Damage Control

by J. A. Jance

  “Great,” Joanna said. “So where’s this house?”

  “Tombstone Canyon,” Frank said. “Just west of the first exit from Highway 80. We’ve got a perimeter set up around the place. You won’t be able to miss it.”

  “All right,” Joanna said. “We’re coming as fast as traffic, lights, and sirens will allow. Is there anything else going on I should know about?”

  “According to Jaime, there’s still no sign of Luis Andrade,” Frank said. “None at all.”

  Great, Joanna thought. A day that had started out badly was now on its way to being a whole lot worse.

  Joanna ended the call and turned to Deb. “You’re wearing your vest?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Detective Howell replied.

  “Good,” Joanna said. “You’re probably going to need it.”

  That was small comfort, however. In hostage situations there was only so much a Kevlar vest could protect.

  After a moment, Joanna picked up the phone. When Butch didn’t answer his cell phone, she dialed the home number, where Jenny, there looking after Dennis, answered the call.

  “Butch still isn’t back from the other house,” she said. “He probably didn’t hear his phone ring. Do you want me to give him a message?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “Tell him something’s come up. I’ll probably be late for dinner.” She ended that call and then turned to Detective Howell. “Want me to call Katy and give her the same message?”

  “Please,” Deb Howell returned.

  She did so, utilizing the same kind of bland language she had used with Jenny. “Something’s come up,” Joanna told Katy Rawlins. “We may be late.”

  Joanna didn’t say, “Deb and I will be home as soon as we finish laying our lives on the line.” That would have scared Deb’s sister to death.

  It would have scared Joanna Brady, too, and since they were driving at something close to ninety miles an hour into the teeth of a hostage situation, scaring herself silly wasn’t a good idea.

  CHAPTER 13

  DREADING THE UPCOMING CONFRONTATION, DEB HOWELL AND Joanna drove most of the way to Bisbee in an uneasy silence punctuated only by the sound of the siren. “Do you think we should call Larry Wolfe at work and let him know what’s happening?” Deb asked.

  Having distraught relatives show up in the middle of hostage situations was generally a surefire recipe for disaster. “Let’s leave it be for the time being,” Joanna said.

  Deb nodded and said nothing.

  Just north of the Mule Mountain Tunnel they drove past a police roadblock that had shut down the old Divide Road to all traffic. The same was true for the first exit into Old Bisbee. That one was closed in both directions.

  Deb stopped the Crown Vic at the far edge of the cluster of police and emergency vehicles from a variety of jurisdictions—City of Bisbee, Arizona Department of Public Safety, and Cochise County Sheriff’s Department—parked haphazardly along the street. Joanna stayed in the vehicle for a moment, assessing the situation.

  The officers in attendance—all of them wearing vests and maintaining positions that kept them out of the line of fire—appeared to be focused on a small one-story frame house on the north side of Tombstone Canyon. Like its near neighbors, it was old-fashioned, complete with a tin roof and a screened front porch. Someone had installed a homemade wheelchair ramp that looked much too steep to meet code but probably served its purpose anyway. The tiny graveled yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. A narrow walkway led from the front of the house around to the back, where only the walk and the fence separated the house from a bank of rocky hillside that rose abruptly behind it. Unless someone was prepared to do genuine mountain climbing, there was really only one way in or out of the yard—through the front gate.

  A hulking fire truck was parked in the street. Behind it, sheltered from the house, Joanna spotted Frank conferring with Bisbee’s police chief, Alvin Bernard.

  Joanna opened the car door and got out. Bisbee was a good ten degrees cooler than Tucson, but it was still hot—close to a hundred.

  “Stay with the car,” Joanna ordered Deb Howell. “I’ll check with Frank and see where we’re needed.”

  Careful to keep a screen of vehicles between herself and the Beasleys’ house, Joanna approached Frank and Alvin. The city’s police chief had been less than welcoming when Joanna was first elected sheriff. He, like many others, had been skeptical about whether or not she’d ever turn into a “real” police officer. Five years into her administration, however, those early jitters were pretty much gone. Most of the time the two of them had a reasonably good rapport, and if Alvin had a problem with Joanna’s being in charge of a department that was several times larger than his, he didn’t let on.

