loved them to distraction. She always thought she could take one more, and then one more and one more after that, until it would get to be too much and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. That’s when Grandma would step into the breach again and fix whatever needed fixing.”
“What about Pam and Carmen?” Joanna urged.
“When I found out they were willing to pay for some interviews with some of the women who had escaped The Brethren, I thought, why not put them in touch with Carol? Here was a woman-a potentially wonderful, capable woman-whose whole life had been torn apart by what my father and The Brethren did to her. It’s one thing to show a little girl being married off to an ugly old man. That’s bad enough. But when I told Pam and Carmen about Carol, they were interested in doing a story about the long-term ill effects of what The Brethren do. They wanted to interview both Stella and Carol.
I told them talking to Stella was a bad idea. I knew she wouldn’t be interested, but Carol was in a bind for money.”
“How did you know she needed money?”
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“Carol always needed money,” Andrea replied. “This time she had gone so far as to ask me to help, and I didn’t,” Andrea said hopelessly, tears welling up again. “I had some money set aside for a vacation next year, after I finally get my Ph.D. I wasn’t willing to spend it on vaccinating that latest batch of stray dogs. And so I turned her down, but I put Pam and Carmen in touch with Carol instead. Call it guilt on my part, because it’s true, but it was also a way for Carol to have the money she needed without my having to come up with it and without Grandma’s having to do it, either. I thought I was helping, I really did.”
Andrea paused and stared off into the middle distance. “What happened then?” Joanna urged.
Andrea swallowed hard. “Carol died. I didn’t know exactly when Pam and Carmen were supposed to see her, so I fooled myself into thinking that Carol’s death was just a random act of violence, that it had nothing at all to do with The Brethren, or with Pam and Carmen, either. And I believed that, right up until this morning, when I talked to Grandma. Then I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That my father killed them, and Carol, too,” Andrea said quietly. ‘And now he wants to take Carol’s body back to Mexico with him. It’s like he’s not willing to let any of us escape, not even in death. I’m afraid he’ll come looking for me next, Sheriff Brady, and if he does-if he even so much as comes near me-I swear to God, I’ll kill him myself.”
Somehow Joanna understood this was no idle threat. “I wouldn’t advise that, Ms. Mossman,”
she said. “We currently have your father under surveillance based on the fact that he’s been the object of a previous death threat-one from your grandmother,” she added with a slight smile. “And now one from
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you. I’m confident that we’re going to find a way to charge him with something. That way he’ll end up in jail rather than going back to Mexico, with or without Carol’s remains. In the meantime, however, I believe it’s possible that you yourself are in danger. Do you have anywhere you can go? Is there anyplace you can stay?”
“The people I work with have safe houses,” Andrea said quietly.
“Go to one of them,” Joanna urged. “Just for the time being. Give us a chance to find out exactly what happened to Carol and to Pam and Carmen. It’s early in the investigations. We’re in the process of sorting out the forensics and gathering evidence.
Once we make our case, that will be plenty of time for you to come out of hiding.”
Andrea nodded. “You’re right,” she said. ‘And I will. But you should probably talk to Stella, too. If I’m in danger, so is she.” She paused. “But there is one thing,”
she added.
“What’s that?” Joanna asked.
“If you can, don’t mention to her that I’m the one who put Pam and Carmen in touch with Carol. Stella’s done a better job than any of us at putting the past behind her and getting on with her life.”
Joanna nodded. She switched off the tape recorder and then stood to go. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a business card. “Call me tomorrow and let me know you’re okay and where you are so I can be in touch with you if I need to.”
“I will,” Andrea said. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
Outside, early-afternoon Tucson temperatures scorched sidewalks, softened pavements, and made the door handle and steering wheel of the Civvie too hot to touch, but Joanna barely noticed. Her whole being simmered with contempt for a wormy 310
little weasel named Eddie Mossman-a man whose betrayal of his daughters went against everything Joanna herself believed in and held dear.
“We’ll get you, you lousy bastard,” she vowed aloud once she eased herself down on the skin-searing seat. “One way or another, we’re taking you down.”
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On the hundred-mile drive back to Bisbee, a bank of beautifully mountainous thunderclouds, fat with the promise of still more much-needed rain, piled up over the mountainous silhouettes of the Chiricahuas and Dragoons. After only two days of summer monsoons, the shoulders of the highway were already tinged with green, as dormant seeds of grass and weeds sprang to life.
Ordinarily, Joanna Brady would have reveled in this summer miracle, but today she was as blind to the desert’s annual transformation as, earlier, she had been unaware of Tucson’s heat. With her mind focused totally on the job, her initially angry resolve to deal with Eddie Mossman gradually evolved into questions of strategy.
What was her duty here? What was her responsibility as sheriff, and what was required of her as a human being? Although as yet there was no physical evidence to support such a theory, Andrea Mossman -was clearly
