Exit Wounds

by J. A. Jance

  But at least, Joanna thought as she darted once more through the whirling sea of dirt and grit, at least she can hold him one last time. At least she can say good-bye.

  Moments later Joanna found herself leaning heavily against the front fender of the nearest ambulance, barfing into a clump of sun-dried verbena that had grown up along the edge of the pavement. Somehow she knew that this wave of sour banana nausea had nothing at all to do with her own baby. She was still heaving when someone laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

  “Joanna?” Frank Montoya asked. “Are you all right?”

  She wiped her mouth on her shirttail. “Not really,” she managed. “You wouldn’t happen to have any water on you, would you? Mine’s all gone.”

  Her chief deputy disappeared and returned a moment later with a bottle of water.

  “The blood on your arm looks pretty bad,” he said. “Are you hurt?”

  Joanna looked down at her bloodied arm and thought about Suzanne Blake. “My heart’s hurt,” she said softly. “There was a two-year-old baby in that car, Frank. A baby whose mother was willing to risk death for both of them to bring him here. They came on the Fourth of July, for God’s sake! I’m sure she thought she was giving her son a chance at a better life. Instead, she’s hurt and he’s dead.”

  Frank nodded. “Somebody told me there were five dead.”

  “Six,” Joanna corrected. “Counting the baby.”

  Frank studied her face for a long moment. “Look, Joanna,” he said at last, “my car’s right over there. Maybe you’d better come sit down for a couple of minutes.”

  Any other time, Joanna Brady might have argued the point. With a docility that surprised them both, she allowed herself to be guided to Frank’s Crown Victoria and placed in the rider’s seat while he stood outside.

  “I talked to Officer O’Dea of DPS a couple of minutes ago,” Frank told her. “I met up with him on my way here. He said to tell you that so far there’s no sign of the driver.”

  “That figures, but we’ll find him,” Joanna declared. “Terry and Spike are out combing the desert for him right this minute.”

  Frank nodded in agreement. “Jaime and Ernie just pulled up,” he added. “I’ll go see if they have what they need.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Joanna said.

  “I don’t think so,” Frank said. “Not right now. Sit tight for a couple of minutes.”

  “But…”

  “Nobody’s keeping score, boss,” Frank told her. “Lighten up. Give yourself a break.”

  Joanna nodded. “All right,” she agreed.

  She sat in the car and leaned her head against the seat back, but when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the little boy lying in the dirt with his shattered skull oozing blood. Minutes later, and against Frank’s advice, she was down in the dry bed of Silver Creek watching Jaime Carbajal shoot crime scene photos. The bodies of five of the victims remained where they had fallen. The sixth one was missing, but Joanna refused to feel any sense of guilt about that. When the time came, she led Jaime and Ernie Carpenter to the clump of mesquite where she had found the dead child.

  “Was the boy alive when you found him?” Ernie Carpenter asked, his pen poised over his own notebook.

  Joanna looked her investigator straight in the eye. “Would I have moved him if he hadn’t been?”

  Ernie’s thick eyebrows knotted into a frown, but he said nothing. Joanna was grateful he was willing to let it go at that. It helped that George Winfield came scrambling down the bank into the creek bed just then. His timely arrival provided Joanna with a welcome change of focus.

  He glanced around the scene and shook his head. “Hell of a way to get out of Ellie’s annual fireworks party,” he said. “Where do we start?”

  Joanna was still at the crime scene forty-five minutes later, when Deputy Howell came to announce that the K-9 unit had just radioed in for assistance. Deputy Gregovich and Spike had located the driver, who, in a futile effort to escape the dog, had fallen down a cliff and injured his ankle.

  “Too bad he didn’t break his neck and save us all a hell of a lot of trouble,” Joanna told Debbie Howell. “Take a team of EMTs and go get him, but don’t bring him back here. If he comes too close, I’m as likely to shoot him as look at him.”

