instead, she’d once again tossed and turned for a long time before finally drifting into a fitful sleep.

She showered hurriedly and then, with her hair still wet, went into the kitchen where a bowl of steaming Malt-o-Meal was already on the table. “I really don’t have time to eat ...” she began, looking at the clock.

“Yes, you do,” Butch insisted. “‘This way you’ll have at least one decent meal today.”

Knowing he was right, Joanna sat and ate. She was in her office by ten after eight and pressing the intercom button. “Good morn­ing, Kristin. Would you let Chief Deputy Montoya know that I’m here?”

“He’s not,” Kristin said. “He called a little while ago and said to tell you he’ll be a few minutes late.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Maybe you could come in and help me make some sense of all this new paper.” She said nothing at all about the previous batch, which was still stowed in her unopened briefcase.

When Kristin entered the office, Joanna was shocked by her secretary’s appearance. Her nose and eyes were red. She looked almost as bad as Joanna felt, and she walked as though she had aged twenty years overnight.

“Kristin,” Joanna demanded, “what’s wrong?” as the younger woman deposited a new stack of papers on one corner of Joanna’s desk.

“Nothing,” Kristin mumbled, turning away.

“Come on,” Joanna urged. “Something’s not right. Tell me.”

“It’s Terry,” her secretary replied with a tearful sniffle. “What about him?”

“He didn’t come in until four o’clock this morning. He tried to tell me he was working overtime, but I looked on the schedule after I got here. He wasn’t cleared for any overtime. He tried to tell me he was teamed up for some special operation with Deputy Howell. It was a special op, all right. I think he’s sneaking around with her behind my back and—”

“They were on a special operation,” Joanna interrupted. “I per­sonally authorized the overtime last night. From now until we catch that I-10 carjacker, I want them ruising the freeway rest areas for as many hours a day as they can stand.”

Kristin’s face brightened. “Really?” she said.

Joanna sighed. “Really.”

Kristin shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Me. Terry tried telling me the same thing, but I didn’t believe hint.”

“It’s hormones, Kristin,” Joanna said patiently. “They’re all out of whack when you’re pregnant.” As she spoke, Joanna couldn’t help realizing that she had made the exact same kinds of accusations with Butch on Sunday—and without the benefit of hor­monal imbalance to use as an excuse. “You’d better call Terry and apologize,” she added.

“I can’t. He’s asleep right now.”

“Well, when he wakes up later, call and apologize.”

“I will,” Kristin promised. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”

It was almost nine o’clock before Frank came dragging into Joanna’s office carrying yet another sheaf of papers, this one con­taining the stack of incident reports that would constitute the morning briefing.

“Sorry I’m late, Boss. With both of us out of the office all afternoon and half the night, there were a lot of pieces to pull together.”

“Don’t worry about being late,” she assured him. “If you think your desk is a disaster, look at mine. So what’s on today’s agenda—other than Rob Whipple’s murder and the Texas Canyon carjacking?”

“Burton Kimball cut a deal for Sally Matthews.”

“What kind of deal?”

“He played the sympathy card big-time—as in, officials of the State of Arizona have already cost Sally Matthews die life of her only daughter. Consequently, she shouldn’t he punished further, et cetera, et cetera. Phoenix PD busted Sally’s boyfriend, B. B. Ardmore, while he was making a drug sale in downtown Phoenix yesterday afternoon. If Sally agrees to turn state’s evidence and if she tells investiga­tors everything she knows about B. B.’s organization and his associates, she’s off the hook. She also has to agree to enter rehab as soon as pos­sible after Dora’s funeral, which is currently scheduled for Friday afternoon at two o’clock.”

“Are you telling me Sally Matthews has been cut loose?” Joanna demanded. “Sally Matthews was running a meth lab—an illegal and dangerous meth lab inside the city limits. She broke any number of laws, one of which should be child neglect. Nonetheless, she gets to turn Dora’s death into a get-out-of-jail-free card. That’s not right.”

“Talk to Arlee Jones about that,” Frank Montoya suggested. “Until the voters decide to replace him with a county attorney with brains, that’s what we can expect. In the meantime, the charges are open, so that if she doesn’t carry through on her promises, they can be refiled.”

Joanna shook her head in disgust. “What else?” she asked.

“A single car, non-injury rollover, just outside of Hereford. Then there was a bunch of drunk Harley riders who left one of the bars in Tombstone and then went out to the municipal airport for a late-night fistfight session. When a pair of Border Patrol agents broke it up, everybody else jumped on their bikes and took off. The only one left was the one who was too busted up to leave. He’s in the county hospital down in Douglas with a broken jaw and three broken knuckles. Then there’re two DWIs and a domestic violence down in Pirtleville. Oh, and I almost forgot, yesterday’s carjacking’s car—the Pontiac Grand Am that was taken from over in Texas Canyon—was stopped at the crossing in Naco early this morning with a full load of illegals. The car’s in the Border Patrol’s impound lot down on Naco Highway. The lady’s purse isn’t.”

“What’s the word from the crime scene in Paradise?”

“I talked to Ernie. He and Jaime stayed there until three this morning. According to him, somebody did a half assed job of try­ing to clean up Rob Whipple’s house, but there are still plenty of traces of blood there. The crime scene team and Casey Ledford will be working that today, as well as Irma Sorenson’s Nissan once we get it dragged out of where it landed and back here to the justice center. Since Rob Whipple was shot in Irma Sorenson’s car, presumably the blood in his cabin will be from someone else.”

“Like Connie Haskell, for instance,” Joanna said. Frank nodded. “But there’s still no trace of Irma or Rob Whipple’s Dodge Ram?” she asked.

“Not so far.”

Joanna shook her head. “Nothing like being under the gun,” she said.

“It’s more than that, Joanna,” Frank returned. “Think about it. We’ve had three homicides in four days, and here the department sits with only two detectives to its name. We’re understaffed and underfunded, and—”

Joanna held up her hand and stopped him. “Please, Frank. Let’s not go into this right now. I know you’re right. What do you think kept me awake half the night? I was worrying about the same thing, but before we go off trying to deal with all the political and financial ramifications, let’s handle what’s on our plates right now. What are Ernie and Jaime doing at the moment?”

“I told them to take the morning off. They have to sleep some time. At noon they’ll head up to Tucson to talk with Chris Bernard and his lawyer. As a result, Rob Whipple’s autopsy will must likely have to be put off until tomorrow.”

“Which shouldn’t hurt Doc Winfield’s feelings any,” Joanna added.

“Since the Grand Am’s been found,” Drank resumed, “it may mean our carjacker will be back on the prowl again. Deputies Gre­govich and Howell are also taking the morning off, but I’ve sched­uled them to hit I-10 again today. By the way, did you know Kristin thought there was some hanky-panky going on?”

“I hope you told her otherwise,” Joanna said.

Frank nodded. Before he could say anything more, Joanna’s intercom buzzed. “What is it, Kristin?”

“There’s someone on the phone who insists on talking to you.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Hardy. Brian Hardy.”

“Brent, maybe?” Joanna asked.

“Sorry. Yes, that’s it. Brent. He says it’s urgent.”

