by J. A. Jance
Even though Jeff’s and Marianne’s lives appeared to be complete now, Joanna knew that her friend carried an unhealed wound in her heart. Coming here automatically forced Joanna to revisit Andy’s death, and Marianne would be dealing with Esther’s. For both of them, their good deeds in caring for Amy Ruiz would not go unpunished.
Joanna made her way to the OR waiting room, expecting at any moment to be accosted by someone objecting to the presence of her firearm, but no one said a word. Before exiting the elevator on the OR floor, she said a silent prayer asking for guidance, and then, squaring her shoulders, she entered the waiting room. She expected to find Amy Ruiz already there, but she wasn’t. The room was full of people, all of them strangers.
Joanna tucked herself away in a corner seat and waited. She sat there for a while, but then, remembering she’d been putting the final touches on her budget request that morning, she pulled out her iPad. Butch had fixed her laptop so she could access files remotely from the tablet. She wasn’t nearly as fast typing on the iPad’s flat keyboard as on a real one, but she could do editing just fine. And that’s what she did. While she was at it, she put in an additional request. She still had access to the line item that had included the amount necessary for body cameras. She added that one in, right along with her request for extra personnel.
If Dave Newton’s investigation failed to exonerate Armando and some kind of multimillion-dollar lawsuit resulted, Joanna would be able to show in dollars and cents how spending a small amount of money on bodycams might have made all the difference.
She had just finished putting the final touches on that and sending it when Frank Montoya came in with Amy leaning on his arm. They stopped at the nurses’ station long enough, Joanna suspected, for Amy to be given a beeper that would let her know when Armando had been moved from the OR to a recovery room.
When Frank and Amy turned to search the room, Joanna waved them into the two unoccupied chairs she’d been saving for them. Amy looked like hell. When Joanna saw her earlier, before delivering the news, she’d seemed completely put together. Now her makeup was gone, her hair was a mess, and the despair on her face was apparent for all to see.
“He’s still in surgery,” Amy announced, “and I need to use the restroom.”
As she walked away, Joanna turned to Frank. “I thought you’d be here first.”
“So did I,” he said, “but Amy insisted on getting her kids organized and packing a bag to bring along. I think she knows she’ll be here for several days.”
“She’s not wrong about that,” Joanna said grimly. “I’m pretty sure she will be.”
“She cried most of the way here, so she’s probably cried out at this point,” Frank continued. “The problem is, much as I hate to do it, I have to drop her and run. I have a meeting coming up later this afternoon that I must attend.”
“You’ve done way more than your share,” Joanna told him gratefully. “I’ll be here, and so will Marianne Maculyea.”
Chapter 6
Joanna and Amy Ruiz sat together for the next two hours, but they mostly didn’t talk. Amy was busy fielding phone calls from relatives and well-wishers, and although Joanna knew that the calls were all well intentioned, she could see that every time Amy had to repeat the story of what had happened and tell people Armando was still in surgery, it depleted her that much more.
Finally, when Amy was briefly between phone calls, Joanna reached over and touched the woman’s knee.
“The people who are calling you all mean well, but they don’t have any idea that they’re draining away your strength. Turn off the phone. People can leave messages, and you can return them at your leisure. Have you had anything to eat?”
Amy shook her head. “Not since breakfast,” she said. “But I’m not hungry.”
“You still need to eat,” Joanna said firmly, sounding just like her mother. It was the same thing Eleanor Lathrop Winfield would have said, with the exact same inflection. “If nothing else, you can pick at a bowl of chicken noodle soup, but it’s going to be a very long night, and if you don’t get some nourishment, you’ll crash and burn.”
“This sounds like the voice of experience speaking,” Amy said, giving Joanna a wan smile.
Joanna nodded. “After Andy was shot, this is where they brought him. And then, when I lost him . . .” She paused, remembering, and then swallowed hard before she continued. “After a while things got so bad that I had to get away, so I took off on foot. I had no idea of where I was going or what I was going to do. I ended up at a hotel a few blocks from here—a place called the Arizona Inn. Have you ever heard of it?”
