Shoot / Don't Shoot

Larry Dysart was also a Roundhouse regular. These days his drink of choice was limited to coffee or tonic with lime. He came to the bar almost every night and spent long congenial evenings discussing literature with the bartender, arguing politics with everybody else, and scribbling in a series of battered spiral notebooks.

He looked up now from pen and paper. “Right, Dave,” Larry said. “No problem. I’ll be glad to give you a lift home.”

CHAPTER THREE

Even though Joanna was only going through the motions, she went to church the next morning. She sat there in the pew, seemingly attentive, while her best friend and pastor, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea, gave a stirring pre­-Thanksgiving sermon. Instead of listening, though, Joanna’s mind was focused on the fact that she would be gone—completely out of town—for more than a month. She was scheduled to spend five and a half weeks taking a basic training class at the Arizona Police Officers Academy in Peoria.

There was plenty to worry about. For instance, what about clothes? Yes, her suitcases were all zipped shut, but had she packed enough of the right things? This would be the longest time she had ever been away from home. She wasn’t terrifically happy about the idea of staying in a dorm. As much trouble as she’d had lately sleeping in her own bed, how well would she fare in a strange one?

But the bottom line—the real focus of her worry—was always Jenny. How would a protracted absence from her mother affect this child whose sense of well-being had already been shattered by her father’s murder? Had it not been for the generosity of her in-laws, Joanna might well have had to bag the whole idea and stay home. Putting their own lives on hold, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady had agreed to come out and stay at High Lonesome Ranch for the duration of Joanna’s absence. Not only would they care for Jenny, getting her to and from school each day, they would also look after the livestock and do any other chores that needed doing.

Professionally, Joanna’s attendance at the academy was a thorny issue. Of course she needed to go. That was self-evident, even to Joanna. Her close call during an armed showdown on a copper-mine tailings dump a few days earlier had shown her in life-and-death, up-close-and-personal terms exactly how much she didn’t know about the world of law enforcement.

Joanna’s connections to law enforcement were peripheral rather than professional. Years earlier her father, D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop, had served as sheriff of Cochise County. And Andy, her husband, had been a deputy sheriff as well as a candidate for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down by a drug lord’s hired hit man. Joanna’s work resume as office manager of an insurance agency contained no items of legal background or law enforcement training. Some of those educational gaps could be made up by reading and studying on her own, but an organized course of study taught by professional instructors would provide a more thorough and efficient way of getting the job done.

As the word job surfaced in Joanna’s head, so did a whole other line of concern—work. If a five-and-a-half-week absence could wreak havoc in her personal life, what would it do to her two-week-old administration at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department? While she was gone, her two chief deputies Frank Montoya for administration and Dick Voland for operations—would be running the show. That arrangement—the possibly volatile combination of two former antagonists—would ei­ther function as a form of checks and balances or else it would blow up in Joanna’s face. Sitting there in church, not listening to the sermon, Joanna could worry about what might happen, but she couldn’t predict which way things would go.

Almost without warning, the people in surrounding pews rose to their feet and opened their hymnals as the organist pounded through the first few bars of “Faith of Our Fathers.” As Joanna fumbled hu­rriedly to find the proper page of the final hymn, she realized Reverend Maculyea’s sermon was over. Joanna hadn’t listened to a word of it. No doubt Marianne had figured that out as well. When she and her husband, Jeff Daniels, followed the choir down the center aisle to the door of the church, the pastor caught Joanna’s eye as they passed by. Marianne smiled and winked. Weakly, Joanna smiled back.

She had planned to skip coffee hour after church, but Jenny headed her off at the front door. “Can’t we stay for just a few minutes?” she begged.

Joanna shook her head. “I have so much to do....”

“But, Mom,” Jenny countered. “It’s Birthday Sunday. When I was coming upstairs from Sunday school, I saw Mrs. Sawyer carrying two cakes into the kitchen. Both of ‘em are pecan praline—my favorite. Please? Just for a little while?”

“Well, I suppose,” Joanna relented. “But remember, only