To reach the conference room, Joanna had to walk past Kristin’s desk and through a small reception area. Seated on the love seat, thumbing through an old copy of Arizona Highways, was a large woman with mousy brown hair who looked to be about Joanna’s age. She wore shorts, an oversize T-shirt, and thongs.
It was only midmorning, but already the office was heating up. Dressed in her uniform, Joanna couldn’t help but envy the other woman’s casual attire, but not the strained expression on her face. It was the despairing, empty look in the eyes that gave Joanna her first clue. She had seen that look far too many times before in the eyes of grieving survivors-the people left behind in the wake of violent and unexpected deaths. This had to be one of Carol Mossman’s sisters.
Joanna stopped in front of the love seat and held out her hand. “I’m Sheriff Brady,”
she said. “You must be Stella Adams.”
“Yes,” the woman murmured softly. “Yes, I am.”
“Please accept my condolences.”
Stella nodded. “Thank you,” she replied.
“And thank you for bringing your grandmother here for the interview. We’re a little shorthanded at the moment. Otherwise I would have sent one of my detectives to bring her into town.”
“It was no trouble,” Stella said.
Just then a young boy of fifteen or sixteen came sauntering down the hall. The crotch of his pants hung almost to his knees. So did the tail of his shirt. A scraggily thin bristle of goatee protruded from the bottom of his chin. Stella Adams gave the new
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arrival a hard look. “There you are, Nathan,” she said. “What took you so long? I thought I told you to park the car and come right inside.”
Without glancing in Joanna’s direction, the boy slouched into a nearby chair. “Come on, Mom. Lay off. It’s hot. I drove all around looking for some shade to park in.”
“Mind your manners,” Stella growled at him. Then, to Joanna, she said. “This is my son, Nathan. Nathan, this is Sheriff Brady.”
Scowling, the boy stood up. “Hello,” he said grudgingly. “Glad to meetcha.” His handshake was limp. “Is there a Coke machine around here somewhere?” he asked.
“Just off the lobby,” Joanna told him.
Nathan turned to his mother, who was already fishing a handful of change out of her purse. “Come right back,” she admonished as he turned to go.
Joanna watched the transaction in silence. If Nathan was allowed to drive by himself, he had to be at least sixteen. And if Stella Adams was anywhere near Joanna’s age-somewhere in her early thirties-then she would have been only fourteen or fifteen when Nathan was born, years younger than Joanna herself had been when she gave birth to Jenny.
“He may not look like it,” Stella said to Joanna as her son walked away, “but Nathan’s a good kid. It’s hard to raise good kids these days.”
“Don’t I know it,” Joanna agreed. “Especially once they become teenagers. Now I’d better get going.”
She hurried into the conference room. “Good,” Jaime Carbajal said, reaching for the tape recorder once Joanna had taken a chair. “Now we can get started.”
Jaime began the interview. Edith answered his questions in to
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a surprisingly steady voice, only occasionally biting back tears.
“Tell us about your granddaughter, Carol Mossman,” Jaime began.
“What do you want to know?”
“It’s always helpful to know as much about the victim as possible,” Jaime said gently.
“Carol didn’t have an easy life,” Edith said sadly.
“Why’s that?”
“She had to live with my son, for one thing,” Edith replied. “Carol’s mother, Cynthia, died in childbirth when Kelly was born. Carol was the oldest. She was ten at the time her mother took sick and twelve when Cynthia died in childbirth. A lot of the burden of taking care of her sisters fell on her. That’s a terrible responsibility for someone so young,” Edith added. “Terrible!”
“Where was this?” Jaime asked.
“In Mexico. Obregon,” Edith answered. “Eddie wasn’t much of a student. He never finished high school. He went to work for Phelps Dodge the minute he was old enough. Working underground, he made good money for a while. Then, in 1975, when PD closed down its mining operation, the company would have transferred him somewhere else. Instead, he quit and took his family to live in Mexico.”
“I know Phelps Dodge had operations in Cananea,” Jaime said. “But I don’t remember any neat Ciudad Obregon.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” Edith replied shortly. “Eddie got himself mixed up with some cockamamy religious group called The Brethren. Their headquarters is on a ranch outside Obregon. Eddie and Cynthia took the three girls and went there because they could live on the ranch rent-free. I’m convinced that’s why Cynthia died, by the way. She had M.S. and never should have gotten pregnant that last time.
But if she’d
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been in a hospital here in the States, being treated by a properly trained doctor, she might still be alive to this day.
“At the time, and for a long time afterward, I didn’t know any of this. Eddie and I don’t exactly get along, you see, and we didn’t stay in touch. Then, one day, out of the blue, a letter came from Carol-a postcard, really-asking if she and her sisters could come live with me. Just like that. And I said, ‘Of course. Whatever you need.’”
“When was that?” Joanna asked.
“When the girls came home?” Edith asked. Joanna nodded. “Seventeen years ago or so,”
Edith said. “Carol had just turned twenty. She told her sisters that she was bringing them home for a visit. Kelly didn’t want to come, and Carol couldn’t make her change her mind. Once they got here, the girls stayed with me and never went back.”
“What happened then?” Jaime asked.
“Well,” Edith said, “Grady was already gone by then, so I did what I could. The girls didn’t have much of an education-only a lick and a promise, so I saw to it that they all got GEDs. Andrea took to schooling like a duck to water. She got her AA degree from Cochise College in Sierra Vista and then went on to the U of A. She’s working on a Ph.D. in psychology and works as a secretary in the Chemistry Department. They give employees a good discount on tuition, you see.
“Stella wasn’t much of a student, but she had a baby to support, so she got a job waiting tables at PoFolks in Sierra Vista. That’s where she met Denny, her husband.
Couldn’t have met a nicer guy, as dependable as the day is long. He drives a FedEx truck. He and Stella got married when Nathan was three. Denny’s the only father little Nate has ever known.”
“And Carol?” Jaime asked.
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A pained expression crossed Edith Mossman’s face. She shook her head sadly. “Carol never quite managed to cope,” she said. “She bounced from one bad job to another, and no matter where she lived, she always ended up taking in a pack of dogs. It’s hard to find a decent place to live when you have five or six or seven dogs living with you.”
“You mean she’s done this before-gathered up a bunch of stray dogs?”
Edith nodded. ‘And then she’d get evicted and the next thing I knew she’d have lost her job and she and the dogs would be living on the streets or in her car. That’s how come I finally let her move into Grady’s and my mobile. That way I could be sure that, no matter what kind of mess the place turned into, at least she’d have a roof over her head.”
“In other words,” Joanna said, “whenever Carol got into some kind of financial or legal difficulty, she came to you for help.”
“There wasn’t anyone else for her to turn to.”
“Including two weeks ago, when she received the citation about this latest batch of dogs?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right. And, like I said to you the other day, I told her I wouldn’t be able to help out until after the first of the month, when my social security check showed up. In the meantime, she called me from work one afternoon, and told me not to worry about it-that she’d made arrangements to get the money from someplace else.”