“Shhhhh,” she said, but he ignored her, although his voice was weaker now. She had to strain to hear him over the noise of arriving emergency vehicles.

“They blackmailed me, Joanna.” He took a breath before he could go on. “I didn’t know what all went on or who all was involved. My job was to walk around howdying people and being blind, deaf, and dumb to what was going on in my own department.” He paused again. “Was Andy in on it?”

Tears were coursing down Joanna’s cheeks. She bit her lip and ducked her head. “I don’t know, Walter.”

“I hope not,” Walter McFadden muttered weakly. “For your sake and Jenny’s, I sure as hell hope not.”

And he was gone.

TWENTY-ONE

Joanna stood up. By then the place was crowded with Emergency Medical Technicians and City of Bisbee police officers to say nothing of dismayed neighbors who were struggling to come to grips with exactly what had happened.

Both Tony Vargas and Walter McFadden were beyond help, so all the lifesaving activity centered around Ken Galloway. Joanna walked past the flurry of activity to the patrol car. There, without anyone paying attention, she pressed the door lock and opened the door, freeing both Jenny and her mother. Once they were out of the vehicle, Eleanor and Jenny clung to Joanna as though fearing she might somehow disappear.

“is Sheriff McFadden all right?” Jenny tearfully.

Joanna shook her head. “He’s dead,” she answered. “He died before the ambulance ever got here.”

Bobo Jenkins turned up just then with Adam York in tow. Joanna took Jenny by the shoulders. “Go sit on the porch with Tigger,” she said. “Stay out of the way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Jenny tiptoed through the gate then ran to the back porch where she flung her arms around Tigger’s neck. The dog, as ordered, was still lying down, waiting for a release signal from Walter McFadden that was never going to come.

“What should I do?” Eleanor asked meekly.

“Stay with Jenny, Mother.”

Eleanor started after her granddaughter then paused. “It was him, wasn’t it,” she said. “The man with the gold in his teeth.”

Joanna looked down at the lifeless body of Tony Vargas. She nodded. “It was him,” she said.

Joanna had spoken gently to both her daughter and her mother, but when she turned to face Bobo Jenkins her face was full of barely repressed fury. “What’s he doing here?” she asked, nodding toward Adam York who was off to one side consulting with several of the uniformed officers on the scene.

“I talked to the man, Joanna,” Bobo Jenkins explained. “He followed the bloody footprints down the stairs from the hotel, put two and two together, and came to the hospital. He’s on the up-and-up.”

“Sure he is,” Joanna returned with her eyes narrowing. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

As if on cue, Adam York turned and caught her looking at him. He left the officers and walked over to where she was standing. “Joanna, are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Good.”

“Look,” she said, “you may have convinced my friend Bobo, here, that you walk on water, but I’m not buying it. Until I see some proof otherwise, I’m going to continue to consider you part of the opposition.”

“Your husband got Lefty O’Toole to agree to come into the Witness Protection Program,” York said. “Andy had contacted me and told me to expect Lefty within a matter of days. When it all fell apart, when Lefty showed up dead and then Andy suddenly laid his hands on a considerable sum of unexplained money,

I figured the cartel had turned him. Then,when Andy was killed as well it made sense that there was some other traitor pretty close to home.”

“You thought it was me?” Joanna asked.

York shrugged. “Why not? I was casting my net around and you turned up in it. You’re right, I do owe you an apology, and not just over the autopsy results. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Ken Galloway was the one who typed the suicide note in Andy’s file. We’ve known for years that Cochise County was a major conduit of the drug trade and we figured there had to be someone in law enforcement working with them, but it wasn’t until Andy connected with Lefty that we figured we were going to get a break. Now, thanks to you, we finally know who some of those people were.”

“If Lefty knew Galloway was involved, why didn’t he warn Andy?”

“Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. It’s possible he tried to and Ken intercepted the message. Andy and Ken were supposedly good friends, weren’t they?”

“Supposedly,” Joanna agreed, bitterly. “We thought he was a friend.”

“With Lefty out of the picture, I figured the whole investigation was blown, but now, with this book…”

“What book?” Joanna demanded.

“Angie’s book. She’s scared to death and tired of running. I guess she finally decided she had to trust somebody. She spilled her guts about Tony and his little black book. She even suggested a possible deal.”

“Angie trusted you?” Joanna asked sharply. “Why not?” Adam York returned. “You don’t think I’d cheat her, do you?”

“Until I read that book for myself and make sure your name isn’t in it, I’m not trusting anybody “

York studied Joanna’s face for some time before he nodded. “Considering what you’ve been through,” he said, “that’s probably a very wise position to take. By the way,” he added, “are you aware that you have what appears to be a bullet hole in your jacket pocket? You may want to mention that to the crime le investigators here. Otherwise, they’re not going to understand some of the evidence they’re looking at.”

It was several hours later before anyone made a move to go home. Marianne Maculyea had shown up in her 1967 sea foam-green VW Bug. Jeff Daniels, who kept the old Bug running perfectly, turned up in Joanna’s Eagle, which he had hot-wired to bring down from the hotel. When it was time to go, Joanna loaded her mother into the car first and then went to find Jenny.

“What’s going to happen to Tigger?” Jenny asked. “We can’t just leave him here, can we?”

And, of course, the answer to that question was no. Jenny and Tigger rode in the back while a strangely subdued Eleanor rode in front. “Thank you for the ride,” Eleanor said when Joanna dropped her off in front of her own house at four in the morning. “Thank you for everything.”

Try as she might, Joanna could never remember hearing her mother saying those words ever before.

At home at last, Joanna was so tired she could barely walk. Without thinking, she went directly to the bedroom. Looking at it, she realized there would be times in the future when the memories of that bed would make sleeping there impossible, but now she was too tired. Joanna tumbled across it. With the comforting scent of Andy’s pillow lingering in her nostrils, she was asleep within minutes.

She didn’t stir again until almost ten that morning. When she went padding through the house to check on things, she discovered that both big dogs were curled up on Jenny’s bed. They opened their eyes and looked at her, but neither Sadie nor Tigger made any effort to get down, and since Jenny was still sound asleep, Joanna left them there.

In the kitchen where she went to start a pot of coffee, Joanna discovered a note from Jim Bob Brady saying he’d been out to feed the cattle and also that one of Norm Higgins’s boys had stopped by to see about picking up Andy’s clothes for the funeral. Jim Bob had told him to come back later.

Steeling herself for the ordeal, Joanna went back to the bedroom to pick out Andrew Brady’s clothing for the last time. She marched directly to his side of the closet. Norm Higgins had hinted that maybe, under the circumstances, it might be better if Andy were buried in civilian clothes rather than his uniform, but Joanna had decided otherwise.