Page 22 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)
Bisbee, Arizona
Joanna arrived at her office the next morning to the noisy but welcome sound of jackhammers. That meant Dave Ruiz’s crew was cutting through the jail’s concrete floor to create trenches to install plumbing in the redesigned solitary unit.
She dropped her purse on her desk and then peeked into the reception area. “Any trouble in lunch land this morning?” she asked.
Kristin laughed. “So far so good,” she said.
“Okay, then,” Joanna replied.
At her desk she busied herself with writing the report she would need to present to the Board of Supervisors at their Friday morning meeting.
No doubt they would require a full update from her on the construction process and the seemingly unnecessary expense of the prisoner transfer, to say nothing of the credit card charge covering the lost-lunch fiasco.
As soon as Marliss Shackleford caught wind of that, Joanna knew she’d be only too happy to spread the word near and far.
Joanna was deep into the process when a call came in from Arturo Pena. “Good morning,” she said.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“My job,” she replied. “And no, it’s not solving crimes. I’m dealing with endless paperwork. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’d like you to come for a visit today, and not in my office—at my house.”
Joanna was puzzled. “Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“A possible informant has come forward, but she doesn’t want to come to my office, and since she’s a migrant who can’t be caught on the wrong side of the border, I can’t exactly bring her to yours.”
“What time?”
“Say two o’clock?”
“Two it is,” she said. “Give me the address, so I can key it into my GPS.”
Arturo gave her the address before adding, “One more thing—well, two.”
“What?”
“No uniform and no official vehicle.”
“In other words, your informant doesn’t want anyone to know she’s talking to the cops.”
“ Exactamente ,” Arturo said. “See you at two.”
At noontime, Joanna went home to change clothes. She hadn’t planned on disturbing Butch because she knew he was hard at work on his next manuscript. Nevertheless, he emerged from the den as soon as she stepped into the house.
“Did I somehow forget that you were coming home for lunch?” he asked, following her into the bedroom.
“You didn’t forget because I’m not home for lunch,” Joanna told him. “I’m coming here to change into civilian clothes and to trade my Interceptor for the Enclave.”
“How come?”
“I need to pay a visit to Naco, Sonora, this afternoon. Arturo Pena has a potential informant in the Xavier Delgado case, and she’s not someone who can cross the international border without going to jail and jeopardizing any chance of her being allowed to enter the US illegally.”
“So a migrant then?”
“Evidently.”
“But you will be home for dinner.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Okay, then,” Butch said. “Good luck, but I’m going back to work. I need to make some forward progress before the kids get home from school.”
At five to two, Joanna cleared the border and drove to the Pena residence, a modest home on Calle 5 de Mayo, right on the edge of town. Arturo answered the door when she rang the bell.
“Come in,” he said. “She’s already here.”
He led Joanna into the living room where a dark-haired middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a leather jacket sat on a sofa.
“This is Senora Ana Mendoza,” he said, indicating the woman, “and this is Sheriff Joanna Brady.”
Joanna was taken aback when Arturo made the introductions in English, but Ana didn’t seem surprised, so Joanna responded in English as well. “Glad to meet you,” she said.
“I’m glad to meet you, too, Sheriff Brady,” Ana replied.
“Before my father was murdered, he taught English at the Universidad Americana in Managua. He also taught me. He was a good teacher with the wrong politics. For people like that, Managua can be a dangerous place. After he was murdered, I was afraid I would be next, so I applied for refugee status in the US, but rather than stay in Managua, I came here to wait. I don’t actually live at the camp.
I have the means to rent a room, so I do, but at the camp, although no one pays me to do it, I try to teach the kids to speak English, and when I’m there I hear things.
The kids trust me. That’s why no one must know that I have spoken to you. ”
“In other words,” Joanna said, “you wish to be a confidential informant.”
“Correct,” Ana said. “Confidential. So what do you know about an organization called Hands Across the Border?”
Joanna thought about that. “It’s my understanding that it’s a charitable organization that provides assistance to migrants waiting to cross the border into the US.”
Ana nodded and smiled. “That’s right, and there are chapters in towns all along the border. They provide necessities wherever possible—food, clothing, blankets, that sort of thing.”
“I believe there’s a chapter in Bisbee,” Joanna added.
“That is also correct,” Ana said. “A couple of years ago one of their members bought an old food truck and converted it into a traveling storefront. It’s called La Tienda Gratuita —The Free Store.
It comes across the border every other Friday.
Usually the driver brings sack lunches, but mostly he brings things people have donated.
Secondhand clothing is better than no clothing. ”
Joanna nodded.
“The man who drives the Free Store truck is a man named Mr. Roper. The kids call him Senor Santa Claus.”
“Mr. Roper,” Joanna repeated thoughtfully. As far as she knew, the only person by that name living in the area was Stephen Roper—a long-retired teacher from Bisbee High School. He’d actually been Joanna’s English teacher during her senior year at BHS.
“Stephen Roper?” she asked in disbelief.
“Correct,” Arturo put in. “I checked with the border guards. They told me he’s the Free Store guy.”
“Yesterday, after the detectives came to talk to some of the kids, I overheard two of them talking. According to them, the last time Mr. Roper was here, the kids from the camp went to collect their lunches and see what else he had to offer. Because Xavier was too young to go to school, when that was in session, he’d get lonely and tag along with older kids from the camp.
They call him El Pequena Plaga , the Little Pest.
