from mining to law enforcement, signing up for a college degree in criminal justice hadn’t been an option. Instead, he had pored over the textbooks and manuals on his own, using what he learned there to bootstrap himself out of a dead-end job as a miner into the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.
He may have started out there as a deputy, but he had worked his way up through the ranks until eventually he had been elected sheriff. Just seeing the books he had used to accomplish that transformation gave Joanna a whole new sense of her father’s single-minded struggle to better himself.
Joanna found the diaries in the second of the two heavy boxes. When she picked up the first of the leather- bound volumes, she did so almost reverently. Two dates-March 26, 1964, to June 8, 1969-were inscribed in indelible black ink on the front cover of the book and repeated again, in the same hand, on the spine. It took Joanna’s breath away to think that the small volume in her hand contained five years of her father’s life-five years she knew nothing about. At the time D. H. Lathrop had been writing in this diary, his daughter, Joanna, hadn’t been born.
She opened the first page. It was yellow and brittle to the touch, but her father’s distinctive handwriting leaped out at her.
“Work,” the entry dated March 1964 read. “I hate it. I hate working in the mine. I hate being dirty. I hate the dust and the dark. Fell in a stope today. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but I promised Ellie…”
Joanna stopped cold, allowing the word to sink into her consciousness. Ellie! Her father had called her mother that. So did George Winfield. Two very different men with the same wife who used the same affectionate nickname.
“… that I would support her until death do us part. And I will. A promise is a promise.”
And there it was. Joanna had always known that much about her parents’ relationship-that her mother had married someone who had been considered beneath her and that Eleanor had never, not for one day, allowed her husband to forget that fact. Regardless, though, Eleanor hadn’t bolted. She had married D. H. Lathrop for better or for worse. She may have been disappointed. There may have been far more “worse” days than “better,” and her husband may not have measured up to Eleanor’s lofty expectations, but she had stuck with him, too.
For the very first time, it occurred to Joanna that in reading her father’s version of his life, she might be doing her mother a disservice-that if she read the diaries she might come away with too much information about both of them.
Closing the book, Joanna threw it down. Then she took out the others-fifteen of them in all-and arranged them in chronological order across her desk. At volume eight, the format suddenly changed. The handsome leather-bound volumes were replaced with reddish cloth-bound books, with only the word “Journal” stamped on the front, with a blank space provided where her father had dutifully inked in the dates.
Joanna was lost in thought when Butch appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing?” he asked.
She jumped. “You startled me,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you, so Lady and I came in here.”
“Your father’s books?” Butch asked.
Joanna nodded. “His diaries and some other books as well.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“Keep them,” Joanna answered.
“I know that. I guess, I meant,
In the end, they stowed all of the books in the bottom drawer of Joanna’s file cabinet. And because bending over was too cumbersome for Joanna, Butch was the one who actually put them away.
“This is silly, you know,” she said. “After all, it’s our house.”
Butch straightened up and looked at her. “How much luck have you had changing your mother’s behavior?” he asked.
“None.”
“Same thing with my mother,” he said. “So let’s just deal with it-and keep the door locked. Now come to bed. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow.”
Joanna had just stepped out of the shower a little past seven the next morning when Butch tapped on the bathroom door, reached in, and handed her the telephone.
“It’s Jeannine Phillips,” Tica Romero said when Joanna answered.
“What about her?”
“Her damaged truck was found abandoned in the westbound rest area at Texas Canyon,” Tica said.
There was a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of Joanna’s stomach. Texas Canyon was only a matter of miles away from San Simon and from Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer’s Rooster-comb Ranch.
“What do you mean, damaged?” Joanna demanded. “Is it wrecked?”
“Somebody put a rock through the passenger window. Officer Phillips is nowhere to be found.”
“When’s the last time someone heard from her?”
“She radioed in to Dispatch at midnight to say that everything was fine and she was going off shift.”
“Did she give her location at that time?”
“No.”
“Has someone secured the vehicle?” Joanna asked.
“Yes. Deputy Raymond is on the scene.”
“Tell him to hold the fort. Then call everyone else-Dave Hollicker, Casey Ledford, and Chief Montoya. Tell them to meet me at the scene.”
“What about Homicide?” Tica asked tentatively. “Should I call them?”
Tica’s question confirmed Joanna’s own worst fears-that Jeannine Phillips wasn’t just missing; that she could already be dead. “Yes, them, too,” she said at last. “The Double Cs along with Debbie Howell.”
Butch came into the bedroom while Joanna was getting dressed. “What’s going on?” he asked. “It sounded serious.”
“It is,” Joanna said. “I’m on my way to Texas Canyon.” When she finished explaining the situation, Butch headed for the kitchen. “You can’t afford to go through a day like this on an empty stomach,” he said. “I’ll fix you a traveler.”
Don and Margaret Dixon were at the table eating bacon and eggs when Joanna stepped into the kitchen, briefcase in one hand and car keys in the other.
“Aren’t you going to have some breakfast?” Margaret asked Joanna on her way past. “After Butch went to all this trouble…”
“She is having breakfast, Mom,” Butch corrected. “I made her order to go.”
He followed Joanna out to the garage. Once she was settled into the Crown Victoria with her seat belt buckled, Butch reached in through the open car door. He handed her an open Zip-loc container with two peanut-buttered English muffins inside it and an insulated thermos cup filled with freshly brewed tea.
“Be careful,” he said, kissing her good-bye. “Be really, really careful.”
“I will,” she said.
She downed the muffins before she even reached Highway 80. Once there, she turned on her lights and siren and drove like hell, fuming as she went. After all, Joanna had called off the dogfight-ring surveillance, and she had ordered-
The first order of business, though, was to find Jeannine Phillips. Joanna reached for her radio and was patched through to Frank Montoya.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“On the far side of the Divide.” Frank’s home in Old Bisbee put him a good seven or eight miles ahead of her.
“Have you put out an APB on Jeannine?” she asked.