Amy shook her head.
“I went inside and tried to eat some lunch,” Joanna continued. “I ordered food, but I couldn’t eat it. I left most of my sandwich on the plate, and then I went outside. It’s a resort, you see—an oasis, really—with beautiful plush lawns and gardens. There was this little palm-frond-covered patio with a Ping-Pong table and four big blue wooden chairs, one in each corner.
“I was sitting in one of them, crying my eyes out, when this old lady came walking up to me. She looked ancient, probably somewhere in her nineties at least. One leg was in a brace of some kind, so she walked with a funny gait, but she stomped up to me like she owned the place and asked me if I was a guest. I wasn’t, of course, and I was sure she was about to throw me out, but then something strange happened. She asked me what was wrong and what she could do to help. All of a sudden, I spilled out the whole story—to a complete stranger. Then she took my arm and walked me to the lobby entrance, as though we’d been friends forever. I’ll never forget the words she said as she sent me on my way. ‘It will take time, my dear, but someday things will be better for you. Just you wait and see.’”
“And she was right?” Amy asked.
“Yes,” Joanna replied after a moment, “she was right, but it took a long time. That’s why I think things will be better for you, too, eventually, but right now it’s time for baby steps. We’re going to go down to the cafeteria. You may not swallow a bite of food, but I hope you’ll at least try.”
Chicken soup was one of the items on the cafeteria menu, and that seemed like a good choice. Since breakfast had been a very long time ago, Joanna ordered two bowls instead of one. Joanna ate hers. Amy did not. She stirred at it absently but swallowed only a taste or two. They spoke very little, and Joanna didn’t push it. There wasn’t that much to say. The road ahead for the Ruiz family held two stark and very different choices—either Armando would recover from his injuries or he would not.
Amy’s beeper buzzed just after four. She leaped up like a frightened rabbit and started to clear the table. “You go,” Joanna said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Joanna was heading for the hospital elevator when a call came through from Arlee Jones. “Who the hell does Dave Newton think he is, coming into my county and telling me what I can and can’t do?” Cochise County’s chief prosecutor demanded.
Joanna’s first encounter with Newton had been in Pima County as opposed to Cochise, so it hadn’t fallen under Arlee Jones’s aegis.
“He is a bit of a jerk,” Joanna replied. She could have said a whole lot more, but she didn’t.
“He’s way more than ‘a bit,’” Arlee countered. “And he was walking around dissing Dave and Casey, acting as though our people don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”
He was dissing their boss, too. That’s what Joanna thought, but she didn’t say it aloud.
“What’s the deal with the fingerprints on the table knife?” Arlee asked. “Casey said you wanted them.”
Joanna took a breath and launched into an explanation. “Garth Raymond said that according to at least one of the Hogan kids they were playing in the bedroom when Armando showed up with the protection order. After the doorbell rang, someone—they didn’t see who—locked them inside the bedroom. After that they heard sounds of a struggle, followed by gunshots. At least I believe that’s the correct chronolog
y. And so I’m curious. Who locked them in the bedroom, their father or their mother? Since Madison Hogan swore out the protection order just yesterday, how come she was stark naked at her husband’s residence early this morning?”
“She was naked because they had just gotten out of bed,” Arlee replied.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I asked her,” Arlee replied. “When I got tired of watching Detective Newton strutting around the crime scene like some puffed-up peacock, I took myself to the hospital and talked to the wife. Madison told me she called Mr. Hogan to ask for Christmas money for the kids. He said he’d give her some, but only if she and the kids came out to his place in Whetstone to spend the night. She decided that since the protection order hadn’t been delivered, her going there wouldn’t be a problem. I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor guy. He probably thought he’d get a piece of tail for his trouble. Instead he ended up with a bullet in his chest.”
Arlee Jones wasn’t exactly a font of political correctness.
