"For tonight anyway," Marianne replied. "We've booked a room at the Plaza at Speedway and Campbell. Once Jeff gets off the phone, he'll probably head over there to catch a nap. He'll come back later and spell me. I don't know about tomorrow. One or the other of us will go home to be with Ruth, or maybe Angie or somebody can bring her up here for a little while during the day."
There was a pause. "You don't necessarily sound all that hot yourself, Joanna. What's going on with you?"
Jeff and Marianne were enmeshed in the all-consuming cocoon of their own little crisis, and justifiably so. Joanna could see no reason to trouble Marianne Maculyea with any of the grim details of what was happening right then on the Triple C.
"I'm overseeing a search right now," Joanna answered carefully. "And then I have some interviews, but I thought I'd try dropping by the hospital later on this afternoon if that's all right with you."
"Please," Marianne said. "That would be great. I'd really like to see you. So would Jeff."
Something in Marianne's tone bothered Joanna-something she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Esther is all right, isn't she?" she asked.
"Yes," Marianne replied, her voice cracking. "At least I think so."
"What's wrong, then?"
"That's just it. I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired. We were here all night long. Neither one of us has had any sleep…"
"No, Mari," Joanna countered. "It's more than that." A long silence filled the phone. "What is it?" she urged. "Tell me."
Marianne took a deep breath. "You remember that night Andy was here in the hospital?" she said at last.
Joanna remembered every bit of it. Too well. "Yes," she said.
"Remember when you told me you were trying to pray, but you couldn't remember the words?"
That moment was still crystal clear in Joanna's heart and memory, as if it had happened mere minutes ago. She squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden film of tears that threatened to blind her.
“You told me that it didn't matter," Joanna said. "You told me that trying to remember the words was good enough because God knew what I meant. And then you offered to pray for me."
"I shouldn't have," Marianne said now. The black hopelessness in her friend's words wrung Joanna's heart, made her want to weep.
"What do you mean, you shouldn't have?"
"I had no right," Marianne said. "I didn't know what I was talking about."
"Of course you did. What are you saying, Marianne? What's wrong?"
"I've been here all night trying to pray myself, but I can't, Joanna. And it's not just the words that I've lost, either. It's more than that. Far more. How could God do something like this to us and to Esther? How could He make Esther so sick that the only way to save her is for some other mother's baby to die? That's not right. It's not fair."
Marianne lapsed into a series of stricken sobs. For several seconds Joanna listened and said nothing. There was nothing she could think of to say. How could she go about comforting someone who was a steadfast friend and pillar of strength to everyone else?
"You'll get through this," Joanna said finally.
"Yes," Marianne choked, "maybe I will. But how will I ever be able to stand up at the pulpit and preach about faith when my own is so totally lacking? How can I teach about a loving God when I'm so pissed off at Him I can barely stand it?"
Joanna smiled in spite of herself. Marianne Maculyea, the rock-throwing firebrand rebel she had known in junior high at Lowell School, was a firebrand still.
"If you're so totally lacking in faith," Joanna pointed out, "you wouldn't even acknowledge God, much less be pissed at Him. Now, have you had any asleep?"
Even as she asked the question, Joanna reminded herself of her mother-in-law. For Eva Lou Brady, a crisis of the soul was almost always rooted in some physical reality.
"No," Marianne admitted.
"What about having something to eat?"
"Jeff brought me a tray from the cafeteria a little while ago, but I couldn't eat it. I wasn't hungry."
"Is the food still there?"
"The tray is."
"Eat some of it," Joanna urged. "Even if it tastes like sawdust when you try to choke it down. You're going to need your strength, Marianne. If you don't eat or sleep, you're not going to be worth a plugged nickel when you'll want to be at your best. If you're strung out because of lack of food or rest, you won't have anything to offer Esther when she finally comes out from under the anesthetic. She's going to need you then, and you'd better be ready."
There was another stretch of silence and Marianne seemed to consider what she'd been told. "I'll try," she said at last.
Joanna saw two vehicles pulling up behind the Blazer-Dick Voland's Bronco and Frank Montoya's Crown Victoria. "Good," Joanna said. "You do that. And remember, I'll be there either later this afternoon or else this evening. All right?"
"All right."
"You hang tough."
As soon as the call ended, Joanna stood with the phone in her hand. She thought about calling the Copper Queen Hotel directly and telling Butch that she wouldn't be able to see him that night, but she was afraid he'd talk his way around her. Instead, feeling like a heel and a coward to boot, she hunched in the code for the sheriff's department.
"Kristin," she said as soon as her secretary came on the line, "I don't have much time. Please call the Copper Queen Hotel and leave a message for Mr. Frederick Dixon. Tell him I won't be able to join him for dinner tonight. Tell him I'm going up to Tucson to see Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea."
"Got it," Kristin said. "Copper Queen, Frederick Dixon, and you can't make it for dinner. How're Jeff and Marianne doing, by the way? I had lunch with my mother. She was telling me about the transplant. I don't know who told her."
I can guess, Joanna thought. And her initials are Marliss Shackleford.
"They're okay," she said. "At least they're doing as well as can be expected."
Finished with the call, she tried to reassure herself that she had handled the Butch Dixon situation in a kind and reasonable fashion. He might be disappointed, but at least she hadn't just left him hanging for a change. Still, though
Her thoughts were interrupted by an excited shout from one of the S and R guys a good quarter of a mile away.
"Sheriff Brady," Mike Wilson yelled, relaying the message. "Come take a look at this."
With Dick Voland and Frank Montoya both trailing be-hind her, Joanna hurried over to where Mike was standing. Several of the other S and R guys were already converging on the spot. Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal weren't far behind.
"What is it?" Joanna demanded when she finally reached Mike.
He pointed toward the ground. "Look," he said.
There, nestled between a pair of rocks and winking back the brilliant late-summer sunlight, was a watch-a gold-and-silver Omega. On the watch's pearlescent face behind the remains of a shattered crystal, the two hands stood stopped at 10:26. That was the time Sonja Hosfield had told her she remembered hearing shots. Around ten-thirty.
Looking around, Joanna saw the blood spatters and knew this was the killing ground-the place Katrina Berridge had fallen to earth. She looked up and caught Ernie's eye. "Have you found any bullets?" she asked.
"Not yet," he said. "But we're looking."
"Hey, Mike." Terry Gregovich's voice shrilled out of the speaker on a small walkie-talkie fastened to the collar of Mike Wilson's orange hunting vest. "I think we may have found something up here."
All eyes turned from the watch and the blood-spattered ground around it to the majestic cliffs rising from the valley floor. There, barely visible and clambering over the rock face like so many orange-bodied ants, were the other members of the Search and Rescue team.