“Put him through, then,” Joanna told her. “Good morning, Mr. Hardy. What can I do for you?”

“It’s about Irma. She just left.”

“Left from where?” Joanna demanded.

“From here, from Quartzite East,” Hardy said. “Tommy and I had a big argument about whether or not we should call you. He said we ought to mind our own business, but I told him, ‘No way. I’m calling.’“

Joanna switched her phone to speaker. “What exactly hap­pened?”

“Irma must have shown up late last night, after we were asleep. When we woke up this morning, there was a strange car—a big blue Dodge pickup—parked next to her RV. I went over to check, because I was afraid whoever was there was someone who wasn’t supposed to be. I knocked, and Irma herself came to the door. After what you told us about her son, I was really relieved to see her. She told us that the pickup belongs to her son, but that didn’t exactly set my mind at ease, especially since Irma’s been hut s.”

“Hurt?” Joanna asked. “How so?”

“She’s got a gash on her hand. It’s bad enough that it probably should have had stitches. I told her it looked infected to me and suggested she see a doctor. She said she’s been putting Neosporin on it, and she’s sure it’ll be just fine. She told me she’d had an accident in her Nissan and that was how she hurt her hand. Any way, she said the car was totaled and that Rob, her son, had lent her his pickup. She also said that she’s decided to sell the RV. She’s found an RV dealer—in Tucson, I think—who’s willing to pay her for it in cash rather than selling it on consignment. With that kind of hurried sale, she’s probably being taken to the cleaners over it, but it’s not my place to say. Anyway, she asked Tommy and me to help hitch up the pickup to the back of the RV and off she went.”

“How long ago?” Joanna asked.

“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Just long enough for Tommy and me to get into a pissing match over it. Like I said, she came sneaking back into the park late last night, after we had gone to bed. We didn’t even know she was here until this morning. Since neither Tommy nor I actually set foot inside Irma’s RV, I’m think­ing it’s possible that her son may be in there—that she drove it out of the park herself so we wouldn’t see her son and know that she was hiding him.”

“Irma Sorenson’s son isn’t in her RV,” Joanna said. “He’s dead.”

“Dead!” Brent exclaimed. “How did that happen?”

“The incident is currently under investigation. Now, Mr. Hardy, thank you so much for calling, but if you’ll excuse me, I have some other matters to attend to. If Irma Sorenson should happen to return, please call us immediately. Dial 911 and have the operator locate me.”

“You sound as though you think she’s dangerous,” Brent Hardy said hesitantly.

“I suspect she is,” Joanna returned. “Possibly to herself more than anyone else, but I don’t think you and Mr. Lowrey should take any more chances.”

“We won’t.”

“I’ll go get a car,” Frank said as Joanna ended the call.

Joanna nodded and dialed Dispatch. “Larry,” she said. “The subject of our APB, Irma Sorenson, is believed to be heading west on I-10. She left Bowie about twenty minutes to half an hour ago, driving a bronze-and-black Marathon motor home and towing a blue ‘97 Dodge Ram pickup. I want her pulled over and stopped in as deserted a place as possible. Not in town, and not, for God’s sake, at one of the rest areas. Maybe it would be a good idea to put down some spike strips on that long grade coming up the San Pedro River in Benson. It’s a long way out of town, so there shouldn’t be lots of people around. She’ll already have lost speed by then, and it’s less likely she’ll lose control when the tires go.”

“Got it,” Larry Kendrick said.

“This woman is armed and dangerous,” Joanna continued. “As soon as she’s spotted, I want you to set up roadblocks and stop all westbound traffic immediately behind her. Eastbound freeway traffic coming into Cochise County should be stopped at J-6 Road. Frank and I are on our way. Once you alert all units, get back to us. We’ll try to deploy manpower in a way that blocks off as many freeway exits and entrances as possible. The fewer innocent people we have caught up in this action, the better.”

By the time Joanna put down the phone and grabbed her purse, Frank Montoya was parked beside her private entrance with his Crown Victoria’s engine fired up and running.

“Did you tell Kristin we’re leaving?” Frank asked as he wheeled away from the door and through the parking lot.

“I didn’t have time.” As soon as she was settled in with her seat belt fastened, Frank handed her an atlas. After opening it to the proper page, Joanna unclipped the radio. “Okay, Larry. Where do we stand?”

“I’ve notified DPS and let them know what’s happening. They’re sending units as well. Currently I’ve got a long-haul trucker named Molly who says the subject just passed her at Exit 344,” Larry returned. “Molly is convoying with another trucker. They’re going to turn on their hazard lights and stop on the freeway. That should bottle up all the traffic behind them, and it takes care of the westbound roadblock. If I can find someone else to do the same thing at J-6 Road, our people will all be free to deal with the stop itself. City of Benson is closing all exits and entrances to the freeway there. The chief of police in Benson wants to know if we’re putting down the spike strips, or are they?”

“Do we have anyone on the scene yet?”

“Not so far,” Kendrick said. “Where are you and Chief Deputy Montoya?”

Joanna looked up and was amazed to see that they were already out on the broad, flat plain between the Mule Mountains and the hills leading into Tombstone. “Not quite halfway,” she told him.

“I tried Deputy Rojas from Pomerene. He’s up at Hooker Hot Springs investigating some dead livestock. It’ll take him a while to get back down from there. Matt Raymond and Tim Lindsey are on their way from Elfrida and Sierra Vista respectively. Tim should be there first.”

“Okay,” loa4u4;4 said. “Have Matt try to catch up with the subject from behind and keep her in visual contact. Put Matt and Tim in touch directly, so Tim can lay down the strips with just enough time to get back in his car and take cover. And then, in your spare time, call the Double Cs. Tell Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal that we need them both in Benson ASAP.”

Joanna settled back in the seat and listened to the squawking radio as Larry Kendrick relayed her orders to various officers. Meanwhile Frank’s Civvie flew through Tombstone and out onto the straight stretch of newly repaved highway between Tombstone and St. David.

“Sounds like you’ve got things under control,” Frank said.

Joanna shook her head. There were too many variables; too many jurisdictions and people involved; too much opportunity for ordinary citizens to be injured or killed. “We’ll see,” she said.

They were halfway between St. David and Benson when Larry Kendrick’s voice addressed her once again. “Sheriff Brady?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got a problem. Deputy Raymond reports that the subject is pulling off on the shoulder just west of Exit 318.”

Joanna studied the map. “The Dragoon Exit?” she asked. “That’s right.”

That meant Irma Sorenson was stopping far short of Tim Lind­sey and his tire strips. “Why’s she stopping?” Joanna asked.

“Matt’s not sure. No, wait. He says a lone woman has stepped out of the vehicle and is walking back toward the rear. He says it looks like maybe she’s got a flat.”

Joanna took a deep breath. It could be a trap. Irma Sorenson might have noticed the sudden reduction in traffic volume travel­ing in both directions on the freeway. She might also have noticed the presence of a marked patrol car following her even though Deputy Raymond had been directed to keep his distance. There was no question in Joanna’s mind that Irma Sorenson was capable of murder. What were the chances that she was taking the flat for some reason? On the other hand, it was possible that since the RV had been parked in one place for more than six months, it really did have a ruined tire.

