Shoot, Don't Shoot (13 page)

And not for his mother, either.

CHAPTER TEN

Joanna left the jail complex and headed north with her mind in a complete turmoil. What should she do? Drop it? Forget everything she had heard in that grim interview room and go on about business as usual as if nothing had happened? What then? That would mean Jorge would most likely go to prison on a manslaughter charge while Serena’s killer would be on the loose, carrying on with his own life, free as a bird. Those two separate outcomes went against everything Joanna Brady stood for and believed in, against her sense of justice and fair play.

Joanna Lathrop Brady had grown up under her mother’s critical eye with Eleanor telling her constantly, day after day, how headstrong and hard to handle she was, how she never had sense enough to mind her own business or leave well enough alone. Maybe what was about to happen to Jorge Grijalva’s already shattered life wasn’t any of her business, but if she didn’t do something to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice, who would? Carol Strong, the local homicide detective on the case, the one Jorge had called the
bruja
? No, if the prosecutors and defense attorneys were negotiating a plea bargain, that meant the case was officially closed and out of the hands of police investigators.

If it is to be, it is up to me, Joanna thought with grim humor as she drove north through much lighter traffic. It would give her one more opportunity to live up to her mother’s worst expectations.

She made it back to Peoria in twenty minutes, which seemed like record time. When she came to the turnoff that would have taken her home to the APOA campus, she kept right on going across the railroad tracks and right on Grand, returning once more to the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Instead of going back to the dorm and her reading assignment, she was going back to see Butch Dixon, her one and only slender lead in this oddball investigation. Even Joanna was forced to acknowledge the irony. She would be enlisting the bartender in a possibly ill-fated and harebrained crusade to save someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in being saved. Who was, in fact, dead set against it.

By ten o’clock,
Monday Night Football was
over. With only local news on TV, the bar was nearly deserted when she stepped inside. Butch waved to her as she threaded her way across the floor through a scatter of empty tables. There was only one other customer seated at the bar. Even though she could have taken any one of a number of empty seats, she made directly for the same spot she had abandoned several hours earlier.

“The usual?” Butch Dixon asked with a pleasant grin as she hoisted herself up onto the stool. Joanna nodded. Moments later, he set a Diet Pepsi on the counter in front of her. While she took a tentative sip from her drink, he began diligently polishing the nearby surface of the bar even though it didn’t look particularly in need of polishing.

“I suppose you get asked this question all time,” he said.

“What question?”

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in this line of work? I mean, how come you’re sheriff?”

“The usual way,” she answered. “I got elected.”

“I figured that out, but what did you do before the election? Is being a cop something you always wanted to be, or is it like me and bartending? I sort of fell into it by accident, but it turns out it’s something I’m pretty good at.”

Joanna considered before she answered. Butch must be one of the few people in Arizona who had somehow missed the media blitz about Andy’s death and about his widow being the first-ever elected female sheriff in the state. If he had seen some of the news reports or read the newspaper articles, he had long since forgotten. It was all far enough in the past that for him there was no connection between those events back in September, and Joanna’s name and title on the business card she had given him.

So what should she do? Tell Butch Dixon the painful story about what had happened to Andy? Or should she just gloss over it? After a moment’s hesitation, she decided on the latter. If she was going to try to enlist Butch Dixon’s help, it would be tier to approach him as a professional rather than play on his sympathies as some kind of damsel in stress.

“Fell into it by accident, I’d say,” she replied. “I used to sell insurance.”

“And what are you doing over at the academy, teaching classes?”

“I wish,” she answered. “No, I’m taking them. I’m there as a student, not as an instructor.”

When Butch stopped polishing the counter, his towel was only inches from Joanna’s hand. For a moment he seemed to be staring at it. Then he looked up at her face. “What does your husband do?”

Joanna’s gaze had followed his to where the diamond on her engagement ring reflected back one of the lights over the bar. No matter how hard she tied, there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid telling this inquisitive man about Andy.

“He’s dead,” Joanna said at last, feeling both relieved that she had told him and surprised by how easy it was right then to say the words that placed Andrew Roy Brady’s life and death totally in the past tense.