“When they went to the Free Store, Xavier tagged along. For some reason, Mr. Roper had a fresh supply of shoes, all kinds of shoes in lots of different sizes that he’d gotten because a shoe store in the States was going out of business.
Most of the kids walked away with new shoes.
They said Xavier was still there when they left, and the last time they saw him, he was talking to Senor Santa Claus about a certain pair of shoes, ones he really liked. ”
Joanna’s heart skipped a beat. “Did they say what kind of shoes?”
“Yes, zapatillas de cana alta ,” Ana said, momentarily slipping back into her native Spanish. “High-topped sneakers.”
A layer of goose bumps flashed across Joanna’s body.
Before his retirement in the early 2000s, Stephen Roper had been a teacher at Bisbee High School for decades.
He was not only a well-respected member of the community, he was also someone Joanna Brady knew personally.
Just because he may have been one of the last people to see Xavier Delgado alive didn’t mean he had killed the boy, but it also didn’t mean he hadn’t.
Still, the idea that Xavier had been looking at a pair of high-topped sneakers the last time the kids from the migrant camp saw him was striking.
The detail about the high-topped sneakers was a holdback, something no one outside Joanna’s investigation team knew anything about.
Trusting her face not to betray her roiling emotions, Joanna spoke again. “This has been very helpful, and we’ll certainly look into it.”
“If you end up arresting him, will the boys be required to testify in court?” Ana asked.
“They might be,” Joanna said. “I can’t say for sure.”
Of course, given the boys’ migrant status, she wondered, would having them testify even be possible?
Would the county prosecutor’s office be able to negotiate a peace treaty with the feds that would enable the boys and maybe the rest of their families to cross the border legally?
Answering those questions was a battle for another day.
“Please don’t let them know that I told you,” Ana begged.
“Believe me, we won’t,” Joanna assured her.
“You’ve given us something very valuable, Senora Mendoza, and something we didn’t have before—an actual named suspect.
But until we can verify his involvement in this case with something more solid than what you’ve told us so far, we won’t even approach him. ”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you ,” Joanna insisted. “Thank you not only for the information you’ve just provided, but also for doing what you’re doing—teaching kids who are not only desperately in need of someone who can teach them, but also for being someone they can trust.”
Ana stood up then. “I’ll be going then,” she said with a smile. “Thank you for meeting with me. I hope this helps. Anyone who would murder an innocent boy like that is a monster.”
“He certainly is,” Joanna agreed, “and if Mr. Roper turns out to be the killer, then he’s been hiding in plain sight for decades.”
Arturo showed Ana out and then came back into the living room. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”
“I think she may have just handed us our guy,” Joanna replied, then she took several minutes to clue him in about the high-topped sneakers.
“What are you going to do now?” Arturo asked.
“I’m going to go back to my office and put people to work finding out everything there is to know about Stephen Roper and Hands Across the Border.”
“You’re not going to go interview him?”
“Nope,” Joanna replied, “not yet. I don’t want him to have any idea that we’ve made a possible connection between him and Xavier Delgado’s death until I’m damned good and ready. When I do get around to paying him a call, I’m hoping I’ll do so with an arrest warrant in hand.”
“If there’s anything more I can do to help, please let me know,” Arturo said.
“You and Ana have already helped immeasurably,” Joanna told him. “Before meeting Ana, my investigators had nothing at all to go on. Now we do, and the faster we can get the killer behind bars, the better.”
As soon as Joanna cleared customs and while still in Naco, Arizona, she dialed Casey Ledford’s number.
“I believe I’ve got a person of interest for you in the Xavier Delgado homicide,” Joanna said, once the call was answered.
“Really?” Casey replied. “Who is it?”
“Stephen Roper.”
“Did you just say Stephen Roper?” Casey repeated after a moment of stunned silence. “You’ve got to be kidding! The same Mr. Roper who used to teach chemistry at Bisbee High?”
“The very one,” Joanna replied.
“But he’s who got me interested in chemistry in the first place,” Casey objected. “He’s the reason I became a CSI.”
“Be that as it may,” Joanna said, “it’s possible that he’s also our killer.
For right now, don’t say a word about this to anyone outside your lab.
I’m going to call a team meeting tomorrow morning first thing to discuss this lead, and I’ll want all hands on deck.
In the meantime, I want you and Dave Hollicker to track down everything there is to know about Mr. Stephen Roper and about a charitable group called Hands Across the Border.
If you end up having to work all night, fine. I’m authorizing the OT.”
“Okay, boss,” Casey replied. “Not to worry. Once I clue Dave in, we’ll be on it.”
Joanna’s next call was to Kristin, giving her the list of people she expected to be in the conference room for a mandatory meeting at ten o’clock the following morning and asking her to notify them of same.
“Wait,” Kristin objected. “Isn’t ten a.m. the same time you’re due at the Board of Supervisors meeting?”
Joanna instantly realized Kristin was right. With the issues that currently needed to be presented to the board, Sheriff Brady herself had to be on hand. This wasn’t an appearance that could be delegated to her chief deputy.
“You’re right,” Joanna agreed with a sigh. “Make the meeting time 2 p.m.”
“Do you want me to tell them what it’s about?” Kristin asked.
“No,” Joanna said decisively. “Just tell them it’s mandatory, no exceptions.”
After ending the call, however, Joanna could see the bright side of changing the meeting time. It would give her CSIs that much more time to see what information they could dig up on Stephen Roper .