Tonight the big story was from Tennessee, where some kid had gone berserk and had shot up a school bus, killing the driver as well as two children and injuring three others before some of the other kids on the bus tackled the shooter and wrestled the gun out of his hands.
“He was just a regular kid,” a tearful principal was saying into the microphone someone had shoved in his face. “Something of a loner, but he never gave his teachers any trouble. This just came at us out of the blue, with no warning.”
“See there,” Wayne said. “Now they’re turning school buses into war zones. You should stop driving that thing, Aggie. The way kids are today, it’s too dangerous.”
The stricken principal’s words had already chilled Agnes Hooper’s heart. Loner, she thought. Never gave teachers any trouble.
“That’s what people say about Lucy Ridder behind her back,” Agnes said softly. “That she’s a loner.”
Wayne turned away from the blaring television set and studied his wife’s face. “Lucy Ridder,” he said thoughtfully. “Isn’t she that Indian kid who lives with her grandmother out on Middlemarch Road?”
Agnes nodded. “Lucy’s the last one off my bus in the afternoon and the first one on in the morning.”
Wayne covered his face with both hands. “Dammit, Aggie!” he exclaimed. “I wish you could quit that damned job. Just haul off and quit. Walk away from the whole stupid mess.”
But they both knew quitting wasn’t an option. Driving a school bus didn’t pay beans, but the benefits were good. And it was Agnes Hooper’s medical benefits with the Elfrida Unified School District that were keeping her husband alive.
“You know I can’t do that, hon,” she said calmly. “It’s just not in the cards.”
Wayne shook his head. “It’s not right,” he said. “I’m the one who should be out working and taking care of you. That’s how life’s supposed to be, not the other way around. The last thing you should have to do is be out dealing with a bunch of crazy kids day in and day out!”
“They’re good kids,” Agnes said soothingly, wanting to calm him down. Dr. Loomis said it was bad for Wayne to be stressed. “They’re not crazy. As for Lucy Ridder, she’s never given me a moment’s trouble.”
“Right,” Wayne Hooper said with a despairing shake of his head. “As I recall, that’s the exact same thing that principal just said about the kid who shot up the school bus back there in Tennessee—he never gave anybody a lick of trouble.”
After finding Clayton Rhodes’ body, Joanna shifted into automatic and made all the necessary calls. Once George Winfield, Cochise County’s medical examiner, had been summoned to the scene, there was nothing for her to do but wait. She did go inside the unlocked house as far as the little telephone table. There she came face-to-face with a much younger image of Clayton Rhodes in a framed, formally posed wedding picture taken of him and his late wife, Molly. Bony and bow-legged even then, Clayton looked grimly uncomfortable and out of character in a dark, double-breasted suit. The youthful, sweet-faced Molly, slender in her bridal finery, bore little resemblance to the broad-hipped, heavyset woman Joanna remembered meeting years earlier, when she had first come to High Lonesome Ranch.
Turning from the picture, Joanna donned a pair of latex gloves and rummaged through the drawer in the table until she located a small, leather-bound address book. She remembered Clayton’s daughter’s first name—Reba—but she had no idea what her married name might be. Consequently, Joanna had to page through almost the whole notebook until she finally located the name under the letter S for Singleton—Reba Singleton. The address listed was in Los Gatos, California. Jotting the address and 415 phone number down on a scrap of paper, Joanna returned the address book to the table drawer and punched up her cell phone.
“I’d like the number for the Los Gatos, California, Police Department,” she told the operator.
“The emergency number?” the operator asked.
With Clayton dead, the emergency was long over. “No,” Joanna said. “The non-emergency number will be fine.”
She spent what seemed like several long minutes waiting on hold before a desk sergeant finally took her call. “My name is Joanna Brady,” she told him. “Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona. We’ve had a death here—a man named Clayton Rhodes. I understand his daughter lives there where you are—in Los Gatos. I need someone to do a next-of-kin notification.”
The desk sergeant sounded terminally bored. “Name?” he said.
“Clayton Rhodes.”
“No. The daughter’s name.”
“Reba Singleton.”
“Address.”
“943 Valencia,” Joanna returned, followed by the 415 area code telephone number.
“You say this Singleton woman is the stiff’s daughter?”
“The deceased’s name is Clayton Rhodes,” Joanna returned sharply. “The man happened to be a friend of mine—a good friend.”
“And this is the most recent address information you have for his daughter?”