Skeleton Canyon (27 page)

Ignacio paused, as if remembering the attack were almost as painful as living through it the first time.

“So?” Joanna urged.

“I must have blacked out for a minute. When I came to, he was talking to me. ‘You’re a big one for a greaser,’ he was saying. ‘But you know what they say about that. The bigger they come, the harder they fall, right?’ I didn’t answer. I tried to turn around so I could get a better look at him, but he shook me so hard, I was afraid he was going to break my neck. ‘Did you hear me?’ he said again. ‘You’re supposed to answer when somebody speaks to you.’

“He shook me again—the kind of shake a coyote might give a rabbit in order to break its neck. That’s when I decided a rib was broken. One at least. According to Dr. Lee, it turns out to be three.”

“Dr. Lee over at the Copper Queen?” Joanna asked. She was taking notes now, writing as fast as she could.

Ignacio nodded. “He was my doctor last fall when I got hurt up here playing football. And that’s where I went after this happened—to the hospital to see Dr. Lee.”

“Go on then,” Joanna said.

“‘What’re you doing here, greaser?’ the guy says. ‘Casing the joint? Trying to figure out how you and your buddies can get inside and steal some of Mr. O’Brien’s stuff?’ I tried to tell him that I didn’t care about the O’Briens
^’
stuff, but he didn’t believe me. He must’ve thought I was one of the border bandits.
^”

“What happened next?” Joanna urged.

“He let go of my hair. When I fell back down, it hurt so had, I was afraid I might have ruptured a lung. I was still dealing with that when he burned me.”

Joanna caught her breath. “Burned you?”

Ignacio nodded. “I heard him strike a match and then I smelled cigar smoke. The next thing I knew, he burned me—right between my shoulder blades. I could smell that my shirt was on fire. I rolled around on the ground, trying to put it out. All the time, he
^’
s talking to me. ‘Just pass the word along to all your thieving friends down there across the line,’ he said. ‘Tell ‘em Mr. O’Brien has a few surprises for anyone who comes around here trying to steal his stuff.’ By the time I finally got the fire out, the guy was already crossing the road to where the other guy was waiting on the ATV.”

Listening to the story, Joanna felt almost physically ill as she recalled some of the almost forgotten details of the Alf Hastings case over in Yuma County. There wasn’t a decent police officer in the state of Arizona who hadn’t been ashamed of what had happened to the young illegals who had fallen into his clutches. They had been beaten and left to die. Now that Ignacio Ybarra mentioned it, Joanna thought she remembered that the young men had also been tortured and burned.

She stood up. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Ignacio nodded. “Sure,” he said.

Joanna stalked out into the outer office. She picked up Kristin’s phone and dialed Frank Montoya’s extension. As a recent law enforcement graduate of the University of Arizona, he was also the most computer literate.

“Does the name Alf Hastings ring a bell?” she asked when he answered.

“Not right off,” Frank responded. “Should it?”

“He was the deputy over in Yuma County who was the ringleader in that police brutality case with the four young UDAs. I want you to run Hastings’s name through the computer database. Bring me a copy of everything you get back.”

“What are you after specifically?” Frank asked.

“I want to hear from some of the other investigating officers,” Joanna told him. “I’m looking for an MO. I want to know exactly what was done to those kids.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Alf Hastings is living in Cochise County right now and working for David O’Brien. Unless I’m mistaken, I have one of Hastings’s most recent victims sitting here in my office. My major concern is that there may be others we don’t even know about.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Frank told her.

Taking Kristin’s phone book from the shelf behind her desk, Joanna located the number for the Copper Queen Hospital. It was morning office hours at the clinic, so Joanna had to pull rank before she was finally put through to Dr. Lee directly.

Dr. Thomas Lee was a Taiwanese immigrant in his mid-thirties who had come to Bisbee straight out of medical school. He had initially planned to stay long enough to pay off his school loans. The loans were all gone now—had been for over a year—but still he stayed on.

“Sheriff Brady,” Dr. Lee said, when he came on the phone. “Can I help you?”

