by Jan Burke
“No foolin’? You knew him back in Bakersfield? I’ve just known him since he’s been in Las Piernas — what, about five years now? Smart guy. Really smart guy. You know, I’m not saying he’s Poindexter or anything, just sharp — you know what I mean? I mean, he never makes anybody else feel dumb. He’s good that way. You know, a lot of guys want to be homicide detectives, so when somebody gets promoted quickly, there might be resentment. But Frank, he’s the kind of guy that made it easy on everybody. They just like him. Works hard, doesn’t put anybody down, doesn’t go around with his nose stuck up in the sky — he’s a good cop. He doesn’t make the guys in uniform feel like lackeys.
“Yeah, I worked with him on his first case here. It was tough on him then, getting used to Las Piernas, new guys to work with. Plus, he broke up with his girlfriend. I guess he transferred down here partly because of some broad he knew in Bakersfield. She gets a job in Las Piernas, begs him to move; he no sooner gets transferred and she quits and goes back to Bakersfield. God knows why. She was with the Highway Patrol. He shoulda known right there. You know her? No? I don’t know what he saw in her. I told him, ‘Good riddance — a woman like that will make you crazy.’ But he hasn’t really been with anybody special since. You know, dated here and there, but nobody special.”
He gave me a meaningful look, and I casually tried to steer the conversation in another direction. “I didn’t know you and Frank had worked together so long.”
“Aw, five years is all. I’ve been tracking down corpse-makers for ten years — before that I spent another seven in uniform — all of it in Las Piernas. Place grows on you, you know what I mean?”
“Yes. I’ve lived in Las Piernas most of my life. There are only a handful of places in southern California where people really settle down, and Las Piernas is one of them. Lots of third generation locals. I suppose that’s no big deal compared to some parts of the country, but in the L.A. area…”
“You’re right. People are born and die in Las Piernas, and you look around and most people in neighboring towns are moving every few years. I love the place.”
We reached the outskirts of a town that looked like it hadn’t changed much in fifty years. A pockmarked sign announced that this was “Gila Bend — Home of 1700 Friendly People and Five Old Crabs.” The highway joined up with Interstate 8 at Gila Bend, and in turn became Pima Avenue. It looked as if Gila Bend was struggling through some tough times. Every third or fourth building stood abandoned. There were four or five motels designed on varying themes, and about as many fast-food places and gas stations. A couple of convenience stores rounded out the picture. I had just about reached the end of the town when I spotted the City Hall, which was attached to the Gila Bend Museum and Arizona Tourist Information Center.
“You passed the sheriff’s station several blocks ago,” Pete said, as I started to pull in to ask directions.
“If you knew that, why didn’t you speak up?”
“I wanted to see the rest of the town.”
Exasperated, I turned the car around and headed back up the street.
Soon we came to a fairly new one-story building of brown brick with Spanish tiles on the roof. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. I pulled into a parking space.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s find out what they have on Hannah.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Pete warned.
We opened the car doors and were met with a blast of dry heat. We made our way into the building and felt the chill of air conditioning inside. “Out of the frying pan, into the freezer,” mumbled Pete.
It was a small station that also served as a part of the court system and as a detention center. We went up to a window and pressed an intercom button. A woman detention officer came to the window. Pete showed his ID and asked her if she would please let a deputy sheriff know we were there. A few minutes later, a door to our left was opened, and a tall man in a tan uniform came out to greet us. There was a warm smile on his rugged features. “You must be the folks from California. I’m Enrique Ramos,” he said. He was a big man, but he moved with ease and grace. I guessed him to be about fifty.
Pete extended a hand. “Pete Baird. I think I talked to you on the phone. This is the friend of Mr. O’Connor’s I told you about, Irene Kelly.”
Ramos gave me a firm handshake. “Sorry to hear about Mr. O’Connor. I got a kick out of talking to him on the phone. I was looking forward to meeting him in person. Come on back.”
