by J. A. Jance
Another little zinger. This guy isn’t easy to like, Joanna thought. Stuffing the keys in her pocket, she started toward the door.
“Class starts at eight-thirty sharp in the morning,” Dave Thompson said to her back. “Not eight thirty-five or eight-thirty-one, but eight-thirty. There’s coffee and a pickup breakfast in the student lounge. It’s not fancy—cereal, toast, and juice is all—but it’ll hold you.”
Joanna turned back to him. “You’ll be in class?”
He raised the bottle to his lips, took a swallow, and then grinned at her. “You bet,” he said “I teach the morning class. We’ve got a real good-looking crop of officers this time around.”
Joanna started to ask exactly what he meant by that, but she thought better of it. Her little go-round with Peewee Wright at the truck stop earlier that afternoon had left her feeling overly sensitive. Thompson probably meant nothing more or less than the fact that the students looked as though they’d make fine police officers.
“Any questions?” Thompson asked.
Joanna shook her head. “I’d better go drag my stuff in from the car and unpack. I want to put everything away, shower, and get a decent night’s rest.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Wouldn’t do at all for you to fall asleep in class. Might miss some important.”
As Joanna hurried out the door and headed for her car, she was suddenly filled with misgivings. If Dave Thompson was indicative of the caliber of people running APOA, maybe she had let herself in for a five-and-a-half-week waste of time.
After lugging the last of her suitcases into the room and looking around, she felt somewhat better. Although the room wasn’t as large or as nice as Dave Thompson’s, it was done in much the same style with floor-to-ceiling mirrors covering one wall of both the room and the adjacent bath. The ceilings weren’t nearly as high as they were in the office unit, and the floor was covered with a commercial grade medium-gray carpet. The bathroom, however, was luxury itself. The floor and counter tops were polished granite. The room came complete with both a king-sized Jacuzzi and glass-doored shower. All the fixtures boasted solid brass fittings.
Looking back from the bathroom door to the modest pressboard dresser, desk, headboard, and nightstand, Joanna found herself giggling, struck by the idea that she was standing in a cross between a castle and Motel 6.
Joanna spent the next half hour emptying her suitcases and putting things away. Her threadbare bath towels looked especially shabby in the upscale bathroom. When she was totally unpacked, she treated herself to a long, hot bath with the Jacuzzi heads bubbling full blast. Lying there in the steaming tub, supposedly relaxing, she couldn’t get the Grijalva kids out of her mind. Ceci and Pablo. They were orphans, all right. Twice over. Their mother was dead, and their father might just as well be.
Sighing, Joanna clambered out of the tub into the steam-filled room and turned on the exhaust fan, hoping to clear the fogged mirrors. The first whirl the blades brought a whiff of cigarette smoke to her nostrils. A moment later it was gone. Obviously, her next door neighbor was a smoker.
After toweling herself dry, Joanna pulled on a robe. By then it was only nine o’clock. Instead of getting into bed, she walked over to the desk and picked up Juanita Grijalva’s envelope, which she had dropped there in the course of unpacking. Settling at the desk, she emptied the envelope and read through all the contents, including rereading i. articles she had read earlier that afternoon in the truck stop.
This time, she took pen and paper and jotted notes as she read, writing down names and addresses as they appeared in the various articles. The Grijalvas—Antonio Jorge, Ceci, and Pablo; Jefferson Davis and Ernestina Duffy of Wittmann; of Peoria Detectives Carol Strong and Mark Hansen; Butch Dixon, bartender of the Roundhouse Bar and Grill; Anna-Ray Melton, manager of the WE-DO-YU-DO Washateria; Madeline Bellerman, Serena’s attorney.
Those were the players in the Serena Grijalva case—the ones whose names had made it into the papers. If Joanna was going to do any questioning on her own, those were the people she’d need contact.
It was after eleven when she finally put the contents back in the envelope, climbed into bed, and turned off the light. As she lay there waiting for sleep to come and trying to decide what, if anything, she was going to do about Jorge Grijalva, another faint whiff of cigarette smoke wafted her room.
