Skeleton Canyon Read online

  “Do you happen to know the license number?”

  David shook his head. “Not off the top of my head, but I’m sure the registration and title are in my file. Would you like me to get them?”

  Joanna shook her head. “That’s not necessary. We’ll get it from the D.M.V.” She looked at Ernie. “Have you checked the house to make sure nothing’s missing, Detective Carpenter?”

  “Not yet,” he replied. “I was about to do that when-”

  “Missing?” David O’Brien interrupted. “What do you mean, missing? Are you implying that Brianna would steal from her own parents?”

  “I’m implying nothing of the kind,” Joanna returned coolly, choosing to ignore David O’Brien’s continuing bluster. “Your daughter left home yesterday, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m merely trying to ascertain what, if anything, she took with her. Something she might have taken along may give us a clue as to her actual destination.”

  “I see,” David agreed reluctantly.

  Joanna turned to Katherine. “Would it be possible for you to show us Brianna’s room?”

  The woman stood at once. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be happy to. Right this way.”

  With Katherine leading, Ernie and Joanna walked back into the welcome coolness of the house. Morosely smoking his cigarette, David O’Brien remained where he was.

  “Please excuse David,” Katherine O’Brien was saying. “He’s not usually so on edge. You have to understand, this has all been a terrible strain on him. A shock. And the idea that some-thing awful may have happened…” Pausing, she shook her head. “After what went on before, it’s just… just unthinkable,” she finished at last.

  They had entered a part of the sprawling house that appeared to be a bedroom wing.

  “After what happened before?” Joanna asked.

  “You know,” Katherine said. “If he lost Bree, too. Just like he lost his other two kids. I don’t think he’d survive it.” Joanna frowned. “He had other children?”

  Katherine had stopped in front of a closed door. With one hand on the knob, she hesitated before opening it. “I’ve always respected Bree’s privacy,” she said. ‘I’ve never gone into her room without permission.”

  “Do it just this once,” Ernie urged. “I think she’ll forgive you.” Nodding, Katherine opened the door and let him inside, but without entering the room herself. Since the woman was Moving in the hallway, so did Joanna, mulling over what Katherine had just told them.

  “I thought Brianna was an only child,” Joanna said a moment later.

  “There were two others,” Katherine said. “A boy and a girl. From his first wife.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Katherine looked surprised. “I thought everyone knew about that.”

  “I don’t.”

  Katherine sighed. “They both died,” she said simply. “David and Suzanne, his first wife, were driving back to Phoenix after being down in Tucson over Fourth of July. David was at the wheel. The two kids were asleep in the backseat. David Junior was eight, and Monica five. On the road between Phoenix and Casa Grande, they got caught in one of those terrible Interstate 10 dust storms.

  “David told me that he saw the dust cloud coming and was trying to make it to the next exit, but the storm got to them first. He drove over on the shoulder of the road, hoping to get out of the way of traffic. He got out of the car and was opening the passenger door to lead Suzanne and the kids to safety when a semi slammed into them from behind. The impact threw him clear of the wreckage. Suzanne and the kids were trapped in the car. The coroner said they all died on impact. I hope so, because there was a terrible fire after that-one of those awful chain reaction things. Nine people died in all, most of them burned beyond recognition.

  “It was more than an hour later when someone finally found David. He was unconscious and had been thrown so far from the other wreckage that no one saw him at first. They airlifted him to Good Samaritan in Phoenix. That’s where I met him. I was an intensive care nurse. I was on duty in the ICU when they brought him in. I was there when he regained consciousness.”

  Remembering, Katherine paused and bit her lip. “I’ll never forget it. ‘Where’s my wife?’ he asked. ‘Where are my kids? Please tell me.’ The doctor had left orders that he was to be told nothing, but that didn’t seem right. The funerals were scheduled for the next day, and he didn’t even know they were dead. So I told him.