“Frank Montoya told me that while the Hogans were still together and living in Sierra Vista, his department had responded to several domestic-violence incidents at their residence. In all those cases, Madison was deemed to be the aggressor. So where did the gun come from? Whose was it? What kind?”
“A Glock 17,” Arlee answered. “Dave Hollicker found a bunch of spent casings around the front door of the mobile home near where we found Leon Hogan’s body. They also found a single casing in the living room of the trailer, along with a bullet hole and a bullet in the living-room ceiling.”
“That coincides with what the little girl told Deputy Raymond—that the fight started inside the house and then moved outside, where, presumably, Leon Hogan was firing his weapon as he approached Deputy Ruiz.”
“That’s how it looks to me,” Arlee agreed. “Leon Hogan came out firing, and both Deputy Ruiz and Madison Hogan took cover behind the door of his vehicle. Hogan fired several shots. There was plenty of brass on the pouch and several slugs hit Armando’s vehicle, but only one bullet actually hit the door.”
“The one that hit him?”
“That’s right. It shattered the driver’s-side window and then ricocheted off the frame before striking Armando in the gut. I don’t think Hogan could shoot for beans, and the fact that Armando got hit was more of a fluke than anything else. How is he, by the way?”
“Just out of surgery,” Joanna said. “He’s in Recovery right now, so there’s no word on his condition. Amy, his wife, is with him.”
“Good to hear he made it through surgery,” Arlee said. “Now I just wish someone could take Newton down a peg or two. From what I saw, Armando Ruiz acted in self-defense, but that doesn’t mean those guys from DPS can’t drag out the investigation, making Armando’s life as miserable as possible for as long as possible—make yours miserable, too, for that matter.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Joanna said, “but think about those poor Hogan kids. Their lives are pretty miserable at the moment, too. There’s a good chance one of them saw their naked mother screaming over the body of their dead father.”
“Unfortunately, that’s something they’ll never be able to unsee,” Arlee Jones observed sadly.
For the first time ever, Joanna felt a real human connection to the crusty old prosecutor.
“Where are they right now?” she asked.
“The Hogan kids?” Arlee asked.
“Yes.”
“Back with their mother, I suppose,” Arlee replied. “Madison was hysterical when the EMTs brought her to the hospital in Sierra Vista. The doctors there gave her something to calm her down and take the edge off, but they were getting ready to release her about the time I was leaving. CPS was right to remove the kids from the crime scene, but I can’t see any reason for them not to be returned to their mother’s custody.”
“Were they interviewed before they went back to her?” Joanna asked.
“I thought they should have been,” Arlee replied, “but Newton said otherwise. Those state-run three-letter folks stick together. When DPS says jump, CPS says how far.”
Joanna thought about that for a moment. “Even so,” she said finally, “something about all this just doesn’t feel right.”
“Not to me either,” Arlee agreed, “but I think I should get off the phone. I’m sure I’ve bothered you long enough. I had to rant and rave about Newton to someone, and you were the only one I could think of.”
“Feel free,” Joanna said. “Anytime.”
He ended the call. Reluctant to carry on her conversation with Arlee in a crowded elevator, Joanna had stayed in the downstairs corridor while they talked. Off the phone with him, she stayed where she was and dialed Casey Ledford’s number.
“Dave Newton is a complete asshole,” Casey said when she answered.
Joanna laughed in spite of herself. “It doesn’t sound like he’s busy winning friends and influencing people today,” she said. “I was just on the phone with Arlee Jones. He was singing the same song, different verse.”
“How’s Armando?” Casey wanted to know.
“Out of surgery,” Joanna replied. “His wife is with him. I’m about to go upstairs to check on his condition, but let me ask you a question. How are you doing?”
“We’ve gathered what we can from the crime scene, and that includes the table knife you asked for, the one from the hallway just outside the kids’ bedroom.”
“And the fight started inside the house, in the living room?”
“That’s how it looks. We’re packing up right now so we can go back to the lab and start processing.”