He motioned us to follow him through the door to a small back office.
“You know, as slow as it is around here sometimes, I don’t think anybody but your friend could have talked me into going through our old missing-persons files from the 1950s. But he kind of got my interest going with all his talk about teeth and so on. Besides, I figured him to be the kind of person who would bug the hell out of me if I didn’t respond to his request.”
“You figured right,” I said. “He always tried the friendly approach first, but he could make a royal pain out of himself if need be.”
Ramos smiled. “I thought so.” He gestured to a couple of straightback wooden chairs and we sat. He pulled a folder out of a filing cabinet and sat behind his desk.
“Had to go into the old archives to find stuff like this — all on microfiche now. Well, anyway, when you’ve only got a few hundred people in town, you don’t have many go missing in a year. In 1955, we weren’t the great metropolis we are now. I know it’s hard for people from a big city to imagine this place being any smaller than it is now, but it was.” He opened the folder and looked over some notes.
“In 1955, we had three missing persons. One was an old woman who probably had what we now call Alzheimer’s, and she wandered off along the fence of the damned gunnery range — it’s just across the road — the MPs found her, but it was winter and she never really recovered from her time outdoors.
“You might say we also found a young boy who ran off from home, but really he came back on his own; according to the notes here, no worse for the adventure.
“There was one more we didn’t find: a young woman, about twenty, who worked in the feed store. She was still living with her folks at the time. Her mother reported her missing on June 16, 1955, but there was evidence that she left on her own; she had purchased a bus ticket to San Diego the previous evening. Couldn’t trace her from there. Guy at the Greyhound depot here said she gave him just about every last cent she had to go to California, and San Diego was as far as it would take her. So we figured she might have just got tired of life in Gila Bend. We checked around and a girl she worked with said she had talked a lot about how she was going to marry a rich kid from Phoenix. Well, we couldn’t figure out why she’d go to California if the rich kid was in Phoenix, but maybe he was going to meet her there.”
“Had she ever mentioned this kid to her parents?” I asked.
“No, but it was pretty clear she hadn’t been abducted, and she was over eighteen, so there wasn’t much we could do about it. Her folks never made much out of it once we told them about the bus ticket.
“Now along comes your friend Mr. O’Connor, thirty-five years later, with his story. I did a little more digging around and found this. A picture from her high school graduation, in 1953.” He pushed a small black and white photo across the desk, and Pete and I both rose from our chairs to look at it.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said Pete.
Except for small differences in her looks, a little something about her nose and lips, there was no mistaking the resemblance to MacPherson’s computer composites.
“It’s Hannah,” I said.
“Who?” asked Ramos.
I handed the computer drawing over to Ramos. “Hannah’s sort of a nickname we’ve used for her over the years.” I didn’t want to tell him why. “What was her real name?” I asked.
“Assuming this is the same woman — and I agree, it looks a lot like her — her real name was Jennifer. Jennifer Owens.”
“Je
nnifer Owens,” I said aloud, then repeated it in my mind. Suddenly, I felt tears well up in my eyes. O’Connor should have been the first one to hear her name. She had been his obsession for thirty-five years. It was his work that had led us this far. He had come so very close to learning who she was. God, how proud he would have been. It might have eased a little of that pain he carried around for his sister.
Ramos was looking at me. “You okay, Miss Kelly?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Just thinking of how pleased O’Connor would have been. He was… especially concerned about Hannah — Jennifer. Had been from the start. It’s hard to explain.”
“He told me about his sister,” Ramos said.
I was surprised, and didn’t hide it. Ramos met my look with an understanding smile. “I think he was afraid I wouldn’t take this seriously.”
Pete was looking between us, but neither of us offered him an explanation. “So,” he asked Ramos, “are her parents still around?”
“Yeah, her mother is still living,” Ramos said. “Old man’s been dead some years now. But her mother lives out in a trailer off Highway 85. You probably passed it on the way here. She doesn’t have a phone. I’ll take you out there if you want to go.”
