by J. A. Jance
Jorge looked surprised. “You know about that?”
Joanna nodded.
He shrugged. “She saw my truck.”
“Your truck?”
“I bought a new truck. A Jimmy. Not brand-new, but new to me. Serena said it wasn’t fair for me to have a new truck when she didn’t have any transportation at all, when she was having to walk to work. I tried to tell her that the other truck needed a new engine and that if I couldn’t get to work, I couldn’t pay any child support. It didn’t make any difference.”
“Speaking of kids. Did you see Ceci and Pablo that night?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jorge Grijalva hung his head and didn’t answer.
“Why not?” Joanna repeated.
“Because I didn’t want them to know I was in town,” he said huskily. “Because Serena didn’t,” he added. “She said if the kids saw me there, they’d think we were getting back together, but we weren’t.”
“So you and Serena met at the bar to discuss arrangements for Thanksgiving?”
Jorge Grijalva shook his head. “Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“Serena was very beautiful,” he answered. “And she was much younger.... But you knew that, didn’t you?”
He paused and looked at Joanna, his features screwed into an unreadable grimace.
“Yes,” she said.
“I used to be good-looking, too,” Jorge said. “Back when I was younger.”
Again he stopped speaking. Joanna was having difficulty following his train of thought. “What difference does that make?” she prompted.
He looked at her then. The silent, soul-deep pain in his dark eyes cut through the cloudy plastic between them and seared into Joanna’s own heart. Slowly both his eyes filled with tears. “So beautiful,” he murmured. “And me? Compared to her, I was nothing but an old man. But sometimes ...”
He stopped yet again. Despite the plastic barrier between them, an unlikely intimacy had sprouted between Joanna Brady and Jorge Grijalva as they sat facing each other in the harsh glare of fluorescent light in those two equally grim rooms.
“Sometimes what?” Joanna whispered urgently.
Jorge Grijalva’s head stayed bowed. “Sometimes she would go with me. If I brought her something extra along with the child support. Sometimes she would...” His voice faded away.
“Would what?” Joanna asked. “Go to bed with you? Is that what you mean?”
Jorge nodded but didn’t speak. His silence now gave Joanna some inkling of the depth of Jorge Grijalva’s shame, and also of his pride. Serena Duffy Grijalva had been a whore, all right. Even with him. Even with her husband.
“So you came to see her,” Joanna said, after a long pause. “Did you bring both the child support and . . . the extra?”
He nodded again.
“But after she found out about the truck—about your new truck—then she refused to go with you and you killed her. Is that what happened?”
“That’s what the bruja thinks,” Jorge answered sullenly. For the first time, there was something else his voice, something besides hurt.
“What witch?” Joanna asked.
“The black-haired one. The detective.”
“The detective from Peoria? Carol Strong?”
“Yes. That’s the one, but it didn’t happen the way she thinks. I didn’t kill Serena. She left the bar first. After a while, so did I.”
Joanna leaned back in her chair and regarded Jorge speculatively. “Your mother is right then, isn’t she, Jorge? You’re going to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit”
With effort, Jorge Grijalva pulled himself together. He sat up straighter in his chair. His gaze met and held Joanna’s. “I told you my wife was a whore,” he said quietly, “but I will not go to court to prove it. Serena’s dead. Ceci and Pablo don’t need worse than that.”
“But you’re their father. If you go to prison for murdering the children’s mother, isn’t that worse?”
“Pablo is mine,” he said softly. “But I’m not Ceci’s father. She doesn’t know that. Serena was already pregnant when I met her.”
That soft-spoken, self-effacing revelation came like a bolt out of the blue and stunned Joanna into her own momentary silence. “Still,” she said finally, “you’re the only father she’s ever known. Think what it will be like for her with you in prison.”
“Think what it would be like for her with me dead,” Jorge countered. He shrugged his shoulders. “Manslaughter isn’t murder. You’re an Anglo. Why would you understand?”
“Understand what?”
“Supposing I go to court, say all those things about Serena to a judge and jury and then they find me guilty anyway. Of murder. They’ve got themselves one more dirty Mexican to send to the gas chamber. This way, if I take the plea bargain, maybe I’ll still be alive long enough to see my kids grow up. By the time they’re grown, maybe I’ll be out. Maybe then Ceci will be old enough so I can tell her the truth and she’ll be able to understand.”
“But ...” Joanna began.
Jorge shook his head, squelching her objection. “If you see my mother, tell her what I told y That way, maybe she’ll understand, too. Tell her me that I’m sorry.”
With that, Jorge Grijalva put down his phone and signaled to the guard that he was ready to go. He got up and walked away, leaving Joanna sitting on her side of the Plexiglas barrier, sputtering to herself.
As he walked out of the room, Joanna was filled with the terrible knowledge that she had heard the truth. Juanita Grijalva was right. Her son, Jorge, hadn’t killed Serena, but he would accept the blame. In order to protect his children from hearing an awful truth about their mother, he would willingly go to prison for a crime he hadn’t commit. Meanwhile, the real killer—whoever that was—would go free.
