Page 51 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)
Bisbee, Arizona
With her cell phone in one hand and a microphone in the other, Joanna Brady stood behind Tica Romero’s chair in Dispatch with absolutely no idea of what she should do.
A little over a mile away, serial killer Stephen Roper had fallen into the trap she had devised and was now driving in mad circles around what appeared to be a mini-racetrack, with all entrances and exits blocked by fire trucks and police vehicles.
After literally decades of his getting away with one murder after another, her department was about to take him into custody.
That arrest should be the crowning glory of her career.
But some nine miles away, just outside Naco, Joanna’s archenemy, Marliss Shackleford, had been gravely injured by that same serial killer who had fled this latest crime scene in the victim’s own vehicle.
According to Garth, Marliss was in desperate need of medical attention, but with fire department personnel, including EMS responders tied up in Joanna’s Traffic Circle blockade, there was no telling how long it would be before medical assistance could arrive.
By rights, Joanna should be at that scene, too, but she couldn’t do both.
“Can you connect me to the ER at the Copper Queen Hospital?” Joanna asked Tica.
With a few clicks on her keyboard, the call was made. “Copper Queen Hospital ER. How can I help you?” a voice asked.
“This is Sheriff Joanna Brady. There’s been a serious incident down by Naco. I need to speak to the doctor in charge.”
“One moment.”
Seconds later someone else came on the phone. “Dr. Ybarra here,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
“This is Sheriff Brady. There’s been a serious incident at a home on Country Club Drive north of Naco where a woman was dropped headfirst into a crawl space.
She’s on the floor. Two of my detectives are with her, but she has no feeling in her arms or legs.
My people have called for an ambulance, but there’s a big tie-up at the Traffic Circle, so there’s no telling when EMS will be able to get there. ”
“I’ve heard about the traffic problem,” Dr. Ybarra said, “but I could get around that by using School Terrace Road. What’s the address?”
Joanna gave it to him. Then, when the call ended and having done everything she could for Marliss Shackleford, Joanna buckled on her body armor, fired up her Interceptor, and headed for the Traffic Circle.
By the time Joanna arrived, Chief Deputy Hadlock had things pretty well in hand.
He’d had some of the blockading fire trucks move aside enough for several police vehicles to squeeze through.
They had created enough of a pinch point that Roper could no longer get past, forcing him to come to a stop at the eastbound Highway 80 exit where Joanna’s body-armor-clad arrest team was congregated.
“Hands on your head and step out of the vehicle,” someone shouted over a bullhorn as Joanna made her way toward the front of the crowd.
For a moment, nothing happened inside Marliss Shackleford’s battered RAV4, but then someone else called out the chilling warning, “Gun!”
Ducking for cover, Joanna could see the small handgun Stephen Roper was holding next to his ear.
She was determined the confrontation wouldn’t end that way.
The last thing she wanted was for Roper to get away with killing himself without ever being called to account for his unspeakable crimes.
Spotting the guy with the bullhorn, Joanna made her way over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“May I?” she asked pointing at the bullhorn.
He handed it over without a word. “Mr. Roper,” Joanna shouted into it. “Sheriff Brady here. As you can see, you’re surrounded. There’s no getting away. My officers are here to take you into custody without you or anyone else being injured.”
“Screw you, Joanna Lathrop,” he shouted back. “You’re doing no such thing.”
After that he seemed to struggle with the weapon for a moment.
Everyone at the scene, including Joanna, held their respective breaths, waiting for the report of a gunshot—one that never came.
After a moment, Roper seemed to examine the gun before holding it up to his ear a second time.
In that instant, people realized the gun wasn’t firing, and officers swarmed the car.
Within seconds, Roper had been dragged out of the vehicle and placed facedown on the ground while handcuffs snapped shut around his wrists.
“What are you arresting me for, bitch?” he demanded of Joanna once he was back on his feet. “For the murder of that little kid?”
Joanna was well aware that all they had on the Xavier Delgado case so far was a search warrant, and the arrest warrant in the Amanda Hudson case had not yet materialized.
“No,” she said. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of the attempted murder of Marliss Shackleford.”
Roper hadn’t been expecting that, so for Joanna, the shocked expression on his smug face was worth the price of admission.
Once he was in the back of a squad car, Joanna broke away from the group and made her way around the circle, using the Interceptor’s lights and siren to clear snarled traffic out of her way.
When she arrived at Stephen Roper’s residence on Country Club Drive, an ambulance from Sierra Vista was parked outside.
They had been summoned to serve as backup and had made it as far as Miracle Valley when the emergency EMS call came in.
Walking toward the house, Joanna spotted Garth and Deb sitting on a porch swing off to one side of the front door. Garth’s arm was around Deb’s shoulder in a comforting manner, and she was clearly crying.
