Downfall (28 page)

AS JOANNA CONTINUED TO CLIMB, THE STARLIGHT GREW STEADILY
brighter. With her vision now completely adjusted to the gloom, this could have been nothing more than a trick her eyes were playing on her. She could feel that she was tiring. Had she had lunch? Or even breakfast? She wasn't sure. Couldn't remember back that far. What she did know was that she had to keep going no matter what.

A couple of times she slipped for real and came very close to tumbling backward down the mountainside. One of those times was while pulling herself up onto the ledge where she and Agent Watkins had startled the horned toad days earlier. It was nighttime now. Surely the toad was safely tucked away in a cozy underground burrow and out of harm's way. She hoped so.

Behind her, she heard the sound of Jeremy's labored breathing. He seemed to be having as much or even more trouble with
the climb than she was, but then he had more weight to lift. She was counting on the chance that as he grew more fatigued, he would become more vulnerable to an unexpected attack. She hoped that her continued show of utter compliance would increase the effectiveness of her intended course of action. She needed to catch him completely off guard.

One thing in her favor was the fact that Jeremy had no idea she had ever climbed Geronimo or had even the slightest idea of the landscape on top of the peak. As she climbed, she tried to envision it—the placement of each of those thriving clumps of hedgehog cactus and their relative distance from the cliff's edge. Joanna was counting on that population of isolated hedgehogs—the very ones that had ultimately caused Desirée Wilburton's death—to help prevent hers. That was the crux of her plan—to either trip or shove an unsuspecting Jeremy hard enough to make him fall into one or more of those clumps of wicked thorns. And once he was distracted by that, she hoped to make good her escape. The chute down to the spring was still there—she had seen it herself. If she made it that far, the grove of scrub oak at the bottom of the chute would offer her some cover.

Yes, she still had her Glock, but she didn't kid herself about the prospect of surviving some kind of shootout at the top of the mountain. There was no such thing as a quick draw from an ankle holster. Jeremy would be all over her long before she could raise her weapon. Once she reached the relative safety of the trees, though, she might be able to pick him off when he came down the mountain after her.

Finally, Joanna scrambled up the last rise. She was several steps ahead of Jeremy by then, and she had enough time to hurry over to the small indentation that formed the dividing line
between the mountaintop's two small humps, the spot that marked the top of the chute. She looked around, noting the distance between her and the nearest clumps of cactus.

Just then Jeremy topped out, too. First his head appeared and then the rest of him. He stood still for a moment catching his breath—a black shadow outlined against a starlit sky. And on that shadow she noted the distinctive bulge of a holster that told her he was carrying more weaponry than just his Taser. What if he decided to draw the gun and simply shoot her from the far side of the knoll? Well then, it would all be over, wouldn't it? For her last-ditch plan to succeed, she needed to draw him closer—closer to her and closer to the cactus.

“How did you do it?” she asked, speaking quietly between gasps as she, too, attempted to regain her breath. The ploy of speaking softly worked exactly as she intended. Jeremy came several steps closer before he answered.

“Do what?”

“Get Susan to go with you. How did you get her to leave the school in the first place?”

“That was easy. She was glad to go along for the ride. Like I said, she knew I was pissed and thought a quick roll in the hay would fix me.”

“Surely she must have known you were up to no good and that she was in danger.”

“When she caught on for real, that's when I threatened her with the Taser,” Jeremy answered. “She was absolutely petrified of the damned thing and did everything I said. You're doing the same thing.”

Yes, I am,
Joanna thought.
But only up to a point.

She remembered the earlier discussion back in the conference
room after her officers had all watched Susan Nelson seemingly being force-walked off the school grounds. At that point there had been some speculation about whether her assailant had been carrying a weapon in his left hand—possibly a knife or a gun. Now Joanna understood that neither had been involved. Jeremy's weapon then had been his temper. Only later, when Susan had realized she was in real danger, had he employed his department-issue Taser.

When Tasers had been distributed to officers in her department, everyone who was given one—including Joanna herself—had been Tased as a part of their training. She remembered from then and also from only an hour or so ago that Tasers delivered a powerful punch that amounted to five seconds of exquisite pain followed by nothing at all. She suspected that the momentary dizziness she had experienced earlier had more to do with hitting her head on the sidewalk when she fell than it did with being Tased.