“All right, Larry,” Joanna said, steadying her voice and trying not to think about Matt Raymond’s wife and the five-year-old twin girls who were the light of his life. “Here’s what I want you to do. Tell Matt to drive past the vehicle and see if he can tell if the woman is carrying any kind of weapon. If none is visible, have him put on his lights—the orange ones, not the red—and back up on the shoulder. Have him—”

“Deputy Raymond’s on the radio now,” Larry reported. “I lc says the subject is attempting to flag him down. He doesn’t see any weapon. I’ve directed Deputy Lindsey to leave his position i44 lien-son and back up Deputy Raymond.”

Holding the radio mike clenched tightly in her white-knuckled fist, Joanna looked entreatingly at Frank Montoya. “Can’t you drive any faster than this?” she begged.

Frank merely shook his head. “Not if you want us to get there in one piece,” he said.

Now they heard Deputy Raymond’s static-distorted voice coming through the speaker, broadcasting into his shoulder mounted radio. “Ma’am, is something the matter?” That transmission was followed by something garbled that Joanna was unable to decipher, followed by Raymond again, “Well, let me take a look.”

Holding her breath, Joanna gripped the microphone even harder and wondered why the hard plastic didn’t simply crumble to pieces in her hand. Suddenly she heard the sound of a scuffle. “Get down! Get down! Hands behind your back. Behind your back!”

Then, after what seemed an eternity, Joanna heard Deputy Ray­mond’s voice once more. “Got her.” He panted jubilantly. “Sub­ject is secured. Repeat: Subject secure. She wasn’t carrying a weapon, and she really does have a flat. Lost the whole tread on her right rear tire. I just finished checking out the RV. It’s full of pack­ing boxes, but there’s no one else inside.”

In the background of Deputy Raymond’s transmission Joanna heard the screeching of a siren announcing the arrival of Tim Lindsey’s patrol car. It was all under control and her officers were safe. Joanna’s voice shook with gratitude and relief when she spoke into the microphone again.

“Okay, Larry. Tell Deputy Raymond good work. Have him put the subject in the back of his patrol car and wait for Frank’s and my arrival. Under no circumstances is he to ask her anything until we arrive, understand?”

“Got it.”

“And tell our trucker friends who’ve been stopping traffic that they can let things start moving again. If possible, I’d like their names, company names, and addresses. I want to be able to write to their bosses and express my appreciation.”

“Will do.”

Joanna put down the microphone, leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let out her breath.

“Way to go, Boss,” Frank said. “Running an operation like that by radio is a little like giving somebody a haircut over the phone, but you made it work. Congrats.”

A few minutes later, Frank turned the Crown Victoria onto I-10 east of Benson. With the emergency over, he had now slowed to the posted legal limit, and the Civvie dawdled along at a mere seventy-five. By the time they made a U-turn across the median, they could see that backed-up traffic from both sides of the freeway was now approaching the scene. Frank and Joanna’s Civvie was the third police vehicle in a clot of shoulder-parked vehicles lined up behind the massive RV.

As soon as Joanna stepped out of the car, she went straight to her two deputies. “Good job,” she told them.

Matt Raymond still seemed a little shaken by the experience. “It could have been a whole lot worse,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “I know,” she said. “Believe me, I know.”

“I haven’t talked to the woman much, but she’s begging us to change her tire and let her drive on into Tucson,” Matt Raymond said. “She claims she’s got a deal to sell the Marathon, but she has to deliver it to the dealer by one o’clock this afternoon. Otherwise, he rescinds his offer to buy.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Joanna said. “She’s under arrest for murder. She’s not in any position to be selling a motor home.”

“I tried to tell her that myself,” Matt said. “I don’t think she was listening.”

Joanna looked up as a speeding eighteen-wheeler blew past in a burst of hot air, followed by a long, unbroken line of other vehicles. “We need to get this mess off the road. It’s not safe for any of us. Is this thing drivable, or are we going to need a tow truck?” she asked, looking down at the mangled flat.

“All we have to do is change the tire,” Matt Raymond replied.

Joanna walked over to the idling Bronco that was Matt Raymond’s marked patrol car. There Irma Sorenson, a white-haired unassuming lady with a pair of thick glasses perched on her nose, sat handcuffed in the backseat. She looked like somebody’s grand-mother, not a cold-blooded killer.

“Mrs. Sorenson?” Joanna said. “I’m Sheriff Brady. Having all these vehicles parked on the shoulder of the freeway is causing a hazard. We need to move them. Would it be all right if one of my deputies changed that tire?”

“Please,” Irma said. “I don’t know where the jack and spare are. I’m sure they’re in one of those locked compartments. The keys are still in the ignition.”

“So you don’t mind if my officers enter your vehicle? We don’t have a search warrant.”

“You don’t need a search warrant,” Irma said. “I’m giving you permission to enter. If you need me to sign something, give it to me and I’ll sign. And if you’ll just let me take it on up to Tucson, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. But I have to sell this thing, and I have to sell it today.”

“Because it contains evidence?” Joanna asked.

“No. Because I need the money. I’m going to need a lawyer.”

Joanna closed the car door and walked back to where her deputies stood waiting. “She says the keys are in the ignition. You have permission to get the keys and change the flat tire, but whatever you do, don’t touch anything else. You got that?”

Raymond and Lindsey nodded. Together they set about finding the keys, locating the jack and spare, and changing the tire.

“Frank, do you happen to have that miniature tape recorder of yours in your pocket?”

“Sure do, why?”

“Bring it,” Joanna said. “I want you to Mirandize Mrs. Sorenson. And I want that recorded as well.”

“You don’t think she’s going to confess, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” Feeling half-guilty about what she was about to do, Joanna led the way back to the car. “Mrs. Sorenson, you told me a minute ago that it we let you keep your appointment with the RV dealer in Tucson, that you would tell us everything we want to know. Is that true?”

Irma Sorenson nodded.

“We’ll have to record your answers.”

“That’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

“This is my chief deputy, Frank Montoya. I’d like him to switch on his recorder and read you your rights.”

“Sure,” Irma said. “Go ahead.”

Frank and Joanna sat in the front seat of the Bronco. Irma remained in the back.

“So what happened?” Joanna asked, once the legal formalities had been handled.

“I killed him,” Irma said simply and without blinking. “I shot my son in the middle of the forehead.”

“Why?”

“Because he was going to kill me,” Irma replied. “I know he was. I knew too much about what he had done. He just didn’t know I had the gun.”

“What gun?” Joanna asked sharply. “Where did you get it?”

“From the car,” Irma said. “From that blue Lincoln Rob had me drive to the airport for him. I knew something dead had been in that car. I could smell it, and given Robby’s past . . .” Irma paused then and gulped to suppress a sob. “Given that, I knew what it had to be. I knew it had started all over again, with hint doing what he used to do. The only thing I could think of was to let someone know about the car.”

“But what about the gun?” Joanna prodded.

