Skeleton Canyon (7 page)

Because of the heat, Joanna had dressed in shorts and an old Cochise County Fair T-shirt to drive Jenny to camp. Now, though, she wondered how that kind of casual dress might affect and offend the O’Briens. She worried that they might think Sheriff Joanna Brady wasn’t paying attention; wasn’t according their family’s crisis the kind of respect it deserved.

Taking that into consideration, she changed her mind about skipping off at the department first thing. Instead, she drove straight home to High Lonesome Ranch. Barely pausing to greet the two dogs, Tigger and Sadie, Joanna hurried inside to shower, put on fresh makeup, and change into civilized work clothes—her most lightweight business suit, a blouse, heels, and hose.

If Bree is dead, I probably won’t be able to do a damned thing to help those poor people,
she told her image in the mirror as she gave her short red hair one last shot of hair spray.
If nothing else, though, at least I’ll look competent. That may be the best I can do.

CHAPTER FIVE

Finished dressing, Joanna rushed out to her waiting Crown Victoria. Late afternoon sun had turned the interior into a fiery oven. Barely able to stand touching the steering wheel, Joanna turned on the air-conditioning full blast. By the time she made it out to the highway, the car was beginning to cool off some. The difference between her Eagle and the air-conditioned Ford was astonishing.
I will have to get the AC fixed this week,
Joanna told herself.
Definitely
before
I go back to pick Jenny up from camp, not
after.

Driving toward David O’Brien’s place, Joanna still thought of it by its old name, Sombra del San Jose—Shadow of San Jose, named after the stately mountain that thrust up out of the Mexican desert a few miles away. That was the name the ranch had been given originally by David O’Brien’s grandfather, back before the turn of the century. When David O’Brien had returned to the family digs from Phoenix several years earlier, he had renamed the place Green Brush Ranch, after the mostly dry wash bed—Green Brush Draw—that bisected the entire spread. The new name was posted above the gale, formed in foot-high, iron letters.

Despite the sign, the new name hadn’t caught on with most other locals any better than it had with Joanna. They regarded II as change for change’s sake. Now, knowing about David O’Brien’s attitude toward Jaime Carbajal, Joanna saw the name in a whole new light. Considering his attitude toward Mexicans, no wonder David O’Brien had dropped the Spanish language name.

At the entrance to the ranch, a closed, electronically controlled gate barred her way
.
On either side of the gate, as far as time eye could see, stretched an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped by V-shaped barbed wire with a coiled layer of razor wire resting inside it. The fencing reminded Joanna of the barrier surrounding the inmate exercise yard at the Cochise County jail. It was the same stuff that encircled countless human and auto junkyards all over the country.

At the time the O’Briens had been having the fencing installed at great expense, they had been considered something of a laughingstock. Old-timers around the county had made fun of the whole concept, calling the fence David’s Folly and referring to the ranch itself as Fort O’Brien. That, however, was before the dawn of the era of “Border Bandits,” roving hands of mostly Sonora-based thieves and thugs who practiced home invasions, burglaries, and armed robbery on people who lived along the U.S. side of the border. Taking the grim presence of those folks into consideration, David O’Brien’s fence no longer seemed foolish.

Joanna leaned out the driver’s window of the Crown Victoria and punched the talk button on an intercom mounted on a post just outside the gate.

 “Come on in, Sheriff Brady,” a disembodied voice said as the gate slowly began to swing open. “Drive right up to the house. They’re expecting you. Detective Carpenter said you were on your way.”

Joanna glanced around in surprise. There was no sign of any monitoring video camera, yet there had to be one somewhere. Joanna hadn’t announced her name, yet whoever was in charge of the gate knew who she was and what she was doing there.

“Thanks,” she said, putting the Crown Victoria back in gear and moving forward. “I’m glad to hear they know I’m coming.”

Outside the gate, on the county side of the fence, the far western end of Purdy Lane was little more than a dirt track. Inside the fence, however, the private road leading away from the gate was a smooth layer of well-maintained blacktop. Thinking of the rough, rutted track that led through High Lonesome Ranch and of the sometimes sagging barbed-wire fence that surrounded it, Joanna shook her head.
The O’Briens must have money to burn,
she told herself.