  “Later, when his doctor found out I was the one who had given David the information, the doctor tried to have the nursing supervisor fire me. It didn’t work, but I quit anyway. When David left the hospital, he needed a full-time nurse, and he hired me to take care of him. Those first three or four years were awful for him. He was devastated. He felt like he had lost everything. He was suicidal much of the time. There were guns in his house. If I hadn’t hidden them, I think he would have taken his own life a dozen times over.”

  “When did you get married, then?” Joanna asked.

  “Five years later,” Katherine answered. “When David finally realized that his life wasn’t finished. That he wanted to live again. That he could possibly father another child.”

  Katherine stopped. “People say that, you know,” she added. “At funerals. To the parents of dead children. They say, ‘You can have another child.’ Except it doesn’t work out. You can never replace one child with another.”

  Up to that very moment, Katherine O’Brien had given every indication that she was a pillar of strength. Leaning against the doorjamb of her daughter’s room, she began to cry.

  “She’s gone,” she sobbed hopelessly. “I know it. My poor little Bree is gone, and she’s never coming back.”

  For a time there was nothing Joanna could do but wait. She knew that words would do nothing to relieve the kind of distress Katherine O’Brien was suffering. “I’m sorry,” the weeping woman mumbled at last, blowing her nose into a tissue. “I’ve been trying not to fall apart in front of David, but opening the door to Bree’s room was more than I could bear.”

  “I understand,” Joanna said kindly. “Believe me, I do.”

  Ernie reappeared in the doorway. “Would you mind coming in here now, Mrs. O’Brien? I’d like you to look through your daughter’s clothing and toiletries and try to see if anything in particular isn’t here. That way, if it becomes necessary to broadcast a report to other jurisdictions, we’ll be able to include a description of exactly what she might be wearing.”

  Joanna gave Ernie a grateful nod. Officially, Bree O’Brien’s possible disappearance was not yet a missing persons case. Still, Ernie’s diplomatic handling of the situation seemed to filler Katherine some comfort and give her courage.

  Sighing and pulling herself together, Katherine stepped into her daughter’s room. Joining her, Joanna was surprised by what she saw. The room was immaculately clean; the bed carefully made. Books on the loaded bookshelves stood with their whines aligned in almost military precision. The desktop held a formidable computer setup, but no stray pieces of paper lingered around it. In fact, the place was so unbendingly neat that, had it not been for the posters and pictures pinned to the walls and for the mound of teddy bears piled at the head of the bed, it would have been hand to tell that a teenager lived there at all.

  Jenny’s room stayed neat because she liked it that way, but Joanna remembered all too well the chaotic condition of her own room back when she had been Brianna’s age. The place had been a pit. Once a week or so, and always uninvited, Eleanor Lathrop had stepped over the threshold into Joanna’s sanctum sanctorum. Once inside, she never failed to raise hell. Eleanor, needing to exert control, had wanted the place kept spotless, while a rebellious Joanna had craved and reveled in the very disorder that drove her mother wild.

  Based on that scale of value, Joanna’s initial reaction was to see Brianna O’Brien’s room as an indicator of a good relationship between mother and child-one of mutual respect. As always, when f
aced with evidence that some mothers and teen-age daughters actually got along, Joanna allowed herself to indulge in the smallest flicker of envy. After all, her relation-ship with her own mother was still far from perfect.

  “Right this way, Mrs. O’Brien,” Ernie was saying. “If you’ll just take a look at the closet here and tell me if you notice anything in particular that’s missing-something that ought to be here but isn’t.”

  The closet was a walk-in affair. It was big enough for both Katherine and Joanna to join Detective Carpenter inside the well-organized little room without even touching shoulders. The closet was as compulsively neat as the room. Clothes were hung on hangers. Paired shoes were carefully stacked in hanging shoe bags. A dirty clothes hamper stood in the corner, but it was empty.

  “Her overnight bag,” Katherine said at once, gesturing toward a fool-and-a-half-wide empty space on an upper shelf. “It’s just a little carry-on. That’s all she ever takes with her.”

  “Yore don’t see any clothes missing?” Ernie urged.

