J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

“What kind of car?” Joanna asked.

“He wasn’t sure. Late model. White. He thought it might have been a Lexus.”

Joanna felt a sudden clutch in her gut. At mention of the word, she realized she had failed to pass along Larry Kendrick’s message about Melanie Goodson’s supposedly stolen Lexus. Now it seemed that a Lexus might play a pivotal part in this case as well.

Finished with their casting job, Frank Montoya and Jaime Carbajal came walking toward Joanna. Between them they carried a collection of several plaster casts.

“What’s this about a Lexus?” Frank Montoya asked as he loaded the casts into boxes in Jaime’s van.

“One was seen near here late last night. Up by the Cochise Stronghold sign. And I believe we now may have a line on our victim,” Joanna answered. “My guess is her name is Sandra Ridder.”

Montoya frowned. “Ridder,” he repeated. “Any relation to Lucinda Ridder, the runaway?”

Joanna nodded. “Sandra is Lucinda’s mother. She was released from prison up in Perryville sometime yesterday afternoon. And it turns out she’s so well-rehabilitated after spending almost eight years in the slammer that she took the first opportunity that presented itself to steal her attorney’s Lexus overnight.”

“When did this all come up and why didn’t I know about it before now?” Frank Montoya demanded.

“Larry Kendrick told me about the bulletin on the stolen Lexus as I was on my way here. I meant to mention it to you as soon as I arrived, but with everything else that was going on, it slipped my mind. It wasn’t until Lance here mentioned a Lexus that I remembered. Exactly how far is it from here to Lucinda’s grandmother’s house?”

“It’s off on Middlemarch Road. Two miles, give or take.”

“Maybe we’d better drop by and see her,” Joanna said.

“Catherine Yates told me her daughter was due home either today or tomorrow,” Frank replied irritably. “But she didn’t say from where-certainly not from prison. All Catherine said was that she wanted Lucy home when her mother got there. Any idea what the mother was in for?”

“Manslaughter. I don’t know any of the details. Just that she got sent up for ten years and served eight.”

“All of which puts Lucy’s disappearance in a whole new light.”

Joanna nodded grimly. “Doesn’t it just,” she said. She turned back to Deputy Pakin. “Lance,” she said, “I’m going to go with Chief Deputy Montoya in his car. You stay here and assist Detective Carbajal. When it’s too dark to see, I’d like you to stay here and keep the crime scene secure until we can get a crew of techs back out here in the morning.”

“Will do,” Deputy Pakin agreed. “What about emergency calls?”

“Call into Dispatch and let them know you’re on assignment. If the need arises, they’ll have to bring in officers from other sectors to cover problems in yours. And when you go off shift, have the Night Watch Commander send someone else out here to take your place.”

“Sure thing.”

Leaving her Blazer parked on the shoulder of the roadway, Joanna followed Frank to his waiting Crown Victoria. Without a word, Frank got in, slammed the car door shut, started the engine, and then rammed the gearshift into drive for a tire-spinning, gravel-spattering U-turn. From the set of Frank’s jaw, Joanna knew her chief deputy was ripped. For the next several minutes they maintained a strained silence, punctuated here and there by radio chatter.

“What’s wrong, Frank?” Joanna asked at last.

He turned and glowered at her. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I feel like you left me out of the loop back there. Like there were things going on that I should have known about and nobody told me.”

“Come on,” she pleaded. “Don’t make a big deal out of this. It was nothing but an oversight on my part. It certainly wasn’t deliberate. We were all busy, Frank, and it slipped my mind. Besides, until Lance brought up the subject of the Lexus, there was no possible way for anyone to see a connection between the two cases.”

“I suppose not,” Frank grumbled, but Joanna could tell he was still provoked, and that made her uneasy. Not only was Frank Montoya her chief deputy, he had long been Joanna’s greatest ally in the department. She could ill afford to offend him.

“Tell me about Catherine Yates,” she said, trying to change the subject. “If she didn’t bother to mention that her daughter was being released from prison, she wasn’t exactly being forthright with you. What’s her story?”

“I don’t know. She’s an Indian-part, anyway. Apache, I believe. She told me that her granddaughter has lived with her for several years. She implied there was some kind of family problem-a sticky divorce or something. But when I asked if Lucy might have gone off to live with her father, she said that wasn’t possible. That he wasn’t in the picture.

“Here’s the turnoff to her place,” Frank added, switching on the turn signal.

“Wait,” Joanna said. “Stop here a minute and let me check something.”

Obligingly, Frank pulled over next to a mailbox on top of a leaning wooden post and put the Ford in neutral. Meanwhile, Joanna plucked Frank’s radio microphone out of its clip and thumbed the “talk” button.

“Larry,” she said when the dispatcher’s voice came through. “When Pima County sent down the information on that stolen Lexus, did they include a rap sheet on Sandra Ridder?”

“Sure did.”

“Does it say what she went to prison for?”

“Man-one. Sentenced to ten years and served almost eight.”

“Does it say who she killed?”

“Yup, her husband, one Thomas Dawson Ridder.”

“Thanks, Larry,” Joanna told him. “That’s a big help. What about a mug shot?”

“We’ve got one of those, too.”

She glanced at Frank. “Is your wireless fax working?”

Frank Montoya had spent months and several thousand drug-enforcement dollars turning his Crown Victoria into a fully equipped mobile office.

He nodded.

“Fax everything you have to Frank’s computer.”

“Will do, Sheriff Brady,” Larry Kendrick replied. “But it’s going to take a couple of minutes. I’m here by myself and another call is just coming in.”

“Take your time, Larry,” she told him. “No rush.”

Putting the microphone down, Joanna turned back to Frank. “Being dead is a damned good reason for the father not being in the picture,” she said. “So what do you think is going on?”

“This is how it looks to me.” Frank held up one hand and began ticking off his fingers. “On the surface of it, it’s easy to say that a marauding band of UDAs is responsible for whatever went on back there and let it go at that. But I’ve got a different idea. How does this sound? First Mommy whacks Daddy, and somebody sees to it that Mommy goes to prison. Later Mommy gets out of prison. As soon as she does, somebody whacks her. Immediately prior to that or else immediately thereafter, Baby Daughter disappears. Sounds to me like one way or the other, we’ve got a whole new set of reasons to go looking for Lucinda Ridder. Either she’s a victim, too, or else she’s something a whole lot worse.”

Sighing, Joanna leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Let’s go. By the time we finish talking to Catherine Yates, we’ll have what we need from Dispatch. In the meantime, I have to say, I hope to God you’re wrong. I don’t want to be stuck tracking down some nice, gun-wielding fifteen-year-old.”

“That’s funny,” Frank said.

“What’s funny?”

“That’s exactly what Catherine Yates told me earlier this afternoon about Lucinda. She said Lucy’s a nice girl.”

“Right,” Joanna returned sarcastically. “I’ll just bet she did. That’s what grandmothers always say-that their particular little darlings are nothing but sweetness and light. I’ll bet if someone had asked Lizzie Borden’s grandmother, she probably would have given the exact same answer: She would have said, ”Little Elizabeth’s an adorable child. She’s just as nice as you please and wouldn’t hurt a fly if her life depended on it.“ ”