“That’s what I’m telling you. I knew I had to have a reason tier someone to look at it—at the car, I mean. I couldn’t just call up and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I need someone to go check out a car that’s sitting in the lot at Tucson International because I think maybe someone’s been killed in it.’ No, if an old lady calls in and says that, they’ll probably think she’s a complete wacko and pay no attention. But I thought if I said, `Hey, there’s a car at the airport with blood on it. Somebody needs to go check it out,’ maybe they would. But for that I needed some real blood, so I cut my hand. And it was when I was looking around on the floor of the car for something to use to cut my hand with that I found the gun. It must have belonged to the person Robby killed, the one whose car it was. Anyway, I found the gun on the floor along with an old Bible that was full of hundred-dollar bills. I put them both in my purse. I know it was wrong to take the money. It didn’t belong to me, and I should have left it where it was. But I took the gun just in case I needed it, you see. When you’re dealing with someone like Robby—someone that unpredictable—you just never can tell.”

“And where is it right now?”

“The gun? It’s still in my purse,” Irma said. “Inside the RV.”

“Getting back to your son,” Joanna said. “You’re saying you wanted him to be caught?” Irma nodded. “Then why didn’t you go ahead and call the Tucson Police Department? You could have turned him in right then instead of going through the ruse of making a phony phone call and pretending to be someone you weren’t.”

“He was my son,” Irma said as though that explained every-thing. “I couldn’t just turn him in. My heart wouldn’t let me do that.”

“But if you shot him, your heart evidently let you kill him.”

“That was self-defense,” Irma declared.

“You mean Rob Whipple had a weapon, too? He was holding a knife on you or a gun?”

“No. But he was going to kill me all the same. I knew too much. I had driven that car to the airport for him, and I had spent two days cleaning up the blood that was spattered all over that filthy cabin of his. I pretended to believe him when he told me he had hit a deer with his pickup and killed it. He claimed he had cleaned it inside the cabin so the forest rangers wouldn’t see it and nail him for hunting out of season. That’s the thing that really galls me. That he thought I was that stupid. But I knew it was no deer that had died there—it was a woman. It had to be.”

“Why do you say that?” Joanna asked.

Irma shrugged. “That’s who he always went after—women.”

“Did you talk about her with your son?” Joanna asked. “Did you talk about the dead woman?”

“Are you kidding?” Irma asked. “We were both too busy pretending she didn’t exist. Of course we didn’t talk about her. But I knew that as soon as the mess in the cabin was cleaned up and as soon as I had collected the money from selling the RV, Robby would have to get rid of me, too.”

“So he was the one who wanted you to sell the RV?” Joanna asked.

Irma nodded. “It was his idea, and he’s the one who made the deal. We spent all day Sunday and a big part of Sunday evening looking for a dealer who would make me a good enough offer.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said, thinking of Dora Matthews. “You and Robby were together on Sunday?”

“All day, and all night, too. I stayed with him out at the cabin.”

“And he was with you the whole time?”

“The whole time. Until he had to go back to work on Monday. Yesterday, I went back to Tucson and rented a locker at one of those self-storage places where I can store my stuff for the time being. They sell boxes there, too. I brought some of those home and spent most of last night taping them together and throwing junk into them. All we have to do is drop them off at the storage unit on the way to the dealer—they’re both on Twenty-second Street—and they’ll all be there waiting when I get out.”

“Out of where?”

“Jail, of course,” Irma replied. “What else would I be talking about? I knew once Robby had me sign over the title, that would be it. Once I had the money in my hand, he wouldn’t need me anymore. So I got to Robby before he had a chance to get to me,” Irma continued without even pausing for breath. “He came home from work that night all upset, saying he’d been fired. I was scared of him. I told him I was going to go back to my place for the evening, back to the RV. He got in the car with me. I think he was going to try to stop me. When I pulled the gun out of my purse, you should have seen the surprised look on his face. He just couldn’t believe it. He laughed at me and said, ‘Come on, Mom. Put that thing away. You’re never going to use it.’ But I did. Then I belted him into the car—that’s the law, you know. Passengers have to have their seat belts fastened. Then I drove him off the cliff. In the movies, cars always burst into flame when they go over cliffs. That was what I was hoping this one would do, but it didn’t. It just made a big whanging sound and then a huge cloud of dust rose in the air. That’s all there was to it.”

“And this was when?”

“Night before yesterday. Monday, it must have been. Monday evening.”

Joanna wanted to ask more questions, but right at that moment she could no longer think of any. Shooting her son in cold blood hadn’t bothered Irma Sorenson, but she had been sure to have his seat belt buckled when she sent the Nissan over the cliff.

Shaking her head,, Joanna clicked off the recorder. The criminal mind was more or less understandable; motherhood unfathomable. In sending her son to Pathway to Paradise, Irma Sorenson had hoped to save him. Instead she had lost everything.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“We’re going to do what?” Detective Ernie Carpenter demanded. By the time the Double Cs arrived, the whole cir­cus of Irma’s RV, her son’s pickup, and the collected entourage of police vehicles had moved to the parking lot of a defunct motel east of Benson.

“You heard me,” Joanna told him. “We’re going to drive Mrs. Sorenson into Tucson. First we’re going to drop off her personal possessions at a storage unit and then have her at the dealer’s lot prior to that one o’clock deadline so she can unload her RV. After that, there’ll be plenty of time to take her back to Bisbee and book her.”

“That’s crazy.” Ernie scowled in objection. “The woman has just confessed to the murder of her own son. You’re going to let her unload her stuff at a storage unit and sell off her RV without even bothering to search it?”

“Do you happen to have a search warrant on you at the moment?” Joanna asked.

“Well, no,” he admitted.

“Who’s to say we can’t serve the search warrants later, at the RV dealer’s or even at the storage unit, for that matter?”

“But still ...”

“But nothing, Ernie,” Joanna said. “I gave Irma Sorenson my word, and I fully intend to keep it. In exchange for letting her sell her RV, what do we get? A signed confession that clears not one but two of the three murders that have happened in Cochise County in the last week. That sounds like a good deal to me.”

Ernie Carpenter recognized there was no changing Joanna’s mind. “All right,” he conceded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you drive this thing?” Joanna asked, indicating the motor home.

“Sure.”

“Okay, here’s the address of the storage unit, and the ignition key. You drive it there, and I’ll send along a contingent of deputies to do the unpacking. Once the boxes are out of there, come to the dealer—Tex’s RV Corral in the 5700 block of East Twenty-second Street. Frank and I will bring Irma with us and meet you there.”

Grumbling under his breath, Ernie Carpenter stalked off. Joanna went looking for Frank. Two hours later, and a good fifteen minutes before the one o’clock witching hour, a small parade con­sisting of Irma Sorenson’s RV, the towed Dodge Ram, and two police cars pulled into the parking lot at Tex’s RV Corral. A bow-legged man in boots, jeans, Western shirt, and ten-gallon hat saun­tered out of the office. He looked as though he would have been far more at home riding the range than running an RV dealership.

He held out his hand as Ernie Carpenter stepped down from the RV. “Howdy. Tex Mathers is the name,” he said wish an easy going grin. “And you are?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Ernie muttered. “The owner’s the person you need to talk to. She’s back there.”

Tex Mathers’ grin faded when he saw Irma Sorenson climbing out of the backseat of Deputy Raymond’s Bronco. As, Joanna had directed, Matt Raymond had removed Irma’s handcuffs prior to letting her out of the vehicle.