  “Her tennis shoes,” Katherine said.

  Ernie grimaced in disappointment. “Nothing else?”

  “Not from the closet. It’s summer, though. Bree spends most of the time in shorts and tank tops. Those are kept in the dresser.”

  Moving over to the dresser, Katherine pulled open the top drawer. “Some underwear, I suppose,” she said. Closing that drawer, she moved on to the next one. “And shorts. She usually wears cutoffs and tennis shoes.”

  “Do you know the brands?”

  “Wranglers for the jeans and Keds for the shoes,” Katherine said. “And tank tops. She has several of them. They’re all the same style but in several different colors, so I can’t really tell on which ones aren’t here.”

  Ernie scribbled something in his notebook. “Nightgown?”

  Katherine walked as far as the bed and lifted the right-hand pillow, spilling the mound of lounging teddy bears off onto the floor. “Her nightgown’s definitely missing,” she said a moment later. “And her diary… her journal, rather,” Katherine corrected. “I think of it as a diary, but Bree prefers to call it a journal. It’s one of those little blank books with lots of pink or blue flowers on the cover. I forget which it is. She buys them at a bookstore in Tucson, and she usually keeps the one she’s working on right here on her nightstand. She says that’s the last thing she does before she falls asleep at night-writes in her journal.”

  Ernie made another notation. “What about the bathroom?” he said. “Would you mind checking there?”

  Moving deliberately, Katherine headed there next. She stood for some time in front of the bathroom counter. “Perfume, deodorant, makeup are all gone,” she said. “She’s taken the usual stuff. The kinds of things you’d expect. Her hair dryer is here, but I’m sure Crystal has one Bree could borrow.”

  Reaching out, Katherine pulled open the top drawer in the built-in bathroom vanity. “Comb and brush,” she reported. Then, frowning, she reached down into the drawer and picked something up. At first glance it looked to Joanna like a light green, oversized matchbook.

  “What’s this?” Katherine asked, turning the packet over. Lifting the flap revealed a layer of tiny white pills covered by a plastic shield and backed by foil. To Joanna, the packaging was instantly recognizable. It took Katherine O’Brien a moment longer.

  Turning the package over in her hand, Katherine frowned as she read the label. “Birth control pills!” she exclaimed in dismay. “What on earth would Brianna be doing with these?”

  Behind Katherine’s back, Ernie Carpenter and Joanna Brady exchanged glances. The usual reason, Joanna thought. Maybe there’s a lot more rebellion going on in Brianna O’Brien’s amazingly clean room than anyone-most especially her mother-ever imagined.

  Those thoughts flashed through Joanna’s head, but she was careful to say nothing aloud. Keeping quiet allowed Katherine O’Brien the opportunity to arrive at those same conclusions on her own. “Why, you don’t think…” Katherine blanched. “No. Absolutely not. Bree wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  But clearly, Ernie Carpenter did think. “When we were out in the other room and I was asking about Bree’s friends,” he ventured, “neither you nor Mr. O’Brien mentioned a boyfriend.”

  Detective Ernie Carpenter had been a homicide cop for fifteen years and a deputy before that. He knew everything there was to know about murder and mayhem. Up to then, his careful handling of Katherine O’Brien had been sensitive in the extreme, but as soon as he made that statement, Joanna realized his knowledge of women was still somewhat lacking. His comment hit Katherine O’Brien hard, especially since the little green package clutched in her hand would most likely rob her of any lingering illusions about her daughter’s supposedly virginal purity.

  Rather than believe the evidence in her hand, however, Katherine turned on Ernie. “My daughter does not have a boyfriend, Detective Carpenter!” she insisted. “N-O-T. If she did, don’t you think her mother would know about it?”

  Not necessarily, Joanna thought, relieved to note that, at that juncture, Ernie was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

  “As for these,” she continued furiously, flinging the offending package of pills back into the drawer and slamming it shut, “there’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. Bree sometimes has terrible menstrual cramps. Maybe she’s taking the pills for that. It’s a common treatment. She certainly wouldn’t be using them for birth control. Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to be getting back to my husband.”

