Judgment Call (24 page)

“Where?”

“At the new fire station.”

The “new fire station” on Highway 92 wasn't really new, but it was a lot newer than any of the other firehouses in town.

“Dena will be there?”

“She's supposed to be.”

It was as though the kids from the high school were pawns laid out on a chessboard, while Marliss, working behind the scenes, kept track of them all. For the first time Joanna began to wonder. Jenny's crime scene photo had been posted, but how much of what she and Butch thought of as their private lives was also being bandied about on the Internet? The thought flashed through Joanna's head, but she forced herself to not focus on it.

“What about Marty Pembroke?” Joanna asked. “Will he be there, too?”

“Trust me,” Marliss said. “If Dena's there, Marty will turn up eventually.”

Let's hope it's later rather than sooner,
Joanna thought.

Back in the Yukon, she drove straight to the car wash. Two cars were already parked, waiting their turns. Joanna pulled in behind them, even though the idea of getting the Yukon washed was a hopeless proposition. High Lonesome Road was dirt. By the time she got back to the house, the newly washed car would be covered by a thin film of dust. Besides, if she wanted it washed, the guys at the motor pool would do it for free. Having the car washed by the cheerleaders was a way of being a good citizen while offering her the possibility of having a quiet word with Dena.

Armed with a bucket of soapy water, Dena had drawn hubcap duty. When the girls tackled the Yukon, Joanna positioned herself by the right-rear wheel and waited for Dena to come to her.

“I'm not supposed to talk to you,” Dena said.

“On whose orders?” Joanna asked.

Dena didn't answer.

“Let me guess,” Joanna said. “The answer to my question is Marty Pembroke.”

“So?”

“So, you can talk to me, or I can go to your folks and tell them what you and Marty were doing out at the Rifle Range.”

Dena's fair skin was already flushed from working in the sun, but now she blushed a bright crimson.

“We weren't doing anything wrong.”

“Oh?” Joanna said. “You need to wise up, Dena. If you don't want your personal life to be public knowledge, you probably shouldn't post all the gory details on the Internet. Marty Pembroke strikes me as a smart-ass, but that isn't the same as being smart. You may be doing nothing ‘wrong'”—Joanna said, using her fingertips to signal quotation marks—“but the real question is this: Is he smart enough to use a condom?”

Still blushing, Dena bit her lip. “He doesn't have to. We're fine. I'm on the pill. He got them for me. From his dad. They're like free samples or something.”

So either Marty was lifting medications from his father without Dr. Pembroke's knowledge, or Marty was a cad and Dr. Pembroke was his enabler. Despicable? Absolutely! The very thought of it made Joanna furious, but her job right then was to investigate a homicide.

“Talk to me,” Joanna warned, “or I go straight to your parents. Did they know you were out of the house?”

“No,” Dena admitted. “I snuck out, after they were asleep.”

Joanna Brady knew all about sneaking out of the house. As a teenager she had been an expert at doing that very thing.

“So tell me about that night,” Joanna ordered. “All of it. I need the truth.”

“My parents go to bed after the news—about ten thirty. I waited until eleven. When I was sure they were asleep, I climbed out through my bedroom window. Marty was waiting in his car at the end of the street. We went to the Rifle Range and we … well … you know,” she finished with a shrug.

Joanna knew all about that, too. Dena Carothers and Marty Pembroke weren't the first, second, or even the third generation of Bisbee kids to use the abandoned Rifle Range south of Warren for those kinds of romantic, sexually driven assignations.

“How long were you there?”

“He dropped me off about two, and I climbed back in the window. It was a school night, but I'm lucky. I don't need much sleep.”

“What's going on?” a male voice demanded from behind Joanna.

She turned to see that Marty had arrived on the scene. “Why are you talking to her, Dena?” he demanded. “I told you not to talk to anybody, but especially not to her.”

“Why is that?” Joanna asked. “Why shouldn't she talk to me?”

Still blushing, Dena picked up her bucket and moved to the next vehicle in line, leaving Joanna and Marty alone.

“Because she's underage and you could go to jail for statutory rape?”

Marty's face twisted into a grimace. “I don't know what she told you …” he began.

“Why don't you tell me about Wednesday night?” Joanna suggested.

“I'm not supposed to talk to you without the lawyer.”

“Then I suppose I have to go have a talk with Dena's parents.”

That was really an idle threat on Joanna's part. These were two nonadults, but they were consenting nonadults. They were also taking precautions. Already struggling with being a hypocrite based on her own history, Joanna knew that turning them in for what they were doing wouldn't be in anyone's best interest. If the story came out, Dena's reputation would be shot, and Marty would end up spending a lifetime labeled as a sex offender. In this case, abiding by the letter of the law would have made things even worse for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Fortunately, Marty Pembroke didn't know that.

“We went to the Rifle Range,” he admitted, shamefaced about it rather than bragging. “It wasn't anything serious. We were just messing around.”

“Really,” Joanna said. “I think the correct terminology would be ‘screwing around' rather than ‘messing around.' What time did you and Dena meet up?”

“Around eleven.”

“What time did you drop her off?”

“Around two, I guess. I got home about two thirty.”

“While your father was still at the ER?”

Marty nodded.

“Does your father know about this?” Joanna asked. “About your having sexual relations with Dena?”

Marty didn't answer that question, and Joanna was convinced she knew why.

“What if she gets pregnant?”

“She won't.”

“You seem surprisingly confident about that. Why?”

“Because she's on the pill.”

