Skeleton Canyon (26 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Standing in front of her closet on Monday morning, Joanna was faced with the usual problem of what to wear. Had she managed to go shopping on Saturday afternoon, she might have had a few more choices. As it was, she settled on a three-piece hunter green pantsuit that was coming up on the end of its useful life. It was an old standby that dated from her previous career in the insurance business. She had worn it until she was tired of it. Most likely so was everyone around her.

The phone in the outer office was ringing as she walked in the door to hers. “It’s Adam York,” Kristin Marsten, her secretary, announced over the intercom once Joanna made it as far as her desk. “Do you want me to put him through?”

“Sure,” she said. “Hello, Adam,” she added a moment later. “You’re certainly up and at ‘em bright and early this morning.”

“You call this bright and early? What do you mean?” Adam replied. “I’ve been working all weekend—ever since you called on Saturday. In fact, I tried like hell to reach you yesterday evening. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. Your machine never picked up, either.”

“Sorry about that,” Joanna apologized. “I was out all day in a car with no radio. Then, last night, a storm came through and knocked out a transformer just up the road, shutting off the electricity for several hours. It also seems to have put a permanent glitch in my answering machine. Even with the power back on this morning, I couldn’t make the thing play back messages or record a new one.”

Adam York laughed. “Sounds like it’s about time to toss out that outdated machine and sign up for something civilized like voice mail.”

“I’ll look into it,” Joanna told him. “Now, what have you got for me?”

“Here’s the deal. As I told you the other night, the guys up in Phoenix have been working overtime on a big-time Freon-smuggling case. I checked with them. No one on that case thinks your Benson guy is related to what’s going on in Phoenix. They agree with me that he sounds like more of a small-time, independent operator than a big one. The Phoenix case revolves around a major air-conditioning contractor up there, not some seat-of-the-pants tow truck operator. All the same, as of six o’clock this morning, both Sam Nettleton and Sam’s Easy Towing and Wrecking are under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “How’d you manage that?”

Adam York laughed. “There are a few advantages to being the agent in charge, you know. If we come up with anything concrete, we’ll let you know right away.”

“I appreciate it,” Joanna said. Glancing out into the reception area, she saw both her chief deputies pacing back and forth, waiting for their early morning briefing. “‘Thanks for keeping me posted, Adam. I have to go. Duty calls. There are people outside waiting for me.”

^“
Sure thing,” Adam told her cheerfully. “Rut don’t bother Ilianking me. If this lead turns into something, we should be thanking you. You’re the one helping us, remember?”

Putting down the phone, Joanna motioned Deputies Voland and Montoya into the room. Wrangling as usual, they assumed their customary chairs. “What’s the deal?” Joanna asked.

“We took another big hit in the overtime category again this weekend,” Frank Montoya complained. “Nobody around here seems to listen or believe me when I tell them a budget crunch is coming. It’s going to nip us in the butt. We can’t keep squandering our resources this way, day after day, week after week.”

“You call that squandering? We had a homicide, for one thing,” Voland reminded him. “We also got hit by a record breaking storm—one that played havoc with roads and traffic all over the county. Of course, we had to use overtime. What do you expect?”

“I’ll tell you what I expect. If we keep splurging on overtime at the same rate we have been lately, my computer model says payroll will hit empty two weeks prior to the end of the fiscal year. What’s going to happen then?”

“Nothing much,” Dick Voland said easily. “We’ll have ourselves an old-fashioned SDC with the board of supervisors.”

“An SDC?” Frank Montoya asked with a frown. “What’s that?”

“A stare-down contest,” Voland replied with a sardonic grin. “First guy to blink loses.”

Montoya, chief deputy for administ
^r
ation, was not amused. “That’s no way to run a department,” he said.

