Shoot, Don't Shoot (15 page)

“Rhonda was always the smartest girl—the smartest person—in our class when it came to cracking the books. She went to Arizona State University on a full-ride scholarship. As soon as she ran into that professor down there at the university, she was hooked. I don’t think she ever looked at another boy our age.”

According to Ms. Dobson, Rhonda Weaver met Professor Norton when she took his class in microeconomics as an ASU undergraduate student nine years ago. Norton divorced his first wife the following summer. He married Rhonda Weaver a short time later. It was his third marriage and her first. They have no children.

Leann Jessup finished reading and put the paper down on the table. “This crap makes me sick. We should have been able to do more. I agree with what the man in the article said. The system let down, although I guess it’s not fair to second-guess the guys who took those other calls. After all, we weren’t there. If I had been, maybe I would have done something differently.”

“Maybe,” Joanna said. “And maybe not. In that shoot/don’t shoot scenario yesterday, I evidently pulled the same boner the responding officer did. If that had been a real life situation, I would have plugged that poor little kid, sure as hell.”

Folding the paper, Leann shoved it into her purse and then stood up. “It’s almost time for class,” she said. “We’d better get going.”

Joanna glanced around the room and was surprised to find it nearly empty. Only one student remained in the room, a guy from Flagstaff who was still talking on the telephone. He and his wife were having a heated argument over what she should do about a broken washing machine while he was away at school. The public nature of the lounge telephone made no allowances for domestic privacy.

Joanna and Leann cleared their table and head for class. Determinedly, Leann Jessup changed the subject. “It’s going to be a long day,” she said. “I’ve been up since four. The train woke me.”

“What train?” Joanna asked. “I didn’t hear any train.”

“You must have been sleeping the sleep of dead,” Leann said. “It was so loud that I thought we were having an earthquake.”

Outside the classroom a small group of smokers clustered around a single, stand-alone ashtray. Grinding out his own cigarette butt, Dave Thompson began urging the others to come inside. Other than the guy from Flagstaff, Joanna and Leann were the last people to enter.

Something about the searching look Dave gave her made Joanna feel distinctly uneasy. Leann evidently noticed it as well.

“Oops,” she whispered, as they ducked between other students’ chairs and tables to reach their own. “The head honcho looks a little surly today. We’d better be on our best behavior.”

Moments later, Dave Thompson closed the door behind the last straggler and marched forward to e podium. “I hope you’ve all read last night’s assignment, boys and girls,” he said. “We’re going to spend the morning discussing some of the material on the worldwide history of law enforcement as well as some additional material on law enforcement here in the great state of Arizona. I’m a great believer in the idea that you can’t tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”

During the course of Dave Thompson’s long lecture, Joanna almost succeeded in staying awake by forcing herself to take detailed notes. As the midmorning break neared, she once again found herself counting down the minutes like a restless school kid longing for recess.

When the break finally came, Joanna raced out of the classroom and managed to beat everyone to the student lounge. She poured herself a cup of terrible coffee from the communal urn and then made for the pay phone and dialed her own office number first. Kristin Marsten, her nubile young secretary, answered the phone sounding perky and cheerful. “Sheriff Brady’s office.”

“Hello, Kristin,” Joanna said. “How are thing?”

Kristin’s tone of voice changed abruptly as the cheeriness disappeared. “All right, I guess,” she answered.

Kristin’s tenure as secretary to the Cochise County sheriff preceded Joanna’s arrival on scene by only a matter of months. Kristin started out the previous summer in the lowly position of temporary clerk/intern. Through a series of unlikely promotions, she had somehow landed the secretarial job. Joanna credited Kristin’s swift rise far more to good looks than ability. No doubt in the pervasively all-male atmosphere that had existed under the previous administrations, blond good looks and blatant sex appeal had worked wonders.

By the time Joanna arrived on the scene, Kristin had carved out some fairly cushy working conditions. Because Joanna’s reforms threatened the status quo, the new sheriff understood why Kristin might view her new female boss with undisguised resentment. Given time, Joanna thought she might actually effect a beneficial change in the young woman’s troublesome attitude. The problem was, between the election and now there had been no time—at least not enough. Kristin’s brusque, stilted replies bordered on rudeness, but Joanna waded into her questions as though nothing was out line.