Following the winding road, Joanna reviewed what little she knew about David and Katherine O’Brien. David, in his early seventies, was a Cochise County native and the only grandson of one of southern Arizona’s more colorful pioneers. David’s grandfather, Ezra Cooper, had first set foot in what would eventually become the Arizona Territory when, as a young man, he had worked as a surveyor laying out the boundaries of the Gadsden Purchase. Later, after making a fortune working for what would become the Southern Pacific Railroad and also after contracting TB, Cooper had returned to the southern part of the Arizona Territory hoping to regain his health. He had brought with him a young wife and had expected to found a thriving family dynasty on the lush grassland of the lower San Pedro Valley.

When Ezra Cooper died a few years later, he left behind a widow named Lucille, a six-year-old daughter named Roxanne, and, to his regret, no sons. Lucille’s second husband, a fortune-hunting ne’er-do-well named Richard Lafferty, had so overgrazed the place that when he died of influenza in 1918, what was left of Ezra Cooper’s Sombra del San Jose was little more than a mesquite-punctuated wasteland. Now, with the help of a university trained botanist and liberal applications of money, David O’Brien had gained a good deal of favorable press by systematically removing the water-hoarding stands of mesquite and returning the desert landscape to its original grassy state.

So much for David O’Brien. Joanna knew that Katherine was David’s second wife. Other than the fact that she was the middle-aged mother of an outstanding daughter, Joanna knew very little about her. Economically and socially, Green Brush Ranch and the High Lonesome were worlds apart.

Coming around a curve, Joanna encountered a Y in the road. Never having been to the place before, Joanna might have taken the wrong fork. Fortunately, an all-terrain vehicle, its original color obscured by a layer of red dirt, sat idling at the intersection. The driver—a cigar-chomping cowhand with a roll of fat around his middle—waved her on, sending her down the right-hand fork and slipping onto the roadway be-hind her.

A white-stuccoed ranch house appeared a moment later. Surrounded by yet another razor wire–topped fence, the house was set in a small basin, nestled in among a stately copse of green-leafed cottonwoods. Once again Joanna had to wait for an electronically operated gate to open to allow her access to the house itself.

Threading her way through a collection of several parked police vehicles and past another fiberglass-topped ATV, Joanna pulled up under a shaded portico and parked next to David O’Brien’s customized Aerostar van. In front of the van sat Katherine O’Brien’s distinctive Lexus LS 400—the only one like it in town. On the verandah, beyond David O’Brien’s wheelchair-accessible van and next to a gurgling fountain, stood the hulking figure of Chief Deputy Richard Voland. He was talking to another man, one Joanna didn’t recognize. Beside the stranger sat a huge panting German shepherd.

Voland glanced up as Joanna approached. “Afternoon, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “This is Alf Hastings, Mr. O’Brien’s operations manager.”

Alf was a suntanned forty-something man with a cream-colored straw Resistol cowboy hat pulled low over pale blue eyes. Joanna might not have recognized the face immediately, but she did recognize the name.

In Arizona law enforcement circles, Alf Hastings was notorious. As a Yuma County deputy, he had been the focal point of one of the biggest police scandals in the state’s history. He and three other deputies had been fired for systematically brutalizing a group of teenaged undocumented aliens (UDAs) who had been caught crossing the Mexican border just north of San Luis. The four officers had herded the UDAs into a van, driven them just inside the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and left them there—after first beating the crap out of them and taking their water. No doubt all six of them would have died had they not been found by a feisty Good Samaritan—a spelunking retired schoolteacher from Wooster, Ohio. She had given them water, loaded them into her Jeep Wagoneer, and then carted them off to the nearest hospital.

In the resulting investigation, the cops had lost their jobs, although none of them actually went to prison. An ensuing flurry of civil lawsuits, shades of California’s Rodney King, had put a big hole in Yuma County’s legal contingency fund.

“So you’re our local lady sheriff, are you?” Alf said with what was no doubt calculated to be an engaging grin. “Glad to meet you.”

He held out his hand. Joanna shook it without enthusiasm. “I didn’t know you had moved to Bisbee,” she said.

