Skeleton Canyon (22 page)

Fantasizing about that missed meal, Joanna failed to notice the black Lexus parked by the curb just down the street from the coroner’s office. Joanna was sitting in the Eagle under the portico and waiting for George to pull in behind her when someone tapped on the window beside her head. She looked outside to see the grief-ravaged face of Katherine O’Brien.

Joanna opened the door. In the more than two hours she had been in the car with the body, Joanna’s olfactory senses had somehow become deadened to the stench. Only when she opened the door and moved into the fresh air could she tell the difference. The evil cloud that came out of the Eagle with her sent Katherine reeling backward, gagging and holding her mouth.

“That’s not . . .” she wailed, shuddering and pointing at the mud-encrusted back gate of Joanna’s wagon. “It can’t be ...”

“Mrs. O’Brien,” Joanna said quickly. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I had to come and see for myself,” Katherine said. “Miss Stoddard told us that it didn’t look good, but I had to know for sure. I had to know what really happened.”

Seeing the Lexus now, Joanna squinted through the rain. “Where’s your husband, Mrs. O’Brien? Is he waiting in the car?”

Katherine shook her head. “I came by myself. I told him I was going up to St. Dominick’s to light a candle and pray. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“And you shouldn’t be,” Joanna admonished. “Dr. Winfield wasn
^’
t planning to try to ID the body until after it’s been properly taken care of for evidence reasons.”

“It?” Katherine said, her voice rising until it verged on hysterics. “You’re calling my daughter an ‘it’? And what’s she doing stuffed in the back of a station wagon like that?”

Thank God Deputy Raymond didn’t drive up with the body in the back of his pickup,
Joanna thought.

Just then Doc Winfield pulled in behind the Eagle. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“‘This is Katherine O’Brien,” Joanna explained. “She came to find out what’s happened to her daughter.”

George Winfield’s clothing was still plastered to his body. The man was a mess. Still, with a look of total and grave concern, he reached out and took Katherine O’Brien’s hand, grasping it firmly. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. O’Brien,” he said, his voice softened by genuine warmth and dignity both. “It will lake some time for me to prepare things so you can actually view your daughter. If you wouldn’t mind going inside to wait, I’ll come get you as soon as possible.”

Taking Katherine by the arm, he escorted her to the door while Joanna stood there waiting. She knew George Winfield had been a doctor once, an oncologist, before he had left that field to study forensic pathology. As she watched Katherine O’Brien lean against him, taking comfort from whatever he was saying to her, Joanna realized she was seeing a demonstration of bedside manner in action—an impressive demonstration at that.

Joanna knew the body was far too heavy for her to manage on her own. During the next few minutes, she occupied herself with hauling George Winfield’s equipment case out of the back of her Eagle. In less than five minutes, the coroner reappeared. He was dressed in clean, dry scrubs and wearing a lab coat. He was also pushing a gurney.

“If you can help me load her onto this,” he said, “I’ll be able to handle things from here.”

“What about Mrs. O’Brien?” Joanna asked. “Do you want me to have her go home and come back later?”

Winfield frowned. “I’m not used to having family members waiting outside quite this soon,” he said. “But you could just as well let her stay. The face is so badly mangled from being squashed flat by the falling truck that there isn’t that much that will soften the blow. Not only that, if the mother can’t positively identify her by sight, then we’re better off knowing now that we’ll have to get the dental records.”

Joanna nodded. “Do you want me to wait with her?”

“If you don’t mind,” George Winfield said, “that would be a big help.”

Painfully aware of her own scruffy appearance—of her dirty clothes and dusty hiking boots—Joanna Brady ventured inside. The Cochise County Coroner’s Office was housed in quarters once occupied by Dearest Departures, a bankrupted discount funeral home. George Winfield had stowed Katherine O’Brien in a small, darkened room that had probably been intended to function as a private chapel. Katherine sat on one end of an upholstered love seat, weeping quietly into a hanky. Joanna walked over and sat down beside her.

“You probably shouldn’t do this alone,” Joanna said tentatively. “Would you like to have someone go out to Sombra—” She slopped and corrected herself. “—to Green Brush Ranch and bring your husband here to he with you’?”