“Is anything happening?” she asked.

“Nothing much,” Kristin returned.

“No messages?”

“Nothing happening. No messages. Joanna recognized the symptoms at once. Kristin was enjoying the fact that her boss was temporarily out of the loop. The secretary no doubt planned to keep Joanna that way for as long as possible.

“Something must be happening,” Joanna pressed. “It is a county sheriff’s office.”

“Not really,” Kristin responded easily. “I’ve been sling things along to Dick ... I mean, to Chief Deputy Voland, or else to Chief Deputy for Administration Montoya.”

“What kind of things?”

“Just routine,” Kristin answered.

Joanna had to work at keeping the growing annoyance out of her own voice. She knew there was no possibility of effecting a miraculous adjustment Kristin’s attitude over long-distance telephone lines. But if Kristin wanted to play the old I-know-and-you-don’t game, it was certainly possible to II her bluff.

“Oh,” Joanna offered casually. “You mean like the prisoner petitions asking me to fire the cook or the domestic assault out at the Sunset Inn?”

“Well . . . yes,” Kristin stammered. “I guess so. How did you know about those?”

Hearing the surprise in Kristin’s voice, Joanna allowed herself a smile of grim satisfaction. She resented being drawn into playing useless power-trip games, but it was nice to know she could deliver a telling blow when called upon to do so. After all, Joanna had been schooled at her mother’s knee, and Eleanor Lathrop was an expert manipulator. The sooner Kristin Marsten figured that out, the better it would be for all concerned.

“A little bird told me,” Joanna answered, “but I shouldn’t have to check with him. Calling you ought to be enough.”

Bristling at the reprimand, Kristin did at last cough up some useful information. “Adam York called,” she said curtly.

Adam York was the agent in charge of the Tucson office of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Joanna had met him months earlier when, at the time Andy’s death, she herself had come under suspicion as a possible drug smuggler. It was due Adam York’s firm suggestion that she had enrolled in the APOA program in the first place.

“Did he say what he wanted?” Joanna asked. “Did he want me to call him back?”

“Yes.”

“Where was he calling from?” Joanna asked. “Did he leave a number?”

“He said you had it,” Kristin replied. “He said for you to call his home number. He has so fancy kind of thingamajig on his phone that tract him down automatically.”

Not taking down telephone numbers was another part of Kristin’s game. Joanna had Adam York’s number back in the room, but not with her. Not here at the phone where and when she needed it. Her level of annoyance rose another notch, but she held it inside.

“What else?” Joanna asked.

“Well, there was a call from someone named Grijalva.”

“Someone who?” Joanna asked impatiently. “A man? Woman?”

“A woman,” Kristin said. “Juanita was her name. She wouldn’t tell me what it was all about. She just said to tell you thank you.”

Joanna drew a long breath. There was very little point in lighting into Kristin over the telephone. What was needed was a way to make things work for the time being.

“I’ll tell you what, Kristin,” Joanna said. “From now on I’d like you to bag up all my correspondence and copies of all phone calls that come into your office. My in-laws are coming up here tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Bundle the stuff up in a single envelope. I’ll have my father-in-law stop by the office to pick it up tomorrow the last thing before they leave town.”

“You want everything?”

“That’s right. Even if you’ve passed a call along someone else to handle, I still want to see a copy of the original message. That way I’ll know who called and why and where the problem went from ere.”

“But that’s a lot of trouble—”

Pushed beyond bearing, Joanna cut off Kristin’s objection. “No buts,” she said. “You’re being paid be
my
secretary, remember? To do
my
work. For as long as I’m gone, this is the way we’re going to handle things. After tomorrow’s batch, you can FedEx me the next one Monday morning. After at, I want packets from you twice a week for as long as I’m here. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, is Frank Montoya around?”

“He’s not in his office. He’s over in the jail talking the cook. Want me to see if I can put you through to the kitchen?”

“No, thanks. What about Dick Voland?”