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Let me know what you find.”
“Off the record, right?” Casey asked.
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Definitely off the record.”
Her next call was to Detective Deb Howell.
“How’s Armando?” the detective wanted to know. Joanna gave her the same answer she’d given to Casey.
“I guess you got pushed off the case the same way we did,” Deb grumbled. “What’s there to investigate? It sounds to me as though the guy had a gun in his hand and was shooting to kill. Why wouldn’t Armando use deadly force?”
“I agree,” Joanna said. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Why, then?” Deb asked. “What do you need?”
“I’d like you to look into Madison Hogan.”
“The dead guy’s wife? Why? What’s this all about?”
“Leon and Madison Hogan had a contentious marriage,” Joanna replied. “According to Frank there were several incidents of domestic violence at their residence prior to Leon’s moving out. In each case the husband was the one with visible injuries and Madison was the one who was taken into custody.”
“My understanding is we’re not to have anything to do with Armando’s case.”
“This has nothing to do with the shooting itself. This is about the Hogans’ two kids, Kendall and Peter.”
“What about them?”
“When officers arrived on the scene, the kids were locked in a bedroom. The little girl told Deputy Raymond that just before a fight broke out in the living room, someone shut the door and locked them inside by shoving a table knife through a hasp on the outside of the door.”
“Who locks kids inside bedrooms?” Deb demanded.
“Good question,” Joanna returned. “And why? The whole thing seems off to me somehow. Armando was there to deliver a protection order that Madison Hogan swore out yesterday, yet she evidently took the kids to Leon’s place to spend the night. She told Arlee Jones that she went there in hopes of getting money from Leon to buy Christmas presents for the kids, but I wonder if that’s true. It was a school night. What were the kids doing at their father’s mobile home in Whetstone this morning when they should have been at school in Sierra Vista?”
“I don’t understand,” Deb said. “What are you saying?”
“I’m just wondering i
f Madison Hogan had some other underlying reason for going to Whetstone, something that has nothing to do with Christmas presents. But that’s Dave Newton’s problem, not ours. For right now I’m worried about the kids.”
“What about them?”
“Maybe I’m nuts, but what if Leon Hogan wasn’t the only victim of domestic violence living in that household? Maybe he’s not the one who locked the kids in that bedroom. What if their mother did?”
A brief but telling silence followed. “Considering what we all know about Jeremy Stock, I don’t think you’re nuts,” Deb replied. “And believe me, Sheriff Brady, I’m all over it. Do you have any idea which school the two kids attend?”
“Not a clue,” Joanna answered, “but check with Frank Montoya. He knows where the family lives, so he’ll know which school.”
Chapter 7
It was dark outside and well past dinnertime, but Kendall could tell that no dinner would be forthcoming. Fortunately, that nice Mrs. Kidder, Daddy’s neighbor, had made toast and scrambled eggs for them for breakfast, and Mrs. Ambrose, that lady from Child Something or Other, had bought them a burger from McDonald’s before she brought them back home. She said their mother had been ill and had been in the emergency room, but now that she was home, they could go home, too. And then she had sat there in the living room with them while their mother told them that Daddy was gone.
Kendall had known that from the beginning, but Peter hadn’t known until later, after their mother told them to go to their room and stay there.
“What does gone mean?” Peter had asked. “Will we still be able to see Daddy on weekends?”
Kendall had explained. “It means he’s dead.”
“Like Coon you mean?”
Coon had been the family dog, a bluetick hound, one with long floppy ears and a very cold nose. Daddy had brought Coon home as a puppy the year Kendall was five. Coon was supposed to be Kendall’s dog, but he had really belonged to Peter more than he did to her. He slept at the foot of Peter’s bed, and when they were home, he was always nearby. When Daddy left, he was going to take Coon with him, but Peter had cried and begged for the dog to stay with them, and he had. Then, a few weeks later, Kendall had come home from school and found Peter on the bed with his head buried in the pillow, crying like crazy.