Desert Heat

by J. A. Jance

  Now, faced with her daughter’s uncomfortable question, a convenient television commercial rescued her. Eleanor Lathrop limped into the kitchen and helped herself to a dish of peaches. “Isn’t that man here yet?”

  “Not so far,” Joanna answered.

  The older woman leveled a meaningful stare at her granddaughter. “Shouldn’t you finish up and go to bed pretty soon?” she asked. “Don’t you have school in the morning?”

  The child returned the look with a level stare of her own. “It’s too early,” Jenny returned. “I’m in the third grade now, Grandma. I don’t have to go to bed until nine o’clock. Besides, I want to stay up and kiss Daddy goodnight.”

  Eleanor Lathrop shook her head disparagingly. “That’s silly,” she sniffed. “It could be all hours before he gets here. Besides, he’s probably off politicking somewhere and has forgotten completely what night this is.”

  “He didn’t forget,” Joanna asserted firmly. “Something must have come up at the department, some emergency. He just hasn’t had a chance to call.”

  “Men never do. He’s already almost two hours late, you’d think he’d have the common decency…”

  Not waiting for her mother to finish the sentence, Joanna hurried to the kitchen wall phone and dialed the Cochise County Sheriff’s department. The local telephone exchange was small enough that it was only necessary to dial the last five digits of the telephone number. The clerk who answered said that Andy was out. Unable to provide any further information about how long ago he had left or where he might be, the clerk offered to put Joanna through to Chief Deputy Richard Voland who, despite the lateness of the hour, was still in his office.

  “Hi, Dick. It’s Joanna Brady. What’s going on that everybody’s still at work?”

  “I don’t know about anybody else,” Dick Voland replied, “but I’m catching up on a mountain of paper. Ruth and the kids are bowling tonight, so I’m in no hurry to get home.”

  “Have you seen Andy?”

  “Andy? Not for a couple of hours. He lit out of here right around five o’clock. I thought from what he said that he was pretty much going straight home. Isn’t he there?”

  Joanna felt a tight clutch of fear in her stomach, a cop’s wife’s fear. “No. Did he say he was going somewhere else before he came home?”

  Dick Voland didn’t answer immediately, and Joanna heard the momentary hesitation in his voice. “One or two of the day shift guys are still out in the other room. Let me check with them. Hang on. Someone will be right back to you.”

  Half a minute later, someone else came on the line. “Joanna, what’s up?”

  She was relieved to recognize the voice of Ken Galloway, one of Andy’s best friends in the department.

  “Andy’s late getting home, and we were supposed to go out tonight. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  “Christ!” Ken exclaimed. “It’s almost eight o’clock and he’s not there yet? I thought he was on his way home hours ago. He mentioned a couple of errands, but nothing that should have taken this long. Maybe he had car trouble.”

  The knot in Joanna’s stomach tightened into a fist. Jennifer’s suggestion of car trouble had been annoying. Coming from Ken Galloway, the supposedly comforting words sounded patronizing. She bridled. “If it were car trouble, don’t you think we’d have heard from him on the radio by now?”

  “Seems like it. Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “I’ll do some checking from this end and give you a call back.”

  Joanna put down the phone. For a moment she stood there indecisively, then she spun around and marched to the back door where she pulled a worn pair of suede work boots on over her pantyhose, then she took Andy’s old Levi’s jacket down from its peg beside the back door. Sensing an outing, Sadie eagerly nosed her way to the door and waited for Joanna to open it.

  “Where are you going?” Eleanor demanded.

  “To look for him,” Joanna answered simply. “Something’s wrong. I know it. He may be hurt.”

  “But why should you go looking? The department will handle that. That’s what we pay them for,” Eleanor Lathrop pointed out. “That’s what your father always said.”

  Invoking the name and memory of Sheriff D. H. Lathrop, Joanna’s father who had been dead now for some fifteen years, had been Eleanor’s foolproof way of winning almost every intervening argument with her daughter. This time it didn’t work. Joanna didn’t knuckle under.

