by J. A. Jance
“Yes, ma’am,” Jaime said. “I’ll be there.”
By now, Junior had edged away from Joanna and was skittering down the road. He had already passed the Crown Victoria by the time she was able to dash after him, catch him by the arm, and bring him back to the vehicle.
“Go,” he said again, more urgently this time. “Junior go. Junior go now!”
“All right,” Joanna agreed. “We’re going. Come get in the car.”
He tried to shake loose of her hand. Remembering what had happened to Sister Ambrose, Joanna held firm. After a momentary struggle, he quieted. For a matter of seconds Joanna wondered if she should lock him in the backseat rather than letting him ride up front with her, but by then he was no longer fighting. She helped him into the front passenger seat and buckled the seat belt across him. Then she hurried around the car and climbed in herself.
She had started the car, backed up, and completed a U-turn when the sharp and unmistakable odor of urine flooded her nostrils. Her heart sank with the sudden realization of what Junior had really meant when he said he wanted to go. She knew instantly that Junior’s particular brand of “go” was going to play havoc with the Civvy’s cloth-covered interior.
Embarrassed for Junior and angry with herself for not understanding his urgent plea, Joanna floorboarded the gas pedal. There was no point then in stopping the car and trying to hustle him into a rest room. The damage was already done.
What are the guys in Motor Pool going to think when I bring this one in? she wondered.
On the seat beside her, Junior buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “Sorry,” he wailed over and over again. “Junior sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Joanna said, swallowing her own anger in hopes of calming him. “You tried to tell me and I didn’t understand. We’ll be home soon, Junior. We’ll take care of it.”
He raised his head hopefully. “Home?” he said.
A feeling of total helplessness washed over Joanna. She had no idea where his home was or how to take him there. In his innocence he thought she did and trusted her to make good her promise. How could she do that? And how would she deliver on what she had told Father Mulligan, that she would take care of Holy Trinity’s little lost lamb?
Where would she find something as simple as dry clothing for him to wear? There was nothing out at High Lonesome Ranch that would fit him. Joanna had long since sent Andy’s things to a local clothing bank. Even if she was able to solve the basic issue of dressing Junior, what would she do with him after that? For one thing, there was the question of bed-rooms. The house at High Lonesome Ranch was a modest two-bedroom affair with no guest room. Butch had slept fine on Joanna’s cloth-covered sofa. With Junior that wouldn’t be possible-for several obvious reasons.
On the seat beside her, an inconsolable Junior once again dissolved into tears. His despairing, muffled sobs were enough to break Joanna’s heart.
“Hush now,” she said. “Do you like to sing?”
Continuing to whimper, he didn’t answer.
They were through Tombstone now, past the airport, and coming down the long curve into the upper San Pedro Valley. Off to the right-a good twenty miles across the valley-the combined lights of Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca glimmered along the base of the mountains. Ahead of them, in the darkened sky over the Mule Mountains, a single star-the evening star-glittered brightly. Seeing it reminded Joanna of some of the trips she had made back and forth to Tucson when Jenny was a baby. Driving by herself, there had been no way to comfort her crying child but to sing. Would that same magic work on Junior?
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” Joanna began. The familiar tune filled the night. At the sound of her singing, Junior quieted a little. He continued to sniffle and choke, but his heart-wrenching sobs eased.
By the time Joanna finished that first familiar ditty, Junior’s breath was coming in long, ragged shudders, but at least he was quieter. And Joanna felt better, too. As the last notes of “Little Star” died away, she moved on to another equally familiar tune. For the next twenty minutes, she sang every childhood song she could remember. There were ones from Sunday school: “Zacheus,” “Jesus Loves Me,” “I’ll Be a Sunbeam for Jesus.” There were ones from kindergarten: “Eensy Weensy Spider,” “I’m a Little Teapot,” and “Do the Hokey-Pokey.” By the time the Crown Victoria slid across the Divide and dropped down into Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon, Joanna had moved on to Girl Scout songs: “Make New Friends But Keep the Old” and “White Coral Bells.”
