J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

After that, Joanna fell silent. “So,” Frank asked. “Do we send a response or not?”

What Joanna really wanted to do in response was get in her car, drive uptown to the Bee’s office on Main Street, grab Marliss by the front of her shirt, and shake her until her teeth rattled. That, of course, was a rotten idea. Struggling to get a grip, Joanna thought about it. As for a written response, any mention of the joint operation ran the risk of blowing the Freon deal and possibly the murder investigation as well. Much as Joanna personally would have liked to drop Marliss Shackleford down the nearest mine shaft, Joanna knew that just wasn’t possible-not without jeopardizing too many other things.

“Not,” she said. “Thank Ken for sending it over. That was very evenhanded of him for a change, but we’ll let the column go as is. With no comment.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you said something?” Frank asked.

“No,” Joanna said. “In this case, I think we’ll let our actions speak for themselves.”

“All right,” Frank conceded. “Have it your way.”

Once Frank left her office, Joanna continued to fume. She found herself second-guessing her decision. Between that and wondering what was going on in Benson, it wasn’t too surprising that she couldn’t concentrate on paperwork anymore. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force herself to proof-read a densely worded letter from her to the board of supervisors. The sentences on the page simply didn’t make sense. They kept becoming entwined with Marliss Shackleford’s Lone hanger comment and with the single sentence from Brianna O’Brien’s diary that Joanna had come to regard as the dead girl’s haunting last words. “My mother is a liar.”

Finally, giving up on her third attempt at reading the letter, Joanna put it aside, along with the remainder of that day’s untended correspondence. Abandoning all pretense of staying on task, Joanna leaned back in her oversized chair and stared out the window.

When Joanna had come into her office an hour or so earlier, the sky outside her window had been brilliantly blue. Now that same blue sky was pockmarked with puffy white, gray-bottomed clouds. On the ground below, swiftly moving shadows from those same clouds glided silently over the desert landscape like so many circling vultures. Watching the shadows, Joanna found herself once again thinking about Brianna O’Brien’s mother, the liar.

Determined to do something constructive, Joanna stood up and headed for the evidence room. Buddy Richards, the evidence room clerk, greeted her with a welcoming smile that Joanna knew was far more pleasant than it should have been. Buddy was one of the recalcitrant old-timers who had much preferred things the way they were. Months after the election, Buddy still wasn’t happy about having a woman for a boss.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked from be-hind his manufactured grin.

Buddy was a former deputy who, as a result of a bull-riding accident on the amateur rodeo circuit, now had a right leg two inches shorter than the left. When he had been offered a disability retirement, Joanna had hoped he’d take it, thus ridding her of one more detractor. Unfortunately, Buddy had refused the offer, claiming he’d much rather “gimp around the evidence room than be put out to pasture.”

“Ernie Carpenter should have turned in a book with regard to the O’Brien case,” Joanna told him. “Do you happen to know whether or not it’s been dusted for prints?”

“Looks like,” Buddy replied, consulting his computer screen.

“Could I see it, then?”

Richards frowned. “According to the rules, I’m only supposed to release it to one of the officers on the case.”

Joanna looked the man directly in the eye. “What do you think I am, Mr. Richards?” she asked. “Chopped liver?”

“I’ll get it right away,” he said.

Once the book was in her hands, Joanna took it straight to her office. Out on the mountain on Sunday afternoon, she had scanned through most of the journal. Now, with nothing to do but wait, she took the time to read it more thoroughly. More than once, the words Brianna had written brought tears to Joanna’s eyes.

Bree had filled the pages with teenaged joy and anguish both. She had spent full pages agonizing over the extent and seriousness of Ignacio Ybarra’s football injuries. Using the journal as a sounding board, she had also poured out her dismay at the callous attitude exhibited by the other girls on the cheer-leading squad who had once been her friends. Not only did they not share her concern for the injured player, they had ostracized her for leaving the squad. It was only in reading the journal that Joanna learned how Bree, once arguably the most popular girl in school, had been forced to come to grips with life as a social outcast.

In that emotional snake pit, it wasn’t surprising that she had invested so much of herself in a new and forbidden relation-ship with Ignacio. Isolated and alone, she had turned to him for solace. No wonder the friendship between them had quickly blossomed, first into romance and later into love.

Joanna discovered some references to a brief summer school connection between them that was little more than a stolen kiss or two. Had they never seen one another again, that brief encounter would have been dismissed as mere puppy love. Their second interaction, however, had been far different. Even from a distance, Joanna Brady couldn’t help but be moved by the youthful but undeniable passion that had flowed so freely out of Bree’s heart and onto the pages of her journal. The outpouring was made all the more poignant by Joanna’s knowing the rest of the story. Ignacio Ybarra had returned Bree’s feelings. Now he was left alone, trying to find a way to survive the loss of that ardent first love.

Not only did the journal provide a detailed road map of Bree’s feelings, it also offered a faithful account of the resourceful young couple’s meetings, of how they had arranged at least one of their secret assignations. It also told about where they went and what they did on the first of their unauthorized weekends together. It wasn’t until Joanna reached the last week in February that she found an item that had nothing at all to do with Ignacio Ybarra. It was something Joanna remembered reading on her first scan of the journal, but with everything that had been going on at the time, she had missed the entry’s possible significance.

As per usual Mom is going to be out of town over her birthday. I don’t know why she insists on being gone right then. She always gives some lame excuse like she doesn’t care for birth-days or that after a certain age they don’t matter that much any-way. And she always says it wouldn’t be fair to interrupt what the whole group is doing for some kind of birthday celebration.

Before, I’ve gone along with her wishes and haven’t done anything about her birthday until she gets back home. But this time I’ve made up my mind things are going to be different. I’ve found the most wonderful birthday card-tire perfect one-and I don’t want to have to wait and give it to her after she gets back home. I know that one of those companies like FedEx or UPS-the ones who advertise that they can deliver anything anywhere-will he able to get it to her on time. All I have to do is figure out in advance exactly where she’ll be. After that, the rest will be easy.

Joanna stopped reading and once again stared out the window. The clouds that earlier had merely dotted the sky now had coalesced into an ominously dark and unbroken gray canopy. Across the parking lot, gray sticks of ocotillo, already edged with new green leaves sprouting in the aftermath of yesterday’s rain, tossed wildly back and forth in a brisk breeze.