Dead to Rights

“Well?” Jenny said. Surprisingly enough, she was looking at Butch rather than her mother.

Butch looked uncomfortable. “Your mother and I haven’t had a chance to discuss it yet.”

“Discuss what?”

“I was talking to Jenny earlier about the three of us going out to dinner again tonight, but to a nice place this time.” Joanna turned back to her daughter. “It’s up to you, Jenny. If you want to go to Sue’s, that’s fine.”

Jenny put the phone back to her ear. She listened for a while. Finally she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “But I won’t come over until sometime later on this afternoon.”

Butch sighed and shook his head. “Stood up again,” he said. “Just my luck. How about you? Would you consider going to dinner with me anyway?”

“On one condition,” Joanna told him.

“What’s that?”

“We go in my car. I’m not built for motorcycles.”

The phone rang again, almost as soon as Jenny put it down. She answered and, after a moment, handed the receiver to her mother.

“Matt Bly, the composite guy, is due here at ten,” Dick Voland announced in his customarily brusque fashion. “We’ll go from here to the hospital to interview Deputy Long, and from there out to Elfrida to see the gas-station clerk.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Joanna asked.

“Jaime Carbajal,” Voland answered. “I figured that would give me a chance to check him out and see how he does when he’s working solo.”

“How about if I meet you at the hospital?” Joanna suggested. “I need to stop by and see how Debbie Howell and Ted Long are doing.”

“All right,” Voland said, “but be advised. It’s just like I said it would be. We’re paying through the nose for this guy. I don’t want to waste any of his time.”

Once the breakfast dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Jenny gathered up her overnight gear. Then she stood with on impish grin on her face while Batch Dixon zipped her into an oversized jacket and fastened on a helmet. “Ready?” he said.

“Ready,” Jenny returned.

To Joanna’s ear Jenny’s voice sounded strangely hollow and grown up, echoing through the plastic. As she watched Jenny climb onto the motorcycle and settle on behind Butch, Joanna felt her heart constrict. The idea of Jenny’s riding off on the thing was terrifying. What if something happened? What if there was an accident?

Jenny, on the other hand, was thrilled beyond bearing and waving with delight as Butch Dixon started the smooth-sounding engine.

“See you at Marianne and Jeff’s,” she crowed. “Bet we’ll beat you there.”

“No bet,” Joanna replied.

Butch grinned at her. “Don’t worry,” he told her over the drone of the engine. “There are old riders and bold riders, but no old bold riders. I’ll be careful.”

Shaking her head and stepping out of the way, Joanna couldn’t help laughing at that, which was obviously exactly what Butch had intended.

On her way up to the Canyon Methodist parsonage in Old Bisbee, following behind the motorcycle, Joanna gave herself points. After all, she had let Jenny go. She had overcome her own objections and let her daughter do something daring, rather than holding Jenny too close and trying to protect her from everything, from life itself.

At the parsonage the three newcomers were part of a stream of well-wishers. They stayed for only a few minutes-long enough for introductions. Ruth was a shy but bright-eyed little one who clung fiercely to Jeff Daniels and didn’t want him out of her sight. By comparison, Esther was a pale reflectionof her sister. To Joanna^’s way of thinking, Esther Maculyea Daniels looked very ill indeed. She lay, silent and listless, in Marianne’s arms, brightening only when Ruth’s face happened to appear in her line of vision.

“I can see why Jeff couldn’t bear to leave her,” Joanna said quietly.

Marianne nodded while her eyes filled with unshed tears.

“Esther’s going to be just fine.” Joanna spoke the comforting words with far more conviction than she felt. “Do you have everything you need? Is there anything I can get you?”

“Prayers,” Marianne answered. “I think we’re going to need a lot of those.”

As a new batch of visitors descended on the parsonage, Joanna, Butch, and Jenny headed out. Watching Jenny’s halo of golden hair disappear once more into Butch’s spare helmet, Joanna found something to be thankful for-two things especially. Not only was Jenny healthy-she was also a long way out of diapers.

She had barely made it to her desk when Ernie Carpenter shambled into her office. There had been dark circles under his eyes on Friday. If anything, now they were worse-almost black rather than merely purple.

“It’s Saturday,” she pointed out. “I told you to take the weekend off. What are you doing here?”

“These loose ends are killing me,” he said. “I can’t sleep anyway, so I could just as well be working.”

Joanna shook her head. “You look like hell, Detective Carpenter, but we do need you. Next week for sure you’re to take some time off. Understood?”

“Right,” he said.

“In the meantime, I’m on my way over to the hospital to watch Mr. Bly, the composite artist, do his stuff. Care to join me?”

“Sure.”

They were in Joanna’s Blazer, headed for the hospital when Ernie tapped his head. “I almost forgot to tell you. I spent some time late yesterday afternoon with the guy out at the Rob Roy.”

“Peter Wilkes?”

“‘That’s the one. Evidently Terry Buckwalter really is one hell of a golfer. Shoots in the high sixties and low seventies most of the time. As a consequence, there are only a few guys out there, besides the pro, who are willing to golf with her. But he did come up with the name of one guy who has gone out with her several times, even though she’s walked all over him. Larry Matkin. Isn’t he the young mining engineer who works for P.D.?”

Joanna nodded.

“And wasn’t he at the funeral yesterday, too?”

“He was,” Joanna said. “Not only that, he called me on Thursday and left a message for me to call him back. I’ve tried several times, but I’ve never been able to catch him.”

“After this deal at the hospital,” Ernie said thoughtfully, “maybe we ought to interview him.”

“Sounds great,” Joanna said. “Any idea where he lives?”

“No,” Ernie said. “But it won’t take long to find out.”

In Joanna’s head, the words “composite-sketch artist” had evoked the picture of an artist-a properly bereted, goateed and smocked middle-aged man with a sketch pad in of hand and a fistful of charcoal in the other. From that standing point, Matt Bly hardly measured up. He turned out to be tiny-five feet four, and incredibly young-twenty- four or twenty-five at the outside. He wore thick glasses, had a severely receding chin, and used a laptop computer rather than pad and pencil.

Joanna looked in on a recovering Debbie Howell on her way to Deputy Long’s room. When she arrived, the composite creation process was already in full swing. As far as she could the whole thing proved to be exceedingly slow, exacting, and eventually disappointing. It had been evening and Deputy had been too far away from the suspect to pick up the kinds of painstaking details necessary to put together a successful composite. When Matt Bly pronounced the picture finished, there wasn’t anything about it that was the least bit familiar. The artist, however, didn’t seem at all discouraged.

“That’s all right,” he said. “By the time I put this together with the witness we’re going to see in Elfrida, it’ll be better. Just you wait and see.”

While Joanna had been watching the artist in action, Ernie had been out in the corridor using a pay phone to track down Larry Matkin’s address. When Joanna came looking for him, the detective was scribbling something in his notebook.

“Got it, Sheriff Brady,” he announced. “Matkin lives in a rented trailer out by Gold Gulch.”

They took the Rifle Range Road to a trailer parked on the first gentle slopes of Gold Hill. “Why would anyone