Rattlesnake Crossing

This is the prettiest unicorn I've ever seen. Grandma and I got it at a drugstore in Tulsa.

The G's said to tell you that we'll be home sometime on Sunday. I don't know what time.

I love you and I miss you. And I miss the dogs and Kiddo, too. Don't forget to give him his carrots.

Love,

Jenny

P.S. Guess what? I kicked Rodney in the you-know-what and now he's being nice to me.

Reading the postcard, Joanna didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She ended up doing neither one. Instead, she dropped the mail, postcard included, beside her purse on the seat and headed up the drive toward her house.

In all the time she'd been sheriff, Joanna Brady had never been as discouraged or as beaten down as she felt that night. She had returned from the latest crime scene near Pomerene feeling totally helpless. She had stood on the sidelines and watched while EMTs from the air ambulance service loaded Ruben Ramos on board to airlift him to the cardiac care unit at Tucson Medical Center. And then she had watched the technicians from the Pima County Medical Examiner's office load yet another dead citizen from Cochise County-some other person she, Sheriff Joanna Brady, had failed to serve and protect-into the meat wagon to be hauled off to the Pima County morgue. Once again Fran Daly had scheduled an autopsy for early the following morning.

And all the time this was going on, all the while those necessary and official tasks were being done, Sheriff Joanna Brady had stood apart from the action and wrestled with her own demons and with the grim knowledge that somewhere nearby, a killer waited, coiled and deadly as a rattlesnake, waiting to strike again.

'You'd better go home,' Ernie Carpenter had said to her at last. 'There's nothing more you can do here.'

When he said that, Joanna hadn't even bothered to argue. Without a word, she had simply dragged her weary body into the Blazer and driven away. That late-summer night was devoid of all humidity. Consequently, the desert cooled rapidly. She left the windows open, hoping to cleanse the smell of death from her lungs, and from her soul as well.

Soon, though, she found herself shivering-whether from actual cold, simple exhaustion, or a combination of both, she couldn't tell. When that happened, she rolled up the windows and opened the vent.

Halfway up the dirt track to the house she realized that the dogs hadn't come running to meet her. That was odd. They almost always did. Has something happened to one of them? she wondered. Tigger probably tangled with the porcupine again.

Then she caught a glimpse of the house through the forest of mesquite and saw that the whole place was ablaze with lights. Her first thought was that Jim Bob and Eva Lou must have changed their minds and brought Jenny back home earlier than they had anticipated. Except that when she came into the yard, rather than the Bradys' aging Honda, she spotted Butch Dixon's Subaru parked in front of the gate.

What's he doing here? she wondered irritably.

Once she had accepted that there was no way she'd be getting back to Bisbee in a timely fashion, she had called Kristin and asked her to track down Butch and tell him what was happening. She had wanted to let him know that once again, through no fault of her own, she wouldn't be able to make their early-evening date.

That had been hours ago. She might have been happy to see him at five or six, but she wasn't the least bit thrilled at the prospect of seeing him now. She was sweaty and dirty and tired. The night before, she had washed the clothing from her crime-scene investigation bag, but oversleeping that morning meant she hadn't had time to dry the clothes and repack them. She had ventured out to the Frankie Ramos crime scene dressed in her regular work clothes. In the course of walking the rock-strewn riverbank, she had broken the heel on one shoe. That accounted for what looked like a severe limp. One stocking, the third pair she had put on that morning, had snagged on a mesquite tree branch, leaving it with a three-inch-wide ladder run that went from mid-thigh all the way down to her ankle.

When the motion-detector yard light came on, Butch and the two dogs materialized all at once from the relative shadow of the front porch. The dogs gamboled and Butch sauntered toward the Blazer to meet her. Joanna climbed out of the truck, slamming the door behind her.

'Long day,' Butch observed. 'It's about time you got home.' He grinned so she would know he was just kidding.

Temper, temper, Joanna warned herself. She wanted to be glad to see him. Maybe she was glad to see him, but she was too tired, too depleted. Joanna Brady was a foot soldier in the war against good and evil, and evil was definitely winning.

'What are you doing here?' she asked.

Standing with hands in his pockets and managing to look both foolish and contrite at the same time, Butch shrugged. 'When Kristin called, I had already made up my mind what we were having for dinner. Or supper. Which do you call it?'

'Dinner.'

'Well, dinner, then. So I thought, why not go ahead and bring it on out here and wait for you? I used the dog- turd key-that turd is very realistic, by the way-and let myself in. I hope you don't mind.'

'Mind?' Joanna returned. 'Why should I mind?'

'But you look worn out,' he said. 'And from what I heard on the radio, I can understand why. This is probably a bad idea. Tell you what, I'll just go straighten the kitchen back up, wrap up the bread, and then I'll go.'

Joanna was torn. She wanted Butch to leave, to go away and leave her alone. Unaccountably, she also wanted him to slay. 'You mean dinner's already on the table?'

“Pretty much. It's no big deal. It's the kind of supper my mother used to make on hot summer nights back in Chicago-chef's salad, some fresh-baked bread…”

'You baked bread?'

'Actually, I cheated. I bought one of those ready-to-bake loaves from the store. I have my own bread machine, but it's locked up in the storage unit at the moment. Still, you can't beat the smell of fresh-baked bread to make a person feel all's right with the world.'

They had been walking as they talked. When Joanna opened the back door, the two dogs darted inside. She followed, drawn forward by the magical scent of newly baked bread. As her mouth began watering, it suddenly occurred to her that at almost eight-thirty at night, maybe she was more hungry than she was tired.

'It smells wonderful,' she said. 'Don't go.'

'Really?' Butch asked.

'Really. Just give me a chance to clean up and change.' Stripping off her blazer, she left it on the dryer. Then she walked into the kitchen, removing her underarm shoulder holster with her Colt 2000 as well as the small-of- back holster that held her Glock 19. She loaded both weapons into the deep bread drawer beneath the kitchen counter and then dug her cell phone out of her purse.

As she plugged the phone into the battery recharger on the kitchen counter, she realized Butch was watching her-watching and frowning. 'What's wrong?' she asked.

'That's where you keep all that stuff, right there in the kitchen? Shouldn't the guns be locked up in a cabinet or something?'

'Andy always used to lock up his gun when he came home from work, but Jenny was a lot younger then. Jenny and I talked about it a few months back. She knows enough to leave the guns alone, and when we're rushing around here to leave in the morning, it's a lot more convenient for me to finish cleaning up the kitchen and then grab them on my way out the door.'

'Oh.' That was all Butch said, but it seemed to Joanna that she noted a trace of disapproval in the way he said it. That got her back up. What right does he have to come barging into the house, uninvited, and start criticizing the way jenny and I live together? She was about to say something about it when she looked through the kitchen doorway and caught sight of the dining room table. It was set with good dishes, cloth napkins, champagne glasses, and an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of champagne.