by J. A. Jance
Jim Bob Brady showed up about then. The fact that he was all smiles pretty much gave away the game.
“So did we win?” Joanna demanded.
“We certainly did,” a beaming Jim Bob replied, “by a total of sixty-seven votes. Hubble was on the air giving his concession speech as I left the church. Now let me get a look at this brand-new grandbaby of ours. If this isn’t a red-letter night, I don’t know what is!”
Chapter 1
THE FIRST TIME LATISHA MARCUM HAD AWAKENED IN DARKNESS IN that house-of-horrors dungeon, she thought she’d gone blind. She was lying on a bare mattress on what seemed to be an earthen floor. When she tried to get to her feet, she discovered two things—she was completely naked, and her leg was secured to the wall with a heavy-duty chain. That’s when she started to scream.
“Help!” she pleaded. “Somebody help me! Get me out of here.”
“Shut up,” said a voice out of the darkness—a woman’s voice or a girl’s, Latisha couldn’t tell which. “No one’s going to help you. If you keep making all that racket, you might make him mad, and he’ll come back down. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”
“Who will come back down?”
“The Boss,” she said, “from upstairs.”
“Who’s he?”
“The devil,” said a second voice, another female speaking in a soft southern accent. “And in case you’re wondering, you’re in hell.”
“How many people are here?” Latisha asked.
“Three, counting you,” the first voice said. “I’m Sandra Locke, but people call me Sandy.”
“And I’m Sadie Jennings,” the other voice said. “Who are you?”
“Latisha Marcum.”
“With a name like that, are you black?” Sadie asked.
“Does it matter if I am?”
Sadie laughed. “Just wondering,” she said. “In this hellhole you could be deep purple for all I care, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
“But where is here?” Latisha wanted to know. “Where are we?”
“In the desert somewhere,” Sandy said. “One day when I was upstairs, one of the blackout curtains wasn’t all the way shut. I saw some old buildings that looked like they might have been part of a movie set from one of those old westerns. I could see some mountains in the distance, but everything between here and the mountains looked like desert.”
“A desert, then, but where?”
“Who knows?” Sadie answered. She might have shrugged or not. It was impossible to see. “In Arizona maybe, or Texas or New Mexico—all those places look alike to me, although there aren’t many mountains in Texas.”
As far as Latisha was concerned, the words Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico meant nothing to her. She had no idea what those states might be like. Until Trayvon had taken her to New Orleans, she had never set foot outside Missouri.
Latisha fell silent for a moment, and so did the others. The urge had been coming on for some time, and now she was desperate. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“See that spot of light over in the corner?” Sandra asked.
Latisha looked around. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, she realized it wasn’t completely dark. There was a bit of murky light coming into the space from a row of three glass blocks set high in what had to be an outside wall.
“That’s where the toilet is,” Sandy said. “When you go, take your cup along. If you want water to drink, you’ll have to get it out of the flushing tank.”
“From the toilet?” Latisha repeated.
“The water in the flushing tank is clean,” Sadie said. “Since it’s the only water there is, get used to it.”
Latisha reached out and felt around the head of her mattress. Eventually her fingers closed on a cup of some kind—a metal cup with a handle—and a plastic storage container with a lid on it. When she picked it up and shook it, something rattled inside.
“What’s this?”
“That’s your dinner,” Sadie said. “It’s also breakfast and lunch. Don’t spill it, because if you do, the rats will come looking for it.”
“But what is it?” Latisha insisted.
“Purina Dog Chow would be my first guess,” Sandy suggested, “or maybe a brand that’s not as good.”
“Dog food?” Latisha echoed in disbelief. “We’re supposed to eat dog food? I can’t. I won’t.”
“You’ll be surprised,” Sadie told her. “Once you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat most anything.”
Taking the cup with her, Latisha struggled to her feet. The cumbersome chain around her ankle made it difficult to walk. She’d taken only two steps when she tripped over something on the floor. The next thing she knew, she had tumbled onto another mattress, one as empty and bare as her own.
