Toward the end of the article was a paragraph that answered one of the questions Joanna had planned to ask Frank:
Thomas Dawson Ridder, a self-employed landscape gardener, had recently been dismissed from the army, where he had served as Staff Sergeant with STRATCom at Fort Huachuca. He was brought up on charges for assaulting an unnamed superior officer. Rather than face court-martial in that incident, Ridder accepted a general discharge, left the army, and moved with his wife and young child to Tucson. While the child’s mother is being held without bond in the Pima County jail and with her father deceased, the Department of Child Protective Services has taken steps to remove the minor child from the family home. She has been placed in the care of relatives.
Joanna stared at the end of the article for a long time after she finished reading it. She went back into the text of the article and underlined the word “weapon.” Then she made a note in the margin. “Was this missing weapon ever found? Is that maybe what was hidden in the Tupperware bowl?” Then, as soon as Joanna wrote that comment, she had another thought.
If Sandra Ridder drove all the way to Cochise Stronghold the night of the murder, Joanna wondered, if she knew she was going to be arrested, why didn’t she drop Lucy off at Catherine Yates’ nearby house right then, instead of taking the child back to Tucson with her? Why had she put her daughter in a position where she would have to be shuffled around by a bunch of bureaucracy-wielding strangers?
If Joanna hadn’t been a mother herself, she might not have considered that question, but it was one she wished she’d had a chance to ask Sandra Ridder in person. And she hadn’t been able to ask that question of Sandra’s attorney, Melanie Goodson, either. There was still one person she might ask—Sandra’s mother, Catherine Yates. After mulling the idea for a few moments, Joanna dismissed that one as well. It seemed unlikely to her that Sandra’s mother would have any more of an idea about the whys and wherefores of her daughter’s behavior than Eleanor Lathrop Winfield did about Joanna’s.
The next article was a short one that recounted the plea-bargain hearing. In it Sandra admitted that some of the injuries she suffered that night had been self-inflicted. That, although she claimed her husband had beaten her on other unreported occasions, on the night in question he had not. She had shot him as he sat in his chair in front of the television news and then had staged the ransacking of the house and her own injuries in order to be able to establish a claim of self-defense.
In making his decision, the judge said that based on Sandra Ridder’s account of self-inflicted injuries, he agreed with the prosecutor in disallowing any claim of self-defense. However, in view of Tom Ridder’s known violent tendencies, the judge did find some mitigating circumstances. As a consequence, his judgment of voluntary manslaughter was one full step down from the prosecutor’s previously arranged plea bargain of second-degree murder.
Studying that article, Joanna realized that one of the standard newspeak phrases was missing from the references to Melanie Goodson. Nowhere in that article or in any of the others was there any mention that Melanie Goodson was Sandra Ridder’s “court-appointed” attorney. That meant that Melanie Goodson had taken on Sandra Ridder’s case on a fee basis.
Joanna jotted down another note to herself. “Who paid Melanie Goodson’s fee? Sandra’s mother???”
The whole while Joanna had been working, Sadie and Tigger had been sprawled comfortably in the cave beneath the table. Now, acting in unison, the two dogs scrambled to their feet. Shoulder to shoulder, they dashed from the dining room into the living room, where they stood side by side, barking frantically at the front door.
As Joanna followed the dogs to the door, she remembered Butch’s concern about the unidentified car that had been lurking at the entrance to High Lonesome Ranch. She looked out in time to see a pair of headlights pull up and stop at the gate. Whoever it is doesn’t know us very well, Joanna thought. If they did, they’d be coming to the back door instead of the front.
“Who is it, Mom?” Jenny called from the kitchen.
Peering out between the window blinds, Joanna couldn’t tell. The vehicle hadn’t come far enough into the yard to trigger the motion-activated yard light located on the side of the garage. Feeling vulnerable and besieged, Joanna wished for the comforting presence of either one of her Glocks, but those were both under lock and key in her bedroom.
“Joey?” Butch asked. “Do you want me to go out and check?”
Before Joanna could answer, the car door swung open. In the dim illumination of the dome light, she caught a glimpse of Kristin Marsten’s cloud of blond hair as she climbed out of her Geo.