Shoot Don't Shoot Page 9

  The unexpected invitation of going off to dinner with Leann Jessup was tempting. Maybe Joanna should take the call as a hint and drop the whole idea of stopping by the Roundhouse. Maybe Joanna’s tentative plan of questioning Butch Dixon, the bartender there, was a fruitcake notion that ought to be dropped like a hot potato.

  For only a moment Joanna considered inviting Leann to come along with her, but the words never made it out of her mouth. If she went to the bar, talked to Butch, and ended up making a botch of things, why bring along a relative stranger to witness her falling flat on her face?

  “Sorry,” Joanna said. “I wish you had called ten minutes ago.”

  Leann seemed to take the rejection in stride. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll figure out some alternative. See you tomorrow.”

  Joanna put down the phone and pulled on jeans and a sweater. Armed with an address from the phone book and her notes, she headed for downtown Peoria and the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Based on the name, she expected the address would take her somewhere close to the railroad track. Instead, Roundhouse derived from the shape of the building itself, which was, in fact, round. The railroad part had been grafted on as an afterthought in the form of an almost life-size train outlined in orange neon tubes along the outside of the building.

  This must be the place, Joanna thought to herself, pulling into the potholed and vehicle-crowded parking lot. As she parked the Blazer, she could almost hear Eleanor Lathrop’s sniff of disapproval. Women in general and her daughter in particular weren’t supposed to visit bars to begin with. And they certainly weren’t supposed to venture into those kinds of places alone. “A woman who goes into bars without an escort is asking for trouble,” Eleanor would have said.

  So are women who run for the office of sheriff, Joanna thought with a rueful smile. Squaring her shoulders, she climbed out of the truck and headed for the entrance. Just inside the door, she paused to get her bearings, allowing her ears to adjust to the noisy din and her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light.

  The joint was divided almost evenly between dining area and bar. The smoke-filled bar was jammed nearly full while the restaurant was largely empty. In both sections, railroad memorabilia—from fading pictures and travel posters to crossing signs—decorated every inch of available wall space. A platform, dropped from the ceiling, ran around the outside of the room and supported the tracks for several running electric trains that hummed overhead at odd intervals. One wall was devoted to a big-screen television where a raucous group of sports-minded drinkers were jockeying for tables in advance of a Monday-night football game. Above the din of the pregame announcements, a blaring jukebox wailed out Roger Miller’s plaintive version of “Engine, Engine Nine.”

  The semicircular bar in the dead center of the room was jammed with people. Seeing the crowd, Joanna’s heart fell. She had hoped that by now the Happy Hour crowd would have gone home and the Roundhouse would be reasonably quiet. A slow evening would give her a chance to talk to the bartender. Under these busy circumstances, that wouldn’t be easy.

  With a sigh Joanna made for the single unoccupied stool she had spotted at the bar. If she sat there, she might manage to monopolize the bartender long enough for a word or two. He was a short, round-shouldered man with a shaved head, heavy black eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed, pencil-thin mustache. The name tag pinned to his shirt said BUTCH.

  Butch Dixon appeared in front of Joanna almost before she finished hoisting herself onto the seat, shoving a wooden salad bowl overflowing with popcorn in her direction. “What’ll it be?” he asked.

  “Diet Coke,” she said.

  “Diet Pepsi okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He went several steps down the bar, filled two glasses with ice, and then added liquid using a push-button dispenser. When he returned, he set both glasses in front of Joanna. “That’ll be a buck,” he said.

  Joanna dug in her purse for money. “I only asked for one,” she said.

  Butch Dixon grinned. “Hey, don’t fight it, lady,” he said. “It’s Happy Hour and Ladies’ Night both. You get two drinks for the price of one. You new around here?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Well, welcome to the neighborhood.”

  A cocktail waitress with a tray laden with empty glasses showed up at her station several seats away. While Butch Dixon hurried to take the used glasses and fill the waitress’s new orders, Joanna sipped her Diet Pepsi and surveyed the room. On first glance the Roundhouse appeared to be respectable enough, and, unlike the truck stop, no one tried to proposition her. She had finished one drink and was started on the other before Butch paused in front of her again.

  “How’re you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine. Is the food here any good?”

