Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(19)

“Okay,” she’d told him. “You lie on a soccer ball. I’ll lie on my belly, and we’ll see which one is the better shot!”

Not surprisingly, Newton had declined to participate, and eventually he’d been forced to exonerate Joanna as well, but that’s how she continued to think of him and refer to him—Soccer Ball Newton.

“Exactly,” Joanna replied finally. “That’s the one.”

“I’m guessing with that kind of history there’s a lot of bad blood on both sides.”

“You could say that,” Joanna agreed, “and I’m afraid some of it is going to get splashed onto Deputy Ruiz. If Newton can come up with a way to claim that Armando is at fault, he will.”

“But you didn’t call him on that, did you?”

“No,” Joanna said. “You’d be proud of me. I managed to keep my mouth shut for a change.”

“So where are you headed now?” Butch asked. “Back to the office?”

“No, I’m on my way to the hospital in Tucson. Frank Montoya is driving Amy Ruiz to the hospital, but someone should be there with her when Armando comes out of the OR, and I’m nominating myself for that duty. Why not? If I can’t be working the homicide, I could just as well make myself useful.”

“How did you rope Frank Montoya into taxi duty?” Butch asked.

“I didn’t,” she said. “He flat-out volunteered. When I left the school after notifying Amy, he was there waiting and offering to give her a ride.”

“He’s a good guy,” Butch said. “I’m sorry your department lost him.”

“Boy howdy,” Joanna returned. “That makes two of us.”

“My last Phoenix appearance is tonight,” Butch said. “The ones in Tucson start tomorrow. With all this going on, do you want me to cancel and come home?”

Butch’s question made Joanna realize that with everything that had been going on, she hadn’t told Carol Sunderson about any of it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me talk it over with Carol and give you a call back.”

Just then call waiting sounded. “It’s Tom Hadlock,” she told Butch. “I’d better go.”

“Updates?” she asked once she’d switched over to the other call.

“Deputy Ruiz is in surgery as of twenty minutes ago,” the chief deputy told her. “It’s expected to take several hours.”

A surgery lasting several hours was not good news, but at least Armando was still alive.

“All right,” she said. “I’m on my way to the hospital and don’t know how long I’ll stay. Frank Montoya is bringing Amy there while her folks look after their kids. And speaking of kids. What’s going on with Kendall and Peter Hogan? If their father is dead and their mother is hospitalized, are there any nearby relatives who can look after them?”

“None that I can find,” Tom answered. “Leon Hogan was in the army and stationed at Fort Huachuca. He’s originally from Cody, Wyoming, and his parents still live there. I’ve organized a next-of-kin notification with Cody PD, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’ll let you know when it’s done. In the meantime I’ve contacted Child Protective Services. They’ll be sending someone to Alice Kidder’s house to take charge of the children until such time as their mother is released from the hospital.”

“From what Garth told me, those kids might have plenty to say. Do we know if DPS is interviewing them?”

“No idea,” Tom answered, “but the word I’m getting from Casey Ledford and Dave Hollicker is that this Newton character is a complete jackass, so we’d best not ask.”

“You’re right there,” Joanna agreed. “He is an ass with a capital A.”

Tom let that pass without comment. “If you’re on your way to Tucson, how long do you plan to stay?”

“Beats me. Probably several hours, but I’ll need to check with my sitter. In the meantime DPS is on the scene and already sent me packing. By now they’ve probably done the same with Deputy Raymond.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “I’ll keep the lights on here.”

Good to her word, Joanna called Carol Sunderson the moment the previous call ended. “It’s handled,” Carol said. “I’ll have the boys come here for dinner, and then they can go home while I stay here with Denny and Sage. It’s not a problem. You do what you need to do and don’t worry about a thing.”

“Butch said that if need be, he can cancel his Tucson appearances and come home.”

“He doesn’t need to do that either,” Carol insisted. “We’ll be just fine on our own.”

As Joanna drove on, for the thousandth time she thanked her lucky stars that Carol Sunderson was in their lives. How many working parents weren’t blessed with that kind of stable child-care arrangement?

Gradually the radio chatter dissolved into road noise, and Joanna found herself thinking about the costs and consequences of domestic violence, not just in terms of loss of life but also in terms of shattered hopes and dreams. According to Records at Sierra Vista PD, Madison Hogan might have been the primary aggressor in those earlier domestic-violence callouts to the Hogan residence, but now Leon, the DV victim, was the one who was dead. How often did that happen?