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 closed 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.