  “Are you kidding? We were voted Best Bar Hamburgers in the Valley of the Sun two years in a row. Want one? I can bring it to you here, or you could move to the dining room.”

  “Here,” she said.

  “Fries? The works?”

  After fighting sleep all morning, Joanna had skipped lunch at noontime in favor of grabbing a nap. Hungry now, she nodded.

  “Have the Roundhouse Special then,” Butch said, writing her order down on a ticket. “It’s the best buy. How do you want it?”

  “Medium.”

  He nodded. “And seeing as how you’re new, I’ll throw in the Caboose for free.”

  “What’s a Caboose?” Joanna asked.

  “A dish of vanilla ice cream with Spanish peanuts and chocolate syrup. Not very imaginative, but little kids love it.”

  He came back a few moments later and dropped a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware in front of her. “Just move here?” he asked.

  There seemed to be a slight lull among the customers at the bar right then, and Joanna decided it was time to make her move. For an answer, Joanna shook her head and then pulled one of her business cards from her jeans pocket. She handed it to him.

  “I’ll only be here for a few weeks. I’m attending police academy classes at the APOA just down the road,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said, shoving the card into his pocket without bothering to look at it. “Some of those folks show up here now and then. For dinner,” he added quickly. “Most of ’em hang out in the dining room rather than in the bar, if you know what I mean. I guess they’re all afraid of what people will think.”

  Joanna took a breath. “Actually, I came here today to talk to you.”

  “To me?” Butch Dixon echoed with a frown. “How come?”

  “It’s about Serena Grijalva,” Joanna said quietly.

  Butch Dixon’s eyes hardened and the engaging grin disappeared. From the expression on his face, Joanna expected him to tell her to get lost and forget the Roundhouse Special. Just then someone a few stools down the bar tapped his empty beer glass on the counter.

  “Hey, barkeep,” the impatient customer muttered. “A guy could thirst to death around here.”

  Dixon hurried away. Thinking she had blown her chances of gaining any useful information, Joanna sat forlornly at the bar with her half-empty glass in front of her and wondered if there would have been a better way to approach him. Eventually, he came back with a platter laden with food.

  “How come the sheriff of Cochise County is interested in Serena Grijalva?” he asked. “And why bother talking to me instead of Carol Strong, the detective on the case? Besides, you won’t want to hear what I have to say any more than she did.”

  “This isn’t exactly an official inquiry,” Joanna answered. “I just wanted to check some things out.”

  “Like what?”

  “According to what it said in the paper, you were one of the last people to see Serena alive.”

  “That’s right,” Butch Dixon answered. “Me and Serena’s ex-husband and a whole roomful of other people. Serena and her ex were having themselves a little heart-to-heart. We all heard them. You can see how private it is in here.”

  Once again Butch was
called down the bar while Joanna bit into her hamburger. That one bite told her that the Roundhouse Special lived up to its glowing advance billing.

  Butch came back to stand opposite Joanna’s stool “How’s the burger?”

  “It’s great. But tell me about Serena and Jorge Grijalva. They were having a fight?”

  “Do you ever read Ogden Nash?” Butch asked.

  Joanna was taken aback. “No. Why?”

  “If you’d ever read ‘I Never Even Suggested It,’ you’d know it only takes one person to make a quarrel.”

  “Only one of them was fighting? Which one?”

  “Serena was screaming like a banshee. I guess she had a restraining order on him or something, but he acted like a gentleman. Didn’t threaten her or anything. Didn’t even raise his voice. I felt sorry for the poor guy. All he was asking was for her to let the kids come to his mother’s for Thanksgiving dinner. It didn’t seem all that out of line to me.”

  Again Butch was summoned away, this time by the cocktail waitress again. When he finally returned, Joanna was done with her hamburger. He picked up the empty platter and stood holding it, eyeing Joanna.

  “I don’t care what the detectives and prosecutors say, I still don’t think he did it. After she stomped out the door, he sat here for a long time, all hunched over. He had himself a couple more drinks and both of those were straight coffee. He said he had to drive all the way back to Douglas to be there in time to work in the morning. Does that sound like someone who’s about to go knock off his ex-wife?”

