Desert Heat

FIVE

That day had all the distorted and nightmarish reality of time spent at a carnival fun house. Hours dragged. The seconds and minutes stretched into eternity, except for those few precious moments each hour when Joanna was allowed to sit at Andy’s bedside. Those brief interludes passed in a fast-frame blur that was never long enough.

Nature abhors a vacuum. As the hours passed, the waiting room filled and emptied of people. Neighbors from home stopped by, people Joanna knew from work or school or church. Her boss, Milo Davis, showed up with the first contingent. In a genuine show of sup-port, all of them had willingly taken time to make the two-hour, hundred-mile, one-way drive from Bisbee to Tucson. Each time Joanna emerged from Andy’s room, some of the earlier arrivals would have disappeared only to be replaced by a new crop.

The visitors eddied and flowed around her, offering hugs and nervous murmurs of small talk. Someone had evidently leaked the information that the previous night’s shooting incident was now being investigated as a possible suicide attempt. That was hot news in Bisbee, and most of the visitors that morning were well aware of the ugly rumor. To each other, Joanna’s visitors spoke indignantly about how terrible it was that Andy Brady could do such an awful thing to his wife, child, and parents. To Joanna, they said only how very sorry they were and how she should let them know if there was anything at all they could do to help.

For Jennifer, the novelty of being at the hospital wore off within the first hour. The nurses were adamant. Children under sixteen were not allowed to visit patients in the ICU. Period. When Jennifer realized there was no way she would be allowed to visit her father, she grew more and more restless. Not long after that she began lobbying to go home. Even with Marianne Maculyea running interference between mother and child, by eleven Joanna had hit the wall and was ready to send Jennifer packing. At noon, when Marianne offered to take the child home and let her stay at the parsonage for as long as necessary, Joanna agreed instantly. They left at twelve fifteen, but Joanna’s respite was brief. Her mother arrived a few short minutes later.

For years, Eleanor Lathrop had maintained a standing Wednesday morning appointment for a shampoo, set, and manicure at Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty, in Helen Barco’s converted backyard garage. The classy sounding “e” had been added to Helen’s name about the same time her husband, Slim, had installed a shampoo basin where he had once kept his table saw. Eleanor had been one of Helene’s first, and was now one of her most loyal, customers. It would have been unthinkable for her to miss that appointment, especially when there was so much to talk about.

Eleanor arrived at the ICU waiting room wearing her best Sunday dress. Her hair was freshly blued and her nails freshly done. There was a striking contrast between the well-turned-out Eleanor and her scruffy looking daughter who was still wearing that old, ratty jacket and her pair of rough boots. Her hair was a mess; her clothes were filthy.

“You look a fright,” Eleanor said in her usual brusque fashion. “I sent your suitcase along with Walter. Didn’t that man bother to give it to you?”

“He brought me the suitcase, Mother,” Joanna replied wearily. “I just haven’t had time to do anything about it.”

Eleanor glanced around the room. “Where’s Jennifer?”

“She was bored to tears. Marianne Maculyea took her back to Bisbee. She’ll stay with Mari and Jeff until I get things under control here.”

Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t under-stand what’s got into you, Joanna. First you have her ride up here with Walter McFadden, and then you send her home with someone else before I can even get here. What in the world are people going to think? That you don’t believe I’m capable of taking care of her? That you don’t even trust your own mother to baby-sit?”

Eleanor’s voice had been climbing steadily, and now her eyes filled with self-pitying tears. Joanna tried her best to calm her. “It’s nothing like that, Mother. Nothing at all. Jenny was bored and unhappy sitting around here. When Mari offered to take her home, it was too good to pass up.”

At that moment, the room was free of other Brady family visitors, so Joanna settled her mother in front of the waiting room’s only television set.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Joanna said, switching on the set.

“Where are you going?”

“To visit Andy.”

“But I just got here,” Eleanor objected petulantly. “Can’t you stay around long enough to tell me what’s happening?”

