J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

“Do you have any idea why she would call your mother?” Joanna asked. “Were they close?”

“I don’t know if ”close‘ is the right word,“ Jay said. ”I know Lucy made a big impression on my mom-a favorable impression. And maybe that went both ways. I know Mother talked about Lucy for years afterward, always hoping that, wherever she was, she was all right.“

“You told me on the phone that your mother was Lucy’s teacher?”

“Not a real teacher, like at school. Mother was Lucy’s ballet instructor at the Lohse YMCA. You see, all her life, Mom lived and breathed dancing. Even after she retired, she could never quite get it out of her system. When she came out here to visit us that one year, she heard that the Lohse YMCA downtown had lost its ballet instructor on a temporary basis. The woman had had a premature baby and was on extended maternity leave. The Y was strapped enough for funds that they couldn’t handle having one person on maternity leave and, at the same time, pay to hire a replacement. Rather than see ballet lessons canceled for several months in a row, Mother volunteered to fill in. She worked at it that whole winter.

“I remember her telling me, a week or so after she started, about a little girl who came to her class, a little girl wearing thick glasses. When Mother asked her what she wanted, she said she wanted to be Maria Tallchief. Mother said, ”Oh, so you want to be an Indian?“ The little girl said, ”I already am an Indian. I want to be a ballerina.“

“According to Mother, one of the nuns from Lucy’s school had evidently given her a book to read about a young Native American woman who had gone on to become a world-class ballerina. Lucy couldn’t have been very old at the time, only second grade or so, and the story made a big impression on her. So that’s how Mother and Lucinda Ridder met. Once Lucy was in the program, she loved it. She came every day after school, either to take lessons or to practice. As I remember, she attended a Catholic school somewhere near downtown, and came to the Y on the bus.”

“The school,” Joanna interjected. “Was it Santa Theresa?”

Jay frowned. “Could be,” he said. “I don’t really remember. Anyway, she rode the bus from school to the Y every afternoon. Then, when the lessons were over, her dad would come downtown to pick her up.”

“Her father,” Joanna put in. “Not her mother.”

Jay nodded. “Right. I believe her mother worked out of town-at Fort Huachuca, as I recall. Anyway, Lucy’s mother came to pick her up just that once. As far as I know, it was the last time Lucy Ridder ever came to the Y.”

“When was that?”

“The day of the murder,” Jay answered. “That night was the night Lucy’s father was shot and killed. Mother had told me about it even before we saw the news the next day and realized what must have happened.”

“It was so unusual for Sandra Ridder to show up that your mother actually told you about it?” Joanna asked.

“It wasn’t just that she showed up. It was how she looked when she got there. You see, Mother wasn’t the violent type, and she lived a pretty sheltered life,” Jay Quick explained. “Seeing something like that really shook her up.”

“Something like what?” Joanna asked.

“The way Sandra Ridder looked that day. Her lip was cut and bleeding. There were cuts and bruises on her face. Her eyes were black and blue. One of them was almost swollen shut. She came barreling into the gym right after Mother’s lesson had started, dripping blood on the floor and interrupting the whole class. Sandra ordered Lucy to go get her clothes on because they were leaving right then. Mother tried to tell Sandra that she shouldn’t be doing that, that she shouldn’t be driving. She tried to convince Sandra that she needed to be driven to a doctor or else to an emergency room, but Sandra wasn’t having any of it. She just told Lucy again to come on. Now.

“Mother agonized about it for years afterward. She always wondered if she had shut down her class and insisted on taking Sandra to see a doctor, maybe none of it would have happened-maybe Tom Ridder wouldn’t have died. Mother felt responsible, you see-felt as though there should have been something she could have done to prevent it. She blamed herself, and it haunted her. I don’t think she ever quite got over it.”

Joanna thought back to Clayton Rhodes’ garage. Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could see him sitting there in the smoke, pale and limp, hunched over the steering wheel of his idling pickup. In that moment she knew exactly how Evelyn Quick must have felt. She understood the hopeless, hollow emptiness of thinking there must have been something she could have done. With an effort, she shook off her own nightmare to return to Evelyn Quick’s.

“What happened then?” Joanna asked.

“The next day, once we heard what had happened-that Tom Ridder had been shot dead-Mother tried to get in touch with Lucy to see if there was something she could do or at least to offer her condolences. But as far as we could tell, there were no services of any kind held for Tom Ridder, at least not ones that were announced to the public. Mother tried calling the house several times, using the number the YMCA had in their records, but there wasn’t any answer. It wasn’t until months later, when the paper announced that Sandra Ridder was being sent to prison, that Mother learned Lucy had been sent to Pearce to live with relatives.

“The whole thing was terribly sad-all of it. As I said, Mother mourned about it for a long time. She said Lucy was an unusual girl, a kid with a lot of spunk. She said she was certain Lucy could have amounted to something someday. Maybe not in ballet, but in something.” He paused before adding sadly, “I don’t think this is what she had in mind.”

“Let’s go back to what you said before,” Joanna interjected. “You mentioned that Tom Ridder was always the one who came to get Lucy at the end of her lessons.”

Jay Quick nodded. “Always. That’s what Mother said. Regular as clockwork. She said his pickup would be parked right outside the door in a loading zone whenever the lessons were over. I think that was the other thing that bothered my mother-that Tom Ridder had fooled her so completely. She said she never even suspected that someone who seemed so crazy about his little girl-so devoted-could, at the same time, have been so physically abusive with his wife. After the fact, I think Mother was concerned that if he had beaten his wife like that, he might have been doing the same thing to Lucy, although she said she never saw any sign of it. No bruises or cuts or anything like that.”

“Obviously this whole experience made a big impression on your mother.”

Jay Quick nodded. “She talked about it for years afterward. Every time she came to Tucson to visit-and she came every winter-she’d get to wondering whatever became of Lucinda Ridder. Once she even talked about taking a drive out to Pearce to try to find her, but we never quite got around to making that trip, and I don’t think Mother ever did anything about it on her own.”

“So, as far as you know, your mother and Lucy didn’t maintain any contact after that?”

“Right. Not as far as I know.”

“Lucy Ridder is fifteen now. Almost sixteen. Do you have any idea why, after all these years, she would try reaching your mother now?”

Jay shook his head. “None at all,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since Saturday morning when she called. I’ve been wondering about it even more today, ever since I heard about this latest mess on the news.”

“While I was on my way here, I had one of my officers trace the call that came to your house on Saturday morning,” Joanna told him. “You were right about hearing trucks in the background, but Lucy’s call wasn’t placed from a truck stop. It came from a freeway rest area in Texas Canyon on the other side of Benson.”