Pete stood up. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never get used to this part of the job.”
We climbed into the front seat of a large green-and-white Jeep Cherokee that had the sheriff’s logo on its doors. About five miles back on Highway 85, we turned off onto a dirt road that ran through some fenced acreage with cattle here and there. It was easy to see why a four-wheel-drive vehicle was necessary. We jolted our way down a road that had so many potholes, NASA could have tested lunar-landing vehicles on it. Finally we came to a stop outside an opening in the barbed-wire fence; from the opening, a gravel drive led back to a trailer. Ramos honked and waited awhile. Soon the trailer door swung open and a thin gray-haired lady stared out and then waved to us. Ramos slowly pulled into the drive, trying not to raise dust.
“Hello, Enrique!” she barked out in a raspy voice. “Who you brought with you?”
“A couple of folks from California, Mrs. Owens.”
“California! Well, come on in out of the sun. It’s hotter than hell out. A couple of old devils like Enrique and I can take it, but you folks are probably just about baked.”
The trailer was an old silver one, with light wood paneling. By the time the four of us had squeezed in, it felt as if we had quite a crowd in there.
After introductions, she motioned us to sit down on a couch behind a Formica table. On a shelf below a window were several framed photos of Jennifer. Baby pictures, family pictures. Jennifer with another young girl. Jennifer standing outside the trailer. A larger version of the graduation photo. She had been a beautiful blonde with a shy, closed-mouth smile.
Mrs. Owens went over to the refrigerator and came back with a big pitcher of lemonade. She brought out four ornate glasses on a tray covered with an old lace doily.
I felt like shit. I glanced at Pete, and knew he felt the same.
“So what brings a police officer all the way out from California to see a seventy-year-old desert rat?” she asked.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute here, Mrs. Owens?” Ramos suggested.
She gave him an inquisitive look with her china blue eyes and slowly sat down. “What’s this all about, Enrique?”
“It’s about Jennifer, Mrs. Owens.”
“Jennifer? My Jennifer?”
He nodded.
“My God, she’s dead. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I’m sorry, we believe so, yes.”
She began to cry. She got up from the table and stumbled back into a bedroom and shut the door, which didn’t muffle the rising wail of grief. We sat immobilized, none of us looking at the other. After a while we heard water running. She stepped out, drying her face on a pink towel.
“I’m sorry,” she said to us. “You’d think after thirty-five years I wouldn’t care if I ever saw her again. But I’ve always hoped—” She broke off.
“Of course, ma’am,” Pete said, “that’s only natural. And we are very sorry to have to be the ones to end those hopes.”
“What about my grandchild?” she asked suddenly.
We were all startled.
“Grandchild?” repeated Ramos.
“Jennifer ran away because she was pregnant. She ran off to be with the father. Who is he? And what became of my grandchild?”
If I had doubts that Hannah and Jennifer were the same person, this last question ended them. Jennifer looked like the woman in the pictures, came from a Southwestern town with high levels of fluoride in the water, disappeared near the date Hannah was found, and she was pregnant.
We all exchanged looks. I went over to her and put an arm around her. “This is a very difficult story to tell, Mrs. Owens. Please sit down.”
For a moment it seemed she would resist this idea, but then she meekly allowed me to lead her back to the chair.
I sat back down, across from her.
“Tell me,” she said quietly.
“On June 17, 1955,” I began, “a woman’s body was found on the beach in Las Piernas. We now believe that woman was Jennifer.”
“1955! Dead since 1955!” she exclaimed, but then fell silent.
“The woman was guessed to be about twenty years old. She was two months pregnant when she died. She was murdered.”
“Murdered! Why? Why would anyone want to kill Jennifer?”