“It’s time for me to go see him,” Joanna explained. “They only let me in the room once an hour for five minutes at a time. You’ll barely know I’m gone.”

Five minutes later when Joanna returned to the waiting room, Eleanor was engrossed in Noontime Edition, Tucson ’s local version of the noon news. “It’s a good thing you got back in time,” she said. “You’d better come watch. When this commercial is over, they’re going to have something on about Andy.”

Joanna hurried over to the television set. “Really? About Andy? On the Tucson news?”

“That’s right.”

The commercial ended and the screen switched to the newsroom set. A female anchor with a beauty-pageant smile turned her charm full on the camera.

“From Bisbee, this morning, we have learned that a Cochise County Sheriff’s Deputy, who is also a candidate for the office of sheriff, has been hospitalized in critical condition with a possibly self-inflicted gunshot wound. In addition, the injured man is currently being investigated for alleged connections to Wayne M. “Lefty” O’Toole, a suspected drug-runner, found shot to death near Guaymas last week.

“Sources close to the investigation say that evidence linking Andrew Brady with the murder victim had been found by Mexican officials at the crime scene north of Guaymas. Brady is a declared candidate in a contest to oust longterm Cochise County Sheriff, Walter V. McFadden.

“For more on that, here’s Noontime Edition’s on-the-scene correspondent, Roger Cannon, speaking to you from the courthouse in Bisbee.”

Not believing her ears, Joanna sank into a chair next to her mother.

“What in the world are they talking about?” Eleanor asked.

“Hush,” Joanna hissed. “Listen.”

The picture on the screen switched to a young man posing in front of Bisbee’s copper-toned Iron Man, the statue of a barechested man-a well-muscled miner-wielding a sledgehammer and drill.

“Late last night and early this morning, this small southern Arizona mining community was shocked to learn that a well-respected local police officer who is running for the position of sheriff, Deputy Andrew Brady, had been wounded in what investigators now say was an apparently unsuccessful suicide attempt. Brady was rushed to University Hospital in Tucson where he remains in guarded condition.

“Earlier this morning federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers notified the Cochise County Sheriff’s department that they were beginning a wholesale investigation of Brady’s possible involvement with slain convicted drug runner, Lefty O’Toole, who also hails from the Bisbee area.

“O’Toole, who once served as Andrew Brady’s high school football coach, was a man who, in recent years, was suspected of utilizing his Vietnam-era piloting experience in the lucrative field of transporting illegal drugs across the Mexican border.

“People here in town have told me that O’Toole taught at Bisbee High School briefly in the late seventies, but his teaching contract was terminated over an alleged drug violation. He was living near Guaymas at the time of his death. The exact nature of the connection between Andrew Brady and Lefty O’Toole is not known at this time.”

“Why, did you ever!” Eleanor Lathrop exclaimed. Joanna waved her to silence.

“I’m speaking now with Richard Voland, Chief Deputy for the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department,” the reporter continued. “Mr. Voland, before this morning was anyone in your department aware of the DEA’s possible investigation into the activities of Deputy Brady?”

Richard Voland’s face appeared on the screen looking tired and angry. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. We had no idea.”

“Is it possible that Andrew Brady somehow learned of the impending investigation and that’s what prompted last night’s unfortunate events?”

“It’s possible, of course,” Richard Voland agreed, “but I don’t see how Andy could have known since we didn’t find out ourselves until mid-morning today.”

“Cochise County Sheriff, Walter McFadden, is well known statewide for his outspoken op-position to drugs. How has he reacted to the news that one of his deputies may have some involvement with a known drug-runner?”

“I’d rather not comment on that, if you don’t mind,” Richard Voland said. “You’ll have to ask Sheriff McFadden himself when he’s available.”

“Has your department taken any action against Andrew Brady at this time?”

Voland glared at the reporter. “Andrew Brady is currently on sick leave,” he replied. “If and when we have access to the DEA’s so-called evidence, we’ll review it and then see if any further action is necessary.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Voland. Back to you, Donna.”

