Paradise Lost by J. A. Jance

you’re sorry, Jenny,” Joanna said. “Grandma and Grandpa are there now to take you home, right?”
    “Yes,” Jenny murmured uncertainly with a stifled sob, her tears still very close to the surface.
    “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Joanna said. “But in the meantime, I want you to know I love you.”
    “‘Thank you.”
    “Grandma told me that you reported finding the body even though you knew you’d probably get in trouble. That was brave of you, Jenny. Brave and responsible. I’m really proud of you for doing that.
    “Thanks,” Jenny managed.
    “You go with the Gs now. I’ll see you tomorrow when I get home. Okay?”
    “‘kay, Morn.”
    “Bye-bye.”
    “Bye.”
    “I love you.”
    Jenny switched off the phone and then blundered back toward Grandma and Grandpa’s Honda. At the far end of the state, Sheriff Joanna Brady turned to her new husband.
    “How’d I do?” she asked.
    “Cool,” he said. “Understated elegance. Now come back to bed and let’s try to get some sleep. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    It was only a little past seven when Joanna and Butch, packed and breakfasted, left the Marriott in Page for the five hour drive to Phoenix. After the flurry of late-night phone calls, Joanna had had difficulty in falling asleep. She had lain awake for a long time, wondering if the dead woman in Apache Pass might be connected to the epidemic of carjackings that had invaded Cochise County. True, the previous crimes hadn’t been that vicious. None of the other victims had been badly hurt, but that didn’t mean whoever was doing it hadn’t decided to do the crime of carjacking one better.
    Leaving Page, Joanna was still thinking about the dead woman and whether or not finding the body would leave any lingering emotional scars on either Jenny or Dora. Lost in her deliberations Joanna hardly noticed the miles that passed in total silence.
    Butch was the one who spoke first. “No matter how long I live in Arizona,” he said, “I’ll never get over how beautiful the desert is.”
    For the first time, Joanna allowed herself to notice the scenery. On either side of the endless ribbon of two-lane blacktop, the surrounding desert seemed empty of human habitation—empty and forbidding. Early-morning sunlight and shadows slanted across the red and lavender rock formations, setting them in vivid relief against an azure sky. High off against a cloudless horizon, a solitary buzzard drifted effortlessly, floating in graceful, perfectly drawn circles. Just inside a barbed-wire fence a herd of sheep, their wool stained pink by the dust raised by their dainty hooves, scrabbled for bits of life-giving sustenance. Joanna drove past a meager trading post and a line of run-down makeshift clapboard sales stands where Native American tradesmen were starting to lay out their jewelry, baskets, and rugs in hopes of selling them to passing tourists.
    As a lifelong desert dweller, it was difficult for Joanna to see the stark landscape through the eyes of a Chicago area transplant. What Butch saw as wonderfully weird and exotic struck her as simply humdrum.
    “I keep thinking Cochise County is sparsely populated,” Joanna said with a laugh. “I suppose that compared to this, it’s a metropolis.”
    Butch reached over and took her hand. “Speaking of Cochise County,” he said, “have you made up your mind about whether or not you’re going to run again?”
    Joanna heaved a sigh. With the wedding and everything else going on, Joanna had kept sidestepping the issue. But now, three years into her term of office, she was going to have to decide soon.
    “I can’t quite see myself going back to selling insurance for Milo Davis,” she said with a rueful laugh.
    “No,” Butch agreed. “I can’t see that either.”
    “But I lived with my dad when he was running for office,” Joanna continued. “It was hell. When it was time for an election campaign, we hardly ever saw