She's The Sheriff (Superromance Series No 787)

by Duquette, Anne Marie

  Virgil reached for her hand and pressed it under the table, silently letting her feel the panic button. Then he released her, and the two men left.

  “Half an hour.” Jondell was the first to speak. “Enough time for you to kill me, then pretend it was self-defense.”

  “You’re in cuffs and I’m not wearing a gun, Mr. Jondell. Do I look as though I could do you in with my bare hands?”

  “No, ma’am. But then, you didn’t look like someone who could ruin my life, either.”

  The two studied each other. He’s afraid of me, Desiree realized. Just as I’m afraid of him. Only I won’t show it.

  “So, is this place bugged? Will anyone come if I start screaming for help?”

  “They’ll come,” Desiree replied.

  “They’ll come if you scream, you mean. Well, don’t expect me to start threatening you. If—and ! I mean if-I had any negative thoughts. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to say them out loud.”

  “You have certain rights, Mr. Jondell, and they include being told if we’re taping you. You also know you’re allowed a court-appointed lawyer. Just say the word.”

  “Like you’ll play by the rules, anyway,” he sneered, some of his bravado returning.

  “I am now.”

  “Yeah, for how long? I know your track record... Sheriff.”

  There was, to Desiree, an uncomfortable pause as Jondell stared at the floor, then at her bandaged forehead.

  “What happened to you? Your boyfriend break a chair over your face?”

  “Please, Mr. Jondell. Don’t play stupid with me. Someone torched the cars in the bat sanctuary parking lot. I happened to be there, and sustained my injuries at the scene.”

  “So, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, huh? Then you didn’t see me?”

  Oh, no. I’m not going to be your alibi. “It would’ve been hard. I was unconscious at the time.” She pointed to her head.

  “Well, I didn’t hit you! Even though everyone obviously thinks I’m the guilty party.”

  “Are you?” Desiree bluntly asked.

  “That’s pure bullsh—I mean, no, ma’am, and excuse my swearing, if the tape’s running.”

  “It’s not running, and I’m more concerned with finding who started those fires than your manners.”

  Jondell yanked at his handcuffed arm, but the table didn’t move. “I stayed out of jail once. Do I look stupid enough to buck the odds? And with you as sheriff?”

  “Then why come to Tombstone?” Desiree asked. “Why make yourself a target for suspicion in the first place?”

  “What I told you was the truth.” Jondell sighed. “I needed a job. I’m dead broke. And...my wife kicked me out. She’s filed for divorce.” The words were abrupt, jerky, angry. “She’s taking our two daughters. Told them she doesn’t want a pervert like me around the house—as if I’d hurt my own children! I love them! I never laid a hand on the kids or the wife.”

  At his words, she became as angry as he, despite her resolution to keep her emotions under control. “They why did you beat up Linda Elby? She was a stranger! Why hurt her? Try to rape her?”

  “That’s her story,” Jondell said disdainfully. “I ripped her blouse to scare her a bit.” He sneered. “She wanted more, you know. I just gave it to her.”

  “Why do any of it?”

  “Because I get angry! Better to take it out on some stranger than the people I care about. My father used to beat up on me all the time rather than hit my mother. He did it because he loved her, she said. I have it from her own mouth. But I don’t hit my kids,” he said proudly. “Or my wife. That Elby woman wasn’t family. I only hurt her the one time. My ol’ man was a lot worse. Besides, she took my parking space earlier. She took the good spot even though I was closer.”

  Desiree felt ill at his answer. She knew better than to challenge the sickness of the man’s confused logic. She’d learned that lawbreakers always tried to justify their actions. One of her law professors had even lectured that the number one response of drivers stopped for speeding was not a declaration of innocence but indignation.

  Everyone else was going faster than I was! Why don’t you ticket them?

  It appeared Jondell was no exception. He’d been a battered child who justified his own battering by saying it wasn’t his family he’d hurt; he claimed he’d done it only once—unlike his father—so it was okay.

  “I want back what you took away from me!” Jondell insisted.

