she located the Maricopa County Jail complex at First and Madison. Then, she turned on the Blazer’s engine and pulled out of the parking lot, headed for downtown Phoenix.
Accustomed to Cochise County’s almost nonexistent traffic, Joanna was appalled by what awaited her once she turned onto what was euphemistically referred to as the Black Canyon Freeway. Even that late in the evening, both north and southbound traffic was amazingly heavy. And once she crossed under Camelback, southbound traffic stopped altogether. From there on, cars moved at a snail’s pace due to what the radio traffic reports said was a rollover semi, injury accident at the junction I-10 and I-17. That wreck, along with related fender-benders, had created massive tie-ups all around the I-17 corridor, the exact area Joanna had to traverse in order to reach downtown.
Continuing to try to decode the traffic reports, Joanna was frustrated by the way the information was delivered. The various freeways were all referred to by name rather than number, and most of them seemed to be named after mountains—Superstition, Red Mountain, Squaw Peak. If an out-of-town driver didn’t know which mountains were which and where they were located, the traffic ports could just as well have been issued in code.
Most of Joanna’s experience with Phoenix came from an earlier, less complicated, non-freeway era. At Indian School she left the freeway, resorting to surface streets for the remainder of the trip. She navigated the straightforward east-west/north-south grids with little difficulty once she had escaped the freeway-related gridlock.
She reached the jail late enough that there was plenty of on-street parking. After locking her Colt 2000 in the glove compartment, she stepped out of the Blazer and looked up at the lit facade of an imposing building.
Had Joanna not been a police officer, she might have liked it better. The Maricopa County Jail had received numerous architectural accolades, but for cops the complex’s beauty was only skin deep. The portico and mezzanine above the lighted entrance were eminently attractive from an aesthetic point view. Unfortunately, they were also popular with a number of enterprising inmates, several of whom had used those selfsame architectural details as a launching pad for well-planned escapes. Using rock climbing equipment that had been smuggled into the jail, they had rappelled down the side of the building to freedom.
Joanna stood on the street, eyeing the building critically and knowing that her own jail shared some of the same escape-prone defects. Old-fashioned jails—the kind with bars on the windows—may not have been all that aesthetically pleasing, but at least they did the job.
Shaking her head, she walked into the building. Immediately upon entering, she was stopped by a uniformed guard seated behind a chest-high counter. “What can I do for you?” he asked, shoving his reading glasses up on top of his head and lowering his newspaper.
“I’m here to see a prisoner,” Joanna said.
The guard shook his head, pulled the glasses back down on his nose, raised the paper, and resumed reading. “Too late,” he said without looking at her. “No more visitors tonight. Come back tomorrow.”
Joanna removed both her I.D. and badge from her purse. She laid them on the counter and waited for the guard to examine them. He didn’t bother.
He spoke from behind the paper without even looking at them. “Like I said. It’s too late to see anybody tonight.”
“What about the jail commander?” Joanna said quietly. “You do have one of those, don’t you?
The guard lowered the paper and glanced furtively down at the counter. When his eyes
“Then I’ll speak to whoever’s in charge.”
When he spoke again, the guard sounded exasperated. “Lady, I don’t know what’s the matter with you, but—”
“The matter,” Joanna interrupted, keeping voice firm but even, “is that I want to see a prisoner, and I want to see him tonight.”
