J. Jance: Desert Heat

Joanna bit her lip. “That’s good,” she managed to murmur as Ken Galloway’s pickup pulled away taking both the dog and the child with it. Down the road they heard the already speeding county ambulance rumble over the last cattle guard on High Lonesome Road and turn onto the Double Adobe Cutoff. Seconds later, after crossing the last cattle guard there as well, it turned onto Highway 80. The noise of the siren faded behind the foothills.

“We’d better hurry,” Walter McFadden urged. “Come on.”

Together they made their way to his 4 x 4 which was parked just off the road with its light bar still flashing. Once they reached it, McFadden helped her inside before racing around to open his own door.

“You talked to the medics,” she said quietly as the pickup lurched into reverse and circled back onto the roadway. “What did they say?”

“Lots of internal damage,” McFadden re-plied, pressing the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

“Is he going to make it?” Joanna asked.

“They don’t know. Nobody does. Like I told your daughter, they’ve called for a helicopter to meet them in Bisbee. They’ve managed to stabilize him enough to move him. That’s a good sign. I told them I’d take you directly to University Medical Center.”

“Shouldn’t we stop in Bisbee for me to sign surgical releases.”

McFadden shook his head. “Not necessary. When somebody’s hurt this bad, they don’t wait for releases.”

“Can’t I go along in the helicopter? Wouldn’t that be faster?”

McFadden shook his head. “It might be faster, but with the EMTs along there’s not enough room. Don’t worry, Joanna. They may beat us to the hospital, but it won’t be by much.”

With siren blaring, they roared past the newly opened county jail, up Highway 80, around the traffic circle, and on through town. Joanna glanced at the speedometer. They were doing sixty-five when they rounded the long, flat curve by the open-pit mine, and the needle hit seventy as they headed up the long straightaway. After that, she gripped the arm-rest and avoided looking at the dashboard. She knew they were going fast. She didn’t need to know any more than that.

Once through town the nighttime desert swept by outside the windows, washed by the alternating red and blue flashes from the light bar overhead. Joanna ignored the intermittent crackle of voices on McFadden’s two-way radio. She heard only the jumble of unanswerable questions roaring in her head. Would Andy live or not, and if he did, would he be all right? What would she do if he died? What would she do if he didn’t quite die but if he couldn’t ever go back to work, either?

With help from the bank they were buying the High Lonesome Ranch from Andy’s parents, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady, who had moved into a small two bedroom house in Bisbee proper. Joanna knew full well that it took all of Andy’s and Joanna’s joint efforts to keep things afloat. The monthly payments they made on the ranch constituted a major portion of the elder Bradys’ retirement income. What would happen to them if Joanna and Andy could no longer keep up the payments? Joanna squeezed her eyes shut and refused to think about it anymore.

“Somebody told me that today was your anniversary,” Walter McFadden was saying.

Joanna nodded. “We had a date. We were supposed to have dinner and spend the night at the Copper Queen. In fact, my suitcase is all packed. It’s right by the kitchen door. Maybe you could have someone bring it to Tucson for me in the morning.”

“Sure thing,” McFadden answered. “Glad to do it.” For a moment there was silence in the speeding truck before Walter McFadden asked, “How many years?”

Joanna’s thoughts had strayed, and it took a few seconds before she answered. “Ten.”

“You kids eloped, as I recall,” McFadden continued. “Made Eleanor mad as all get out.”

It still does, Joanna could have added, but she didn’t. Her mother had never liked Andy to begin with, and when she had learned he was interested in law enforcement, Eleanor Lathrop had predicted this very kind of outcome.

“If you let him become a policeman,” Eleanor had warned, “you’ll end up raising Jennifer alone, the same way I had to raise you.” Remembering her mother’s dire prophecy, Joanna’s fingers tightened around the armrest.

Again Joanna and Walter McFadden fell silent. Several miles sped beneath the vehicle’s tires before the sheriff eventually asked, “Was Andy having trouble with anybody?”

“Trouble?” Joanna repeated dully. “What do you mean trouble?”

McFadden shrugged. “I don’t know. At work possibly or with any of the neighbors. When you live out in the country this way, you can run into some surprising complications. Remember that case down by Bisbee junction where two of Old Man Dollarhyde’s cattle drowned in those new people’s fancy swimming pool? I thought World War III was going to break out over that one for sure.”

Joanna thought of her neighbors. The closest ones, Charlene and Bill Harris, lived a mile farther down High Lonesome Road on the right. They had two high school-aged girls who sometimes baby-sat for Jennifer. Then, across the road and up a shallow canyon was the Rhodes’s place which belonged to a spry octogenarian named Clayton Rhodes who still rode his fence line on horseback each year rather than using his aged pickup truck. Beyond the Harris place was that of a fairly re-cent arrival, Adrienne West with her fledgling herd of llamas. Among the neighbors on High Lonesome Road there had never been even the smallest hint of difficulty.

“No,” Joanna replied. “Nothing like that. Besides, no one out here in the valley can afford a swimming pool.”

“What about work?” McFadden asked.

“None except…”

“Except what?”

Embarrassed, she shrugged. “You know. The election and all that.”

Andrew’s decision to run against Sheriff McFadden had caused a good deal of consternation in the Cochise County Sheriff’s department as well as in the community at large. Walter McFadden had already announced that this was the last time he would run for sheriff. As a result, most people felt that he shouldn’t have had any real opposition. Surprisingly, despite her husband’s determination to run, Joanna Brady was inclined to agree with that same general opinion. After all, McFadden had been her father’s undersheriff and hand-picked successor. Joanna still felt a good deal of loyalty to the man, but once Andy had committed to the race, Joanna had thrown herself into the campaign with all the fervor she had once devoted to her father’s re-election efforts.

Joanna realized all this now as the truck sped on through the night. Regardless of what happened at University Medical Center, this year’s election campaign for Cochise County Sheriff was over for Andrew Brady.

“You’re not thinking I had something to do with this, are you, Joanna?” the sheriff asked.

“Of course not,” she replied honestly. “Not at all.”

“Good,” Walter McFadden declared quietly. “I’d hate to think you did. I’m no cheater. When I win an election, I win it straight out or not at all.”

Once again neither of them spoke while the truck ate up several miles of highway. Mc-Fadden was the first to break the silence. “Tell me, Joanna. Why’d he do it?”

“Do what?”

“File against me. Andy knew this would be my last term. I’d have been more than happy to see him run next time. Why’d he have to go and jump the gun like that?”

Joanna studied the old man’s angular pro-file. Among Arizona ’s collection of fifteen county sheriffs, Walter McFadden was considered something of an elder statesman. He was well liked and well respected.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Andy’s impatient. I guess he figured it was something he had to do. Anybody else would have fired him.”