  “Mrs. O’Brien,” Joanna said quickly, “would you mind if Detective Carpenter and I poked around in here for a few more minutes in case there’s something we’ve missed?”

  Having spent her outrage, Katherine took a deep breath. She considered for a moment, looking back and forth between Ernie and Joanna. “No,” she said finally. “I suppose not, but still, I should be getting hack to David.”

  “As soon as we finish in here, we’ll come find you,” Joanna said.

  In an exhibition of self-control Joanna found astounding, Katherine O’Brien switched off her anger and turned on an outward display of good manners. “We’ll probably be in the living room,” she said. “We usually have cocktails there every evening. In times of crisis, David likes to stick to as normal a routine as possible. You and Detective Carpenter are welcome to join us if you like.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said. “But not while we’re working.”

  Katherine walked as far as the door. She went out into the hallway, pulling the door almost shut behind her. Then she opened it again and stuck her head back into the bedroom. “One more thing,” she added. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention the pills. To David, I mean. Knowing about them would only upset him. He’s already very close to the edge.”

  “Talk about close to the edge,” Ernie said, staring at the closed door as Katherine left and the latch clicked home. “What about her? And what’s the big deal anyway? Would these people prefer having their daughter turn up pregnant rather than be caught taking birth control pills?”

  “They’re Catholic,” Joanna said, as if those words alone were explanation enough. “Practicing birth control is a sin.”

  “Maybe so,” Ernie said. “But it seems to me that there are times when not practicing birth control is downright crazy.”

  Going into the bathroom, he opened the drawer and re-moved not one but two identical containers of pills. He took out his notebook and made a note of the doctor’s name and the pharmacy’s address on the label.

  “She got these up in Tucson,” Ernie told Joanna, ‘‘ The pharmacy is there, and probably the doctor is, too. Which means that she probably went to a good deal of trouble to make sure her parents wouldn’t find out about them. My guess is that these two packages are for the next two months. She most likely has this month’s supply with her.”

  Nodding, Joanna wandered over to the nearest bookshelf. There, on the second shelf from the bottom, sat a series of ide
ntical books-blue ones with streams of pink flowers spilling over the covers. Realizing these had to be the journals Katherine had mentioned, Joanna reached down and plucked the first one off the shelf. Inside the front cover was Brianna’s full name-Roxanne Brianna O’Brien-written in flowing purple ink. The first entry was dated in June, three years earlier. Entries in that first volume ran from June 7 to September 12. The next volume picked up on September 13. Each volume covered roughly a three-to-four-month period. The last journal ended on October 8 of the previous year.

  “Look at this,” Joanna said, thumbing through the last volume. “Why did she stop?”

  “Stop what?” Ernie asked.

  “Keeping a journal. Bree started doing it three years ago. From the looks of it, she poured her heart and soul into these hooks. Each day’s entry covers one to three pages, and one volume fills three to four months. Then, at the end of the first week of last October, she stops cold. But her mother just told Hs that Bree writes in her diary every night before she goes lo sleep. So what’s happened to the last eight months’ worth of entries?”

  Ernie came over to where Joanna was standing and squinted down at the shelf from which she had removed the volume she was still holding.

  “Where’d this one come from?” he asked.

  Joanna pointed. “Right there,” she said.

  “Bree took one with her,” Ernie said decisively. “The ghost of the book’s footprint is still here, in the dust at the back of the shelf behind the books. That means that, if she’s continued to write her diary entries at the same pace, she may have taken two volumes along-one completed and the other nearly so.”

  “Why?” Joanna asked.

  “Something to do with that nonexistent boyfriend maybe? But if she went to all the trouble of taking both journals along, why didn’t she take the pills, too?”

  Joanna thought about that for a moment. “According to Katherine, she didn’t generally come into Bree’s room. If she did, the books were all there on the bookshelf, in plain sight. The pills were put away.”