Sitting there by herself, all those separate realizations came to Joanna almost simultaneously. They were followed immediately by a thought was even worse: There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about any of them.
Drained, Joanna pressed the buzzer for a guard to come let her out. As she was led back to the jail’s guarded entrance, through a maze of electronically locked gates that clanged shut behind her, Joanna realized something else as well.
M r. Bailey, her high school social studies teacher, had done his best to drum the words into the heads each Bisbee High School senior who came through his civics class. “We hold these truths to self-evident,” he had read reverently from the textbook, “that all men are created equal.... “
For the first time, as clearly as if she’d heard a pane of glass shatter into a thousand pieces, Joanna Brady understood with absolute clarity that those words weren’t necessarily true, not for everyone. Certainly not for Jorge Grijalva.
And not for his mother, either.
CHAPTER TEN
Joanna left the jail complex and headed north with her mind in a complete turmoil. What should she do? Drop it? Forget everything she had heard in that grim interview room and go on about business as usual as if nothing had happened? What then? That would mean Jorge would most likely go to prison on a manslaughter charge while Serena’s killer would be on the loose, carrying on with his own life, free as a bird. Those two separate outcomes went against everything Joanna Brady stood for and believed in, against her sense of justice and fair play.
Joanna Lathrop Brady had grown up under her mother’s critical eye with Eleanor telling her constantly, day after day, how headstrong and hard to handle she was, how she never had sense enough to mind her own business or leave well enough alone. Maybe what was about to happen to Jorge Grijalva’s already shattered life wasn’t any of her business, but if she didn’t do something to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice, who would? Carol Strong, the local homicide detective on the case, the one Jorge had called the bruja? No, if the prosecutors and defense attorneys were negotiating a plea bargain, that meant the case was officially closed and out of the h
ands of police investigators.
If it is to be, it is up to me, Joanna thought with grim humor as she drove north through much lighter traffic. It would give her one more opportunity to live up to her mother’s worst expectations.
She made it back to Peoria in twenty minutes, which seemed like record time. When she came to the turnoff that would have taken her home to the APOA campus, she kept right on going across the railroad tracks and right on Grand, returning once more to the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Instead of going back to the dorm and her reading assignment, she was going back to see Butch Dixon, her one and only slender lead in this oddball investigation. Even Joanna was forced to acknowledge the irony. She would be enlisting the bartender in a possibly ill-fated and harebrained crusade to save someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in being saved. Who was, in fact, dead set against it.
By ten o’clock, Monday Night Football was over. With only local news on TV, the bar was nearly deserted when she stepped inside. Butch waved to her as she threaded her way across the floor through a scatter of empty tables. There was only one other customer seated at the bar. Even though she could have taken any one of a number of empty seats, she made directly for the same spot she had abandoned several hours earlier.
“The usual?” Butch Dixon asked with a pleasant grin as she hoisted herself up onto the stool. Joanna nodded. Moments later, he set a Diet Pepsi on the counter in front of her. While she took a tentative sip from her drink, he began diligently polishing the nearby surface of the bar even though it didn’t look particularly in need of polishing.
“I suppose you get asked this question all time,” he said.
“What question?”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in this line of work? I mean, how come you’re sheriff?”
“The usual way,” she answered. “I got elected.”
“I figured that out, but what did you do before the election? Is being a cop something you always wanted to be, or is it like me and bartending? I sort of fell into it by accident, but it turns out it’s something I’m pretty good at.”
Joanna considered before she answered. Butch must be one of the few people in Arizona who had somehow missed the media blitz about Andy’s death and about his widow being the first-ever elected female sheriff in the state. If he had seen some of the news reports or read the newspaper articles, he had long since forgotten. It was all far enough in the past that for him there was no connection between those events back in September, and Joanna’s name and title on the business card she had given him.
So what should she do? Tell Butch Dixon the painful story about what had happened to Andy? Or should she just gloss over it? After a moment’s hesitation, she decided on the latter. If she was going to try to enlist Butch Dixon’s help, it would be tier to approach him as a professional rather than play on his sympathies as some kind of damsel in stress.
“Fell into it by accident, I’d say,” she replied. “I used to sell insurance.”
“And what are you doing over at the academy, teaching classes?”
“I wish,” she answered. “No, I’m taking them. I’m there as a student, not as an instructor.”
When Butch stopped polishing the counter, his towel was only inches from Joanna’s hand. For a moment he seemed to be staring at it. Then he looked up at her face. “What does your husband do?”
Joanna’s gaze had followed his to where the diamond on her engagement ring reflected back one of the lights over the bar. No matter how hard she tied, there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid telling this inquisitive man about Andy.
“He’s dead,” Joanna said at last, feeling both relieved that she had told him and surprised by how easy it was right then to say the words that placed Andrew Roy Brady’s life and death totally in the past tense.
“Andy was a police officer,” she added. “He died in the line of duty.” She told the story briefly mild dispassionately, without giving way to tears.
Hearing what had happened, Butch Dixon was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that—”
Joanna held her hand up. “I know. The rings. I suppose I ought to take them off and put them away, but I’m not ready to do that yet. I’m used to wearing them. I may not be married anymore, but I still feel married.”
