Downfall (27 page)

STILL STUNNED AND SHAKEN BY THE BLOW TO HER FACE, JOANNA
moved forward slowly and unsteadily. Having her hands bound in front of her meant that she was unable to use her arms to help maintain her balance, and that extra twenty ounces on her ankle felt like an anchor.

Between the Tahoe and the grove of trees, she stumbled and fell three different times. Unable to break her fall, she landed hard each time, adding more scrapes and bruises to her already damaged face and body. After every fall, Jeremy grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her back to her feet. Each time she was terrified that he would somehow spot the weapon concealed under her pant leg and take it away from her.

Once they entered the grove of trees, sheltering greenery blocked the starlight, leaving them in almost total darkness. Joanna stumbled along upright, occasionally colliding with an invisible
tree trunk. Desolate as the surrounding desert may have seemed, this was arid pastureland. Not only did grazing cattle keep the earth denuded of grass, they also pruned the scrub oak as far up as they could reach. At five-four, Joanna was able to walk upright beneath the tree branches, while Jeremy, following behind her, had to duck his way underneath, cursing as he went.

This angry side of Jeremy Stock was something new, something Joanna had never encountered before today. She understood enough about domestic violence to realize that some abusers were monsters who managed to mask their ugly tempers in public all while venting their fury on loved ones behind closed doors at home. Had that reality been at work with Deputy Stock the whole time he had worked for her? If so, what could she have done to spot it and put a stop it. And if Allison and Travis Stock were dead, as she now feared they were, how much of that was her fault? She and Detective Waters had blithely driven away from the Stock family interview without any idea that they were leaving someone behind to die—make that, leaving two someones behind to die.

Beyond the water hole and still under the canopy of trees, Joanna tripped over a loose rock and tumbled to the ground. In an unavoidable chain reaction, Jeremy slammed into her and fell on top of her. As he dragged her upright again, her hip hurt like hell where the toe of his boot had hit her body full force, but at least he hadn't plowed head-on into her stomach. That would have been far worse.

“I could walk better if you uncuffed my hands,” she said.

“Stuff it,” Jeremy told her. “Keep walking.”

“How did you find out about Travis and Susan?” she asked,
trying to initiate conversation as they emerged once more into pale starlight.

“I didn't,” Jeremy said. “Until you showed up at the house this afternoon, I had no idea he was involved with her.”

“Then how . . . ?”

Jeremy grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around until they were face-to-face.

“Don't you understand anything?” he demanded furiously, shaking her again. “I thought Susan's baby was my damned baby! I had no idea anyone else was involved, much less Travis. I wanted her to get rid of it, and she wouldn't—she absolutely refused. As soon as Travis gave you that swab, I knew it was over and I was toast. I didn't want Allison and Travis to have to face what was coming, so I ended it for them.”

“By killing them?”

He shrugged. “To my way of thinking, I did them a huge favor. That way they didn't have to live with the consequences of what I'd done.”

“What about your other son?” Joanna asked. “Don't you have an older boy who's away at college?”

“You mean Thad? As far as I'm concerned, he's no son of mine. He turned his back on us when he went off to college. He can go to hell for all I care.”

“And face all of this on his own?” Joanna asked.

“Yup,” Jeremy said callously. “I guess them's the breaks.”

Taken aback by the man's utter disregard for anyone but himself, Joanna rounded on him. “You're a coward, Jeremy Stock,” she spat at him, “and a low-down, miserable excuse for a human being. Travis believed Susan's baby was his. Young as he was, he was willing to face up to the consequences of his actions. He
wanted Susan to divorce her husband and marry him, but she evidently gave him the same answer she gave you—that it was her baby and she was keeping it, but I have to give Travis full marks. He didn't kill her for turning him down. Travis was man enough to take no for an answer. You weren't.”

Jeremy said nothing. For a moment neither did she. They were stopped at the place where the game trail Joanna and Agent Watkins had followed veered off toward the left. “Which way?” she asked.