“I have it young man in my office right now,” Joanna told the doctor. “Ignacio Ybarra. Do you know him?”

“Nacio? Yes, of course.”

“I need to ask you a question about him.”

“Sheriff Brady, you know I can’t reveal—”

“Please, Dr. Lee. I need to ask just one or two questions. Did you see him this weekend?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“Saturday,” Dr. Lee said. “Saturday night. He came to the emergency room.”

“You treated him then?”

“Yes.
^”

“Is there a possibility that Ignacio’s injuries had been received the night before?”

“You mean on Friday instead of Saturday? Absolutely not!” Dr. Lee exclaimed. “He was bleeding. Dirt was still in the wounds.”

“‘Thank you, Dr. Lee,” Joanna breathed. “That’s all I need to know.”

“But you must tell me,” Dr. Lee objected. “Why are you asking such questions? Has something happened to Nacio? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You already have,” Joanna told him. “I thought Ignacio was telling me the truth. Now I know for sure.”

Putting down the phone, she went back into her office. Ignacio Ybarra was still sitting in the same place with his head lowered, his shoulders bent. Sorrow exuded from every pore.

Moving with a confidence she hadn’t felt before, Joanna re-hinted to her desk. Ignacio looked up as she came by. Joanna mat down and met his questioning gaze.

“Nacio,” she said kindly, “why didn’t you tell us any of this last night?”

The young man ducked his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was too scared. I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“So why are you here now?”

“I’ve thought about the pearl for two nights now. I want it back, Sheriff Brady. I gave it to Bree because I loved her, and I want it back for the same reason. It’s all I’m ever going to have to remember her by.” He broke off, burying his grief-contorted face in his hands.

Joanna waited several moments while the young man sat there sobbing. “You must have loved her very much,” she said at last.

Ignacio nodded, but it took several seconds longer before he was under control enough to speak. “Bree and I thought that someday we’d be able to be together. We were going off to school in September. With us in Tucson and with both our families here, how much could they have done to stop us?”

Plenty,
Joanna thought, thinking about how much grinding criticism her disapproving mother had heaped on Joanna’s and Andy’s marriage over the years. For good or ill, Ignacio Ybarra was never going to have to face those kinds of issues with David and Katherine O’Brien.

“You lost the pearl during the beating, then?” she asked. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes,” Ignacio murmured. “I’m sure that’s when it fell out of my shirt pocket. It’s bound to be there, right across the road from the gate. I’m sure I can find it again, but if I go back on my own to look for it, he’ll send somebody after me again. That’s why I carne here this morning, Sheriff Brady. To ask for help. If I go there with a deputy, no one will bother me.”

“Do you want to file charges against him?” Joanna asked.

“Against the man who beat me up?”

“Yes.”

Ignacio seemed to consider the possibility. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he admitted. “I just wanted the pearl back, that’s all.
^”

“If you have broken ribs, we’re talking about a serious assault here,” she told him. “Whoever did this to you shouldn’t hr allowed to get away with it.”

“But I barely saw him,” Ignacio objected. “It was dark. I may not be able to identify him.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Joanna said grimly. “I have a pretty good idea of who he is.”

Before Joanna had a chance to turn back to Ignacio, there was an impatient knock at the door. “Come in,” she called.

The door burst open and Detective Carpenter strode into the room. “What exactly is going on here?” he demanded, glowering first at Joanna and then at Ignacio. “I thought I was the Detective on—”

“Good morning, Ernie,” Joanna interrupted. “I’m so glad you could join us. I need you and/or Detective Carbajal to take Mr. Ybarra’s statement. I believe Nacio has been the victim of serious assault at the hands of one of David O’Brien’s employees. Afterward, you’ll need to search the area opposite the outside gate to Green Brush Ranch to see if you can find Brianna O’Brien’s missing pearl earring, which was lost in the course of that attack. I’m sure Mr. Ybarra will be able to show you where it happened. I’m waiting for some information from Yuma County. If what I suspect pans out, sometime early this afternoon you and I should pay a visit to Green Brush Ranch.”

