Missing and Endangered

by J. A. Jance

  “What’s wrong?” Kendall had asked.

  When Peter had come home from school that day, Mommy had told him that Coon had somehow gotten out of the yard, been hit by a car, and died. She said the vet tried, but he couldn’t save him.

  Kendall had never believed that story. If Coon was dead, it had more to do with the fact that Mom’s new boyfriend, Randy, hated him than it did with Coon getting out of the yard. But she didn’t mention that to Peter any more than she had told him earlier that their father was dead, even though she’d known that long before their mother got around to telling them.

  As soon as she’d heard that first gunshot, she’d made Peter hide under the bed. After that the shots had come thick and fast. When they ended and the screaming started, Kendall had tried the door only to discover that it was locked from the outside. Wanting to know what had happened, she’d climbed up on top of the dresser and peeked out the window. The moment she saw Daddy lying on the porch with a big patch of blood spreading on his shirt and with his eyes open and staring at the sky, she knew he was dead. She’d seen dead people before, but only on TV, not in real life. This was definitely real. Daddy had told her that he was going to fix it so she and Peter could come live with him, but now she knew that was never going to happen.

  After Mrs. Ambrose left, Mommy had told Kendall and Peter that people were coming over that night and they needed to stay in their room. Randy was there, and some other people were there, too. Kendall could hear them laughing, talking, smoking, and probably drinking, too. Mommy did that a lot. It sounded like it was a party, which didn’t seem right, not with Daddy dead.

  In the meantime Kendall and Peter lay on the floor in their bedroom with Peter’s Spider-Man coloring book between them. Peter was weird and liked to color upside down, so he was on one side of the book and she was on the other, listening while he jabbered away about which color he was going to use next. She was glad that her brother was busy and talking. Then he said something that caught her attention.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  Kendall had hoped that that late-afternoon hamburger had been enough. Now she knew that it wasn’t. She also knew that leaving their bedroom wasn’t an option. She’d done that once when Mommy had friends over. She tiptoed out of the room and had been creeping down the hallway toward the bathroom when she saw some man she didn’t know going into Mommy’s bedroom. She must have made a noise. Just then Randy turned up behind Kendall, grabbed her by the shoulder, and spun her around. She’d never liked him. Randy had mean eyes and a nasty way about him, but that night was the first time he’d really scared her.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he told her, giving her a stiff shake. “You go back to your bedroom right now,” he’d ordered, hissing the words and shaking his finger in her face. “And don’t you come out again either. Or else.”

  Kendall didn’t know what “or else” meant, and she didn’t want to find out. She didn’t want Peter to find out either. So when there were evening visitors at the house, the kids usually stayed in their room no matter what—hunger included.

  Even before Randy and his pals started hanging around, there’d been times when Mommy sent them to bed without remembering they hadn’t had any dinner. As a result Kendall had taken to sneaking food—cookies, crackers, and sometimes even dry cereal—into their room and hiding the items away in the closet in case they were ever needed. Tonight they were.

  “How would you like a marshmallow sandwich right here in the room?” Kendall asked.

  Peter shook his head. “There’s no such thing as a marshmallow sandwich,” he said.

  “Yes there is.”

  “Is not. Show me.”

  And so Kendall did. After making Peter close his eyes, she got up from her place on the floor and went over to the chair by the door where she had dropped her backpack. Daddy had always loved cooking outside on his Weber grill, and once he moved out and went to live in Whetstone, the grill had gone with him. When Kendall and Peter would go to stay with him on weekends, that’s what he would make for them to eat—burgers, hot dogs, or sometimes even steaks—all of them cooked on the grill. And after dinner he always made s’mores for dessert.

  Last night when Mommy told them to go to bed, she and Daddy had still been in the living room. On their way through the kitchen, Kendall had spotted a partially used bag of marshmallows and several unopened packets of graham crackers sitting on the counter. She’d gathered them up and carried them into their bedroom. She’d used one of her scrunchies to close the marshmallow bag before stuffing it and the packets of graham crackers into her backpack. She produced them now, pulling them out of the backpack one by one with the same kind of flourish a magician might use when pulling rabbits out of a hat.

  Daddy always bought the huge marshmallows, not the medium ones or the tiny ones. These were big enough that when you stuck them between two crackers, it looked like a real sandwich. Kendall had to admit that she missed the crunchy burned crust that Daddy always left on the outside of the marshmallows, but she didn’t complain, and neither did Peter. It was something for them to eat, and by then they were both hungry.

  “Put on your jammies,” Kendall ordered when they finished eating and as she stowed the remaining food in the corner of the closet. “It’s time for bed.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom first,” Peter said. “I need to pee.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “The door’s locked.”

  That wasn’t true. Kendall was only pretending the door was locked, and she did that so Peter wouldn’t step out into the hallway and run into Randy the same way she had. As for the peeing problem? She’d created a solution for that.

  “You’ll have to use the jar,” she told him.

  After her encounter with Randy, Kendall had cleaned out an empty peanut-butter jar, one with a lid on it, that she kept in the closet for times when the kids needed to go to bed and there was partying going on outside their door. Unfortunately, there was no work-around for brushing their teeth.

