Tombstone Courage jb-11 Page 9

  Joanna’s heart caught in her throat. What would happen if she made the wrong decision? What if she somehow failed to successfully negotiate the distance between them? Would Joanna be destroying whatever relationship had once existed between herself and her daughter? Was history bound to repeat itself?

  “Could I talk to you, please?” Joanna asked.

  Jenny pulled the teddy bear more tightly over her head and didn’t answer.

  She mued softly. “I need to know why you don’t want me to win.”

  Jenny rolled over, flinging the teddy bear aside allowing her mother a glimpse of her tear-stained desolate face. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.”

  Joanna resisted the temptation to close the distance between them.

  This was a turning point. She needed to hear Jennifer’s answer, needed to listen to what the child had to say without smothering her in a word-strangling embrace.

  “What are you afraid of?” Joanna asked.

  Jennifer’s chin quivered. “That you’ll die, too,” she whispered. “That somebody will kill you, too, Just like they did Daddy. If that happens, I’ll be all alone.”

  That was it. The answer when it came was so blindingly simple, so logical, that it took Joanna’s breath away. Of course! Why hadn’t she seen it coming? If she had been a better mother, a more perceptive parent, maybe she would have.

  “Just because I’m elected sheriff doesn’t mean someone’s going to try to kill me.”

  “But Sheriff McFadden got killed,” Jennifer returned with unwavering childish logic. “And Daddy. And Grampa.”

  “Grandpa Lathrop died because he was changing a tire in traffic-because he was helping someone not because he was sheriff,” Joanna pointed out.

  But even as she said the words, Joanna knew they weren’t the right ones. They didn’t address Jennifer Brady’s very real concern; didn’t do justice to her heartfelt worry. D. H. Lathrop had died by legitimately accidental means-if drunk drivers can ever be considered truly accidental. But the other two hadn’t.

  Walter McFadden and Andrew Brady had both died violent deaths as soldiers in the ongoing war fare between good and evil, between wrong and right. And Jenny wasn’t mistaken in her concern.

  Winning the election would put Joanna Brady directly on the front lines of that exact same conflict. As though negotiating a minefield, Joanna walked carefully to the side of the bed and settled on the edge of it with her hands folded in her lap. Still she made no attempt to touch her daughter.

  “Sometimes you have to take a stand,” she said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your dad saw what terrible things drugs and drug dealers were doing to the people around him. He decided he had to try to stop it and…”

  “And they killed him,” Jenny finished.

  The room grew quiet. From the dining room came the hushed murmur of muted conversation.

  “Everyone must die sometime, Jenny,” Joanna said at last. “Grandpa and Grandma Brady. Grandma Lathrop. You. Me.”

  “But Grandma and Grandpa are old,” Jennifer objected. “Daddy wasn’t.” Again the room grew still as Joanna struggled to find the right words. “Do you remember the night of Daddy’s funeral?” Jennifer nodded wordlessly.

  “We made a decision that night, the two of us together, a decision for me to run in your father’s place, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when we said it, people believed we meant it, your grandparents, Jeff and Marianne, and lots of other people, too. They’ve all worked hard to see that what we said that night comes true.”

  “But…”

  “No. Wait a minute. Let me finish. You’re not the only one who’s scared, Jenny. That’s the reason I was late coming to dinner. While I was sitting outside Helen Barco’s shop and worrying about whether or not I wanted to win the election, I fell asleep.”

  Jenny’s eyes widened. “You’re worried, too?”

  Joanna nodded. “And for the same reasons you are. If I win, what happens then? Maybe you’re right. Maybe the bad people who came after Daddy will come after me as well. But I promised to run for sheriff. Promising to run means that if you win, you’re also promising to do the job. Even if you’re scared to death.”

  Jennifer moved slightly on the bed, cuddling closer, putting her head in her mother’s lap. “I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered, grasping her mother’s hand, squeezing it tight.

  Joanna felt hot tears well in her eyes. “I know,” she said. “I don’t want you to be, either. I’ll try to be careful.”