The picture returned to the newsroom set. Once more the smiling woman’s face beamed out at them, but Joanna could no longer hear what the news anchor was saying over the roar of blood pounding in her own ears.

“Why, forevermore!” exclaimed Eleanor Lathrop. “That’s the wildest thing I’ve ever heard of. How can they get away with saying such nonsense?”

Shocked, Joanna lurched to her feet. For a moment she stood over her mother, but she didn’t open her mouth for fear of what might come out. She grabbed up her purse, flung it over her arm, and headed for the door. “I can’t breathe in here,” she said. “I’ve got to get some air.”

“Where are you going now?” Eleanor wailed.

“For a walk.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

“No. I’ve got to think.”

“Well, you should at least change clothes before you go out. You look terrible.”

“Tough,” Joanna said to herself as the door swung shut behind her, stifling whatever last minute advice or orders her mother might have been issuing.

Joanna paused in the hallway long enough to look down and examine her clothing. She could easily have passed for a bag lady. She was still clumping around in the pair of frayed, pull-on work boots. The Levi’s jacket was bloodstained and torn besides. Under it, the once lovely blue dress, the one she had bought for their anniversary getaway at the Copper Queen, was also stained and tattered. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, that unkept date seemed a lifetime ago. She was embarrassed by her appearance, but she re-fused to go back into the waiting room and face her mother in order to retrieve the suit-case. Staying dirty was the lesser of two evils.

She fled down the hallway. When the elevator didn’t come right away, she pounded down the stairway with the sound of her boot heels reverberating in the stairwell. Reaching the first floor, she galloped through the lobby, almost crashing into a delivery man carrying two huge bouquets of flowers. Once she reached the sidewalk outside, she stood for a minute in the early afternoon sun.

The air conditioner had been running full blast in the waiting room. Outdoors it was still surprisingly hot. Reflected heat from the September sun rose off the driveway’s blacktop in shimmering waves, but the warmth didn’t penetrate Joanna’s frozen core. Instead of peel ing off the jacket, she pulled it closer around her and plunged her hands deep in the pockets.

Not caring where she went, she headed across an expanse of green lawn toward Campbell Avenue. “I won’t cry,” she told her-self determinedly. “I will not cry!”

She had already cried enough. Besides, crying would interfere with the thinking process, and that was what she had to do now. Think.

How was it that Lefty O’Toole had emerged from the dim, dark reaches of the past to some kind of suspected illegal involvement with Andy? Who the hell was Lefty O’Toole any-way? Her only real recollection of him was from a poor black-and-white photo of a necktie-clad man in the faculty section of Andy’s senior-year Cuprite, Bisbee High School ’s annual. The same grainy picture had been run in the local paper when one of Lefty’s numerous subsequent scrapes with the law had brought him under public scrutiny.

Lefty O’Toole had been fired from his teaching position at Bisbee High School the year Joanna was a freshman. The place on the year-book’s faculty page where his picture should have been was blank. O’Toole had been present in Andy’s book, missing in hers. Now, here he was back again. It was as though the man was some kind of terrible ghost who had returned years later to haunt her and tear Joanna’s life to pieces. How was it possible? How could it be happening?

And why was Andy lying in a hospital bed-pale, stricken, barely breathing, and unable to defend himself-while the world outside the hospital room, even friends of his like Dick Voland, accused him of all kinds of unspeakable actions? Andy. He wasn’t perfect by a long shot. Ten years of marriage had taught Joanna that, but he was hardworking, honest, and kind. He was the type of man who would spend a weekend helping patch a widow’s leaking roof or who would agree to take a carload of noisy kids to Sierra Vista for a bowling tournament. How could a man like that, a man so very much like her own father, have anything at all to do with the likes of Lefty O’Toole?

Joanna crossed Campbell and started up Elm, striding along in her heavy, clumsy boots, not caring how she looked, letting the sunlight warm her chilled body and mind.