By then it no longer mattered what she sang because Junior was sound asleep beside her. With the heater on, the smell of urine was thick in the air, but Joanna didn’t dare open the window for fear the cold air would chill him. After all, he was wet. She wasn’t.
Coming around Lavender Pit, she finally made up her mind about where she was going to go-straight to Butch Dixon’s place in Saginaw. Picking up the phone, she dialed his number and breathed a sigh of relief when he answered right away.
“Where are you?” Butch asked. “Jenny and I are just now sitting down to eat.”
“I’m coming through Lowell,” she told him, speaking quietly, afraid that if she raised her voice she might disturb Junior, who was snoring softly beside her.
“Great,” Butch said. “We set a place for you, but I didn’t think you’d be here this early.”
“Neither did I,” Joanna murmured, wondering how she was going to break the news to him. “But I’ve got a problem, Butch.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I’ve got a passenger with me. His name is Junior. At least that’s as much of his name as we know. He’s developmentally disabled. He peed his pants about the time we were leaving a crime scene in Tombstone, and now he’s sound asleep.”
“What’s he doing in your car?” Butch asked. “Is he under arrest, or what?”
“He didn’t commit a crime, so no, he’s not under arrest. Somebody abandoned him at the weekend arts and crafts fair over in Saint David. It’s hard to tell about his age. I’d say he’s somewhere close to fifty, but we’ve got no identification to verify that. Mentally he’s closer to three or four. Verbal, but only just.”
“Not enough to tell you he needed to go to the bathroom.”
“Right. He tried. I just didn’t understand.”
“So where are you taking him, to the jail?”
“I can’t take him there, Butch. Some of those guys…”
“I know. I know. And you can’t take him home, either.”
“No,” Joanna agreed. “I can’t, but…”
“You want me to take care of him?”
Joanna’s heart filled with a flood of gratitude. It was exactly what she had wanted, but she hadn’t dared ask. By then she was less than half a mile from Butch’s home in the Saginaw neighborhood. Driving around the traffic circle, she was tempted to go around several more times, just to give Butch time to adjust to the idea of taking in an unexpected house guest. It seemed, however, that Butch was already coping.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“The traffic circle.”
“I’ll go out and move the Subaru so you can pull into the carport right next to the house. And I’ll bring out a robe and some towels so we can get him out of his wet clothes before we try to bring him inside. How big is he?”
“Not very,” Joanna responded.
“Will my underwear fit him?”
“He’ll swim in it.”
“No problem,” Butch said cheerfully. “Sounds like he’s swimming in something else at the moment. How bad is your car?”
“It’s bad. Soaked.”
“It’ll have to wait. First things first,” Butch said. “See you in a couple of minutes.”
It wasn’t much more than that when Joanna arrived at Butch’s house. True to his word, Butch’s new Outback was parked on the street. The chain-link gate to his driveway stood wide open, allowing Joanna access to a covered carport. Jenny stood at the back door clutc
hing an armload of material that turned out to be the promised towels, a robe, and a pair of sweats with a drawstring at the waist.
For a change, Joanna was only too happy to stand aside and let someone else take charge. Butch knelt beside the car and untied Junior’s high-topped tennis shoes. After removing the shoes, Butch gently shook Junior awake. Helping him out of the car, Butch stood him upright long enough to peel off the soaked khaki work pants, undershorts, and shirt, all of which he allowed to fall into a sodden heap. After helping Junior step into the sweats, Butch wrapped the shivering and uncomplaining man in the ample folds of a thick terry-cloth robe.
“There you go,” Butch said, taking Junior by the arm. “Come on in. It’s cold out here, and dinner’s on the table. I’ll bet you’re hungry.”
Looking down at the terry-cloth robe, Junior ran his fingers across the soft, downy material in seeming delight. “Hungry,” he said, nodding agreeably. “Junior eat.”
