Page 4 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

After that their conversation moved to less stressful topics—about Nick and Jenny’s relatively new apartment on River Road and making tentative plans for the upcoming holidays, which would have to be built around Jenny’s schedule.

As a newly hired deputy, it was unlikely she’d have much time off when it came to the actual holidays themselves.

Once dinner was over and as they were leaving the dining room, Joanna noticed that on their way, Jenny went to the trouble of introducing her to some of her fellow students while bypassing others.

Back in her room, Joanna called Butch to check in, before turning on the TV set to watch that evening’s episodes of Law and Order . When it was time to plug her phone into the charger, she did a quick search on Google. Then she added one more item to the outline notes for her speech: Calamity Jane.

Joanna awakened the next morning with a terrible case of nerves.

Over the years, she had delivered countless campaign speeches, so she was no stranger to public speaking.

The thing is, for each election, the speeches stressed that year’s particular hot button, and once she’d given it a time or two, she’d pretty much had the words memorized.

This was different. Graduating from the APOA was the beginning of what might well be a lifetime commitment for some of these trainees, and she wanted her words to be memorable.

Her own APOA graduation certainly had been, but for all the wrong reasons.

Two weeks before the end of the session, the class’s lead instructor, Dave Thompson, had been murdered, and LeAnn Jessup had been gravely injured, so much so that she’d had to complete her training at a later time.

Consequently, what should have been a joyous graduation had been more of a subdued memorial service than anything else.

Joanna was determined this one would be different.

At twenty after nine, Joanna reported to the new APOA campus.

The old one had looked like what it was—a former religious facility.

The new one resembled a newly built junior college campus.

As she pulled into a visitor parking place, Leonard Wilson, a former FBI agent and the facility’s new director, rolled up in his motorized wheelchair to greet her.

“Welcome, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I’m guessing this place isn’t quite the same as the one you attended.”

“I’ll say,” Joanna said. “It’s totally different.”

“By the way,” he added. “That daughter of yours is one sharp cookie. You must be very proud.”

“I am that,” she said. “Thank you.”

“And thank you for agreeing to be our guest speaker today. Let’s get you over to the gym for a quick mic check before the doors open at nine thirty.”

Once the sound check was over, Joanna and Wilson remained on the podium as guests began arriving.

Those included a collection of police chiefs and sheriffs, including Pima County Sheriff Brian Fellows, who were all in attendance to swear in and pin badges on their newly graduated recruits.

When Nick Saunders, his mother, and her new husband turned up and settled in the fifth row back, Joanna sent them a tiny wave.

Finally, at ten o’clock sharp, the cadets themselves filed into the room.

All were dressed in the uniforms of their prospective agencies.

Once inside, the cadets were seated in the two front rows.

Since they were arranged alphabetically, Jennifer Ann Brady was number two in line.

That first glimpse of Jenny decked out in her Pima County Sheriff’s Department uniform took Joanna’s breath away.

The program began with an invocation delivered by the chaplain for Phoenix PD and the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

After that, Director Leonard Wilson, serving as master of ceremonies, introduced Joanna, letting the people in the room know that not only was she the sheriff of Cochise County, she was also an APOA alum and the mother of one of the current graduates.

Joanna stepped forward with her phone in hand and the Notes page showing.

After placing the phone on the lectern in front of her, she began.

“This isn’t exactly a homecoming for me, because back when I attended APOA, the campus was in a different location. As far as I can tell, this facility is a major step up from the old one, but it’s not just the location that’s different.

“My path here was somewhat different from the one most of you are following. By the time I arrived at the APOA and despite the fact that I had zero law enforcement training in my background, I had already been elected sheriff in Cochise County. At the time of my first husband’s untimely death, he was a deputy sheriff running for office against his then boss whose department was later found to have been riddled with corruption.

After Andy was shot to death on his way home from work, some of the people in town launched a write-in campaign to have me elected in his stead.

Once that happened and my election was certified, the board of supervisors appointed me to serve out the remainder of my predecessor’s term without waiting until January when I would normally have been sworn into office.

“Because I’d had no law enforcement prior to the election, it didn’t take long for me to mess up.

While pursuing a homicide suspect on foot, I made a serious mistake and committed one of law enforcement’s ten most fatal errors, the one often referred to as Tombstone Courage, aka failure to call for backup.

My case of Tombstone Courage wasn’t fatal, but within days of learning that tough lesson, I sent myself to APOA so I could be properly trained.

“By studying the two front rows, I can see that out of a class of fifty recruits, a full dozen of you are female. Congrats on that. When I was here, the total number of women was two. I’m incredibly proud to say that one of today’s twelve female graduates happens to be my daughter, Jennifer, known to some of you as Calamity Jenn. ”

At that point, several grins and knowing nods appeared on faces in the two front rows.

“I happen to know a little about hazing,” Joanna continued.

“I suspect that moniker, a takeoff on Calamity Jane, probably wasn’t meant to be a compliment, but in actual fact it is.

The real Calamity Jane, a sharpshooting frontier woman who insisted on wearing men’s clothing, was born Martha Jane Canary.

At age fourteen, after the deaths of both her parents, she singlehandedly raised her five younger siblings.

And, although she eventually gained fame and fortune while traveling with Wild Bill Hickok’s Wild West Show, she was well known throughout her life for her kindness and compassion.