Had Walter McFadden known about all this earlier when he dropped off Jennifer and the suitcase, Joanna wondered. If so, why hadn’t he told her? Surely if someone in his department was being investigated by the DEA, the sheriff himself would have been properly notified. Why had the reporter interviewed Dick Voland? Why not the sheriff himself? But then, maybe with the election coming up, Mc-Fadden figured it would be better if someone else broke the news that his opponent was under investigation.

Hours earlier Joanna had thought that having Dr. Sanders accuse Andy of attempting suicide was the worst possible thing that could happen. Obviously she had been wrong. This was far, far worse. She could see how, left to their own devices, the media would convict Andrew Brady of wrongdoing without him ever having an official day in court.

A car drove by, a silver Ford Taurus with a single male occupant. She realized dimly that she had seen that car twice now in the course of her short walk. At first the idea that someone might be following her seemed too preposterous to even consider. The events of the past few days had left her edgy and skittish, she told herself. She was being silly. But when she crossed the next intersection, she caught sight of the same car again. This time it was parked half a block away with the engine still running and the driver hunched behind the wheel.

Why would someone be following her, she wondered. At home in Bisbee, she wouldn’t have hesitated to walk up to the car and ask what the hell was going on, but this was Tucson, a big city by comparison, and only the night before, person or persons unknown had tried to murder her husband. Feeling isolated and vulnerable, she looked around her for someplace to turn for help. The houses nearby all seemed large and forbidding, mansions almost. The way she was dressed, in her blood-stained clothing and clumsy boots, she couldn’t see herself running up to the front door of any of those houses and asking for help. They’d take one look at her, call the cops, and have her arrested.

Ahead of her she saw the pink-and-blue wall of what at first seemed to be the largest house of all, but then, upon closer inspection, she realized the building was a hotel, a public building. Small blue letters on the side of the building announced, “Arizona Inn.”

She personally had never set foot inside the place, but she had heard of it. The Arizona Inn was some kind of posh resort. Maybe here she could disappear into a crowd of tourists. At the very least, she’d be able to find a telephone and summon help.

She ducked into the first available door. Looking around to get her bearings, she found herself standing in front of a small, densely stocked gift shop. Joanna had hoped for a crowd, and there was none, but perhaps the gift shop might have a pay phone she could use. Quickly, she slipped inside. The sales clerk behind the small counter was busy with someone else-a well-dressed older lady. Overhearing their conversation, Joanna learned the woman was making complicated arrangements to send gifts back home to her several grandchildren in Dubuque, Iowa.

While waiting impatiently for the clerk to finish with her customer, Joanna caught sight of a rack displaying a few end-of-summer items-bathing suits and smock-like beach jackets. Looking at them, she grew more self-conscious about the way she looked and about how out of place her bloodied, filthy clothing was in her present circumstances. She examined the clothing on the rack more closely.

At the far end of the rack was a vivid yellow smock. That particular shade had never been one of Joanna’s favorites, but the size was medium, and so was she. Joanna pulled the garment off the hanger and held it up to her body, checking the price tag in the sleeve as she did so. Even at half off, the price was enough to raise her eyebrows, but at least the smock didn’t have any bloodstains on it.

Joanna peeled off the denim jacket and rolled it up into a wad. On a shelf near the door sat a small collection of leather huaraches, Mexican-made, sandal-type shoes that visiting tourists from back East loved to take home as much for their comfort as for their value as genuine Southwestern conversation pieces. Hoping her luck would hold, Joanna edged over to the display. Sure enough, she saw a pair that was half a size too big, but half a size off was close enough for huaraches. She kicked off the boots and slipped on the floppy leather shoes.

By the time the saleswoman finished with her first customer and turned to Joanna, the boots and jacket were securely wrapped together in a compact bundle. Hoping to imitate the anchorlady she had seen on the news, Joanna smiled her most sincere smile.

“I think I’ll wear both of these, if you don’t mind,” she said.