  “What’s the situation?” she asked.

  “We’re going on two hours now from when Ms. Edwards first called our office,” Frank explained. “She asked for you specifically. Kristin told her you were out, and asked if she could take a message. Samantha reported that someone had broken into her parents’ home and was stealing their stuff. Kristin advised Samantha to dial 911 and report it, which she did. When officers from the City of Bisbee showed up, however, they were greeted by a hail of gunfire. They backed off and tried reaching the residence by phone—on the Beasleys’ landline. That’s when Sandra told the officers once again that Sheriff Brady is the only one her sister, the hostage taker, was willing to talk to. You’re the only one she trusts.”

  “What’s happening now?” Joanna asked.

  “Not much,” Alvin said. “Playing a waiting game and listening to that god-awful singing.”

  “Singing?” Joanna repeated, not sure she’d heard him properly. Joanna had spent an hour and a half and a hundred miles mentally preparing herself for a life-and-death confrontation. In a hostage situation that included an armed assailant, singing had never been part of the equation. “What do you mean, ‘singing’?”

  “Listen,” Frank said, holding up his hand. Sure enough, in the background and over the subdued crackle of police radios, Joanna heard someone warbling a barely recognizable version of “Down in the Valley.”

  “There’s an open window in that bathroom,” Frank said. “The sound is coming from there.”

  “Is she drunk?” Joanna asked.

  “Could be,” Frank said. “When I first got here, she was singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot.’ She went from that to ‘Where Have You Been, Billy Boy.’ Now this. If she’s drunk, though, she’s an armed and dangerous drunk.”

  “Any chance of her passing out?” Joanna asked.

  “One can hope,” Frank said. “But I doubt we’ll be that lucky.”

  “What about Sandra Wolfe’s cell phone?” Joanna asked. “Has anyone tried calling that?”

  “We did,” Frank said. “Sandy picked up. Samantha ordered her to put it down. As soon as she did, there was a gunshot and the call ended.”

  “She shot her sister?”

  “That’s what we thought at first, but then we heard Sandy scream, ‘You shot my phone! You shot my phone!’ We’re guessing Samantha plugged the cell phone.”

  Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. “What about the gun she’s using? Where did that come from?”

  “Alfred Beasley had several guns that I know about,” Alvin Bernard told them. “He was quite the hunter back in his younger days. When he quit that, I’m guessing he never bothered getting rid of the guns.”

  “He was losing his mental faculties but he still had guns?” Joanna muttered under her breath.

  “That’s the way the Second Amendment guys want it,” Alvin growled. “And old age isn’t strictly speaking, a medical disorder.”

  It was hardly a time to launch into a heated discussion of gun control, and Frank stepped in to short-circuit it.

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “Our problem right now is that however many guns Alfred Beasley may have had, they’ve fallen into the hands of his certifiably nutty daughter. We need a plan.”


  “I’m not a trained hostage negotiator,” Joanna said. “But since she asked for me, should I try talking to her?”

  Alvin handed her a cell phone. “Be my guest,” he said. “The Beasleys’ landline is the last number I called. All you have to do is punch the green button twice. That’ll activate the redial.”

  “You talked to her, then?” Joanna asked.

  “I said I called the number,” Alvin corrected. “Samantha Edwards wouldn’t talk to me except to say she wanted you here. After that she hung up. She did the same thing to Frank.”

  Joanna put the cell phone on speaker and then punched the button. Moments later, when the phone rang inside the house, the singing ended abruptly.

  “Samantha?” Joanna said when the call connected. “It’s Sheriff Brady. They said you wanted to talk to me. What’s going on in there?”

  “Are you here now?” Samantha asked.

  “Yes. I’m just outside,” Joanna said. “If you can see the fire truck out in the street, I’m on the far side of that.”

  Something must have set her off, Joanna thought. What could it be?

  “You were fine when I saw you earlier,” Joanna said. “What happened? And how’s your sister? Is Sandy all right?”

