big Ferris wheel. Can we ride on it, please?”
Andy reached into his pocket, pulled out his billfold, extracted some money, and handed it over to Jenny. “You get the tickets, Jen,” he said. “Mommy and I will be right there. We’ll all ride it together.”
Once again, Jenny raced off. Soon, without any intervening walking, they were stepping up the slanted wooden ramp and the attendant was fastening the wooden pole across the front of the car. “No swinging now, you hear?” he warned.
The Bradys-Andy, Joanna, and Jenny-were the last passengers to board. Once they were locked in place, the Ferris wheel started its upward climb. Jenny, her whole body alight with excitement, sat in the middle. Andy leaned back in the seat, smiling. With one arm he reached across behind Jenny until his wrist and hand were resting reassuringly on Joanna’s shoulder.
Joanna didn’t much care for Ferris wheels-didn’t like the way they went up and up and up until you were at the very top with nothing at all beneath you. Nor did she enjoy the stomach-lurching way in which the world dropped out from under you. Suddenly, as they fell, she realized that the comforting weight of Andy’s hand had disappeared from her shoulder.
Concerned, she looked across the seat. Jenny had scrambled over to the far side of the car-to the place where Andy had been sitting-and was frantically peering out over the armrest.
“Daddy, Daddy,” she screamed. “Come back. Don’t go. Please don’t leave us.”
But Andy was already gone. He had disappeared into thin air. When their car hit the bottom of the arc, Joanna could see no sign of him.
“Stop this thing,” Joanna shouted at the attendant. “Let us out. My husband fell. We’ve got to find him.”
The attendant pointed to his ears, shook his head, suggesting that he couldn’t hear, and then touched the control panel. Instead of stopping, the wheel sped up to twice its previous speed, racing up and then plummeting down into the void, with Joanna floating helplessly in her seat. Jenny inched over until she managed to grab on to her mother. As the wheel went round and round she clung there, sobbing in terror. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. The car Jenny and Joanna were in was at the very pinnacle of the Ferris wheel. From there they could see for miles-off across the fairgrounds and the racetrack, to Douglas and Agua Prieta and to the parched desert landscape beyond.
They stayed there for the longest time, with Joanna searching in every direction for some sign of Andy, for some hint of where he might have gone. At last the wheel moved again-down, down, down-until it stopped at the bottom. The attendant, grinning, leaned forward to unlatch the wooden bar. It wasn’t until she stood up to walk down the ramp that Joanna realized she was naked. And all around her, watching, were people from the department. Dick Voland and Ernie Carpenter. Kristin and the clerks from records. The deputies from Patrol and the guards from the county jail.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. Instead of shrinking away and trying to cover herself, Joanna was angry. Furious! How could Andy have done this to her? How could he have gone off and left her alone like this? He should have stayed with her-stayed with them both.
She heard a bell then. Andy had always liked the sledge hammer concessions. In those games, a strong enough blow from a hammer would ring the bell at the top of a metal post. The resulting prize was usually nothing more exotic than a shoddily made teddy bear or an awful cigar. Still, Andy loved to try his hand at it. Joanna looked toward the bell, hoping, that whoever was ringing it would turn out to be Andy. She could see the pole, the bell, but there was no one in sight. Still, the bell continued to ring, over and over, until it finally penetrated her consciousness. The insistently ringing bell was coming from a telephone-the one on Joanna’s bedside table.
As she raised herself on one elbow to grope for the receiver, she glanced at the glowing green numbers on the clock radio. Twelve forty-seven. Who the hell was calling her in the middle of the night?
“Sheriff Brady,” she answered, her voice still thick with sleep.
“Sorry to wake you,” said Larry Kendrick from Dispatch. “We’ve got a problem here. The jail commander asked me to call you.”
Sitting up, Joanna fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp. “What is it?”
“We just found Hannah Green dead in her cell,” Kendrick said.
“Dead!” Joanna echoed. “How can that be? What happened?”
“She hung herself from her bunk,” Larry said. “Or, more accurately, strangled herself. With her bra.”
“Has somebody called Dick Voland and Ernie Carpenter?”
“Dick’s already here. Ernie’s next on the list.”
“I’ll be right there, too,” Joanna said, scrabbling out of bed. In a turmoil, she slammed down the telephone receiver and tore off her nightgown. She was half-dressed when she stopped cold.
Jenny was in bed and sound asleep. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. With this kind of emergency, Joanna might be gone for several hours. She couldn’t very well go off and leave Jenny alone, asleep in a house a mile from the nearest neighbor. But waking her up and taking her along was equally impossible. What should she do? Bed her down on the couch in Kristin’s office and expect her to sleep while all hell broke loose around her?
Sinking back down on the bed, Joanna realized she’d have to call someone. Whom? Her mother? Eva Lou or Jim Bob Brady? They would have been asleep for hours. It wasn’t fair to wake them up. The same held true for Marianne Maculyea. She’d be asleep, too. Despairing, Joanna glanced at the clock once more-five to one.
And that’s when she realized that there was one friend who would still be awake. One A.M. would be closing time at the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge up in Brewery Gulch. Angie Kellogg would just be getting off work. In Angie’s previous life, and in this one as well, she lived what was essentially a night shift existence. Other people might think it was the middle of the night. For Angie, it was late afternoon.
Seconds later, worrying that she might already he too Tale, Joanna dialed the number. “Blue Moon,” a voice said. “Angie speaking,”
“‘Thank God you’re still there. It’s Joanna.”
“Of course I’m still here,” Angie replied. “It’s not quite one yet. I’m just washing up the last of those god-awful trays. What’s the matter?”
“I’ve got to go into work, and I don’t know what to do about Jenny. I need someone to look after her while I go back to the office.”
“Now?” Angie asked.
“There’s been a problem over at the jail. Once I go in, no telling how long I’ll be there. I don’t want to wake Jenny up-tomorrow’s a school day-but I don’t want to leave her here by herself, either.”
Angie Kellogg still couldn’t quite fathom how she had become friends first with Joanna and then with Joanna’ friends, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea and Jeff Daniels. What she did know, however, was that those three people were the ones who had made her new life possible. Faced with an opportunity to repay some of what she regarded as an overwhelming debt of kindness, Angie was eager to help
“Do you want me to come there, or would you like to bring her to my place?” Angie asked.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d appreciate your coming here,” Joanna answered.
“Sure,” Angie answered. “No problem. I’ll be there jus as soon as I can. I’ll lock up right now, but I’ll leave Bobo note so he’ll know why I didn’t finish cleaning up.”
“You’re sure he won’t mind?”
“No. Not at till, but it’ll still tike the better part of twenty minutes for me to get there.”
Joanna looked at the clock once more. It was one straight up. Still, after what had happened earlier that evening, Joanna wasn’t willing to leave Jenny alone, not even for a minute. “Don’t rush, I can wait that long,” she said. “The woman’s dead. My getting there a few minutes earlier or later isn’t going to make a bit of difference.”
As Joanna hurried into her clothing, she was overwhelmed with guilt. Hannah Green had come to Joanna, come specifically to the sheriff, for help. Joanna had done what she could for the unfortunate woman-handled the situation to the best of her ability. She had been terribly moved, as much by Hannah’s broken spirit as by the woman’s mangled hand and crippled fingers. Joanna had listened and had been kind to her even while using Jenny to engineer the woman’s capture. There was nothing bad or dishonorable in that. It was Joanna’s job.
Still, she felt guilty. In the first days and weeks after Andy’s death, she, too, had lived with the same kind of abject hopelessness that she had recognized in Hannah Green. Joanna, too, had seen a future empty of all promise
