Judgment Call (21 page)

“I checked with Dr. Ross just before you got here,” Deb said. “She says Giles is going to be fine.”

“What kind of name is that for a dog?” Dave Hollicker said.

“It's what he answers to, which is surprising considering how long Debra had him,” Deb replied. “Dr. Ross says she'll be ready to release him later today, but she'd rather not send him to the pound while he's still recovering from all the porcupine damage. She's worried about him picking up an infection or maybe passing one along to the other dogs. Since the puncture wound is infected, he's on antibiotics. She's taken a blood draw for the tox screen, but after this much time has passed, it's not likely that anything will show up on that.”

“What puncture wound?” Dave asked.

That's the reason we all need to be in the same room,
Joanna thought.
So we all have the same pieces of the puzzle.

“From a bear-tranquilizing dart,” Joanna answered. “Dr. Ross thinks that's what knocked the dog out.”

“Who would have access to something like that?” Dave wanted to know. “And why use it?”

“Depending on how it's deployed, it could be lots quieter,” Jaime said. “Some of them are fired out of pistols or shotguns, but I've also seen blowguns that can bring down small game. If the guy had a dog in his face, taking him down with a dart could be a lot less obvious than using a gun in a residential neighborhood. What I think is most interesting here—and more than a little odd—is that whoever killed Debra Highsmith went to considerable effort to neutralize her dog without killing him.”

“What color is the dog?” Dave asked.

“Mostly black,” Deb answered at once. “It's a Doberman. Why?”

“What about the victim's hair color?”

“Brown,” Jaime answered. “With some lighter streaks.”

“Women call those streaks highlights,” Deb said. “We pay good money for them.”

“Okay,” Dave said, ignoring the hair-color byplay. “I collected several hairs that were caught on the metal frame of the doggie door at Debra Highsmith's house. Under the microscope, it's easy to see that the black ones belong to the dog. Then there's a slightly longer light brown or even auburn one that's definitely human.”

“So maybe that's how the perpetrator gained access to the house—through the doggie door?”

“Maybe,” Dave agreed. “With any luck the guys in the crime lab will be able to develop a DNA profile. The truth is, it could also belong to the victim.”

“Why would Debra Highsmith be crawling through her own doggie door?” Deb wanted to know.

Dave shrugged. “Maybe she forgot her keys and had to let herself in that way. Not that it's ever happened to me,” he added with a sheepish grin.

“By all means, get that sample to the crime lab,” Joanna said, stepping into the discussion. “In the meantime, what about the victim's phone records?”

“Got 'em right here,” Deb said, tapping her finger on a stack of faxes sitting in front of her that she had been shuffling through during the meeting. “They came in overnight from Debra Highsmith's cell phone provider. Turns out she didn't have a landline at home, which probably explains why she didn't have an alarm system. Besides, it's tough to find security alarms that can differentiate between the family dog and an intruder.

“While we've been sitting here, I've been scanning the phone records. If what Sue Ellen Hirales told you about being close friends with Debra Highsmith is true, why aren't I seeing a single phone call from Debra's phone to New Mexico or from New Mexico back to her? I'm not seeing any calls to Altoona, Pennsylvania, either. So she saves all her grandmother's letters, for years and years, but she doesn't pick up the phone and call her? Not ever? At least not in the last year's worth of phone records.”

“What about e-mail records?”

“I'm looking into those. The school district isn't eager to let us into their computer system, but so far I don't have any kind of personal e-mail account for Debra Highsmith, only the one at work.”

“Did you ask Abby Holder about that?”

Deb nodded. “I asked her that specifically. She said that as far as she knew, Debra Highsmith didn't have an e-mail address other than the one at school. So we're going to need to get access to that.”

“I'll tackle Farraday,” Joanna said. “I'll try to get him to cooperate. If he won't, then we'll have no choice but to get the warrant.”

Next Joanna turned to Casey Ledford. “Okay. Where do we stand on fingerprints?”

“Nowhere,” Casey said. “I took elimination prints from the people who work at the school who would most likely have been in and out of Ms. Highsmith's office. Thanks to Dr. Machett, I have the victim's prints as well. So far I can't find any prints that shouldn't be there—not in her house, her office, or her vehicle. That tells me the guy was wearing gloves the whole time. If he went to the trouble of obtaining bear tranquilizer, this shows a whole lot of premeditation. The killer is organized. He planned this well in advance.”

“I'd have to agree with that,” Dave said. “We're seeing premeditation, but also plenty of rage. The guy was careful about going through the house, but demolished everything in sight once he got to the victim's office. What changed? Presumably he went to the house first. Then he killed the victim. I believe it was only after she was dead that he went to her office, because he wouldn't have had the office keys before that.”

“Maybe he couldn't find what he was looking for and that made him mad as hell,” Matt Keller suggested. All through the meeting, the Bisbee investigator had been sitting there, taking it all in, but not saying a word. “So far, the only things we know for sure that are missing are those calendars and the two computers.”

“We also still don't know where the perp went after he left High Lonesome Road,” Joanna said. “I understand from Terry that he and Spike lost the trail up by Grace's Corner. Terry's theory is that someone picked the guy up from there and took him to his vehicle, which would have to have been parked in an unobtrusive place.”

“If you don't know the make or model of the vehicle you're looking for, any parking place is unobtrusive,” Jaime said. “What do we do now?”

“I'd like everybody to spend the morning out in San Jose Estates. The neighborhood canvass that was done is just like the earlier crime scene investigation that was conducted at Debra Highsmith's house. When the City of Bisbee officers were questioning the neighbors, they were asking about a possible missing person. A homicide is a lot more serious. Talk to everybody. Maybe someone was missed, or maybe one of them will have remembered something important that he forgot to mention the first time around.”