  Peter scowled. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, you have to.”

  “But why? Peeing in the jar is gross.”

  “Peeing in your pants is worse,” she said.

  Faced with that inarguable truth, Peter heaved a heartfelt sigh and did as he was told. Had he tried the door, he would have discovered that it wasn’t locked at all, but fortunately Kendall was very good at pretending, just like earlier today when she’d had to pretend that Daddy wasn’t dead. After seeing the scene outside their bedroom window, she’d climbed down from the dresser without letting Peter look outside and without telling him the truth, either. Sometime after that—a seemingly long time—a police officer had opened the door and let them out. The whole time he was walking them over to Mrs. Kidder’s house, he hadn’t said anything about what had happened to Daddy, and neither had the other cop, the one who’d talked to them later. Since the officers hadn’t mentioned a word about Daddy being dead, neither did Kendall. She just pretended it hadn’t happened, even though it had.

  Kendall also pretended that she hadn’t seen the gun. It had been lying on the front porch right next to Daddy’s hand, but she knew it wasn’t Daddy’s. He didn’t have a gun. The one on the porch was probably the one her mother usually carried around in her purse. They’d had a lesson on guns at school one day, and Kendall had come away knowing that guns shouldn’t be left lying around out in the open like that. At least that’s what her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Baird, had told them. “Guns are dangerous,” she’d said. “They need to be handled properly and shouldn’t be left in places where children have access to them.”

  Kendall didn’t bother trying to repeat those words to Peter. She just did her best to make sure he never got anywhere near Mommy’s purse.

  “Can we go to school tomorrow?” Peter asked once they were both in bed, lying in the dark with Kendall in the top bunk and Peter in the lower one.

  Peter like
d school because of the free breakfasts and free lunches. Kendall liked school because she loved her teacher. Mrs. Baird didn’t yell at people the way Mommy did. Mrs. Baird was always smiling. She said please and thank you. Mommy didn’t do any of those things.

  “We can’t,” she said. “You heard what Mommy said. We have to stay home until after the funeral.”

  “What’s a funeral?” Peter asked.

  Kendall wasn’t exactly sure what a funeral was—something to do with dead people—something to do with Daddy. She had asked Mom when that would be—the funeral, that is—and Mom said she didn’t know, that someone else would have to tell them.

  “I think it’s like a party for dead people,” Kendall answered. “Grandma Puckett is coming.”

  “Will Daddy’s mommy and daddy come, too?” Peter asked.

  Kendall had met Daddy’s parents only once when they came to Mommy and Daddy’s wedding. She knew that they lived far away, so they didn’t visit often.

  “I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug.

  But Kendall was glad they’d be having company, even if it was only Grandma Puckett. When she came to visit, there was usually a lot of yelling. Mommy didn’t seem to like her mother very much, but when she was there, the food was always better. It turns out Grandma Puckett didn’t approve of people having cold cereal for dinner. The other good thing about having Grandma visit was that Randy generally stayed away.

  Peter was quiet for a long time after that. Kendall thought he had fallen asleep, but then he spoke again. “I wish Coon were here,” he said. “He always kept my feet warm.”

  “I wish he was here, too,” Kendall replied.

  Only when she heard Peter’s breathing steady did Kendall Hogan finally give herself permission to stop pretending and to stop being brave. Only then did she give way to the tears she’d been holding back all day because she hadn’t wanted Peter to see her crying. She wept as though her heart was broken, because it was.

  Daddy and Coon were both gone, and neither of them would be coming back. Ever.

  Chapter 8

  It turned out to be a very long evening. When Joanna went back upstairs, she found Marianne Maculyea sitting with Amy in the OR waiting room. The three of them were there together when the surgeon arrived to deliver his difficult news. Armando had survived the surgery and was now in recovery. He told Amy that they’d managed to successfully resection her husband’s bowel. Once released from the hospital, Armando would be wearing a colostomy bag, something that might or might not be reversible at some point in the future. For now the biggest danger was the possibility of infection. Once out of recovery, he would be moved to the ICU, where, heavily sedated, he could be monitored for any sign of infection. In other words, there was nothing for Amy or anyone else to do but watch and wait.

  Shortly after eight that evening, Armando was transferred to the ICU, and the others moved to a different waiting room. About that time Amy’s father, Glenn Harper, showed up, arriving with a buddy in tow and with Amy’s car keys in hand. He listened in silence while his daughter laid out the situation, including the fact that in the morning Armando’s sister would be driving their mother over to Tucson from Las Cruces and dropping Amy’s mother-in-law off to stay as long as her help was needed. Glenn Harper, a retired U.S. Army colonel, was used to taking charge, and he did so as soon as Amy finished.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sounds like you’re in for a long haul, and I’m glad to hear Consuelo is coming. The kids can stay with Mom and me for as long as necessary. While Armando’s in the ICU, you’ll only be able to see him for a few minutes every hour, so you’ll be better off trying to get some rest, rather than sitting here in the waiting room all night long. I’ve reserved a room for you at a hotel over on Speedway called the Aloft. It’s just down the street on the corner of Speedway and Campbell—within walking distance if need be. Once Consuelo shows up, the two of you can spell each other, with one of you here at the hospital while the other grabs some sleep in the room.”