  The man’s pain was so real Desiree felt it. Felt sorry for him. But she had to speak the truth. “What you took away from yourself, Mr. Jondell. I only finished what you started.”

  Jondell pounded his fist violently on the table.

  Desiree forced herself not to react. She waited for anything else he might care to tell her.

  “I’ve got no place to go except jail,” he finally said. “Or hell.” He gave her a crooked, lopsided grin. “Maybe I’m already there. You tell me, Sheriff.”

  “I’m here to ask questions. You’re not required to answer, but I have to ask anyway. Why’d you do it?”

  Desiree meant the parking lot, if Jondell did indeed set fire to the cars, but his mind wasn’t on the parking lot. He leaned forward to trace invisible patterns on the tabletop. “I guess because I didn’t have a choice. I hurt that woman to save my family. I couldn’t not do it.”

  “Oh, please, don’t feed me that line!” For a moment she was her old self, the crusading lawyer from the D.A.’s office instead of Tombstone’s new sheriff. “You’re an educated man. You know there’s always another channel for anger!”

  Jondell actually laughed. “That’s a good one, Sheriff. You did the same thing I did, right? Took the law into your own hands to avenge your friend? Lawyers are snakes. They’re lawbreakers, too, just like me.”

  “That’s not how it was!”

  “Sure it was,” he taunted. “You broke the rules because you couldn’t stop yourself. I hurt your friend because I couldn’t stop myself.” Jondell began tracing patterns on the table again. “Just like when you called in the media. You used the same excuse I did,” he muttered. “Didn’t you? Didn’t you say that to yourself? I had to. I couldn’t help it. You of all people should understand.”

  Desiree clenched her fists.

  “Look at you,” Jondell mocked. “Ready to punch me out. Go ahead if you want. You’re holding all the cards.”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze dead on. “This is a little more serious than some poker game, Mr. Jondell. I’m here to uphold the law. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in Tent City, either have me appoint you a lawyer or tell me your alibi.”

  Jondell actually shuddered. Tent City was Arizona’s controversial answer to overcrowded jails. Prisoners were assigned to isolated tents in a desert. They didn’t have to be heavily guarded. Without food, water, maps or transportation—which was heavily guarded—there was no escape. Like stepping into the icy waters around the former prison at Alcatraz, leaving Tent City meant walking toward certain death. Sometimes those who stayed died anyway.

  “Tent City. Another example of police brutality—man’s inhumanity to man.”

  “That’s something you can’t blame me for, Mr. Jondell. That’s the system.”

  “No, people like you are the system. Because you allow the brutality. How would you feel if someone in your family was treated like you treated me? How would you feel if someone close to you got all the bad breaks because of one person’s mistakes?”

  “I know exactly how it feels, Mr. Jondell. My sister was there at the fire. She miscarried at the crime scene.” It isn’t right—not the tents, not the brutality, not Linda’s scarred psyche, not your father’s brutality. “We’re all guilty, Mr. Jondell. But the baby my sister lost last night was innocent. A good surgeon lost the use of her arm. My deputy was burned in the flames. I nearly had my skull split open. I want the culprit behind bars. I want him there now.” Her anger was white-hot.

  “
It wasn’t me! I didn’t set any fires.”

  “Then prove it. Either give me your alibi or I’ll be legally shipping you out of here. We only have holding cells here in Tombstone. If your lawyer doesn’t show up soon, I might be forced to send you to a long-term facility.”

  “What will you do? Give me the hottest tent around?”

  “The only authority I have is over our cells in Tombstone, and they happen to be air-conditioned. As for Tent City—” she shrugged “—your temporary residence would be out of my hands.”

  Jondell’s face went white. “You bitch.”

  “Sheriff to you. Either let me help you or...” She stood up, ready to leave.

  “Wait! I’ve got an alibi. I drove to an all-night drugstore. Not that you’ll believe me.”

  “A drugstore? Why?”

  “I wanted to get some hinges for the campground’s outhouse doors. Two of them are broken. The third is so warped it doesn’t close all the way.”

