Joanna was dismayed. “There was no reason to tell you,” she said. “Butch and I are-”
“I know. You’re engaged,” Voland finished, although that wasn’t close to what Joanna had intended to say. “1 know all about it. Marliss told me. She heard it from your own mother. How could you do that to me, Joanna? How could you?”
“Dick,” she said reasonably, “I didn’t do
Again Dick Voland cut her off. “I expected you to have the decency to tell me, that’s all. You must know how I feel about you. It’s been like that since you first came to the department. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to give me some sign that it would be okay for me to ask you out. For you to say that you had spent enough time grieving over Andy and that you were ready to move on with your life. I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t think you’d do an end run around me and take off with someone else.”
He paused long enough for Joanna to say something, but by then she was too floored to speak.
“When Marliss came out to Oak Vista yesterday afternoon and told me all about it, I didn’t believe it. I was sure it was a lie-that she was just being Marliss. But she made it sound real enough that I had to know for sure. So I came out here to see for myself. I parked out on High Lonesome Road and waited. And sure as shit, the first person to show up is Butch Dixon in that little Outback of his. Jenny was in the car with him, and somebody else I didn’t recognize. Probably that cretin you dragged home from Saint David.”
“Dick,” Joanna said warningly. “I told you-”
“I don’t care what you told me,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes. First he drove up and then, hours later, who should show up? You, Sheriff Brady-you and nobody else. Come home to shack up. If you didn’t care any more than hat about yourself, it seems to me that you’d at least care about Jenny.”
“That’s about enough,” Joanna said. “I think you’d better go now.”
“No, it isn’t enough. Not nearly. Here.” He reached in his shirt pocket and fumbled out a wrinkled, much-folded piece f paper.
“What’s this?” Joanna asked.
“My letter of resignation. I quit. As of now.”
Dick Voland had tried to quit once before-right after Joanna’s election. Back then she had talked him into staying because she needed his help, his expertise. Even now, she still could use his experience, but not without respect. Lacking that, sere was no way they could continue to work together. She unfolded the letter and glanced at the contents.
“All right,” Joanna said when she finished reading. “Considering what’s happened, that’s probably for the best. I’ll expect you to turn in your vehicle and your departmental weapons before the close of business today.”
“Don’t think this is the last you’re going to hear from me,” Voland warned as he turned his key in the ignition. The Bronco’s engine roared to life.
“No,” Joanna said. “I don’t suppose it is.” As soon as the heater fan caught hold, another cloud of rancid air blasted into Joanna’s face. “Are you sure you should be driving’?” she added. “It’s possible you’re still drunk.”
“I’m not drunk,” he insisted. “Besides, who’s going to stop me? You? I don’t think so.”
Voland rammed the Bronco into reverse and then stepped on the gas. Joanna had to sidestep out of the way in order to keep from being creamed by the outside mirror. He drove off, leaving Joanna in a cloud of dust.
Fleeing into the house, it was all she could do to press her door key into the lock. She dropped the letter on the dryer and then ran weeping through the house. She threw herself across the bed and buried her face in the covers. Joanna hadn’t cried that way for months. A wild fit of racking sobs came from deep inside her and shook her whole body. Her tears didn’t have their source in any one thing. It was everything: Dick Voland quitting. Eleanor bossing her around. Butch asking her if being sheriff was what she really wanted. Lewis Flores blowing his brains out right in front of her. And that was not all. There was also the fact that Joanna had lost her nerve and hadn’t actually told Jenny what was really going on with Butch. Now, thanks to Marliss Shackleford, everyone else in town already knew about it or soon would.
Eventually the combination of tears and exhaustion caught up with her. Joanna fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she and Butch were standing together at the altar of Canyon United Methodist Church. Butch, wearing a tuxedo, was grinning from ear to ear. Junior, standing beside him, was evidently best man, although the badge he wore in place of a boutonniere looked a little out of place on his tux.
Looking down, Joanna discovered that she, too, was dressed for the occasion. She was wearing her wedding dress-the same dress she had worn years earlier when she and Andy were married. Beside her, as maid of honor, stood Angie Kellogg, the ex-hooker Joanna and Marianne Maculyea had rescued from the clutches of a sadistic drug-enforcer. Living in Bisbee, Angie had achieved a certain kind of respectability, but in Joanna’s dream she had regressed. Standing in front of the church, the lushly voluptuous Angie looked anything but prim. One hip was cocked at a suggestive angle. She looked like a hustler standing on a street corner and waiting for her next trick to show up and make her an offer.
In front of them a smilingly oblivious Marianne Maculyea looked past the bridal party toward the rest of the congregation. “If anyone here present knows of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony,” Marianne in-toned, “let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”
Behind them, at the far end of the aisle, the church door slammed open. Joanna turned and looked back, but in her dream Canyon Methodist’s beautifully varnished mahogany doors had vanished. In their stead, separating the sanctuary from the entryway vestibule, was a shabby swinging door straight out of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Brewery Gulch, where Angie Kellogg now worked as relief bartender. And in front of the door, posing with his feet apart like some latter-day gun-slinging John Wayne, stood Dick Voland.
“I object,” Voland said. “I saw her first and that makes her mine. If anybody here disagrees with that, I’ll be happy to meet him outside and settle this man to man.”
That was all it took. Butch Dixon turned and strode down the aisle, leaving Joanna standing alone. “Come back,” she called after him. “This is stupid. Don’t do this.” But he just kept on walking. He didn’t even look back.
Joanna awakened with a start. One hand, trapped under her cheek, felt as though it were made of wood. As soon as she moved her weight off it, circulation began returning, sending a painful tingling all the way from her fingertips up to her elbow.
Turning over, Joanna glanced at the clock. It said one-thirty. That meant she had been out of it for over four hours. Her clothing was wrinkled. There was a wet spot on the bedspread where she had drooled in her sleep. She was thinking about getting up and maybe making herself something to eat when the phone rang.
“Mrs. Brady?” a voice asked.
That was strange. Joanna wasn’t used to being called Mrs. Brady any more. Most people addressed her as Sheriff. “Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”
“Enid Sutton,” was the reply. “I’m the principal at Lowell School.”
Enid Sutton was new to Bisbee, but Joanna remembered meeting her once at a school open house. She hadn’t been particularly impressed one way or the other.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come pick up your daughter,” Mrs. Sutton continued.
“What’s wrong? Is Jenny sick? Hurt?”
“She’s not hurt, but I am putting her on a three-day suspension.”
“Suspension!” Joanna gasped. “What on earth for?”
“For fighting, Mrs. Brady. I’ve tried to get to the bottom of it. She claims that some of the boys were teasing her at lunch. Apparently it was something about your upcoming marriage. I can certainly understand how a child might feel upset and threatened at having to deal with that sort of thing, but I’m sure you can see my position. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence on the school grounds. Jenny bloodied one boy’s nose and tore the other one’s shirt right off his back.”
Drowning in Enid Sutton’s words, Joanna closed her eyes and let the guilt wash over her. Once again she had failed her daughter. She had been so busy trying to save the world-trying to rescue people like Lewis Flores and Karen Brainard from their own foolishness-that she had left Jenny, her own precious daughter, vulnerable to attack from none other than the likes of Marliss Shackleford. It wasn’t at all a fair contest, and the awful realization of Joanna’s own culpability left her shaken.
