Shoot, Don't Shoot (8 page)

“You look kind of lonesome sitting there all by yourself.”

“I was reading,” Joanna said.

“I noticed. So what are you, some kind of student?”

Joanna looked down at her left hand. She still wore her wedding ring and the diamond engagement ring she had received as a gift only after Andy was already in the hospital dying. Seeing them made the pain of Andy’s loss burn anew. She looked from her hand back to the man in the booth. If he had noticed either the gesture or the pain engendered by his unwanted intrusion, it made no difference.

“I’m not a student, I’m a cop,” she answered evenly.

“Sure you are.” He nodded. “And I’m a monkey’s uncle. I’ve got me a nice little double bed in my truck out there. I’ll bet the two of us could make beautiful music together.”

For a moment, Joanna was too stunned by his rude proposition to even think of a comeback. Instead, she shuffled the stack of papers back into the envelope. “Which truck is that?” she asked.

“That big red, white, and blue Peterbilt out the in the parking lot.” He grinned; then he tipped the bill of his San Diego Padres baseball cap in her direction. “Peewee Wright Hauling at your service ma’am.”

“Where are you headed?”

Peewee Wright beamed with unwarranted confidence. “El Paso,” he said. “After I sleep awhile that is. It’d be a real shame to have to sleep alone, don’t you think?”

“I see you’re wearing a ring, Mr. Wright,” Joanna observed. “What would Mrs. Wright have to say about that?”

Peewee waved his cigarette and shook his head. “She wouldn’t mind none. Me and her have one of them open marriages.”

“Do you really?” Joanna stood up, gathering her belongings and her check. “The problem is, I don’t believe in open marriages.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of her newly printed business cards. She paused beside his table, fingering the card, looking at the words that were printed there: JOANNA BRADY, SHERIFF, COCHISE COUNTY, BISBEE, ARIZONA.

“And how will you be going to El Paso?” she asked.

“Interstate Ten from Tucson,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “That’s about what I figured,” she said, dropping the card on his table. “If I were you, I’d check my equipment for any violations before I left here. I’d also be very careful not to speed once I got inside Cochise County.”

She waited while he reached out one meaty paw to pick up the card and read it.

Because the Arizona Highway Patrol, not the Sheriff’s Department, patrols the segment of I-10 that slices through Cochise County from the Pima County line to the New Mexico border, Joanna knew her words to be nothing more than an empty threat. Still, when the man read the text on her business card, he blanched.

He was still holding the card as Joanna walked away. If nothing else, the experience would give him something to think about the next time he tried to pick up a lone woman minding her own business in a truck stop.

CHAPTER SIX

Had Joanna been going to the Hohokam Resort Hotel that evening instead of later on during the week, it would have been easy to find. The only high-rise for miles around, the twelve-story newly finished hotel towered over its low-rise Old Peoria neighbors, its layers of lighted windows glowing like beacons as Joanna made her way north on Grand Avenue.

The Arizona Police Officers Academy turned out to be directly across the street. It was also across the railroad tracks, however, and the only way to get there was to cross the railroad at Olive and then turn in off Hatcher.

The triangular site was located in an area that seemed to be zoned commercial. Along both Seventy-fifth and Hatcher, a high brick wall marked two sides of the property. Entry was gained through an ornate portal. Two cast-concrete angels stood guard on either side of the drive. An arched lintel rose up and over behind them. One of the angels had lost part of a wing—probably to vandals—while the other was still intact. The words GOD IS LOVE were carved into the lintel itself.

The verse wasn’t exactly in keeping with the mission of a police academy, but Joanna knew where it came from—a man named Tommy Tompkins. The Reverend Tommy Tompkins.

For years the APOA had limped along in the deteriorating classrooms of a decommissioned high school in central Phoenix. Only recently had the academy moved to its new home in Peoria. The APOA’s good fortune came as a result of Tommy’s fall from grace. He and his two top lieutenants had been shipped off to federal prison on income tax evasion convictions. As his religious and financial empire collapsed, the property he had envisioned as world headquarters of Tommy Tompkins International had fallen into the hands of the Resolution Trust Corporation.

