Watching as he put down his plate and drink, Joanna was surprised to note that although he was naturally handsome, he was also surprisingly ungainly. While the conversation hummed around the table, Rod attacked his food with a peculiar intensity. When he glanced up and caught Joanna observing him, he blushed furiously, from the top of his collar to the roots of his fine blond hair. For the first time, Joanna wondered if Rod Bascom wasn’t an inveterate head-nodder in class because he was actually painfully shy? The very possibility made him seem less annoying. At twenty-five or -six, Rod
was close to Joanna’s age. In terms of life experience, there seemed to be a world of difference between them.
“Are you enjoying the classes?” Joanna asked, trying to break the ice.
Once again Rod Bascom nodded his head. Joanna had to conceal a smile. Even in private conversation he couldn’t seem to stop doing it.
“There’s a lot to learn,” he said. “I never was very good at taking notes. I’m having a hard time keeping up. I suppose this is all old hat to you.”
“Old hat? Why would you say that?” Joanna returned.
“You’re not like the rest of us,” he said, shrugging uncomfortably. “I mean, you’re already a sheriff. By comparison, the rest of us are just a bunch of rookies.”
Joanna flushed slightly herself. No matter how earnestly she wanted to fit in with the rest of her classmates, it wasn’t really working. She smiled at Rod Bascom then, hoping to put him at ease.
“I’m here for the same reason you are,” she said “Some of this stuff may be boring as hell, but we all need to learn it just the same.”
He nodded, chewing thoughtfully for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said. “It took me a while to figure out why your face is so familiar. I finally realized I saw you on TV back when all that was going on. It must have been awful.”
Rod’s kind and totally unexpected words of condolence caught Joanna off guard, touching her in a way that surprised them both. Tears sprang to her eyes, momentarily blurring her vision.
“It’s still awful,” she murmured, impatiently brushing the tears away. “But thanks for mentioning it.”
“You have a little girl, don’t you?” Rod asked. How’s she doing?”
Joanna smiled ruefully. “Jenny’s fine, although she does have her days,” she said. “We both know it’s going to take time.”
“Are you going home for Thanksgiving?”
“No, Jenny and her grandparents are coming up here.”
Rod Bascom nodded. “That’s probably a good idea,” he said. “That first Thanksgiving at home after my father died was awful.”
He got up then and hurried away, as though worried that he had said too much. Touched by his sharing comment and aware that she’d somehow misjudged the man, Joanna watched him go.
What was it Marliss Shackleford had said about people in the big city? She had implied that most of the people Joanna would meet in Phoenix were a savage, uncaring, and untrustworthy lot.
So far during her stay in Phoenix, Joanna had met several people. Four in particular stood out from the rest. Leann Jessup—her red-haired note-writing tablemate; Dave Thompson, her loud-mouthed jerk of an instructor; Butch Dixon, the poetry-quoting bartender from the Roundhouse Bar d Grill; and now Rod Bascom, who despite his propensity for head nodding, gave every indication of being a decent, caring human being.
There you go, Marliss, Joanna thought to herself, as she stood up to clear her place. Three out of four ain’t bad.
The morning lectures may have dragged, but the afternoon lab sessions flew by. They started with the most fundamental part of police work—paper—and the how and why of filling it out properly. Joanna didn’t expect to be fascinated, but she was—right up until time for the end-of-day session of heavy-duty physical training.
Once the PT class was over, Joanna could barely walk. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt. It was four-thirty when she finished her last painful lap on the running track and dragged her protesting body back to the gym.
The PT instructor, Brad Mason, was a disgustingly fit fifty-something. His skin was bronze and leatherlike. His lean frame carried not an ounce of extra subcutaneous fat. Brad stood waiting by the door to the gym with his arms folded casually across his chest, watching as the last of the trainees finished up on the field. Running laps was something Joanna hadn’t done since high school. She was among the last stragglers to limp into the gym,
“No pain, no gain,” Mason said with a grin as Joanna hobbled past.
Her first instinct was to deck him. Instead, Joanna straightened her shoulders. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll try to remember that.”
After lunch Joanna had told Leann she’d be happy to go to the candlelight vigil, but by the time it she finished showering and drying her hair, she was beginning to regret that decision. She was tired. Her body hurt. She had homework to do, including a new hundred-page reading assignment from Dave Thompson. But it was hard to pull herself together and turn to the task at hand when she was feeling so lost and lonely. She missed Jenny, and she missed being home. The partially completed letter she had started writing to Jenny the night before remained in her notebook, incomplete and unmailed.
Joanna went to her room only long enough to change clothes; then she took her reading assignment and hurried back to the student lounge. Naturally, one of the guys from class was already on the phone, and there were three more people waiting in line behind him. After putting her name on the list, Joanna bought herself a caffeine-laden diet coke from the coin-operated vending machine and sat down to read and wait.
The reading assignment was in a book called The Interrogation Handbook. It should have been interesting material. Had Joanna been in a spot more conducive to concentration, she might have found it fascinating. As it was, people wandered in and out of the lounge, chatting and laughing along the way while collecting sodas or snacks or ice. Finally, Janna gave up all pretense of studying and simply sat and watched. She tried to sort out her various classmates. Some of them she already knew by name and jurisdiction. With most of them, though, she had to resort to checking the name tag before she could remember.
Eventually it was Joanna’s turn to use the phone. Jenny answered after only one ring.
“Hullo?”
At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Joanna felt her heart constrict. “Hi, Jenny,” she said. “How are things?”
“Okay.”
Joanna blinked at that. After two whole days, Jenny sounded distant and lethargic and not at all thrilled to hear her mother’s voice. “Are you all packed for tomorrow?” Joanna asked.
“I guess so,” Jenny answered woodenly. “Grandpa says we’re going to leave in the afternoon as soon as school is out.”
“Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing?” Joanna asked.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m tired,” Joanna answered. “How about you? Are you all right? You sound upset.”
“How come you’re tired?”
“It may have something to do with running laps and doing push-ups.”
“You have to do push-ups? Really?” Jenny asked dubiously. “How many?”
“Too many,” Joanna answered. “And I have a mountain of homework to do as well, but Jenny you didn’t answer my question. Is something wrong?”
“No,” Jenny said finally, but the slight pause before she answered was enough to shift Joanna’s maternal warning light to a low orange glow.
“Jennifer Ann . . .” Joanna began.
“It was supposed to be a surprise.” Jenny’s blurted answer sounded on the verge of tear. “Grandma said you’d like it. I thought you would too.”
“Like what?”
“My hair,” Jenny wailed.
“What about your hair?” Joanna demanded.