  Thoughtfully, Butch Dixon shook his head. “I’ll go get your ice cream,” he added. “You want coffee or something to go with it?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  He walked away, carrying the dirty dishes. Joanna watched him go. That made two different people who were convinced of Antonio Jorge Grijalva’s innocence—a poetry-quoting bartender and the accused’s own mother.

  Butch Dixon returned with the dish of ice cream. “Did the prosecutor’s office talk to you about any of this?” Joanna asked.

  Dixon shook his head. “Naw. Like I said, the detective just brushed me off. She claimed that she had enough physical evidence to get a conviction.”

  “Like what?”

  “She didn’t say. Not at the time. Later I heard about a possible plea bargain, and it pissed me off. I wanted to see him fight it. I even called up his public defender and offered to testify. He wasn’t buying. I hate plea bargains.”

  Thoughtfully, Joanna carved off a spoonful of ice cream. “There are two primary reasons for so many plea bargains these days. Are you aware of what they are?”

  Butch rolled his eyes. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “The first one is to keep the system moving. If the case is reasonably solid, the prosecutors may decide to go for a lesser sentence just to spare themselves the time and aggravation of going to trial.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “If the case is so weak they don’t think they’ll be able to get a conviction, they may go for a plea bargain as the best alternative to letting the guy walk. Maybe that’s what’s happened here.”

  “Wait a minute,” Butch said. “Do you think that’s possible? Maybe the case is weak and that’s why they’re going for a plea bargain?”

  “It isn’t really my case, but that’s what I’m trying to find out,” Joanna said. “If it’s a strong case or if it isn’t.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Butch Dixon exclaimed, beaming at her. “I figured you were just like all the others. You let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, you hear?”

  Joanna nodded. “Sure thing.”

  He had paused long enough that now he was behind in his duties. Joanna finished her ice cream and waited for some time, hoping he’d drop off her check. Finally, she waved him down. “Could I have my bill, please?”

  “Forget it,” he said. “It’s taken care of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You ever been divorced?”

  Joanna shook her head.

  “I have,” Butch Dixon said. “Twice. Believe me, no matter what, the man is always the bad guy. I get sick and tired of men always getting walked on, know what I mean?”

  “What does that have to do with my not paying for my hamburger?”

  “Any friend of Jorge Grijalva’s is a friend of mine.”

  9

  Walking from the bar into the parking lot, Joanna was surprised by how warm it was. Bisbee, two hundred miles to the south and east, was also four thousand feet higher in elevation. November nights in Cochise County had a crisp, wintery bite to them. By comparison, the evening air in Phoenix seemed quite balmy.

  Once in the Blazer, Joanna sat for some time, not only considering what she had heard from Butch Dixon, but also wondering about her next move. Obviously, Butch was no more a disinterested observer than Juanita Grijalva was. Something in the bartender’s own marital past had caused him to be uncommonly sympathetic to Jorge Grijalva’s plight. Had he, in fact, called the man’s public defender with an offer to testify on Jorge’s behalf? That’s what Dixon claimed. In an era when most people don’t want to get involved, that in itself was remarkable.

  So, in addition to his mother, Jorge Grijalva has at least one other partisan, Joanna thought. Despite Butch Dixon’s professed willingness to do so, however, he would never be called to a witness stand to testify. Plea bargain arrangements don’t call for either witnesses or testimony. There would be no defense, and that seemed wrong. Somehow, without Joanna quite being able to put her finger on the way he had done it, Butch Dixon had caused the smallest hairline crack to appear in her previous conviction that Juanita Grijalva was wrong. Maybe her son was about to plead guilty to a crime he hadn’t committed.

  It was only seven o’clock. The sensible thing to do would have been to head straight back to the dorm and put in a couple of hours reading the next day’s assignment. Instead, Joanna reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the detailed Phoenix Thomas Guide Jim Bob Brady had insisted she bring along. Even as she did it, Joanna knew what was happening. She was wading deeper and deeper into the muck. Inevitably. One little step at a time. Just like the stupid dire wolves at the La Brea tar pits, she thought.

  Switching on the overhead light, she studied the map until 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 of 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 reports could just as well have been issued in code.

  Most of Joanna’s experience with Phoenix came from an earlier, less complicated, nonfreeway 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 of 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 focused on the badge lying in front of him, he frowned. “The commander went home already.”

  “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—”