On fifteen acres of donated cotton field, Tommy had planned to build not only a glass-walled cathedral, but also the dorms and classrooms that would have allowed him to indoctrinate a cadre of handpicked missionaries. By the time Tommy Tompkins International fell victim to the RTC, the planned complex was only partially completed. The classroom wing along with dormitories, a temporary residence for Tommy himself, as well as a few outbuildings were all that were or ever would be finished.

When the place went up for grabs, the state of Arizona had jumped at the chance to buy the property at a bargain-basement price since the site lay directly in the path of a proposed freeway extension. While awaiting voter approval of road-building monies, the state had leased the complex to the multijurisdictional consortium running APOA. The transaction was accomplished with the strict understanding that little or no money would be spent on remodeling. As a result, angels continued to guard the entrance of the place where police officers from all over the state of Arizona received their basic law enforcement training.

Maybe guardian angels aren’t such a bad idea, Joanna thought as she drove across the vast, patchily lit parking lot to the place where two dozen or so cars were grouped together near two buildings connected by breezeways and laid out in a long L.

The two-story structure built along one leg had the regularly spaced windows, doors, and lights that indicated living quarters. That was probably the dorm. Although lights were on in some of the rooms, there was no sign of life. The other building was only one story high. From the spacing of rooms, Joanna surmised that one contained classrooms. She parked the car and walked to the end of the dorm nearest the classroom building. There she found a wall-mounted plaque that said OFFICE along with an arrow that pointed toward the other building.

Past a closed wrought-iron gate, Joanna discovered that the last door on the classroom building was equipped with a bell. Even though no lights were visible inside, she rang the doorbell anyway.

“I’m out here on the patio. Who is it?” a male voice called from somewhere outside, somewhere vend that iron gate.

“Joanna Brady. Cochise County,” she answered. When she tried the gate, it fell open under her hand. Across a small patio between the two buildings, she could see a cigarette glowing in the dark.

“It’s about time you got here,” the man growled in return. “You’re the last of the Mohicans, you know. You’re late.”

Nothing like getting off on the right foot, Joanna ought. “Sorry,” she said. “My paperwork said suggested arrival times were between four and six. If whoever wrote that meant required, they should have said so.”

The man ground out his cigarette and stood up. In the dim light, she couldn’t make out his features, but he was tall—six four or so—and well over two hundred pounds. He smelled of beer and cigarettes,  and he swayed slightly as he looked down at her.

“I wrote it,” he said. “In my vocabulary, suggested and required mean the same thing. Suggested maybe sounds nicer, but I wanted you all checked in by six.”

“1 see,” Joanna replied. “I’ll certainly know better next time, won’t I?”

“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see. Come on, then,” he added. “Your key’s inside. Let’s get this over with so I can go back to enjoying the rest of my evening off.”

Instead of heading back through the gate, he stomped across the patio to a sliding door that opened into the office unit. Before entering, he paused long enough to drop his empty beer can into an almost full recycling box that sat just outside the door. Shaking her head, Joanna followed. This was a man who could afford to take some civility lessons from Welcome Wagon.

Joanna had expected to step inside a modest motel office/apartment. Instead, she found herself a huge but sparsely furnished living room that looked more like a semi-abandoned hotel lobby than it did either an office or an apartment.

Leaving Joanna standing there, the man headed off toward what turned out to be the kitchen. “I’ll be right back,” he said, over his shoulder, but he was gone for some time, giving Joanna a chance to examine the room in detail.

It seemed oddly disjointed. On the one hand, the ornate details—polished granite floors, high ceilings, gilt cove moldings, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and lush chintz drapes—seemed almost palatial, while the furnishings were Danish-modern thrift store rejects. Between the living room and kitchen was a huge formal dining room with a crystal chandelier. Instead of a polished dining table and chairs, the room contained nothing but a desk and chair. And not a fancy one, at that. The battered, gun-metal-gray affair, its surface covered with a scatter of papers, was almost as ugly as it was old.

The man emerged from the kitchen carrying a bottle of Coors beer. He paused by the desk long enough to pick up a set of keys. When he was barely within range, he tossed them in the general direction of where Joanna was standing. Despite his poor throw, she managed to snag them out of air.

