Devil's Claw (36 page)

“What’s true?” Joanna asked.

“What Lucy Ridder told me.”

Joanna held up her hand. “Wait,” she cautioned. “Don’t say anything more right now. Mr. Woodworth? Mr. Davis? Thank you so much for all your help, but I believe that’s all we need for right now. If there’s anything more, we’ll let you know.”

Now it was Fred Woodworth’s turn to sigh. Closing the lid on the laptop, he ran one finger regretfully and lovingly across it. “It was a pleasure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to help out anytime. Just give me a call.”

He and Rich Davis stood up. Frank Montoya escorted the two men as far as the conference-room door. As soon as they stepped over the threshold and out into the reception room, Frank closed the door behind them and turned expectantly back to Joanna and Sister Celeste.

“What did Lucy tell you?” Joanna was asking.

“That her mother was a spy.”

“A spy?”

“She said her father told her that Sandra Ridder was providing top-secret information to our enemies. I’d guess that would have been the Iraqis during the Gulf War.”

For a second or two, both Joanna Brady and Frank Montoya were struck speechless. Before either one of them could comment, Sister Celeste stood up. “I’m sure you’ve heard enough,” she said. “Now, if you’ll be so good as to come with me, I’ll take you to Lucy right away.”

“Where is she?” Joanna choked, finding her voice at last.

“At Holy Trinity Monastery over in Saint David,” Sister Celeste said. “The prior, Father Mulligan, is a good friend of mine, and I understand he’s a friend of yours as well. He promised me he’d take care of Lucy and keep her safe and out of sight. Lucy Ridder is convinced that the man who murdered her mother came out to Cochise Stronghold that night looking for the computer disk. She’s afraid that eventually he’ll figure out who must have it. Once he does, he’ll come looking for her as well.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying Lucy knew someone killed her mother?” Joanna asked. “How could she?”

“It’s perfectly simple,” Sister Celeste answered calmly. “Lucinda Ridder saw him do it.”

CHAPTER 22

Joanna shook her head. “I don’t think so. I want you to get Detective Carpenter to tackle the Fort Huachuca situation ASAP. Tell him I want to know everything possible about Sandra Ridder’s position when she used to work on post—who she worked for, what she did, how much money she earned, everything.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank cautioned. “If this really does turn out to be a legitimate spy case, won’t we be stepping on jurisdictional toes?”

“Look at how old this case is, Frank,” Joanna said. “It’s been around at least as long as Sandra Ridder was in prison and probably a whole lot longer than that. What makes you think we’re the first ones to discover it?”

“You’re saying there may have been a cover-up?”

Joanna shrugged. “It could be. Look at what happened at Los Alamos. Let’s solve Sandra Ridder’s homicide
before
we send out for reinforcements and
before
we go jumping through any unnecessary bureaucratic hoops. If, in the process of doing that, we come across real evidence of espionage, then we’ll pass it along to the Feds so they can follow it up. In the meantime, we’re operating on hearsay eight-year-old evidence from a fifteen-year-old runaway and on the shaky technical assumptions of a convicted computer hacker. Talk about leaning on a pair of bent reeds. If we tried to call in the FBI based on what we have up to this point, they’d laugh themselves silly.”

“Sister Celeste could have it all wrong,” Frank suggested quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Just because Sister Celeste thinks Lucy Ridder didn’t kill Sandra Ridder, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. Lucy may have lied to Sister Celeste, and she may lie to you as well, to say nothing of being potentially dangerous. Everybody seems to keep forgetting the kid has a gun.”

“If Lucy Ridder killed her mother, who killed Melanie Goodson?” Joanna asked. “Are you suggesting that Lucy is responsible for that murder as well?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“But not very likely,” Joanna returned. “Somebody out there has gotten away with something for years. Once Sandra Ridder was let out of jail, maybe she threatened to blow the perp’s cover. That’s why Sandra Ridder is dead, and I’ll bet that’s why her attorney is dead as well. I’m with Sister Celeste on this one. I don’t think Lucy had a thing to do with her mother’s death other than possibly seeing it happen. And based on that—on the fact that she’s both an eyewitness and thought to be packing around a computer disk full of classified material—I believe Lucy Ridder’s life is in danger. Maybe her grandmother’s is as well. Speaking of Catherine Yates, hadn’t we better do something about her? Presumably, thanks to Sister Celeste’s efforts, Lucy is safe at the moment. I want round-the-clock surveillance on Catherine Yates’ place. That way, if someone comes there looking for the disk, we might just nail them.”

“Mounting a round-the-clock guard is going to cost money,” Frank said. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Thanks for your budgetary concern, Frank. But if it’s a choice between spending money or possibly saving a life, I’m in favor of the latter.”

“All right,” Frank agreed after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll go round up Ernie, and we’ll get started. But what about the disk?” He held it out to her. “It’s evidence, isn’t it?”

Joanna nodded. “The question is: evidence of what? Bag it, log it, and take it down to the evidence room. Somebody somewhere is going to want it eventually. When they do, I want to be able to lay hands on it at a moment’s notice.”

“Unlike Tucson PD and a certain missing bullet,” Frank said.

“Right,” Joanna returned. Frank Montoya opened the door once again. In the reception room, Joanna found Sister Celeste pacing impatiently back and forth in front of Kristin’s desk. “Would you like to ride with me?” Joanna asked. “Or would you prefer to bring your own vehicle?”

“I’ll ride with you if you don’t mind,” Sister Celeste returned. “We need to talk. On the way, I’ll tell you what I know.”

Joanna was surprised by the nun’s response, but gratified as well. Sister Celeste may have had reservations about Joanna when she first appeared in the office, but those concerns had evidently been dealt with. Out in the parking lot, Joanna walked past her worn Blazer, choosing instead to drive Sister Celeste in the relative comfort of a departmental Crown Victoria.