  “Promise?”

  Not letting go with one hand, Joanna used the other to brush a strand of damp hair off Jennifer’s still tear-stained cheeks. Unable to speak, she nodded.

  “Girl Scout’s honor?” Jennifer pressed.

  “Girl Scout’s honor,” her mother whispered in return, while Helen Barco’s mascara streamed un noticed down her face.

  ONCE MORE Harold awakened, caught in a disorienting spin-the turbulence between real and dream, between known and unknown. He had no sense of how much time had passed, but the sky far overhead was dark now. Blackness surrounded him like some all-enveloping, evil shroud.

  Harold was so desperately cold that he wondered for a moment if maybe he was already dead, already put away in that cut-rate casket he had taken off Norm Higgins’ hands. Eventually though, he sorted it out-remembered where he was if not how he’d come to be there. Remembered that his body was broken; that he was trapped and unable to move.

  Harold was lying there trying to think of a way to escape his prison when he heard the familiar wheeze and throb of his old Scout’s much overhauled engine. He heard it laboring up the steep dirt track toward the basin, toward the glory hole. It must be Ivy, he thought at once. Had to be Ivy, come to search for him. Who else would bother? And who else would know to come here. Sudden tears filled his eyes-not tears of selfpity but tears for his daughter, for Ivy. What would happen to her now? After taking care of her mother all those years, would she have to spend the next ones taking care of him as well?

  He wished suddenly, fervently, that he had died in the fall. He upbraided himself for not trying harder to die. He should have concentrated on that rather than on trying to find some way out.

  Now, with Ivy approaching ever nearer, Harold was filled with a desperate need to escape his broken body quickly-to do it now, before Ivy found him. Before she had a chance to call for help. Before she could turn him over to the care of doctors who would try valiantly to patch the shattered pieces back together.

  He already knew that wouldn’t work. Broken backs didn’t magically heal themselves. Once the doctors finished screwing around with their casts and braces and astronomical bills, Ivy Patterson’s worst nightmare would materialize and she would be handed yet another cripple to care for.

  if Ivy calls to me, Harold thought wildly, I won’t answer. I’ll pretend I’m already dead.

  Maybe she’ll go away and leave me alone. Over night, he would simply will himself to die. He had seen his own father do it after he was hurt in the mining accident. He knew it was possible. And the cold would help.

  But even as Harold toyed with the idea, the Scout’s engine grumbled closer, climbing steadily, grinding up over the final incline. As the Scout came closer, a flash of light splashed across the small pile of wood-chip-sized rock that made up the mound of tailings around the mouth of the glory hole. Almost directly overhead, the engine coughed once and backfired as the ignition was switched off. Harold heard the driver’s door creak open on familiar rusty hinges; heard leather shoe soles scrape across loose shale, pausing long enough to climb over or through the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the glory hole. Then there was another sound of something heavy, cardboard perhaps, scraping along the ground.

  Harold pressed his lips together, and forced himself to keep quiet. He was determined not to answer, no matter what. He waited for Ivy to speak to him and was surprised when she didn’t.

&nb
sp; Instead, a flashlight switched on. A powerful beam of yellow light slid down the darkened walls of the shaft, searching here and there, to the right -;and then the left, before finally settling on his body. Still nothing was said, nothing at all.

  He was tempted to speak then, but abruptly the light switched off. In the sudden jet-black darkness, everything was still until the first five-pound river rock plunged toward Harold with accidental, —but still deadly, accuracy.

  Long before it hit him, he heard it bouncing off the walls and knew what it was. And in that split second, he remembered everything. But by then it was much too late.

  The rock hit him full on the chest, sending a long splinter of broken rib deep into his heart. Harold Patterson died instantly, died in exactly the nightmarish way he had always dreamed he would, with the rocks of retribution raining down around him.

  The barrage continued uninterrupted for some time as the rocks plunged through the darkness.