  “There’s a strange woman in here who claims to be my sister, but she’s not,” Samantha declared. “Whoever she is, I think she may have done something to Mother. Mom is missing and so is Dad, and there are all kinds of people—really bad people—standing around outside the house. If you don’t do something to stop them, I’m afraid they’ll try to steal Dad’s stuff.”

  Joanna was stunned. Somehow Samantha Edwards had forgotten that her parents were both dead and she had no idea that the woman she was holding at gunpoint was her long-estranged sister. Not only that, in Samantha’s state of mental befuddlement she had somehow convinced herself that the cops surrounding her parents’ house—officers summoned by her own 911 call—were actually a band of thieves.

  Joanna covered the cell phone’s speaker. “It sounds like she’s suffered a complete psychotic meltdown.”

  Frank and Alvin nodded in agreement. They thought so, too.

  “If Samantha’s this screwed up, how does she even know who I am?” Joanna asked.

  Alvin shrugged. “Beats me,” Frank said.

  While Joanna was off the line, Samantha wandered into a relatively tuneless but still recognizable version of the Joan Baez classic, “500 Miles.” It was as though all those different songs were connected by some invisible string in Samantha’s subconscious, with one leading seamlessly to the next with no obvious connection.

  Joanna took her hand off the speaker. “Why did you want to talk to me?” she asked.

  “Who are you again?”

  “Joanna Brady,” Joanna said patiently. “Sheriff Joanna Brady. They told me you asked to talk to me. Why? What do you want?”

  “A bean burrito enchilada-style,” Samantha answered at once. “I’m hungry. Did I miss lunch?”

  Considering the circumstances, that improbable answer was almost as jarring as her singing, but in the world of hostage negotiations, granting a simple request was a possible starting point, and Joanna latched onto it.

  “A bean burrito enchilada-style,” Joanna repeated. “I’m writing it down. I’ll have to send someone to go get it. Once the food gets here, I’ll trade you the burrito for your weapon, okay?”

  “Only if you get all those other people out of here,” Samantha said.

  With Sandra Wolfe’s life hanging in the balance, banishing the police presence wasn’t an option.

  “We’ll talk about it when the food gets here,” Joanna countered. “Okay?”

  Noisily Samantha hung up the receiver. A moment later she resumed her plaintive song.

  Joanna turned to Frank. “Have Dispatch call Deb. Ask her to go to Daisy’s, pick up that burrito, and bring it back here.”

  “Right,” Frank said, picking up his phone. “Enchilada-style. I’m on it.”

  Moments later, Deb Howell sped away from the clutch of parked cars while Joanna once again punched redial on Chief Bernard’s phone.

  “What about the other woman who’s there with you?” Joanna asked when Samantha answered again. “Is she all right?”

  “She was crying earlier,” Samantha said. “She stopped now.”

  “Can you put her on the phone?” Joanna asked. “Can I talk to her?”

  “I guess,” Samantha said. “Just a minute. I’ll ask her.”

  The song resumed, starting up in the same place where it had stopped. Then, to Joanna’s amazement, Sandra’s voice came through the phone.

  “Sheriff Brady?” she whispered shakily. “Can’t you do something about this? Can’t you make her let me go?”

  It was Joanna’s first real chance to get information—vital information—about the situation inside the house and she didn’t want to blow it.

  “We’re trying,” she said. “How many guns does she have?”

  “Four that I can see,” Sandy answered. “Daddy’s old .22 pistol, two shotguns, and a rifle.”

  “Are they all loaded?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Probably.”

  “How did this happen?” Joanna asked.

  “Beats me,” Sandra said. “We were going through Mom’s Christmas-card list, contacting people and letting them know what’s happened. Everything seemed fine. No problems. We stopped for lunch—”

  “But she said she was hungry,” Joanna objected.

