had recently been elected president of Local 83 of the National Federation of Deputy Sheriffs.
In recent months Joanna had clashed with Ken Junior twice regarding Yolanda Canedo’s illness. The first confrontation had occurred when Joanna suggested that members of the union ought to do at least as much for the Canedo family as the jail inmates had. The second had happened only a few days earlier, as the Canedo family had struggled to make arrangements for Yolanda’s funeral.
Deputy Galloway had balked at Joanna’s insistence on giving Yolanda the honor of an official Fallen Officer funeral. Ken Junior had taken the position that, as a mere jail matron, Yolanda Canedo didn’t qualify as a real Fallen Officer. Joanna had gone to the mat with him on that score. Only over his vociferous objections had two lines of smartly saluting officers greeted Yolanda’s grieving family as they exited St. Dominick’s Church after the funeral.
Led by two Arizona Department of Public Safety motorcycle officers, the hearse pulled away from the curb. One by one the other members of the funeral cortege formed up behind them for the slow, winding trip down Tombstone Canyon to Bisbee’s Evergreen Cemetery two miles away. The ceremony in the cemetery was the part of the service Joanna had steeled herself for. She dreaded the symbolic Last Call and the moment when she would be required to take a carefully folded American flag and deliver it into Leon Canedo’s hands.
She remembered too clearly another bright fall afternoon, not so different from this one, when Walter V. McFadden had placed a similarly folded flag in Joanna’s trembling hands at the close of Andy’s graveside services.
During the ride down the canyon and around Lavender Pit, Joanna was glad her daughter, Jenny, wouldn’t be at the cemetery. Once again she had reason to be thankful for her former mother-in-law’s kindness and wisdom. Eva Lou Brady had called High Lonesome Ranch early that morning.
“Let Jenny come stay with Jim Bob and me tonight,” Eva Lou had urged. “After what happened to Andy, Yolanda’s funeral is going to be difficult enough for you. It’ll be even harder on Jen. I’ll have Jim Bob pick her up after school so she’s here with us before the service gets started. That way she won’t have to see the hearse and the cars pulling into the cemetery. We’ll take her out for pizza and try to keep her occupied.”
Lowell School, where Jenny attended seventh grade, was situated directly across the street from Evergreen Cemetery. Not only that, Joanna had been dismayed the day before when she drove by the cemetery and noticed that the plot Leon Canedo had chosen was fully visible from some of Jenny’s classroom windows.
Bearing all that in mind, Joanna had readily agreed to her former mother-in-law’s suggestion. Now, driving into her own front yard and seeing the darkened house, Joanna was even more grateful. This was a night when she needed a buffer between home and work. The killer combination of funeral, wailing bagpipes, graveside service, and church-sponsored reception afterward had stretched Sheriff Joanna Brady’s considerable resources to the breaking point. Had Butch or Jenny asked about Yolanda Canedo’s funeral, Joanna would likely have dissolved in tears.
The motion-activated light above the garage flashed on, illuminating Joanna’s way from the car to the house. The afternoon had been warm, but as soon as the sun went down, there was a hint of fall in the air. Once inside, Joanna hurried to the bedroom, where she stripped off her clothing and weapons. She locked away her two Glocks and pulled on a thick terry-cloth robe. Headed for the kitchen, she was stopped halfway there by a ringing phone.
“How did it go?” the Reverend Marianne Maculyea asked. “And how are you doing?”
Joanna’s friendship with Marianne dated from when the two of them had been preadolescent students at the same school Jenny now attended. Married and the mother of two, Marianne was also pastor at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, where Joanna and Butch were members. She was the only person to whom Joanna had confided her concerns about attending and participating in Yolanda Canedo’s funeral service.
“I’m all right,” Joanna replied grimly. “But it was tough.”
