Desert Heat

by J. A. Jance

  Quickly she placed a long-distance call to the Methodist parsonage in Bisbee. Jeff Daniels answered.

  “Hello, Jeff,” Joanna began, trying to observe at least a vestige of good manners. “I need to speak to Jennifer.”

  “You sound upset, Joanna,” Jeff returned. “Are you all right? How are things?”

  She tried to answer but at first the words caught in her throat. “Andy’s dead,” she managed finally. “It happened earlier this afternoon. Please don’t tell Jenny when you call her. I want to be the one to break the news.”

  “She’s outside with Marianne right now,” Jeff said. “Hold on. I’ll go get them both.”

  While she waited, Joanna dug her finger-nails deep into the palms of her hands. It hadn’t been necessary for anyone to tell her of her own father’s death. She had been right there on the shoulder of the road and had seen it all for herself firsthand. Now, though, she found herself praying for strength, for the ability to find the right words to say. Moments later Jenny’s cheerful, childish voice came on the phone.

  “Hi, Mom. Reverend Maculyea and I have been outside playing on her swing. I think she’s weird. And Jeff, too. They have a swing, but they don’t have any kids.”

  “Jenny…” Joanna began and then stopped when she heard the unmistakable tremor in her voice.

  And clearly her distress was obvious, even to a nine-year-old. “What’s the matter, Mom?” Jenny asked. “You sound funny. Are you all right?”

  Joanna took a deep breath. “I’m okay, but your dad’s not,” she said. “He’s dead, Jenny. Daddy’s gone.”

  Her announcement was met with shocked silence. For a moment she thought maybe she’d been disconnected. “Jenny,” Joanna said. “Are you still there? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Is he really?”

  “Yes, really, honey. I’m sorry.”

  Again the phone seemed to go dead in a baffling, achingly long silence, one Joanna had no idea how to fill. Finally Jennifer said, “Why were those nurses so mean to us? Why wouldn’t they let me see him? I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  “I know, Jenny. Neither did I. Hospitals have rules, I guess, and everybody has to go by them, even if they don’t always make sense to anybody else.”

  Jennifer began crying then. For almost a minute the only sound was that of Jenny sobbing brokenly into the phone. Joanna longed to be in the same room with her daughter. She wanted to hold her close and shield her from the hurt, but from one hundred miles away there was nothing she could do but listen. The sound of Jennifer’s broken-hearted weeping tore Joanna apart.

  At last, in the background, she heard Jeff Daniels speaking soothingly. After a shuffle, the phone was handed over to someone else while Jenny’s disconsolate sobbing moved away from the receiver.

  “Jeff told me,” Marianne Maculyea said when she came on the line. “How did it happen? After listening to Dr. Sanders, I thought he was doing all right.”

  “So did I, but according to the nurse he went into another episode of cardiac arrest. This time they weren’t able to bring him back. Two separate doctors came in and certified that he was brain dead. And then they took him away. I wasn’t even there.”

  “I’m so sorry, Joanna. Do you want me to come back up to Tucson? If you need me, I can be there in less than two hours.”

  “No. I’d much rather have you there with Jenny right now. I’m all right, really. I had to leave the hospital for a little while to try to get myself sorted out, but I’m on my way back there now. I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

  “Call if you need me,” Marianne told her. “I’ll stay by the phone.”

  “Thanks, Mari. I will.”

  After hanging up, Joanna detoured through the hotel restroom where she used a handful of tissues to wipe her face and blow her nose. Looking at her image in the mirror, she was shocked by what she saw there-by the deep, dark circles under red, puffy eyes, by the gray pallor of her skin, by her lank, dirty hair. She still hadn’t had a chance to shower or change out of the blue dress and the yellow smock, and her teeth were crying for a toothbrush. But all that would have to come later. For now she had to go back to the hospital and handle whatever needed to be handled.