  “Mother,” Joanna answered curtly. “Andy’s my husband, and I’ll go looking for him if I want to.”

  Jenny slipped out of the breakfast nook and hurried to the door. “I’ll come too.”

  “No. You stay here with Grandma.”

  With that, Joanna turned on her heel and sprinted out the door, taking the dog with her. She had gone only a few steps when the single floodlight in the yard came on. Joanna looked back and waved to Jenny who was standing beside the yard light switch with her face pressed longingly against the fine screen mesh.

  “I’ll be right back,” Joanna called. “You wait here.”

  Sadie raced ahead toward the detached garage, knowing from the noisy jangle of the key ring in Joanna’s hand that she would be taking the car. While the dog danced in happy circles, Joanna backed her worn Eagle station wagon out of the garage. Moments later, with the dog once more in the lead, they started down the rutted dirt road that was little more than a pale yellow ribbon winding through a forest of mesquite.

  In the still but chilly desert night, moonlit leaves cast delicate lacy shadows on the ground. Sadie gamboled along ahead of the car for only a few yards before she raced off into the underbrush, nose to ground. Within moments the dog set up a noisy racket-the characteristic booming-that meant she had scared up some desert quarry. It was probably the same old wiry, neighboring jack rabbit the dog always chased. In stylized ritual, the dog pursued the rabbit hour after hour, day after day, without either one of them ever fully putting their hearts into the contest.

  Joanna, smiling to herself, was comforted by the familiar baying of the hound and by the jack-in-the-box antics of kangaroo rats who leaped fender high in their scramble to get out of the approaching car’s path. Their comical frolics made her feel somewhat better, but still she worried.

  She made her way out to the cattle guard that marked the boundary of their property, the High Lonesome Ranch, and swung onto the wider dirt road of the same name. During the early twenties, when water was plentiful, the High Lonesome Ranch with its mail-order Sears Craftsman house, had been one of the larger and more prosperous spreads in the Lower Sulphur Springs Valley. During harder times, one chunk of land after another had been sold off until all that remained of the original ranch was the scraggly forty acres that still held the house and outbuildings.

  Just across the cattle guard, Joanna stopped the car, switched off the engine, and got out to listen. Here in a natural depression that was also the roadway, she was unable to see head-lights, but she could hear the steady whine of rubber tires on blacktop. While she listened, three separate vehicles went past without any of them turning east on the Double Adobe Cutoff.

  Panting, Sadie trotted up to her side. “He’s not here, girl,” Joanna said, stroking the dog’s smooth forehead. “Let’s go on down to the corner and see if he’s there.”

  They started south on High Lonesome Road. This time, Sadie was content to follow along behind the car, sticking to the left-hand shoulder of the road. Between the ranch and Double Adobe Road, High Lonesome crossed a series of four steep washes on the rickety spines of four narrow, one-lane-wide bridges. The bridges were old and no longer strong enough to handle heavy loads. Each year, after the rainy season, the county sent a bulldozer out to grade a track through the sand for over-sized loads.

  Joanna was speeding across the third bridge when the moonlight glinted off something in the wash below. Jamming on the brakes, Joanna stood the Eagle on its nose, almost fish-tailing off the road in her
haste to stop the car. With dust still billowing up around her, she leaped out of the Eagle and ran back to the bridge while her headlight-handicapped vision adjusted to the sparse moonlight.

  “Andy,” she called. “Andy is that you?”

  Without remembering how she got there, she found herself standing in the middle of the narrow bridge looking down on what she instantly recognized as her husband’s Bronco. It seemed to be mired down in the sand. Near the pickup’s front bumper she could barely make out a dark smudge on the lighter sand. Her first fleeting thought was that Andy had accidently hit a stray head of livestock, but that was only a trick her mind played on her to shield her from the terrible truth.

  “Andy,” she called again. “Are you down there?”