“This is Mr. Mathers,” Ernie said, as Joanna came forward, bringing Irma along. “He evidently owns the place. And this is Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

Tex Mathers sized Joanna up and down, then he glanced in the direction of the other uniformed officers. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “And why the cops? Mrs. Sorenson didn’t tell you I’m doing anything illegal, did she? Because I’m not. Assuming the rig is in the kind of condition her son said it was in, I’m paying her a fair price. Low blue book, of course, because she wants her money up front, but it’s a good deal.”

“And you’re still prepared to go through with it?” Joanna asked.

“Well, sure,” he said. “I suppose I am, as long as it’s in good shape and all that. Her son told me it was low mileage and in excellent condition.”

“Help yourself, Mr. Mathers,” Joanna said. “Go have a look.”

Joanna had been astonished at the luxury of the motor home when she had first stepped inside, from the flat-screen entertain­ment center and full-sized appliances to the etched-glass walls between the bathroom and the hallway. She could see why Tex Mathers was itching to get his grubby hands on it. Although the deal he had struck with Rob Whipple wasn’t strictly illegal, Joanna had a hunch it wasn’t in Irma’s best interests, either. When it came to protecting widows and orphans, she doubted RV dealers would be very high on the trustworthy list.

“How much more would Irma get if you sold this on consign­ment?” Joanna asked.

Tex Mathers shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe forty or fifty grand more. It’s a top-of-the-line and very desirable model, but the lady’s son said his mother needed her money right away”

“Supposing she didn’t need it instantly,” Joanna said. “What then?”

“I pro’ly wouldn’t have much trouble selling it,” Tex admitted. “Might take a couple of months—until the first snowbirds show up this fall.”

Without another word, Joanna left Tex Mathers to finish exploring the motor home and went outside to where a petite Irma Sorenson stood dwarfed by a circle of towering uniformed deputies.

“Irma, who said you needed an all-cash deal?” Joanna asked.

“Robby. He said it would be worth taking the lower price now just to have the cash in hand.”

“It may not be worth it,” Joanna said. “If it were mine, I wouldn’t sell it for cash. I’d write it up as a consignment deal.”

“But I told you. I need the money to hire an attorney”

“You’ll have more money to work with if you don’t take it now,” Joanna said. “There are probably several attorneys in Bisbee who’d be willing to take you on without having the money up front.”

“Are you sure?” Irma asked uncertainly.

“I’m pretty sure. Once you have an attorney, though, you might ask him about the deal as well.”

Tex Mathers reappeared, looking abashed. “It’s a sweet rig,” he said. “Just like your son told me it was. And I’m still prepared to write out a check to you for the full agreed-upon amount today, but if you’d rather put it on consignment ...” He gave Joanna a sidelong glance, as if checking to see whether or not she approved.

“And then Mrs. Sorenson receives what?” Joanna asked.

“The sales price less my commission.”

“From what you said to me inside, that would be substantially more than what you offered to pay her today?”

Tex Mathers scuffed the toe of his boot in the gravel. “Well, yeah,” he said. “I s’pose it would.”

“All right,” Irma Sorenson said after a moment. “We’ll do it that way, then. Let’s get the paperwork done. I don’t want to keep these people standing around waiting all day.”

“Frank,” Joanna suggested. “Why don’t you go along to keep an eye on things?” Tex Mathers took Irma’s arm and led her inside. Frank, shaking his head, dutifully followed. Once they were gone, Joanna turned to her officers. “Okay, Matt, maybe you and Jaime could get the pickup unhitched from the RV”

“What do you want me to do?” Ernie asked.

“As soon as the pickup is loose, you drive it back to Bisbee. Get the taped confession transcribed onto paper, so Irma can sign it and get the gun in to Ballistics. Deputy Raymond will bring Irma back to Bisbee. If you need to ask her any more questions, have Frank sit in with you, since he was in on the other interview.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Jaime and I are going to go do that interview with Christo­pher Bernard.”

“Look, Sheriff Brady,” Ernie began, “with all due respect ...”

“Ernie, with the caseload we’ve got going, the department is at least two detectives short. For right now, until we can hire or train more, Frank Montoya and I are going to fill in as needed. Do you have any objections to that?”

“No ma’am,” Ernie said. “I guess not.”

“Good.”

By one twenty-five, Ernie Carpenter was on his way back to Bisbee, but Frank and Irma had yet to emerge from Tex Mathers’ office. “What time did you say that appointment was?” Joanna asked Jaime Carbajal.

The detective glanced at his watch. “Two,” he said, “and their house is a ways from here.”

“We’d best get going,” Joanna told him.

Thirty minutes later, Jaime stopped the Econoline van in front of a closed wrought-iron gate. Beyond the gate sat an enormous white stucco house with a red tile roof. The house looked like a Mediterranean villa that had been transported whole and dropped off in the middle of the Arizona desert.

“Quite a place,” Joanna commented. “Whereabouts do Dora’s former foster parents live?”

Jaime pointed at a much more modest, natural adobe-style house that was right next door. “That’s the Dugans’ place right there,” he said.

In addition to size, the other major difference between the two residences was in the landscaping. The Bernards’ place was newly planted with baby trees, shrubs, and cacti. The mature shrubbery around the Dugans’ house showed that it had been there far longer.

“There was evidently another house on the Bernards’ lot origi­nally,” Jaime Carbajal explained. “They bought it as a tear-down and had their own custom design built in its place.”

A phone was attached to the gatepost. Jaime picked up the handset and announced who they were. Moments later the iron gate swung open, allowing them admittance. The garage doors were open, revealing two cars parked inside. Scattered around the circular driveway were several more vehicles, including an obviously new silver Porsche Carrera.

“Get a load of the rolling stock,” Jaime said. “The Porsche, a BMW-Z3 Roadster, a Mercedes S-600, and a ... I’ll be damned. Look at that—a Lexus 430. That’s what the kid in Sierra Vista told us. Buddy Morris said he thought he saw Dora Matthews getting into a white Lexus. But I don’t remember seeing one when we were here yesterday. By the time Ernie and I finished up in Sierra Vista, all hell had broken loose in Portal. We never had time to check with the DMV.”

“It’s all right, Jaime,” Joanna said. “Just keep cool.”

The blue-eyed, blond-haired woman who answered the door was only a few years older than Joanna, but she was so polished and cool-looking that she made Joanna feel dowdy in comparison. Amy Bernard was pencil-thin. Her navy-blue pantsuit and white silk shell accentuated her slender figure and made Joanna wish she had been wearing something other than a khaki uniform.

“I’m Amy Bernard,” she said. Then, without giving Joanna a second glance, she added, “Come in. This way.”

The woman of the house led Jaime Carbajal and Joanna through a spacious foyer and into a formal dining room. Under an ornate crystal chandelier stood a long, elegantly carved table sur­rounded by twelve matching chairs. Three people were seated at the far end of the table in front of a huge breakfront. Two were serious-looking men, both of them wearing the expensive but casual dressed-down attire that had long since replaced suits and ties among members of Tucson’s upper crust.

