Dead to Rights

by J. A. Jance

  Joanna glowered at her daughter. “I wouldn’t be so certain about that horse, Jenny,” she said. Then, to Butch, she added, “It does seem a little lonely at times. And there are days when I get so sick of the long commute that I wonder if it’s worth it.”

  “What do you mean, a long commute?” Butch asked.

  Joanna shrugged. “Well,” she replied, “it’s ten minutes to the end of the road and then another seven or so after that to the office.”

  Butch Dixon’s response was a genuine hoot of laughter. “Back in Chicago, where I grew up, twenty minutes was how long it took my father to get to the train station in Downers Grove. Then there was another hour on the train. That’s a long commute. He did it every weekday for twenty-five years.”

  “You’re from Chicago?” Jenny asked. Butch nodded.

  “So how did you get to Arizona?”

  “My grandparents—my mother’s parents—were among the original buyers in Sun City,” Butch said. “I was in sixth grade—just a few years older than you—when my grandfather got sick. My parents pulled me out of school in January so we could come see him before he died. I’ll never forget it. It was bitterly cold in Chicago. The streets were lined with thousands of cars that were frozen to the ground and covered by mounds of snow-plowed ice, while people in Sun City were walking around in shirtsleeves, playing golf, and barbecuing on their outdoor patios. I thought I was in heaven. I decided right then that Arizona was the place for me. I told my mother at the time, but I don’t think she believed me. It took a few years, but I finally made it.”

  Their salads arrived then, followed by a steaming pizza. Talk was lighthearted and fun. Joanna enjoyed watching the way Butch teased and charmed Jenny. The child seemed to bask in the attention of this funny but attentive man who not only asked her questions but seemed genuinely interested in her answers. By the time the spumoni ice cream disappeared, Jenny and Butch Dixon had become friends.

  “Can’t Mr. Dixon come out to the house so we can show it to him?” Jenny asked.

  “Maybe he isn’t interested…” Joanna objected.

  “But I want him to meet the dogs,” Jenny continued. “You like dogs, don’t you, Mr. Dixon?” she asked, checking Butch’s face as he answered.

  “I love dogs,” he said.

  “Still,” Joanna said, “it depends on whether or not he wants to.”

  “Sure,” Butch said. “I’d love to meet Tigger and Sadie, but what do you think?” he added with a sidelong look in Joanna’s direction.

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  They caravanned out to the ranch, with Jenny riding backward most of the way to make sure Butch didn’t get lost in the process. Tigger and Sadie both went properly berserk at the sight of the motorcycle, but they were also fairly well behaved once Jenny had introduced them to Butch. When Jenny took the dogs and went inside, Butch and Joanna stood for a moment on the night-chilled back porch staring up at the velvet-black, star-studded sky.

  “It’s breathtaking,” he said quietly. “Beautiful and peaceful both. When you live in the city, it’s hard to believe there’s anyplace on earth that’s still this empty.”

  “It’s not that empty,” Joanna returned. “My nearest neighbor is just a little over a mile away.”

  “Only a mile? That close?” Butch laughed. “Listen,” he added. “The next time you start wondering about whether or not your commute is worth it, call me. I’ll be glad to tell you it is.”

  Laughing too, Joanna opened the backdoor. “It’s cold out here. Come on in,” she said. “We do have a front door, but most people come into the house this way—through the laundry room.”

  Thanks to Angie Kellogg’s cleaning efforts the previous morning and due in no small part to the fact that hardly anyone had been home in the meantime, the house was still reasonably straight. They had gone only as far as the kitchen when Jenny returned and grabbed hold of Dutch’s hand.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  While Jenny guided Butch around the house, Joanna ducked into the bedroom long enough to slip off both her holsters and her body armor. Then she went back out to the living room to take messages off the machine. For a change, there were only two—both from Eleanor. Joanna decided those would have to wait until after Butch left. She was sitting on the couch in the living room when the tour ended and Jenny delivered him back there before heading off for her nightly bath.

