by J. A. Jance
The second and third messages were from Carol Strong. Both of those had come in within the last ten minutes and both said Carol would call back later.
Once again, Joanna searched the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain all the way aside. She expected to find two wringing-wet bathing suits on the floor of the tub, but the tub was dry and empty. So was the sink. The drain plugs were still closed in the exact same way the housekeeper had left them earlier that morning.
Joanna stood in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to ward off a rising sense of panic, trying to think what to do. Don’t overreact, Joanna told herself firmly. They probably just went back downstairs. Strangely enough, the thought of possible disobedience made Joanna feel better.
Resolutely, she headed downstairs herself. In addition to the pool, the hotel’s recreation area boasted a hot tub as well as a sauna. Posted rules indicated that the last two were off limits to unaccompanied children, but that didn’t mean Jenny would necessarily regard that as the final word. In her daughter’s egocentric, nine-year-old view of the world, what she regarded as unreasonable rules were made to be badly bent if not outright broken.
Jim Bob probably got tired of hanging out at the pool and now Jenny’s trying to pull a fast one, Joanna reasoned grimly. Stalking through the recreation facilities, at first Joanna was more angry than worried. As she searched the hot tub and sauna, she rehearsed a carefully phrased dressing down. She couldn’t be all that hard on Ceci Grijalva because she was a guest. Most likely she didn’t fully understand the rules, but for Jennifer Ann Brady, there could be no such excuse.
Except it turned out the girls weren’t anywhere to be found. Not in the hot tub or in the sauna or in the pool itself. Joanna asked everyone she met if they had seen two little girls, one with short curly blond hair and the other with long dark braids. No one had seen them, not for at least an hour. What had started out as a tiny knot of worry in the pt of her stomach turned into a cement block.
Maybe they got hungry, she told herself hopefully, fighting down a rising sense of panic. Maybe Jenny had realized that armed with a room key she might be allowed to sign for food in the coffee shop. Joanna hurried in that direction, rushing along on tiptoe, trying to scan the few busy tables as she approached in hopes of spotting them. Bu none of the tables was occupied by the two AWOL little girls.
“Mrs. Brady,” a man’s voice said quietly at her elbow. “Maybe you’d like to come with me.”
Joanna looked up, expecting the speaker to be some hotel official who had nabbed Ceci and Jenny in the act of doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Instead, she found herself staring into the astonishingly impenetrable blue eyes of Larry Dysart.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Not who are you?” he returned lightly. “That figures. It means you know who I am. Let’s go sit down and have a drink—a drink and a little talk.”
He took her by the arm and guided her across the lobby. Joanna allowed herself to be led toward the massive fireplace. Larry Dysart directed her to the same chair where she had sat the previous afternoon while she visited with Bob Brundage.
“What about?” she asked.
“About what you want and what I want.”
“The only thing I want right now is my daughter.”
“I know,” Larry Dysart said soothingly. “Of course, you do. Maybe you and I can do a little horse-trading.”
A half-drunk cup of coffee was already sitting on the coffee table. Larry signaled a passing cocktail waitress. “The lady will have a diet Coke,” he said without bothering to ask.
Joanna’s world spun out of control. If Larry Dysart knew all about Joanna’s drink of choice, that meant his information could have come from only one source. Butch Dixon, the nice man! Butch Dixon, the feeder of starving multitudes! Butch Dixon, that blabbermouthed son of a bitch!
“What have you done with Jenny and Ceci?” Joanna demanded angrily.
“Shhhhhh,” Larry said, casually waving his coffee cup to encompass the rest of the lobby. “You wouldn’t want the whole world to hear our little discussion now, would you? It should be public enough so no one can pull anything off the wall, but private enough so no one else hears, don’t you think?”
“I don’t care if the whole world hears. Where are the girls?” Joanna asked, not bothering to lower her voice. “If you have them, I want you to tell me where they are.”
“I won’t tell you where they are, not right now. They’re safe, at least for the moment. But they won’t be forever, not if you insist on being stupid. Lower your damn voice!”