Next to the man at the head of the table slouched the only incongruity in the room, a homely gangly young man with braces and spiked purple hair. A series of gold studs lined the edges of both ears. What looked like a diamond protruded from one side of his nose.

“Here they are,” Amy said, before gliding down the tar side of the table, where she slid gracefully onto a chair next to her son.

Both men rose. After some prodding from his father, Christo­pher rose as well. “I’m Dr. Richard Bernard,” the man at the head of the table said. “This is my son Christopher, and this is our attor­ney, Alan Stouffer. I was led to believe there would be two detec­tives corning this afternoon, Detective Ernie Carpenter and Detective Jaime Carbajal. So you would be?” he asked.

“I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she replied. “Detective Carpenter is otherwise engaged at the moment, so I’m accompanying Detective Carbajal. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Have a seat,” Dr. Bernard said. “What we do mind is having this unfortunate situation intrude on us. I’m sure Dora Matthews’s life wasn’t all it should have been, and I’m certainly sorry the poor girl is dead, but I can’t see how you can possibly think our son Christopher had anything at all to do with what happened to her.”

“I’m sure my officers didn’t mean to imply that Christopher was involved in Dora’s death,” Joanna said soothingly. “But we do know that he spoke to her on both Friday and Saturday, prior to her death on Sunday. In situations like this it’s our policy to inter-view all the victim’s friends. We’re here to learn if Christopher has any information that might help us track down Dora’s killer.”

“I don’t know anything,” Christopher Bernard blurted. “All I know is she’s dead, and I’m sorry.”

To Joanna’s surprise, he turned sideways on his chair then and sat staring at the breakfront with its display of perfectly arranged and costly china. It was only when he brushed his cheek with the back of his hand that Joanna realized he was crying.

“As you can see, Chris and Dora Matthews were friends,” Dr. Bernard said. “‘They met a few months ago when she was staying here in the neighborhood. Naturally he’s grieved by her death, but—”

“Christopher,” Joanna said. “Were you aware Dora Matthews was three months pregnant when she died?”

Chris Bernard swung back around on his chair. He faced Joanna with his eyes wide. “You’re sure then?”

Joanna nodded. “Are you the father of Dora’s baby?” she asked.

Chris looked at his father before he answered. Then he lifted his chin defiantly and straightened both his shoulders. “Yes,” he answered, meeting and holding Joanna’s questioning gaze. “I am.”

“Christopher,” Amy Bernard objected in dismay. “How can you say such a thing?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Excuse me,” Alan Stouffer said, leaping into the fray. “I’m sure Chris has no way of knowing for sure if he was the father of that baby, and I must advise him—”

“I was too the father,” Chris insisted. “Dora told me on the phone Friday night that she thought she was pregnant. I told her she needed to go to the drugstore and get one of those test kit things so she could find out for sure. I told her if she was, we’d run away to Mexico together and get married. Dad says I’ll never amount to anything, but I do know how to be a man. If you have a kid, you’re supposed to take care of it. That’s the way it works. I have my trust money from Grandpa. We would have been all right.”

The dining room was suddenly deathly quiet. From another room came the steady ticking of a noisy but invisible grandfather clock.

“Really, Chris,” Alan Stouffer said. “You mustn’t say anything more.”

“But I want to,” Chris argued, his face hot and alive with emo­tion. “Dora’s dead, and I want to find out who did it. I want to know who killed her. I want that person to go to jail.”

With that, Chris buried his head in his arms and began to sob. Meanwhile Joanna grappled with a whole new sense of respect for this homely and seemingly disaffected kid whom she had been prepared to write off as a privileged, uncaring jerk. She could see now that her own and Eleanor Lathrop’s hopes had indeed been granted. The boy who had impregnated Dora Matthews had cared for her after all. Somehow, against all odds and against all rules of law and propriety, the two of them had met and fallen in love. And even though Dora was dead, Christopher Bernard loved her still.

Amy Bernard reached out and patted his shoulder. “There, there, Chris, darling. It’s all right. Shh.”

“Sheriff Brady,” the attorney said, “I really must object to this whole situation. You haven’t read Christopher his rights. Anything he has said so far would be automatically excluded from use in court.”

“No one has said that Christopher Bernard is suspected of killing Dora Matthews,” Joanna said quietly. “I’m just trying to get some information.”

“It’s all right, Alan,” Dr. Bernard said. “It’s my understanding that Dora Matthews died sometime Sunday night. Is that correct?” Joanna nodded.

“Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? Amy went to see a play at the Con­vention Center that night, and Chris was with me and some of our friends. Two of the other doctors at the hospital—at TMC—have sons Christopher’s age. The six of us spent Sunday night at a cabin up on Mount Lemmon. We went up Sunday before noon and didn’t come home again until Monday morning.”

“What play?” Joanna asked.

“Annie Get Your Gun—one of those traveling shows,” Amy said. “Richard doesn’t care for musicals all that much.”

Joanna turned to Dr. Bernard. “You can provide us with the names, telephone numbers, and addresses of all these friends?”

“Certainly,” he returned easily. “Amy, go get my Palm Pilot, would you? I think it’s on the desk in my study.”

“They’re not my friends,” Chris put in bitterly. “In case you haven’t noticed, Dad. Those guys were jocks. I’m not. If it was supposed to be a ‘bonding experience,’ it sucked.”

Amy Bernard returned from her errand. After placing her husband’s electronic organizer within easy reach, she once again patted her son on the shoulder. He shrugged her hand away. “Would any one care for something to drink? Iced tea? Coffee?”

“Oh, sit down, Amy. This isn’t a social visit. We’re not serving these people hors d’oeuvres.”

With bright spots of anger showing in both of her smoothly made-up cheeks, Amy Bernard resumed her seat. With the plastic stylus, Richard Bernard searched through his database and then read off names, addresses, and telephone numbers for Drs. Dan Howard and Andrew Kingsley and their two sons, Rick and Lonnie. While Jaime jotted down the information, Joanna turned her attention back to Christopher.

“When’s the last time you spoke to Dora?” she asked gently.

The boy blinked back tears and took a deep breath before he answered. “Saturday,” he said. “Saturday morning. Dora was staying at someone’s house, a friend of hers, I guess. She gave me the number Friday night. When I talked to her on Saturday, she said that she couldn’t go to a drugstore in Bisbee because all the people there would know her. So I told her we’d get the test kit after I picked her up that night.”

“In Bisbee?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go?”

Chris nodded. “I tried to. Dora had given me directions, and I went there, only there was this huge mess on her street, with all kinds of emergency vehicles and everything. I parked the car and walked back up the street. At least, I tried to. It turned out that the problem was at Dora’s house. I couldn’t tell what had happened—if someone had been hurt or if the place had caught fire or what. I tried to get close enough to see if I could find Dora, but the cops chased me away, told me to get lost. I waited and waited, but she never showed up. Finally I gave up and came back home. I thought she would call me again, but she never did. And then Sunday, Dad made me go on that stupid trip to Mount Lemmon. He probably thought if I hung around with jocks long enough, maybe I’d turn into one, like it was catching or something.”