“Whose mattress is this?” she asked, picking herself back up and retrieving the cup she’d dropped when she fell. It had fallen to the floor. If she’d been wearing any clothes, Latisha would have wiped the lip of the cup on her clothing. Since she wasn’t, she couldn’t.
“That one still has a Vacancy sign posted on it,” Sadie said. “At least so far.”
Latisha struggled to her feet once more. Feeling her way through the gloom, she was finally able to make out the ghostly presence of a toilet.
“Before you go to the bathroom, it’s always a good idea to check and make sure no one else is using it,” Sandy said. “If the chains get tangled up in the dark, it’s hell getting them loose again.”
“You have chains, too?” Latisha asked.
“No,” Sadie said. “We stay down here in the dark because we wanna be here, right?”
“Right,” Sandy agreed. “In reality we’re all off on some fancy cruise ship, and these are deck chairs.”
They both laughed then, as though they were sharing some hysterically funny joke.
Not laughing, Latisha located the toilet and used it. When she flushed it, the toilet made a funny sound, like there was some kind of machinery involved. But there was no sink, nowhere to wash her hands afterward, no soap and water, no towel. After filling the cup and returning to her mattress, she learned that a scratchy woolen army blanket, that metal cup, and the plastic container of food were the sum total of her possessions. There was no pillow for her head, no comb or brush, no eating implements, and no toothbrush, either.
She started to ask about that, but then she stifled it. She had seen movies and TV shows about what went on in prisons. Given enough desperation, a comb or a toothbrush or an ordinary kitchen fork could be turned into a lethal weapon.
Time passed. The other girls had fallen silent. Maybe they’d both fallen asleep. Maybe Latisha had, too. But then a door opened and an electric light flashed on, burning so brightly that Latisha had to cover her eyes. Once she could see again, she realized that the only light fixture was a bare bulb hanging from a frayed brown cord in the middle of the room. There were four mattresses positioned foot to foot in the room with a narrow earthen pathway running between them. Latisha’s eyes adjusted to the sudden light in time to see two sets of grimy bare feet disappear beneath khaki-colored army blankets just like hers.
“What’s happening?” she whispered. “What’s going on?” No one answered. Sadie and Sandy had gone completely silent.
She looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. At one end was a concrete slab where the toilet was located. At the other end was an old-fashioned chest-style freezer. Behind that was a plank stairway that seemed to lead upstairs.
She watched as a pair of work-boot-clad legs slowly descended the stairs. When the hulking figure of a man finally came into view, she immediately recognized his face. He was the john who had approached her in New Orleans; the same guy who’d lured her into his vehicle and then drugged her somehow. Sitting up, Latisha glanced questioningly at the two occupied mattresses, hoping for a clue about what was going on, but all she saw was the outline of two figures, lying still as death under the blankets. There would be
no help for her from that quarter, nor any answers, either.
The man heading toward her was white, most likely in his fifties or sixties, heavyset, with wavy graying hair. He gave her a wolfish grin that showed off a set of crooked, yellowish teeth.
“Time to give the new girl a try,” he said, leaning down with a key at the ready to unlock the clamp around Latisha’s ankle. “Time to see whether or not you were worth hauling all the way home from New Orleans.”
As soon as the clamp let loose, Latisha scrambled away from him on the mattress, kicking as she went, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough. Grabbing her naked thigh with a bruising, iron grip, he dragged her back to him.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?” he said with a chuckle. “I can see that I’ve got myself a fighter on my hands. Well, good enough. Come on, girl, let’s us go upstairs and have ourselves some fun.”
Latisha was still struggling to get away when he slapped her with a tooth-jarring blow that left her seeing stars and rendered her momentarily unconscious. When she came to, she was being carried upstairs. Latisha was no lightweight. She weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds, and yet he carried her on his shoulder as though she were no trouble at all.