  Five more hours passed before Joanna finally crawled back into her Civvie and headed home, having missed her evening appearance in Willcox. She was drained and tired and, surprisingly, hungry. She let herself into the darkened house and stopped off in the kitchen long enough to make herself some hot chocolate—not the instant stuff where you add hot water and stir. No, she hauled out a saucepan and made the old-fashioned kind. The recipe, learned at her father’s knee, came complete with canned milk, chocolate syrup, salt, sugar, and vanilla. She was just sprinkling sugar and cinnamon onto a piece of buttered toast when a bathrobe-clad Butch appeared in the kitchen.

  “How was it?” he asked, pouring the remaining half cup of cocoa for himself.

  “Bad,” Joanna told him. “A speeding Suburban full of UDAs turned over at Silver Creek east of Douglas. The department of public safety investigator estimates the guy was doing at least eighty when he slammed through the Jersey barrier at a construction site. Six dead, including a two-year-old boy. Twenty-some injured, some of them critical.”

  “Six dead and twenty-some injuries,” Butch repeated. “How many people were in the car?”

  “Thirty.”

  Easing himself onto a stool beside her, Butch whistled. “They must have been stacked inside like cordwood.”

  Joanna nodded. “They were,” she said dully. “The driver was wearing a seat belt. Naturally the son of a bitch walked away unscathed.”

  “How are you, Joey?” Butch asked after a pause.

  He knew her well enough to ask. Joanna didn’t dodge the question. “Not so good,” she admitted, biting her lip. “I’m the one who found the baby.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That had to be pretty rough.”

  “It was. He couldn’t have been more than two, Butch. And he ended up dead in a clump of mesquite with the back of his head bashed in.”

  Joanna’s voice quivered audibly as she spoke. Butch reached over, put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her over so she was leaning against his chest.

  “That’s not all.”

  “What else?”

  “I’m a sworn police officer, but I deliberately disturbed evidence at a crime scene.”

  Butch’s carefully placed his empty cup on the granite-tiled surface of the counter. “You did what?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “The boy was dead when I found him, Butch,” Joanna confessed. “I know I should have left him where he was, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I picked him up and carried him to his mother. She was in a helicopter on her way to the hospital in Bisbee, but I called it back. I gave her the boy’s body—so she could hold him one more time, so she could say good-bye. I know I shouldn’t have, Butch, but with all the other bodies lying everywhere, I didn’t think it would hurt…”

  Joanna’s voice trailed off into a stifled sob. Butch pulled her close and let her weep into the shoulder of his terry-cloth robe.

  “It’s okay, Joey,” he said soothingly. “It’s okay. It sounds like this was one of those times when you had two choices, both of them right and both of them wrong. You did what you had to do.”

  Butch and Joanna sat that way for several minutes. Finally Butch pushed her away. “With all this going on,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll have to go into the office tomorrow, right?”

  Sniffling, Joanna nodded. “Probably.”

  “Well, then, come on. It’s late. We’d better go to bed and try to get some sleep.”

  Taking Joanna by the hand, Butch led her into the bedroom. It wasn’t until she was lying in bed next to Butch that she finally thought to question him about the results of Jenny’s barrel-racing performance.

  “She did all right,” Butch a
nswered.

  “All right?” Joanna asked.

  “Jenny didn’t bring home a ribbon, if that’s what you mean,” Butch said. “But she was out there making the effort. She and Kiddo did a good job, but remember, it was also their first time out. Not only that, Jenny was by far the youngest competitor in the bunch. Don’t worry. She can hold her head up.”

  “Was she upset that I wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t think so,” Butch said. “Jenny knows you have a job to do, Joey. We both do.”

  “I wanted to be there. I meant to be there.”

  “I know you did, but allow me to let you in on a little secret. You can’t be in two places at once. Now hush up and go to sleep.”

