Page 2 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Bisbee, Arizona

As Sheriff Joanna Brady pressed the ignition button on her Ford Interceptor, her husband, Butch Dixon, leaned in through her open window. “Do you have everything you need?”

“I do now, thanks,” she answered. As she’d headed for the garage, she had left her freshly cleaned dress uniform, still in its plastic bag, hanging on the doorknob in the laundry room. It would have been there still had Butch not spotted it and carried it to the car.

“Drive carefully,” Butch said, giving her a peck on the cheek, “and be sure to tell Jenny I’m proud as punch.”

“Will do,” Joanna said, putting the SUV in reverse. Butch was still there waving as the garage door slid shut behind her.

Leaving the ranch, she turned first onto High Lonesome Road and then Double Adobe Road before reaching Highway 80.

Her office at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department was just a few miles ahead.

She had intended to drive straight by her office, but with the situation at the jail currently such a powder keg, at the last moment, she turned off, pulled into her reserved spot on the far side of the building, and stepped inside through her private entrance.

When she walked through her office and into the waiting room outside, Kristin Gregovich, her secretary, looked up in surprise. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were on your way to Peoria.”

“I am,” Joanna replied, “but I wanted to stop by and see how things are.”

“All right so far as I can tell,” Kristin answered.

“Where’s Tom?”

Tom Hadlock was Joanna’s chief deputy.

“Where do you think?”

“The jail?” Joanna asked.

“Where else?” Kristin said with a sigh.

Aware that she was out of uniform, Joanna made her way through the series of security doors that led into the jail’s interior.

Growing up, she’d loved watching reruns of the Andy Griffith show.

When she’d first been elected sheriff, the Cochise County Jail resembled the one in Mayberry where even the town drunk had been treated like visiting royalty.

Back then, the jail had been a bit on the casual side and generally filled with a collection of locally well-known but minor offenders—ones charged with DUIs, drunk and disorderly, domestic violence, speeding, driving without a license, etc.

—who came and went on a regular basis. Those original frequent fliers had usually been held for a matter of days or weeks at the most.

Over time, all that had changed. Chaos along the Mexican border had brought a whole new world of criminal activity to Cochise County.

Now, in terms of inmates, the county jail resembled a regular prison.

Offenders who had been arrested for various kinds of smuggling and drug offenses and who were unable to post bail were having to be housed for months or even years while awaiting trial.

That meant the jail was usually filled to capacity and beyond.

In fact, the situation had become so precarious that several months earlier Joanna had been forced to make arrangements for all jail personnel to wear body cams while on duty.

Two months earlier, one of her patrol deputies had spotted a vehicle that had been cosmetically altered to resemble a UPS van speeding northbound on Central Highway just outside Elfrida.

When the officer gave chase, the driver of the van had opened fire.

The pursuing officer had radioed for help, but realizing he was mostly on his own, he had finally resorted to shooting out one of the rear tires of the speeding vehicle, causing the driver to lose control.

The van had lurched off the highway, plowed into an irrigation ditch, and then rolled three times before coming to a stop.

The driver, who had been wearing a seat belt, walked away from the incident without a scratch and was taken into custody.

Unfortunately none of the twenty-three illegal immigrants crammed into the back of the van had had seats, much less seat belts.

Five of the passengers died at the scene.

Four more later succumbed to their injuries.

EMTs and law enforcement officers from all over the area, and even as far away as Lordsburg, New Mexico, had responded to the carnage.

Joanna herself had shown up on the scene, doing her best to comfort the less seriously injured who, after being triaged, had to wait their turn while medics responded to those with life-threatening injuries.

The driver, one Antonio Rodriguez-Otero, an illegal immigrant with no valid driver’s license, was now being held in the Cochise County Jail, charged with nine counts of felony vehicular homicide, one count of assaulting a police officer, and one count of driving a stolen vehicle.

Since he was an obvious flight risk, no bail had been offered, and he had waived his right to a speedy trial.

In other words, there was no telling how long he would continue to languish in Joanna’s lockup before his court date.

Unfortunately, Antonio was anything but your ordinary, man-on-the-street kind of illegal immigrant.

He was a hardened criminal and a full-fledged member of the Sinaloa Cartel, and someone who much preferred his own company to anyone else’s.

Whenever he was allowed to mingle with the general population, he’d pull some stunt to land himself in solitary confinement.

Two weeks ago, he had used a fork to attack another inmate standing in line in the mess hall.

With Mr. Rodriguez-Otero pretty much permanently ensconced in the jail’s only solitary-confinement cell, Joanna had been forced to embark on carving out spaces for two more solitary units from an area that had once held a total of ten inmates.

The process of obtaining permits for electrical and plumbing for the jail remodel was a bureaucratic nightmare.

Not only that, with overcrowding now that much worse, tempers among the inmates were at a boiling point.

After two near riots the week before, Joanna had finally asked the governor for help. Seven members of the Arizona National Guard had been dispatched to the Cochise County jail to help maintain order.

That morning Joanna found Tom Hadlock in the jail’s administration office where he was huddled with the new jail commander, Terry Gregovich.

For years Terry, Kristin’s husband, had served as the department’s K-9 officer.

Once his knees gave out and he could no longer keep up with his dog, Mojo, Joanna had brought both man and beast inside.

With everything that was going on, having a jail commander with a trained K-9 assistant at his side seemed like a good idea.

“Hey, guys,” Joanna said, letting herself into the room. “How’s it going, Mojo?”