  “Dad,” Amy said, fighting back tears. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Yes I should. You’re my girl, and looking after you is my job. Have you eaten anything?”

  Amy glanced in Joanna’s direction and shook her head. “Not really,” she answered.

  “All right, then,” he concluded. “In order to take care of Armando, the best thing we can do right now is take care of you. To that end I’m going to make sure you have some dinner and get you checked into the hotel. The hospital will call if you’re needed.”

  Joanna knew that Glenn Harper was right. There was nothing to be gained by Amy’s toughing the night out on a hard chair in an ICU waiting room. She was surprised, however, when Amy knuckled under almost immediately and obediently did as she was told. She slipped into Armando’s room long enough to kiss him good night before allowing her father to escort her from the waiting room. With Amy gone and with nothing more for Joanna and Marianne to do, they headed out as well.

  As they rode down in the elevator, Marianne murmured sadly, “Aloft used to be the Four Points, you know.”

  Joanna nodded, because she knew what Marianne meant. The Four Points was the hotel where she and Jeff had been staying when they’d lost Esther. Reaching out, Joanna took her friend’s hand and squeezed it. “I know,” she said. “This place holds far too many bad memories for both of us.”

  Minutes later, after Joanna had turned off Kino Parkway onto I-10, Butch called. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.

  Joanna brought him up to date. He sighed when she finished. “So even after Armando recovers from surgery, he still won’t be able to return to active duty?”

  “Definitely not with a stoma,” Joanna replied. “A desk job will be the best he can do for the time being and maybe for good.”

  “Which means you’re going to be even more shorthanded in terms of sworn officers than you already are.”

  “Looks like it,” she agreed. “I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. For right now all we can do is hope and pray Armando doesn’t come down with some kind of infection. That bullet didn’t kill him, but sepsis could.”

  Joanna made the hundred-mile drive from Tucson in good time and was home in bed by eleven. Even so, it was almost three before she finally fell asleep. It was fine to tell Butch that she’d deal with the personnel crisis later, but that didn’t mean she herself believed it. Finding, hiring, and training qualified people was a difficult, time-consuming process, and keeping them on board after they were hired and trained was even more challenging.

  In the end all the tossing and turning did for Joanna was cause her to oversleep. The next morning, by the time she woke up and staggered out of the bedroom in search of coffee, Carol was on duty and she and Sage were already back from taking Denny to catch the bus. Carol, with her own cup of coffee poured and on the table next to her, sat beside Sage’s high chair supervising her breakfast.

  “You had a late night,” Carol observed, “and don’t bother telling me about it. I already know why. It made the front page. I picked up your copy of the Bee on our way back from the bus stop.”

  The Bisbee Bee was delivered on a daily basis by an auto-route driver who shoved each day’s copy into the metal newspaper cone attached to their mailbox post. This morning’s edition sat on the table next to Carol’s silverware. She pushed the paper across the table until it was close enough for Joanna to read the headline:

  Father of Two

  Shot by Deputy

  by

  Marliss Shackleford

  “Father of Two Shot by Deputy,” Joanna thought. Why not “Armed Gunman”? But the answer to that was clear enough, and most likely the article would be more of the same. Armed or not, the father was the victim here, which meant that the deputy was in the wrong.

  “I don’t have time to read this right now,” she said, tossing the offending paper in the general neighborhood of her purse. “I need to shower, dress, and get to work.”

>   By the time she reached the Justice Center, roll call was over. After touching base with Tom Hadlock and bringing him up to date on Armando’s condition, Joanna retreated to her own office, where her first call was to Amy Ruiz. Armando’s condition had been upgraded to serious but stable, with no signs of a developing infection. In addition, Amy’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law had gotten an early start leaving Las Cruces and were due at the hospital any minute. All of that was good news, and Joanna was able to turn to her pile of neglected correspondence and daily routine matters with a happier heart.

  Much later, with her desk finally cleared, she closed the door to her office and read the Bisbee Bee article all the way through:

  Leon Hogan, age 29 and a father of two, was gunned down yesterday at his residence in Whetstone by Cochise County Deputy Sheriff Armando Ruiz. Deputy Ruiz had been sent to the home to deliver a no-contact order obtained by Hogan’s estranged wife a day earlier.

  Shortly after the document was delivered, a confrontation occurred between the two men which ended in gunfire. Mr. Hogan was declared dead at the scene. Deputy Ruiz, age 31 and the father of three, was airlifted to the trauma unit at Banner–University Medical Center in Tucson, where he underwent emergency surgery. His condition is currently listed as serious.

  The officer-involved shooting is currently under investigation by officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

  “I never meant for any of this to happen,” said Madison Hogan. “I was just trying to prevent trouble, not cause it. And my poor kids. They were inside the house when all this happened, and the cops wouldn’t even let me go inside to take care of them.”