“Follow that,” he said, gesturing toward the faint path. Joanna was relieved. At least that meant they were taking the side route rather than making a direct ascent.

“We're going up, I take it?” she asked.

“Yes, we are.”

“Why?” she insisted. “What's the point?”

“The point is that this all ends at the time and place of my choosing. Grandma Meynard told me once that Grandpa always wished he could have climbed Geronimo on the last day of his life and taken a flying leap off it, instead of being locked up in that damned bed at the Copper Queen Hospital for weeks on end. He said if he'd known what was coming, he would have handled it himself while he was still able. I feel the same way, Sheriff Brady. No friggin' way I'm going to live out the rest of my days rotting away in prison.”

“What about me?” Joanna asked.

“What about you?”

“Presumably I'm supposed to die, too?”

“Why not? You started it,” he said. “I told you no DNA sample, and you took one anyway. I'm sick and tired of women not doing as they're told. Got it? Let's move.”

Joanna moved, following the circuitous path as it wound its way up the mountain. The ground began to rise under her feet. As the grade grew steadily steeper, the only sound within hearing came from her and Jeremy's increasingly heavy breathing. In that noisy silence, she became aware that once again Sage was kicking away, reminding her mother of her presence and of her need and will to live.

Every forward step took both mother and child nearer to the brink. Joanna realized that she had to act soon. A moment or two later, she fell again, a faked fall this time rather than a real one, but one that sent her tumbling back down until she came to rest at Jeremy's feet.

“I can't do this,” she pleaded, looking up at him imploringly and making her breathing sound more labored than it was. “Especially if we're going all the way to the top. It's too steep. I can't make it without using both hands. I can't.”

For a time, Jeremy simply stared down at her, saying nothing. Finally, when he reached down to help her up, the key to the handcuffs was in his hand. As he bent to unfasten the cuffs, struggling in the dark to operate the lock, Joanna had a few seconds to peer out across the empty desert behind him, hoping against hope to see even the smallest sign that her people had somehow pieced things together and were coming to her aid. But there was nothing to see. The streetlights of Warren winked at her in the far distance, but between Geronimo and town, there was nothing but a pitch-black void.

When Jeremy straightened up, Joanna could tell from his defensive stance that he was braced for her to launch some kind of counterattack. Since that's what he expected, she didn't deliver. Better to lull him into a false sense of security. Better to let him
think that he had drained all the fight out of her. Since Jeremy Stock thrived on reveling in his own power, she decided to give him an additional dose.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, rubbing her abraded wrists. Then she turned back to the mountain and climbed anew, praying as she went—for strength and courage.

Somewhere during that steady climb upward, a familiar Bible verse came to mind. It was a passage from Deuteronomy that Marianne Maculyea had read aloud during Andy's funeral service:

I'm choosing life for both of us,
she told herself and Sage, too.
But we're not getting out of this mess without a whole lot of help from the Man upstairs. Somehow, between here and the top of the mountain, I'm hoping He'll give us a chance to get away.

IT WASN'T UNTIL CHIEF DEPUTY HADLOCK WAS ALONE IN HIS TAHOE
and speeding west on US Highway 80 that the whole situation threatened to overwhelm him. At that point, the shakes hit so hard he was afraid he was going to have to roll down the window and heave. He'd made it through the briefing, thank God, including running the damned PowerPoint presentation without a hitch and without losing his cool, either. But it wasn't just God he had to thank for all that, it was Sheriff Brady, too.

She was the one who had insisted that he spend a year joining a Toastmasters club and learning how to do solo public-speaking presentations. She was the one who had tossed him out in front of countless packs of clamoring reporters and forced him to figure out how to handle them. She was the one who had given him this job—one he had coveted but had hardly dared hope would ever be his.

Now it was, but with Sheriff Brady's life in jeopardy, Tom wondered if he was up to the task. Had he made the right calls? He had deployed his assets in the way that made the most sense to him, but were they being used in the most effective manner? And if they weren't—if he'd been wrong about any of it—chances were Joanna Brady wouldn't live through the night. If that happened, responsibility for her death would land squarely on his shoulders.