  Desiree remembered the outhouses. One had an open door, one had a broken door, and one had no door at all.

  “So, where are the hinges?”

  “They didn’t have any, but I’m telling you the truth. I don’t want to live in Tent City! I’m already living like an animal at that campground, but at least I’m free. Check with the drugstore.” He gave her the address. “They’ll remember me—I made a point of asking them to reorder the hinges.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Desiree demanded.

  “Because I wanted my lawyer here. I wanted a witness to hear my story, to verify my story in case you were up to your usual tricks.”

  “I said I was playing by the rules.”

  “So what if you are? Bounty hunters are legal in this state. Criminals die in the desert in sweltering tents. You know, they had it better in the past. Why don’t you just hang me quick and put me out of my misery? It would be more humane than dealing with people like you.”

  “Just because Arizona has the death penalty doesn’t mean I believe in it.”

  “No, you’d rather keep me alive and torture me.”

  Desiree refused to argue with Jondell anymore. She reached for the door. It immediately opened, revealing Virgil and Jamie waiting outside.

  “Not very brave, are you, Sheriff?” Jondell shook his cuff. “And me here chained like a dog.”

  She didn’t dignify that remark with an answer. “Jamie, take him back to his cell. Virgil, you’re with me.”

  She and Virgil walked down the hall alone. “I don’t have my watch,” she said. “Has it been thirty minutes? Were you waiting for me long?”

  “I never left. Jamie stayed, too.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t believe in taking orders, Deputy?”

  “We all look out for each other,” Virgil said. “I wasn’t leaving you alone.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She studied his face, remembering Caro’s words. “I hope you saved wear and tear on those feet and sat down.”

  “I’m fine. I want to help.”

  He really does. “Well, if you’re up to it, I need you to check out an alibi. Jondell claims he was at a drugstore up north looking for hinges to fix the outhouses.” She recited the address and filled him in on Jondell’s alibi. “I saw those outhouse doors, and he was telling the truth—only one closes. If he was in that drugstore, we’re going to have to let him go.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She stopped walking to retrieve her sling from her pocket. “Why hasn’t that sorry excuse for a campground been cleaned up?”

  “Well, it barely makes code during inspection, but it does each time.”

  “It’s a dump. Why not shut it down?”

  “Because every town has a few problems. That campground has most of ours. Nothing serious—some alcoholics who don’t want treatment. Some homeless, unless you count their tents. A few drifters, a couple men with prison records.... As long as we leave them alone, they leave us alone. Send in any officials, and they scatter all over. Better to keep them in one spot—health violations or not.”

  “Makes sense. Though a few well-placed hints concerning those outhouses wouldn’t hurt—maybe a surprise inspection or two.”

  “Noted.”

  Desiree hung the sling back around her neck and slid her arm through it.

  “What? No lecture on insubordination?” Virgil asked.

  “No. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. Jamie’s as bad as you are.”

  They continued their walk down the hall. Desiree stopped at the ladies’ room. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I’ll call the drugstore.”

  Desiree nodded, then stepped inside. The mirror showed a bruised face, half-curled, half-burned hair and a bandage over a row of stitches. Back to the scissors, she thought. I’ve seen better-looking road-kill. She reached into her back pocket for her comb and lipstick. Empty. They were with her things from the hospital; she’d thrown her bag in Wyatt’s car—her prescription, too. Her head was throbbing again, her shoulder was aching, and she hadn’t slept that well in the hospital last night. She was pale, too. It’s because I’m not wearing makeup. It’s the bathroom lights. But she didn’t convince herself. Desiree tried to finger comb the mess that used to be her hair and gave up.

  Time to go home. Just as soon as Virgil hears from the drugstore.

  Desiree turned her back to the mirror and left, rejoining her staff in the office. Virgil was just hanging up the phone.

  “Jondell’s alibi?” she asked.

  Virgil nodded. “It checks out. He was there in the hardware section at the time of the fire. Two clerks confirmed it.”