If the woman had any private thoughts about the suitability of the yellow smock with Joanna’s torn dress and skin coloring, she diplomatically kept them to herself as she clipped off the sales tags and put Joanna’s bundled jacket in a flimsy bag.

“Maybe I should double this,” she said, hefting the weight.

“Good idea,” Joanna agreed.

She held her breath while she wrote out the check, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t bounce. Friday was payday for both Joanna and Andy. Maybe their paychecks would make it to the bank before this check did. Or, if they didn’t, maybe Sandra Henning, the manager, would cover it for a day or so until Joanna could make it good.

“Can you tell me where to find a phone?” Joanna asked.

“Down the hallway,” the woman answered. “Beyond the bellman’s desk, across from the library.”

Joanna scuttled across the old-fashioned lobby and found the tiny telephone alcove. Seated in front of the phone, she paused for a moment, wondering who exactly she should call and what she should tell them. Not knowing who else to ask for help, she finally dialed the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department and asked to speak to Walter McFadden. When told he wasn’t in, she asked for Dick Voland instead.

“Hi, Dick,” she said curtly when he answered. “This is Joanna Brady. Where’s Sheriff McFadden? I want to speak to him.”

Voland cleared his throat uneasily. “He’s not here right now.”

“Where is he?”

“I can’t say, Joanna. We haven’t heard from him. What do you need? Can I help?”

As Joanna tried to frame an answer, a man entered the lobby from outside and walked past her. When he stopped at the bellman’s desk to ask a question, she recognized the distinctive profile and realized it was the man from the Taurus, the same one who had been following her.

“Joanna?” Dick Voland said. “Are you still there? Do you want me to take a message?”

Joanna’s hand shook and her heart hammered in her chest. “No,” she said softly, lest the man overhear. “No message.”

Carefully, she put down the phone. She had no idea who this man was or what he wanted, but it was clear that he was trailing her openly, in broad daylight as if he had a perfect right to do so.

The long lobby was nearly deserted. An old man sat on a bench next to the wall far beyond the registration desk, but except for him, the bellman, and the man who was following her, there were no other people in the lobby. The sounds of laughter and tinkling glassware came floating to her from someplace else, from a room that sounded like a dining room.

Her pursuer had stepped closer to the bell-man’s desk and was reading one of the news-papers lying there. The door to the dining room was just around the corner from the public telephone. Maybe if she went through the dining room, she could disappear outside through another exit.

Joanna got up and bolted around the corner, almost colliding head-on with a dining room hostess. “One for lunch?” the woman asked.

Joanna glanced back over her shoulder. Something, maybe the sudden flurry of movement, had caused the man to look up from the papers. Their eyes met, and he started toward her.

“One for lunch,” Joanna said hurriedly. “No smoking.”

“This way please.”

The large dining room with its old-fashioned cane-backed chairs was only half-full, but the room hummed with a relaxed, convivial atmosphere. Joanna followed the hostess to a windowed table that looked out on a small patio.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coffee,” Joanna murmured. “Just coffee. Black.”

Sitting with her hands clenched in front of her chin, Joanna watched as the hostess ushered the man into the room and seated him a few tables away. A busboy delivered the coffee and Joanna’s hands were shaking badly enough that some of the coffee spilled the first time she raised the cup to her lips.

What should she do, she wondered. Make a run for it out a side door and hope to elude him long enough to get back to the hospital? She took another sip of coffee and tried to calm herself. Surely there was some way out of this if she could just force herself to think clearly.

“What can I get for you today?” a smiling waiter asked.

Joanna hadn’t intended to stay, much less eat, but she felt trapped. Not eating would make her even more conspicuous. Without even bothering to check the price on the menu, she ordered a club sandwich.

She sat back and took another sip of coffee. Gradually the clanking silver and glassware combined with the enticing smells emanating from the kitchen reminded her that she had eaten almost nothing in nearly twenty-four hours.

She would eat her sandwich when it came and whoever it was who was so interested in where Joanna Brady went and what she did could sit right there and watch her eat.

It would serve him right.