BUTCH DIXON WAS PISSED—ROYALLY AND COMPLETELY PISSED. IN terms of travel time, it was less than ten minutes from Joanna’s office at the Justice Center on Highway 80 to the house at High Lonesome Ranch. When she had told him on the phone that she was coming straight home, he had been dumb enough to believe her. He had gone ahead and put food on the table. For one thing, it was ready. Jim Bob and Eva Lou, longtime retirees, were used to eating earlier in the afternoon, so starting to eat at six thirty meant it was already well past their usual dinnertime. Bob and Marcie were still on East Coast time. As far as their interior clocks were concerned, it was verging on ten P.M. Jenny and Denny were hungry, too.
It wasn’t as though he had spent the afternoon slaving over a hot stove. Making green chili casserole was duck soup to him. Heating up tamales, refritos, and tortillas and getting them on the table wasn’t a big deal, either, but doing that while also greeting people, serving beverages, and trying to carry on three different conversations wasn’t easy.
And now, with dinner almost over, Joanna’s place at the table was still empty while he tried to entertain his wife’s shirttail relatives—her former in-laws and the brother she barely knew.
When the landline phone rang just as Butch finished cleaning his plate, he was relieved to have a legitimate reason to jump up and answer it.
“Hey, Butch,” Casey Ledford said, “I hate to intrude on your evening, but could I speak to Sheriff Brady, please? I’ve got some news she’s going to want to hear.”
“You’d be welcome to speak to her if she were here,” Butch replied a little too curtly. “As far as I know, she’s still at the department.”
“That’s funny,” Casey said. “I just peeked at her office. Her lights are off.”
Butch’s throat constricted. Those were words cop-related families everywhere dreaded hearing—that for some reason their law enforcement loved one wasn’t where he or she was supposed to be. Even more feared would be the awful late-night phone call or the piercing middle-of-the-night doorbell ring that always preceded the official arrival of the worst possible news.
Butch looked back toward the table. Jenny, smoothly assuming the role of hostess, was in the midst of an entertaining tale about dropping Maggie off at her new stable. Hoping that no one at the table was listening in, he tried to speak to Casey without letting his voice betray his roiling emotions.
“Maybe you could go back and check again,” he suggested quietly. “I spoke to her half an hour or so ago, and she told me she was leaving right then. She should have been here by now.”
“Do you mind holding while I go look?” Casey asked.
“Sure,” Butch replied. “I’ll hold.”
He waited—for a long time. There was no elevator music playing on the line with intermittent cheery-voiced announcements telling him, “Your call is very important to us.” And the longer he waited, the more he understood that something untoward had happened—something bad.
When Casey finally returned to the line, she was breathless—as though she’d just run a sprint—and her voice was guarded. “I’m afraid something’s terribly wrong,” she said. “Sheriff Brady’s Yukon is there, and so are her purse, briefcase, and phone—scattered all over the sidewalk. From the evidence I’m seeing on the ground, she may have been Tasered.”
Butch’s heart constricted. He wanted to speak, but didn’t trust his voice to work properly.
“I need to go now,” Casey continued. “We’re seeing AFIDs on the sidewalk in front of her parking place, and I need to see if I can get someone from Taser International to help me identify them.”
Butch understood that in cop-speak AFIDs were Anti-Felon Identification tags—tiny pieces of material that resembled confetti that could be used to identify each individual Taser.
“But where is she?” a desperate Butch demanded when he was finally able to speak, but by then the phone line was empty. Casey was already gone. For a time, he stood still listening to the buzzing hum of the dial tone before carefully returning the receiver to its charger. Something about his manner must have alerted Bob Brundage. When Butch turned around, Bob was eyeing him suspiciously. Then, without asking any questions, Bob rose from his chair. “You guys stay put,” he told the others. “I’ll help Butch clear.”
Moments later, in the relative privacy of the kitchen and under the noisy cover of rinsing dishes, Bob asked, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“It’s Joanna,” Butch managed. “She’s gone missing from her office.”
“Missing?” Bob echoed.
Butch nodded miserably. “It looks as though she was assaulted out in the parking lot as she left the office to come home.”
Bob simply shouldered Butch aside. “Let me handle the dishes,” he said. “You go do whatever you need to do. Marcie and I will stay here with the kids.”
Butch didn’t hang around waiting for a second offer. He poked his head into the dining room. “I have to go out for a while,” he said, offering no further explanation. “I’ll be back soon. You guys go ahead and have dessert.”
Opening the garage door, Butch discovered Bob’s rented Taurus was parked directly behind his Subaru. Rather than return to the dining room and ask Bob to move it, he grabbed the key fob to Joanna’s Enclave from the collection of keys hanging on the laundry room pegboard. Moments later, he peeled out of the driveway in Joanna’s SUV rather than his own, leaving behind a billowing cloud of dust.
Minutes after entering the highway, he rounded the barrier of low hills that separated the ranch from the Justice Center. Long before he could make out the buildings themselves, he saw the distinctive red and blue glow of emergency lights pulsing behind what he knew to be Joanna’s office. Gripping the steering wheel that much tighter, he shoved the gas pedal all the way to the floor and drove like hell.
He didn’t worry about being stopped for speeding. He didn’t need to. He already knew that every cop in the immediate area was otherwise engaged.