Katherine O’Brien shook her head. “I’m a trained nurse,” she said. “It’s better if I do it.”

Joanna nodded. “All right, then,” she said.

Katherine blew her nose. “Tell me about Ignacio Ybarra,” she said.

“I didn’t think you knew anything about your daughter’s boyfriend,” Joanna returned. “That’s what you told us yesterday.”

“I didn’t,” Katherine said. “Not then. Frankie Stoddard picked up the name earlier by listening to radio transmissions on her police scanner. As soon as she mentioned the name, I recognized it. He’s the football player from Douglas—the one who was injured in the Bisbee-Douglas game.”

“The one your daughter quit the cheerleading squad over’?” Katherine nodded.

“That’s him,” she said.

“My mother is a liar.” Unbidden, the words from the last entry in Brianna’s journal came back to Joanna in a rush.
What kind of liar?

There were lots of ways to lie, Joanna realized. Eleanor Lathrop had lied, not by spinning some outrageous fib but by keeping silent. By marrying George Winfield on the sly and then by not mentioning it to anyone, not even to her own daughter. That was what Ogden Nash and the Catholic church would have called a sin of omission rather than a sin of commission. So what kind of untruth on Katherine’s part had so offended her own daughter that Brianna had retaliated by weaving her own web of lies?

“Are you aware that two of your daughter’s journal volumes are missing from her room?”

“No,” Katherine replied. “I had no idea.”

“One was found at the crash site. The second—the current one—wasn’t there.”

“So it is her, then, isn’t it,” Katherine said doggedly, her tears starting anew. “I kept hoping and praying it might be some other truck. There are lots of those around, you know. I saw one just like it on my way uptown. But the journal ...” She shook her head. “That pretty well settles it. How did it happen? The accident, I mean. Tell me. I need to know.”

Joanna sighed. With no certain confirmation from the autopsy, it was still way too early to discuss the possibility that Bree’s death might prove to be a homicide rather than an accident. Still, as long as Frankie Stoddard continued to monitor all departmental radio transmissions, it wouldn’t be a secret for long. Joanna nonetheless decided to try.

“The truck ran off a cliff out in the Peloncillos,” she said. “It turned over several times. It looks as though Brianna was thrown clear. When the truck finally came to rest, she was crushed underneath it. Under the cab.
^”

Katherine closed her eyes. “She died instantly, then?”

Joanna shook her head. “I don
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t know,” she said. “Dr. Winfield is the only one who can answer those kinds of questions. That’s why he needs time to collect evidence.”

“Yes,” Katherine said. “Of course.”

“Tell me something,” Joanna said. “Yesterday, when your husband wanted me to notify the FBI, he raised the issue of a possible kidnapping. Is there anything in your husband’s business dealings that would lend itself to that kind of scenario?”

The change in Katherine’s demeanor was abrupt. “What exactly do you mean by that?” she demanded. “And what does a question like that have to do with my daughter driving her truck off a cliff?”

She’s doing it again,
Joanna thought, watching in fascination as Katherine O’Brien seemed to collect herself and make an almost instant transformation into a tigress defending her young or den. It was the same kind of almost schizophrenic behavior she had exhibited the day before when Ernie and Joanna had been interviewing her. One moment she had been falling apart. The next, in a daunting display of willpower, she had pulled herself together and assumed the role of gracious hostess. This time she came out swinging in her absent husband’s defense.

“It’s just curiosity more than anything,” Joanna assured her quickly. “Obviously, your husband has made a good deal of money over the years ...”

“He was in real estate,” Katherine returned. “Real estate and construction both. He was a major player in the development of Paradise Valley up in Phoenix. Over the years, he diversified enough so that when it was time to sell out and come down here, he was able to make a good deal of money—funds that are still coming in, by the way. If you’re asking me whether or not my husband hangs out with lowlifes who would do this kind of thing—a kidnapping, I mean—I’ll tell you right here and now that he doesn’t. David O’Brien may be a little overbearing at times, even unreasonable occasionally. But my husband is a highly principled man. If you don’t believe me, there are any number of people you could ask. Wally, for instance.
^”

“Wally?”

