J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

“What are you going to do now?” Jay asked.

“Look for her.”

“Will you be able to find her?”

It was Joanna’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’re trying, but the trail is several days old. I’ve just dispatched my canine unit to the rest area to see whether or not they can pick up her trail there.”

There was a long, heavy pause. “What will happen then?” Jay Quick asked. “Do you think she really did kill her mother?”

Joanna shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say for sure at this time, but it is a possibility. Lucy disappeared on the same night her mother was shot. According to Lucy’s grandmother, Lucy and her own mother have been estranged for years-for as long as Sandra Ridder was in prison. We believe Sandra Ridder died of a gunshot wound, and we know from Lucy’s grandmother that Lucy had a handgun with her when she ran away from home. As I told you on the phone, all those things don’t necessarily make her a suspect, but they do make her a person of interest. We need to find her, talk to her, and ask her some questions.”

Jay sighed. “I hope it’s not true that she’s a killer. But if it is-if it turns out Lucy Ridder really is responsible for her mother’s death-then I’m glad my mother didn’t live long enough to see it. Finding out that one of her favorite students ended up like that would have broken Mother’s heart. I don’t think she could have stood it.”

Having gleaned as much information as possible, Joanna thanked Jay as he escorted her outside. “I appreciate all your help.”

He nodded.

Joanna was about to climb into the Blazer when once again the control-tower-looking building caught her attention. “What is that?” she asked. “It looks like it belongs on an airport.”

“Right,” Jay said. “It does. This complex used to be called Freeway Airport. When they rezoned the land and shut down the runways, the control tower became the only part of the airport they left standing. It’s sort of a memorial, I guess.”

The sound of a ringing telephone drew Jay Quick back inside while Joanna climbed into her overheated Blazer. Once inside with the air-conditioning running, she used her cell phone to dial information. Seconds later a second call was answered across town at a convent on South Sixth Avenue.

“Santa Theresa’s,” a woman said. “Sister Emelda speaking.”

“I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge,” Joanna said uncertainly.

“That would be Sister Celeste, but she won’t be home until after five.”

“This is Sheriff Joanna Brady, from Bisbee. Is there somewhere else where I could reach her in the meantime?” Joanna asked. “It’s urgent. I really do need to speak to her as soon as possible.”

“She’s over at the school,” Sister Emelda said. “But she has a faculty meeting that’s scheduled to start at three and won’t be out until around four o’clock. Is that too late?”

Joanna glanced at her watch. It was only a little before three, but waiting until after four to speak to Sister Celeste would make it chancy for her to do an interview, drive out of town in rush-hour traffic, and still make it home to Bisbee in time for Eleanor Lathrop Winfield’s command performance dinner.

“Could you give me her office number?” Joanna said. “Maybe I can catch her before she goes into the meeting.”

“You can try,” Sister Emelda said dubiously. “But one thing about Sister Celeste. She’s very prompt, and she expects other people to be the same.”

Seconds later, Joanna was speaking to a secretary at Santa Theresa School. “Sister Celeste, please,” she said.

“Could I take a message, please? She’s about to go into a meeting.”

“This is Sheriff Joanna Brady from Cochise County,” Joanna said. “And it’s really quite important that I speak to her as soon as possible. I won’t keep her long.”

The secretary went off the line. Seconds later the phone was answered again. “Yes,” a clipped voice said. “What can I do for you?”

“My name is-”

“You’re Sheriff Brady,” the woman interrupted. “I know all that. My secretary already told me. This is Sister Celeste. What is it you want?”

“We’re investigating a homicide that occurred sometime overnight last Friday down near Elfrida,” Joanna said. “We have reason to believe that a person of interest in that case-a girl by the name of Lucy Ridder-called your convent in the early hours of Saturday morning and spoke to someone there for some time-fifteen minutes or so. I was hoping I could speak to whoever that person was.”

“I don’t think so,” Sister Celeste said abruptly. “In fact, I’m sure that would be quite impossible. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

With that, the line went dead. Joanna sat in the Blazer holding her cell phone, staring at it, and feeling as though a door had just been slammed shut in her face.

You may think it’s impossible, Sister Celeste, Joanna thought. But I will be back.

Joanna was still sitting in the Quick Custom Metals parking lot and holding her phone when it came to life in her hand. When she answered, her caller turned out to be Detective Carpenter.

“Thought you’d like to know that we’re having the Lexus towed to the impound lot,” Ernie said. “Looks like our victim was there, all right. Or, if not Sandra Ridder, somebody else bled all over the leather upholstery. Casey Ledford came out to the site and did a preliminary look-see. She tried lifting prints from several places and couldn’t find any.”

“No prints again,” Joanna breathed. “Just like all those plastic water jugs.”

“Right,” Ernie agreed. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t see one of your ordinary run-of-the-mill UDAs working that hard to keep his fingerprints out of sight and out of our computers. That suggests to me that whoever it is has been in some kind of hot water before, and he knows once we get a lock on his prints, we’re going to get a hit on AFIS and know exactly who he is.”

“Can you tell where whoever it was went after abandoning the Lexus?”

“I’d say the driver of the Lexus was picked up by someone driving a second vehicle. The driver went from one vehicle to the other without leaving any kind of prints we could cast. And the tire tracks of the second vehicle are in the roadway, so they’ve long since been obliterated by passing traffic. We’ll probably pick up trace evidence from the car’s interior that will help us get a conviction if we ever catch who did it, but for right now…”

“The Lexus is a dead end for identifying the suspect,” Joanna supplied, “unless Casey can pull something out of the hat.”

“How many low-life crooks do you know who are this cagey?” Ernie Carpenter asked. “Most of them never consider the possibility that they might get caught. In other words, Joanna, I’m getting a funny feeling about this case.”

“What kind of feeling?” Joanna asked.

“Like we’re supposed to think we’re dealing with illegals when we’re not.”

“Who then, Lucy Ridder?”

“She’s fifteen years old. I doubt very much that a kid her age would know enough or be sophisticated enough about criminal procedures to wipe down prints. Besides, she doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

“I don’t think Lucy Ridder has a license to carry, either,” Joanna said. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to fire that twenty-two she stole from her grandmother.”

“Point taken,” Ernie said.

There was a momentary pause before Joanna spoke again. “What if all this has something to do with what went on eight years ago? Maybe it goes back to Tom Ridder’s murder. Maybe that’s why Lucy was trying to get in touch with all those folks from back then. Is Jaime there?”