  Butch paused in front of a bookcase and studied the shelf devoted to family pictures. “Andy and you?” he asked, pointing at their wedding picture.

  “Yes.”

  “You must have been very young.”

  Joanna nodded. “I had just turned nineteen the month before we got married. Andy died the day after our tenth wedding anniversary.”

  “You were lucky,” he said, collapsing into the chair opposite her—the same worn easy chair that had always been Andy’s favorite. Joanna winced at the idea of Butch Dixon sitting there. It seemed wrong somehow—disloyal to Andy.

  “At least you had ten years,” Butch was saying.

  At least? Joanna wondered. What did he mean by “at least”?

  This was a whole new perspective. She had spent so much time during the last few months missing the years she and Andy hadn’t spent together that it was difficult for her to see those few years in a different light, with her cup half full instead of half empty.

  “Some people never have that many,” he finished.

  Before Joanna had a chance to reply or to learn what kind of private hurt lay behind those words, the phone rang. She hurried to pick it up. If it turned out to be Eleanor, how would she manage to get her off the phone?

  “Hello,” she said, picking up the receiver. “Joanna Brady speaking.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Dick Voland told her. “Hal Morgan’s taken off.”

  “Taken off?” Joanna echoed. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. He’s gone. He assaulted Deputy Howell and headed for the hills. From what we can tell, he used a bottle to knock her colder ’an a wedge, then took off in that Buick of his. I’ve posted an APB. With any kind of luck, he won’t make it out of the county.”

  “How’s Debbie?” Joanna asked.

  “She’s got a concussion. She’s been transported to the hospital.”

  Joanna felt her temperature rise. “If Deputy Howell’s already in the hospital, how long ago did all this happen?”

  “Half an hour, I guess,” Dick Voland replied. “Maybe forty-five minutes.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed before now?”

  “I was still here in the office,” Voland said. “I’ve been handling it. I didn’t see any reason to bother you.”

  Another time, Joanna might have chewed him out for leaving her out of the loop. This time, however, she understood exactly why he was right there, Johnny-on-the-spot, the moment the call came in. She could still see Dick Voland stretched out and sleeping on the couch in his office. And she could still see Ruth Voland standing there in her sweats, telling Joanna about Ken, the bowling coach. Poor Dick.

  “So tell me again what happened,” Joanna said.

  “According to what we’ve been able to piece together, Debbie must have been out behind the motel, grabbing a smoke. Someone—I’m betting Morgan himself—whacked her over the head from behind. The doc’s still picking slivers of broken beer bottle out of her scalp. Anyway, she was left lying unconscious, right beside the dumpster. One of the busboys from the coffee shop came out later on to empty the trash. He’s the one who found her and called nine-one-one. By then Morgan was long gone. He left a note, though.”

  “A note? What kind of note?”

  “A suicide note. Typed it on the screen of a little laptop computer he left in his room.”

  “What did it say?” Joanna asked.

  “That Bucky Buckwalter deserved to die. Morgan said he had no intention of going to prison for something that was no more of a crime than putting a sick
dog out of its misery.”

  Joanna felt her stomach contract. In the hospital Hal Morgan had assured Joanna that he hadn’t killed Bucky Buckwalter. She cursed herself for being a naive fool. Obviously Morgan had been lying through his teeth, and she had been stupid enough to believe him.

  “I have company right now,” Joanna said. “If everything is handled…”

  “Just a minute,” Voland interrupted. “Something’s coming in from Dispatch.”

  As she waited, holding the telephone receiver to her ear, she was aware that Butch Dixon was watching her—watching and listening. “Problems?” he asked.

  She nodded, just as Dick Voland came back on the line. “Deputy Long, from the northern sector, just spotted the Buick at the gas station in Elfrida. There are too many civilians around for him to risk doing anything. I told him to hang back and keep Morgan under surveillance.”

