Dead to Rights

by J. A. Jance

  “Shhhh now,” he said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “It’s okay, Joanna. Everything’s under control.”

  ELEVEN

  THE NEXT half hour or so was a blur of frantic activity. The whole house buzzed with cops while Joanna fielded a concerned call from Marianne Maculyea, whom Jenny had also called, reassuring her that everything was fine, that help had arrived, and that Hannah Green was being taken into custody. When it was time for Ernie Carpenter to lead a handcuffed Hannah Green out to the waiting patrol car, they came through the living room, where Joanna and Jenny were sitting on the couch.

  Hannah stopped in front of them. “Them dogs of yours is real nice,” she said to Jenny.

  Jenny nodded. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  Then Hannah looked at Joanna. For a few seconds their eyes met. There was such an air of hopelessness about her—such beaten-down defeat—that Joanna couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman. Even at Joanna’s worst, in those bleak days right after Andy’s death, she hadn’t been nearly as lost as Hannah Green. One important difference was that Joanna Brady had been blessed with something to live for—she’d had Jenny. Hannah Green had nothing.

  “Thanks for lettin’ me get that load off my chest,” Hannah said. “Needed to tell somebody. Guess I been needin’ to for years.”

  “You’re welcome,” Joanna said.

  “Come on now,” Ernie Carpenter urged, taking Hannah by the elbow and propelling her forward. “We’ve got to get moving.”

  Joanna walked them outside. When she came back into the house, she could smell something burning. Out in the kitchen, the pot with the potatoes in it had burned dry. “Damn!” she exclaimed, dashing for the kitchen. “There goes dinner.”

  Dick Voland followed her into the kitchen and then stood leaning against the kitchen counter as she rinsed what was left of the scorched potatoes and rescued the pork chops from being burned to a crisp.

  “This is a nice place you’ve got here,” Voland observed, looking around the efficient but spacious kitchen.

  “Thank you,” Joanna said. “You’ve never been here before, have you?” Voland shook his head. “Well,” Joanna said, “I can’t take any credit for it. My in-laws are the ones who did the kitchen remodel.”

  Voland nodded. “It is a long way out of town.”

  Joanna stopped stirring the gravy and stared up at her chief deputy. She didn’t have to be psychic to know where he was going on this one. “It’s not that far,” she said.

  “But what if Jenny hadn’t been smart enough to call me and let me know what was happening? What would you have done then?”

  Joanna went back to the gravy. “I would have thought of something,” she said. “Actually, I don’t think we were ever in any real danger. It may have been scary at the time, but Hannah Green wasn’t armed. She didn’t try to do either Jenny or me any harm.”

  “But she could have,” Voland countered. “And so could any other crazy who might choose to show up here.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Voland shrugged. “With a house like this, on some acreage with your own well, you could probably sell it in a minute. Maybe buy something in town. A place where Jenny could walk back and forth to school and where you wouldn’t be out here all by yourselves.”

  Joanna and Dick Voland were so at odds most of the time that Joanna found it oddly touching for him to be concerned about her safety. The fact that he would actually come right out and say something about it was downright disconcerting.

  Joanna shook her head. “I appreciate the suggestion, Dick,” she said. “But the High Lonesome is Jenny’s and my home. It’s the one Andy and I planned and worked for together. I’m not letting someone scare me out of living here.”

  “No,” Dick Voland said a moment later. “I suppose not.”

  The afternoon had stretched so long after the luncheon that her trip out to the Rob Roy with her mother and mother-in-law seemed eons ago. Still, Dick Voland’s suggestion about Joanna’s selling the High Lonesome had reminded her of something else, something Eleanor had said. Joanna knew that even raising the issue would put an end to this amicable but highly unlikely truce between Dick Voland and her. She decided to go ahead and risk it.

  “Speaking of selling,” she said. “Did you know Terry Buckwalter is making arrangements to sell out Bucky’s practice?”

  Voland looked surprised. “So soon?” he asked. “With a business like that, especially one with a professional involved, I would have thought it would take months, if not years, to unload it. Where’d you hear about that?”