But Susan Nelson had been a civilian—someone who had never encountered the realities of Taser weaponry. For her, the prospect of being Tased must have been terrifying. No doubt Jeremy would have had talked it up some, too—exaggerating the effects enough to scare her into doing exactly as she was bidden. If he used the Taser as a stun gun on Joanna now, she knew that the effect would be much the same—not fun but not fatal, either. She'd get over it. She suspected that recovering from a fall into a batch of thorny cactus would take quite a bit longer.

“Why the duct tape?” Joanna asked.

Jeremy shrugged. “Why not? I couldn't risk having her kick her way out of the trunk between Sierra Vista and here.”

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, Joanna saw a tiny
pinprick of light near the base of the mountain. The flash seemed to emanate from somewhere near where Jeremy had parked his SUV. It came and went so fast that once the spark was gone, she couldn't be sure she had seen it at all. She glanced in Jeremy's direction and saw no visible reaction. From where he stood, the flicker must have been outside his line of sight.

For the first time, Joanna felt a tiny burst of hope. If someone was out in the desert tonight—in the desert and in the dark—there was a good chance that whoever it was had come looking for her. That meant that, with any kind of luck, help really was on the way.

“COME ON,” JEREMY SAID, MOVING A FEW STEPS TOWARD HER. “ON
your feet. It's time.”

“Time for what?”

“What do you think? To do what we came here to do.”

As he came nearer, Joanna saw him draw a weapon from the shadowy holster on his hip and point it in her direction. The starlight didn't offer enough illumination for her to make out exactly what it was, but she guessed he was most likely holding his service weapon—a Beretta. At that point the Taser and the Beretta offered unevenly bad options. A pulse from the stun gun would render her momentarily senseless, while a bullet from the handgun would render her dead. As for her cactus plan? He was still too far away.

“I can't,” she whimpered.

“You can't what—you can't die?”

“I can't get up. I've got a cramp in my leg.”

He came another step or two forward—reaching out to her with his right hand while still holding the pistol grip in his left. Just then, Joanna heard a sudden scrabbling noise that seemed to come from somewhere short of the crest of the peak. Something unseen was out there in the dark, speeding toward them and sending a cascade of rocks and gravel skittering down the mountainside.

Joanna first thought was that their presence on the mountain had most likely alarmed a wandering herd of javelina—boar-like creatures that roam the nighttime desert that tend to scatter in fear when faced with humans.

Joanna didn't care what kind of animal was out there, but the noisy racket was an audible answer to her fervent prayer for a desperately needed distraction. Jeremy heard the noise, too. He moved closer to the edge, peering into the darkness in an attempt to catch sight of whatever was down there.

Once he drew even with her, Joanna flew into action. She flung herself in his direction, head-butting him in the side of his knees. Arms windmilling in a futile effort to regain his balance, he fired off a single wild shot before tumbling to the ground. He landed just as Joanna had intended him to land—with his right cheek impaled on the spines of the nearest clump of cactus.

Jeremy howled in agony, but Joanna didn't wait around long enough to see if he had dropped his weapon. She was already on the move, making for the top of the chute. As she scrambled over the edge and started downward, a dark form shot past her. A bobcat maybe? A coyote? Whatever it was, the animal was Jeremy's problem now, not hers. Joanna hit the top of the chute hard with her backside. The trip down wasn't as smooth as she remembered,
and it wasn't nearly as fast, either. There were numerous starts and stops. Expecting a bullet to slam into the back of her head at any moment, she maneuvered around the occasional fallen boulder and then pushed off again in order to keep her downward momentum going.

Behind and above her, Joanna heard Jeremy's scream change from one of agony to one of pure rage. “Get off me, you damn dog!” he yelled. “Get the hell off me.”

Dog?
Joanna wondered.
What dog?

And then she knew. It had to be Spike. Someone had sent the K9 unit to rescue her, and Spike had arrived just in time.

At last Joanna gained the shelter of the trees and was able to tug the Glock out of its holster. With a weapon in her hand, things were a little more even. If Jeremy came after her now, she'd be ready and waiting.

But then, to her horror, she heard the sound of a gunshot, followed by the shocked yipe of an injured animal. That was followed by a long moment of total silence.

Joanna knew how her K9 unit operated. If Spike was here, Terry Gregovich would be somewhere nearby. That meant in terms of taking Jeremy down, it was now two to one, which made for better odds.

“You're surrounded, Jeremy,” Joanna called up the mountainside. “Drop your weapon and show us your hands! Now!”

