Skeleton Canyon

That does it, she thought. Budget or no budget, I’m getting a cellular phone.

It was almost four in the afternoon as Joa

She realized then that she was hungry. Not just hungry-starving. She’d had nothing to eat all day long. She had missed Eva Lou Brady’s Sunday di

Fantasizing about that missed meal, Joa

Joa

“That’s not…” she wailed, shuddering and pointing at the mud-encrusted back gate of Joa

“Mrs. O’Brien,” Joa

“I had to come and see for myself,” Katherine said. “Miss Stoddard told us that it didn’t look good, but I had to know for sure. I had to know what really happened.”

Seeing the Lexus now, Joa

Katherine shook her head. “I came by myself. I told him I was going up to St. Dominick’s to light a candle and pray. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“And you shouldn’t be,” Joa

“It?” Katherine said, her voice rising until it verged on hysterics. “You’re calling my daughter an ‘it’? And what’s she doing stuffed in the back of a station wagon like that?”

Thank God Deputy Raymond didn’t drive up with the body in the back of his pickup, Joa

Just then Doc Winfield pulled in behind the Eagle. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“‘This is Katherine O’Brien,” Joa

George Winfield’s clothing was still plastered to his body. The man was a mess. Still, with a look of total and grave concern, he reached out and took Katherine O’Brien’s hand, grasping it firmly. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. O’Brien,” he said, his voice softened by genuine warmth and dignity both. “It will lake some time for me to prepare things so you can actually view your daughter. If you wouldn’t mind going inside to wait, I’ll come get you as soon as possible.”

Taking Katherine by the arm, he escorted her to the door while Joa

Joa

“If you can help me load her onto this,” he said, “I’ll be able to handle things from here.”

“What about Mrs. O’Brien?” Joa

Winfield frowned. “I’m not used to having family members waiting outside quite this soon,” he said. “But you could just as well let her stay. The face is so badly mangled from being squashed flat by the falling truck that there isn’t that much that will soften the blow. Not only that, if the mother can’t positively identify her by sight, then we’re better off knowing now that we’ll have to get the dental records.”

Joa

“If you don’t mind,” George Winfield said, “that would be a big help.”

Painfully aware of her own scruffy appearance-of her dirty clothes and dusty hiking boots-Joa

“You probably shouldn’t do this alone,” Joa

Katherine O’Brien shook her head. “I’m a trained nurse,” she said. “It’s better if I do it.”

Joa

Katherine blew her nose. “Tell me about Ignacio Ybarra,” she said.

“I didn’t think you knew anything about your daughter’s boyfriend,” Joa

“I didn’t,” Katherine said. “Not then. Frankie Stoddard picked up the name earlier by listening to radio transmissions on her police sca

“The one your daughter quit the cheerleading squad over’?” Katherine nodded.

“That’s him,” she said.

“My mother is a liar.” Unbidden, the words from the last entry in Bria

There were lots of ways to lie, Joa

“Are you aware that two of your daughter’s journal volumes are missing from her room?”

“No,” Katherine replied. “I had no idea.”

“One was found at the crash site. The second-the current one-wasn’t there.”

“So it is her, then, isn’t it,” Katherine said doggedly, her tears starting anew. “I kept hoping and praying it might be some other truck. There are lots of those around, you know. I saw one just like it on my way uptown. But the journal…” She shook her head. “That pretty well settles it. How did it happen? The accident, I mean. Tell me. I need to know.”

Joa