Had Joanna been going to the Hohokam Resort Hotel that evening instead of later on during the week, it would have been easy to find. The only high-rise for miles around, the twelve-story newly finished hotel towered over its low-rise Old Peoria neighbors, its layers of lighted windows glowing like beacons as Joanna made her way north on Grand Avenue.
The Arizona Police Officers Academy turned out to be directly across the street. It was also across the railroad tracks, however, and the only way to get there was to cross the railroad at Olive and then turn in off Hatcher.
The triangular site was located in an area that seemed to be zoned commercial. Along both Seventy-fifth and Hatcher, a high brick wall marked two sides of the property. Entry was gained through an ornate portal. Two cast-concrete angels stood guard on either side of the drive. An arched lintel rose up and over behind them. One of the angels had lost part of a wing—probably to vandals—while the other was still intact. The words GOD IS LOVE were carved into the lintel itself.
The verse wasn’t exactly in keeping with the mission of a police academy, but Joanna knew where it came from—a man named Tommy Tompkins. The Reverend Tommy Tompkins.
For years the APOA had limped along in the deteriorating classrooms of a decommissioned high school in central Phoenix. Only recently had the academy moved to its new home in Peoria. The APOA’s good fortune came as a result of Tommy’s fall from grace. He and his two top lieutenants had been shipped off to federal prison on income tax evasion convictions. As his religious and financial empire collapsed, the property he had envisioned as world headquarters of Tommy Tompkins International had fallen into the hands of the Resolution Trust Corporation.
On fifteen acres of donated cotton field, Tommy had planned to build not only a glass-walled cathedral, but also the dorms and classrooms that would have allowed him to indoctrinate a cadre of handpicked missionaries. By the time Tommy Tompkins International fell victim to the RTC, the planned complex was only partially completed. The classroom wing along with dormitories, a temporary residence for Tommy himself, as well as a few outbuildings were all that were or ever would be finished.
When the place went up for grabs, the state of Arizona had jumped at the chance to buy the property at a bargain-basement price since the site lay directly in the path of a proposed freeway extension. While awaiting voter approval of road-building monies, the state had leased the complex to the multijurisdictional consortium running APOA. The transaction was accomplished with the strict understanding that little or no money would be spent on remodeling. As a result, angels continued to guard the entrance of the place where police officers from all over the state of Arizona received their basic law enforcement training.
Maybe guardian angels aren’t such a bad idea, Joanna thought as she drove across the vast, patchily lit parking lot to the place where two dozen or so cars were grouped together near two buildings connected by breezeways and laid out in a long L.
The two-story structure built along one leg had the regularly spaced windows, doors, and lights that indicated living quarters. That was probably the dorm. Although lights were on in some of the rooms, there was no sign of life. The other building was only one story high. From the spacing of rooms, Joanna surmised that one contained classrooms. She parked the car and walked to the end of the dorm nearest the classroom building. There she found a wall-mounted plaque that said OFFICE along with an arrow that pointed toward the other building.
Past a closed wrought-iron gate, Joanna discovered that the last door on the classroom building was equipped with a bell. Even though no lights were visible inside, she rang the doorbell anyway.
“I’m out here on the patio. Who is it?” a male voice called from somewhere outside, somewhere vend that iron gate.
“Joanna Brady. Cochise County,” she answered. When she tried the gate, it fell open under her hand. Across a small patio between the two buildings, she could see a cigarette glowing in the dark.
“It’s about time you got here,” the man growled in return. “You’re the last of the Mohicans, you know. You’re late.”
Nothing like getting off on the right foot, Joanna ought. “Sorry,” she said. “My paperwork said suggested arrival times were between four and six. If whoever wrote that meant required, they should have said so.”
The man ground out his cigarette and stood up. In the dim light, she couldn’t make out his features, but he was tall—six four or so—and well over two hundred pounds. He smelled of beer and cigarettes, and he swayed slightly as he looked down at her.
“I wrote it,” he said. “In my vocabulary, suggested and required mean the same thing. Suggested maybe sounds nicer, but I wanted you all checked in by six.”
“1 see,” Joanna replied. “I’ll certainly know better next time, won’t I?”
“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see. Come on, then,” he added. “Your key’s inside. Let’s get this over with so I can go back to enjoying the rest of my evening off.”
Instead of heading back through the gate, he stomped across the patio to a sliding door that opened into the office unit. Before entering, he paused long enough to drop his empty beer can into an almost full recycling box that sat just outside the door. Shaking her head, Joanna followed. This was a man who could afford to take some civility lessons from Welcome Wagon.
Joanna had expected to step inside a modest motel office/apartment. Instead, she found herself a huge but sparsely furnished living room that looked more like a semi-abandoned hotel lobby than it did either an office or an apartment.
Leaving Joanna standing there, the man headed off toward what turned out to be the kitchen. “I’ll be right back,” he said, over his shoulder, but he was gone for some time, giving Joanna a chance to examine the room in detail.
It seemed oddly disjointed. On the one hand, the ornate details—polished granite floors, high ceilings, gilt cove moldings, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and lush chintz drapes—seemed almost palatial, while the furnishings were Danish-modern thrift store rejects. Between the living room and kitchen was a huge formal dining room with a crystal chandelier. Instead of a polished dining table and chairs, the room contained nothing but a desk and chair. And not a fancy one, at that. The battered, gun-metal-gray affair, its surface covered with a scatter of papers, was almost as ugly as it was old.
The man emerged from the kitchen carrying a bottle of Coors beer. He paused by the desk long enough to pick up a set of keys. When he was barely within range, he tossed them in the general direction of where Joanna was standing. Despite his poor throw, she managed to snag them out of air.
“Good reflexes.” He nodded appreciatively. “You’re in room one oh nine,” he said. “It’s in the next building two doors down, just on the other side of the student lounge. The gold key is to your room. The silver one next to it opens the lounge door in case you need to go in after I lock it up for the night. The little one is for the laundry. It’s way down at the far end of the first floor, last door on left. There’s a phone in your room, but it’s only local calls. For long distance, there’s a pay phone in the lounge.”
‘Thank you ...” Joanna paused. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Thompson,” he said. “Dave Thompson. I run this place.”
“And you live here?”
He took a sip of beer and gave Joanna an appraising look that stopped just short of saying, “You want to make something of it?” Aloud he said, “Comes with the job. They actually hired a dorm manager once, but she got sick. They asked me to handle the dorm arrangements on a temporary basis, and I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s not that much work, once everybody finally gets checked in, that is.”