She caught the barest glimpse of him, peering down from above, trying to catch sight of her. But he didn't follow her order to drop his weapon. Behind and beneath her, she heard the sounds of someone else, another human, laboring up the mountain.

“Hang in there, Spike,” Terry called. “I'm coming to get you.”

Gazing back up toward the mountaintop, Joanna caught sight
of something that looked like an enormous night bird taking wing. A second or so later, her mind made sense of what she was seeing. The flying creature wasn't a bird at all. Jeremy Stock had made good on his threat and had taken a final flying leap off the mountain.

Time stood still. With his arms spread like an eagle, Jeremy seemed to stay airborne for a long time—as though he had been caught up in winds aloft. But then gravity took hold and he tumbled earthward. In utter silence, he did three acrobatic somersaults in the air before plunging headfirst into the ground.

He landed close enough to Joanna's sheltering grove of trees that she heard the sickening thud as his head smashed into something hard. It was the same sound she had heard earlier in the summer, when Dennis had accidentally dropped their Fourth-of-July watermelon.

There could be no doubt. In that moment, Joanna knew Jeremy Stock was dead.

Good riddance
were the first words that came into her head. As for the second ones?
May you rot in hell!

Just then Terry, panting with exertion and barely able to speak, stumbled into her protective thicket. “The son of a bitch shot Spike,” he gasped as he rushed up to her. “Are you okay, Sheriff Brady?”

“I'm fine,” she told him. “Go get your dog, Terry. Let's hope he's okay.”

BUTCH THOUGHT HE WOULD GO HOME AND MAINTAIN A QUIET VIGIL
as he waited for Agent Watkins to call, but that was not to be. When he arrived at High Lonesome Ranch, the house and yard were both abuzz with activity. Inside, the dinner dishes had been cleared away. Denny was evidently in bed, but the kitchen itself was in full production mode, with all hands on deck preparing for the next day's post-funeral barbecue.

If we
have
a barbecue,
Butch thought despairingly. If his precious Joey was gone forever, all bets were off.

Jenny, wearing an oversized apron and standing by the kitchen counter, was using the food processor to slice up cabbage for coleslaw. As soon as she caught sight of him, she abandoned her post and raced over.

“What's going on?” she demanded. “You left without saying a word. Tell me!”

Butch dropped onto the bench of the breakfast nook and buried his face in his hands. “It's your mother,” he said. “She's been kidnapped.”

He told the story then—as much of it as he knew anyway. A wide-eyed Jenny sat stone-faced across from him, staring and listening. The other women listened, too, but they kept on working, with Eva Lou and Carol mixing up and kneading batches of yeast dough while Marcie formed already raised dough into rolls and placed them on cookie sheets to rise a second time.

“Are you saying she could die?” Jenny asked at last when Butch finished.

He nodded miserably.

“And they're all out there right now trying to save her?”

Butch nodded again.

“Why aren't you out there, too?” Jenny demanded furiously. “Shouldn't you be helping them instead of sitting here doing nothing?”

Her angry words weren't questions so much as outright accusations.

Butch didn't want to own up to the real reason he had come home—that he hadn't wanted to run the risk of leaving both Jenny and her little brother fatherless and motherless. “I'm not a cop,” he said instead. “I'd just be in the way. Besides, Chief Deputy Hadlock is doing a terrific job under the most dire of circumstances.”

“Right,” Jenny muttered sarcastically. “Of course he is.”

With that, she got up from the table, leaving Butch sitting alone. She returned to her food processor, slicing up the cabbage heads with an impressive show of displaced fury. Jenny might not have inherited her mother's fiery red hair, but she hadn't missed out on Joanna's hot temper.

Having worn out his welcome in the kitchen, Butch retreated to the patio, where Jim Bob Brady and Bob Brundage, two guys with absolutely no blood ties between them, were keeping watch over Butch's propane-fired gas grill and tending to the several savory-smelling hunks of beef brisket that were already aligned side by side in the smoker.

“What's up?” Jim Bob asked. “The way you left without a word of explanation, it's got to be something serious.”

And so Butch was obliged to tell the story again, from beginning to end. The whole while he was recounting the details, his eyes drifted off in the direction of Geronimo. With intervening hills between the mountain and High Lonesome Ranch, there was no way for him to see that far, but his heart and soul—his very existence; Joanna and his baby girl—were up on that unseen mountain.
What if they don't make it?
he wondered.
What if they don't come home to me? What if?