  Within seconds, Butch had turned over onto his side and was snoring softly. With the day’s events taken into consideration, Joanna expected to lie awake, tossing and turning, but she didn’t. Within minutes she, too, was sound asleep.

  In her dream, the SUV driver was on his knees, cowering in front of her. She was holding a gun in her hand. Not one of her little Glocks, but her father’s old .357-magnum. “Please, lady,” the guy begged. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It was an accident. I was just doing my job.”

  “Those people didn’t have a chance,” she told him scornfully. “And neither do you.”

  With that she pulled the trigger and the back of his skull exploded. He fell onto his back. As a pool of blood spread out beneath him, Joanna turned and walked away, still carrying the .357.

  Ten

  The horror of the nightmare woke her up. Shaken, Joanna reached across the bed, hoping to find Butch Dixon’s comforting presence, but he wasn’t there. His side of the bed was empty. With one hand over her mouth to stave off the retching, she piled out of bed. By then, Lady knew the drill and was smart enough to scramble out of the way as Joanna once again raced for the bathroom to deal with that day’s worth of morning sickness.

  She was still pale and shaken when she made her way into the kitchen. “How long is this going to last?” Butch asked as he handed her a mug of tea.

  Joanna shrugged. “Last time I was fine for the first month, sick as a dog for the second, and fine again after that—except for drinking or smelling coffee.” That was when she noticed that the coffeepot next to the sink was empty. “No coffee for you this morning, either?”

  He held up a stainless-steel covered mug. “Iced,” he answered. “Made from yesterday’s coffee. I thought if you didn’t have to smell me making it, maybe you wouldn’t get sick. Obviously that didn’t work.”

  “It was nice of you to try,” she said, smiling wanly.

  “Maybe I should start marking off days on the calendar,” Butch said. “And how long do you go on eating mostly peanut butter? It’s not what I call a balanced diet.”

  “No,” Joanna agreed, “but I’m sure I won’t starve.”

  “Lucky chewed up another one of Jenny’s boots yesterday,” Butch mentioned in passing.

  “Not one of the new ones!”

  “Yes, one of the new ones. And the right one, just like the other pair. If he’d chewed up the left-hand one, she’d still have two boots to work with even if they weren’t a pair. I tried to explain to her that, with a puppy in the house, she can’t leave anything lying around untended. I don’t think she got the message.”

  “Will she this time?” Joanna asked.

  Butch shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Especially if this pair of boots comes out of her own pocket.” He came over and settled onto the stool next to Joanna’s. “By the way,” he said, “your mother called late last night.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m not sure. She said she was looking for George and wondered if you were home.”

  “That wasn’t it,” Joanna said. “I’m guessing she really wanted to find out if her calling out the big gun had any effect on me.”

  “What big gun?” Butch asked.

  Joanna told Butch about Bob Brundage’s call. Butch listened to the story in thoughtful silence and shook his head when she finished. “Eleanor just doesn’t get it,” he said.

  “Get what?”

  “The idea that you’re all grown up and able to make your own decisions.”

  “You’re right,” Joanna said. “And I doubt she ever will.”

  An hour later, when Joanna drove into the Justice Center parking lot, she noticed an Arizona DPS van that was parked in front of the gate to the razor-wire-surrounded impound lot where the wrecked remains of the Suburban had been hauled and deposited for inspection. It had been decided the night before that this would be a joint-operation investigation, and Joanna was glad to see someone from the Department of Public Safety was already on the job. So was Dave Hollicker.

  “Finding anything important?” Joanna asked as she joined the two clipboard-carrying officers who were conferring earnestly just to the left of the Suburban’s smashed driver’s-side fender.

  “This is Sheriff Brady,” Dave said, seeing her for the first time. “And this is Sergeant Steve Little of the DPS.”

  “Glad to meet you, Sheriff Brady,” Sergeant Little said. “The biggest question in my mind is why this old crate was still on the road in the first place. No way it should have been doing ninety miles an hour. The brakes are shot. The shock absorbers are rusted out, and, with as many people as he had in there, the vehicle was grossly overloaded.”