“As for how I happen to know about hazing? Turns out there was a certain amount of that back when I was here too. Not surprisingly, a lot of it was aimed at the two women who had seemingly ventured into no-girls-allowed territory. By the way, LeAnn Jessup, my sole female classmate, started out working for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, but she’s spent most of her career with the FBI and is currently living in Washington, DC, where she’s one of their criminal profilers.

“But getting back to hazing. I’m assuming you’ve all been through Shoot/Don’t Shoot scenarios, correct?”

That question, too, was answered with knowing nods from everyone in the front two rows and from a number of uniform-wearing members of the general audience as well.

“In my case, on the very first day of class, the director singled me out by calling me up to the front of the room and handing me a revolver—a very heavy one as I recall.

I was advised that it was loaded with blanks and then directed to stand in front of a black-and-white TV monitor.

I was told that during the course of the upcoming video, I would need to make a decision about whether or not to pull the trigger.

“When the video began, the camera was at chest level on an officer pursuing an armed fleeing offender down a residential street. Suddenly the suspect veered off the sidewalk, through a gate, and up a paved walkway to a front porch where he forced his way inside the residence. Moments after the door to the house slammed shut behind him, it opened again. At that point, both the camera and I were located at the far end of the walkway, but when I caught sight of the weapon in his hand, I realized the gunman was coming back out. Knowing I’d never be able to hit his arm from that distance, I waited with my finger on the trigger, hoping for a body shot, and thank God for that.

When the suspect actually stepped out onto the porch, he was holding a baby—a toddler actually—cradled in his left arm.

If my revolver had been loaded with real bullets instead of blanks, and if I had pulled the trigger in that moment, the child would have died.

“All these years later, I still have nightmares about that. On those occasions when my dream self makes the wrong decision and the baby dies, I wake up shaking. Over time I’ve learned to not bother trying to go back to sleep after revisiting that scenario. It doesn’t work.

“Unfortunately that situation is one some of you may encounter during the course of your careers in law enforcement—the critical decision to pull the trigger or not pull the trigger, and I pray that if and when one of those incidents comes to pass, each of you will make the right decision.

“In our family, Jennifer is actually third-generation law enforcement. Her grandfather, my father—D.H. Lathrop—served as the sheriff of Cochise County long before I was elected. Andrew Brady, Jenny’s late father, was a deputy sheriff in that same jurisdiction, before being killed in the line of duty.

Now I’m the sheriff. However, the situation on the ground has changed drastically since my father’s day.

“Back then and even at the beginning of my years in office, the Cochise County Jail was populated by short-timers—nonviolent offenders who were incarcerated there for a matter of days or weeks rather than for months or years. But that’s not how things are now.

Often we’re forced to deal with violent offenders who, with no way to be bonded out, have to be held in our facility for extended periods of time while awaiting trial.

“The most dangerous inmate currently housed in the Cochise County Jail, my jail, is a human trafficker who crashed a speeding vehicle loaded with twenty-three undocumented individuals. Nine of the twenty-three perished—five at the scene and four more after being transported by EMS. The offender is now being held without bond while awaiting trial on nine counts of felony vehicular homicide. Having waived his right to a speedy trial, there’s no telling how long he’ll be there.

The problem is, he’s also a violent member of the Sinaloa Cartel and poses a constant danger not only to my jail personnel, but also to his fellow inmates.

“Still, human trafficking is only a small part of the problems that currently plague us. We all know about the death and destruction being visited on grieving families all over the country by drug addictions due to the uncountable doses of fentanyl and heroin that are currently pouring into our country. This may not be a traditional war zone, but it’s a war zone nonetheless.

By raising your hand and swearing to serve and protect in any given jurisdiction in the state of Arizona, you’ll also be putting yourself on the front line of that war zone—the thin blue line that is now this country’s first line of defense.

“So thank you for being here today. Thank you for stepping up and agreeing to do this necessary, incredibly challenging but also incredibly rewarding job. And today, please accept both my congratulations along with my profound gratitude to each and every one of you. Well done!”

Finished, Joanna picked up her phone and then returned to her chair to a round of enthusiastic applause.

After that, Wilson rolled his chair forward.

One at a time, he began calling the official representatives of the various agencies to come forward where they individually swore in that jurisdiction’s graduates.

After each new officer repeated his or her oath of office, shiny new badges were pinned on the chests of their impeccably pressed uniforms.

When Pima County Sheriff Brian Fellows wheeled his own chair up the ramp onto the podium, he and Leonard Wilson exchanged small nods of acknowledgment.

Then, taking his place center stage, Sheriff Fellows motioned for Joanna to join him.

She stood at attention while Jenny and two other recruits, including a guy named Rory Adcock, were called to the podium to swear their oaths of office.

When it came time to pin on her daughter’s badge, Joanna’s hands trembled so hard that she barely managed to fasten it.

Although she did her best to put on a brave front, as she returned to her seat, she found herself wiping away tears.

She tried to pretend she’d just gotten a speck of dust in her eye, but she doubted anyone in the room was fooled.

Like many others gathered there that day, Joanna Brady was now the parent of a rookie police officer. Soon her own beloved child’s life would be on the line right along with everyone else’s.