“Were you the one who suggested Lucy sign up for ballet?” Joanna asked, once they were underway.

Sister Celeste regarded her with a raised eyebrow. “Yes,” she said. “How did you know about that?”

“Jay Quick, the son of Lucy’s ballet instructor, remembered something about one of the nuns at school giving a book to her—a book about a Native American ballerina.”

“Maria Tallchief.” Sister Celeste nodded. “I knew when I gave Lucy the book that it made a big impression on her. It seemed to help—to give her hope that somehow things could get better for her. She was so desperately unhappy, I had to do something.”

“Why unhappy?” Joanna asked.

“Santa Theresa’s is a barrio school,” Sister Celeste answered. “We have lots of Hispanic students and quite a few Native Americans. Lucy was different.”

“Different how?” Joanna asked. “She’s Apache, isn’t she? How much more Native American could she be?”

“She isn’t full-blooded Apache,” Sister Celeste replied. “And it shows. The other kids teased her and made her life miserable because she wasn’t Indian enough to suit them. And then, once she arrived at her grandmother’s place near Pearce, just the opposite must have been true. There she had too much Indian blood, and she was still an outsider.”

“Which is why her best friend turns out to be a red-tailed hawk?” Joanna asked. Sister Celeste nodded. “Where is he, by the way?”

“Who, the hawk?” Sister Celeste asked. “Big Red is at the monastery, too. At the time Lucy called me, she said she and the bird would be hiding out in the hills near Texas Canyon. I suggested that she come to Tucson. I offered to come get her right then, early Saturday morning. I even told her she could stay at the convent, although we aren’t really set up to accommodate boarders. Lucy refused. Said she couldn’t come because of the bird. She said since she couldn’t ride her bike on the freeway, she’d have to walk the whole way to Tucson because Big Red had never been in a car before and she didn’t think he’d go in one.

“When she was talking about her pet bird, I was more or less envisioning something like a parakeet or parrot. I had no idea what kind of bird Big Red was or
how
big. Someone came to where she was right then, and she had to get off the phone. She said she’d call me back. I stayed by the phone all day long, but I didn’t hear from her again until Sunday morning. When I talked to her that time, she was calling from a place called Walker Ranch. She told the people there that she had been hiking and gotten lost. She told me that someone bad had come looking for her Sunday morning, and she had run away, leaving everything behind—her bike, bedroll, water, and food. She said if it hadn’t been for her hawk calling a warning, she would have been trapped. She said Big Red was the only reason she got away.

“That was the first I really understood Big Red is a hawk. The woman who lived at the ranch gave me directions, and I told her I’d be right there as soon as I could to pick them up. Overnight I had been racking my brain to think of a place where a girl and a bird would be welcome. Sometime around midnight I remembered my friend, Father Mulligan.”

“At Holy Trinity in Saint David?” Joanna added.

Sister Celeste nodded. “Since Lucy was clearly so frightened, it seemed like an altogether more sensible place for her, and Holy Trinity is a retreat center that is set up to handle overnight visitors. Once I understood Big Red was a hawk, Holy Trinity seemed like a good place for him, too. Much better than the grounds at Santa Theresa’s, which happen to be in the middle of Tucson. The only problem was getting them there.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “Don’t tell me Lucy walked from Texas Canyon all the way to Saint David.”

“Lucy’s a very resourceful young woman, and I’m sure she could have walked that far,” Sister Celeste returned. “But right then, she was at the end of her rope. I remembered how in some of the old romance novels I used to read, falconers would keep hoods over their birds’ heads. So that’s what I did—got Big Red a hood.”

“Where?” Joanna asked, only half teasing. “What did you do, go to Pets-Are-Us?”

“I didn’t have to. One of the sisters at the convent, Sister Anne Marie, is a real wizard with a Singer sewing machine. She whipped one right up. And when Lucy put it on Big Red, it fit perfectly—like it had been made for him, which, of course, it had. Once his eyes were covered, he got in the van just as nice as you please.”

For several minutes the car moved through the bright desert afternoon sunlight with no further words being exchanged. When Sister Celeste spoke again, she took the conversation back several steps. “Back then, when I suggested Lucy take ballet, there was more to it than just the Indian situation.”

“Oh?” Joanna replied. “What else?”

“When it was time for the first parent-teacher conferences that fall, Tom Ridder showed up by himself. I told him both parents needed to be involved in what was going on at school. I explained that things weren’t going well for Lucy—that she wasn’t fitting in and that she wasn’t working up to her potential, either. I asked him if there were problems at home. He admitted that yes, there were. He said he and his wife were having marital difficulties. That things were so bad they might end up in divorce court. He said Lucy was the only reason he was hanging on and trying to hold things together.”

“Lucy’s grandmother claimed Tom Ridder had behaved violently with his wife,” Joanna said. “And from what I saw of the record and legal proceedings, the judge who sent Sandra Ridder to prison seems to have said pretty much the same thing—that Tom Ridder was prone to violence. Prior to the murder, did you see any evidence that would support that?”

Sister Celeste shook her head. “No,” she said. “I agree there was violence in the home, but I don’t think Tom Ridder was the culprit. One day, Lucy came to school with a handprint-shaped bruise on her face. Remember, this happened back before there were state laws requiring school personnel to report instances of possible abuse to the authorities. I asked Lucy about it—asked if her father had hit her. I’ll never forget what she told me. ‘The only person in our house who hits people is my mom.’ She said that her mother had a temper. That sometimes she would do mean things to Lucy and to her father as well, but Lucy insisted that no matter what people said, her dad never hurt anybody.”

“And you believed her?” Joanna asked.

“I had no reason not to,” Sister Celeste replied.