“Courtesy of your father?” Joanna asked.

Again, when Marty didn't answer, Joanna was able to sort the answer out for herself.

“I think I understand. Your father's afraid that if you knock up some hick girl from Bisbee, that might stand in the way of your future, sort of like your school suspension from Ms. Highsmith might have lessened your chances of getting the education of your choice. Even if you've been accepted by a school, that decision could be rescinded. Isn't that right?”

Marty Pembroke was a big kid, probably a full foot taller than Joanna's five two, but he seemed to shrink in size under her penetrating green-eyed gaze. He was one of the privileged few, and she doubted anyone had ever spoken to him in quite that tone before. He stared down at his feet for a time and then gave the tiniest nod.

“Your father told you that it would be easier to beat a murder rap than it would be to duck a statutory rape charge, right?”

Another nod.

“Okay, then, Marty, here's the deal.” Joanna reached up and clapped him on one of his shoulders. “Dena Carothers has just backed up your alibi. She didn't like telling me that she was out at the Rifle Range or what she was doing out there, but she did. It turns out that you're telling me the same thing. Since you were out there in your car screwing your brains out, you couldn't very well have been ten or eleven miles away out on High Lonesome Road murdering Ms. Highsmith at the same time. That means you're off the hook on the murder charge, got it?”

Marty raised his eyes and looked at her. “Okay,” he mumbled.

“It turns out that this is also Dena Carothers's lucky day.”

“Why's that?”

“Because you're bad for her,” Joanna declared, “and you're going to break up with her.”

“You can't make me do that.”

“Oh yes I can,” Joanna told him. “Watch me. You don't have to do it today, but by the end of the weekend you're going to tell her that she's a great girl, but it's just not a good idea to get too serious when you're about to go away to college in the fall. From that moment on and for as long as you're in Bisbee, you're going to live a celibate lifestyle.”

“What does that mean?”

“Celibate means no more screwing around—literally. If you mess with any of the other underage girls here in town, I'll know about it, and I promise you, I'll nail your ass to the ground.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“Have you ever heard the saying ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas'?”

“I guess,” he said with a shrug.

“Well, here's some news from the front, buddy boy. It ain't necessarily so. I know you kids think you're the only people surfing the Net, but if you believe that, you're way dumber than your father seems to think you are. I'm giving you one chance to walk away with your future intact. One chance, and that's it. Don't screw it up, literally or figuratively. Understand?”

Marty nodded.

With that, Joanna climbed into her Yukon and headed home. She was convinced that she could exclude Marty Pembroke as being a possible suspect in Debra Highsmith's murder, but one of the things she had said to him continued to resonate in her head—the part about kids not being the only ones surfing the Net.

Debra Highsmith had gone to a great deal of effort to keep away from electronic media. Almost immediately after Marty Pembroke had posted her face on the Internet, she had started taking defensive measures—obtaining the concealed-weapons permit; getting the dog. So something about being posted online had made her wary, but of whom? And why?

Joanna's phone rang. “Kenneth Ryan isn't our guy,” Deb Howell said. “The night Debra Highsmith was murdered, he was under house arrest, serving out a DUI sentence complete with an electronic ankle bracelet. He's allowed to be at home or at work and nowhere else. They give him fifteen minutes of grace time to get from one to the other. Turns out that's been the case for the past two months. He's got one more month to go.”

“So he's a thrice-divorced drunk,” Joanna said.

It occurred to her about then that Debra Highsmith had been wise beyond her years in realizing that Kenny Ryan wasn't father material and in keeping the fact that she was pregnant away from the presumptive father.

She said, “I have a feeling that Mikey Hirales is way better off living with his adoptive parents on the Falling H than he would have been living with a drunk for a father in Las Cruces.”

“I think so, too,” Deb said, “but what do we do tomorrow when Mikey's biological grandmother shows up? What do we tell her?”

“As Jim Bob Brady is fond of saying, ‘Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.' Right now, I'm going home to take a nap. I was up most of the night chasing after Sue Ellen Hirales and Isadora Creswell while the rest of you were sawing logs. Butch and I have a command performance at the Plein Air gala tonight, and I need my beauty sleep. I had a chance to check out Marty Pembroke's alibi. It looks like he's in the clear.”

“Too bad,” Deb said. “He was really our only lead.”

“Did anything come from reinterviewing Debra Highsmith's neighbors?”

“Nada.”

“Those are all finished now?”

“Yup.”

“Who's on call tonight?”

“Jaime.”

“All right, then,” Joanna said. “Tell the guys to take the rest of the day off and go home. The budget can't handle running this whole investigation on an overtime basis. We'll take another look at things tomorrow morning when Isadora shows up.”

“Sounds good,” Deb Howell said, sounding relieved at getting some of her weekend back. “I'll let everyone know.”

As Joanna headed for High Lonesome Ranch, she was thinking about her father. She remembered him telling her once that sometimes you had to do the wrong thing for the right reason. She was sure what she had just done with Marty Pembroke was an instance of that. And when it came to Marliss Shackleford? Ditto. Calling her on her Internet snooping was the right thing to do. Making use of that snooping was right or wrong, depending on your point of view.

Joanna was relatively sure that nothing short of a threatened jail sentence would make Marliss cede even so much as an inch of her Internet territory, and that was fine with Joanna. As long as Marty Pembroke was still in town, Joanna Brady intended to take full advantage of Marliss's ill-gotten info to make sure Marty continued to walk the straight and narrow.