Upstairs he lugged her through a ramshackle room where holes in the peeling linoleum revealed the bare wooden planking of the underlying floor. The walls were made of rough plaster. At one end of the room was an old-fashioned electric stove, an antique-looking fridge, and a small kitchen table. At the other end was an iron-framed double bed—one with another bare mattress and no bedding.
In this room, as in the one downstairs, the only light came from a single bare bulb dangling on a tan cord. There were windows in the walls, but they were covered by thick curtains made up of what looked like black plastic garbage bags. They were positioned in such a way that it was impossible to catch a glimpse of what was outside.
The man carried Latisha into a bathroom, lifted her off his shoulder, and then stood her upright in the middle of the room. “Everything you need is right here,” he said. “You get yourself all spiffed up now, and then we’ll see what you’ve got.”
Going out and closing the door, he left her standing there alone. A moment later she heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.
She looked around. There was a rust-stained lavatory, a creaky toilet, and an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. Next to the tub sat a wooden stool loaded with body soap, shampoo, and a thin bath towel, along with a brush and a comb. Latisha didn’t want to do what he said, but there wasn’t really any choice. Besides, she felt utterly filthy, so she ran water into the tub and then climbed in. Despite the circumstances she was able to lean back in the hot water, close her eyes, and relax. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. After shampooing her filthy hair, she climbed back out and used the towel to dry off.
Standing in front of the mirror over the sink, she was shocked to see how much her face had swollen from that one terrible blow. The comb and hairbrush he’d provided for her use had never been intended for hair like hers, and she finally had to give up trying to sort out the tangles. Behind the pockmarked mirror of the medicine chest, she located a tube of toothpaste and a single toothbrush—a used toothbrush to be sure, but it was better than no toothbrush at all.
Finally she was done, and she tapped on the door to let him know she was ready, although she wasn’t, not really. When she was working the streets, Latisha had dealt with some rough customers from time to time, but nothing had prepared her for the Boss. What he dished out was far worse than anything she’d ever experienced.
It seemed as though the torment lasted for hours. The more he hurt her, the better he liked it. When he finally had his fill, he grabbed her upper arm and propelled her back downstairs, turning on the overhead light as he did so. He threw her onto her mattress and then reached for the chain. She was too exhausted to fight anymore or try to get away. While he fastened the clamp around her leg, she looked at the others. Sandy and Sadie still lay unmoving and silent under their respective blankets.
The light went off. The door slammed shut. There was the sound of a bolt of some kind being latched. Heavy footsteps pounded across the plank flooring upstairs before another door slammed shut, followed a few minutes later by the sound of a vehicle starting up.
“He’s gone now,” Sandy said. “He probably won’t be back for a day or two.”
“Are you okay?” Sadie asked.
Latisha was not okay. She was anything but okay, but she didn’t want to admit it. “I’ll live,” she said. “But you were wrong. This isn’t hell. Upstairs is.”
She heard the sounds of chains clanking. Then, to her surprise, she felt her mattress shift underneath as though people had sat down next to her, on either side. An invisible hand patted her shoulder.
“I’m sorry for what he did to you,” Sadie said. “But there’s nothing we could do to help.”
It was small comfort, but comfort nevertheless. And much to Latisha’s further surprise, it was the beginning of an unlikely but abiding friendship.
Chapter 2
SAGE’S UNSCHEDULED EARLY ARRIVAL HAD PUT A FLY IN ANY NUMBER of ointments. Based on a December due date, the release of Butch’s next book, Just the Facts, and the accompanying book tour had been rescheduled. It was now set to occur starting the week after the election. Butch immediately offered to call his publisher and cancel the two-week tour for his upcoming murder mystery, but Joanna nixed that idea.