“It sounds as though we’re finished here,” Alan Stouffer began. “Chris has been entirely cooperative. I don’t see how he can

“Do you know when Dora’s funeral is?” Chris asked Joanna.

“Christopher,” Amy said, “I know you were friends, but that isn’t—”

“Do you?” he insisted.

Joanna nodded. “I believe it’s sometime on Friday afternoon. I don’t know the time exactly, but if you call Norm Higgins at Hig­gins Funeral Chapel and Mortuary in Bisbee, I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you.”

“What’s his name again?”

Joanna pulled out one of her cards and jotted down Norm Hig­gins’s name on the back of it. “I’m sorry I don’t know the num­ber,” she said, handing the card to Christopher.

“That’s all right “ he sniffed. “I can get it from information.”

“Chris,” Amy said. “You really shouldn’t go. It just wouldn’t be right.”

“I’m going,” Christopher Bernard said fiercely. “And you can’t stop me!”

“And we should be going, too,” Joanna said, rising to her feet. “You’ve all been most helpful. And, Chris,” she added, offering him her hand, “please accept my sympathy for your loss. I know you cared deeply about Dora Matthews. She was lucky to have had you in her life.”

Out in the car, Jaime Carbajal slammed the car door and turned on Joanna in exasperation. “Why did you just quit like that?” he demanded. “I have a feeling there was a whole lot more Chris could have told us.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “But I want it to be admissible.”

“You still think he did it?”

“No, I don’t,” Joanna replied. “When you turn around to drive out, I want you to stop as close as you can to the front of that Lexus. I want to get a peek at the front grille and see if there’s any damage.”

“But . . .” Jaime began.

“Humor me on this one, Jaime. All I want is a peek. And we’re not violating anybody’s rights here. The car isn’t locked up in the garage. It’s parked right out here in front of God and everybody.”

Hopping out of the van, Joanna made a quick pass by the vehicle. And there it was: a slight depression in both the front bumper and the hood of the LS 430; the left front headlight cover had been shattered. The Lexus had hit something and had hit it hard. Seeing the damage took Joanna’s breath away. In that moment, she knew Jenny wasn’t the target—never had been. Uttering a prayer of thanksgiving, Joanna darted back to the open door of the van. “Anybody see me?” she asked.

Jaime was staring into the rearview mirror. “Not that I could tell,” he said. “So what’s the deal?”

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “It’s damaged, all right. It hit something hard enough to dent in the front end and shatter the headlight cover.”

“Where to now?” Jaime asked.

“Drive out of the yard, pull over into that next cul-de-sac, and stop there.”

Having said that, Joanna took her cell phone out of her purse and switched it on. She dialed Frank’s number and breathed a relieved sigh when he answered on the second ring.

“Irma’s not booked yet, but she will be,” he told her. “I sug­gested she call Burton Kimball.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “If anybody needs Burton Kimball’s ser­vices, it’s Irma Sorenson. Now I have a job for you, Frank. Did Ernie ever get any response on those telephone-company inquiries he made yesterday? If not, maybe you can hurry them up. We’re looking for calls going back and forth between the Bernards’ num­ber in Tucson and Sierra Vista.”

“I’ll have to check with Ernie. Between him and Ma Bell, that may take a while. Can I get back to you?”

“Sure. If the line’s busy, leave a message. I have a couple of other calls to make.”

By then, Jaime had parked in a neighboring cul-de-sac as directed. He had put the vehicle in neutral but left the engine run­ning. “What now?” he asked.

“We wait,” Joanna answered. “If anyone conies through the Bernards’ Irons gate driving that damaged Lexus, I want you to follow them. But first, give me your notebook with the names and numbers you wrote down. I’m going to check out Dr. Bernard’s alibi.”

It took several minutes for Joanna to get through to Dr. Daniel Howard. Since it was Wednesday afternoon, she ended up reaching him at home.

“Who’s this again?” he asked, after Joanna had explained what she wanted.

“I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she said. “From Cochise County.”

“Maybe I should check with Dick before I answer,” Dr. Howard hedged.

“It would really be better if you answered my question without checking with anybody,” she told him.

“Well, it’s true then,” he said after a pause. “We were up at the cabin—Andy Kingsley’s cabin. There were six of us—my son, Rick, and me; Dick Bernard and his son, Chris; and Andy Kingsley and his son, Lonnie. We got there up about noon on Sunday. Barbecued some hamburgers, played some cards, drank a few beers. The kids played games and watched videos. We all came back early Monday afternoon. How come? What’s this all about?”

“Never mind,” Joanna told him. “It’s nothing. Thanks for your help.”

Next she tried the number for Andrew Kingsley. A young male voice answered. “Dad’s not home,” he said. “Wanna leave a message?”

“Is this Lonnie, by any chance?” Joanna asked.

“Yeah. That’s me.” “My name’s Joanna Brady. I was just wondering did you go camping with Christopher Bernard last weekend?”

“That weirdo? Yeah, why?”

“And he was with you all Sunday night?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone,” Lonnie said. “It was my dad’s bright idea. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

“Right,” Joanna said. “I know just what you mean.”

She ended the call. As soon as she did, the phone rang again. “Hello, Frank. That was quick.”

“You were right. Ernie’s request had gone nowhere, but I know the right person to call,” he said. “Her name’s Denise, and she’s a jewel. She told me there’s a collect call from a pay phone in Sierra Vista at four twenty-seven in the afternoon. It’s a pay phone located in a Walgreens store. The call lasted for more than ten min­utes. What does it mean?”

“It means probable cause,” Joanna said.

“So Chris Bernard did kill her then?”

“No, surprisingly enough, I believe Chris Bernard is a stand-up guy. He was out of the house when that call came in from the Wal­greens pay phone. So was Dr. Bernard. It sounds to me as though both the father and the son could be in the clear on this. I’m beginning to believe that the mother did this job all by her little lonesome. Somehow Amy must have convinced Dora that she was on the kids’ side and that she was coming to help her. I want a search warrant for the Bernards’ house and for all their vehicles as well.”

“You’re saying the kid’s mother is our killer?”

“May be,” Joanna corrected. “Setting out to save her precious son from a fate worse than death. According to my scorecard, Frank, it’s been a bad day for mothers all around.”

‘‘Oops, Sheriff Brady,” Jaime Carbajal said. “Trouble. That Lexus is just now coming through the gate. It looks like the mother’s alone in the vehicle. Want me to pull her over?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Let her go, Jaime. Just follow her. Let’s see where she’s going. Gotta hang up, Frank. We’re on the move here. Get cracking on that search warrant, will you? We may need it sooner than you think.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was anything but a high-speed chase. With Amy Bernard obeying every posted speed limit, Jaime and Joanna followed at a distance of several car lengths. The van was so much taller than the surrounding vehicles that it was possible for Jaime to let other traffic merge in front of them and yet still maintain visual contact with the gleaming white Lexus.

“If anyone saw you looking at that vehicle in the yard, it could cause problems,” Jaime said.

“We’ll just have to hope they didn’t. In the meantime, don’t let that woman out of our sight.”

“Where do you think she’s going?” Jaime asked as Amy Bernard turned off Tanque Verde onto Grant Road.