Her last thought before she fell asleep was that whoever lived in the room next door had to be a chain smoker.
Joanna woke early the next morning, dressed, and hurried down to the lounge, hoping to call Jenny before she left for school. Unfortunately there was a long line at the single pay phone. All her classmates seemed to have the same need to call home.
While she waited, Joanna helped herself to coffee, juice, and a piece of toast. A newspaper had been left on the table. She picked up the paper and read one of the articles. A power-line installation, crew, working on a project southwest of Carefree, had stumbled across the decomposing body of a partially clad woman. Officers from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department were investigating the death of the so-far unidentified woman as an apparent homicide.
Joanna’s stomach turned leaden. Some other as yet unnamed family was about to have its heart torn out. Unfortunately, Joanna Brady knew exactly that felt.
“You can use the phone now,” someone said.
Joanna glanced at her watch. Ten after eight. “That’s all right,” she said. “My daughter’s already left for school. I don’t need it anymore.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Within minutes of the beginning of Dave Thompson’s opening classroom lecture, Joanna was ready to pack her bags and go back home to Bisbee. Her first encounter with the bull-necked Thompson hadn’t left a very good impression. The lecture made his stock go down even further.
Listening to him talk, Joanna could close her eyes and imagine that she was listening to her chief deputy for operations, Dick Voland. The words used, the opinions voiced, were almost the same. Why had she bothered to travel four hundred miles round-trip and spend the better part of six weeks locked up in a classroom when she could have the same kind of aggravation for free at home just by going into the office? The only difference between listening to Dave Thompson and being lectured Dick Voland lay in the fact that after a day of wrangling with Dick Voland, Joanna could at least go home to her own bed at night. As far as beds were concerned, the ones in the APOA dormitory weren’t worth a damn.
The man droned on and on. Joanna had to fight lay awake while Dave Thompson paced back and forth in front of the class. Joanna had spent years listening to Jim Bob Brady’s warm southern drawl. Thompson’s strained down-home manner of speech sounded put on and gratingly phony. Waving an old-fashioned pointer for emphasis, he delivered a drill-instructor-style diatribe meant to scare off all but the most serious-minded of the assembled students.
“Look around you,” he urged, waggling the pointer until it encompassed all the people in the room. “There’ll be some faces missing by the time we get to the end of this course. We generally expect a washout rate of between forty and fifty percent, and that’s in a good class.”
Joanna raised her eyebrows at that. The night before, Dave Thompson had said this was a good class. This morning, it evidently wasn’t. What had ringed his mind?
“You may have noticed that there aren’t any television sets in those rooms of yours,” Thompson continued. “No swimming pool or tennis courts, either. This ain’t no paid vacation, my friends. You’re here to work, plain and simple. You’d by God better get that straight from the get-go.
“There may be a few party animals in the crowd. If you think you can party all night long and then drag ass in here the next morning and sleep through the lectures, think again. Days are for classwork, and nights are for hitting the books. Do make myself clear?”
Careful not to move her head in any direction, Joanna kept her eyes focused full on Thompson’s beefy face. Peripheral vision allowed her a glimpse o
f movement in the front row where a young blond-haired man nodded his head in earnest agreement. The gesture of unquestioning approval was so pronounced it was a wonder the guy’s teeth didn’t rattle.
“Over the next few weeks, you’ll be working with a staff made up from outstanding officers who have been selected from jurisdictions all over the state,” Thompson was saying. “These are the guys who, along with yours truly, will be conducting most of the classroom instruction. We’ll be overseeing some of the hands-on training as well as evaluating each student’s individual progress. All told, the instructors here have a combined total of more than a hundred twenty years of law enforcement experience. Try that on for size.”
He paused and grinned. “You know what they say about experience and treachery, don’t you? Wins out over youth and enthusiasm every time. Count on it.”
The room was quiet. No doubt the comment had been meant as a joke, but no one laughed. While Thompson consulted his notes, Joanna noticed the young guy in the front row was busily nodding once again.
