Veering off in another direction, Joanna dodged away before Dennis saw her coming. She hurried toward the booth where the group of teenagers seemed to be preparing to leave. Joanna stopped in front of their booth and then pulled over an extra chair from a nearby table, effectively blocking their exit.
“I’m Sheriff Brady,” she said. “Good morning, or is it afternoon already? Mind if I join you?”
She recognized at least three of the kids. Two of them—Tiffany Brazile and Dena Carothers—were on the cheerleading squad. Billy Stout was a big man on campus, a key player in every sport. The other boy, tall and skinny, was someone Joanna didn’t know. Faced with her uniformed presence, the four teenagers exchanged guilty glances. The expressions on their faces said they did mind having Joanna join them, but none of them had nerve enough to say so. Without waiting for an invitation Joanna sat down.
“I understand that a little while ago, you were overheard discussing one of our ongoing investigations—the disappearance of Ms. Debra Highsmith. Do you mind sharing whatever information you might have?”
“We don’t really know anything,” Tiffany said too quickly. “We were just looking at a picture on Facebook. It’s no big deal.”
“Excuse me, but it is a big deal,” Joanna corrected. “You seem to be in possession of details concerning the investigation that have not yet been released to the public. I need to know exactly what you know about my case and how you came to have that information.”
“What if we don’t want to tell you?” The speaker was the boy in the corner.
“This is a homicide investigation,” Joanna said flatly. “So far this is simply an informal conversation. If you would prefer something more official, I could always throw all of you in the back of a couple of patrol cars and take you on a field trip out to the Justice Center. In that case, we’d be having this discussion in one or two of my department’s interview rooms. Your call.”
“If I ended up in jail, my parents would kill me!” Tiffany exclaimed. “Go ahead, Marty. Show her the picture.”
“My parents would do the same thing,” Dena said. “Show it to her.”
Shaking his head, the boy named Marty pulled an iPhone out of his shirt pocket. After scrolling through several pages, he handed the device over to Joanna. She recognized both the scene and the subject—Debra Highsmith, lying dead, struck down by a hail of gunfire on the rock-strewn shoulder of High Lonesome Road.
Sheriff Brady prided herself on her ability to maintain a poker face, but it took a superhuman effort for her to keep her facial features utterly neutral in the face of that damning photo. She knew that photo could have come from only one source—her daughter, Jenny.
“You believe this to be …?” Joanna prompted.
“That’s Ms. Highsmith, our principal,” Dena said quickly. “That’s her hair, and she’s wearing her favorite suit. She wore it to school every week.”
Joanna turned her unblinking gaze on the owner of the iPhone. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“Marty. Martin Pembroke. My dad’s the new doctor at the hospital.”
“I’m glad to meet you, Marty,” Joanna said without offering her hand. “My source tells me you weren’t exactly overwhelmed with grief when you learned Ms. Highsmith might be dead. My source says that you seemed downright gleeful and said something to the effect that the wicked witch is dead.”
“She was a witch,” Marty said.
“I’m assuming that means she wasn’t one of your faves,” Joanna said.
These kids already knew Debra Highsmith was dead. There was no point in Joanna’s trying to maintain otherwise, so she didn’t bother.
“Earlier this year she suspended me for ten days for no reason,” Marty Pembroke grumbled. “If my father hadn’t appealed to the school board, I wouldn’t have been able to make up the work and might not have been able to graduate with my class.”
“Well, boo-hoo-hoo,” Joanna said, making zero effort to tone down the sarcasm. “You claim she suspended you for no reason? Really?”
“It was all because some jerk put a can of beer in my locker. The beer wasn’t even mine. It was one of my friends’ idea of a joke. She blew it all out of proportion.”
“Excuse me,” Joanna pointed out, “but being a minor in possession of alcohol is against the law.” She passed the phone back to him. “Saying you were suspended for no reason isn’t exactly being fair to Ms. Highsmith. It turns out there was a reason for your suspension—and a valid one at that. As for having a beer at school? That certainly compounds an already difficult issue. Did you mention to Ms. Highsmith that you thought someone else had put it there?”
“No,” Marty said. “What do you think I am, some kind of snitch?”
“There you are,” Joanna said agreeably. “You didn’t rat out your pals, and you’re the one who got suspended. Fair enough. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Still, does a ten-day suspension warrant being glad someone is dead?”
“All we were doing here was talking, and just because I said it doesn’t mean I meant it,” Marty muttered. “Besides, all any of us know about what happened is what we saw in the picture—just her body lying there.”
The intervening conversation had given Joanna a chance to get a grip on herself. It didn’t matter whose Facebook site had the photo on it; Joanna knew the origin of the original. It had to have come from either the killer or Jenny. Unfortunately, between those two options, Jennifer Ann Brady as the source of the photo seemed the more likely, although Joanna wasn’t aware that her daughter even had a Facebook page.
“Tell me about Facebook,” she said. “Where is that photo posted? Whose account?”
“We don’t have to tell you that,” Marty Pembroke replied. “Isn’t that like freedom of speech or something?”
“If you won’t tell her, I will,” Dena said. Obviously Marty’s reluctance to be a snitch didn’t extend to Dena. “It’s Anne Marie Mayfield’s page. She’s the one who posted it. She didn’t like Ms. Highsmith, either. Neither did I.”
“What was your beef with her?” Joanna asked.
“She sent us both home to change clothes,” Dena replied. “She said Anne Marie’s skirt was too short, and my neckline was too low. It’s like she turned into the fashion police or something. She probably would have been happier if we’d all had to wear uniforms to school.”
“Sounds to me like she was doing her job,” Joanna said.
The four kids in the booth, exchanging a set of disparaging looks, remained duly unimpressed.
With the conversation seemingly at an end, Joanna pulled out a pen and a notebook that she opened to a fresh page. “I’ll need your names and phone numbers,” she said.
Dena had struck Joanna as being the weakest link, so she handed the writing equipment to her. Without a word, she wrote down the required information and passed it along. Since Dena had complied without objection, so did everyone else.
When they finished and handed the pen and notebook back, Joanna stood up and returned her chair to the other table. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of business cards.
“You’re all welcome to go now,” she said, passing one card to each of the young people in the booth. “You should expect to hear from one of my investigators sometime in the very near future, and if you happen to stumble across any information that might be helpful, please feel free to call.”
As Joanna turned away from the booth, the idea that any of them would call her for any reason at all seemed more than