“Jaime and Ernie think they’ve located Melanie Goodson’s missing Lexus. It was found abandoned out east of Douglas. They’re on their way to the scene right now. Ernie was going to look into this tomorrow, but as long as you’re in a bureaucracy-busting mood, how about if you call out to personnel at Fort Huachuca? See what you can find out about Tom Ridder and why he was run out of the army back in the early nineties. He was a staff sergeant when they booted him out, so my guess is the infraction was something more serious than an unauthorized walk in the park.
“When you finish up with that, call Terry Gregovich and tell him comp time’s over for the day. I want our canine unit to get their butts up to that rest-area telephone in Texas Canyon and see if they can pick up Lucy Ridder’s trail from there. Between Saturday night and now, lots of different people may have used that particular pay phone, but it won’t be nearly as many as those hundred-plus Volksmarchers who went meandering through the crime scene out at Cochise Stronghold. We also need to schedule deputies to stop through the rest area overnight for the next several days to see if there are any regular three a.m. users of the rest area who might have seen Lucy Ridder and her sidekick red-tailed hawk.”
“Anything else?” Frank asked.
“One. Have you seen Kristin?”
“She wasn’t at her desk when I got back to the department.”
“I wonder where she went. She didn’t say she was going to lunch. Well, anyway, when you see her, let her know I’m on my way to Tucson. I probably won’t be back until fairly late, but if you have any more good ideas, give me a call back.”
As Joanna continued driving north toward Tucson, she puzzled over what it all meant. Why on Saturday night had Lucy Ridder succumbed to a sudden urge to reconnect with people from her distant past? For a fifteen-year-old, reaching back eight years was going back more than half her life. So the question was: Had she stayed in touch with these folks through all the intervening years, or was this series of phone calls a bolt out of the blue to all three recipients?
The fact that Evelyn Quick had died years earlier without Lucy’s knowing about it made Joanna think the lightning-bolt option was actually the correct one. And if that was true, that meant the phone calls had to do with Sandra Ridder’s sudden and-as far as her daughter Lucy was concerned-unwelcome release from prison.
Joanna also mulled what Jaime Carbajal had told her about Lucy Ridder being a loner. That wasn’t much of a surprise. Anyone who would prefer the company of a red-tailed hawk to the company of people couldn’t be called outgoing or even normal-whatever that might be. Joanna thought back to her own high school days in the years after her father died. She had grieved over D. H. Lathrop’s death and blamed herself for it, too, since her father had been bringing Joanna and members of her Girl Scout troop home from a weekend camp-out when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver while changing a tire. Eleanor Lathrop may have been annoying at times and downright wrongheaded on occasion; still, Joanna had had the benefit of her mother’s love and guidance during those years when she had felt her father’s loss most keenly. Nonetheless, even with her mother’s help, Joanna had felt like the odd man out at school. Kids her age might have had parents who were divorced, but when you were a sophomore or junior or senior in high school, hardly anybody else had a parent who was dead.
Bearing all that in mind, it was hardly surprising that Lucy Ridder was a loner. Her father was dead, and now so was her mother. And all those years she had lived with Catherine Yates-all during the time when the awful pain of losing her father would have been at its peak-Lucy had been in the care and keeping of someone who more or less thought Tom Ridder got what he deserved-of someone who thought Lucy’s father’s killer was being wrongly imprisoned. That had to have hurt. And even if it was true that Tom Ridder had physically abused his wife, it might not have made any difference to his daughter’s broken heart. It seemed clear enough to Joanna that Lucy had loved Tom Ridder as much as or more so than she despised Sandra, her mother.
Joanna knew enough about domestic violence in families to realize that children-the innocent bystanders to those knock-down, drag-out battles-often end up choosing sides, and the sides they choose aren’t necessarily the ones outsiders might expect. And, for a child coming from that kind of troubled background, it wasn’t at all out of the question to think Lucy Ridder herself might have resorted to a violent solution to what she deemed an overwhelming problem.
But still, Joanna reasoned as she sped past the Triple-T Truck Stop on her way into Tucson, that’s no excuse.
Just because the Bible talked about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth didn’t mean that the offending eye or tooth were there for anyone’s taking. If Lucy Ridder had avenged her father’s death by killing her mother, then fifteen years old or not, she would have to answer for that crime in a court of law.
Regardless of whether or not Lucy Ridder agreed with the judge’s sentence, her mother had paid for her crime by spending eight years of her life in prison. Joanna could feel empathy for Lucy Ridder, but the bottom line was if Sandra Ridder’s daughter turned out to be a killer, too, then the justice system would have to decide on an appropriate punishment-once Joanna’s department delivered Lucy into their hands and assuming some wily defense attorney didn’t figure out a way to get her off scot-free.
CHAPTER 14
Quick Custom Metals on Romero Road was in a light-industrial complex near I-10 and Prince. Driving up to it, Joanna saw a glass-topped brick building that looked for all the world like an airport control tower, only there was no airport. Around the building was an expanse of green lawn.
When Joanna stepped out of the car, she was surprised by the difference in temperature between Bisbee and Tucson. Here, at a far lower elevation, the sun blazed down with an intensity that felt more like a Cochise County June day than a late-March afternoon. When she stepped into the company’s front office, she was grateful to find it was fully air-conditioned.
A counter ran the length of the room. In front of it, an elderly silver-haired woman was engaged in a serious low-voiced conversation with a middle-aged man who stood behind the counter. It was clear from what was being said that the woman was in the process of having a sheet-metal custom-made coffin designed to hold the earthly remains of her beloved cat. The woman wanted to ascertain that the dimensions of the box would be large enough to accommodate her pet in a comfortable resting position without being crowded.
“Some cats like to curl up in a little ball, you know,” she was saying. “But not my Sidney. He always preferred to stretch out flat on the cool tiles in the kitchen, more like a dog than a cat. So that’s why I want to be sure this will be big enough. I don’t want the poor thing to be scrunched up for all eternity.”
It may have sounded like a bizarre request, but the man behind the counter seemed unfazed by it. “In that case, Mrs. Dearborn,” he said, “you’d better bring us Sidney’s exact measurements so there’s no mistake. Where is Sidney now?”
“Still at the vet’s,” Mrs. Dearborn replied. “They’re keeping him on ice there until I can come back with the coffin.”
The man gave the woman an understanding smile. “Well, if you’ll have the vet call me with the correct measurements, I’ll have one of my men get right on it. And be sure that they measure him laid out just the way you want him. Once we have the dimensions, you’ll have the box-the coffin-within twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Quick,” Mrs. Dearborn murmured. “You are quick, too,” she added. “Just living up to your name, I suppose, but you have no idea how much this means to me. I expect you’ll be hearing from my vet, Dr. Winston, within the hour.”