Shoot / Don't Shoot

missing or if maybe someone ordered it impounded.”

The patrol officer spent several minutes checking back and forth by radio before he finally came up negative.

“You might have Detective Strong add that to her APB on Dave Thompson. The vehicle is probable registered in Leann Jessup’s name. If he’s missing and the car is, too, chances are pretty good that they’ll turn up together.”

Again the officer returned to his radio. “Dispatch says Detective Strong’s gone home to get some sleep. Do you want them to wake her up to give her the message, or should they let her sleep?

“Tell them they can give it to her after she wakes up.”

Joanna returned to her Blazer. “What are we going to do now?” Jenny asked. “I still haven’t been swimming.”

“We have one more stop,” Joanna said. “I want to drop by the hospital just long enough say hello and to find out how Leann is.”

“Do we have to?” Jenny whined.

“Yes,” Joanna answered.

Something in her mother’s voice warned Jenny not to argue. The child sat back in the passenger seat and crossed her arms. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “But I hope it doesn’t take too long.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shadowed by Jenny, Joanna wandered around the corridors of St. Joseph’s Hospital for some time before she finally located the proper waiting room. There were only two other people in the room when they entered. A woman sat on a couch, weeping quietly into a hanky. A grim-faced man in his late twenties stood nearby. Both people looked up anxiously when the door opened. Seeing a woman and a child, they both looked away

“Mrs. Jessup?” Joanna asked tentatively.

The woman pulled the hanky away from her face and stood up. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Lorelie Jessup, and this is my son, Rick. Is there any news?”

Lorelie didn’t at all resemble her tall, red-haired daughter. Anything but beautiful, she was short, squat and nearsighted. Her thinning, dishwater?blond hair was disheveled, as though she had climbed out of bed and come straight to the hospital without pausing long enough to comb it.

Joanna remembered Leann saying that her mother was only in her late forties, but with her face blotchy and distorted by weeping, with her faded blue eyes red from crying, she looked much older than that. Wrinkles lined her facial skin, perhaps as much from sun as age. The corners of her mouth turned down in a perpetual grimace and there was a general air of hopelessness about her. She looked like someone Jim Bob Brady would have said had been “rode hard and put up wet.”

And most likely that was true. Joanna tried to recall how many years Leann Jessup had said her mother had worked two jobs in order to single-handedly support her two children. Years of unremitting labor had taken their toll.

“I’m sorry,” Joanna said, “I don’t know any news. I’m not with the hospital. My name’s Joanna. I’m a friend of Leann’s.”

“Not another one!” Rick Jessup groaned.

“Another what?” Joanna asked. Instead of answering, Rick Jessup rolled his eyes, stuffed both hands in his pockets, and then stalked off across the room. There wasn’t much physical