“And neither is this,” Joanna told them firmly. “Quit bickering, both of you. You sound like a wrangling old married couple. Let’s go to work. Yesterday’s overtime charges aren’t Dick’s fault, Frank. He wasn’t even in town when the storm hit. On the other hand, Frank is right about the budget shortfall. Every week he gives me a computer printout that shows where we are and where we’re going. At the moment we’re running six-point-seven days short of being able to meet basic payroll at the end of the fiscal year. That’s a serious problem. Everybody from patrol right through jail staff is going to have to do something to fix it. Now let’s—”

The intercom buzzed. Shaking her head in annoyance, Joanna pushed the button. “What is it, Kristin?
^”
she demanded. “We’re having a briefing in here. Can’t it wait until—”

“There’s someone here who insists on seeing you, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin said. “His name’s Ignacio Ybarra.”

“You mean he’s here to see one of the detectives, don’t you?” Joanna asked.

“No. He says he wants to see the sheriff. Right away.”

“Where’s Detective Carpenter?”

“He still hasn’t come in this morning.”

“And Detective Carbajal?”

“He’s on his way up to the courthouse to see Judge Moore about a search warrant.”

Joanna considered for a moment. “Does Mr. Ybarra have Burton Kimball along with him?”

“The lawyer? No,” Kristin answered. “He’s here alone.”

“Ybarra,” Dick Voland said, glancing down and scanning his briefing sheet. “Isn’t he the prime suspect in the O’Brien case’?” Joanna nodded, and Voland rose to his feel. “If you want me to, Sheriff Brady, I can handle this for you....”

“He asked to speak to me, Dick,” Joanna said firmly. “I’ll talk to him myself.”

“Without Ernie?”

“You heard Kristin. Mr. Ybarra asked for me. He didn’t ask for you or Detective Carpenter or even for Detective Carbajal.”

“But—” Voland began.

Joanna cut him off. “I’m quite capable of passing along whatever information is given to me, Dick. Now, if it’s all right with you two, we’ll continue our briefing in the conference room as soon as I finish up with Mr. Ybarra.”

The two chief deputies left immediately after that, although Dick Voland was still grumbling about it under his breath as he walked out the door. Joanna punched the intercom button once more. “All right, Kristin,” she said. “You can send him in now.”

Ignacio Ybarra entered the room looking awful. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. His coloring was gray. Dark circles under his eyes said he hadn’t slept. Once through the doorway, he paused and glanced warily around the room as if expecting to see other people.

“Have a seat, Mr. Ybarra,” Joanna said. “And relax. There’s no one else here but us—no hidden microphones, no nothing. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to have your attorney present when you speak to me?”

Ignacio shook his head and eased himself onto a chair, grimacing with pain as he did so. “No,” he said. “This is all right.”

‘‘What can I do for you, then?” Joanna asked.

Nacio took a deep breath. “I come to talk to you about Bree’s earring.”

“The one you found and then lost again?”

The young man nodded. “I only found part of it,” he said. “The pearl.”

“What about it?” Joanna asked.

“You know something about that earring, don’t you, Sheriff Brady?”

Once again, Joanna thought back to Katherine O’Brien’s surprising reaction to the one remaining earring—to the fact that the dead girl’s mother wanted to have nothing to do with it. Nodding, Joanna kept quiet and waited for Ignacio Ybarra to speak again. Instead, he sat in an uncomfortable and lengthening silence, staring down at his hands.

Joanna wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Here was a murder suspect who had willingly walked into her office. He must have come there with the intention of volunteering some bit of information he hadn’t been prepared to share earlier in the presence of his attorney. Now, though, he had frozen up. He seemed unable to say anything at all much less what he had come to say.

Sitting there, Joanna Brady regretted that she wasn’t more experienced at interrogating suspects. What she had done in-stead, however, was live on the High Lonesome long enough to recognize the sometime necessity of priming a pump. In order to elicit any information from this obviously guarded and wary young man, she would have to share some bit of intelligence herself.

“I know her parents didn’t approve of them,” she said quietly.

Ignacio’s troubled brown eyes met hers. The pained hurt in that look--the all-consuming grief–was almost more than Joanna could bear. Katherine O’Brien’s way of grieving had been far more decorous and controlled—grief under glass, almost. Ignacio’s pain was much closer to the surface and written over every inch of him. Joanna Brady had been through her own terrible loss. She recognized there was no fakery in Ignacio Ybarra’s hurt, no pretense. Regardless of how Brianna O’Brien had died—at her lover’s hands or someone else’s—that Monday morning, Ignacio was suffering. His heart was broken.