Joanna walked up to them. “She didn’t make it then?”
Garth shook his head.
With her own tears welling, Joanna turned on her heel and returned the way she’d come, finally sinking down on the porch steps.
She and Marliss had been at each other’s throats for years, but she’d never once wished harm would come to her.
Joanna sat there for several long minutes, trying to get her emotions under control.
Then a man wearing scrubs sat down beside her.
“Good to see you again, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “Not under these circumstances, of course.”
Joanna looked at him. He was a heftily built Hispanic man in his forties, with a bit of gray hair showing around his temples.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Nacio,” he said. “Ignacio Salazar Ybarra, remember me? The Douglas Bulldog quarterback who fell in love with the head cheerleader from Bisbee High?”
The story came back to her in a flash—Ignacio Ybarra and Bree O’Brien.
Their story had been a southern Arizona version of Romeo and Juliet.
He had been a talented football player from Bisbee’s longtime athletic rival, Douglas High School.
He had been seriously injured in the final football game of his life at Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark.
Brianna, Bisbee’s “it” girl—the one voted most likely to succeed—had been standing close enough to the action to hear the bone in his leg shatter, and over time the two of them had bonded over that horrific incident.
Ignacio was Hispanic; Bree was Anglo. He came from an impoverished background.
Her family was well-to-do, and neither set of parents had approved of their teenaged romance.
While on an ill- fated camping trip to Skeleton Canyon, Bree had been murdered, and her family had been quick to point the finger at Ignacio.
Eventually Joanna’s investigation had revealed Nacio to be blameless.
In her last conversation with Bree’s grieving father, Joanna remembered David O’Brien saying that he planned to use the funds he had originally intended to use to send Bree to college to pay for Ignacio’s schooling instead.
Sitting on Stephen Roper’s front porch, awash in guilt that she hadn’t somehow prevented this awful tragedy, Joanna learned for the first time that David O’Brien had been good to his word.
“So you did become a doctor then?” she asked.
He nodded. “Bree’s dad paid my way through college and medical school both. He became like a second dad to me and an extra grandfather to my kids. They called him Pops. Last year, when he passed away, he left Green Brush Ranch to me.
“Sonja, my wife, is also a physician—a surgeon. We met in med school. We were living and working in LA when we found out about inheriting the ranch. I had been wanting to get out of the city and come back to Arizona for years. Her family immigrated to the US from Mexico when she was three, and the idea of living close to the border appealed to her, too. We both hired on at the Copper Queen Hospital, but we’ve only been here a short while.
We got here just in time for the start of school last September. ”
For Joanna, Nacio’s uplifting story of good overcoming evil was like spotting a lifeboat in a sea of despair. It gave her the strength to ask the next question.
“So what happened here? The last I heard from my detectives, Marliss was talking to them but couldn’t feel either her arms or legs. Now she’s dead?”
Nacio—Dr. Ybarra, Joanna reminded herself—nodded.
“We won’t know for sure until Dr. Baldwin performs the autopsy, but my best guess is that a fall from that height shattered at least one and maybe more of the vertebrae in her neck.
When EMS attempted to load her onto a board, a bone fragment must have penetrated her medulla oblongata.
When that happens, there’s nothing to be done, and maybe that’s a blessing,” he added.
“She most likely would have been destined to live out her life as a quadriplegic. That’s a kind of hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. ”
I wouldn’t, either , Joanna thought, but could I have prevented it?
Just then, Dr. Kendra Baldwin herself pulled up in her “body wagon.” She greeted Nacio with a handshake and Joanna with a nod. “Sorry for the delay,” she said. “There’s some big tie-up at the Traffic Circle, and it took forever to get through.”
“My fault,” Joanna said, “but I’m pretty sure we have Xavier Delgado’s killer in custody.” She took a breath before adding, “And now he’s Marliss Shackleford’s killer, too.”
Kendra appeared shocked, but so did Ignacio Ybarra. “Marliss, too?” she asked.
“Wait,” Nacio interjected. “You’re talking about the little boy who disappeared from the migrant camp in Naco, Sonora?”
“Yes, to both,” Joanna replied. “The guy we’ve taken into custody at the Traffic Circle is one Stephen Roper. He’s lived in Bisbee for decades. We have reason to believe he’s also a prolific serial killer.”
“You’re talking about the guy with all the pink T-shirts, Senor Santa Claus, who operates the Free Store?” Dr. Ybarra asked.
Joanna nodded. “The very one,” she said.
“But I thought he was a good guy,” Ignacio said.
“So did everybody else,” she said sadly, “including Marliss Shackleford.”