  Again, the walk back to the hospital seemed to take forever. As she entered the lobby, she felt shabby and dirty and ill at ease. She felt even more so when a well-dressed young woman fell into step beside her.

  “Mrs. Brady. Could I please have a word with you?”

  The woman was a stranger yet she seemed to know Joanna by sight. “Who are you?” Joanna asked.

  “Sue Rolles. I’m a reporter with the Arizona Daily Sun.”

  “What do you want?”

  “About your husband’s suicide…”

  “Murder,” Joanna interrupted, correcting the reporter the same way she had corrected Dr. Sanders hours earlier.

  “But I was under the impression that the case was being investigated as a suicide.”

  Joanna stopped in mid-stride and turned to face the reporter. Hurt and rage, the two war-ring emotions that had simmered hot and cold inside her all morning long, combined into a volatile mixture and came to a sudden boil. “You can talk about suicide all you want,” she declared, “but not to me, and not about my husband. Do I make myself clear?” The re-porter nodded.

  “Andrew Brady was murdered,” Joanna continued. “He was an experienced police officer. Cops know all about how guns work. When they set out to commit suicide, they know how to get the job done-they usually blow their brains out. I believe that’s a statistic l read in an article in your very own newspaper.”

  “I’m here to tell you that Andrew Brady never shot himself in the gut. He wouldn’t have done something like that in the first place, and even if he had, he never would have done it where I’d most likely be the one to find him.”

  Properly chastised, the reporter moved back a step just as Ken Galloway materialized out of nowhere.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, extricating himself from a crush of homeward-bound people exiting an elevator.

  Joanna turned on him as though he were as much an enemy as the reporter. “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she said. “Andy’s dead and I’m sick and tired of people telling me he committed suicide. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I won’t listen.”

  “Who’s this?” Ken asked, nodding toward Sue Rolles.

  “A reporter,” Joanna answered. “With the Sun.”

  “Maybe you’d better go,” Ken Galloway said hurriedly to Sue Rolles. “I think Mrs. Brady has had about all she can handle for one day.” To Joanna he said, “Your mother sent me down to see if I could find you. She’s waiting for you upstairs. Come on.”

  He started away, but Joanna didn’t move. Right that moment there were few people Joanna wanted to see less than she wanted to see her own mother, but she could hardly tell Ken Galloway that. When Joanna didn’t move, Galloway came back.

  “I’ll be up in a little while,” Joanna said. “I need to stop off at the billing department and make arrangements to pay the bill.” It was a lame excuse but enough to delay the inevitable confrontation with her mother for a few minutes longer.

  “But what should I tell your mother? She’s waiting to give you a ride home,” Ken explained. “She said you rode up here with Sheriff McFadden last night and that you didn’t have a way back to Bisbee.”

  Wearily Joanna passed her hand over her eyes. “Ken, you know my mother, don’t you?” “Some,” he admitted.

  “Well enough to know how much of a pain she can be at times. You may think I’m a terrible daughter, but I’m just not up to riding home with her right now. Too much has happened. I need some time to sort my way through things, some time to think without her constantly yammering at me. You’re here, Ken. You have a car, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe this sounds crazy, but couldn’t I ride back home with you? Be a friend. Go upstairs and tell my mother that I’ve got things to
do. Make something up if you have to. Tell her I’ve got to go see the Medical Examiner or talk to someone from the Tucson PD. Tell her anything, whatever you want. Just so I don’t have to ride in the same car with her for the next two hours. I couldn’t stand it.”

  Ken nodded sympathetically. “Sure,” he said. “I understand. There are times when the last thing you need is a mother. You go on over to the billing department and do what-ever you have to do. Then wait for me down in the cafeteria. I’ll come get you as soon as she’s gone. Is that all right?”

  Joanna nodded. “It’s what I want,” she said, “but you must think I’m crazy.”

  “No,” Ken Galloway said with a pained expression on his face. “You forget. You’ve been away from the hospital for the last two hours. I’ve spent that whole time upstairs in the waiting room with your mother and her pal Margaret Turnbull. I know exactly what you mean.”