  Joanna was torn. She had been out working every night this week. It sounded as though Dick Voland had things under control. Still, he had called with the expectation that, once notified, the sheriff would do something about the situation. And most sheriffs—most hands-on sheriffs—would have. The problem was, most of them didn’t have nine-year-old daughters to worry about.

  “Dick,” Joanna began. “I can’t leave Jenny here…”

  “I’ll watch her for you,” Butch offered. “You go. I’ll stay right here until you get back.”

  Covering the mouthpiece, Joanna looked across the room at him. “You don’t mind?” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  Joanna hesitated, but only for a second. Then she took her hand away from the mouthpiece. “I’m on my way,” she said. “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the Blazer. I’ll be in radio contact just as soon as I’m in the car.”

  Slamming down the phone, Joanna turned toward Butch. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “Like I said yesterday. When duty calls, you’ve got to go. Jenny and I will be fine. We may even watch a little of My Fair Lady before it’s her bedtime. She told me it’s one of her favorites. I happen to like that one as well.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said. “I’d better go get ready.”

  She stopped by the bathroom long enough to let Jenny know what was happening. Then she hurried into the bedroom and put her body armor back on under her clothing—her body armor, her Glock, and her Colt 2000. When she came back out of the bedroom, she found Butch settled on the couch, with the two dogs curled up comfortably at his feet. He was scratching Tigger’s ears.

  “I think he’s adopted me,” he said.

  “It does look that way,” she agreed.

  “What are all these scabs all over his face?”

  “Tigger’s big problem with porcupines is that they can’t outrun him. And once he catches one, he thinks he can win.”

  “I know the feeling,” Butch said. “I seem to have the same kind of luck with women.”

  Not knowing what to say in response, Joanna started toward the door. “Make yourself at home,” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ll wait here and keep the home fires burning,” he said. “You go do whatever it is you have to do. But be careful, and come back home in one piece, you hear?”

  Joanna started to make some smart-mouthed reply, but she stopped when a lump rose unaccountably in her throat and her eyes suddenly blurred with tears. How many times had she said almost those exact words to Andy when he had been called out to some crime scene or accident in the middle of the night? The words of warning and caution took on a new meaning when someone else said them to you. When someone else cared enough to say them to you.

  Nodding, she murmured a quick “I will.” Then she turned away before Butch Dixon had a chance to glimpse how his words of concern had affected her. By the time she vaulted into the Blazer and started down the road, she was crying like a baby.

  And the thing that made those tears so very puzzling was that she didn’t really know why she was crying. She had no idea at all.

  By the time Joanna reached High Lonesome Road, she had herself under control enough to stop the tears and switch on the radio. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “The situation is under control, Sheriff Brady,” the calm voice of Tica Romero, one of the dispatch operators, assured her. “We’ve got it handled.”

  Tica’s unruffled response was frustratingly low on information. “I’d like to know exactly how it’s being handled,” Joanna responded.

  “Deputy Ted Long has the Buick under surveillance. The suspect still hasn’t left the gas station. It looks like he’s headed northbound on Highway 191.”

  “What are Deputy Long’s orders?” Joanna asked.

  “Visual contact only. No hot pursuit. No lights or sirens.”

  Joanna was relieved. She had visions of civilians caught in an Elfrida shoot-out or maybe some twilight-working farmer on a tractor being creamed by either a fleeing suspect or a speeding patrol car. “Good,” she said. “What else?”

  “Chief Deputy Voland has authorized establishing a roadblock just beyond the Sunizona curve.”

  Visualizing the road, Joanna worried about other crossroads that turned off Highway 191 prior to Sunizona—roads that led off into the Chiricahua Mountains on the east or up into the Dragoons on the left. What if Hal Morgan turned off on one of those? In the 1860s, those high desert mountain ranges had been the ones where a canny Apache chieftain named Cochise had led his people in order to elude capture by the U.S. Cavalry. The rugged part of the Dragoons called Cochise Stronghold came by the name honestly. If those steep, rockbound canyons had once been able to afford a safe haven to a whole band of people, Joanna knew it would be all too easy for a single modern-day homicide suspect to disappear into them.

