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“Mother spoke to Maria Elena in the hospital. Tomas was on his way, but Mother was the only one there. Maria Elena told Mother about you-about the red-haired woman who found Eduardo and brought him to the helicopter. You are that woman, aren’t you?”
Joanna felt a lump constrict her throat. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, I am.”
“Maria Elena must have known she was dying. She asked Mother to come to you and ask you to please show us that spot. She wanted us to put up a cross for Eduardo-a single cross-but we would like to put up two-one for Eduardo and one for his mother as well.”
Still Ramona Quiroz continued to stare. She said nothing, but when Gabriella stopped speaking, the old woman nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Would you take us there?” Gabriella finished.
“Yes,” Joanna said at once. “Of course. Now?”
“Please. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
Joanna stood and went to the door. “I’m going out, Kristin,” she said.
“When will you be back?”
“I have no idea.” Joanna turned back to the two women, where Gabriella was busy translating what had transpired.
“We can take one car or two, whichever you like,” Joanna offered.
“The things we need are already in mine,” Gabriella said. “So it would probably be better if we took that.”
‘All right,” Joanna said. “But if you’d like, you could bring it around here to the back, to my private entrance. That way your mother won’t have nearly so far to walk.”
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Gabriella left to fetch the car. When the door closed behind her, Ramona Quiroz spoke on her own for the first time. “You are very kind,” she said. “Thank you.”
“De nada, “Joanna replied.
“So you went out there with them?” Jenny asked. It was after dinner. Jenny was sprawled on the family room floor next to Tigger. Lucky, worn out with playing, was stretched out on Jenny’s other side. Both dogs were sound asleep. Joanna and Butch were on the couch and Lady, with one watchful eye on Butch, was tucked into a tight curl at Joanna’s feet.
“Yes,” Joanna answered. “The walls of Silver Creek are so steep right there, I didn’t think Mrs. Quiroz could possibly make it down and back up again. But she did. She was very determined. And Gabriella had brought along everything they needed-two matching crosses, flowers, a shovel.”
‘And they put the crosses at the exact spot where you found the little boy?”
Joanna nodded. “Even with the storms we’ve had, I was able to show them where I found him. And that’s where they put both crosses, under a clump of mesquite. If it rains as hard as it did the other night, it could be the crosses will be washed away, but that’s where they wanted them.”
“Why did they do that?” Jenny asked.
“It’s a kind of remembrance,” Joanna said. “And it seemed like a nice thing to do.”
“Is the guy who wrecked the van even going to jail?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “I doubt it. I think the feds have made some kind of deal with him.”
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“That doesn’t seem fair,” Jenny remarked.
Joanna looked at her daughter. At thirteen, Jenny still saw the world in terms of right or wrong, good or bad, black or white.
“It doesn’t seem fair to me, either,” Butch added.
Joanna sighed. “It’s the best we can do. If we can put the heads of the syndicate out of business and hand some of them jail time, maybe we can keep some other poor families from being slaughtered the same way.”
She stood up then. Her whole body ached. She was still paying the price for the three hours she had spent the night before lying on hard rocky ground. “I’m going to bed,”
she said. “I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up.”
She went into the bedroom and slept so soundly that she never heard Butch come to bed. During the night she dreamed she was out on High Lonesome Road, attempting to plant a flower-covered cross in the middle of the road at exactly the same spot where she’d discovered Andy’s helpless body all those years ago-where she’d found her husband unconscious and lying in a pool of his own blood.
Again and again she tried to pound the cross into the hard, unyielding ground. Again and again, the rock-hard caliche rejected it. When Joanna awakened, the sun was just coming up, and her face was wet with tears. She looked across the bed to the spot where Butch lay, snoring softly. It was a dream Joanna didn’t understand, but she knew, whatever it meant, she probably wouldn’t be telling Butch about it.
Lady lay on the rug on Joanna’s side of the bed. The dog sensed Joanna was awake, and she raised her head warily as if she expected a mad dash to the bathroom, but it didn’t come. For some reason, the nausea was in abeyance that morning. Joanna reached down and patted Lady’s head, then she motioned for the 357
dog to join her on the bed. Carefully, without disturbing Butch, Lady eased herself up onto the covers. Then, after circling three times, she nestled herself against Joanna’s body and, with a contented sigh, fell back asleep.
Moments later, Joanna did, too.
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On Friday morning, when Joanna arrived at the county offices for the weekly board of supervisors meeting, she was astonished to find the usually empty parking lot crammed full of vehicles, which forced her to park at the far end of the lot. On her way to the door she was greeted by a milling group of protesters, all of them carrying placards. board of supervisors unfair to animals several of them said. Others said seventeen too many. And then she knew. The folks from Animal Welfare Experience were at it again, only this time they were targeting someone besides her.
At the door to the building, Tamara Haynes was busy berating Charles Longworth Neighbors, the newest and Joanna’s least favorite member of the board of supervisors. “Have you even been to Animal Control?” Tamara demanded. “Do you have any idea how shorthanded they are?”
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Joanna was gratified to see the AWE activist tackling somebody else for a change.
And now that Sally Delgado, one of the first office clerks, had quit the department to work full-time on Ken Junior’s campaign, Joanna was relatively sure her information leak had been plugged.
“Ms. Haynes,” Neighbors began as Joanna edged past them, “you have to understand-“
But Tamara Haynes was on a roll, and she paid no attention. “And why did you deep-six that animal-adoption program they wanted to start-the one that would have taken strays to various shopping centers in hopes of finding owners? We need to get unwanted animals off death row, and if you think we don’t vote, Mr. Neighbors, you’re in for a rude awakening. Right, folks?”
The last comment was greeted by cheers all around.
For the first time, Joanna was forced to consider that perhaps Tamara Haynes did care about animals, after all. Perhaps the demonstration outside the Cochise County Justice Center had been something more than a strictly political plot to further Ken Junior’s chances of winning the election.
“Really, Ms. Haynes,” Neighbors was saying, looking decidedly uncomfortable, while his eyes remained focused on the little diamond sparkler winking at him from Tamara Haynes’s very much exposed belly button. ‘As I said,” he continued awkwardly, “I’m already late for a meeting. You’ll have to excuse me.”
He broke away from his interrogator then and dodged into the building right on Joanna’s heels. “Who in the world are those people?” he wanted to know. ‘And why are they so upset with me?”
“What set them off was having all those animals die at the scene of that homicide last week,” Joanna told him.
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“That’s certainly not my fault,” Neighbors grumbled. “I don’t see how they can hold the board of supervisors responsible for that.”
“But they know Animal Control is shorthanded,” Joanna replied. “If we’d had enough personnel to keep an eye on hoarders like Carol Mossman, she might not have ended up with so many animals in her possession at the time of her death.”