Those items were all on the plus side of the ledger. On the other side was the possibility that Ron Haskell could have had some other motivation besides money for wanting his wife out of the way, like maybe an as yet undiscovered girlfriend who might be impatient and well-heeled besides. Someone like that might make someone like Ron Haskell eager to be rid of a now impoverished wife. Haskell’s once seemingly airtight alibi now leaked like a sieve. He had chosen a course of action—a premeditated course of action—that had placed him in an isolated cabin from which he knew he would be able to sneak away at will and without being detected.
Forced to acknowledge that her original assumption about the isolation cabin had been blown out of the water, Joanna now wondered if some of her other ideas about Ron Haskell were equally erroneous. He had volunteered to conic in for DNA testing. Joanna had thought of that as an indicator of his innocence that it showed confidence that Ron Haskell knew his genetic markers would have nothing iii common with the rape-kit material collected during Doc Winfield’s autopsy of Connie Haskell. However, what if Ron Haskell had decided to divest himself of his wife by hiring someone else to do his dirty work? In that case, somebody else’s DNA would show up on the body. Ron Haskell wouldn’t be implicated.
Joanna picked up her phone and dialed Casey Ledford. “What do you think about Ron Haskell?” she asked.
“He seemed nice enough,” Casey replied. “Upset that his wife is dead, but eager to cooperate and wanting to find out who killed her. I took his prints, by the way,” she added. “For elimination purposes. Just looking at them visually, I can see they do match some of the partial prints I found in Connie Haskell’s Lincoln, but the ones I saw were mostly old and overlaid by far more recent ones. Based on that alone, I’d have to say that, unless he was wearing gloves, Ron Haskell hasn’t been in his wife’s car for weeks or even months.”
“Too bad,” Joanna said with a sigh. “I was hoping we were getting someplace.”
“Sorry about that,” Casey Ledford said.
Joanna had put down the phone and was still sitting and thinking about what Casey had said when it rang again. “Hi, George,” she said when she heard the medical examiner’s voice on the line. “What’s up?”
“Have you had a chance to talk to your mother yet?” he asked.
When George called Eleanor Lathrop “your mother” rather than his pet name, Ellie, Joanna recognized it as a storm warning. Not so far,” Joanna answered guiltily. “It’s been pretty busy around here today. I haven’t had a chance.”
“She left the house this morning before I woke up and she didn’t bother starting the coffee before she left. She was supposed to join me for lunch, but she didn’t show up,” George said. “I checked a few minutes ago, and she still isn’t home. Or, if she is, she isn’t answering the phone. I thought maybe the two of you had gotten together, and that’s why she ended up forgetting our lunch date.”
Who has time for lunch? Joanna thought. She said, “Sorry, George. I haven’t heard from her at all.”
“Well, if you do,” Doc Winfield said, “have her give me a call. I’m worried about her, Joanna. She was really agitated about this Dora Matthews thing. I’ve never seen her quite so upset.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna reassured her stepfather. “I’m sure mother will be just fine.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll let you go.”
“No, wait. I have a question for you, too. Do you think Dora Matthews and Connie Haskell were killed by the same person?”
“No,” George Winfield said at once.
His abrupt, no-nonsense answer flooded Joanna with relief. It opened the door to the possibility that perhaps the two homicides—Connie’s and Dora’s—weren’t related after all. If that was the case, maybe Jenny wasn’t a target, either.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“For one thing, because the two deaths were so dissimilar,” George Winfield replied. “The person who killed Connie Haskell wasn’t afraid of getting down and dirty about it. He was more than just brutal, and most of it was done while she was still alive. Her killer wasn’t the least bit worried about being bloodied in the process. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he enjoyed it.
“On the other hand, Dora Matthews’s killer went about doing 1e job in an almost fastidious fashion. That death wasn’t messy. I’d bet money that Dora’s killer was an inexperienced first-timer who is downright squeamish about even seeing blood, to say nothing of wearing it. The other guy isn’t, Joanna. Once you identify Connie Haskell’s killer, I’m convinced you’ll discover that he’s done this before, maybe even more than once.”
“And he’ll do it again if we don’t catch him first,” Joanna returned.
“You’ve got that right,” George said. “Sorry, there’s another call. It may be Ellie. But please, Joanna. I need you to talk to her.”
“I’ll call her,” Joanna said. “I promise.”
She punched down the button and was getting ready to dial her mother when Frank came rushing back into her office. “We just hit pay dirt,” he said, waving a piece of paper over her head. “I finally got a call back from the phone company about that pay phone in Tucson. It belongs to some little private company that operates a small network of pay phones only in the Tucson area. That’s why it took longer to track down the calls than it would have otherwise. But there is some good news. Another call was made from that pay phone within thirty seconds of the end of Alice Miller’s 911 call.”
“Really,” Joanna breathed. “Where to?”
“A place called Quartzite East.”
“Isn’t that a new RV park off I-10 in Bowie?”
Frank nodded. “Relatively new,” he corrected. “It opened last year. It’s a joke, named after the real Quartzite, that mostly migratory motor-home town on the other side of the state. That’s where the next phone call went—to the office at Quartzite East.”
“Good work, Frank,” Joanna said. “Our mysterious Alice Miller may net live at Quartzite East, but she sure as hell knows someone who does. What say you and I head out there ourselves?”
“My car or yours?” Frank asked.
“Let’s take yours,” Joanna said.
“I’ll have to go down to the Motor Pool and fill it with gas.”
“You do that,” Joanna told him. “I’ll be right there.”
Going back for her purse, Joanna found Deputy Galloway standing by Kristin’s desk. “You wanted to see me?” he asked. Joanna nodded and ushered him into her office. “I wanted to talk to you about Yolanda Cañedo,” she said as Galloway took a seat.
“What about her?”
“You know she’s back in the hospital?”
“I guess,” he said in a nonchalant tone that said he wasn’t particularly concerned one way or the other.
“Are the deputies as a group going to do anything about it?” “Like what?”
“Like sending a group card or flowers. Or like offering to look after the kids during off-hours to give Leon and the grandparents a break. Or like showing up at one of the boys’ Little League games to cheer them on.”
Deputy Galloway shrugged. “Why should we?” he asked. “Yolanda doesn’t even belong to the local. Besides, she’s a ...”