As soon as Joanna cleared customs and while stillin Naco, Arizona, she dialed Casey Ledford’s number.
“I believe I’ve got a person of interest for you in the Xavier Delgado homicide,” Joanna said, once the call was answered.
“Really?” Casey replied. “Who is it?”
“Stephen Roper.”
“Did you just say Stephen Roper?” Casey repeated after a moment of stunned silence. “You’ve got to be kidding! The same Mr. Roper who used to teach chemistry at Bisbee High?”
“The very one,” Joanna replied.
“But he’s who got me interested in chemistry in the first place,” Casey objected. “He’s the reason I became a CSI.”
“Be that as it may,” Joanna said, “it’s possible that he’s also our killer. For right now, don’t say a word about this to anyone outside your lab. I’m going to call a team meeting tomorrow morning first thing to discuss this lead, and I’ll want all hands on deck. In the meantime, I want you and Dave Hollicker to track down everything there is to know about Mr. Stephen Roper and about a charitable group called Hands Across the Border. If you end up having to work all night, fine. I’m authorizing the OT.”
“Okay, boss,” Casey replied. “Not to worry. Once I clue Dave in, we’ll be on it.”
Joanna’s next call was to Kristin, giving her the list of people she expected to be in the conference room for a mandatory meeting at ten o’clock the following morning and asking her to notify them of same.
“Wait,” Kristin objected. “Isn’t ten a.m. the same time you’re due at the Board of Supervisors meeting?”
Joanna instantly realized Kristin was right. With the issues thatcurrently needed to be presented to the board, Sheriff Brady herself had to be on hand. This wasn’t an appearance that could be delegated to her chief deputy.
“You’re right,” Joanna agreed with a sigh. “Make the meeting time 2 p.m.”
“Do you want me to tell them what it’s about?” Kristin asked.
“No,” Joanna said decisively. “Just tell them it’s mandatory, no exceptions.”
After ending the call, however, Joanna could see the bright side of changing the meeting time. It would give her CSIs that much more time to see what information they could dig up on Stephen Roper.
Chapter 18
Fertile, Minnesota
1975–1976
Even as Steve had headed home to Minnesota in 1972to care for his ailing mother, he had already decided that one way or the other, Arizona was the place for him. Over the course of the next several years, while being her caregiver, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not only that but also to the dismay of his voices, he’d had to forgo his summertime adventures.
The public library in Fertile carried a few daily newspapers for their patrons to read—The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, and the dailies from Minneapolis/St. Paul—but other than posting the expected high and low temperatures for Phoenix on any given day, they offered very little Arizona-specific weather information. Wanting to know more, Steve began to subscribe to several Arizona papers, ones from locations in which he might be interested—Pinetop, Sedona, Bisbee, Prescott, and Flagstaff. The weather information he gleaned from those gave him a much clearer idea of where he might want to settle and where he wouldn’t.
For instance, he was astonished to discover that Flagstaff, at an elevation of 6,800 feet, could often have as much as seven feet of snow over the course of the winter. He immediately took that city off his list. One of the reasons he was leaving Minnesota was to get away from cold weather, not to be buried in seven-foot snowdriftsin sunny Arizona. Because of their high temperatures, Tucson and Phoenix were never on his radar in the first place.
Steve read his newspapers in the evenings, often in those later months, while seated at his mother’s bedside. “What’s going on with you?” she had asked him once. “You never used to be interested in newspapers.”
Fortunately, she was more interested in what was on television at the time and hadn’t tumbled to the fact that the papers he was reading were all from out of state.
“Just trying to keep up with current events,” he told her.
The other person in town who noticed his new interest in newspapers was Walt Whipple, the postmaster. Because there were often too many papers to fit in his P.O. box, Steve would have to go up to the service window to collect them.
“You thinking about moving to Arizona?” Walt inquired one day as he handed over Steve’s latest batch of mail.
Fortunately, Steve already had a plausible answer lined up and ready to deploy. “I’ve been having some trouble with my back lately,” he explained. “The doc told me it’s early stages of rheumatoid arthritis and that I might need to consider moving to a high, dry climate, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Walt said. “Your mother would be lost without you.”
“Yes, she would,” Steve agreed. “That’s why I’m only considering it at the moment. I haven’t mentioned a word about it to her or anyone else, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t, either.”