“Yes.” Joanna could almost see Kristin’s tight lipped acquiescence in the single word of her answer. Moments later, Dick Voland came on phone.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you, Sheriff Brady and what’s the matter with Kristin?”

“I’m fine,” Joanna answered. “Kristin, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be having a very go day.”

“I’ll say,” Dick returned. “I thought she was going to bite my head off when she buzzed me about your call. What can I do for you?”

Joanna listened between the words, trying to tell if anything was wrong, but Voland sounded cordial enough. “How are things?” she asked.

“Everything’s fine. Let’s say pretty much everything. The prisoners are all pissed off about quality of their grub, but Frank tells me he’s working on that. We’ve had a few things happening, but nothing out of the ordinary. How are your classes going?”

“All right so far,” Joanna answered.

“Is my ol’ buddy, Dave Thompson, still do’ the bulk of the teaching up there?”

“You know him?”

“Sure. Dave and I go way back. I’m talking years now. We’ve been to a couple national conferences together, served on a few statewide committees. He fell on a little bit of hard times after his wife divorced him. Ended up getting himself remoted.”

“Remoted?” Joanna repeated, wondering if she’d heard the strange word correctly. “What’s that?”

Voland chuckled. “You never heard of a remotion? Well, Dave Thompson was always a good cop. Spent almost his whole adult life working for the city of Chandler. But about the time he got divorced, while he was all screwed up from that, he worked himself into a situation where he was a problem. Or at least he was perceived as a problem. So they got rid of him.”

“You mean the city fired him?”

“Not exactly,” Dick answered. “The way it works is this. If the brass reaches a point where they can’t promote a guy, and if they don’t want demote him, they find a way to get him out of their hair. They send him somewhere else. The more remote, the better.”

“The gutless approach,” Joanna said, and Dick Voland laughed.

“Most people would call it taking the line of least resistance.”

Once she understood the process, Joanna’s first thought was whether or not remoting would work with Kristin Marsten. Where could she possibly send her? Out to the little town of Elfrida, maybe? Or up to the Wonderland of Rocks?

Dick Voland went right on talking. “Believe me, you can’t go wrong listening to Thompson. He knows what it’s all about. Of all the instructors the APOA has up there, I think he’s probably tops. You say your classes are going all right?”

Joanna took a deep breath. No wonder listening to Dave was just like listening to Dick Voland. They were two peas in a pod and old buddies besides. Bearing that in mind, it didn’t seem wise to mention that she was bored out of her tree, especially not now when the lounge was filled with most of her fellow students.

“The classes are great,” she answered after a pause. “As a matter of fact, they couldn’t better.”

For the next few moments and in a very businesslike fashion, Dick Voland briefed the sheriff the all latest Cochise County law-and-order issues including the Sunset Inn domestic assault. Try she might, Joanna couldn’t hear any ominous subtext in what Chief Deputy Voland was telling He seemed surprisingly upbeat and positive.

Joanna waited until he was finished before broaching the question she’d been toying with and on since leaving Jorge Grijalva and the Maricopa County Jail the night before. And when she did it, she tried to be as offhand as possible.

“By the way,” she said, “I’ve been meaning ask. I can’t remember exactly when it was, back early to mid-October, you helped a couple of out-of-town officers make an arrest down at the Paul Spur lime plant. Remember that?”

“Sure. That guy from Pirtleville—I believe name was Grijalva. Killed his ex-wife somewhere up around Phoenix. What about it?”

“What can you tell me about the detectives who were working the case?”

“I only remember one of them,” Dick Voland answered. “The woman. Her name was Carol Strong.”

“What about her?”

“I can only remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure you want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“Legs,” Dick Voland answered. “That woman had great legs.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Joanna hung up the phone, she saw Leann Jessup heading for the door on her way back to class.

“Wait up,” Joanna called after her. “I’ll walk with you.”

As they started down the breezeway toward the classroom wing, Joanna studied her tablemate. Since breakfast, Leann had said almost nothing. During class that day, there had been no hint of the previous day’s lighthearted banter or note passing. Leann had spent the morning, her face set in an unsmiling mask, staring intently at their instructor, seemingly intent on every word. Even now a deep frown creased Leann Jessup’s forehead.