Skeleton Canyon

“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?”

Joa

“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 Bria

“I’m implying nothing of the kind,” Joa

“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.

Joa

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

With Katherine leading, Ernie and Joa

“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?” Joa

“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.” Joa

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 Joa

“I thought Bria

“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 Suza

“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 Suza

“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?” Joa

“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 Joa

“I understand,” Joa

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.”

Joa

Sighing and pulling herself together, Katherine stepped into her daughter’s room. Joining her, Joa

Je

Based on that scale of value, Joa