  There was no answer, but now she caught sight of a ghostly figure darting past the truck and realized that Sadie must have detoured down from the upper level. The dog stopped short near the smudge in the sand, although Joanna’s eyes still hadn’t adjusted sufficiently for her to see clearly.

  “Andy!” Joanna shouted, more frantically this time. “If you can hear me, for God’s sake say something.”

  For an answer she heard a terrible, low moan, one that struck terror in her heart. He was down there, out of sight and hurt, too. Petrified now, Joanna darted back to the end of the bridge and started scrabbling, hand over hand, down the steep embankment.

  “Hang on,” she heard herself shouting. “Hang on, Andy. I’m coming.”

  She found him sprawled face down in the roadway while Sadie, tail wagging, eagerly licked the back of his neck. Roughly Joanna pushed Sadie aside and fell to her knees beside the still, prone figure of her husband.

  “Andy,” she cried desperately, while her heart hammered wildly in her chest. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  “JoJo,” he groaned. “Help me.”

  Andy tried to raise his head, but the effort was too much for him. He fell back helplessly into the dirt.

  “Andy, you’re hurt. Where? Tell me what happened.”

  She was almost shouting in his ear, but there was no answering response from him. The only sounds in the desert came from Sadie’s heavy panting and the faraway, high-pitched yip of a distant coyote. Searching for answers, Joanna’s eyes scanned his back, but she saw nothing. With one hand on his shoulder, she waited for him to take another breath, but he didn’t, not for a long time. The realization that her husband was dying hit her full force.

  Grunting with effort and blessed with a strength beyond her capability, she managed to turn him over onto his back. Only then could she see the ink-black stain that spread from just above his belt buckle to his crotch. Fearing the worst, she touched the dark spot with the tips of her fingers. They came away wet and sticky and covered with sand.

  “Oh, God!” she whispered. “Help me.” It was both an exclamation and a prayer.

  Andy’s eyes fluttered open momentarily. He coughed and a shower of wet sand spattered Joanna’s face, but at least he was still breathing. Fighting back the urge to scream, she leaned close to his ear. “It’s bad, Andy, real bad. Wait here. Don’t move. I’ve got to get help.”

  Leaping to her feet, she scrambled over to Andy’s Bronco and tried the door. It was locked. She ran around to the other side and tried that one as well. It too was locked. For a moment she panicked, then she remembered the extra key to the truck on her own key ring in the Eagle. At once, she climbed back up to the roadway, raced to the idling car, shut off the engine, and grabbed the keys. Afraid she might drop them scrabbling back down, she shoved the keys deep in her hip pocket before starting the steep descent.

  Once back in the sandy wash, she hurried to the door of the Bronco, pulling the keys out as she ran. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to shove the key into the lock. It took three attempts before the key clicked home and turned. Sick with relief, she wrenched the door open, lunged across the seat, and grabbed the radio microphone down from its clip on the dashboard.

  She pressed the button. “Officer down,” Joanna shouted into the microphone. “Officer down and needs assistance.”

  “Who is this?” the dispatcher demanded in return. “State your location.”

  Joanna Brady took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “Joanna Brady,” she answered. “I’ve just found my husband. I think he’s been shot.”

  “Where are you?”

  She forced herself to answer clearly, ration-ally. Otherwise, help would never be able to find them. “Half a mile off Double Adobe Road on High Lonesome. We’re down in the wash beneath the second bridge.”

  “Hang on,” the dispatcher told her. “Help’s on the way.”

  Joanna flung the microphone back into its clip and ran back around the truck where she once more knelt beside Andy’s still, silent form. He lay just as she’d left him. This time w hen she knelt beside him and lay one hand lightly on his chest, he didn’t respond at all. “Andy,” she said, but still there was no answer.

  In an agony of fear, she groped at his wrist. There was a faint, weak pulse, but his skin was icy cold to the touch. Rising panic threatened to engulf her, but she fought it off, rejected it. From some dim corner of memory, her Girl Scout first aid training reasserted itself and clicked into action.