“You don’t
“No, I suppose not,” Joanna said. “The Last Call was bad, but when I had to give Leon the flag, I really choked up. If I could have come home right then, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. Instead, I had to go back up to the church and stay through the whole reception. That almost killed me, Mari. Yolanda’s sons, Manny and Frankie, were there in their white shirts and blue slacks and little bow ties. They’re such cute kids, but they’re so lost and hurt right now, I could hardly stand to look at them, to say nothing of speak to them. What do you say to kids like that? What
“You say what’s in your heart,” Marianne Maculyea replied. “I’m sure seeing them bothered you that much more because it made you think about what it was like for Jenny during Andy’s funeral.”
Marianne Maculyea’s on-the-money comment left Joanna with nothing to say. After a moment of silence, Marianne added, “Speaking of Jenny, how is she?”
“Fine, I’m sure,” Joanna replied. “She’s with Grandma and Grandpa Brady. Eva Lou called this morning and invited her to spend the night. They’re going out for pizza. I wish Eva Lou had asked me to join them. For two cents I would have ditched the reception and eaten pizza instead.”
“You
“I know,” Joanna said hollowly. “But I sure didn’t like it.”
There was another pause. In the background on Marianne’s end of the phone, Joanna heard a murmur of voices. “I’d better run,” she said. “Jeff needs help with baths. I just wanted to be sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” Joanna said with more conviction than she felt, because she wasn’t fine at all. And what was bothering her most was something she wasn’t ready to discuss with anyone – including Marianne Maculyea. Or with Butch Dixon, either, for that matter.
Putting down the phone, Joanna wandered into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator door and peered inside. The ladies’ auxiliary of St. Dominick’s had put on an amazing spread, but Joanna had eaten none of it. And now none of Butch’s carefully maintained leftovers looked remotely appetizing, either. Giving up, she pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge and then rummaged in the pantry for a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Armed with cereal, a bowl, and a spoon, she settled into the breakfast nook. After a few bites she lost interest in the cereal and found herself staring, unseeing, at the game CD taped to the outside of the box.
“Damn Ken Galloway anyway!” she muttered.
He was the main reason she had been heartsick at the funeral reception. Joanna was sure it was due to arm- twisting on his part that so few deputies from her department had been in attendance. In addition to Frank Montoya, only one other deputy – a relatively new hire named Debra Howell – had defied peer pressure and come to the reception.
Not that the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department hadn’t been represented. All jail personnel who weren’t on duty had turned up, including the two guards who had escorted the inmates to the funeral earlier. And there had been plenty of representation by support staff – the clerks and secretaries who worked in the offices, crime lab, and evidence room. Casey Ledford, Joanna’s fingerprint technician, had been there, along with all but one of the emergency dispatch operators. And there were plenty of officers from other jurisdictions who had shown up out of courtesy. As a group, however, the deputies from Cochise County were notable in their absence.
Only half of Joanna’s detective division had shown up, but that was understandable. Jaime Carbajal’s eleven- year-old son, Pepe, played on the same Little League team as Yolanda Canedo’s older son, Frankie. So Jaime and his wife, Delcia, had both been there. Detective Ernie Carpenter’s absence had nothing to do with Ken Galloway’s political machinations; he was on vacation. Ernie had reluctantly agreed to take his wife, Rose, on a weeklong trip to Branson, Missouri, in celebration of their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
So Ken Galloway hadn’t managed to keep everyone away. Still, at a time when Joanna needed the entire department to pull in the same direction, she was upset that the head of the deputies’ union local seemed determined to drive wedges among members of her department. She worried that eventually those small wedges might splinter her employees into warring factions.
The phone rang. As Joanna picked up the extension on the kitchen counter, she caught sight of the Cochise County Dispatch number on the caller ID. “Sheriff Brady here,” she said. “What’s up?”
“A 911 call came in a little while ago from down in Naco,” Dispatch operator Tica Romero reported. “When the EMTs arrived, they found a nonresponsive African-American female. They transported her to the hospital and did their best to revive her, but she was DOA.”
Joanna Brady felt the familiar clutch in her gut. Something bad had happened in her jurisdiction. It was time to go to work. “Any sign of foul play?” she asked.
