Page 36 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
“I believe there’s a chapter in Bisbee,” Joanna added.
“That is also correct,” Aña said. “A couple of years ago one of their members bought an old food truck and converted it into a traveling storefront. It’s calledLa Tienda Gratuita—The Free Store. It comes across the border every other Friday. Usually the driver brings sack lunches, but mostly he brings things people have donated. Secondhand clothing is better than no clothing.”
Joanna nodded.
“The man who drives the Free Store truck is a man named Mr. Roper. The kids call him Señor Santa Claus.”
“Mr. Roper,” Joanna repeated thoughtfully. As far as she knew, the only person by that name living in the area was Stephen Roper—a long-retired teacher from Bisbee High School. He’d actually been Joanna’s English teacher during her senior year at BHS.
“Stephen Roper?” she asked in disbelief.
“Correct,” Arturo put in. “I checked with the border guards. They told me he’s the Free Store guy.”
“Yesterday, after the detectives came to talk to some of the kids, I overheard two of them talking. According to them, the last time Mr. Roper was here, the kids from the camp went to collect their lunches and see what else he had to offer. Because Xavier was too young to go to school, when that was in session, he’d get lonely and tag along with older kids from the camp. They call himEl Pequeña Plaga, the Little Pest.
“When they went to the Free Store, Xavier tagged along. For some reason, Mr. Roper had a fresh supply of shoes, all kinds of shoes in lots of different sizes that he’d gotten because a shoe storein the States was going out of business. Most of the kids walked away with new shoes. They said Xavier was still there when they left, and the last time they saw him, he was talking to Señor Santa Claus about a certain pair of shoes, ones he really liked.”
Joanna’s heart skipped a beat. “Did they say what kind of shoes?”
“Yes,zapatillas de caña alta,” Aña said, momentarily slipping back into her native Spanish. “High-topped sneakers.”
A layer of goose bumps flashed across Joanna’s body. Before his retirement in the early 2000s, Stephen Roper had been a teacher at Bisbee High School for decades. He was not only a well-respected member of the community, he was also someone Joanna Brady knew personally. Just because he may have been one of the last people to see Xavier Delgado alive didn’t mean he had killed the boy, but it also didn’t mean he hadn’t. Still, the idea that Xavier had been looking at a pair of high-topped sneakers the last time the kids from the migrant camp saw him was striking. The detail about the high-topped sneakers was a holdback, something no one outside Joanna’s investigation team knew anything about.
Trusting her face not to betray her roiling emotions, Joanna spoke again. “This has been very helpful, and we’ll certainly look into it.”
“If you end up arresting him, will the boys be required to testify in court?” Aña asked.
“They might be,” Joanna said. “I can’t say for sure.”
Of course, given the boys’ migrant status, she wondered, would having them testify even be possible? Would the county prosecutor’s office be able to negotiate a peace treaty with the feds that would enable the boys and maybe the rest of their families to cross the border legally? Answering those questions was a battle for another day.
“Please don’t let them know that I told you,” Aña begged.
“Believe me, we won’t,” Joanna assured her. “You’ve given us something very valuable, Señora Mendoza, and something we didn’thave before—an actual named suspect. But until we can verify his involvement in this case with something more solid than what you’ve told us so far, we won’t even approach him.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thankyou,” Joanna insisted. “Thank you not only for the information you’ve just provided, but also for doing what you’re doing—teaching kids who are not only desperately in need of someone who can teach them, but also for being someone they can trust.”
Aña stood up then. “I’ll be going then,” she said with a smile. “Thank you for meeting with me. I hope this helps. Anyone who would murder an innocent boy like that is a monster.”
“He certainly is,” Joanna agreed, “and if Mr. Roper turns out to be the killer, then he’s been hiding in plain sight for decades.”
Arturo showed Aña out and then came back into the living room. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”
“I think she may have just handed us our guy,” Joanna replied, then she took several minutes to clue him in about the high-topped sneakers.
“What are you going to do now?” Arturo asked.
“I’m going to go back to my office and put people to work finding out everything there is to know about Stephen Roper and Hands Across the Border.”
“You’re not going to go interview him?”
“Nope,” Joanna replied, “not yet. I don’t want him to have any idea that we’ve made a possible connection between him and Xavier Delgado’s death until I’m damned good and ready. When I do get around to paying him a call, I’m hoping I’ll do so with an arrest warrant in hand.”
“If there’s anything more I can do to help, please let me know,” Arturo said.
“You and Aña have already helped immeasurably,” Joanna told him. “Before meeting Aña, my investigators had nothing at all to goon. Now we do, and the faster we can get the killer behind bars, the better.”
