Shoot, Don't Shoot (12 page)

Accustomed to Cochise County’s almost nonexistent traffic, Joanna was appalled by what awaited her once she turned onto what was euphemistically referred to as the Black Canyon Freeway. Even that late in the evening, both north and southbound traffic was amazingly heavy. And once she crossed under Camelback, southbound traffic stopped altogether. From there on, cars moved at a snail’s pace due to what the radio traffic reports said was a rollover semi, injury accident at the junction I-10 and I-17. That wreck, along with related fender-benders, had created massive tie-ups all around the I-17 corridor, the exact area Joanna had to traverse in order to reach downtown.

Continuing to try to decode the traffic reports, Joanna was frustrated by the way the information was delivered. The various freeways were all referred to by name rather than number, and most of them seemed to be named after mountains—Superstition, Red Mountain, Squaw Peak. If an out-of-town driver didn’t know which mountains were which and where they were located, the traffic ports could just as well have been issued in code.

Most of Joanna’s experience with Phoenix came from an earlier, less complicated, non-freeway era. At Indian School she left the freeway, resorting to surface streets for the remainder of the trip. She navigated the straightforward east-west/north-south grids with little difficulty once she had escaped the freeway-related gridlock.

She reached the jail late enough that there was plenty of on-street parking. After locking her Colt 2000 in the glove compartment, she stepped out of the Blazer and looked up at the lit facade of an imposing building.

Had Joanna not been a police officer, she might have liked it better. The Maricopa County Jail had received numerous architectural accolades, but for cops the complex’s beauty was only skin deep. The portico and mezzanine above the lighted entrance were eminently attractive from an aesthetic point view. Unfortunately, they were also popular with a number of enterprising inmates, several of whom had used those selfsame architectural details as a launching pad for well-planned escapes. Using rock climbing equipment that had been smuggled into the jail, they had rappelled down the side of the building to freedom.

Joanna stood on the street, eyeing the building critically and knowing that her own jail shared some of the same escape-prone defects. Old-fashioned jails—the kind with bars on the windows—may not have been all that aesthetically pleasing, but at least they did the job.

Shaking her head, she walked into the building. Immediately upon entering, she was stopped by a uniformed guard seated behind a chest-high counter. “What can I do for you?” he asked, shoving his reading glasses up on top of his head and lowering his newspaper.

“I’m here to see a prisoner,” Joanna said.

The guard shook his head, pulled the glasses back down on his nose, raised the paper, and resumed reading. “Too late,” he said without looking at her. “No more visitors tonight. Come back tomorrow.”

Joanna removed both her I.D. and badge from her purse. She laid them on the counter and waited for the guard to examine them. He didn’t bother.
He spoke from behind the paper without even looking at them. “Like I said. It’s too late to see anybody tonight.”

“What about the jail commander?” Joanna said quietly. “You do have one of those, don’t you?

The guard lowered the paper and glanced furtively down at the counter. When his eyes focused on the badge lying in front of him, he frowned. “The commander went home already.”

“Then I’ll speak to whoever’s in charge.”

When he spoke again, the guard sounded exasperated. “Lady, I don’t know what’s the matter with you, but—”

“The matter,” Joanna interrupted, keeping voice firm but even, “is that I want to see a prisoner, and I want to see him tonight.”

With a glower, the guard folded his newspaper and tossed it into a cabinet under the counter. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say,” she said, “because you didn’t ask. But it’s Brady. Joanna Brady.
Sheriff
Joanna Brady from Cochise County.”

The word
sheriff
did seem to carry a certain amount of weight, even with a surly, antagonistic guard. “And who is it you want to see?” he asked grudgingly.

“Antonio Jorge Grijalva,” she answered. “He’s charged with murdering his wife.”

“Even if you get in, the guy won’t see you,” the guard said. “Not without his attorney present.

“I believe he will,” Joanna answered. “All you have to do is tell him his mother sent me.”

Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, the guard reached for the phone and dialed a number. Less than ten minutes later, with the help of the jail’s night watch commander, Joanna was seated in a small prisoner interview room. Peering through the scratched Plexiglas barrier, she watched as Jorge Grijalva, dressed in orange inmate rails and soft slippers, was led into the adjoining room.