As soon as Butch had begun unbuttoning Junior’s shirt, Jenny had disappeared into the house. When Joanna followed Butch and Junior into the small, cozy kitchen, she was gratified to see that Jenny had made use of the time alone to set another place at the table.
“This is Junior, Jenny,” Butch said.
“Hello, Junior,” Jenny responded, as though welcoming someone like him was the most ordinary thing in the world. “What do you want to drink-milk, water, or soda?”
Junior’s eyes fastened hungrily on the carton in Jenny’s hand. “Milk,” he said. “Junior like milk. Milk good.”
Matter-of-factly, Jenny went to one of the places and filled the glass there with milk. “Here, Junior,” she said, pointing. “You sit here.”
Butch helped Junior onto the proper chair. Joanna wasn’t sure how Butch had done it, but somehow he had managed to convey to Jenny exactly what was going on. Between the two of them, Butch and Jenny were handling Junior’s afflictions with such easy grace and acceptance that they might both have been used to dealing with people like him on a daily basis.
Butch set a bowl of soup in front of Junior. Jenny seated herself next to their guest, picked up a piece of Butch’s crusty, freshly baked bread, spread it with butter, and then laid it next to his place. Without a word, Junior picked up his spoon and buried it in the thick, steamy soup.
“Careful,” Butch warned. “It’s hot.”
Nodding, Junior held the loaded spoon to his lips and blew on it noisily. Most of the soup slopped back into the bowl, but as soon as he put the remainder in his mouth, his face cracked into the same wide grin Joanna had seen when she had first pinned the sheriff’s badge on his chest.
“Good!” he exclaimed happily. “Good, good, good.” Transfixed by all this activity, Joanna stood just inside the door and watched. She didn’t know which was more gratifying-Butch’s and Jenny’s compassion toward Junior, or the total ease with which they dealt with his obvious abnormalities. Overcome by emotion, Joanna’s eyes brimmed with tears. She tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat.
Joanna was still struggling to find words when Butch took her gently by the shoulder and led her to a chair. “Will Madame be seated?” he asked with a comically formal bow. “And what are we drinking this evening? I can recommend the Cabernet…”
“Milk for me, too,” Joanna said. “I may still have some work to do tonight.”
Jenny made a face at that, but she didn’t say anything to Joanna. Instead, she turned her wide blue eyes full on Junior’s face. “Where are you from?” she asked.
Ladling his soup and blowing on each spoonful, Junior didn’t answer. Jenny, however, seemed determined to draw him into conversation. “Is it near or far?”
Junior paused and looked at her. “Far,” he said. A speech impediment made it difficult for him to pronounce the letter r, but Jenny wasn’t fazed by that, either.
“How big is your family?” she asked.
Junior stopped eating. He put his spoon down and stared back at Jenny. Worried that any discussion of his family might provoke the same kind of outburst that had bruised Sister Ambrose’s elbow, Joanna tried to interrupt, but Butch laid one hand on hers and shook his head, warning her to silence.
Junior held up one finger. “Mama,” he said. Then he raised another finger. “Junior.”
“So it’s just the two of you,” Jenny said. “That’s like Mom and me. Butch here is our friend, and this is his house. But at home where we live, it’s just Mom and me. Just the two of us, same as you.”
A short silence settled over the table. “Do you like to play video games?” Butch asked.
Junior brightened. He reached for what would have been his pockets, then the smile faded. He knew enough to realize that video games required money and he had none.
“Don’t worry,” Butch told him. “I have some video games in the other room that came from my restaurant when I sold it. I’ve fixed them so they don’t take quarters anymore. You can play them all you want, for free.”
Junior’s mouth dropped. “No quarters?” He started to push his chair away from the table.
“No,” Butch said. “Soup first, then video games.”
Without a murmur of objection, Junior settled back onto his chair and resumed eating. If Father Mulligan thought the badge trick was impressive, Joanna thought, he ought to see this.
