“Could I take a message, please? She’s about to go into a meeting.”
“This is Sheriff Joanna Brady from Cochise County,” Joanna said. “And it’s really quite important that I speak to her as soon as possible. I won’t keep her long.”
The secretary went off the line. Seconds later the phone was answered again. “Yes,” a clipped voice said. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is—”
“You’re Sheriff Brady,” the woman interrupted. “I know all that. My secretary already told me. This is Sister Celeste. What is it you want?”
“We’re investigating a homicide that occurred sometime overnight last Friday down near Elfrida,” Joanna said. “We have reason to believe that a person of interest in that case—a girl by the name of Lucy Ridder—called your convent in the early hours of Saturday morning and spoke to someone there for some time—fifteen minutes or so. I was hoping I could speak to whoever that person was.”
“I don’t think so,” Sister Celeste said abruptly. “In fact, I’m sure that would be quite impossible. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”
With that, the line went dead. Joanna sat in the Blazer holding her cell phone, staring at it, and feeling as though a door had just been slammed shut in her face.
You may think it’s impossible, Sister Celeste, Joanna thought. But I will be back.
Joanna was still sitting in the Quick Custom Metals parking lot and holding her phone when it came to life in her hand. When she answered, her caller turned out to be Detective Carpenter.
“Thought you’d like to know that we’re having the Lexus towed to the impound lot,” Ernie said. “Looks like our victim was there, all right. Or, if not Sandra Ridder, somebody else bled all over the leather upholstery. Casey Ledford came out to the site and did a preliminary look-see. She tried lifting prints from several places and couldn’t find any.”
“No prints again,” Joanna breathed. “Just like all those plastic water jugs.”
“Right,” Ernie agreed. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t see one of your ordinary run-of-the-mill UDAs working that hard to keep his fingerprints out of sight and out of our computers. That suggests to me that whoever it is has been in some kind of hot water before, and he knows once we get a lock on his prints, we’re going to get a hit on AFIS and know exactly who he is.”
“Can you tell where whoever it was went after abandoning the Lexus?”
“I’d say the driver of the Lexus was picked up by someone driving a second vehicle. The driver went from one vehicle to the other without leaving any kind of prints we could cast. And the tire tracks of the second vehicle are in the roadway, so they’ve long since been obliterated by passing traffic. We’ll probably pick up trace evidence from the car’s interior that will help us get a conviction if we ever catch who did it, but for right now . . .”
“The Lexus is a dead end for identifying the suspect,” Joanna supplied, “unless Casey can pull something out of the hat.”
“How many low-life crooks do you know who are this cagey?” Ernie Carpenter asked. “Most of them never consider the possibility that they might get caught. In other words, Joanna, I’m getting a funny feeling about this case.”
“What kind of feeling?” Joanna asked.
“Like we’re supposed to think we’re dealing with illegals when we’re not.”
“Who then, Lucy Ridder?”
“She’s fifteen years old. I doubt very much that a kid her age would know enough or be sophisticated enough about criminal procedures to wipe down prints. Besides, she doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
“I don’t think Lucy Ridder has a license to carry, either,” Joanna said. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to fire that twenty-two she stole from her grandmother.”
“Point taken,” Ernie said.
There was a momentary pause before Joanna spoke again. “What if all this has something to do with what went on eight years ago? Maybe it goes back to Tom Ridder’s murder. Maybe that’s why Lucy was trying to get in touch with all those folks from back then. Is Jaime there?”
“He’s driving,” Ernie replied. “I know better than let him talk on the cell phone when he’s supposed to be concentrating on the road. What do you want to know?”
“He’s talked to Melanie Goodson, hasn’t he?”
Ernie was off the phone for a few seconds. “He says three times so far. Why?”
“Did she say anything about receiving a middle-of-the-night phone call around three o’clock on Saturday morning?”
Ernie passed along the question. “No,” he said when he came back on the line “She never mentioned it. Do you want him to ask her about it?”
“Why don’t I do it?” Joanna said. “After all, I’m right here in Tucson. Where’s her office?”