“Good reflexes.” He nodded appreciatively. “You’re in room one oh nine,” he said. “It’s in the next building two doors down, just on the other side of the student lounge. The gold key is to your room. The silver one next to it opens the lounge door in case you need to go in after I lock it up for the night. The little one is for the laundry. It’s way down at the far end of the first floor, last door on left. There’s a phone in your room, but it’s only local calls. For long distance, there’s a pay phone in the lounge.”

‘Thank you ...” Joanna paused. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

“Thompson,” he said. “Dave Thompson. I run this place.”

“And you live here?”

He took a sip of beer and gave Joanna an appraising look that stopped just short of saying, “You want to make something of it?” Aloud he said, “Comes with the job. They actually hired a dorm manager once, but she got sick. They asked me to handle the dorm arrangements on a temporary basis, and I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s not that much work, once everybody finally gets checked in, that is.”

Another little zinger. This guy isn’t easy to like, Joanna thought. Stuffing the keys in her pocket, she started toward the door.

“Class starts at eight-thirty sharp in the morning,” Dave Thompson said to her back. “Not eight thirty-five or eight-thirty-one, but eight-thirty. There’s coffee and a pickup breakfast in the student lounge. It’s not fancy—cereal, toast, and juice is all—but it’ll hold you.”

Joanna turned back to him. “You’ll be in class?”

He raised the bottle to his lips, took a swallow, and then grinned at her. “You bet,” he said “I teach the morning class. We’ve got a real good-looking crop of officers this time around.”

Joanna started to ask exactly what he meant by that, but she thought better of it. Her little go-round with Peewee Wright at the truck stop earlier  that afternoon had left her feeling overly sensitive. Thompson probably meant nothing more or less than the fact that the students looked as though they’d make fine police officers.

“Any questions?” Thompson asked.

Joanna shook her head. “I’d better go drag my stuff in from the car and unpack. I want to put everything away, shower, and get a decent night’s rest.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Wouldn’t do at all for you to fall asleep in class. Might miss some important.”

As Joanna hurried out the door and headed for her car, she was suddenly filled with misgivings. If Dave Thompson was indicative of the caliber of people running APOA, maybe she had let herself in for a five-and-a-half-week waste of time.

After lugging the last of her suitcases into the room and looking around, she felt somewhat better. Although the room wasn’t as large or as nice as Dave Thompson’s, it was done in much the same style with floor-to-ceiling mirrors covering one wall of both the room and the adjacent bath. The ceilings weren’t nearly as high as they were in the office unit, and the floor was covered with a commercial grade medium-gray carpet. The bathroom, however, was luxury itself. The floor and counter tops were polished granite. The room came complete with both a king-sized Jacuzzi and glass-doored shower. All the fixtures boasted solid brass fittings.

Looking back from the bathroom door to the modest pressboard dresser, desk, headboard, and nightstand, Joanna found herself giggling, struck by the idea that she was standing in a cross between a castle and Motel 6.

Joanna spent the next half hour emptying her suitcases and putting things away. Her threadbare bath towels looked especially shabby in the upscale bathroom. When she was totally unpacked, she treated herself to a long, hot bath with the Jacuzzi heads bubbling full blast. Lying there in the steaming tub, supposedly relaxing, she couldn’t get the Grijalva kids out of her mind. Ceci and Pablo. They were orphans, all right. Twice over. Their mother was dead, and their father might just as well be.

Sighing, Joanna clambered out of the tub into the steam-filled room and turned on the exhaust fan, hoping to clear the fogged mirrors. The first whirl the blades brought a whiff of cigarette smoke to her nostrils. A moment later it was gone. Obviously, her next door neighbor was a smoker.

After toweling herself dry, Joanna pulled on a robe. By then it was only nine o’clock. Instead of getting into bed, she walked over to the desk and picked up Juanita Grijalva’s envelope, which she had dropped there in the course of unpacking. Settling at the desk, she emptied the envelope and read through all the contents, including rereading i. articles she had read earlier that afternoon in the truck stop.