  “At the luncheon today,” Joanna replied. “Actually, that little nugget of intelligence came straight from my mother, who got it from Helen Barco at Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty.”

  “Who’s buying the place?” Dick asked. “Most likely someone from out of town.”

  “Mother didn’t say,” Joanna told him. “I meant to mention it to Ernie, but we didn’t have time to talk about anything but Hannah Green.”

  “It’s probably not that important,” Voland said. “But I’m going by the department on my way home. If Ernie’s still there, I’ll let him know.”

  “While you’re at it, there’s something else I forgot to mention,” Joanna continued. “I ran into Terry Buckwalter out at the Rob Roy today, too. When I saw her, she was just coming back from a game of golf. She looked like a million dollars, her wedding ring was among the missing, and it looked to me like she might have something going with her golf pro. The guy’s name is Peter Wilkes. Tell Ernie to check him out, too.”

  “Peter Wilkes!” Dick scoffed. “Isn’t he one of the”—he paused, searching for some kind of acceptable phraseology—“gay blades,” he said finally, “who started the Rob Roy in the first place?”

  Joanna nodded. “He and his partner.”

  “What would he have going with Terry Buckwalter, then?” Voland asked.

  “I don’t know,” Joanna said. “That’s what I want Ernie to check out. He might want to start by talking with Helen Barco.”

  “Wait a minute,” Voland said. “Aren’t you reaching on this one?”

  Joanna had been right. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the truce between Joanna and her chief deputy was disintegrating.

  “What do you mean, reaching?” she asked.

  “Look, Joanna,” Dick Voland said reasonably. “I can see where you’re coming from. What happened to Hal Morgan’s wife is more or less the same thing that happened to Andy. They’re not exactly the same, mind you. But they’re close enough for you to have lost perspective—to be viewing things through some misguided sense of sympathy.”

  “Sympathy!” Joanna began, but Voland went right on talking.

  “You shot Tony Vargas dead, but it wasn’t a premeditated thing. Hal Morgan came here to Bisbee with every intention of doing exactly what he did—of taking the law into his own hands. This afternoon and tonight, I sent those two deputies over to Saginaw, just like you wanted me to. They didn’t find anything, Joanna—not one blessed thing—to support Hal Morgan’s lame story. Now here you come with this fruitcake business about Terry Buckwalter and Wilkes. It’s just…just ridiculous.”

  The heat Joanna felt rising up her neck had nothing to do with either the bubbling gravy on the stove or with the potatoes she had just mashed.

  “Leaving no stone unturned isn’t ridiculous,” she said curtly. “It’s called doing a thorough investigation, Dick. And before you start casting aspersions about who has and who hasn’t lost perspective, you might consider that, if nothing else, I’m looking at Hal Morgan with a presumption of innocence. You and Arlee Campbell keep acting like the man’s already been tried and convicted. I want Peter Wilkes checked out, and Terry Buckwalter as well.”

  “Right,” Dick Voland said. “I’ll make sure to pass the word along.”

  The food was ready to be put on the table. “Would you like something to eat?” Joanna asked in the awkward pause that followed.

/>   “No, thanks,” Voland said. “In fact, maybe I’d better head out and get on this right now. After all, I wouldn’t want any of these valuable leads to slip through our fingers.”

  The sarcasm in Voland’s last sentence wasn’t lost on Joanna. She had heard it before on other occasions. She was learning to live with it, and most of the time it didn’t bother her. Tonight it did. For a while it had seemed she might be gaining ground in Dick Voland’s opinion. Earning her stripes. But his parting remark proved otherwise.

  Even so, she didn’t want him to go away angry. She followed him as far as the back porch. “Thanks, Dick. Especially for dropping everything and coming as soon as Jenny called.”

  He looked back at her. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “Of course I came. It’s my job.”

  Shaking her head, Joanna went back inside and called Jenny to dinner. The child came at once and attacked her food with more enthusiasm than she had shown in months. She had polished off her very well-done pork chop and was working her way through a mound of peas before she slowed down enough to talk.