“Andy was a police officer,” she added. “He died in the line of duty.” She told the story briefly mild dispassionately, without giving way to tears.

Hearing what had happened, Butch Dixon was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that—”

Joanna held her hand up. “I know. The rings. I suppose I ought to take them off and put them away, but I’m not ready to do that yet. I’m used to wearing them. I may not be married anymore, but I still
feel
married.”

Butch nodded. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“Two months ago, back in the middle of September.”

“So it wasn’t all that long ago. Do you have kids?”

Joanna nodded. “Only one, a girl. Her name Jennifer. Jenny. She’s nine.”

“That’s got to be tough.”

“It’s no picnic.”

“Who’s taking care of her while you’re here going to school?”

“Her grandparents. My in-laws. They’re from Bisbee, too. They’re staying out at the ranch and looking after things while I’m away.”

“Ranch?” Butch asked.

Joanna laughed. “Not a big ranch. A little one. It’s only forty acres, but it does have a name. The High Lonesome. It’s been in Andy’s family for years. Right now it belongs to me, but it’ll belong to Jenny someday.”

“Hey, Butch, my margarita’s long gone. I know the broad’s good-looking, but how about paying a little attention to this part of the bar?”

A look of annoyance washed over Butch Dixon face as he turned toward the complaining customer. “Keep your shirt on, Mike,” he growled. “And keep a civil damn tongue in your mouth or go on down the road.”

Joanna watched as Butch mixed Mike’s drink. It was difficult to estimate how old he was. He looked forty but that could have been the lack of hair. He was probably somewhat younger than that. Butch wasn’t particularly tall—only about five ten or so but what there was of him was powerfully and compactly built. As soon as he dropped off the margarita and rang the sale into the cash register, Butch came back to where Joanna was sitting. Resting his forearms on the counter, he leaned in front of her.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Mike’s one of those guys who gets a little out of line on occasion.”

“Compared to some of the things I’ve been called lately, broad’s not all that bad,” Joanna reassured him with a smile. “And I can see why you make a good bartender. You’re very easy to talk to.”

Butch didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the compliment. In reply he picked up her empty glass. “Want another?”

“No. Too much caffeine. When I go home to bed, I’m going to need to sleep. But I did want to discuss something with you. I’m just now on my way home from the Maricopa County Jail. I went down there talk to Jorge Grijalva.”

“Really? Did you manage to talk him out of that plea bargain crap?”

“No. He’s still hell-bent for election to go through with it. Even so, talking to him has convinced me that you may be right. Some of the things he said made me think maybe he didn’t kill her after all.”

“What are you going to do, go to the cops?”

Joanna shook her head. “I am a cop, remember?” he said. “But since this happened in Peoria PD’s jurisdiction, I wouldn’t be able to do anything bout it, not officially. And even if I tried, that case is closed as far as homicide cops are concerned cause they’ve already turned it over to the prosecutor.”

“What’s the point, then?”

“The point is I’m going to do a little nosing around on my own. Unofficial nosing around. Do you still have my card?”

Butch reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Joanna’s business card. She jotted a number on the back and returned it to him. “That’s the number of my room over at the academy. There’s no answering machine, so either you’ll get me or you won’t. You won’t be able to leave a message.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to write down everything you can remember about the night Serena Grijalva died. I’m sure you’ve already given this information to the investigating officers, but since mine isn’t an official inquiry, I most likely won’t have access to those reports. There’s no real rush. I’ll come by tomorrow or the next day and pick it up.”

“Wednesday’s the day before Thanksgiving Butch said, pocketing the card once more. “I suppose you’ll be going home for the holiday?”

Joanna shook her head. “No, Jenny and the Gs are coming up here for the weekend. We’ve a got super-duper holiday weekend package at that brand-new hotel just down the street.”

“The Hohokam?” Butch asked. “It’s only been open a couple of months. I’ve never been inside. It’s supposed to be very nice.”

“I hope so,” Joanna said.

“And who all did you say is coming, Jenny and the Gs? Sounds like some kind of rock band.”

