Page 31 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

Having grown up in a small town, Stephen settled into life in Bisbee with no difficulty.

Initially he was regarded as a “good catch” as far as single males were concerned, and people from both church and the school district tried to fix him up with available women.

He made it plain to his would-be dates that he just wasn’t interested.

Eventually, when people started listening to that new radio program called A Prairie Home Companion , he was jokingly passed off as one of Garrison Keillor’s “Norwegian bachelor farmers.” That seemed to do the trick, and people finally got the message.

From the beginning Stephen maintained that he stood with one foot in Bisbee, Arizona, and one in Fertile, Minnesota, claiming that during the summers he would need to head home to help with the upkeep of the family farm.

Eventually people got used to that idea, too, teasing him about his being less of a local and more of a snowbird.

It didn’t matter what they called him, as long as they didn’t hassle him about being gone.

Of course the family farm story was entirely fictional.

After leaving Fertile, he never once returned to his hometown for a visit, but claiming to go there gave him good cover.

While people imagined he was in Minnesota staying with family or friends, he was actually on the road, doing his thing.

And how could he afford all that traveling on a teacher’s salary?

He couldn’t have, not on his own. But the truth is he had plenty of money.

The lady tellers at the First National Bank branch in Bisbee’s Bakerville neighborhood were the only people in town who really knew how much he was worth, but between the money his mother had left him and the continuing stream of investment income from Gramps’s holdings, Stephen’s financial situation was just fine and dandy, thank you very much.

For his travels Stephen favored the blue highways he found in the most recent edition of the Rand McNally Road Atlas .

He ordered the new edition every April so it would be in his hands by the middle of May.

Those less traveled roadways led him to places where law enforcement was thin on the ground, making it easier for him to get away with murder.

His 1977 road trip netted him two kills.

One was a teenager riding a bicycle on a farm road a few miles outside Fulton, Missouri, just before noon on a Saturday morning in June.

He sideswiped her bike, knocking her to the ground.

She was easy to overpower and didn’t put up much of a fight.

When Stephen was done and went looking for a trophy, there was nothing to be found—no jewelry or barrettes—so he settled for one of her shoelaces.

He called her Farm Girl. Afterward, he threw both her body and her bicycle into a nearby reservoir.

Then, driving sedately, and without ever traveling through Fulton itself, he left both the scene and the area.

By the time Lucianne Highsmith’s worried mother called the Callaway County Sheriff’s Department at four o’clock that afternoon to report her daughter missing, Stephen had already checked into a hotel room in Springfield, Illinois, four hours away.

The body was found days later. No suspects in Lucianne’s homicide were ever identified.

After that, with the voices quieted for a while, Stephen took a few things off his bucket list. He drove up to Chicago and took in a Cubs game, then he traveled along the Great Lakes, including the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, and, finally, went east to Niagara Falls.

He drove at a leisurely pace. After all he had the whole summer to spend.

Eventually he made his way to New York City.

No, he did not revisit Coney Island, but he stayed in town long enough to take in a couple Broadway shows— Jesus Christ Superstar and Man of La Mancha .

Then he headed west again. Tired of being on the road, he made it as far as Gunnison, Colorado, where he rented a cabin on the Gunnison River and spent a relaxing month fishing (fishing always reminded him of the good times he had spent with Gramps) and reading through the shelfful of paperback books—mostly mysteries and westerns—that had been left behind by previous guests.

It was verging on the middle of August when it came time for him to head home.

He made his leisurely way down to the Four Corners area.

Just north of Shiprock, New Mexico, he picked up a hitchhiker—a boy, this time, most likely a Navajo, who was wearing a bright red bandanna.

The kid turned out to be wiry and tough.

For that one Stephen needed his chloroform.

Once the boy was dead, Stephen removed the bandanna.

For trophy purposes that worked fine, and Stephen decided to call this one Bandanna Boy.

After dumping the body in the San Juan River, Stephen drove away.

He spent that night in Flagstaff. It was August, yes, but it was also a weekday, so he was able to find a decent room with little difficulty.

The day after that, he was back home in Bisbee, Arizona, ready to start his second year of teaching at Bisbee High School.