  Ken hurried back to the bank of elevators and Joanna followed the signs to the billing department. She was enough of an insurance bureaucrat to understand how many things could go awry in paying a hospitalization claim. To head off as many difficulties as possible, Joanna wanted to be sure everything was in the best possible order to begin with. First she asked the clerk on duty for a computerized printout of all current hospital charges. With that in hand, she’d be able to check any subsequent bills for possible discrepancies. Her second precaution was to verify that the paperwork reflected that Andy’s policy with the county would provide primary coverage, while Joanna’s insurance from work would finish paying any bills that hadn’t been handled in full by Andy’s carrier. Finally she picked up the small plastic bag containing Andy’s personal effects. She didn’t even look inside it.

  Having done all that, she made her way to the cafeteria. By this time it was late afternoon and the place was deserted except for a few stray hospital workers taking off-hour breaks. She bought herself a cup of coffee and took it to a table near the door.

  Too tired to feel guilty about ditching her mother and too wrung out to feel apologetic about her outburst with the young reporter, Joanna stared vacantly down at the cup of coffee without even bothering to lift it to her lips. Beyond tears and almost beyond thought, she tried desperately to grapple with the reality of Andy’s death, but every attempt left her with a gaping hole in her being that was beyond her ability to fathom. Maybe, if she’d been there to see him before they took him away, it wouldn’t be so hard for her to believe that he was really gone.

  Ken Galloway turned up, startling her out of her reverie by placing the battered suitcase on the table in front of her.

  “Your mother’s gone,” he announced. “She and Margaret are going to caravan back to Bisbee. They told me that they’ll be stopping at the Triple T for deep-dish apple pie in case we want to catch up with them on our way out of town. I said I didn’t think we’d make it, that you had papers to sign, things to do.”

  Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Ken. I’m not nearly as irrational as I sound. It’s just that I couldn’t face dealing with my mother right now.”

  “No problem. I understand completely.” He settled down on the chair opposite her and earnestly studied her face. “You look like hell. How’re you doing?”

  “Better, I think. I’m tired though. I can barely hold my head up.”

  “I wonder why. Do you have any other errands to run? Do you want to stop someplace on the way and get cleaned up before we head out?”

  “No. I’ve been a mess this long, it won’t hurt me to stay that way a little while longer. I just want to go home.”

  “Let’s do it then.”

  Galloway ’s white Bronco was parked in the hospital garage. Joanna climbed into it and settled gratefully in the rider’s seat. While waiting for Ken to go around and open his own door, she realized with a pang how familiar the seat felt. This vehicle was almost the same make and model as Andy’s. It hurt her to realize that she would never again have the pleasure of riding in a vehicle with Andrew Brady at the wheel. That part of her life was over forever.

  Ken climbed in and started the engine. Neither of them said a word as he maneuvered out of the garage and headed south on Camp-bell. As she rode along, Joanna realized that it might be a long time before she had another opportunity to ask anyone else the questions that were bothering her. Ken Galloway had been one of Andy’s best friends. She was sure she could count on him to give her the straight answers she needed.

  “Why’s Dick Voland doing this?”

  Ken gave her a sidelong glance. “Dick Voland? Doing what?”

  “Why’s he saying Andy committed suicide? He was murdered, Ken, I know he was, but the news on TV, the woman in the lobby, they’re all saying something else, that the case is being investigated as a suicide. That sounds like an official pronouncement, and it’s got to be coming from either Dick Voland or from Sheriff McFadden himself.”

  Ken Galloway sighed. “Joanna, listen to me. Nobody’s making anything up. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re going to have to listen and come to terms with it no matter how much it hurts.”

  “So you’re saying the same thing?”

  He nodded. “Look, Andy Brady was a good friend of mine, but from what I’ve learned the past few days, I sure as hell didn’t know everything about him, and I don’t think you did, either. The evidence is all there, Joanna. Believe me.”