Feeling lost and helpless and knowing the barbecue preparations were moving forward just fine without him, he opted for spending some time alone.

“I'm going to go check on the horses,” he said.

With Jenny's black Lab, Lucky, at his heels, he went out to the corral and spent some quality time with Joanna's rescued mare, a blind Appaloosa named Spot, and Jenny's now-retired barrel-racing gelding, a sorrel named Kiddo. Butch was standing there, weeping silently into the smooth hair on Kiddo's neck, when his phone rang. With trembling hands, he wrestled the device out of his pocket. Caller ID told him it was an
unidentified caller.

“Hello?”

“It's Robin,” Agent Watkins said breathlessly. “It's over. She's safe.”

Not trusting his ability to stand, Butch staggered drunkenly over to the nearest wooden fence post and leaned against it. Even though his head was shaved, he could feel his hair follicles standing on end. “You're sure she's okay?”

“I haven't seen her yet,” Robin continued. “I've been told she has some bumps and bruises, but nothing too serious. It's still a very chaotic scene out here. Jeremy Stock is dead. He jumped to his death from the top of the mountain, but before he offed himself, the asshole shot the dog. My understanding is that Spike's still alive. There's a team up on the mountain right now, trying to bring him down.”

“But you're sure Joey's okay,” Butch said, as if he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it.

“Look,” Agent Watkins said, “if you don't want to take my word for it, why don't you come see for yourself? The mop up from this incident is going to take time, but as of right now, the shooting war is over. If you happened to show up on the scene, I don't think Chief Deputy Hadlock would have balls enough to send you packing. Just don't you tell him I told you so.”

“Thank you,” Butch murmured. “Thank you more than I can say. I'm on my way.”

His first instinct was to go straight to the garage and take off—do not pass Go; do not collect two hundred dollars. Then he thought better of it. He sprinted over to the patio and gave the wonderful news to the beef brisket guys before heading into the kitchen. Jenny looked up the moment he entered.

“She's okay,” he announced.

Jenny fairly flew across the room and threw herself into his arms. “Really?”

“Really. Agent Watkins tells me processing the crime scene is
probably going to be an all-nighter. I'm going to drive out there now. Want to come along?”

For an answer, Jenny whipped off her apron and headed for the garage. “Which car?” she asked. “Yours or Mom's?”

“Your mother's,” he answered. “Bob is parked behind mine.”

“What happened?” Jenny asked.

“I don't have the whole story, but somehow and for some unknowable reason, Deputy Stock took your mother captive and forced her to climb Geronimo.”

“Why? What was he going to do to her up there, kill her?”

“I'm not sure, but probably,” Butch said. “Maybe we should ask your mom that question the next time we see her.”

“But why would he do something like that?” Jenny asked. “I mean, he's worked for Mom forever, hasn't he?”

Was this the time for Butch to tell her what he had heard in the conference room, that Jeremy Stock had gone on a crazed rampage and had murdered both his wife and son? He did a silent eenie, meenie, miny, moe, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the remembered words to the old counting rhyme. When the last word let him off the hook, he gratefully accepted that decision. After all, Jeremy Stock's murderous atrocities were police business. Talking about them outside of law enforcement circles was frowned on, even with family members.

“I don't know what set him off,” Butch hedged. “That's something else we'll have to ask your mom, but I do have something to tell you. I wasn't being honest before.”

“About what?” Jenny asked.

“About why I didn't go to the crime scene.”

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid.”

They were stopped at the stop sign at the turn onto Highway 80. When Butch glanced in Jenny's direction, he found her staring at him.

“Afraid of what?” she asked. “Afraid of getting killed?”

Butch shook his head. “What terrified me was the idea that if something happened to both your mother and me, you and Dennis would be left totally on your own. I may not be your real father, Jen, but I'm the only one you have. The thought of your possibly losing both your mom and me scared the living daylights out of me. So I was a good boy. When Chief Deputy Hadlock told me to go home, much as I didn't want to, I did as I was told. I came home, sat on my hands, and prayed a lot.”

“And your prayers were answered,” Jenny said softly.

Butch nodded. “Looks like,” he said.

A moment later, Jenny reached across the center console and touched his hand. “Thanks, Dad,” she said. “And for the record, coming home was the right thing to do.”