Page 15 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

Joanna came to work on Tuesday morning in somewhat better shape than she had the day before.

For one thing, she’d gotten more sleep. She’d still tossed and turned some, but at least she’d had something to worry about other than having a police officer’s daughter working the graveyard shift.

Now she had an upcoming wedding to plan.

Somehow it was easier to fall asleep while thinking about wedding cakes, flowers, and reception logistics than it was while worrying about murder and mayhem.

Dave Ruiz called half an hour later with the welcome news that the last of the building permits had finally been issued.

With that one set of prisoners now being held in Phoenix, the way was finally clear for him to start work on the new solitary confinement part of the jail, and he expected to have a crew on-site bright and early the following morning.

Off the phone with him, Joanna spent a good forty-five minutes with Terry Gregovich, zeroing in on exactly how work on the jail would proceed without the construction crew interfering with her prisoners and vice versa.

Shortly after that session ended, a call came in from Captain Pena. “How’s it going?” he asked when Joanna answered.

“Fairly well,” Joanna answered. “What’s up with you?”

“If I were to stop by about two this afternoon with Elena Delgado in tow, would you happen to have an available interview room?”

Joanna had doubted that the boy’s mother would agree to come in for an interview, so she was pleasantly surprised. “Absolutely,” she said.

“She doesn’t speak any English,” Arturo added. “Do you want me to translate?”

Joanna thought about that. “I should probably have someone from my team,” she said a moment later. “I’ll have my chief detective, Lt. Jaime Carbajal, sit in. But is she going to want an attorney present? My people will have to read her a Miranda warning.”

“I asked about that,” Arturo said. “She says she needs to know for sure if the child is Xavier. That’s why she agreed to be interviewed. She doesn’t need an attorney, but she’d like me to be present during the interview.”

“No problem,” Joanna agreed.

“Okay,” Arturo said. “See you then.”

After consulting with Jaime and letting him know the lay of the land, Joanna made arrangements to have the interview live streamed to the computer in her office. That way she and Detective Raymond would also be privy to everything that was going on.

The rest of the morning passed quickly. With plenty of routine office work to do, Joanna had brought along a sandwich from home and ate lunch at her desk. At ten minutes to two, Arturo appeared in the doorway to her office with a young woman in tow.

Considering Elena Delgado’s occupation as a sex worker, Joanna had expected someone rather sexy.

Beneath a mane of thick black hair, she was plain as opposed to pretty and a bit on the plump side.

She was dressed in a maroon sweatshirt with a fading Corona beer logo affixed to the front.

The tears in the legs of her threadbare jeans spoke of long use rather than strategic designer distress.

Over the years, Joanna had picked up enough Spanish to get through the preliminaries. She rose from her desk and stepped forward with her hand extended saying, “ Buenas tardes. Bienvenido. Lamento mucho su pérdida. ”

Elena nodded. “ Gracias.”

Joanna was struck by how cold Elena’s hand was. Clearly the young woman was careworn and utterly terrified.

“ ?No te sentarás? ” Joanna asked. “Won’t you sit down?”

Elena darted over to one of the two visitors’ chairs in front of Joanna’s desk, but when she took a chair, she perched on the very front of it as if prepared to flee the room at a moment’s notice.

“I’m assuming Captain Pena has told you that on Saturday my officers found the body of a young boy we think may be your son, Xavier.”

Arturo translated and Elena nodded.

“You are not under arrest. The purpose of this voluntary interview is to determine if the body we found is that of your son.”

Once again a nod followed Arturo’s translation.

“Captain Pena will accompany you to the actual interview, one that will be recorded. While there, one of my investigators will read you your rights, but once again, you are not under arrest. Since your presence here is voluntary, you may stop the interview at any time. At some point, my officers will probably ask to swab your cheek in order to obtain a DNA sample. DNA is the only way we’ll be able to positively determine the child’s identity. ”

This translation took a bit longer. Elena nodded again, then asked a question of her own in return.

“She wants to know if she can see him,” Arturo said.

With her heart aching, Joanna shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The body isn’t here. It’s at the morgue, but he has been gone too long. No mother should have to see her child the way he looks now.”