“That brings us to the subject of ride-alongs.” Thompson resumed. “When it comes time for those, you’ll be doing them with experienced on-duty officers from one or more of the participating agencies here in the Valley. By the way, be sure to sign the ride-along waivers in your packet and return them to me by the end of the day.
“This is particular class—procedures—is my baby. It’s also the backbone of what we do here. As you all know, the academy is being funded partially by state and federal grants and partially by the tuition paid by each participating agency. Tuition doesn’t come cheap. The state maybe picked up this fine facility for a song from the folks at the RTC, but we’ve gotta pay our way. Here’s how it works, folks. Listen up.
“Each person’s whole tuition and room rent is due and payable on the first day of class. In other words, today. The minute you all walked through our door this morning, that money was gone. The academy doesn’t do refunds. You quit tonight? Too bad. The guy who hired you—the one who sent you here in the first place—doesn’t get to put that money back in his departmental budget. That means anybody who drops out turns into a regular pain in the bottom line.
“In other words, boys and girls, if you blow this chance, you end up outta here and outta law enforcement, too. Nobody in his right mind’s gonna give a quitter another opportunity.
“For those of you who don’t blow it, for those of don’t who make the grade, when you go back to your various departments, you’re more than welcome to do things the way they do them there. Here at the academy, we have our own procedures, and we do things our way. The APOA way. In other words, as that great American hero, A. J. Foyt, has been quoted as saying, ‘my way or the highway.’
“It’s like you and your ex-wife own this little dog, and the doggie spends part of the time at her house and part of the time at yours. Maybe your ex doesn’t mind if the dog climbs all over her damn furniture, but you do. When the dog goes to her house, he does whatever the hell he damn well pleases, but when he’s at your house, he lives by your rules. Got it?”
Joanna didn’t even have to look to know that guy in the front row was nodding once again. Disgusted by what she’d heard, and convinced the whole training experience was destined to be nothing more than five weeks of hot air, Joanna folded her arms across her chest, sighed, and sank down in her seat. Next to her at the table sat a tall, slender young woman with hair almost as red as Joanna’s
Using one hand to shield her face from speaker’s view, the other woman grinned in Joanna’s direction then crossed both eyes. Wary that Thompson might have spotted the derogatory gesture, Joanna glanced in the speaker’s direction, he was far too busy pontificating to notice the humorous byplay. Relieved, Joanna smiled back. Somehow that bit of schoolgirlish high-jinks made Joanna feel better. If nothing else, it convinced that she wasn’t the only person in the room who regarded Dave Thompson as a loudmouthed, over-bearing jerk.
“Our mission here is to turn you people into police officers,” Thompson continued. “It’s not easy, and it’s gonna get down and dirty at times. If you two ladies think you’re going to come through course looking like one of the sexy babe lawyers t used to be on L.A. Law, you’d better think again.”
The redhead at the table next to Joanna scribbled a hasty note on a yellow notepad and then pushed it close enough so Joanna could read it. “Who has time to watch TV?” the note asked.
This time Joanna had to cough in order to suppress an involuntary giggle. She had never watched the show herself, but according to Eva Lou, L.A. Law had once been a favorite with Jim Bob Brady. Eva Lou said she thought it had something to do with the length of the women’s skirts.
Thompson glowered once in Joanna’s direction, but he didn’t pause for breath. “Out on the streets it’s gonna be a matter of life and death—your life or your partner’s, or the life of some innocent bystander. Every department in the state has a mandate to bring more women and minorities on board. Cultural diversity is okay, I guess,” he added, sounding unconvinced.
“It’s probably even a good thing, up to a point—as long as those new hires are all fully qualified people. And that’s where the APOA comes in. The buck stops here. The training we offer is supposed to help separate the men from the boys, if you will. The wheat from the chaff. The people who can handle this job from the wimps who can’t. We’re going to start that process here and now. Could I have a volunteer?”