Joanna had studied all the articles in Juanita’s envelope. She knew that Serena had been twenty-four when she died and that her husband was almost twenty years older. At first glimpse, the man in the next room seemed far older than forty-three. His face was careworn. He was small, bowlegged, and slightly stooped, with the spareness that comes from years of hard labor and too much drinking. Dark, questioning eyes sought Joanna’s as he edged way into the plastic chair.

Who are you?” he demanded, picking up the phone on his side of the barrier. “What do you want?”

Joanna didn’t hear the questions. He had asked them before she had a chance to pick up the receiver on her phone, but she knew what he wanted to know.

“I’m Joanna Brady,” she answered. “I’m the new sheriff down in Cochise County.”

“What’s this about my mother? Is something wrong with her?”

“No. Your mother’s fine.”

“Why are you here, then?”

“She wanted me to talk to you.”

Jorge leaned back in his chair. For a moment no thought he might simply hang up and ask to be returned to his cell. “Why?” he said finally.

“Your mother says you didn’t do it,” Joanna answered. “She says you’re innocent, but that you’re going to plead guilty anyway. Is that true?”

Jorge Grijalva’s face contorted into a scowl. “Go away,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to you. My mother’s a foolish old woman. She doesn’t know anything.”

“She knows about losing her grandchildren,” Joanna answered quietly. “If you go to prison for killing Serena, the Duffys will never let your mother see Ceci and Pablo again.”

In the garish fluorescent light, even through the scarred and yellowed Plexiglas window, Joanna could see the knuckles of his olive-skinned fingers turn stark white. For a long time, Jorge stared the table, gripping the phone and saying nothing. Then, after a time, he raised his gaze until his troubled eyes were staring directly into Joanna’s.

“My wife was a whore,” he said simply. “She sold herself for money and for other things as well. When I found out about it, I was afraid the same thing would happen to Ceci, to my daughter. I was afraid she’d turn Ceci into a whore, too. So I got drunk once and beat Serena up. The cops put me in jail.” He paused for a moment and studied Joanna before adding, “It only happened once.’

“And when was that?”

“Last year in Bisbee. Before she and the kids moved to Phoenix. Before she filed for a divorce.”

“What about now? What about this time?”

“I wanted the kids to come to Douglas for Thanksgiving. My mother hasn’t seen them since last spring. She misses them.”

“That doesn’t seem all that unreasonable. Why was Serena so angry then that night in the bar?”

Jorge looked surprised. “You know about that?”

Joanna nodded.

He shrugged. “She saw my truck.”

“Your truck?”

“I bought a new truck. A Jimmy. Not brand-new, but new to me. Serena said it wasn’t fair for me to have a new truck when she didn’t have any transportation at all, when she was having to walk to work. I tried to tell her that the other truck needed a new engine and that if I couldn’t get to work, I couldn’t pay any child support. It didn’t make any difference.”

“Speaking of kids. Did you see Ceci and Pablo that night?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Jorge Grijalva hung his head and didn’t answer.

“Why not?” Joanna repeated.

“Because I didn’t want them to know I was in town,” he said huskily. “Because Serena didn’t,” he added. “She said if the kids saw me there, they’d think we were getting back together, but we weren’t.”

“So you and Serena met at the bar to discuss arrangements for Thanksgiving?”

Jorge Grijalva shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“Serena was very beautiful,” he answered. “And she was much younger.... But you knew that, didn’t you?”

He paused and looked at Joanna, his features screwed into an unreadable grimace.

“Yes,” she said.

“I used to be good-looking, too,” Jorge said. “Back when I was younger.”

Again he stopped speaking. Joanna was having difficulty following his train of thought. “What difference does that make?” she prompted.

He looked at her then. The silent, soul-deep pain in his dark eyes cut through the cloudy plastic between them and seared into Joanna’s own heart. Slowly both his eyes filled with tears. “So beautiful,” he murmured. “And me? Compared to her, I was nothing but an old man. But sometimes ...”

He stopped yet again. Despite the plastic barrier between them, an unlikely intimacy had sprouted between Joanna Brady and Jorge Grijalva as they sat facing each other in the harsh glare of fluorescent light in those two equally grim rooms.

