“Jennifer Owens,” I said aloud, then repeated it in my mind. Suddenly, I felt tears well up in my eyes. O’Connor should have been the first one to hear her name. She had been his obsession for thirty-five years. It was his work that had led us this far. He had come so very close to learning who she was. God, how proud he would have been. It might have eased a little of that pain he carried around for his sister.
Ramos was looking at me. “You okay, Miss Kelly?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Just thinking of how pleased O’Connor would have been. He was…especially concerned about Hannah-Jennifer. Had been from the start. It’s hard to explain.”
“He told me about his sister,” Ramos said.
I was surprised, and didn’t hide it. Ramos met my look with an understanding smile. “I think he was afraid I wouldn’t take this seriously.”
Pete was looking between us, but neither of us offered him an explanation. “So,” he asked Ramos, “are her parents still around?”
“Yeah, her mother is still living,” Ramos said. “Old man’s been dead some years now. But her mother lives out in a trailer off Highway 85. You probably passed it on the way here. She doesn’t have a phone. I’ll take you out there if you want to go.”
Pete stood up. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never get used to this part of the job.”
We climbed into the front seat of a large green-and-white Jeep Cherokee that had the sheriff’s logo on its doors. About five miles back on Highway 85, we turned off onto a dirt road that ran through some fenced acreage with cattle here and there. It was easy to see why a four-wheel-drive vehicle was necessary. We jolted our way down a road that had so many potholes, NASA could have tested lunar-landing vehicles on it. Finally we came to a stop outside an opening in the barbed-wire fence; from the opening, a gravel drive led back to a trailer. Ramos honked and waited awhile. Soon the trailer door swung open and a thin gray-haired lady stared out and then waved to us. Ramos slowly pulled into the drive, trying not to raise dust.
“Hello, Enrique!” she barked out in a raspy voice. “Who you brought with you?”
“A couple of folks from California, Mrs. Owens.”
“California! Well, come on in out of the sun. It’s hotter than hell out. A couple of old devils like Enrique and I can take it, but you folks are probably just about baked.”
The trailer was an old silver one, with light wood paneling. By the time the four of us had squeezed in, it felt as if we had quite a crowd in there.
After introductions, she motioned us to sit down on a couch behind a Formica table. On a shelf below a window were several framed photos of Jennifer. Baby pictures, family pictures. Jennifer with another young girl. Jennifer standing outside the trailer. A larger version of the graduation photo. She had been a beautiful blonde with a shy, closed-mouth smile.
Mrs. Owens went over to the refrigerator and came back with a big pitcher of lemonade. She brought out four ornate glasses on a tray covered with an old lace doily.
I felt like shit. I glanced at Pete, and knew he felt the same.
“So what brings a police officer all the way out from California to see a seventy-year-old desert rat?” she asked.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute here, Mrs. Owens?” Ramos suggested.
She gave him an inquisitive look with her china blue eyes and slowly sat down. “What’s this all about, Enrique?”
“It’s about Jennifer, Mrs. Owens.”
“Jennifer? My Jennifer?”
He nodded.
“My God, she’s dead. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I’m sorry, we believe so, yes.”
She began to cry. She got up from the table and stumbled back into a bedroom and shut the door, which didn’t muffle the rising wail of grief. We sat immobilized, none of us looking at the other. After a while we heard water running. She stepped out, drying her face on a pink towel.
“I’m sorry,” she said to us. “You’d think after thirty-five years I wouldn’t care if I ever saw her again. But I’ve always hoped-” She broke off.
“Of course, ma’am,” Pete said, “that’s only natural. And we are very sorry to have to be the ones to end those hopes.”
“What about my grandchild?” she asked suddenly.
We were all startled.
“Grandchild?” repeated Ramos.
“Jennifer ran away because she was pregnant. She ran off to be with the father. Who is he? And what became of my grandchild?”
If I had doubts that Hannah and Jennifer were the same person, this last question ended them. Jennifer looked like the woman in the pictures, came from a Southwestern town with high levels of fluoride in the water, disappeared near the date Hannah was found, and she was pregnant.
We all exchanged looks. I went over to her and put an arm around her. “This is a very difficult story to tell, Mrs. Owens. Please sit down.”
For a moment it seemed she would resist this idea, but then she meekly allowed me to lead her back to the chair.
I sat back down, across from her.
“Tell me,” she said quietly.
“On June 17, 1955,” I began, “a woman’s body was found on the beach in Las Piernas. We now believe that woman was Jennifer.”
“1955! Dead since 1955!” she exclaimed, but then fell silent.
“The woman was guessed to be about twenty years old. She was two months pregnant when she died. She was murdered.”
“Murdered! Why? Why would anyone want to kill Jennifer?”
“That’s one of the reasons we’re here, Mrs. Owens. We don’t know. Whoever killed her-” I tried to find the right words. “Whoever killed her took steps to make it hard to identify Jennifer.” I rushed on. “A friend and co-worker of mine was a reporter on our local paper. His own sister had been killed and hadn’t been found for five years. That happened a few years before Jennifer was found. He sort of adopted the case of this unidentified woman and tried to learn all he could. He ran a column about it every year. He used to tell me that he knew somewhere someone worried about her, the way his family had worried about his sister.
“Not long ago, a new coroner came to work in our city; he found new evidence about Jennifer. He got help from a forensic dentist. Did Jennifer have stains on her teeth?”
“Yes, poor dear,” she said, glancing up at the photographs. “She was always so self-conscious about them. From the water here, you know. Too much fluoride.”
“More than anything, those stains led us to Gila Bend. Unfortunately, my friend died before he could learn your daughter’s identity. He knew that this would be very sad news to you, but I know he hoped it would be better than always wondering what became of her.”
She was quiet for a while, then said, “It’s true. At least now I know. Thirty-five years of hell. I’ve sat here and wondered why she hated us so much that she could never write so much as a postcard. I wondered if she was married, if the baby was a boy or a girl. I wondered why she wouldn’t at least let the child see his grandmother. I wondered if she was dead. I wondered if she was being tortured. I wondered if she had amnesia. You wouldn’t even believe some of the things I’ve wondered. At least that’s over.”
“How did you learn she was pregnant?” I asked.
“Oh, I nearly beat that information out of a cousin of hers. The weekend before she left, Jennifer had gone up to Phoenix to see her cousin Elaine. Elaine Owens-she’s the daughter of my husband’s brother. My husband was never more than a cattleman, and God rest his soul, not a very good one at that. But his brother did real good for himself. Made some money up in Jerome on copper, and sold out long before the bottom dropped out of the market. Went on to invest in God knows what all, but he certainly had the Midas touch.
“Elaine and Jennifer were about the same age, and even though they never paid much attention to us, the family was fond of Jennifer, and she got invited up to Phoenix pretty regular. I don’t know. Looking back on it, it seems that was the cause of a lot of trouble.”