Shoot, Don't Shoot (16 page)

“Are you getting a lot out of this?” Joanna asked

“Out of what?” Leann returned.

“Out of the class. It looked to me as though you devouring every word Dave Thompson said this morning.”

Leann shook her head ruefully. “Appearances can be deceiving. I hope you’ve taken good notes, because I barely heard a word he said. I was too busy thinking about Rhonda Norton and what happened to her. Her husband may have landed the fatal blow, but we’re all responsible.”

“We?” Joanna said.

Leann nodded. “You and me. We’re cops, part of the system—a system that left her vulnerable to a man who had already beaten the crap out of her three different times.”

“You shouldn’t take it personally,” Joanna counseled.

Even as she said the words, Joanna recognized the irony behind them. It took a hell of a lot of nerve for her to pass that timeworn advice along to someone else. After all, who had spent most of the previous evening tracking down leads in a case that was literally none of her business?

Leann shot Joanna a bleak look. “You’re right, I suppose,” she said. “After all, domestic violence is hardly a brand-new problem. It’s why my mother divorced my father.”

“He beat her?”

“Evidently,” Leann answered. “He knocked her around and my older brother, too. I was just a baby, so I don’t remember any of it. Still, it affected all of us from then on. And maybe that’s why it  bothers me so when I see or hear about it happening to others. In fact, preventing that kind of damage is one of the reasons I wanted to become a cop in the first place. And then, the first case I have any connection to ends like this—with the woman dead.” She shrugged her shoulders dejectedly.

They were standing outside the classroom, just beyond the cluster of smokers. “I’ve been thinking about that candlelight vigil down at the capitol tonight,” Leann continued. “The one they mentioned in the paper. I think I’m going to go. Want to go along?”

The subject of the vigil had crossed Joanna’s own mind several times in the course of the morning. Obviously, Serena Grijalva would be one of the remembered victims. Joanna, too, had considered going.

“Maybe,” she said. “But before we decide one way or the other, we’d better see how much homework we have.”

Leann gave her a wan smile. “You’re almost too focused for your own good,” she said. “Has anybody ever told you that?”

“Maybe once or twice. Come on.”

Once again, the two women were among the last stragglers to find their seats. Dave Thompson was at the podium. “Why, I’m so glad you two ladies could join us,” he said. “I hope class isn’t interfering too much with your socializing.”

In the uncomfortable silence that followed Thompson’s cutting remark, Leann ducked into her chair and appeared to be engrossed in studying her notes, all the while flushing furiously. Joanna, on the other hand, met and held the instructor’s gaze. Of all the people in the room—the two women an ‘ their twenty-three male classmates—Joanna was the only one whose entire future in law enforcement didn’t depend in great measure on the opinion of that overbearing jerk.

With Dick Voland’s tale of Dave Thompson’s “remotion” still ringing in her ears, Joanna couldn’t manage to keep her mouth shut. “That’s all right,” she returned with a tight smile. “We were finished anyway.”

The rest of the morning lecture didn’t drag nearly as much. At lunchtime two carloads of students headed for the nearest Pizza Hut. Joanna had already taken a seat at one of the three APOA-occupied tables when the perpetual head-nodder from the front row paused beside her. “Is this seat taken?” he asked.

Joanna didn’t much want to sit beside someone she had pegged as a natural-born brown noser. Still, since the seat was clearly empty, there was no graceful way for Joanna to tell the guy to move on. His badge said his name was Rod Bascom and that he hailed from Casa Grande.

 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.

“I got it cut,” Jenny sobbed. “Grandma Lathrop took me to see Helen Barco last night, and she cut it all off.”

A wave of resentment boiled up inside Joanna. How like her mother to pull a stunt like that! She had to go and drag Jenny off to Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty the moment Joanna’s back was turned. Just because Eleanor Lathrop lived for weekly visits to the beauty shop Vincent Barco had built for his wife in their former two-car garage didn’t mean everybody else did. In Eleanor Lathrop’s skewed view of the world, there was no crisis so terrible that a quick trip to a beautician wouldn’t fix.

Joanna, on the other hand, held beauty shops and beauticians at a wary arm’s length. Her distrust had its origins in the first time her mother had taken Joanna into a beauty shop for her own first haircut. Eleanor had been going to old Mrs. Boxer back then, in a now long-closed shop that had been next door to the post office. Joanna had walked into the place wearing beautiful, foot-long braids. She had emerged carrying her chopped-off braids in a little metal box and wearing her hair in what Mrs. Boxer had called an “adorable pixie.” Joanna had hated her pixie with an abiding passion. All these years later, she still couldn’t understand how a place that had nerve enough to call itself a beauty shop could produce something that ugly.

“It’ll grow out, you know,” Joanna said, hoping offer to Jenny some consolation. “It’ll take six months or so, but it will grow out.”

“But it’s so frizzy,” Jenny was saying. “The kids t school all made fun of me, especially the boys.”

“Frizzy?” Joanna asked. “Don’t tell me. You mean Grandma Lathrop had Helen Barco give you a permanent?”

“It was just supposed to be wavy,” Jenny wailed. She really was crying now, as though her heart was broken. “But it’s awful. You should see it!”

Joanna had always loved the straight, smooth texture of her daughter’s hair, which was so like Andy’s. Had Eleanor been available right then, Joanna would have ripped into her mother and told her to mind her own damn business. As it was though, there was only a heartbroken Jenny sobbing on the phone.

“That’ll grow out, too,” Joanna said patiently. “Ask Grandma Brady to try putting some of her creme rinse on it. That should help. And remember, Helen Barco and Grandma Lathrop may call it

permanent, but it’s not. It’s only temporary.”

“Will it be better by Monday?” Jenny sniffed.

“Probably not by Monday,” Joanna answered. “But by Christmas it will be.” She decided to change the subject. “Are you looking forward to coming up tomorrow?”