  Shock. Andy must be going into shock. Once more she scrambled away from him, this time returning from the Bronco with the clean but worn blanket he always kept in the back seat with his first aid kit and tool chest. Hastily she spread the blanket over his motionless body. She knelt beside him, holding his hands, willing her own warmth into him.

  Neighboring coyotes heard the sound long before she did. Only when that first eerie chorus died back could Joanna hear the faint wail of an approaching siren that had set them off.

  “Do you hear that, Andy?” she asked. “Hang on. For God’s sake, please hang on.”

  But if Andy heard her, it didn’t show. Sadie whined and crawled closer on her belly until her nose touched Joanna’s leg. It was though the dog, too, was in need of comfort. She waited an eternity for Andy to take another shallow breath. But he didn’t. Three miles away, she again caught the faintly pulsing wail of the siren. Followed by another echoing chorus of coyotes. And still Andy didn’t breathe again.

  A shiver of despair shot through Joanna’s body, leaving her totally devoid of hope. She rocked back on her heels and screamed her outrage to the universe. “No,” she wailed, flinging her desolation upward toward a moonlit but uncaring sky. “Noooo.”

  All up and down the lonely stretches of the Sulphur Springs Valley, howling coyotes took up this new refrain. Somehow the sound of it snapped Joanna out of her unreasoning panic, reminded her of another part of her first-aid training.

  Heedless of the blood, she bent over her husband’s inert form. Afraid of hurting him but knowing being too tentative could prove fatal, she placed both hands on his lower rib cage and pressed down sharply. Then, molding her lips to his, she tried to force the life-giving air back into his lungs.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispered between breaths. “Please don’t leave me.”

  TWO

  An ambulance and two Cochise County Sheriff’s vehicles arrived almost simultaneously followed by an officer from the Arizona Highway Patrol. When the arriving officers scrambled toward them down the embankment, Sadie barked frantically. Joanna didn’t want to stop what she was doing, but the only way for the professionals to get close enough to do their work was for Joanna to leave Andy long enough to drag the dog out of the way.

  Clutching Sadie by the collar, Joanna led the protesting dog back to the Eagle and shut her inside for safekeeping. Weak with fear and spent with effort, she leaned against the fender of the car and looked down at the group of Emergency Medical Technicians clustered around Andy’s motionless body. Their hurried shouts and frenzied actions gave her some small hope that perhaps they weren’t too late and Andy was still alive.

  She was still standing there looking down at them when Ken Gallow
ay found her. “How bad is it?” he asked.

  Shaking her head was all the answer Joanna could manage.

  Ken took her arm. “Come with me,” he said. “You’re better off not watching.”

  Holding her solicitously, Galloway guided her through the growing collection of haphazardly parked vehicles that already littered the area around the bridge. He opened the rider’s side of his still-warm patrol car and eased her into the seat. She was shaking violently. Inside her head chattering teeth rattled uncontrollably.

  “My God, Joanna, you must be freezing,” Ken said. “Wait right here.”

  He disappeared, returning moments later with two blankets and a cup of coffee. He handed her the coffee then wrapped the blanket around her legs and tossed the other one over her quaking shoulders. Joanna held the coffee in her hands without taking a drink while she stared at the place where people clambered up and down the embankment. From this perspective, the people on the floor of the wash were totally out of sight.

  “He stopped breathing,” Joanna explained woodenly to Ken Galloway. “I tried doing CPR, but I don’t know if it worked or not. Go check for me, Ken. Please.”

  “You’ll be all right here alone?”

  She nodded. Ken strode to the head of the bridge and then disappeared down the bank. He came back a few minutes later, shaking his head.

  Joanna’s heart sank. “Is he still alive?”

  “Barely. At least they’ve got his heart beating again. You kept him going long enough for them to be able to do that.”

  Joanna didn’t know she had been holding her breath until she let it out. “Thank God,” she murmured.