Page 32 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

When Joanna Brady showed up at work on Tuesday morning, things were blessedly quiet.

For one thing, trenching was over and that annoying jackhammer racket was a thing of the past. Also, according to Dave Ruiz, the plumbing and electrical rough-ins had been installed and were awaiting a visit from the building inspector, who might or might not arrive today.

As far as the jail commander was concerned, things were doing okay, but Terry Gregovich was wondering how soon Joanna could manage the transfer of five more prisoners. She told him she’d look into it.

Detective Raymond had left word that he was taking the day off because he’d be doing Operation Garbage Can that night, which, with any kind of luck, would include a late-night trip to Tucson to deliver a load of possible DNA evidence to the Department of Public Safety (DPS) crime lab.

Joanna was just settling into her computer to look at the upcoming scheduling sheet when Detective Howell entered her office.

“Hey, Deb,” Joanna said. “What’s up?”

“I just now got off the phone after having a very interesting conversation with Detective Kurt Dawson of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department in Crookston, Minnesota.”

“Wait,” Joanna said. “I thought we weren’t going to make any inquiries concerning Stephen Roper until we knew more about what we’re up against.”

“We’re not making inquiries here,” Deb responded, “but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask a few questions in his hometown.

For one thing, we know that even though he was retired, Roper was still taking summers off the same way he did back when Tom Hadlock was in high school.

I thought that was worth checking out, so I called the motels in Fertile—both of them.

They don’t have any record of anyone by that name ever staying there, not since they switched over from paper records to computerized ones. ”

“What about an Airbnb?” Joanna asked.

“No such animal.”

“I learned there’s no one by the name of Roper living in the area, so I checked his mother’s maiden name, Hawkins.

Came up with zilch there, too. Then I thought, what the hell?

Why not try calling the local sheriff’s office and see if anyone there can tell me something?

That’s where I got lucky. Turns out, back in high school the mother of one of their detectives, Detective Kurt Dawson, used to work in the restaurant owned by Stephen Roper’s mother.

The two women were evidently good friends.

“He told me a lot of the same stuff we heard from Casey in the briefing, but he added in a few more details. Remember Tom Hadlock told us Roper claimed that he went back home every summer to work on the family farm?”

Joanna nodded.

“Turns out that’s a bunch of bull. The family farm in question belonged to Stephen Roper’s grandfather, Orson Hawkins, who owned several farming properties in the area.

Apparently he unloaded all of them at a healthy profit and moved into a house in Fertile with his daughter and grandson while Stephen was in high school. ”

“So no family farm to worry about,” Joanna put in.

“Exactly,” Deb said. “According to Detective Dawson, as far as he knew, in the mid-seventies, after Stephen’s mother passed away, he sold off everything, quit his teaching job, and left town.”

“And never came back?” Joanna asked.

“I asked Detective Dawson that very question, so he called his mom while I was still on the line. That’s what she said, too—that she didn’t think he ever came back.”

“If he lies about one thing...” Joanna began.

“What else is he lying about?” Deb finished.

Joanna paused for a moment thinking about what she’d just heard. “So supposing Roper really is a serial child predator. With three months a year free to do whatever he damned well pleases, how much damage could he do?”

“A lot, unfortunately,” Deb replied, “because he’d have the whole country as his playground, and it’s likely he’s been doing it for decades.”

“What about closer to home?” Joanna asked. “Do we have any matching unsolved cases from around our neck of the woods?”

“Nope,” Deb said. “Not that I could find.”

“Even so,” Joanna Brady declared, “the buck stops here! One way or another, we’re going to put that son of a bitch away for good.”

Deb left Joanna’s office a few minutes later, leaving her to consider what she had just said.

If Stephen Roper really was a serial predator, then there was a good chance that his unidentified DNA profile really was sitting around in an evidence locker somewhere after being found at the scene of some long-unsolved homicide.

Suddenly Detective Raymond’s “Operation Garbage Can” had just risen to an entirely different level of importance.

It was possible that by obtaining Stephen Roper’s DNA profile and getting it uploaded into CODIS, not only might it help solve Xavier Delgado’s homicide, it might also provide answers to any number of other cases all over the country.

At that point, Joanna Brady did something she seldom did in her office—she sat at her desk, closed her eyes, and folded her hands in prayer.

“Please, Lord, help us in this investigation, not only for the sake of Elena and Xavier Delgado, but also for any other families out there whose loved ones Stephen Roper may have harmed. You know the names of those families, even if we don’t.

Help us find them, so we can bring them some measure of justice and peace. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”

Then Joanna got up out of her chair, left her office, and went in search of Casey Ledford to huddle with her to discuss if this new information from Deb had opened up any new lines of investigation.