The dog thumped his tail but didn’t raise his head.

“You’ll notice she didn’t ask either of us how it’s going,” Tom grumbled to Terry.

“How is it going?”

“We made it through breakfast without any incidents,” Terry reported. “I guess that’s something.”

“How are the National Guard guys working out?” Joanna asked.

“Fairly well,” Terry said. “Two of them speak fluent Spanish, so that’s a help, and our regular guys who’ve been having to work double shifts really appreciate having a little breathing space.”

“What are you doing here?” Tom asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Peoria for Jenny’s graduation?”

“I am,” Joanna replied. “I just wanted to stop by to see how things were.”

“For right now, we’ve got it covered. The construction crew is due any day to start digging the trenches for the new water and power lines. Listening to a jackhammer all day will probably put everybody’s teeth on edge.”

“In that case, I’m glad I won’t have to be here to listen to the racket. So I’ll head out then.”

“And I’ll come with you,” Tom said.

As they walked back through the security doors, Tom was shaking his head. “I remember when Jenny was just a cute little towheaded kid with her hair in braids. It seems impossible that she’s already old enough to be graduating from the police academy.”

“Time flies, Tom,” Joanna said. “I can barely believe it myself.”

“Tell her congrats from me,” Tom said. “It’s a crying shame she couldn’t come work here instead of signing up with Pima County.”

“Nepotism and all that,” Joanna told him with a smile. “Having her on the job here would never have worked.”

Minutes later, Joanna was back in the car and underway.

On this bright November day, as she drove through the Mule Mountain Tunnel at the top of the Divide, she looked forward to the flash of bright blue sky that she knew would await her on the far side.

On sunny days like this, it was always there, seemingly with a promise of good things to come.

In this instance, with Jenny’s graduation ceremony scheduled for ten a.m. on Friday morning, good things really were in the offing.

Years earlier, the first time Joanna had made the two-hundred-mile trip from Bisbee to the Arizona Police Officer Academy in Peoria, northwest of Phoenix, things had been far different.

As a recently widowed single mom who had just been elected sheriff, she’d had no idea that her stay at the academy would mark the beginning of a whole new life.

Now, with Jenny taking the same course, Joanna’s daughter was on track to become the fourth law enforcement officer in the family, following in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather, Cochise County Sheriff D.H.

Lathrop; her father, Deputy Andrew Brady; and now her mother, Joanna, too.

Although this wasn’t an outcome Joanna had ever expected, she was proud of it all the same.

She was especially proud that, as an APOA graduate herself, she had not only been invited to speak at the graduation ceremony, she would also be there to pin Jenny’s badge on her brand-new Pima County Sheriff’s Department uniform.

Joanna had been driving for some time, and the miles had been rolling by, so she was on the bridge crossing the San Pedro in St. David when her thoughts stalled on the word graduation , because her graduation from APOA had been Joanna Brady’s one and only.

By the middle of the second semester of Joanna’s senior year at Bisbee High School, she was already a married woman with a baby bump that was becoming more obvious by the day.

Late in April she had received a letter from the superintendent of schools, notifying her that “due to her delicate condition” she wouldn’t be allowed to participate in any of the high school ending ceremonies—class night, baccalaureate, or graduation.

Incensed, Joanna had wanted to fight the administration’s decision and had gone to her mother for help, insisting that nothing would show under her cap and gown anyway.

Unsurprisingly, Eleanor Lathrop had sided with the superintendent of schools.

As a consequence, Joanna’s high school career had ended with none of the customary rites of passage enjoyed by her classmates, and her diploma had come to her in the mail a week after everyone else received theirs.

As a result, when Jenny had graduated from Northern Arizona University a year and a half earlier, it had been cause for a joyous celebration.

The entire family—Joanna, Butch, and Jenny’s half-siblings, Dennis and Sage—had all been in attendance at the J.

Lawrence Walkup Skydome in Flagstaff to watch Jenny walk across the stage and receive her bachelor of science degree in criminology and criminal justice.

After that she’d been offered a coveted yearlong paid internship with MMIV—the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Victims—Task Force based in Denver.

When it came time for her to apply for a job with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, she’d already had a whole year of law enforcement experience under her belt.

It also helped that, while still at NAU, she’d been instrumental in helping solve a long-cold homicide case that had originated in Tucson.

All of which meant that, unlike her mother, Jennifer Ann Brady was coming into her law enforcement career with a running start.

Butch and Joanna had decided that Jenny’s graduation ceremony from APOA would be all about her.

Not wanting Dennis and Sage to be a distraction, they had ruled out removing the younger kids from school for the occasion.

That meant this trip was strictly a mother/daughter event.

Tonight she and Jenny would have a quiet dinner together at the hotel.

Tomorrow would be another story. By then it would be a full crowd.

Jenny’s steady boyfriend, Nick Saunders, would be in attendance as would his mother and her new husband.

Originally Nick had planned to attend veterinary school in Washington State, but once his widowed mother had remarried and the couple had moved from Utah to Arizona, Nick had changed his mind.

He was now in his second year of a three-year program at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

After finishing her stint with MMIV in Denver, Jenny had focused her job search in Tucson, where she and Nick now shared an apartment.

Since they weren’t even officially engaged, Joanna wasn’t exactly thrilled with that arrangement, but considering her own premarital track record, she kept her mouth shut.

Yes, tonight it would be just the two of them—Joanna and Jenny, mother and daughter. For that Sheriff Joanna Brady was extremely grateful.