“Wally Hickman,” Katherine O’Brien said. “Years ago, before Wally went into politics, he and my husband were business partners.”

Joanna took a deep breath. “You mean Governor Hickman,” she asked.

Katherine O’Brien nodded. “You know him., don’t you?”

“Not personally.”

“Well, I do, and so does David. Wally and his wife, Abby, are good friends of ours.”

Sheriff Joanna Brady suddenly had visions of this tragic but seemingly obscure little incident in the Peloncillos taking on statewide proportions.
I’ll have to get hold of Frank Montoya and bring him up to speed,
she told herself in a mental note. Montoya, her chief deputy for administration, also doubled as her department’s public information officer. Not if but when the case turned into yet another media hot potato, Frank would be the one who had to handle it.

Joanna decided to back away from the kidnapping line of inquiry. “You said a moment ago that your husband can be unreasonable at times. If you’ll pardon my saying so, I did happen to notice some evidence of that yesterday when Detective Carpenter and I were at the house talking to you.”

“So?” Katherine asked defensively. “There are lots of unreasonable people in the world. If you think of all that’s happened to David over the years, I believe he has more grounds than most for being difficult.”

“He made that quite clear himself,” Joanna said. “But considering his attitude toward Hispanics, what do you think he would have done had he known his daughter was secretly involved with someone like Ignacio Ybarra?”

“What any right-thinking parent of a rebellious teenager would have done, Sheriff Brady. He would have grounded her for the rest of her life.
^”

Before Joanna could think of another question, George Winfield appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. O’Brien?” he said. “You can come in now.
^”

Taking Katherine by the arm, he led the two women into a spotless lab. “I must apologize for having to show you your daughter in her current condition, but ...”

Katherine swallowed hard. “That’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”

Having been away from the awful smell of decaying flesh long enough to clear her nostrils and lungs, Joanna once again had to fight to keep from gagging. The basket was gone. The hotly bag lay on a gurney. The bag was unzipped only far enough to allow an unobstructed view of the terribly mangled face.

Katherine walked forward far enough to glimpse it, then she stopped. Sagging against Doc Winfield, she nodded. “It’s her,” she whispered.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I recognize the birthmark on her neck.”

“Very well.” Winfield went to the head of the table and covered the bag with a clean white sheet. “Wait,” Katherine said. “What about her jewelry? Along with the truck, her fa-Ihn’r gave her a diamond ring for her eighteenth birthday. I’m mire he’ll want to have that back, and her class ring as well.”

Winfield pulled out a form and consulted it. “I’ve inventoried both of those items on the personal effects form,” he said. “Along with her purse, wallet, watch, and the earring as well, hill for the time being, I’ll have to hold on to all of them. The watch we’ll most likely have to keep indefinitely.”

“Why’s that?”

“It might prove helpful in setting the time of death. Everything else you’ll get back, of course, once the investigation is complete, but—”

“What kind of earring?” Katherine interrupted.

“It’s a single pearl,” Winfield answered. “Looks to be of pretty good quality. The other one must have fallen off somewhere. The only reason this one wasn’t lost as well was that the post was smashed flat.”

“I don’t want it,” Katherine said at once. “The earring or the watch. Just give me the two rings. Those are all I care about.”

“But, Mrs. O’Brien—”

“The watch is a cheap Timex. It’s of no consequence whatever. The earring is different. Brianna had her ears pierced just a few weeks before school was out,” Katherine said. “It caused a good deal of heartache in our home because her father disapproves of pierced ears. On anyone, but most especially on his daughter. He forbade her to wear the earrings in the house. In fact, he gave her strict orders to get rid of them. It would hurt him terribly to learn that she had disobeyed him. His heart will be broken as it is.”

“You don’t understand, Mrs. O’Brien,” Winfield interjected. “once personal effects are no longer required for evidentiary reasons, I’m required to turn them over to victims’ families. If I were to keep any items that had appeared on inventory sheets, I would be in clear violation. If it was reported, I’d be out of a job.”

“Very well,” Katherine said. “If that’s the case, when the time comes, I’ll make sure I’m the one who collects Bree’s things. That way I can take care of it myself. You won’t have to have anything at all to do with it.” She backed toward the door. “Is that all? Can I go now?”