By then it was well past ten o’clock and that much later than Clayton’s usual bedtime. Nonetheless, Joanna picked up the phone and dialed his number. She listened impatiently while the phone rang seven times without any answer. Ending the call, Joanna dialed Dispatch at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Tica Romero answered.
“What’s up, Sheriff Brady?” the night-shift dispatcher asked.
“Have you logged any nine-one-one calls today from my neighbor, Clayton Rhodes?” Joanna asked.
“No. How come?”
“He didn’t show up for work today,” Joanna replied. “Evidently not this morning and not this afternoon, either. Who’s patrolling this sector?”
“Nobody at the moment,” Tica replied. “Deputy Pakin is assigned there, but he just responded to a serious-injury accident on Highway eighty out east of Douglas. Deputy Howell is finishing up with a domestic over in Saint David. I could check and see how long it would take her to get here.”
“Never mind,” Joanna said. “I’ll go check on him myself.”
“Keep me posted,” Tica advised. “If you need backup, just call.”
Putting down the phone, Joanna considered what to do next. She didn’t like the idea of leaving Jenny alone in the house while she went to investigate. Still, worried about what she might find at Clayton Rhodes’ place, Joanna didn’t want to take her daughter along, either. And, as late as it was, it would take too much time to call someone to come stay with her.
Walking over to Jenny’s bedroom door, Joanna noticed a tiny slash of light showing along the floorboard. As soon as she turned the doorknob, the light disappeared. “Jenny,” Joanna called across the room. “Are you still awake?”
Doing an excellent job of feigning being awakened out of a deep sleep, Jenny turned over and switched on her bedside lamp. “What’s wrong?” she mumbled.
“I need to go check on Mr. Rhodes,” Joanna said. “Will you be all right if I leave you here by yourself for a while?”
Making no further pretense of having been asleep, Jenny sat up in bed. “Really?” she asked excitedly. “You’d do that? Leave me here alone?”
“If it bothers you, I can maybe call someone to come-”
“No, Mom. Don’t. I can stay by myself.”
“You’re sure. I’ll lock the doors when I leave. I probably won’t be gone very long, and you’ll have the dogs-”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Jenny interrupted with a smile. “I’ll be fine.” With that, she settled back down on the pillow. “And thanks,” she added.
“Thanks?” Joanna asked.
“For the early birthday present.”
Joanna was mystified. “What early birthday present?”
“For treating me like a grown-up even if I’m not.”
“You’re welcome,” Joanna said. “I’d better go.”
“Well, go then,” Jenny urged. “What are you waiting for?”
“I’m going,” Joanna replied. “Don’t rush me.”
“Be careful,” Jenny said.
Feeling her throat tighten, Joanna took Jenny’s hand and squeezed it. “I will,” she said. “Sleep tight,” she whispered, reaching up to switch off the lamp. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Leaving the room, Joanna found herself fighting back tears. Be careful. That’s what Jenny had said. Those words were never far beneath the surface in law-enforcement households. They were especially hard-hitting in a family like Jenny’s. Her father, Andy, had died at the hands of a drug smuggler’s hit man, and her maternal grandfather, Sheriff D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop, had perished after being hit by a drunk driver. The last part of that sentence was never spoken, but it was always understood. Be careful so you don’t go away and never come back.
In her own bedroom, Joanna unlocked the rolltop desk where she kept her weapons. Her Colt 2000 had proved undependable and had been relegated to the status of collector’s item. As an engagement present, Butch had prevailed on her to replace that and her backup Glock 17 with a new pair of Glocks, a 19 and a 26 with interchangeable magazines.
Joanna’s trip to Clayton Rhodes’ place wasn’t really an official police matter. It was more a case of a concerned neighbor looking in on someone else. There was no reason to show up armed to the teeth like some latter-day gunslinger. Still, if something was amiss up the road, it was best to be prepared. In the last few months, Cochise County had been overrun with hundreds of undocumented aliens making their illegal and dangerous journey from Mexico into the States. It wasn’t at all out of line to worry that maybe Clayton had run afoul of a gang of UDAs more interested in the easy pickings of banditry than they were in harvesting strawberries or melons.
Leaving her shoulder holster with its heavy-duty 19 where it was, Joanna strapped on the compact 26 in its inconspicuous small-of-back holster. Then, putting the denim jacket back on and adding both her cell phone and flashlight, she hurried out the back door, carefully locking it behind her.
After clambering into her county-owned Blazer, Joanna headed for the Rhodes place. As the crow flies, Joanna’s house and Clayton Rhodes’ were little more than a mile apart. To get there, however, Joanna had to drive almost five miles of rough dirt road-first from her house out to High Lonesome Road, north on that for the better part of two miles, and then back up another winding road into the hills.
By now the nearly full moon, high in the sky, cast a silvery glow over the nighttime landscape. That was something Joanna appreciated, and something that caught most city dwellers unawares. People who live in the artificial glow of streetlights have no idea that away from the pollution of manmade light, a full moon can make the nighttime desert bright enough to render headlights unnecessary.
Clayton Rhodes’ house dated from pre-air-conditioning times and had been built into the cleft of Mexican Canyon where it was naturally sheltered during the worst of the Sonora Desert’s afternoon heat. Carefully nurtured cottonwoods had grown up around the house, adding a much-needed layer of summertime shade. As Joanna drove into the silent yard, those cottonwoods, still bare-branched, stood like ghostly sentinels with their arms stretched skyward. The windows of the house were totally black. The only light was the eerie reflection of moon glow off the house’s old-fashioned tin roof. There was no sign of life. Joanna remembered that, months earlier, Clayton had sold off the last of his livestock and taken his arthritic old dog, Biddy, to the vet to be put down.
“Won’t be gettin‘ me another dog, neither,” he had told Joanna then. “I’m too dang old. Wouldn’t be fair.”
And so, in Clayton Rhodes’ yard, there was no welcoming chorus of barking dogs to announce Joanna’s arrival. Nor was there any sign of a parked vehicle to indicate someone was at home.
Here, as on High Lonesome Ranch, the yard had been fenced to keep out marauding livestock. Joanna parked the Blazer in the gravel outside the closed gate. Before getting out of her vehicle, she pulled the radio’s microphone out of its holder. “Tica,” Joanna told the dispatcher. “I’m here now-at Clayton Rhodes’ place. It looks pretty much deserted. I’m about to go inside.”
“As in breaking and entering?” Tica asked.
“The man’s in his eighties,” Joanna returned. “He may be inside, sick or hurt. I know for a fact that Clayton isn’t much of a believer in locking doors. But if it comes down to breaking in, I’m not above doing it.”
“I’ve contacted Deputy Howell,” Tica responded. “She’s on her way, but she’s coming from Saint David, so it’s going to take some time for her to get to you.”
Leaving the Blazer idling where it was, Joanna let herself in the gate, walked up onto the creaking porch, and knocked hard on the wood-framed screen door. “Clayton,” she shouted. “Are you in there? Are you all right?”
She reached down and took hold of the knob. It turned easily in her hand and the door swung open, squawking noisily on elderly hinges. The house smelled musty and unkempt. Clayton had been a widower for years. Clearly he wasn’t very interested in doing much of what he always considered “women’s work.”