This time, after Arturo’s translation, there was no answering nod. Instead, Elena Delgado lowered her face into her hands and wept uncontrollably, while Arturo patted her shoulder in a vain attempt to comfort her. At last she quieted, raised her head, and blew her nose into a hanky.

“Are you ready?” Joanna asked.

“ Sí. ” Elena said shakily. “ Estoy listo. ”

Joanna led the visitors out of her office and down the corridor to the interview rooms. The door to one of them was open with Lt. Carbajal and Detective Howell already seated inside. Joanna made the introductions and waited for everyone to be seated before she left, closing the door behind her.

Back in her office, Joanna found that the monitor on her desk had been turned around to face the two visitors’ chairs where Garth Raymond and Joanna’s CSI, Casey Ledford, were already seated.

“It’s started,” Garth reported, rolling Joanna’s chair away from her desk and into the room so she’d be able to see, too. “Jaime just read her rights.”

The beginning of the interview was strictly routine, and even though Jaime conducted the interview in English, Joanna was able to follow the answers in Spanish without having to rely on Arturo’s translation.

“What is your name?”

Maria Elena Delgado.

“What is your date of birth?”

September 11, 2004.

“Where were you born?”

Mexico City, Mexico.

“What is your son’s name?”

Xavier Francisco Delgado.

“What is his date of birth?”

October 14, 2019.

“Who is the boy’s father?”

At that point Elena hesitated and turned questioningly to Arturo.

“ Sigue ,” he told her. “ Dígales. ” “Tell them.”

Joanna watched as Elena gathered herself by taking a long steadying breath before she spoke again. This time her words came so quickly and softly that Joanna was forced to rely entirely on Arturo’s translation.

When I was fourteen, my stepfather sold me to a pimp who put me to work on the streets.

I was still a virgin. That meant I was worth more.

Later, when I got pregnant, the pimp knocked me out with some drug and sold me to another man who liked women who were pregnant.

When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was.

Someone dropped me off at a house with three other girls, all of them pregnant.

They were the ones who told me we were in Guadalajara.

A few weeks later, when the first girl gave birth, she disappeared, and so did her baby.

“Do you think the man killed them?” Jaime asked.

Elena shuddered and answered with a nod.

One of the other girls asked him where they went. He said that he got rid of them—that they were his and he could do what he wanted with them.

Hearing Arturo’s translation of that, Joanna felt sick to her stomach.

This story was almost a carbon copy of one from several years earlier when members of her department had stumbled across a depraved predator named James Ardmore who had been doing something chillingly similar right here in Cochise County to yet another collection of unfortunate young women whom he had held captive, tortured, abused, and finally murdered.

Joanna wasn’t the only one who saw the similarity. Raymond turned to her with an anguished look on his face. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s almost the same thing that happened to Latisha.”

Latisha Marcum had been the sole survivor of Ardmore’s basement torture chamber, and as a newly hired deputy, Garth had played a key role in rescuing her.

“I wonder what the guy fed her,” Garth added. “Ardmore kept his prisoners alive by feeding them dry dog food.”

When they turned their attention back to the computer monitor, Jaime was speaking again.

“What happened next?” he asked.

I wanted my baby. No matter if it was a boy or a girl, it was still my baby. If it was a girl, I would have named her Lucia, after my mother, and if it was a boy, I was going to name him Xavier, after my father.

At the house the three of us who were left did everything—cooking, cleaning, housework.

One day I was out in the yard hanging the wash when I saw a group of workmen next door.

I went over to them and told them that the man in the house was evil—that he was holding us prisoner.

Two of the workmen pulled me over the fence—they were very strong—and the man in charge said he would call the police and have the man arrested.

But I didn’t wait for the police. I was afraid they wouldn’t arrest him—that they would believe the man and not the girls.

Or if they did arrest him, they’d let him out, and he’d come find me.

So I took off, hitchhiking. I didn’t know where I was going.

I just knew I had to get far away. I made it as far as a town called San Luis Potosí.

That’s where I hooked up with a migrant caravan on its way north.

Most of the people in the caravan were nice. They were hoping to go to America to find a better life, and that’s what I was hoping for too. Walking all day long every day wasn’t easy, especially since I was pregnant, but I did it—for me and for the baby.