Joanna laughed. “That’s my daughter and her grandparents, my in-laws. Ever since she was able spell, Jenny’s called them the Gs.” She paused for a moment. “Speaking of names, where did Butch come from?”

Running one hand over the bare skin on his shiny, bald skull, Butch Dixon grinned. “My real we was Frederick. People called me Freddy for short. I hated it; thought it sounded sissy. So when as six, my uncle started teasing me about my new haircut, calling me Butch. The name stuck. I’ve been Butch ever since, and I wore my hair that way for years, back when I still had hair, that is. When it started to disappear, I gave Mother Nature a little shove in the right direction. What do you think?”

Joanna smiled. “It looks fine to me. I’d better be heading back,” she said, standing up. “I’m taking you away from your other customers.... “

“Customer,” Butch corrected, holding up his hand.

“And I’ve got a reading assignment to do before class in the morning.”

“And I’ve got a writing assignment,” he said patting his shirt pocket. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow morning. Do you want me to call you when it’s finished?”

“Please. And in the meantime, if anything comes up that you think is too important to wait, give me call.”

“Sure thing,” Butch Dixon said. “You can count n it.”

By the time Joanna drove back into the APOA parking lot, it was past eleven. Checking the clerestory windows on both the upper and lower breezeways, she saw that some were lit and some weren’t. It was possible some of her classmates were still out. Others might already be in bed and asleep.

Stopping off at the lower-floor student lounge, Joanna found the place deserted. She made straight for the telephone. It was far too late to phone High Lonesome, but Frank Montoya had told her that he never went to bed without watching
The
Tonight Show.

“How are things going?” she asked, when he answered. “I tried calling earlier, but neither you nor Dick Voland could be found.”

“Well,” Frank said slowly, “we did have our hands full today.”

“How’s that?”

“For one thing,” he replied, “somebody sent a petition signed by sixty-three prisoners as that you fire the cook in the jail.”

“Fire him? How come?”

“They say the food’s bad, that they can’t eat and that he cooks the same thing week after week.”

“Is that true?” Joanna asked. “Is the jail food ally as bad as all that?”

“Beats me.”

“Have you tried it?”

“No, but ...”

“These guys are prisoners,” Joanna said. “We supposed to house and feed them, but nobody said it has to be gourmet cuisine. You taste the food, Frank, and then you decide. If the food’s fit to eat, tell the prisoners to go piss up a rope. If the food’s as bad as they say, get rid of the cook and find somebody else.”

“You really did hire me to do the dirty work, didn’t you?” Frank complained, but Joanna heard the unspoken humor in his voice and knew he was teasing.

‘What else is going on down there today?”

‘The big news is the fracas at the Sunset Inn out over the Divide.”

The Mule Mountains, north of Bisbee, effectively cut the town off from the remainder of the state. In the old days, the Divide, as locals called it, was a formidable barrier. Now, although modern highway engineering and a tunnel had tamed the worst of the steep grades, the name—the Divide—still remained.

The Sunset Inn, an outpost supper club on the far side of the Divide, had changed ownership and identities many times over the years. It had reopened under the name of Sunset Inn only two months earlier.

“What happened?” Joanna asked.

“From what we can piece together this is a pair of relative newlyweds, been married less than a year. It turns out the husband’s something of a slob who tends to leave his clothes lying wherever they fall. His wife got tired of picking up after him, so she took a hammer and nailed them all to the floor wherever they happened to fall. He tore hell out of his favorite western shirt when he tried to pick it up. Made him pretty mad. He went outside and sliced up the tires on his wife’s Chevette.”

“Thank God it was only the tires,” Joanna breathed. “I guess it could have been worse.”

Frank laughed. “Wait’ll you hear the rest. One of our patrol cars happened to drive by in time to see her taking a sledgehammer to the windshield of his pickup truck—unfortunately with him still inside. She’s in jail tonight on a charge of assault with intent, drunk and disorderly, and resisting arrest. The last I heard of the husband, he took his dog and what was left of his truck and was heading back home to his mother’s place in Silver City, New Mexico.”