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She radioed into Dispatch. “See if you can hook me up with Deputy Howell,” Joanna told Tica Romero. “I want to know how she’s doing with keeping an eye on Ed Mossman.”
When her phone rang a few minutes later, she thought it might be Debbie Howell getting back to her. Instead it was Butch. “Where are you?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“Coming back from Tucson.”
“You missed your appointment with Dr. Lee.” It was a statement rather than a question.
An accusation, really.
“Yes,” Joanna admitted. “I did. I had to cancel it. Something came up-something important.”
“This baby’s important, too,” Butch said. “Dr. Lee’s office just called to verify that the appointment has been reset for tomorrow morning at ten. I told his receptionist that you’d be there on time if I have to bring you in myself.”
“I’ll be there,” Joanna said. There was a long pause. “Any word from Drew Mabrey?”
Joanna added, more to fill up the uneasy silence than anything else.
“Nothing,” Butch said. “But I’ve got better things to do than just hang out by the telephone waiting for it to ring.”
That was when Joanna figured out that the annoyance in Butch’s voice had far more to do with his case of nerves about what was going on with the manuscript than it did with his being upset about her missing a doctor’s appointment. During the long months when Drew Mabrey had reported one rejection after another, Butch had resigned himself to the idea that the manuscript might never be sold. Now, with a glimmer of hope, the anxiety was excruciating.
“Will you be home for dinner?” he asked.
“Yes,” Joanna replied, without mentioning the fact that she 314
had missed lunch altogether. “I’ll be home as close to six as I can make it.”
Tica radioed back only seconds after Joanna finished the call with Butch. “Deputy Howell says to tell you Mr. Mossman has been holed up in his room out at San Jose Lodge all afternoon. She says she’s been keeping an eye on him, and he isn’t going anywhere without her.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “Tell her to keep up the good work.”
By then the towering clouds had mounded ever higher in the sky. When she came through St. David, a black curtain of rain had settled over the Dragoons, completely obliterating the mountain range from view. By the time Joanna started through Tombstone sixteen miles later, rain was pelting so hard against the windshield that the wipers barely made a dent in the water. Even at the posted limit of twenty-five miles per hour, she could hardly see to drive. At least an inch of water covered the roadway, and every passing vehicle raised a blinding spray in its wake.
Then, as suddenly as Joanna had driven into the cloudburst, she emerged on the far side of it into blazingly bright sunlight that turned the pavement surface a shimmering silver. Switching off the air-conditioning, she opened the windows and left them open. In the aftermath of the storm, outside temperatures had dropped a good twenty degrees. The distinctively refreshing smell of summer rain on sun-warmed creosote bushes washed through the Civvie. It wasn’t enough to dispel all her concerns about the impending visit with Stella Adams, but it helped.
When Joanna reached the Divide outside Bisbee, the storm clouds had been replaced by bright blue, rain-washed skies. The pavement on the road was still slightly wet, while hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascaded down the rocky cliffs of the Mule Mountains.
On both sides of the Divide, washes ran bank to bank with 315
muddy, swiftly moving water. As a lifelong resident of southern Arizona, Joanna knew how treacherous those fast-moving floods of water could be. Every year someone, usually a hapless visitor from out of state, would drown after being surprised by floodwaters from a downpour that had happened miles away.
Ignoring the turnoff to the Justice Center, Joanna drove straight to Stella and Denny Adams’s home on Arizona Street, just across from Warren Ballpark. There were no cars parked in the driveway or on the street in front of the low-slung iron fence, but Joanna parked along a concrete-lined drainage ditch. It, too, was running with several inches of swiftly moving water. Then she walked across a narrow footbridge, through a gate, and up onto the front porch, where she rang the doorbell.
Inside she heard the muffled sound of a television set tuned to something that sounded like MTV Moments after the doorbell rang, the TV set was silenced. A few seconds after that, the door opened and there stood Nathan Adams. The sight of him was enough to take Joanna’s breath away. When she had first seen Eddie Mossman, she remembered that he had looked familiar somehow, even though she was certain she had never seen the man before. Now she knew why. Nathan Adams looked just like Eddie Mossman-just like his grandfather.
Or was it also, Joanna wondered for the first time, just like his father? No one had said as much. No one had admitted that, at the time Carol Mossman had fled Mexico with her two younger sisters, Stella might have been pregnant with her own father’s child. And the simple fact that no one had mentioned it made Joanna wonder that much more whether it was true.
“Yeah?” Nathan said. “Whaddya want?”
“Is your mother home?” Joanna managed. “There’s something I need to talk to her about.”
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“She’s not here.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
Nathan Adams shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “Could be an hour or two, maybe longer.”
“What about your dad?” Joanna asked hopefully.
“He stays at an apartment up in Tucson during the week,” Nathan explained. “He’s usually only home on weekends.”
“Oh,” Joanna said. “I’ll be going then.”
“Want me to have her call you when she gets in?”
“No,” Joanna said. “Don’t bother. I’ll talk with her tomorrow.”
As Joanna walked back across the wide porch, the door slammed behind her. A moment later, the atonal thumping of MTV returned. Joanna retreated to the Ciwie and then sat there for several long minutes without turning the key in the ignition.
Is that the truth? she wondered. Is Nathan the product of an incestuous relationship between Stella and her father:1 And if so, does he have any idea about the truth of the situation?
Joanna remembered Nathan as he had appeared when she had first laid eyes on him that day in the lobby of the Justice Center. He had struck her as a surly, smart-alecky teenager-typical, in other words. She had thought him spoiled, doted on, and more than a little obnoxious, but normal-utterly normal. But could you be a normal teenager if you knew that kind of awful truth about your parentage?
Kids exist in a herd mentality. They want to fit in-want to be just like everyone else. That’s why they wear the same kinds of clothes, watch the same television programs, listen to the same music. But could you fit in if you knew that you existed because your mother had been impregnated by her own father?
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It came to Joanna then in a flash of insight. “He doesn’t know!” she almost shouted, pounding the steering wheel with her fist. “Nathan Adams has no idea!”
Joanna’s hands trembled as she turned the ignition key and put the Crown Victoria in gear. Meanwhile the gears in Joanna’s head were meshing as well. And if Nathan doesn’t know, that’s because Stella’s been keeping it a secret. And if Carol was going public, the secret was about to come out.
There it was laid out before her so clearly that Joanna wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. Andrea was convinced that her father was Carol’s murderer, but this made far more sense. Here was motive-a protective mother’s motive-understandable, utterly implacable, and absolutely deadly.
Joanna headed straight for the department. Without being aware of her speed, she found herself doing seventy down the Warren Cutoff. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to pull her foot off the gas pedal and drive sensibly. She parked the Civvie behind her office and darted inside. As soon as she put her purse down, she hurried over to the door.