Skeleton Canyon

Finally, giving up on her third attempt at reading the letter, Joanna put it aside, along with the remainder of that day’s untended correspondence. Abandoning all pretense of staying on task, Joanna leaned back in her oversized chair and stared out the window.

When Joanna had come into her office an hour or so earlier, the sky outside her window had been brilliantly blue. Now that same blue sky was pockmarked with puffy white, gray-bottomed clouds. On the ground below, swiftly moving shadows from those same clouds glided silently over the desert landscape like so many circling vultures. Watching the shadows, Joanna found herself once again thinking about Brianna O’Brien’s mother, the liar.

Determined to do something constructive, Joanna stood up and headed for the evidence room. Buddy Richards, the evidence room clerk, greeted her with a welcoming smile that Joanna knew was far more pleasant than it should have been. Buddy was one of the recalcitrant old-timers who had much preferred things the way they were. Months after the election, Buddy still wasn’t happy about having a woman for a boss.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked from be-hind his manufactured grin.

Buddy was a former deputy who, as a result of a bull-riding accident on the amateur rodeo circuit, now had a right leg two inches shorter than the left. When he had been offered a disability retirement, Joanna had hoped he’d take it, thus ridding her of one more detractor. Unfortunately, Buddy had refused the offer, claiming he’d much rather “gimp around the evidence room than be put out to pasture.”

“Ernie Carpenter should have turned in a book with regard to the O’Brien case,” Joanna told him. “Do you happen to know whether or not it’s been dusted for prints?”

“Looks like,” Buddy replied, consulting his computer screen.

“Could I see it, then?”

Richards frowned. “According to the rules, I’m only supposed to release it to one of the officers on the case.”

Joanna looked the man directly in the eye. “What do you think I am, Mr. Richards?” she asked. “Chopped liver?”

“I’ll get it right away,” he said.

Once the book was in her hands, Joanna took it straight to her office. Out on the mountain on Sunday afternoon, she had scanned through most of the journal. Now, with nothing to do but wait, she took the time to read it more thoroughly. More than once, the words Brianna had written brought tears to Joanna’s eyes.

Bree had filled the pages with teenaged joy and anguish both. She had spent full pages agonizing over the extent and seriousness of Ignacio Ybarra’s football injuries. Using the journal as a sounding board, she had also poured out her dismay at the callous attitude exhibited by the other girls on the cheer-leading squad who had once been her friends. Not only did they not share her concern for the injured player, they had ostracized her for leaving the squad. It was only in reading the journal that Joanna learned how Bree, once arguably the most popular girl in school, had been forced to come to grips with life as a social outcast.

In that emotional snake pit, it wasn’t surprising that she had invested so much of herself in a new and forbidden relation-ship with Ignacio. Isolated and alone, she had turned to him for solace. No wonder the friendship between them had quickly blossomed, first into romance and later into love.

Joanna discovered some references to a brief summer school connection between them that was little more than a stolen kiss or two. Had they never seen one another again, that brief encounter would have been dismissed as mere puppy love. Their second interaction, however, had been far different. Even from a distance, Joanna Brady couldn’t help but be moved by the youthful but undeniable passion that had flowed so freely out of Bree’s heart and onto the pages of her journal. The outpouring was made all the more poignant by Joanna’s knowing the rest of the story. Ignacio Ybarra had returned Bree’s feelings. Now he was left alone, trying to find a way to survive the loss of that ardent first love.

Not only did the journal provide a detailed road map of Bree’s feelings, it also offered a faithful account of the resourceful young couple’s meetings, of how they had arranged at least one of their secret assignations. It also told about where they went and what they did on the first of their unauthorized weekends together. It wasn’t until Joanna reached the last week in February that she found an item that had nothing at all to do with Ignacio Ybarra. It was something Joanna remembered reading on her first scan of the journal, but with everything that had been going on at the time, she had missed the entry’s possible significance.

As per usual Mom is going to be out of town over her birthday. I don’t know why she insists on being gone right then. She always gives some lame excuse like she doesn’t care for birth-days or that after a certain age they don’t matter that much any-way. And she always says it wouldn’t be fair to interrupt what the whole group is doing for some kind of birthday celebration.

Before, I’ve gone along with her wishes and haven’t done anything about her birthday until she gets back home. But this time I’ve made up my mind things are going to be different. I’ve found the most wonderful birthday card-tire perfect one-and I don’t want to have to wait and give it to her after she gets back home. I know that one of those companies like FedEx or UPS-the ones who advertise that they can deliver anything anywhere-will he able to get it to her on time. All I have to do is figure out in advance exactly where she’ll be. After that, the rest will be easy.

Joanna stopped reading and once again stared out the window. The clouds that earlier had merely dotted the sky now had coalesced into an ominously dark and unbroken gray canopy. Across the parking lot, gray sticks of ocotillo, already edged with new green leaves sprouting in the aftermath of yesterday’s rain, tossed wildly back and forth in a brisk breeze.

Just as Joanna had suspected earlier, another fierce summer thunderstorm was on its way, bringing with it wind, dust, and rain. Not to mention flash floods and more overtime, Joanna thought. But as she continued to stare out the window, her budget concerns were overtaken by another consideration-by the glimmer of a hunch that was more gut instinct than anything else.

Under normal circumstances, Joanna would have turned that hunch over to her investigators. With both her detectives otherwise occupied, she decided to follow through on it herself. Picking up her phone, she dialed the records clerk. “Cindy, can you get me driver’s license information for Katherine O’Brien?”

“Sure, Sheriff Brady,” Cindy Hall responded. “Do you have a middle initial or date of birth?”

“Negative on both of those,” Joanna told her.

“What about address?”

“Purdy Lane,” Joanna replied. She waited during the silence for the several seconds it took for the computer to hook into the slate’s vehicular database and to kick out the needed information.

“All right,” Cindy said finally. “I think I’ve got her. Middle initial is V. Maiden name was Ross. What else would you like to know?”

“Date of birth, for starters,” Joanna said.

“March four,” Cindy answered. “And the year is 1942. Anything else?”

March four, Joanna thought. The same day as the entry that said Katherine was a liar. Are the two somehow related?

“Any arrests or convictions?” Joanna asked.

“None at all,” the clerk answered.

Putting down the phone, Joanna considered her next move. Finally, picking up the receiver again, she dialed her in-laws’ number. She was relieved when Eva Lou answered the phone. That way Joanna could ask her question directly without having to go through Jim Bob.

“Why, good afternoon, Joanna,” Eva Lou said. “How are you doing today, and what have you heard from Jenny?”

Joanna laughed. “Nothing so far. This is Monday. She’s only been there since Saturday, remember?”

“I suppose that’s true,” Eva Lou conceded. “It seems much longer.”

Joanna nodded. It seemed that way for her as well.

“If you write to her,” Eva Lou continued, “be sure to tell her that Grandpa and I miss her terribly.”

“Will do,” Joanna agreed. “In the meantime, I need your help. Last night you were telling me something about Katherine O’Brien. About her mission work.”

“Oh, yes. That poor woman,” Eva Lou said. “My heart just aches for her.”