Ernie started to object, but something in the authoritative way Joanna had spoken stopped him cold.

“Jaime Carbajal is up at the courthouse trying to obtain a search warrant,” Joanna continued. “Call him off that and have him go with you. Now, get going.”

Without another word, Ernie turned on his heel and started for the door. Once there, he turned and looked back into the room. “Coming, Mr. Ybarra?” he asked.

Slowly, Ignacio Ybarra rose to his feet. He stepped toward Joanna’s desk, holding out his hand. “Thanks,” he said quietly, as they shook hands. “Thank you for believing me. I think what Mr. Kimball said about you was right.”

“Why?” Joanna asked. “What did he say?”

“He said that he’d met a lot of sheriffs in his time but that you were the only one who knew how to listen with your heart as well as your ears.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said.

May it always be so.

CHAPTER TWENTY

An hour later, while Joanna was busy reading Frank Montoya’s computerized printout on the police brutality case in Yuma, Kristin called in on the intercom to announce that Dr. Winfield was on the phone.

The prospect of talking to the coroner threw Joanna off center. Officially, Doc Winfield was the coroner, but he was also Joanna
^’
s new stepfather. Picking up the handset, she wasn’t mire how to speak to him on the phone. Winfield settled the whole issue by handling the entire transaction on a strictly professional basis.

“I still have some toxicology tests to do, and those take time-weeks even,” he told her. “But the preliminary results are these. The victim was struck on the head, repeatedly. The weapon was a heavy blunt object of some kind, but what actually killed her was drowning.”

“Drowning?
^”
Joanna asked.

“In her own blood. Her rib cage was completely crushed. Both lungs filled with blood. That’s what killed her.”

Joanna shivered. Drowning in your own blood seemed like an appalling way to die. She forced herself to sound dispassionate. “Any signs of defensive wounds?” she asked.

“None,” George Winfield returned. “It looks to me as though she was naked when the attack came and as though her assailant came at her from behind. There are contusions and abrasions that look as though they happened prior to death.”

“Like she was running, maybe?” Joanna asked. “As though she was trying to get away?”

“Maybe.”

Joanna didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to. “Was she sexually assaulted?”

“No,” George Winfield answered. “Given the circumstances of a naked victim, that’s something I would have suspected. But there’s no sign of sexual violation at all.”

“What about pregnancy?” Joanna asked.

“Negative on that, too. Her birth control pills must have been working.”

“Good,” Joanna said. Those things seemed like insignificant details, but Joanna was glad that they were blows David and Katherine O’Brien would be spared.

“Anything else?” Joanna asked.

“That’s all so far. This should be typed up by noon in case you want someone to come get it.”

“Thanks, George,” Joanna said. “I appreciate the advance notice.”

She had no more than put down the phone when it rang again. “We’ve got it,” Ernie said.

“Got what?” Joanna asked.

“The pearl.”

“Yon found it, then?
^”

“Looks like. With the rainstorm and all I didn’t think we’d ever find it, but we got lucky. It was right where Ignacio said II would be. Maybe he was telling the truth after all.”

Having already talked to Dr. Lee, Joanna didn’t need any more convincing, but she was happy to have Ernie Carpenter’s concurrence.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“While I was sitting here waiting, I’ve been reading up on Alf Hastings’s background,” Joanna said quietly. “He sounds like a hell of a nice guy. You’ll never guess what he liked to do to undocumented aliens besides kicking the crap out of them.”

“What?”

“He liked to burn them,” Joanna answered. “With the lit end of a cigar. Either between the shoulder blades or else on the genitals. On one of those four kids, he did both.”

The phone line went so silent that for a moment Joanna thought Ernie Carpenter had hung up on her. “Ernie?” she asked. “Are you there?
^”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m thinking about Ignacio Ybarra,” Ernie Carpenter said. “I guess he’s one lucky guy.”

“Lucky? How do you figure? He just lost a girl he cared about very much. He—
^”

“Right, but he only got the shoulder blade treatment,” Ernie interjected. “From my point of view, that’s luck.”