Tom remembered speaking to Butch Dixon out in the lobby. Under similar circumstances, he knew Joanna would have reached out to a frightened loved one and said something calming and reassuring. What was it he had said to Butch? He couldn't remember the exact words but he worried that he'd given the poor guy the dreadful news about his wife's situation in far too blunt a fashion and then more or less ordered him to take a hike.

Which Butch hadn't done, of course. Later on, Tom had noticed the man lurking in the back of the conference room during the briefing, and he'd been secretly glad to see him. At least now Joanna's husband knew what was going on not only with the investigation but also with Tom's course of action. These weren't things that would need to be explained later, if things went sideways, which they very well might.

Lost in thought, Tom approached the turn at the end of the cutoff going far too fast. He had to jam on his brakes in order to make the awkward left-hand turn onto Yuma Trail. Fortunately, the vehicle right behind him—driven by Terry Gregovich—was maintaining enough distance that he didn't slam into Tom's SUV from behind.

The dog, Tom thought as he accelerated up the narrow, winding street. Failure or success depends on nothing but a dog—a single damned dog.

He had seen Spike in action on occasion, usually in training situations where Terry was putting his canine partner through his paces. The dog was quick. He'd be able to charge up the mountain way faster than a human while making very little noise in the process. Unless, of course, he barked. Terry claimed the dog was capable of operating in silent mode, but could he really? Tom Hadlock had never owned a dog in his life, and he had no idea if Terry's claim was true. He hoped it was, but if it wasn't, one tiny bark from Spike could spell disaster.

Tom crested the top of Yuma Trail with enough speed that for a second or so his Tahoe went airborne. Behind him, one set of headlights after another went dark. Everyone appeared to be following orders.

So far so good, he thought.

Once the Tahoe was parked, Tom was the first one out of his vehicle, with Spike and Terry joining him before he reached the cattle guard. The three of them set off at a brisk pace, walking side by side toward the shadow of mountain looming in the near distance against a star-studded sky. Some of the younger guys—the daily workout guys—jogged around and past them. Tom kept walking with Ernie Carpenter trudging along behind. There hadn't been much discussion about who was going where, but since Tom himself would be left guarding the disabled escape vehicle, he was grateful to have an old hand like Ernie for backup.

A little over a mile later, the GPS coordinates provided by Tica led them directly to Jeremy's parked Tahoe. It was locked. There was enough of a signal that he was able to send a text to Tica back at the department, who was able to unlock it remotely. Before opening the door, Tom shielded his Maglite long enough
to risk a glance inside the vehicle. Sitting there in plain sight on the front passenger seat was just what he had hoped to find—a clump of blue cloth. Standing in stark relief against the dark material were three four-inch-tall, white capital letters—
SSE
.

“Hot damn,” Tom said to Terry as he doused the flashlight. “I think we just found the hoodie.”

He removed a pair of gloves from his pocket. “I'm going to be tampering with evidence here,” he told Terry. “We can't photograph it in place because we can't risk the camera flash. If need be, I may ask you to swear this is where we found it, and before you touch it, you'll need gloves, too.”

While Terry located his own pair of gloves, Tom cracked open the door, grabbed the hoodie, and shut the door again as quickly and quietly as humanly possible. The dome light flashed on and off briefly. In that instant, it seemed incredibly bright compared to the relative darkness surrounding them. From Tom's point of view, the light seemed to linger forever—a telling beacon shining in the dark. He held his breath for several moments afterward, hoping but not knowing whether or not the light had attracted Jeremy's attention or if their intrusion would be met by a hail of gunfire.

Finally, Tom handed the hoodie over to Terry, who in turn held it down until it came in contact with Spike's eagerly twitching nose.

“Find, boy,” Terry ordered. “Silent and find.”

For a moment, Spike stood still with his muzzle raised in the air. Then with only the tiniest whimper of excitement, the dog set off at a dead run, heading straight toward the steepest part of the mountain with Terry Gregovich following to the best of his severely limited two-legged ability.