J. Jance - Desert Heat

Joanna turned and caught his eye. “Be sure and tell Dick Voland about this,” she said, holding up her hand and waving it defiantly so the diamond winked in the light. “Ask him if this looks like what you’d expect from a de-pressed, unhappy, suicidal man. Ask him, sheriff, and let me know what he says.”

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.