Joanna looked around the room as her investigators nodded in agreement. “What about the Pembrokes?” she asked. “Do they have alibis?”

“Unfortunately, Dr. Pembroke's is rock solid,” Matt Keller said. “The M.E. puts the time of death between one and three
A.M
. From midnight to four, Dr. Pembroke was in the ER dealing with multiple injuries from that DUI down by Naco.”

Joanna vaguely remembered seeing something about that incident during her middle-of-the-night scan of the previous day's paperwork. The accident victim's bad luck turned out to be good luck for Dr. Pembroke.

“What about his son?”

“Marty Pembroke is a snarky kind of kid, but I don't see him as a killer,” Matt replied. “Posting something derogatory online is a lot more his style than hauling out a gun and shooting someone.”

“If he has a verifiable alibi, why won't he talk to us?” Deb asked. “Why lawyer up instead of coming straight out and telling us where he was and what he was doing?”

“What about the other kids?” Joanna asked. “They all seem to be wired into this social networking business. If Marty won't talk to us, maybe someone else will, or maybe what we need to know is posted online.”

“I tried questioning a couple of the kids and got nowhere,” Matt said. “You're right. What we need may be online, but getting inside those groups isn't as easy as you'd think.”

“Maybe we should talk to Marliss Shackleford,” Joanna suggested.

Every person in the room, including Matt Keller, looked at her in utter amazement.

“She must have some kind of access,” Joanna continued. “She knew about Jenny's photo being on the Internet before I knew about it because she was the one who told me. Let's ask her.”

“Wait,” Jaime said. “You're saying you want one of us to go out of our way to speak to that woman?”

Matt Keller came to Joanna's defense. “Sheriff Brady could be right,” he said. “One of the guys in the department, a friend of mine, was getting a divorce. Somehow or other Marliss Shackleford knew about it before he and his wife had even signed any paperwork. He jumped all over Marliss and asked her where she was getting her information. She claimed it was from his daughter's Facebook posting.”

Joanna regarded Marliss as her own personal cross to bear. “I'll handle talking to Marliss,” she said.

“She's likely to hide behind the ‘confidential sources' bit,” Deb said. “I doubt she'll tell you anything.”

What Deb didn't understand was that Joanna had a secret weapon in that regard—her mother. Eleanor and Marliss had always maintained a special kind of bond. Through the years and more than once Marliss had used that personal relationship to wage a PR war against Joanna. For the first time ever, Joanna was prepared to return the favor.

Joanna's phone rang. It was Lisa Howard, the weekend desk clerk from out in the public lobby. “Sorry to interrupt,” the clerk said. “Someone named Sue Ellen Hirales just showed up here at the window. She claims she's a friend of Debra Highsmith and she wants to speak to you before she heads back to New Mexico.”

“You were absolutely right to interrupt,” Joanna said. “Send her in. You don't need to bring her back. Tell her to come to my office rather than to the interview room.”

When Sue Ellen appeared in the room, she was wearing the same clothing she'd worn the last time Joanna had seen her. Although she may have taken a room at the hotel, Joanna doubted she'd slept much. The poor woman looked exhausted.

Joanna introduced her all around and then invited her to have a seat at the table.

“We haven't had a chance to access Ms. Highsmith's e-mail accounts, but we were wondering, did you correspond with her over the Internet?”

“The Internet?” Sue Ellen asked, shaking her head. “No. Never. We sent letters back and forth, but no e-mail.”

“Do you have an e-mail address?”

“Of course,” Sue Ellen said. “I have one. Debra just didn't use it, that's all.”

“What about phone calls?”

“None of those, either.”

“Doesn't that seem odd to you?”

“It's just the way she was,” Sue Ellen said with a shrug. “For as long as I knew Debra, she was shy around phones. When e-mail came along, she preferred using the U.S. Postal Service to stay in touch. She told me once that just because the world had changed didn't mean she had to.”

“I've told the people here what you mentioned to me last night—that your brother, your adopted brother, Michael, is Debra Highsmith's biological son. Is there a chance that his biological father might be behind what happened to her?”

“That worthless creep?” Sue Ellen said. “I don't think he even knows he has a son. I know for sure that Debra never would have told him.”

“He may have found out some other way,” Joanna said. “We need to be able to rule him out as a possible perpetrator.”

Sue Ellen considered for some time before she finally answered the question. “His name is Ryan—Kenneth Ryan. I've kept an eye on him through the years because I always worried he might show up and cause trouble for Debra or for my folks.”

“Do you know where he is right now?”

“He dropped out of college his sophomore year. He's been married and divorced three times so far. He runs a low-class sports bar in Las Cruces called the Goalpost. Could you do me a huge favor? I understand that you'll probably have to talk to him to find out if he was involved, but if he hasn't already figured out about Mikey, could you try to keep from telling him? Considering what's just happened to the poor kid, I don't want any more piling on, and I'd like to spare my parents some additional grief over this. If someday Mikey asks me about his father, I'll be the one to tell him, but not right now. Not until he's ready.”

Joanna glanced around the room. “Can we do that, people?”

There were nods all around.

“No promises, then,” Joanna said, “but we'll do our best. If we can discreetly rule Ryan out of the homicide, then contacting him directly might not be necessary. You need to know, however, that I have been in touch with Debra's grandmother.”

Sue Ellen's eyes widened. “You found Isadora?”