Behind Joanna a horn honked impatiently. She jumped back into the Civvie and hurriedly moved it out of the way of the vehicle she’d been blocking.
It was a tough way to start the day, considering she still hadn’t had her morning briefing or a second cup of coffee.
STANDING IN THE WARM LATE-MORNING SUN with the heavy pay phone receiver held to one ear, the man waited impatiently for his call to be put through. The receptionist had accepted the charges, so it wasn’t a matter of money. Still, he didn’t have all day.
Finally someone picked up at the other end. “Good,” he said when he heard the voice. “It’s you. You’ll be happy to know it’s done. She’s dead. All you have to do now is send money.”
Four
BY THE TIME JOANNA ARRIVED at the Justice Center and let herself in through her private back-door entrance, it was almost eleven o’clock. As usual, her office was a mess. The wooden surface of her desk was barely visible under stacks of neglected files and paper.
Organizing the Fallen Officer portion of Yolanda Canedo’s funeral had taken far more of Joanna’s personal time and effort than she had expected. She and Frank Montoya had shared the responsibilities. All essential law enforcement work had been handled, but some of the more routine matters had been allowed to slide. Now, though, as Joanna dug into the paperwork on her desk, she discovered items that had been routine on Monday. By Thursday they had moved to the “urgent” column.
Wanting to have some quiet time to attack the daunting backlog of paper, Joanna set to work without bothering to announce her presence to anyone, not even to Kristin Gregovich, her secretary in the outside office. Twenty minutes later, as Joanna whaled away at the mess, Kristin came into her office to deliver yet another batch of paperwork. Startled to find Joanna seated at her desk, Kristin almost dropped what she was carrying.
“You scared me to death!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
“Because my phone would have been ringing off the hook,” Joanna answered. “The only way I’m going to make any progress with this mess is to work on it without interruptions.”
Kristin nodded and placed a neatly arranged stack of papers on the one part of the desk Joanna had finally managed to clear. Then, instead of taking the hint and returning to her own office, Kristin sighed and sank, uninvited, into one of the two captain’s chairs facing Joanna’s desk.
In the past two months, Kristin Gregovich had gone from being slightly pregnant to being profoundly pregnant. Her once showgirl-worthy ankles were now severely swollen by the end of each workday. The baby, a girl, wasn’t due for another three weeks, but Kristin, rubbing her aching back, was vocal about hoping to deliver sooner than that. On the other hand, money concerns made her want to stay on the job as long as possible.
Hearing Kristin’s sigh, Joanna looked at her secretary with concern. She worried that there might be some third-trimester complication brewing. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Kristin nodded, but she didn’t look all right.
“Weren’t you supposed to see the doctor yesterday?” Joanna asked.
Kristin nodded again. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Sheriff Brady. We did go, Terry and I both.”
Terry Gregovich, Kristin’s husband, and Spike, his German shepherd, comprised the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department’s K-9 Unit.
Joanna stood up and came around to the front of the desk. “You look upset, Kristin,” she said. “What is it? Is there something the matter with the baby?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” the young woman answered hurriedly. “Shaundra’s fine. The thing is, the only time we could get in for the ultrasound was late yesterday afternoon. We went right after the church service ended. By the time we finished up at the hospital, it was too late to go to the graveside service. I was too beat to go to the reception, so Terry and I just stayed home. But I didn’t want you to think we didn’t come because…” Kristin’s voice trailed off uneasily.
When Joanna had first taken over the job of sheriff, she and her young secretary had needed to sort out some issues between them. For a time after Joanna’s election, Kristin’s loyalties had remained with members of the previous administration. With the passage of time, however, the two women had developed a comfortable working relationship. Months earlier, Joanna was the person to whom Kristin had first confided the news of her unexpected pregnancy. And it was Joanna who had helped Kristin and Terry arrange their nice but hurried shotgun wedding.
In the months since, Joanna Brady had taken a kind of proprietary interest in the young couple’s situation. She had been more than a little disappointed the day before when she’d been forced to assume that they, too, had boycotted the funeral reception. It had hurt her to think that both Kristin and Terry had aligned themselves with Ken Galloway’s malcontents in Local 83. That, of course, had been the other reason Joanna had avoided announcing her presence to Kristin.
“You didn’t want me to think you missed the reception because of what?” Joanna asked.
“You know,” Kristin said with an uneasy shrug. “Because of what’s going on around here.”
“You mean because of Deputy Galloway?”
Kristin nodded. “That’s right. Neither Terry nor I wanted to have anything to do with him and his buddies,” she said quickly. “But four forty-five was the only time we could schedule the ultrasound, and the doctor was later than that. I just wanted you to know, Sheriff Brady – whatever those guys in the union are trying to pull, Terry and I aren’t involved. If we had known what was going to happen – that everybody else was going to stay away like they did – we would have come no matter what!”
A wave of relief washed over Joanna. She eased herself into the chair next to Kristin. Maybe things inside her department weren’t quite as universally one-sided as she had supposed.
“The baby’s welfare has to be your first priority,” Joanna said kindly. “Thanks for telling me, though.” She paused, then added, “But what exactly do you think Ken Junior and his pals are up to? Any ideas?”
“I don’t know,” Kristin said, shaking her head. “Not really. I asked Terry the same thing this morning on the way to work. He thinks most of the guys are just messing around and that we shouldn’t pay any attention to them. But how could they do something like that – ditch the cemetery and the reception, I mean? And what about Leon Canedo? How do those jerks think their staying away made
Joanna leaned back in the chair and thought for a moment before she answered. She didn’t want whatever she said to Kristin to add to her department’s inner turmoil if it happened to be repeated to anyone else.
“Some people are simply incapable of putting themselves in anybody else’s shoes, Kristin,” she said finally. “Empathy won’t ever be one of Deputy Galloway’s long suits. But if it will put your mind at ease, I think Leon Canedo was so overwhelmed by everything that was going on yesterday, he probably didn’t notice who was there and who wasn’t. Ken Junior may have drained off everyone he could bamboozle into not showing up, but it was still standing room only in the parish hall up at St. Dominick’s for most of the evening.”
Kristin heaved another sigh, this one of relief. “Good. I’m really glad.” Saying that, she pushed her unwieldy body upright. “Now that I know you’re here,” she said, “I’ll go get your messages.”
Joanna felt like saying,
“Not yet. Give me a while.”
Nodding, Kristin went out, closing the door behind her. Joanna took the messages and shuffled through them. One was from her mother, one from the county attorney’s office, and two were from people in the community whose names she recognized but who had somehow failed to mention exactly why they were calling. Pulling all pertinent information from reticent phone callers was one of the essential secretarial skills Kristin Gregovich had yet
