Devil's Claw (9 page)

Joanna nodded. She was remembering the message Lisa Howard had passed along to her from the sergeant in Los Gatos. Now, having met Reba Joy Singleton, Joanna had a far better idea of what Sergeant Carlin had meant when he said, “Good luck.” He had meant that Reba Singleton was going to be a problem. Just how bad that problem would turn out to be was anybody’s guess.

CHAPTER 5

“Reba Singleton,” Joanna replied.

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

“That’s my understanding.”

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

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

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

“Preferably on you.”

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

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

“Who is it?” Joanna asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is it?”

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

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

“Where and when did this happen?”

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

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

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

“What happened to her?”

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

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

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

“And was she?”

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

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

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

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

“I’m here. What’s happening?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It means the same thing.”

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

“All right,” Jenny grumped. “I will.”

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

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

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

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

“Drive carefully,” he added.

“I will,” she said.

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

“Still no tow truck?” she asked.

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

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