  “What evidence?”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you, but they found a note.”

  “What kind of note?”

  “A suicide note, Joanna.”

  “No.”

  “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  “Where was it? In Andy’s own handwriting?”

  “In one of Andy’s personal files in the computer at work.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That he was sorry to put you and Jenny through this, that he never should have taken the money in the first place. He said that even with Lefty out of the way, he was afraid the DEA was still closing in. He said he’d never let them take him alive.”

  Joanna shook her head stubbornly. “Somebody must have broken into his file and written it then. Andy wouldn’t.”

  Ken sighed in exasperation. “Come on, Joanna. Get real.”

  For a long time Joanna didn’t speak again. Despite her forcible denial, she felt as though a bucket of ice water had been thrown in her face. For the first time she felt the tiniest bit of doubt. Was there maybe some small grain of truth in what the reporter had told her?

  “What about Guaymas?” she asked finally. “The reporter said something about evidence found at the scene in Mexico that linked Andy to that.”

  “I haven’t seen it, not with my own eyes, but evidently something was found on Lefty’s body, a letter of some kind from him to Andy. From the sound of it, they must have been working together for some time.”

  Ten minutes or so passed in silence while Joanna tried to assimilate what she had heard. If everything Ken Galloway said was true, then she had spent the last ten years of her life married to a complete stranger. None of this squared with her understanding of the man she had known and loved. And loved still.

  “What if it’s a setup?” she ventured.

  “Look, Joanna,” Ken Galloway returned gruffly. He sounded disgusted. “Andrew Brady would have been the last person in the world I would have expected to turn into a crooked cop, but the evidence is overwhelming. The letter’s there, the note’s there, and evidently the money’s in your checking account as well.”

  “You’ve heard about that, too?”

  “Bisbee’s a small town. Word gets around.” “It certainly does,” she said bitterly. “I can see that it does.”

  Not another word was exchanged for the next ninety miles. Most of that time Joanna sat staring straight ahead of her. Resting in her lap was the small plastic bag the clerk had given her. Under the thin layer of plastic she could feel the familiar contours of Andy’s worn bill-fold. Her fingers close
d round it, and she held it tightly, as though it were some precious, life-giving talisman.

  Only as they drove through the Mule Mountain Tunnel, did Joanna rouse herself enough to speak. “We have to stop by Marianne Maculyea’s parsonage up the canyon and pick up Jenny

  “Sure thing,” Ken Galloway replied easily, swinging off the highway onto the exit. “Hang on. We’ll have you both home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Tony Vargas was in an expansive mood when he came home in the middle of the afternoon. He rousted Angie out of the pool for a quick fuck on the living room floor in front of the mangled television set. This time he had no difficulty achieving an erection. As he grunted above her, Angie was grateful she’d been so meticulous about cleaning up all the shattered glass. Otherwise her bare back and buttocks would have been full of it.

  Finished, he rolled off her and then lay be-side her, leaning on one elbow and absently toying with her nipple. “We’ll go out to dinner,” he said. “I feel like celebrating.”

  She didn’t dare ask him what they were celebrating. She was smarter than that. Eventually he headed for the bathroom to shower. She went into the kitchen, squeezed fresh grapefruit, mixed drinks, and then followed him into the bedroom. He had evidently switched on the small television set on the dresser. The local edition of the evening news was just starting. The lead story told that Andrew Brady, the wounded deputy and candidate for Cochise County sheriff, had died at University Hospital in Tucson earlier that afternoon.

  Transfixed by what she was hearing, Angie stood in the middle of the room holding the two drinks. It had been bad enough, earlier that afternoon when her vague suspicions about Tony’s “consultation business” had once and for all solidified into harsh reality. Then, he had broken the television in a blinding rage when he heard the news that Andrew Brady was still alive. Now, with the announcement that the very same man had died, Tony was taking her out to dinner. To celebrate.