J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

“Can or will?” David O’Brien asked.

“We’ve already done something,” Joanna countered reason-ably. “Probably more than we should have under the circumstances. Even though Brianna doesn’t officially qualify as a missing person, my department has nonetheless alerted authorities both here and in New Mexico to be on the lookout for her.”

“But not the FBI.”

“No.”

“And you have no intention of notifying them?”

David O’Brien was clearly a bully-someone who was accustomed to having his own way each and every time, no questions asked.

“As I told you earlier,” Joanna said, “we won’t take that kind of action unless there’s some compelling evidence to indicate that a kidnapping has actually taken place.”

The unwavering calmness in Joanna’s answer seemed to provoke David O’Brien and make him bristle that much more. “I thought as much,” he said. “But that’s till right. You do your thing, Sheriff Brady, and I’ll do mine.”

“David…” Katherine began, but he silenced her once more with a single baleful glare. Again the woman subsided into her chair. She said nothing more aloud, but the fingers gripping her partially filled glass showed white at the knuckles.

Looking at the woman, the phrase “contents under pressure” suddenly popped into Joanna’s head. That was what Katherine O’Brien was like. She seemed to be forever walking on eggshells around her husband, trying to keep things from him-things like learning about his daughter’s birth control pills-that might provoke… what?

For the first time, the possibility of domestic violence entered into the equation. Joanna had been sheriff long enough to know that domestic violence was a part of all too many seemingly happy marriages in Cochise County and throughout the rest of the country as well. DV calls came from homes at all socioeconomic levels and all walks of life. David O’Brien was in his seventies, but his bare arms bulged with the muscles and sinews used to propel his non-motorized wheelchair. His hands, callused from turning the rubber wheels, would come equipped with a powerful grip. Used as weapons, those same hands could be dangerous, although, in Joanna’s opinion, the words that came from his mouth-words steeped in anger and bitterness-seemed damaging enough.

Joanna thought again of the almost obsessive neatness of Brianna’s room-of the House Beautiful quality of the whole spacious and well-appointed place. Some people were good housekeepers by their very nature, but Sheriff Brady had learned from reading her deputies’ incident reports that in some relationships keeping a clean house was a stipulation-a requirement to be met on a daily basis-in order to keep from earning a smack in the mouth. Or worse. In that kind of environment, Bree’s birth control pills, her missing journal entries, and even her own AWOL status made far more sense. For that matter, so did Katherine’s obvious fear of rocking the boat.

Joanna turned back to David. He was studying her with narrowed eyes, as if expecting her to cave in to his demands.

“What do you mean by your thing and my thing, Mr. O’Brien?” she asked.

“It means that as soon as I saw your department’s reluctance to call in reinforcements, I went ahead and made other arrangements. I’ve contacted a private eye up in Phoenix. Detective Stoddard will be here by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. You may be unwilling or unable to do the job, Sheriff Brady. I’m sure my PI won’t be.”

“Hiring a detective is certainly your prerogative, Mr. O’Brien,” Joanna returned. “It may prove to be a waste of money, however, especially if your daughter shows up on her own as scheduled tomorrow afternoon.”

“Even if she does, it’s my money,” O’Brien said sourly.

“Of course,” Joanna agreed. “And you’re entitled to spend it in whatever manner you see fit. Good evening, then.” She started to leave, but then stopped and turned back. “May I ask one more question?”

“What’s that?”

“Have you noticed any changes in your daughter’s behavior in the last few months?”

“What’s this? You’re asking me questions about a daughter you insist isn’t really missing?”

Joanna ignored the jibe. “Has she changed?”

O’Brien shrugged. “Of course she’s changed,” he said. “Night to day. As though she had a personality transplant. Telling us one thing and doing another is just the tip of the iceberg.” He paused long enough to glower at his wife, as though he held Katherine personally accountable for his daughter’s emerging dishonesty.

“She never should have dropped out of the cheerleading squad,” he continued. “That was the beginning of all this and a grave disappointment to me as well. I didn’t raise my daughter to be a quitter. That’s not what O’Briens do.”

You mean being student body vice president and class valedictorian weren’t enough? Joanna wanted to ask, but she didn’t. Instead, she stifled that question in favor of another. “She just quit?”

David O’Brien might have wanted Katherine to keep quiet, but his orders weren’t enough to suppress a mother’s natural inclination to defend her daughter. “Miss Barker had to drop her,” Katherine interjected. “It happened back in November. At the end of football season. Because Bree had been captain of the squad, there was a bit of a flap about it. You may have heard…”

From the moment Joanna had found her wounded husband shot and bleeding in a sandy wash her every waking moment had been preoccupied with her own concerns, with her own survival and with Jenny’s. Joanna Brady had had very little energy left over to squander on anyone else’s difficulties. In That kind of emotion-charged atmosphere, it was hardly surprising that a tempest centered in and around the local high school cheerleading squad had failed to penetrate her consciousness.

Joanna shook her head. “I don’t remember hearing anything about it,” she said.

“You’re probably the only one,” David said. “It happened during the Bisbee-Douglas game. One of the players from Douglas-some young Mexican kid-ended up getting hurt. Had his leg broken, I guess. Bree was upset about it beyond all reason. She walked off the field right in the middle of the game. Left the ballpark and went directly to the hospital. Naturally, the cheerleading adviser had no choice but to put her off the squad.”

Joanna counted off the months in her head. November through June. Seven months. About the same length of time covered by the missing journals. “And that was when you first noticed the change in her?”

“She was moody, I suppose,” Katherine said. “But that was understandable. After all, losing her position on the squad was a very real loss to her, a blow to her self-esteem. There’s some grieving to be done after something like that happens. Grieving and a certain amount of acting out. But beyond that, she was fine. It’s not like it interfered with her grades or anything.”

Realizing Katherine was once again attempting to smooth things over and to minimize whatever had happened, Joanna decided to press the issue. “What kind of acting out?” she asked.

“She called me a bigot, among other things,” David O’Brien snarled, his face darkening with rage. From the looks of him, Bree’s accusatory words might still be hanging in the charged air around him. “My own daughter called me that to my face when I tried to explain to her that some stupid Mexican having his leg broken was no reason for her to give up something she’d wanted for years-something the whole family had worked for.”

Joanna couldn’t help noticing the sneer in O’Brien’s voice when he said the word Mexican. She also remembered his irrational refusal to deal with Detective Jaime Carbajal. Maybe, she thought, Brianna O’Brien’s assessment of’ her father was right on the money.