“I haven’t exactly,” he returned. “Unless the Bisbee City limits come all the way out here. My wife and I live at the hired help’s compound just a ways back up the road here. Mr. O’Brien was good enough to set aside six mobile homes for those of us who work here, except for Mrs. Vorevkin, the housekeeper. She has a room here at the house.”

Hastings’s pocket radio squawked to life. As the operations manager walked away to answer his summons in private, Joanna turned to Dick.

“What’s he doing here?” she asked.

Voland frowned. “As near as I can tell, he’s probably doing the same thing he was doing before—keeping America safe for Americans, only on a private basis, this time, not a public one.”

“Have we had any complaints?”

“Not so far,” Voland answered. “My guess is he’s been keeping a pretty low profile.”

“Did you tell him we don’t tolerate that kind of behavior around here?”

“The subject didn’t come up,” Voland said.

“Never mind,” Joanna said. “I’ll tell him myself the next time I see him. In the meantime, what’s going on? Any word about the girl?”

At six-four, Chief Deputy Voland towered over Joanna by a whole foot. The top of her head barely grazed the bottom of his chin. For months now, the sheriff had been aware of the possibility that her not-quite-divorced second in command might have a crush on her. Always gruff and blustery in public, his private dealings with Joanna had changed. Too much the professional to say anything directly, his feelings were betrayed by ears that reddened when she spoke to him in private as well as by sudden bouts of his being tongue-tied in her presence.

As a consequence, in her dealings with Dick Voland, Joanna always found herself walking a tightrope. Because he was in charge of the day-to-day functioning of her department, it was essential that she have a good working relationship with the man. On the other hand, she didn’t want to say or do anything that would encourage him or give him the wrong idea.

“Nothing much so far,” he said. “Ernie just got here a little while ago. He’s inside talking to the parents. You can go on in, if you want to.”

“How are the O’Briens holding up?” Joanna asked.

“About how you’d expect,” Voland answered. “The mother is brokenhearted; the father is pissed. If I were Brianna O’Brien’s daddy,” he added, “I would be, too.”

As soon as Joanna rang the bell, the O’Briens’ front door was opened by a round-faced red-haired woman who spoke with what sounded to Joanna like a thick Russian accent. “I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said, showing the woman her photo ID and badge. “I’d like to see Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Of course. This way, please.”

Inside, away from the blazing heat, the interior of the air-conditioned house felt almost chill. As Joanna followed the shuffling, heavyset housekeeper across a smooth saultillo tile Boor, she was struck by the scale of the house. The ceilings were high and broken by walls with clerestory windows that provided light without letting in heat. The housekeeper led the way down a long hallway that was almost twice as wide as those in most private homes. The white walls were adorned with groupings of carefully lit and lavishly framed art. Some of the pieces looked familiar. Walking past, there was no way for Joanna to tell whether or not any of the pieces were originals or whether they were simply extremely well-executed reproductions.

Surely they’re not originals,
Joanna thought.
No one in his right mind
would bring a valuable collection of original art right here to the border... .

But then, thinking about the razor wire–topped chain-link fence and the ATV-mounted security guards, the video monitoring system, and what was no doubt a trained guard dog, she reconsidered. Maybe this was original artwork after all.

Al the far end of the long hallway, the housekeeper paused. “You wait,” she said.

Before Joanna, set in an alcove that had clearly been designed for that specific purpose, sat an exquisite, two-foot-tall marble statue of the Madonna and Child. The baby was roly-poly and clung to his mother’s waist with one chubby bare leg. The young mother’s face seemed almost alive with a benevolent, welcoming smile. Her one free hand reached out in graceful, openhanded greeting to all who looked upon her. Beneath the statue sat a polished rosewood prie-dieu. On the prie-dieu lay an open Bible, an onyx-beaded rosary complete with a gold crucifix, and a single lit votive candle. The brown leather of the padded knee rest glowed with the patina of long and faithful use.

Feeling as though she were standing in a chapel, Joanna gazed up at the statue while running an admiring finger over the satin-smooth grain of the wood.

“Sheriff Brady?”