When the soup was gone, Jenny led Junior into what had once been a small parlor but which was now a tiny video arcade. As soon as they were out of the kitchen, Butch turned a penetrating gaze on Joanna. “How are you doing?”
“Better now,” she said. “Much better. How did you know how to handle him like that? You were great.”
“I used to coach Special Olympics,” Butch said. “The Roundhouse used to sponsor a team to the games over in Tempe every summer. I liked doing it, and I pride myself in thinking I was pretty good at it.”
“I’d say very good,” Joanna told him.
Butch stood up. “If you want to clear the table, I’ll go outside, gather up his clothes, and stick them in the washer.”
“Once we get him dressed again, though, what am I going to do with him?” Joanna asked.
‘‘Leave him here,” Butch replied. “I have an air mattress out in the shed. I’ll blow that up and have him sleep right there on the living room floor. He’ll be fine, and on the air mattress, if he has an accident overnight, it won’t hurt anything
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t mind. If I did, I wouldn’t have offered. What do you expect me to do, leave you to handle this whole mess by yourself? No way!”
While Butch went to look after the clothes, Joanna cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. Butch’s house was a high-ceilinged, 1880s kind of place. It had once been part of a neighborhood called Upper Lowell. In the early fifties, this house and all of its neighbors had been loaded onto axles and hauled down out of the canyon to make way for the Lavender Pit Mine. When Butch had bought the place months earlier, it had been a run-down mess, with a bathroom so small that he claimed he’d had to stand in the kitchen to pee. It was Butch’s own handiwork that had remodeled the place, reallocating the space, putting in new fixtures, appliances, and cabinets. Working in the small but convenient kitchen, Joanna couldn’t help admiring his craftsmanship.
Joanna had finished loading the dishwasher and was just adding soap when Butch came back into the kitchen. “That took a while,” she said.
“I know. I have a rug shampooer out in the garage. I took a crack at the upholstery in your car. It helped some, but it’s not going to solve the whole problem. Unfortunately it had a chance to really soak in.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out Joanna’s badge. “This looks like the real McCoy. It wouldn’t happen to be yours, would it?”
Drying her hands, Joanna look the badge and returned it to the leather carrying case in her purse. Once she did that, she walked over to Butch and gave the base of’ his neck a nuzzling kiss. In the process his hand bumped again
st the elbow that had swatted up against the cholla. She winced.
“What’s the matter?” Butch asked. “Are you hurt?”
“A little.”
She rolled up her sleeve and looked. Her elbow was punctured by more than a dozen tiny pinpricks, all of them red and sore. “What happened?” Butch asked
“I had a run-in with a batch of cholla,” she told him.
Shaking his head, Butch reached into a drawer and brought out a tube of Neosporin. “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story,” he said.
For the next forty-five minutes, she told him everything, starting with finding Alice Rogers’ body and ending with Junior. When Joanna finished, Butch leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “What’s it going to take to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna admitted. “I’ve never encountered a case quite like this before.”
“I have,” Butch said grimly. “Two years ago the family of one of my athletes took off out of town while Brad was away at Special Olympics. When the games were over and we tried to take him home, no one was there. One of the neighbors told us they’d packed up and left on vacation. In a way, you can understand it. It’s got to be a terrible strain for the family members. For caregivers it’s a never-ending, lifetime’s worth of responsibility, with no hope and no respite. Still, abandoning ship like that is unforgivable. At least, that’s how it seemed to me then, and it still does.
“But I’ll bet the same thing that happened with Brad will happen with junior. Somebody is going to notice that Junior isn’t at home anymore, and they’ll start asking questions. In the meantime, we’re going to have to look after him, that’s all.”
“You mean that, don’t you,” Joanna said. “The ‘we’ part, I mean.”
“Yes,” Butch said. “If we don’t, who’s going to? And if you and Jenny and I all take a crack at this thing together, it won’t be that big a problem. I’m sure Jeff Daniels will help out, and maybe even Marianne, if she’s able.”
“Did you hear from them today?” Joanna asked. “Has she turned in her resignation?”