“That’s one of the reasons we’re here, Mrs. Owens. We don’t know. Whoever killed her—” I tried to find the right words. “Whoever killed her took steps to make it hard to identify Jennifer.” I rushed on. “A friend and co-worker of mine was a reporter on our local paper. His own sister had been killed and hadn’t been found for five years. That happened a few years before Jennifer was found. He sort of adopted the case of this unidentified woman and tried to learn all he could. He ran a column about it every year. He used to tell me that he knew somewhere someone worried about her, the way his family had worried about his sister.
“Not long ago, a new coroner came to work in our city; he found new evidence about Jennifer. He got help from a forensic dentist. Did Jennifer have stains on her teeth?”
“Yes, poor dear,” she said, glancing up at the photographs. “She was always so self-conscious about them. From the water here, you know. Too much fluoride.”
“More than anything, those stains led us to Gila Bend. Unfortunately, my friend died before he could learn your daughter’s identity. He knew that this would be very sad news to you, but I know he hoped it would be better than always wondering what became of her.”
She was quiet for a while, then said, “It’s true. At least now I know. Thirty-five years of hell. I’ve sat here and wondered why she hated us so much that she could never write so much as a postcard. I wondered if she was married, if the baby was a boy or a girl. I wondered why she wouldn’t at least let the child see his grandmother. I wondered if she was dead. I wondered if she was being tortured. I wondered if she had amnesia. You wouldn’t even believe some of the things I’ve wondered. At least that’s over.”
“How did you learn she was pregnant?” I asked.
“Oh, I nearly beat that information out of a cousin of hers. The weekend before she left, Jennifer had gone up to Phoenix to see her cousin Elaine. Elaine Owens — she’s the daughter of my husband’s brother. My husband was never more than a cattleman, and God rest his soul, not a very good one at that. But his brother did real good for himself. Made some money up in Jerome on copper, and sold out long before the bottom dropped out of the market. Went on to invest in God knows what all, but he certainly had the Midas touch.
“Elaine and Jennifer were about the same age, and even though they never paid much attention to us, the family was fond of Jennifer, and she got invited up to Phoenix pretty regular. I don’t know. L
ooking back on it, it seems that was the cause of a lot of trouble.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“Jennifer was always so unhappy when she came back. Who could blame her? She lived high on the hog the whole time she was there. Elaine would loan her clothes and they would go to parties with rich kids and so on. Then she’d come back here to little old Gila Bend and the feed store and this tiny little trailer.
“Anyway, this last time she went up to see Elaine, she came back in a real state. She would cry for no reason. Next thing I know, she’s taken a bus to San Diego.”
“Did you know anyone there?” Pete asked.
“Not a soul. So I drove up to Phoenix and just about skinned Elaine alive. She finally told me that Jennifer was pregnant and had gone off to California to find the father. I always figured that little snot knew who the father was, but she swore up and down that Jennifer didn’t tell her his name and I couldn’t get it out of her. Needless to say, we never had much to do with that side of the family after that.”
“Do you still have their address?” Pete asked.
“Well, I’ve got one from back then. They might still be there, but I don’t know. It’s been a long time. Let me see.” She got up and pulled open a kitchen drawer full of papers, and picked out a little address book. She put on a pair of reading glasses and read off a Phoenix address as Pete wrote it down.
She looked up over the rim of the glasses. “Did you find a little gold ring? Her daddy’s mother gave her a gold ring with a little ruby in it. Was she wearing it?”
Pete and I looked at one another.
“No, ma’am,” he said quietly, “we didn’t find a ring.”
25
NOBODY SAID A WORD on the ride back to Gila Bend. When we reached the station, Pete looked up at Ramos. “You gonna tell her?” he asked.
“About the body? Yeah, I’ll tell her. But not right away. Let this sink in first. Hell, she’s over seventy years old. But she’s made of strong stuff, you know?”
We nodded. Pete asked if he could make some calls. I told him I was going to walk around a little, but would meet him back at the station for lunch in about twenty minutes. Ramos accepted our invitation to join us.
