Shimmering golden leaves captured the setting sun and reflected off the surface of a shallow pond as Joanna parked in front of the church. As soon as she switched off the ignition, a tall, angular man in a long white robe and sandals came flapping out of the church to meet her.
“I’m so glad you came right away, Sheriff Brady,” Father Thomas Mulligan said. “I’ve been quite concerned.”
“The sister who was left with him wasn’t hurt, was she?”
“No,” Father Mulligan said. “She bruised her elbow when he knocked her down, but other than that she’s fine.”
“Where is he now?”
“In the church. There are lots of lighted candles in the sanctuary, and he seems to like them.”
“Is it safe to leave him there alone?” Joanna asked.
“He isn’t alone. Brother Joseph is with him. Back when Brother Joseph was a high school gym teacher, he taught judo. According to him, judo is like riding a bike. You never forget the moves.”
Half-trotting to keep up with Father Mulligan’s long-legged stride, Joanna followed the priest into the adobe-walled church. The setting sun, shining in through stained-glass windows, filled the small, carefully crafted sanctuary with a muted glow. Two men sat in the front pew. One was an elderly white-robed priest. The other was a wizened, hunched little man whose huge ears and doleful face reminded Joanna of an elf.
“Junior?” she said, holding out her hand.
Slowly he raised his eyes until he was staring up into her face. Politely, he held out his hand as well, but his grip barely clasped Joanna’s.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Brady.”
Without a word, Junior scooted sideways in the pew until he was huddled next to Brother Joseph. Then, burying his head in the priest’s robe, he began to moan. “Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?” Joanna asked.
“Not bad,” Junior wailed, pressing even closer to the priest, who by then had wrapped a protective arm around his shoulders. “Junior not bad. No jail, please. No jail. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt Junior.”
Seeing that he was utterly terrified of her, Joanna stood for a moment trying to decide what to do. Then, from some far recess of memory, she recalled one sunny spring afternoon years earlier. She had been in her Brownie uniform, stationed in front of the post office in Warren, hawking Girl Scout cookies. A man had ridden up to her on a bike, a girl’s bike. He had stopped and stood beside her, staring down into her wagonload of cookies.
He had stood there for a long time, and his silent staring presence had worried her. After all, he was wearing a badge and a holstered gun. Joanna had been petrified that she was doing something wrong, that he was going to arrest her for it.
Then a gray-haired woman had emerged from the beauty shop next door to the post office. The man had smiled at the woman, called her Mama, and pointed at the cookies, saying he wanted some. That was when Joanna realized there was something wrong with him. That he was a grown-up who was also somehow still a child. His mother had bought a box of cookies-Thin Mints-and she had explained that her son “wasn’t quite right,” that he liked to “pretend” to be a policeman. Both the gun and the holster were toys. The sheriff’s badge was a prize from a box of Cracker Jacks.
From that long-ago memory came the seed of inspiration. “I’m not here to take you to jail,” Joanna said. “Did you ever want to play policeman?”
Junior quieted and peeked up at her from behind Brother Joseph’s robe. “Play?” Junior asked.
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Would you like to play policeman?” Reaching into her pocket, Joanna extracted her leather ID folder and handed it over to him. Inside were both her identification and her badge-the badge with the words “Serve and Protect” engraved in square gold letters. Looking at it, Junior’s eyes bulged with excitement. He fingered the metal.
“Would you like to put it on?” Joanna asked kindly. “You could wear it while we go for a ride in my car and look for your mother.,’
“Junior wear it?” he repeated wonderingly. “Me wear it?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “But you’ll have to come with me. Okay?”
Junior nodded his head emphatically, eagerly. “Me wear. Me wear. Put on. Put on now.”
Carefully Joanna pinned the badge to the pocket of Junior’s shirt. “All right now, can you raise your right hand?”
Both hands shot high in the air. “Do you swear to be a good deputy, Junior?” Joanna asked.
Junior’s face split into a wide smile and he jumped to his feet. “Me good,” he said. “Junior very good de-de-deputy.” It took several times before he could finally make his lips form the unfamiliar word. “Go now,” he added. “Go right now. Get in car.”
“Right,” Joanna said. “We’ll go get in the car.”
Junior raced down the aisle, with Joanna and Father Mulligan following behind. “That was very impressive,” the priest said under his breath. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Desperation,” she told him. “Desperation plain and simple.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Between Saint David and Tombstone, Joanna said little and Junior said even less. He sat huddled in the far corner of the passenger seat with his arms clutching his chest. When Joanna asked him a direct question, he ducked his head and stared out the windshield without any acknowledgment that she had spoken to him.
What the hell have I let myself in for? Joanna asked herself. Obviously Junior didn’t belong in jail, not even in protective custody-as if that would be protection enough from some of the casually abusive thugs populating the Cochise County jail. The county hospital down in Douglas contained a mental ward, but Joanna was sure Junior wouldn’t qualify as a mental patient, either. He may not have been in possession of all his faculties, but he certainly wasn’t crazy. He was lost. Abandoned. And, as Joanna could see, terribly, terribly sad.
So if jail and the hospital are both out of the question, what do 1 do with him? she asked herself. In the past she would have gone straight to Marianne Maculyea with that kind of thorny problem. Marianne had the unerring knack of knowing just where to turn for help in sticky situations, but at this point in Mari’s life, she was at such a low ebb that she couldn’t even help herself. How on earth, then, could she be expected to help someone else?
That was as far as Joanna had managed to noodle the problem by the time she reached Tombstone. Once there, she had to call in to Dispatch to get directions to Alice Rogers’ home. It was on the far northern outskirts of town, past the dusty pioneer cemetery, and off on a dirt track called Scheiffelin Monument Road. At the far end of that road was a rocky cairn containing the worldly remains of Ed Scheiffelin. Scheiffelin was a hardy prospector whose silver strike had been the original foundation of Tombstone’s fabulous if short-lived mineral wealth.
Joanna’s father, D. H. Lathrop, had venerated the cussed independence of Ed Scheiffelin and others like him. With the Sonora Desert alive with marauding Apaches, Scheiffelin had left Tucson alone and on foot with little more than a mule, a chaw of tobacco, and a dream of achieving impossible wealth. And when that dream came true-when the silver claims other people had scoffed at came to fruition-Scheiffelin had gone on to wealth, fame, and high living without ever forgetting his humble roots. Years later, before he died in Oregon, he had asked to be returned to Arizona and buried near the site of that initial mining claim.
For D. H. Lathrop, people like Ed Scheiffelin epitomized the heroes of the Old West in a way the good guys and had guys-the Earps and the Clantons-did not. Lathrop had filled his daughter’s head with stories about Ed’s greedy partners who had done their best to cheat him out of what was rightfully his. Her mother had disparaged everything about Tombstone-the clapboard buildings, the phony gunfights, and the tacky tourist souvenirs. For Eleanor Lathrop the place was little more than a vulgar tourist trap-something to be despised and certainly not patronized.