  “Who’s it registered to?” Joanna asked.

  “A guy in Tucson who says he sold it last week to a Hispanic guy who paid him a thousand bucks in cash and said he needed it for his landscaping business. He used it for landscaping, all right. Turned it into a bulldozer.”

  “Do we have any idea who ‘he’ is?” Joanna asked.

  Dave Hollicker shook his head. “No idea. The driver was carrying a fake ID and a fake driver’s license. He won’t answer any questions, but he’s asking for a court-appointed lawyer. Says he wants to be deported back to Mexico.”

  Joanna thought for a moment of the dead and bloodied baby she had cradled in her arms. “That driver’s not going home anytime soon,” she declared determinedly. “Not if I can help it.”

  Leaving the impound lot in her Civvie, Joanna was surprised at the number of vehicles pulling into the Justice Center parking lot. On Saturdays, when court wasn’t in session, the public parking area at the front of the complex was usually deserted. Last in the line of arriving vehicles was a battered Camry. A magnetic sign bearing the Bisbee Bee’s distinctive logo was plastered on the driver’s door.

  As passengers began spilling out onto the hot pavement, Joanna assumed they had nothing to do with her and headed for her reserved and shaded parking place behind the building. Inside her office, she used her phone to call Lupe Alvarez at the reception desk in the public office.

  “What’s going on out front, Lupe?” Joanna asked. “Did someone schedule some kind of tour or activity that I don’t know about?”

  “Beats me,” Lupe replied. “From here all I can see is a bunch of people milling around in the parking lot, lots of them waving signs. It must be some kind of demonstration.”

  “What do the signs say?” Joanna asked.

  “One of them said A-W-E,” Lupe returned. “Any idea what that means?”

  “AWE? Not the slightest,” Joanna answered. “What about the people? Do any of them look familiar?”

  “No, but most of their backs are to me right now. They seem to be posing for photos in front of the door. Right, I just saw a flash, so someone did take a picture.”

  “Why don’t you give Chief Deputy Montoya a call,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe he knows something about this.”

  “Right away, Sheriff Brady.”

  Joanna put down her phone. While she waited for Lupe to call back, she turned on her computer to check her e-mail in-box. She had twenty-seven new messages, most of them offering her ways to earn money by working at home, or quick fixes for the latest computer virus. One by one she deleted those without even opening
them. She was down to the last eleven seemingly real messages when her phone rang again.

  “Chief Deputy Montoya is on his way in,” Lupe reported. “It’ll take him about twenty minutes to get here. He’s scheduled a ten o’clock press briefing, so maybe some of the vehicles are reporters coming for that, but he doesn’t have a clue about a demonstration.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. “Well, then, since he’s not here and I am, I’d better go out and see what’s happening.”

  Since it was Saturday and Joanna had planned on spending the entire day in the office, she had come to work wearing jeans and a wrinkled but comfy linen blazer. If a newspaper photographer was outside snapping pictures, it was likely that a less-than-wonderful photo of Sheriff Brady would end up appearing in print.

  Eleanor Lathrop was nowhere around, but Joanna had a fair idea of how their next conversation would go. “How could you possibly go to work dressed like that,” her mother would ask, “looking like something the cat dragged in? What about that nice uniform you wore in the Fourth of July parade?”

  Walking toward the door, Joanna smiled grimly to herself, imagining the reaction if she came right out and told Eleanor that the uniform was out of commission due to an encounter with puppy pee. An answer like that wouldn’t be well received.

  Opening the front door, Joanna stepped out onto the shaded veranda where a shorts-clad blonde with short-cropped hair was speaking earnestly to Kevin Dawson. Kevin, the Bisbee Bee’s ace reporter and photographer, was also, by some strange coincidence, the son of the newspaper’s publisher and editor in chief.