“They told you that?” he asked at last.

“Mrs. O’Brien did,” Joanna replied. “She said her husband disapproved of Brianna’s wearing earrings.”

“Bid she tell you how much they didn’t like them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. O’Brien hit Bree,” Ignacio said quickly. “Did her mother tell you about that, too?”

Joanna shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Well, he did,” Ignacio declared, rushing on. “He caught her wearing the earrings in the house and told her to take them off. She told him they were her ears, that she should he able to decide what she would and wouldn’t wear on them. That’s when he slapped her—hard, right across the face. It happened the week before graduation. She had to wear makeup all week to keep the bruise from showing.”

Joanna nil let her breath out.
I wasn’t wrong,
she thought.
There was
a
n undercurrent of violence in that compulsively clean house. And in Bree’s
room as well.

“Did her parents know about you?” Joanna asked gently a moment later. “Did they know that’s where the earrings came from?”

Ignacio shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “She was afraid to tell them.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Bree was afraid of what her father might do if he discovered his daughter was involved with an Hispanic.”

“Afraid he’d do something to her or to you?” Joanna prompted.

“Maybe both,” Ignacio replied after a pause.

“She was afraid he’d hurt you?”

“He did,” Ignacio said simply.

Joanna sat bolt upright in her chair. “He did what?”

“Mr. O’Brien hurt me. At least, one of his men did.”

Joanna could barely believe her ears. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that one of David O’Brien’s men beat you up? When? Where?”

“Saturday night,” Ignacio said haltingly. “It happened right outside the gate to Green Brush Ranch. I went there hoping to catch sight of Bree. I thought if she had gone home, maybe I could spot her truck and know she was all right. I wanted to talk to her—to apologize for being late. I didn’t see her truck, though. All I saw were police cars. I was afraid something had happened to her.”

Fully alert, Joanna listened with every cell of her body. Ignacio was a homicide suspect. If what he was saying was true—if he had gone to Green Brush Ranch hoping to catch sight of the victim—that would mean he still thought she was alive almost twenty-four hours after Brianna’s shattered Timex had stopped ticking for good at 9:51. On Friday, not Saturday. That would also mean Ignacio Ybarra hadn’t killed her. The question was, however, was he telling the truth?

“When was this again?” Joanna asked.

“Saturday. I went there in the late afternoon, after I left the station. I was hiding outside the gate in a clump of mesquite when some guy saw me—one of Mr. O’Brien’s security guards, I guess. He’s the one who beat me up.”

“You’re saying the man who beat you up came from Green Brush Ranch?” Joanna asked.

“I le must have,” Ignacio replied. “I didn’t see exactly where he came from. All I know is, he snuck up on me from behind. I didn’t see him until he was on top of me. But that’s where he went afterward—back through the gate to Green Brush Ranch. Another guy on an ATV drove up to the gate. He waited just inside the fence. After the one guy finished with me, he walked across the road and went inside the gate. The two of them rode away together, back up the drive toward where the house roust he.”

“Where the house must be,” Joanna repeated thoughtfully. “You’ve never been there?”

Ignacio shook his head. “Bree made me promise that I wouldn’t go. I think she was worried something like this might happen.”

“Like what?” Joanna asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“This guy came up behind me—an older guy.”

“What did he look like?”

“I couldn’t see him too well in the dark, but he was tall and skinny. Tan. Wearing a cowboy hat.”

Unbidden, the image of Alf Hastings flashed across Joanna’s mind, but she brushed it aside. “Go on,” she said.

“Like I said, it was after dark,” Ignacio said. “1 may have dozed off for a minute. All I know is, out of nowhere I heard someone walk up behind me. I tried to stand up, but I had been in the same position for so long that my legs were asleep. When I tried to stand up, they collapsed under me. I fell forward, right on my face. I had managed to make it as far as my hands and knees when the guy kicked me in the gut. He was wearing pointed cowboy boots, and the toe caught me in the solar plexus. It knocked the wind out of me. I fell down again. The next thing I knew, he had me by the hair, pulling it out by the roots.”