  “I was watching out the window when Detective Carpenter took Mrs. Green out of the house and put her in his car,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “I felt sorry for her. She seemed more sad than crazy, and she didn’t do anything to hurt us. What’s going to happen to her?”

  “I don’t have any idea, Jenny, and that’s the truth.”

  “Will she have to go to prison?”

  “Maybe. That’ll be up to the judge to decide,” Joanna said.

  “Will she have to go to court?”

  “Most likely.”

  “But she’s poor, isn’t she?” Jenny asked. “She looked poor.”

  “I think you’re right,” Joanna said. “She looked poor to me, too.”

  “So how will she pay for a lawyer then?” Jenny asked. “Don’t they cost a lot of money?”

  “If she can’t pay for a lawyer, the judge will give her one. That’s called a court-appointed attorney.”

  “And she doesn’t have to pay then?”

  “No.”

  All of Jenny’s peas had disappeared. The only thing remaining on her plate was a single helping of coleslaw. Before Jenny started on that, she shot her mother a subtly appraising glance. “Was Mr. Voland mad that I called him?”

  “Mad?” Joanna returned. “Not at all. Why do you ask?”

  “I heard him just before he left. It sounded like he was yelling at the top of his lungs.”

  “We were having a discussion,” Joanna said. “A disagreement.”

  “About what?”

  “About how to do things,” Joanna answered after a moment’s consideration. “He thinks the department should do things one way, and I think we should do them another.”

  “Well,” Jenny said. “You’re the boss, aren’t you? Isn’t he supposed to do things the way you want?”

  Joanna had to smile at Jenny’s uncomplicated view of the world. Things either were or they weren’t. Politics hadn’t yet intruded on Jenny’s consciousness. As far as Joanna could tell, neither had the battle of the sexes.

  “Do you remember all those old Calvin and Hobbes books that your dad loved so much? Remember how Calvin never wanted to let Susie in his club?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Dick Voland reminds me a little of Calvin. He liked the department a lot better when it was a private club with no girls allowed.”

  “If he doesn’t like you, why doesn’t he quit and go work somewhere else?” Jenny asked.

  “It isn’t quite that easy, Jenny,” Joanna told her daughter. “Not for either one of us. Dick Voland has been in law enforcement a long time. I haven’t. There are all kinds of things I can learn from him that will make me a better sheriff. The only problem is, sometimes it isn’t easy for the two of us to work together.”

  “Still,” Jenny insisted firmly, “he shouldn’t yell. It isn’t nice.”

  Joanna smiled. “No, it isn’t, but fortunately I’m pretty tough. I can handle whatever he says.”

  “Sort of like sticks and stones can break my bones?”

  “Exactly,” Joanna said. With a laugh she picked up the two empty plates and carried them to the sink. “It’s exactly like that. Now hurry off to bed, Jenny. It’s late. We’ll leave the dishes until morning.”

  Ignoring her overloaded briefcase, Joanna headed for her own bedroom. Setting her alarm for five, she fell into bed and was asleep within minutes. The dream came later.

  She and Andy were together once again. The two of them, hand in hand, were strolling through the dusty midway of the Cochise County Fair while Jenny, carrying an enormous cloud of cotton candy, darted on ahead. The sun shone, and Joanna felt warm and happy. Even in her sleep, she savored the sense of well-being that surrounded her.

  The two of them had stopped beside the carousel when Jenny came racing back toward them. “There’s a great big Ferris wheel. Can we ride on it, please?”

  Andy reached into his pocket, pulled out his billfold, extracted some money, and handed it over to Jenny. “You go get the tickets, Jen,” he said. “Mommy and I will be right there. We’ll all ride it together.”

  Once again, Jenny raced off. Soon, without any intervening walking, they were stepping up the slanted wooden ramp and the attendant was fastening the wooden pole across the front of the car. “No swinging now, you hear?” he warned.

  The Bradys—Andy, Joanna, and Jenny—were the last passengers to board. Once they were locked in place, the Ferris wheel started its upward climb. Jenny, her whole body alight with excitement, sat in the middle. Andy leaned back in the seat, smiling. With one arm he reached across behind Jenny until his wrist and hand were resting reassuringly on Joanna’s shoulder.