  “I don’t know why,” Sandra replied. “Sammy ate like a horse. Then, a little while later, she started acting funny. Weird. She got up and left the room. I thought she was going to use the bathroom. Instead she came back with an armload of guns and with the pistol stuck in the pocket of her jeans. The next thing I knew, she pulled the .22 out of her pocket and pointed it at me. She asked me who I was and what the hell was I doing in our parents’ house. It was like one minute she was fine and the next minute she was stark raving crazy. She’s better when she’s singing. When she stops it’s like she gets agitated and starts to lose it even more.”

  “Food’s here,” Frank said softly from behind Joanna.

  She looked up from concentrating on her phone call and was surprised to see Deb Howell pulling back into the group of parked cars in far less time than it should have taken her to drive to Daisy’s and back. That was when Joanna realized Frank had managed to pull off a bean-burrito relay of some kind.

  “Put Samantha back on the phone,” Joanna said. “I need to talk to her again.”

  By now, the woman was warbling the second verse of “On Top of Old Smokey.” For the first time, Joanna realized that her entire uniform was drenched in sweat. Perspiration was running into her eyes and burning them. It was dripping off her chin.

  Focus, she ordered herself. Stay calm. Maintain a normal voice. Don’t act excited.

  “Hello?” Samantha said. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Your food’s here.”

  “What food?”

  “The bean burrito you wanted, remember?” Joanna said. “You told me you’d trade it for your guns.”

  “I did?” Samantha sounded utterly mystified. “When did I say that?”

  She doesn’t know which end is up, Joanna thought. That’s the one thing you have going for you. Go with it. Use it.

  “Anyway,” Joanna continued. “I was just talking to your dad. He and your mom thought you’d like to come join them for lunch.”

  “Daddy’s out there?” Samantha asked.

  “They both are,” Joanna said. She turned to Frank and gave him the high sign. He spoke into his radio. As though they were one man, the officers maintaining the perimeter drew their weapons. One of Alvin’s uniformed officers, a younger man Joanna didn’t recognize, vaulted over the fence on the far side of the house and then belly-crawled until he was lying prone next to the bottom of the porch.

  Joanna was torn. If Samantha came out
with guns blazing, the young cop was a dead man. On the other hand, if Joanna ordered Samantha to emerge with her hands in the air, that kind of demand was likely to raise too many red flags.

  “Just leave the guns inside, okay?” Joanna said calmly. “As for that other woman, the one who’s in there with you? Leave her inside as well.”

  “But what if she gets away?” Samantha demanded. “I think she was here robbing the place.”

  “Don’t worry,” Joanna assured her. “I have officers stationed out back. We’ll make sure she doesn’t get away.”

  For the next space of time, the universe seemed to come to a standstill. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Holding her breath, Joanna was afraid that Samantha’s singing would resume once more, but it didn’t.

  Someone nearby whispered, “Watch it. She’s coming out.”

  With the screened front porch obscuring Joanna’s view, she couldn’t tell if Samantha was armed or not.

  “Dad?” she called. “Mom? Where are you?”

  “Out here,” Joanna answered. “On the far side of the street.”

  Slowly the door on the screened porch swung open, and the officer in the yard sprang to his feet. The moment Samantha’s figure appeared in the doorway he tackled her, sending both of them sprawling back onto the porch.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Sandra screeched from inside the house as officers descended on the porch and yard from every direction. “I’ve got her guns. All of them. I’m coming out the back way.”

  The fierce battle raging inside the screened porch went on for what seemed an eternity. Samantha Edwards may have left the guns inside the house but not her determination. A pair of lawn chairs crashed to the floor. Several flowerpots tumbled and shattered. In all it took five officers to wrestle Samantha to the floor and cuff her. By the time they finally had her in custody, Joanna was dimly aware of the sound of a helicopter circling overhead—a news helicopter, no doubt, dispatched from one of the stations in Tucson.

  Sandra Wolfe was hysterical when a pair of Joanna’s deputies, followed by Deb Howell, met the woman at her parents’ back door. When they relieved her of her armload of weapons, Sandra fell weeping into Deb Howell’s arms. Meanwhile other officers half led and half carried Samantha out to the sidewalk. “Mom? Dad?” she shouted, looking desperately in every direction. “Where are you? What have they done to you?”