Pausing momentarily, Thompson’s gray eyes scanned the room. Naturally the guy in the front row, the head-bobber, raised his hand and waved it in the air. Thompson ignored him. Tapping the end of the pointer with one hand, he allowed his gaze to come to rest on Joanna. A half smile tweaked the corners of his mouth.
“My mother always taught me that it was ladies before gentlemen. Tell the class your name.”
“Joanna,” she answered. “Joanna Brady.”
“And where are you from?”
“Cochise County,” Joanna answered.
“And how long have you been a police officer now?” he asked.
“Less than two weeks.”
Thompson nodded. “That’s good. We like to get our recruits in here early—before they have time to learn too many bad habits. And why, exactly, do you want to be a cop?”
Joanna wasn’t sure what to say. Each student in the class wore a plastic badge that listed his or her name and home jurisdiction. The badges gave no indication of rank. Hoping to blend in with her classmates, Joanna wasn’t eager to reveal that, although she was as much of a rookie as any of the others, she was also a newly elected county sheriff.
“Well?” Thompson urged impatiently.
“My father was a police officer,” she said flatly. “So was my husband.”
Thompson frowned. “That’s right,” he said. “I remember your daddy, old D. H. Lathrop. Good man. And your husband’s the one who got shot in the line of duty, isn’t he?”
Joanna bit her lip and nodded. Andy’s death well as its violent aftermath had been big news back in September. Both their pictures and names had been plastered in newspapers and on television broadcasts all over Arizona.
“And unless I’m mistaken, you had something to do with the end of that case, didn’t you, Mrs. Brady? Wasn’t there some kind of shoot-out?”
“Yes,” Joanna answered, recalling the charred edges of the single bullet hole that still branded the pocket of her sheepskin-lined jacket.
“So it would be safe to assume that you’ve used a handgun before—that you have some experience?” The rising inflection in Dave Thompson’s voice made it sound as if he were asking a question, but Joanna understood that he already knew the answer.
A vivid flush crept up her neck and face. The last thing Joanna wanted was to be singled out from her classmates, the other academy attendees. Dave Thompson seemed to have other ideas. He focused on her in a way that caused all the other people in the room to recede into the background.
“
Yes,” she answered softly, keeping her voice level, fending off the natural urge to blink. “I suppose it would.”
Thompson smiled and nodded. “Good,” he said. “You come on up here then. We’ll have you take the first shot, if you’ll excuse the pun.” Visibly appreciative of his own joke, he grinned and seemed only vaguely disappointed when Joanna didn’t respond in kind.
Unsure what the joke was, Joanna rose resolutely from her chair and walked to the front of the classroom. Her hands shook, more from suppressed anger at being singled out than with any kind of nervousness or stage fright. Weeks of public speaking on the campaign trail had cured her of all fear of appearing in front of a group of strangers.
The room was arranged as a formal classroom with half a dozen rows of tables facing a front podium. Behind the podium stood several carts loaded with an assortment of audiovisual equipment. As he spoke, Thompson moved one cart holding a video console and VCR to a spot beside the podium. He knelt for a few moments in front of the cart and selected a video from a locked storage cabinet underneath. After inserting the video in the VCR, Thompson reached into another locked storage cabinet and withdrew a holstered service revolver and belt.
“Ever seen one of these before?”
The way he was holding the weapon, Joanna wasn’t able to see anything about it. “I’m not sure; she said.
“For your information,” Thompson returned haughtily, “it happens to be a revolver.”
His contemptuous tone implied that he had misread her inability to see the weapon as total ignorance as far as guns were concerned. “It’s a thirty-eight,” he continued. “A Smith and Wesson Model Ten military and police revolver with a four inch barrel.”
He handed the belt and holstered weapon to Joanna. “Here,” he said. “Take this and put it on. Don’t be afraid,” he added. “It’s loaded with blanks.”
Removing the gun from its holster, Joanna swung open the cylinder. One by one, she checked each of the rounds, ascertaining for herself that they were indeed blanks, loaded with paper wadding, rather than metal bullets. Only after reinserting the rounds did she look back at Dave Thompson, who was watching her with rapt interest.