Butch nodded. “When did it happen?” he asked.
“Two months ago, back in the middle of September.”
“So it wasn’t all that long ago. Do you have kids?”
Joanna nodded. “Only one, a girl. Her name Jennifer. Jenny. She’s nine.”
“That’s got to be tough.”
“It’s no picnic.”
“Who’s taking care of her while you’re here going to school?”
“Her grandparents. My in-laws. They’re from Bisbee, too. They’re staying out at the ranch and looking after things while I’m away.”
“Ranch?” Butch asked.
Joanna laughed. “Not a big ranch. A little one. It’s only forty acres, but it does have a name. The High Lonesome. It’s been in Andy’s family for years. Right now it belongs to me, but it’ll belong to Jenny someday.”
“Hey, Butch, my margarita’s long gone. I know the broad’s good-looking, but how about paying a little attention to this part of the bar?”
A look of annoyance washed over Butch Dixon face as he turned toward the complaining customer. “Keep your shirt on, Mike,” he growled. “And keep a civil damn tongue in your mouth or go on down the road.”
Joanna watched as Butch mixed Mike’s drink. It was difficult to estimate how old he was. He looked forty but that could have been the lack of hair. He was probably somewhat younger than that. Butch wasn’t particularly tall—only about five ten or so but what there was of him was powerfully and compactly built. As soon as he dropped off the margarita and rang the sale into the cash register, Butch came back to where Joanna was sitting. Resting his forearms on the counter, he leaned in front of her.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Mike’s one of those guys who gets a little out of line on occasion.”
“Compared to some of the things I’ve been called lately, broad’s not all that bad,” Joanna reassured him with a smile. “And I can see why you make a good bartender. You’re very easy to talk to.”
Butch didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the compliment. In reply he picked up her empty glass. “Want another?”
“No. Too much caffeine. When I go home to bed, I’m going to need to sleep. But I did want to discuss something with you. I’m just now on my way home from the Maricopa County Jail. I went down there talk to Jorge Grijalva.”
“Really? Did you manage to talk him out of that plea bargain crap?”
“No. He’s still hell-bent for election to go through with it. Even so, talking to him has convinced me that you may be right. Some of the things he said made me think maybe he didn’t kill her after all.”
“What are you going to do, go to the cops?”
Joanna shook her head. “I am a cop, remember?” he said. “But since this happened in Peoria PD’s jurisdiction, I wouldn’t be able to do anything bout it, not officially. And even if I tried, that case is closed as far as homicide cops are concerned cause they’ve already turned it over to the prosecutor.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“The point is I’m going to do a little nosing around on my own. Unofficial nosing around. Do you still have my card?”
Butch reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Joanna’s business card. She jotted a number on the back and returned it to him. “That’s the number of my room over at the academy. There’s no answering machine, so either you’ll get me or you won’t. You won’t be able to leave a message.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to write down everything you can remember about the night Serena Grijalva died. I’m sure you’ve already given this information to the investigating officers, but since mine i
sn’t an official inquiry, I most likely won’t have access to those reports. There’s no real rush. I’ll come by tomorrow or the next day and pick it up.”
“Wednesday’s the day before Thanksgiving Butch said, pocketing the card once more. “I suppose you’ll be going home for the holiday?”
Joanna shook her head. “No, Jenny and the Gs are coming up here for the weekend. We’ve a got super-duper holiday weekend package at that brand-new hotel just down the street.”
“The Hohokam?” Butch asked. “It’s only been open a couple of months. I’ve never been inside. It’s supposed to be very nice.”
“I hope so,” Joanna said.
“And who all did you say is coming, Jenny and the Gs? Sounds like some kind of rock band.”
Joanna laughed. “That’s my daughter and her grandparents, my in-laws. Ever since she was able spell, Jenny’s called them the Gs.” She paused for a moment. “Speaking of names, where did Butch come from?”
Running one hand over the bare skin on his shiny, bald skull, Butch Dixon grinned. “My real we was Frederick. People called me Freddy for short. I hated it; thought it sounded sissy. So when as six, my uncle started teasing me about my new haircut, calling me Butch. The name stuck. I’ve been Butch ever since, and I wore my hair that way for years, back when I still had hair, that is. When it started to disappear, I gave Mother Nature a little shove in the right direction. What do you think?”
Joanna smiled. “It looks fine to me. I’d better be heading back,” she said, standing up. “I’m taking you away from your other customers.... “
“Customer,” Butch corrected, holding up his hand.
“And I’ve got a reading assignment to do before class in the morning.”
“And I’ve got a writing assignment,” he said patting his shirt pocket. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow morning. Do you want me to call you when it’s finished?”
“Please. And in the meantime, if anything comes up that you think is too important to wait, give me call.”
“Sure thing,” Butch Dixon said. “You can count n it.”
By the time Joanna drove back into the APOA parking lot, it was past eleven. Checking the clerestory windows on both the upper and lower breezeways, she saw that some were lit and some weren’t. It was possible some of her classmates were still out. Others might already be in bed and asleep.