  Some of them hit him. Most didn’t, careening -harmlessly off the walls of the shaft. At last, when all the ammunition was gone, the flashlight came back on. This time, the hand that held it trembled violently, and the wavering beam jerked crazily as it zigzagged down the rocky walls, panning through the darkness in search of a body.

  When the light finally settled on Harold’s inert - body, on his open and unblinking eyes, there was a single, sharp intake of breath, a sigh of relief.

  And then the flashlight fell, plunging-still lit through the eerie, enveloping silence. It slammed into Harold’s shattered chest, bounced once, then rolled off into the water.

  Soon after that, the Scout’s engine choked and coughed back to life. It shuddered once, then caught and kept on running. As the International rumbled away toward Juniper Flats and Bisbee beyond that, the flashlight one of Harold’s best, continued to cast a flickering light that lingered in the darkness of the glory hole. Even totally submerged, it still glowed through the murky - water, long after the Scout had disappeared into the overcast night.

  JIM BOB and Eva Lou Brady weren’t exactly social butterflies. It took some serious persuasion to convince them that they should attend the post-election party at all. They agreed, finally, only on the condition that Jenny ride with them. Joanna suspected it was a ploy giving them a convenient excuse to leave early, pleading the necessity of getting Jenny home and in bed because of school the next day.

  Jenny opted to ride with the Bradys. Eleanor Lathrop went with friends. That meant Joanna Brady drove to the post-election party at the convention center alone.

  Brave words to Jenny notwithstanding, Joanna was filled with grave misgivings as she made her way uptown. In her only previous attempt at elected office, she had run for student-body treasurer of Bisbee High School. She still remembered sitting in Miss Applewhite’s biology room (which doubled as Joanna’s homeroom) while Mr. Bailes the principal, read the winners’ names over the intercom. With the sharp smell of formaldehyde filling her nostrils, she had listened intently, holding her breath the whole while, as he droned through the congratulatory list.

  After what seemed forever, when he finally reached the position of treasurer, the name he read wasn’t Joanna Lathrop’s.

  Joanna no longer remembered which of her classmates actually did win. Someone else’s victory wasn’t nearly as important as her own personal loss. The memory of that defeat came to her as clearly and painfully now as if it had happened yesterday.

  She remembered how her face had flushed hot with embarrassment, how she had fought back tears of disappointment while well-meaning class mates told her, sympathetically, “better luck next time.”

  There’ll never be a next time, Joanna had vowed back then. It turned out she was wrong about that.

  Here she was, twelve years later, running for office after all.

  “Whatever you do, don’t cry,” she lectured her self sternly, repeating words Marianne had been uttering for weeks. “Win, lose, or draw not to cry.”

  There were two readily available parking spaces directly across the street from the convention center entrance, but Joanna ignored them both.

  Instead, she drove farther up the street, parking at the upper end of the lot near the post office. She locked the car and started toward the plaza, where she counted three different vans bearing the logos of Tucson television stations, as well as one more from a station in Phoenix.

  Cochise County elections didn’t usually garner that much interest from out of town, but this year’s race for sheriff was different. The earlier deaths of both declared candidates had spurred uncommon statewide and national media attention. The fact that Joanna was both a candidate and the widow of one of the slain men had contributed to keeping the hotly contested election in the human-interest spotlight. Not only that, but pundits continued to dwell on the idea that if Joanna Brady won, she would be the first female county sheriff in the state of Arizona.

  Rather than go directly to the convention center and into the glaring lights of the waiting cameras, Joanna delayed her entrance by crossing the street and approaching the building with the wary attention of a battle-weary scout reconnoitering enemy territory. Stopping in the park, she gazed at the pale green building that appeared a ghostly gray in the evening light.

  And truly, the convention center was a ghost. The structure that now functioned as the Bisbee Convention Center had once housed Phelps Dodge Mercantile branch of the company store in the days before most of the jobs in the domestic copper-mining industry literally went south-to Mexico and South America.