“Sometimes what?” Joanna whispered urgently.

Jorge Grijalva’s head stayed bowed. “Sometimes she would go with me. If I brought her something extra along with the child support. Sometimes she would...” His voice faded away.

“Would what?” Joanna asked. “Go to bed with you? Is that what you mean?”

Jorge nodded but didn’t speak. His silence now gave Joanna some inkling of the depth of Jorge Grijalva’s shame, and also of his pride. Serena Duffy Grijalva had been a whore, all right. Even with him. Even with her husband.

“So you came to see her,” Joanna said, after a long pause. “Did you bring both the child support and . . . the extra?”

He nodded again.

“But after she found out about the truck—about your new truck—then she refused to go with you and you killed her. Is that what happened?”

“That’s what the
bruja
thinks,” Jorge answered sullenly. For the first time, there was something else his voice, something besides hurt.

“What witch?” Joanna asked.

“The black-haired one. The detective.”

“The detective from Peoria? Carol Strong?”

“Yes. That’s the one, but it didn’t happen the way she thinks. I didn’t kill Serena. She left the bar first. After a while, so did I.”

Joanna leaned back in her chair and regarded Jorge speculatively. “Your mother is right then, isn’t she, Jorge? You’re going to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit”

With effort, Jorge Grijalva pulled himself together. He sat up straighter in his chair. His gaze met and held Joanna’s. “I told you my wife was a whore,” he said quietly, “but I will not go to court to prove it. Serena’s dead. Ceci and Pablo don’t need worse than that.”

“But you’re their father. If you go to prison for murdering the children’s mother, isn’t that worse?”

“Pablo is mine,” he said softly. “But I’m not Ceci’s father. She doesn’t know that. Serena was already pregnant when I met her.”

That soft-spoken, self-effacing revelation came like a bolt out of the blue and stunned Joanna into her own momentary silence. “Still,” she said finally, “you’re the only father she’s ever known. Think what it will be like for her with you in prison.”

“Think what it would be like for her with me dead,” Jorge countered. He shrugged his shoulders. “Manslaughter isn’t murder. You’re an Anglo. Why would you understand?”

“Understand what?”

“Supposing I go to court, say all those things about Serena to a judge and jury and then they find me guilty anyway. Of murder. They’ve got themselves one more dirty Mexican to send to the gas chamber. This way, if I take the plea bargain, maybe I’ll still be alive long enough to see my kids grow up. By the time they’re grown, maybe I’ll be out. Maybe then Ceci will be old enough so I can tell her the truth and she’ll be able to understand.”

“But ...” Joanna began.

Jorge shook his head, squelching her objection. “If you see my mother, tell her what I told y That way, maybe she’ll understand, too. Tell her me that I’m sorry.”

With that, Jorge Grijalva put down his phone and signaled to the guard that he was ready to go. He got up and walked away, leaving Joanna sitting on her side of the Plexiglas barrier, sputtering to herself.

As he walked out of the room, Joanna was filled with the terrible knowledge that she had heard the truth. Juanita Grijalva was right. Her son, Jorge, hadn’t killed Serena, but he would accept the blame. In order to protect his children from hearing an awful truth about their mother, he would willingly go to prison for a crime he hadn’t commit. Meanwhile, the real killer—whoever that was—would go free.

Sitting there by herself, all those separate realizations came to Joanna almost simultaneously. They were followed immediately by a thought was even worse: There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about any of them.

Drained, Joanna pressed the buzzer for a guard to come let her out. As she was led back to the jail’s guarded entrance, through a maze of electronically locked gates that clanged shut behind her, Joanna realized something else as well.

M r. Bailey, her high school social studies teacher, had done his best to drum the words into the heads each Bisbee High School senior who came through his civics class. “We hold these truths to self-evident,” he had read reverently from the textbook, “that all men are created equal.... “

For the first time, as clearly as if she’d heard a pane of glass shatter into a thousand pieces, Joanna Brady understood with absolute clarity that those words weren’t necessarily true, not for everyone. Certainly not for Jorge Grijalva.