Waller McFadden’s back porch light snapped on. The door opened and Tigger came out first, followed by the sheriff himself, barefoot and wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He was limping down his back steps. “Who’s out here?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
The interior light of the patrol car snapped off and Ken Galloway stepped out of the car. “No biggie,” he said calmly, walking over to the gate. “We’re just doing a little damage control.”
“Damage control!” Joanna exclaimed, wondering if there was a chance the sheriff might have a weapon concealed somewhere on his body. “Walter, this is the man who killed Andy. They’ve got my mother and Jenny locked in the back of Ken’s patrol car.”
“Is that true, Ken?” McFadden asked. “About Jenny and Eleanor Lathrop?”
Ken shook his head. “It’s like Tony was telling Joanna here. We’re only using them for insurance. It’s gonna get real rough around here, Walter. We’ve got a plane to catch, and there’s enough room in it for three people-you, me, and Tony. We won’t hurt Joanna or her mother or Jenny, either. But by the time they get loose, we’ll be over the border and long gone.”
Tigger came up behind Walter, tail wagging, and dropped the Frisbee at his master’s feet. Seeing him, McFadden shook his head. “Go lie down,” the sheriff ordered. The dog, disappointed, retreated to the back porch while Walter McFadden turned back to Ken Galloway.
“It’s over then, isn’t it, Ken, for all of us. But I’m not leaving. I’ve wanted it to be over for a helluva long time. I just didn’t have guts enough to do anything about it.”
With no further warning, McFadden flung open the metal gate, catching Ken Galloway by surprise and full in the midsection. The top brine of the gate slammed into his ribs, sending him reeling backwards toward the patrol car. When Vargas turned to help Galloway, Joanna saw her chance.
Throughout the confrontation, she had been edging her hand nearer the pocket containing the gun. Now her fingers closed around the grip of the.44. Carefully she thumbed back the hammer. At that close range, there was no need to aim the weapon or even bring it fully out of her pocket.
When she pulled the trigger, the roar of gunfire was deafening. The force of the recoil sent her spinning back against the roof of the Camino. Tony Vargas groaned in surprise, doubled over, and crumpled to the ground.
Tony’s gun fell from his hand, but it was still within reach. As soon as Joanna regained her balance, she kicked it under the car, as far as she could away from his grasping fingers. the meantime, Ken Galloway had pulled his own gun from its holster and was holding it on Walter McFadden. Trying to watch both I McFadden and Joanna, his head swiveled back and forth between them.
“Go ahead and shoot,” Walter McFadden dared Galloway. “That way I’ll have the monkey off my back once and for all.” As he spoke, the sheriff was easing himself through the now-open gate, steadily closing the distance between himself and his renegade deputy.
“Stop right there, Walter,” Galloway warned. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Actually,” Walter drawled, “I do believe I much prefer shooting.”
All the while the sheriff was moving inevitably forward as Galloway backed away. That’s when Joanna realized what McFadden was doing. By pushing Galloway farther into the street, away from the patrol car, he was effectively easing Jenny and Eleanor out of the line of fire. Joanna moved with the two men, taking her part of the triangle along. Meantime lights were coming on all over the neighborhood.
“That way I won’t have to stand around any longer, turning a blind eye to your slimy blackmail deals and murder for hire schemes,” McFadden continued. “I’m looking forward to that, to not having scumbags like you in my life, Ken. Besides, if you do a good enough job, if your aim is good enough, there won’t be enough of me left over to ship off to prison. I never did much like Florence, you know. It’s too damned hot up there.”
With that, Walter McFadden lunged forward, throwing himself toward Ken Galloway’s gun. In the blazing hail of gunfire that followed, both men went down, first Ken Galloway and then Sheriff Walter McFadden.
Joanna heard sirens then. As close as they were, they must have been audible for some time before she noticed them. Still holding the gun, she hurried to where Ken Galloway lay moaning on the ground. She picked up his.357 and handed it over to the first neighbor who appeared on the scene.
“Watch him,” Joanna ordered. “Don’t let him move.”
She rushed to Walter McFadden and knelt beside him. He was pressing his hand to his chest, a hand’s breadth beneath his breastbone. Despite the pressure, blood still oozed up through his fingers.
“Good shooting, Joanna. But then your daddy always said you were a crack shot.”
“Quiet,” she said. “Listen to the siren. The ambulance is on its way.”
“Morphine was the hook-that’s what finally got me,” he whispered. “When the pain got too bad, when Carol was crying for it in middle of the night, I would’ve done anything to get it for her. One buy was all it took. As soon as I stepped out of line, the bastards had me.”
“Shhhhh,” she said, but he ignored her, although his voice was weaker now. She had to strain to hear him over the noise of arriving emergency vehicles.
“They blackmailed me, Joanna.” He took a breath before he could go on. “I didn’t know what all went on or who all was involved. My job was to walk around howdying people and being blind, deaf, and dumb to what was going on in my own department.” He paused again. “Was Andy in on it?”
Tears were coursing down Joanna’s cheeks. She bit her lip and ducked her head. “I don’t know, Walter.”
“I hope not,” Walter McFadden muttered weakly. “For your sake and Jenny’s, I sure as hell hope not.”
And he was gone.
TWENTY-ONE
Joanna stood up. By then the place was crowded with Emergency Medical Technicians and City of Bisbee police officers to say nothing of dismayed neighbors who were struggling to come to grips with exactly what had happened.
Both Tony Vargas and Walter McFadden were beyond help, so all the lifesaving activity centered around Ken Galloway. Joanna walked past the flurry of activity to the patrol car. There, without anyone paying attention, she pressed the door lock and opened the door, freeing both Jenny and her mother. Once they were out of the vehicle, Eleanor and Jenny clung to Joanna as though fearing she might somehow disappear.
“is Sheriff McFadden all right?” Jenny tearfully.
Joanna shook her head. “He’s dead,” she answered. “He died before the ambulance ever got here.”
Bobo Jenkins turned up just then with Adam York in tow. Joanna took Jenny by the shoulders. “Go sit on the porch with Tigger,” she said. “Stay out of the way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Jenny tiptoed through the gate then ran to the back porch where she flung her arms around Tigger’s neck. The dog, as ordered, was still lying down, waiting for a release signal from Walter McFadden that was never going to come.
“What should I do?” Eleanor asked meekly.
“Stay with Jenny, Mother.”
Eleanor started after her granddaughter then paused. “It was him, wasn’t it,” she said. “The man with the gold in his teeth.”
Joanna looked down at the lifeless body of Tony Vargas. She nodded. “It was him,” she said.
Joanna had spoken gently to both her daughter and her mother, but when she turned to face Bobo Jenkins her face was full of barely repressed fury. “What’s he doing here?” she asked, nodding toward Adam York who was off to one side consulting with several of the uniformed officers on the scene.
“I talked to the man, Joanna,” Bobo Jenkins explained. “He followed the bloody footprints down the stairs from the hotel, put two and two together, and came to the hospital. He’s on the up-and-up.”