  In their heyday, P.D. stores in a dozen separate mining communities had been true department stores-places where, by signing a chit, company employees could purchase everything from groceries to furniture, from washing machines to ladies fine millinery, and have the cost automatically deducted from future paychecks.

  Joanna didn’t actually remember shopping in this particular store, although she must have accompanied her mother there on occasion when she was little. She did have a dim, lingering recollection of being lost on a store elevator once, of searching frantically for her mother, and of being found much later among the glass-walled showcases. Eleanor had been furious with Joanna for wandering away on her own. In the very best of times, Bisbee had boasted a grand total of only three elevators, so the chances were good that Joanna’s vaguely remembered incident had actually occurred in the uptown P.D. store, especially since that had been Eleanor’s favorite place to shop. Before the relatively upscale P.D. closed for good, Eleanor Lathrop wouldn’t have been caught dead shopping at a J.C. Penney.

  Since the store had been closed now for twenty some years, Joanna’s knowledge of the building’s faded merchandizing glory came to her primarily secondhand, through her mother’s steady harping back to the once-glorious good old days. Back then the P.D. store in Bisbee had been the place to shop.

  In its heyday the store had offered so much, much more than its withered successor humdrum, lowly grocery store that still clung stubbornly to life a few miles away in the Warren business district.

  With modest renovation, the building’s interior main floor had been redesigned into a meeting hall configuration. The Bisbee Convention Center hosted each year’s flurry of summer high-school reunions as well as other events. An echo of the store’s retailing glory remained in the thin inner shell of shops that lined the edge of the marbled main floor. There, enterprising merchants hawked turquoise jewelry, curios, and knickknacks to any stray tourists who happened to wander inside. A modestly upscale restaurant occupied one corner of the building and usually catered whatever required catering.

  Joanna Brady knew almost all those individual merchants on a first-name basis and had played on the tennis team with the woman who owned and operated the restaurant. All things considered, the Bisbee Convention Center should not have been a scary place for her, yet tonight it was. Impossibly so. Standing outside in the cold, watching others arrive and hurry inside, was far preferable to going inside herself.

>   “I see you’re not all that eager to go inside, there,” a familiar male voice teased from behind her.

  Joanna turned to greet Frank Montoya, the Will cox city marshal, who was one of her two opponents in the race for sheriff. During a series of joint-candidate appearances in front of local civic groups, Joanna had come to like Frank-a tall, scrawny, crew-cut Mexican-American of thirty five. Frank’s ready wit and screwball sense of humor camouflaged real dedication to his work and a serious sense of purpose.

  Frank Montoya was the son of once-migrant farmworkers who had, years before, settled in Wilcox on a permanent basis. He came to law enforcement through a hitch in the army as an MP and with an associate of arts degree in police science from Cochise College. In an area of the country where Mexican-Americans were still often deemed second-class citizens, voters in Wilcox had surprised themselves and Frank, too, by electing him to serve as city marshal while he continued to commute back and forth to the university in Tucson to earn his B.A. in law enforcement.

  “Hi, Frank,” Joanna returned lightly. “You’re right. I’m not looking forward to it. I’d much rather have a root canal.”

  “Me, too,” Montoya agreed with a laugh. “The Big Guy showed up a few minutes ago. I watched him go inside. He was in seventh heaven with a television camera following his every move and with two microphones stuck in his face. It makes it easier for him to talk out of both sides of his mouth.”

  Joanna couldn’t help laughing.

  Al Freeman, the heavyset former chief of police in Sierra Vista, was the third candidate in the three way race for sheriff. In campaign appearances and brochures, Freeman had self-importantly characterized himself as the “only law-enforcement professional” running for the office of sheriff. That tactic had effectively thrown Joanna and Frank Montoya together in an uneasy alliance, which, to their mutual wonder, had blossomed into an un likely friendship.

  With a lessening of tension, Joanna grinned back at Frank. “I don’t know what’s been worse, limping around with doorbelling blisters on both feet or having to sit through Al Freeman’s endless red neck-and-proud-of-it speeches.”