  Damn! That means I have no choice if I intend to play by the rules... to abide by my oath to uphold the law.

  “Jamie, turn the prisoner loose.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  VIRGIL ELECTED TO STAY in the office for the day but arranged for Morgan to come and drive Desiree home. She half dozed in the car, waking up only when they got to the Silver Dollar. She visited Caro, let the others fuss over her for a few minutes, then, with a cheerful Oscar at her side, lay down for a long nap. She had her room back, although Jasentha’s mother was still living at the ranch. Rogelio had insisted Lozen stay there, since she couldn’t work, and in Tucson had no one to care for her. But she’d left Desiree’s room and moved into his place. Desiree was grateful; she preferred her bed to napping on a couch.

  When she finally woke, it was late evening, and Virgil was knocking on her door. He had nothing new to report, it seemed, except that Jondell had been released, as per her orders.

  “So he’s back at the campground?”

  “Yes. And on the home front, Caro came down to dinner. She said to let you sleep.”

  “How is she?”

  “Better than yesterday. How about you?”

  Desiree yawned. “Okay, but I need to shower.” She’d showered before her release, but she hadn’t managed to wash away the hospital smell and the smoke.

  “Then I’ll leave you alone. Caro wants to bring you up a tray. Shall I tell her that’s okay?”

  “Yes, please do. Thanks, Virgil.”

  After a quick shower and meal, Desiree felt almost human again. Her shoulder hurt less, and her head just ached a bit instead of throbbing. With Caro’s help, she’d even managed another scissors session in front of her mirror. Her hair, while now very short on the sides, was at least even. She’d left the longer top as it was, combing down the curls to hide her stitches and fresh bandage. She’d thrown on another pair of jeans and a casual shirt, and since Caro had left to . check on Cat, she was about to decide between a good book in her room or some TV downstairs, when she glanced out the window and a flicker of movement caught her eye.

  Where’s Travis going? It’s after nine o’clock!

  Desiree ran out into the hallway, surprising Virgil.

  “I was coming to get you!” she exclaimed. “Where’s Travis?”

  “I just put
him to bed.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Desiree immediately opened the door to Travis’s room. The bed was empty.

  “Check the bathroom,” Desiree ordered, racing back to her own window. Travis was gone, but she knew what she’d seen. She had her boots on when Virgil rejoined her a few seconds later.

  “He’s not in the house.”

  “I know which way he’s going. Let’s get the horses.”

  “You don’t have to come. I’ll catch up with him.”

  Desiree grabbed his arm. “Get the horses, Virgil. He’s headed straight toward the campground.” She hesitated, not sure whether to tell him what she knew or suspected. “It’s... I don’t think it’s the first time.”

  Virgil gave her a hard look, but didn’t debate her suggestion. He picked up the phone, and with a few curt words to Rogelio, asked that their horses be saddled.

  “Anything wrong?” Morgan inquired as they hurried downstairs and toward the kitchen exit.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Virgil replied. But they stopped to unlock the cabinet and remove their guns.

  THE NIGHT REMAINED WARM, the air sultry, with more than a hint of rain in the distance. The horses weren’t happy at being taken away from their barn. Neither was Virgil. Desiree should have been home in bed. He watched her from time to time. Except for the stiffness in her shoulder, she seemed to be all right.

  Ah, to be ten years younger. His feet ached, and he felt a moment’s longing for the Jacuzzi he’d left behind in California—and his defunct loafers instead of Wyatt’s oversize sneakers. But what he truly longed for was Desiree’s intuition.

  She’s as good at calling people’s actions as Morgan is—and Morgan’s no slouch. This is the second time she’s helped me out with Travis. He envied—and esteemed—her abilities. Despite some mistakes in judgment, he felt she had the makings of a damn fine sheriff. He could tell by the way she’d stood up to Jondell in that interview room and actually got him talking to her.

  Or how she’d slept out at the campground alone.

  And now, helping him to search for his son. Where was Travis?

  “He can’t be too far, Virgil. He’s not as familiar with the land as you are.”