Years earlier, when Butch had sold his restaurant in Peoria, Arizona, he had come to Bisbee intent on pursuing two very different things—Joanna and his lifelong ambition to become a writer. He had won big on both counts. His first book, a cozy called Serve and Protect, featured Kimberly Charles, the fictional chief of police in Copper Creek, a tiny fictional Arizona town. Did Kimberly bear any resemblance to Joanna Brady? When people asked him that question, he would smile and say, “You be the judge.”
In marketing that first book, Drew Mabrey, his agent, had advised him against using his real name—F. W. Dixon.
“Hey,” he had told her, “I always loved the Hardy Boys.”
Drew was not amused, and since Butch was writing cozies, she suggested a more “gender-neutral name,” which is how his nom de plume became Gayle Dixon as opposed to F.W. The book about to hit the shelves, Just the Facts, was the fourth book in the Kimberly Charles series, and at every book-signing event he had to deal with someone, usually an opinionated LOL, who couldn’t quite believe that a “man can write these books.”
“Look,” Joanna said, “we both know that tours for midlist authors are hard to come by these days. The fact that your publisher was kind enough to readjust the pub date in order to take both the election and my projected due date into consideration was a huge concession on their part, and we need to treat it as such. You go out there and do your job, and I’ll stay here to keep the home fires burning. As long as you’re home in time for Thanksgiving, it’s not a problem.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
The truth is, they both knew that even with Butch out of town she’d have plenty of help. For one thing, Carol Sunderson would be there to assist her with looking after Dennis as well as Sage. Years earlier Carol and her husband had been living nearby and raising their two grandsons when their mobile home had burned to the ground. Carol’s husband had died in the fire. Not only was she left alone, she and her grandsons had nowhere to live.
At the time Joanna and Butch had moved into their new place just up the road, and Joanna’s old place, High Lonesome Ranch’s original ranch house, was sitting empty. They’d been able to offer Carol a place to live rent-free along with a part-time paid gig as housekeeper/nanny—a job that suited Carol Sunderson to a tee.
With Butch off on the road, Carol came to the house early enough each day to help get Denny fed, dressed, and down to the end of High Lonesome Road in time to catch the school bus. Eva Lou Brady showed up on an almost daily bas
is, often bringing along a casserole or two, as did Marianne Maculyea. And both of them were more than happy to take over baby-holding duties when called upon to do so. Having all those helping hands around left Joanna feeling truly blessed that she wasn’t having to look after both a newborn and a five-year-old on her own.
Butch’s publicist had organized a short but intense two-week book tour that had launched on time, while most of the items on Joanna’s to-do list had taken a direct hit. Expecting to be off work most of December and part of January, she had originally planned to spend November’s spare time focused on wrapping up election issues—finishing the legally mandated paperwork that follows an election campaign and sending out personal thank-you notes to her many supporters. Once her maternity leave started, she would have had all of December to get ready for Christmas.
Now, though, with the prospect of being back at work in early December, everything got lumped together in a hodgepodge November. Yes, she had time for cuddling and caring for her newborn infant, but in order to get everything else accomplished, too, Joanna lived a twenty-four-hour cycle—sleeping only by fits and starts and nursing every couple of hours. Luckily, Eva Lou came over and helped get the thank-you notes written and sent. Carol went out and bought a set of Christmas cards that Joanna managed to get signed and addressed in short order.
A week and a half into her maternity leave and long before either Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Joanna had gotten most of her Christmas shopping done online, with UPS stopping by the house on an almost daily basis, dropping off gifts that showed up at the door prewrapped.
In other words, Joanna was busy and productive, but was she happy? Not exactly. Halfway through the second week of her leave, she was antsy and restless. For one thing, she wasn’t used to spending so much time at home. She missed the office. She missed the job and the responsibility. Most of all she missed the people. Tom Hadlock, Joanna’s current chief deputy, was the man in charge during her maternity leave. She resisted the temptation to drop by the office and check on things, because it was important not to second-guess the acting sheriff or undercut his authority. Nonetheless, he called her often, giving her updates on what was happening.