Carbajal said.
“What are you doing now?”
“First we have an appointment to go back and talk to the Dugans half an hour from now, when the husband gets home from work. After that, we’ll drop by Sierra Vista on the way home, calk to the kid who claims to have seen Dora Matthews getting into a car on Sunday night. We’ll also go by Walgreens to see what we can find out there.”
For the next several minutes, she briefed Jaime Carbajal on everything that had happened while the two detectives had been otherwise engaged. Once the call ended, Frank turned to her. “Sounds to me as though we may have found ourselves a brand-new prime suspect in the Matthews murder,” he said.
Joanna nodded. “It could be. A sixteen-year-old prime suspect, at that,” she added grimly. “Let me ask you something, frank. What would you do if you were sixteen and your thirteen-year-old girlfriend turned up pregnant?”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t kill her,” Prank said.
“No,” Joanna agreed. “I know you wouldn’t, and neither would I. But from the way Jaime talked about them, I have a feeling Christopher Bernard and his parents live in an entirely different universe from the one you and I inhabit. I suspect they don’t believe the rules apply to them.”
“In other words, you think Chris found out Dora was pregnant and decided to get rid of her.”
Joanna nodded.
“Well,” Frank said thoughtfully. “He does have a point.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. Christopher Bernard is sixteen—a juvenile. Supposing he gets sent up for murder. What’s the worst that’ll happen to him?”
Joanna shrugged. “He gets cut loose at twenty-one.”
“Right. And the same thing goes if he’s convicted of statutory rape. He’s out and free as a bird in five years. He’ll probably have his record expunged besides. But think about what happens if his girlfriend has a baby and she can prove paternity. Then little Christopher Bernard and/or his family is stuck for eighteen years of child support, minimum. No time off for good behavior. No hiding behind the rules that apply to juvenile justice. Based on that, a murder that unloads both mother and child might sound like the best possible alternative.”
The very thought of it sickened Joanna. “Please, Frank,” she said. “Just drive. I can’t stand to talk about this anymore. The whole thing is driving me crazy.”
For the next twenty minutes Frank drove while Joanna rode in utter silence. As appalling as it was to consider, what Frank had said sounded all too plausible. A juvenile offender could dodge any kind of criminal behavior tin- more easily than he could escape being ordered to pay child support. Joanna knew there were plenty of deadbeat dads out there who didn’t pay their court-ordered support money, but it was disturbing to think that the justice system was more eager to order teenagers to pay uncollectible child support than it was to hold them accountable for other far more serious offenses.
They hit I-10 just north of Cochise and turned east. They exited at Bowie and followed the directions on a billboard advertising Quartzite East that said: TURN SOUTH ON APACHE PASS ROAD.
Seeing that sign sent a shiver of apprehension down the back of Joanna’s neck. In some way she didn’t as yet understand, the dots between the mysterious Alice Miller and the location of Connie Haskell’s body seemed somehow to be connected.
“I didn’t realize Apache Pass Road came all the way into Bowie” was all she said.
“Oh, sure,” Frank agreed. “I knew that, but then I grew up in Wilcox. You didn’t.”
When they reached the entrance to Quartzite East, it had the look of a family farm turned RV park. The building marked OFFICE was actually an old tin-roofed house that looked as though it dated from the 1880s. Around it grew stately old cottonwoods. A checkerboard of orchards surrounded the house. Laid out among the carefully tended orchards were fifty or so concrete slabs complete with utility hookups.
