Page 73 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
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 hermedulla 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, Señor 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.”
Chapter 44
Bisbee, Arizona
Friday, December 8, 2023
By the time Joanna got back to the Justice Center,she wasn’t surprised to see the parking lot teeming with TV vans and carloads of reporters. A dead kid from Mexico hadn’t been enough to bring them out of the woodwork, but the death of an erstwhile reporter and the simultaneous arrest of a pillar of the community was enough for the piranhas to show up.
Kristin must have had her ear to the ground for the sound of Joanna’s private door opening and closing. She showed up holding a handful of additional missed-call slips while Joanna was still putting her purse away.