Gripping the end of the armrests, Joanna forced her breath out slowly. When she spoke again, her voice was a bare whisper. “What is it you want?”
“That’s more like it,” Larry said.
Joanna stared back at him. Years of battling with Eleanor had taught her the futility of raised voices. What Larry most likely misread as terrified compliance was, on her part, nothing more or less than self-contained fury.
“I want you and Carol Strong off my back,” he said easily. “I want to leave town. I want things to go the way they would have gone if you hadn’t come around sticking your nose into things that were none of your concern.”
“What things?” Joanna asked, willing her face to remain impassive.
Larry looked at her and didn’t answer. His lips smiled; his eyes didn’t. There was no relationship between his eyes and mouth. It was easy to imagine that the two curving lips and the implacable eyes belonged to two entirely separate faces. The effect was disconcerting, but Joanna didn’t look away.
“You mean like letting Jorge Grijalva’s plea bargain go through?” she asked. “You mean like letting Dean Norton go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? And as for Dave Thompson ...”
In answer, Larry let his glance shift briefly from her to his watch. “I want you to call Carol Strong.”
“It’s too early. She isn’t due into the office until four.”
“Call her anyway. Have them find her. And when you reach her, tell her we need to talk. Tell her I have the girls.”
Hearing him say the words aloud, Joanna’s heart skipped a beat. “How do I know that you—”
Before Joanna could finish framing the sentence, Dysart reached down beside his chair, picked up one of the Hohokam’s plastic laundry bags. He tossed it into her lap. There was something wet and heavy in the bottom of the bag. The weight of it sickened her. Afraid of what warped trophy might he inside, Joanna didn’t want to look. And yet, she had to.
Stomach heaving, she finally peered inside. Jenny’s still-wet bathing suit lay in a soggy pink wad at the bottom of the bag. Larry Dysart had told Joanna that he had the girls, but visible confirmation more than words brought the horrifying reality of it home to her.
Larry Dysart really did have Jenny. And Ceci, too. The awful realization rocked Joanna to her very core. The lunchtime bowl of turkey noodle soup curdled in her stomach.
“Where are they?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.
“Like I said, they’re safe enough for right now,” Larry told her. “Where they are doesn’t really matter. What does matter is whether or not you’re going to do as you’re told. Go call Carol Strong. Now. Use the pay phone over there by the elevators so I can see you the whole time. Don’t try anything funny. And remember, if anything happens to me, the girls die. You do have her number, don’t you?”
Nodding woodenly, Joanna stood up. She walked across the room feeling like she was balancing on a tightrope hundreds of feet above the ground—a tightrope with no safety net. A monster chess-master held Jenny’s life in his hands and he was using her as a sacrificial pawn. Carol Strong would never agree to a deal. She couldn’t possibly. But with Jenny’s and Cecelia’s very survival hanging in the balance ...
It took forever for Joanna to fumble a quarter out of her purse. Then, when she tried to put i
t in the coin slot, her hand trembled so badly, it was all she could do to make it work. And even after she finally heard the buzz of the dial tone, she could hardly force her fingers to do the dialing.
“Detective Strong, please,” Joanna said. At least her throat and voice still worked. That in itself seemed amazing.
Expecting to be told Carol wouldn’t be in until after four, Joanna was surprised when the clerk said, “Who’s calling, please?”
“Joanna Brady,” she answered. “Sheriff Joanna Brady.”
Carol Strong came on the line a moment later. “Thank God it’s you,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve been calling your room every five minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message on the voice mail for fear Jenny, not you, might pick it up. I think we’ve got him, Joanna. I should have figured it out lots sooner than this. I mean it was right there in front of me all along, but until I talked to Serena’s attorney just now—”
“Larry Dysart has Jenny,” Joanna interrupted. “Jenny and Ceci Grijalva both. He told me to call you and tell you he wants a deal.”
Carol stopped abruptly. “You know about Larry Dysart?” she asked. “You say he has Jenny?”