  Joanna didn’t much care for Ferris wheels—didn’t like the way they went up and up and up until you were at the very top with nothing at all beneath you. Nor did she enjoy the stomach-lurching way in which the world dropped out from under you. Suddenly, as they fell, she realized that the comforting weight of Andy’s hand had disappeared from her shoulder.

  Concerned, she looked across the seat. Jenny had scrambled over to the far side of the car—to the place where Andy had been sitting—and was frantically peering out over the armrest.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” she screamed. “Come back. Don’t go. Please don’t leave us.”

  But Andy was already gone. He had disappeared into thin air. When their car hit the bottom of the arc, Joanna could see no sign of him.

  “Stop this thing,” Joanna shouted at the attendant. “Let us out. My husband fell. We’ve got to find him.”

  The attendant pointed to his ears, shook his head, suggesting that he couldn’t hear, and then touched the control panel. Instead of stopping, the wheel sped up to twice its previous speed, racing up and then plummeting down into the void, with Joanna floating helplessly in her seat. Jenny inched over until she managed to grab on to her mother. As the wheel went round and round she clung there, sobbing in terror. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. The car Jenny and Joanna were in was at the very pinnacle of the Ferris wheel. From there they could see for miles—off across the fairgrounds and the racetrack, to Douglas and Agua Prieta and to the parched desert landscape beyond.

  They stayed there for the longest time, with Joanna searching in every direction for some sign of Andy, for some hint of where he might have gone. At last the wheel moved again—down, down, down—until it stopped at the bottom. The attendant, grinning, leaned forward to unlatch the wooden bar. It wasn’t until she stood up to walk down the ramp that Joanna realized she was naked. And all around her, watching, were people from the department. Dick Voland and Ernie Carpenter. Kristin and the clerks from records. The deputies from Patrol and the guards from the county jail.

  Surprisingly, she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. Instead of shrinking away and trying to cover herself, Joanna was angry. Furious! How could Andy have done this to her? How could he have gone off and left her alone like th
is? He should have stayed with her—stayed with them both.

  She heard a bell then. Andy had always liked the sledgehammer concessions. In those games, a strong enough blow from a hammer would ring the bell at the top of a metal pole. The resulting prize was usually nothing more exotic than a shoddily made teddy bear or an awful cigar. Still, Andy loved to try his hand at it. Joanna looked toward the bell, hoping that whoever was ringing it would turn out to be Andy. She could see the pole, the bell, but there was no one in sight. Still, the bell continued to ring, over and over, until it finally penetrated her consciousness. The insistently ringing bell was coming from a telephone—the one on Joanna’s bedside table.

  As she raised herself on one elbow to grope for the receiver, she glanced at the glowing green numbers on the clock radio. Twelve forty-seven. Who the hell was calling her in the middle of the night?

  “Sheriff Brady,” she answered, her voice still thick with sleep.

  “Sorry to wake you,” said Larry Kendrick from Dispatch. “We’ve got a problem here. The jail commander asked me to call you.”

  Sitting up, Joanna fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp. “What is it?”

  “We just found Hannah Green dead in her cell,” Kendrick said.

  “Dead!” Joanna echoed. “How can that be? What happened?”

  “She hung herself from her bunk,” Larry said. “Or, more accurately, strangled herself. With her bra.”

  “Has somebody called Dick Voland and Ernie Carpenter?”

  “Dick’s already here. Ernie’s next on the list.”

  “I’ll be right there, too,” Joanna said, scrabbling out of bed. In a turmoil, she slammed down the telephone receiver and tore off her nightgown. She was half-dressed when she stopped cold.

  What about Jenny?

  Jenny was in bed and sound asleep. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. With this kind of emergency, Joanna might be gone for several hours. She couldn’t very well go off and leave Jenny alone, asleep in a house a mile from the nearest neighbor. But waking her up and taking her along was equally impossible. What should she do? Bed her down on the couch in Kristin’s office and expect her to sleep while all hell broke loose around her?