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “But the fact that she left right after we did makes me think we’d better find out. Our showing up at the house might have spooked her.” Joanna was quiet for several seconds. “You’re the one who dropped Dora Matthews’s cloth­ing at the crime lab, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you happen to have the name and number of the criminal­ist here in Tucson who’s handling it?”

Jaime reached in his pocket, took out his small spiral notebook, and tossed it to her. “The guy’s name is Tom Burgess,” he said. “His phone number is in there somewhere.”

Joanna thumbed through the pages until she found the one that contained Tom Burgess’s name and number. As soon as she located it, she phoned him. “This is Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she said, once he was on the line. “I’m calling about the clothing my investigators brought in yesterday—clothing from a homicide victim named Dora Matthews. Have you had a chance to start on it yet?”

“No, why?”

“We’re currently following a damaged vehicle that may be implicated in that homicide. The medical examiner saw what he thought were flakes of paint on the victim’s clothing. We’re hoping you’ll be able to give us a match.”

“I’ll try to move it up on the list,” Tom Burgess said without much enthusiasm, “but I doubt if I’ll be able to get to it before the first of next week. We’re underbudgeted and understaffed.”

Join the club, Joanna thought. She said, “Please try, Mr. Burgess. I’d be most grateful.”

Joanna hung up and sighed. “Burgess didn’t strike me as much of a go-getter,” Jaime said.

Joanna allowed herself a hollow chuckle. “That makes two of us,” she said.

They continued to follow Amy Bernard, mile after mile, all the way down Grant to Oracle and then north on Oracle until she turned left into Auto Row.

“Now I know what she’s doing,” Joanna groaned. “She’s going to the dealer to have her car fixed.”

Grabbing up her phone, she dialed Frank’s number. “How’s it going on that search warrant? The one we need right this minute is for the Bernards’ Lexus.”

“I’m working on it,” Frank said. “What do you think I am, a miracle worker?”

“You’d better be,” Joanna said. “When you get it, fax a copy of it to me in care of the Lexus dealer in Tucson.”

“What’s the number?”

“I have no idea,” Joanna said, “but I can see the sign from here. It’s called Omega Lexus.”

As Joanna watched, Amy Bernard wheeled the white sedan off the street and up to the entrance to the service bays. Within moments a uniformed service representative came out to speak to her, clipboard in hand. “What do we do now, Boss?” Jaime asked.

“Pull up right behind her,” Joanna directed. “We wait until she gives the guy her car keys. Once they’re out of her hands and into his, we go up to her and have a little chat. You go one way, I’ll go the other, just in case she decides to make a run for it.”

As soon as the service rep took Amy Bernard’s keys, Joanna and Jaime climbed down out of the van. Amy stood with her back turned to the approaching officers, her blond hair ruffling in the wind. She had no idea they were there until Joanna spoke.

“How nice to see you again, Mrs. Bernard. Having some car trouble?”

The woman spun around. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Ignoring her, Joanna walked past both Amy Bernard and the service guy. She stopped in front of the car and made a show of studying the dent in the grille and the broken headlight. “Looks as though you’ve had a little fender bender here,” she said. “Have you reported it?”

“Of course I have,” Amy returned indignantly. “I was out driv­ing alone the other night and hit a deer out on the highway between here and Oracle. I reported the accident to both the police and to my insurance company yesterday morning. But you still haven’t said why you’re here.”

“Do you happen to have a cell phone with you?” Joanna asked.

Amy Bernard’s blue eyes narrowed ominously. “Yes. Why?”

“Because I thought you might want to have Mr. Stouffer pres­ent, Mrs. Bernard. Detective Carbajal here and I would like to ask you a few questions.”

“You can’t do that.”

“You’d be surprised at what I can do, Mrs. Bernard,” Joanna said quietly. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Dora Matthews. And as for the car,” she added, turning to the astonished service rep who stood frozen in place, “I’ve requested a search warrant for that vehicle. The actual search warrant won’t be here until later, but as soon as it’s available, I’m having it faxed to me here. Until it arrives, no one is to touch that vehicle.”

“Wait just a minute!” Amy Bernard’s smoothly made-up face screwed itself into a knot of fury. “I brought my car in here to have it fixed, and it’s going to be fixed.”

“No,” Joanna said simply. “It’s not. I believe this vehicle con­tains evidence of a homicide,” she said to the service rep, who now had the presence of mind to step away from the two women and their heated exchange of words. “It’s to be left alone. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. The name on his uniform was Nick. He looked to be about twelve years old and scared to death.

Apparently, even then, Amy Bernard didn’t believe the rules applied to her. Springing forward like a cat, she wrested the clip board out of the service rep’s hands and tore off the identification tag with the keys still attached. Stuffing the keys into her pocket, she put one hand deep inside the shiny leather bag that dangled from one shoulder.

Before either Joanna or Jaime could stop her, she stepped behind the hapless Nick. “I’ve got a gun,” she announced ominously. “II’ you don’t want this guy to get hurt, you’ll let us drive out of here.”

“Where to?” Joanna asked. “How far do you think you’ll get? Do you want to add kidnapping charges to everything else?”

“You’re never going to prove anything,” Amy said, shoving the reluctant Nick ahead of her toward the driver’s side of the Lexus.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Joanna said. “Anything you say may be held against you. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, an—”

“Shut up!” Amy screamed. “Just shut up.”

“Please, lady,” Nick stammered. “I don’t know what this is about, but—”

“Get in the car,” she ordered. “Now!”

Prodding Nick forward with her purse, she pushed him as far as the front door of the Lexus. Then she slipped into the car ahead of him. She scrambled over the center console while pulling him behind her. Once they were both inside, she locked the doors.

“Get in the van, Jaime,” Joanna ordered. “If she tries to drive out of here, stop her.”

A man in a white shirt and tie emerged from the service office. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“Get on the loudspeaker and clear this area,” Joanna told him, waving her badge in front of him. “Everyone inside and under cover. Now!”

For a second or two the man blinked at her in stricken amaze­ment, then he turned and sprinted back into the office. Within sec­onds, Joanna heard his frantic announcement to clear the area. In the meantime, Nick turned the key in the ignition and started the Lexus. Ducking behind the door of the van, Joanna pulled the Glock out of her small-of-the-back holster. Taking careful aim, she shot out first one rear tire and then the other.

To her amazement, the passenger-side door of the Lexus flew open and Amy Bernard shot out of it into the lot. “What the hell are you doing?” she railed. “You can’t just stand there and shoot the hell out of my car. I’ll have your badge.”

Joanna noticed two things at once. For one, the driver’s door opened. Nick sprang out of the car and sprinted into the relative safety of the office. For another, both of Amy Bernard’s hands were empty. She had left her purse inside the Lexus. There was no weapon in either hand.

Seeing that, Joanna launched herself into the air. Her flying tackle caught Amy Bernard right in the midriff. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of both of them. They went down in a tangle of legs and arms. They rolled across the burning blacktop until they came to rest next to the wheel of the Econoline van. By the time they stopped rolling, Jaime Carbajal had entered the fray as well. As he reached for one of Amy’s flailing arms, she nailed him in the eye with her elbow and sent him careening backward.