“Yes.”
“Damn! What kind of a deal is he looking for?”
“He says he wants to leave town with no repercussions. He wants us to let him go.”
“Where are you?” Carol asked.
“At the hotel. In the lobby. We’re sitting right in front of the fireplace.”
“I can be there in five minutes. I’ll call in the pecial Ops boys—”
“A SWAT team?” Joanna almost screeched into the phone. “No way! Are you crazy? The hotel is full of people. Someone would get hurt. Not only that, he says that if anything happens to him, the girls will die.”
“He’s bluffing.” Carol Strong’s answer was firm and brisk, but that was easy for her. It wasn’t Carol Strong’s daughter who was missing.
“Carol,” Joanna insisted. “Listen to me. He’s got the girls. This isn’t a bluff!”
There was a long pause. “Get a grip, Joanna,” Carol ordered.
“Get a grip?” Joanna echoed. “What the hell do you mean, ‘get a grip’?”
“I mean stop thinking like a mother and start thinking like a cop. What if it’s already too late? What if he is bluffing and the girls are already dead?”
The stark words hit Joanna with the force of a smashing fist to the gut. The sheer pain of it almost doubled her over. Nausea rose in her throat. She fought it down, but somehow the terrible shock of hearing those words vaporized her rising sense of panic.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked finally.
“Tell Dysart I’ll deal,” Carol continued. “While I’m arranging backup, you open negotiations. Ask him what he wants. Try to keep him talking.”
Leaving the phone dangling off hook, Joanna walked back across the room. It was only then that she realized that the Thanksgiving pumpkins were all gone. She saw the poinsettia- and Christmas-tree-decorated lobby for the first time. And, though the spacious lobby wasn’t crowded, then were still far more people there than she had noticed earlier.
Near the desk, a harried young couple tried to check in while riding herd on two active toddlers and a cartful of luggage. A silver-haired, knickers-clad golf foursome stood just inside the lobby door, noisily rehashing the day’s golf game. On the other side of the bank of elevators, teenage organizers from a church youth group were setting up registration tables for a weekend conference. All of the people in the room—hotel employees and guests alike—were going about their business with no idea of the life-and-death drama playing itself out in their midst. And of all of them, only Joanna Brady was wearing a Kevlar vest.
She straightened her shoulders as she approached the fireplace. “Detective Strong says she’ll deal. She wants to know what you want.”
Larry nodded and once again smiled his chilly, humorless smile. “That’s more like it. Tell her—”
“Yoohoo, Joanna,” Jim Bob Brady’s hearty voice boomed from across the room near the hotel en-trance. “We’re back.”
With sinking heart, Joanna watched as the Bradys, arms laden with bags of merchandise, marched purposefully across the lobby.
“Get rid of them,” Larry Dysart whispered urgently. “I don’t want them here.”
“Did you have a good time shopping?” Joanna asked, turning a phony smile on her in-laws.
The phoniness of her smile didn’t seem to faze Eva Lou, who sank gratefully into a nearby chair and kicked off her shoes. “My feet hurt like mad,” c announced. “That place was crazy. I didn’t ink we’d ever get checked out.”
“This is Larry Dysart,” Joanna said lightly, while briskly rubbing her earlobe with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “He’s an old navy friend of Andy’s. These are Andy’s folks, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady.”
During the election, Joanna and Jim Bob had gone out doorbelling together. On a quiet street in Willcox, while Jim Bob went to the house next door, Joanna had rung the bell of a modest bungalow. The man who answered the door had seemed fine at first, but when he discovered Joanna was a candidate for the office of sheriff, he had started telling her a long, complicated story about how his neighbors on either side were really Russian spies who were planning to kill the President and overthrow the government.
Realizing the man was somewhat disturbed, Joanna had tried to drop off her literature and leave. At the prospect of her walking away, however, the man had become highly agitated. Jim Bob had gone on to two more houses before he realized Joanna was still stuck at the first one. He had come back to retrieve her. Between the two of them, Jim Bob and Joanna had effected a reasonably graceful exit.