  “Can’t we put up the roadblock any sooner than that?” Joanna asked. “Why wait so long?”

  “Because Deputy Casey can’t get there any faster, for one thing. He’s on his way down from a domestic over in Dragoon. Chief Deputy Voland figures if Deputy Casey can get as far as Township Butte, he can hide behind the butte to put the roadblock in place. That way the suspect won’t be able to see him until he’s right there. When he comes around that curve at Sunizona, it’ll be too late for him to turn off. The two patrol cars will have him in a squeeze play.”

  “Where’s Chief Deputy Voland right now?”

  “He’ll be leaving the complex as soon as he finishes gathering the response team. Where are you?”

  Joanna’s Blazer had just bounced across the last cattle guard on High Lonesome Road. “I’m on my way to the scene, just now turning left on Double Adobe Road at High Lonesome,” she responded. “Once I hit Double Adobe, I’ll take Central Highway up to Elfrida. Anybody else ahead of me?”

  “Nope. Other than Deputy Casey coming south from Dragoon, you’re the next one up.”

  Knowing that, Joanna switched on both flashing lights and siren. The road was relatively straight but narrow and bisected every few miles by washes that made for gut-wrenching dips. She flew through them so fast that more than once the Blazer felt as though it was momentarily airborne.

  “He’s moving now,” Tica announced.

  “Which way?”

  “North, just like we figured.”

  Nodding grimly, Joanna kept on driving. It was one thing to know intellectually that Cochise County was comprised of 6,256 square miles. Only now, as Joanna Brady sped first east and then north, did her understanding of the challenging distances in her jurisdiction come fully into focus.

  Her departmental patrol division consisted of fifty sworn officers. That sounded like a sizable force but that was before it was parceled out—before those fifty officers had to be divided into five separate shifts and spread over seven twenty-four-hour days. Seven days and all those miles. In all, a single patrol officer often was responsible for covering as much as seven hundred square miles.

  Considering the fact that a suicidal Hal Morgan had attacked Deputy Howell in m
aking good his escape, he had to be classified as a danger to himself and others. He posed a serious threat to the public welfare regardless of where he was and whether or not he was armed. And across all those vast miles of Cochise County, only two responding deputies and Sheriff Joanna Brady herself were anywhere near striking distance of his damn gas-guzzling Buick.

  Several minutes passed before the radio squawked again. “Sheriff Brady?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Tica Romero said. “We’ve lost him.”

  “Lost whom?” Joanna demanded.

  “Deputy Long. Something’s wrong. We’ve lost radio contact.”

  Joanna was just coming into Elfrida then, pausing but not stopping at the junction where Central Highway met 191 and then racing north through town. Highway 191 was a far better road than the one from Double Adobe to Elfrida, but on a better roadway there was always a possibility of more traffic.

  No sooner was she clear of the hamlet of Elfrida than she saw the fallacy in Dick Voland’s plan. In an otherwise black sky, a pulsating halo of red and blue light threw the silhouetted shadow of Township Butte into sudden sharp relief. The mountain may have hidden Deputy Casey’s vehicle, but not the pulsingly eerie glow from his flashing emergency lights. And if, from miles away, Joanna Brady knew the roadblock was there, so did a fleeing Hal Morgan.

  “Lost radio contact,” Joanna repeated. “How can that be?”

  “Hold it,” Tica said. “I’m getting something.”

  During the seemingly endless pause that followed, Joanna held her breath and drove like a maniac. Eventually Tica came back on the air. “Officer down, code three,” she said. “Deputy Casey has abandoned the roadblock and is on his way to the scene. So’s an emergency medical squad from Douglas.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Morgan rammed the patrol car,” Tica Romero answered. “Flipped him right over. According to Deputy Long, he’s pinned inside his vehicle and needs help.”

  Even as Tica spoke, the flashing lights of Deputy Casey’s patrol car appeared from around the curve and came speeding south. Between Joanna’s Blazer and that one there was no sign of any other vehicle.