From then on, however, a rubbed earlobe had meant that whoever Joanna was involved with at the time was trouble in one way or another. In addition to the tugged earlobe, both the Bradys and Joanna knew that Andy had served a two-year hitch in the army—not the navy.
“Is that so?” Jim Bob put down his packages and then offered a hand to Larry Dysart in greeting. “Did you say navy? Glad to meet you, Larry,” Jim Bob said, then the old man turned and focused his eyes on Joanna’s face.
A dismayed Eva Lou looked back and forth between them, but she was familiar enough with the Willcox story to say nothing and follow her husband’s lead.
“And what did you do in the navy?” Jim Bo asked cordially, sitting down and leaning back as if settling in for a genial chat. “Andy was involved in communications.”
“Me, too,” Larry said. “That’s how Andy and I met.”
The lie seemed to come easily. He played along, all the while looking daggers at Joanna with the same hard-edged stare he had used on Leann Jessup at the end of the candlelight vigil.
“Anyone care for a drink?” a cocktail waitress asked.
“Sure,” Jim Bob said. “If you don’t mind, the wife and I will join you. We’ll both have coffee, black.”
“You’d better get back to your friend on the phone,” Larry said. “She’ll think you’ve forgotten all about her. Tell her to come here and we’ll talk.”
Joanna walked back to the phone. “What took you so long?” Carol demanded.
“My in-laws showed up. They’re sitting there chatting with us. They’ve ordered coffee.”
“Get rid of them,” Carol said, repeating verbatim the same thing Larry had said. “I’ve called for backup. The SWAT team is gearing up, but it’ll take a little while to get everybody in place. They’ll take up strategic positions outside the hotel. Cars should be on the scene within two minutes. I told them no lights, no sirens. Nobody’s to try going inside until I give the word, and I’m leaving my office now. Can you tell if he’s armed?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell for sure, but most likely.”
“That’s my guess, too. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Hang in there, Joanna. Believe me, everybody here’s on top of this
thing. We’re getting a search warrant for both his house and vehicle. And don’t worry. No matter what happens, we’ll find those girls.”
“You’d better,” Joanna said, but it was a hollow threat, fueled by desperation and hopelessness and nothing else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Joanna hung up the phone and started back toward the congenial-looking group gathered in front of the poinsettia-banked fireplace. As she walked, the physical weight of the Colt under her jacket was almost as heavy as the terrible weight of responsibility pressing against her heart.
This time it was no dream. Wide awake now, she was back in her worst shoot/don’t shoot nightmare—with Jenny in danger and with people she loved sitting directly in the line of fire. Carol Strong and her backup officers were riding to the rescue, but none of them knew this lobby layout as well as Joanna did. And if Dysart caught a glimpse of cops taking up positions outside, he might turn a gaily decorated hotel lobby into a killing zone.
While Joanna had been on the phone, a school bus had pulled up outside the hotel entrance. Now with whoops of laughter, a crowd of thirty or so teenagers, all of them carrying luggage, swarmed into the lobby. At the sight of all those kids, something came together in Joanna’s heart—an urgency and a determination that hadn’t been there before. As a police officer and as a parent, she had a moral obligation to do something to prevent a gun battle from erupting in a room packed with other people’s innocent children. Ready or not, the way to do that was to stop the battle before it ever had a chance to start.
Joanna was almost back at her chair when the cocktail waitress arrived carrying cups, saucers, and a pot of coffee on a tray. Seeing an opening, Joanna paused, letting the waitress step in front of her.
“Carol’s coming,” she said to Larry, carefully establishing and maintaining eye contact with him as she continued forward. “She’ll be here in just a few minutes.”
As Joanna stepped around the waitress, she reached out and snagged the coffeepot’s handle. With one smooth movement, Joanna shoved the waitress out of the way and sent the glass coffeepot and its steaming contents hurtling past Jim Bob’s startled face. It landed, upside down, in Larry Dysart’s lap.