“I guess that means we should let him up?” the patrol-man asked.

“I guess so,” Joanna said.

Furious and embarrassed both, Joanna turned on her heel and marched back to the Bronco to tell Jonathan Becker that everything was under control. Meanwhile the two Douglas officers helped Butch to his feet and removed the cuffs. They were still apologizing and brushing the dirt off Butch’s clothing when Joanna returned.

“It’s all right,” Butch said to them impatiently. “I’m fine.”

“You only think you’re fine,” Joanna corrected. “What the hell were you thinking of?”

“What were you thinking of?” Butch returned. “You said you were going to the hospital, but when you left there, instead of going home you took off in the opposite direction. What was I supposed to think?”

“That I was doing my job.”

“And I suppose that includes laying a trap for me-having a whole squad of cops pull me over, handcuff me, and throw me on the ground?”

“I happen to have an endangered witness in my car,” Joanna told him. “A witness somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble to get rid of. When I saw your car, I thought someone had followed me and was going to try to kill him.”

“So who is he?” Butch grumbled. “Shouldn’t I at least get to meet the guy?”

Something in the way he said the words touched Joanna’s funny bone. She stopped being mad and started to laugh. The release of tension was catching. Within moments, Butch was laughing uproariously too, as were the two Douglas cops.

Holding her sides, Joanna staggered up to the door of the Bronco and opened it. “Jonathan Becker,” she gasped. “I’d like you to meet Butch Dixon-the man I’m going to marry.”

Butch temporarily stifled his laughter. With dead-pan seriousness he shook Jonathan Becker’s hand. It was enough to make Joanna giggle that much harder. Only when two cars came by, passing carefully and gawking, did Joanna realize how ridiculous they all must have looked.

“We’d better get out of the road before someone does get hurt,” she said.

“Where to?” Butch asked.

“Let’s go to High Lonesome Ranch instead of my office,” Joanna said. “And if Dick Voland happens to be there, it’ll make it that much more interesting.”

Friday dawned clear and cold. Joanna awakened bone-tired and completely alone. After hours of strategic planning, Butch had taken Jonathan Becker into town and booked him into a room at the Copper Queen. Both Junior and Jenny had spent the night with Jim Bob and Eva Lou.

During the contentious discussions that followed their arrival at High Lonesome Ranch, Butch Dixon hadn’t been shy about voicing his opinions. With Becker and possibly Joanna in danger, Butch had been in favor of scrubbing the whole idea. To be fair, Joanna herself had wavered back and forth a dozen times. On the one hand, using Becker as bait seemed like a daring enough plan that it just might work. On the other, if Alice Rogers’ funeral was stocked with cops on loan from jurisdictions all over southeastern Arizona, how would it be possible to tell all the strangers apart? How would anyone be able to separate good guys from bad guys?

The drug-selling activities of the rogue North Las Vegas cops were enough to justify calling in the DEA, and in the end it was Adam York, Joanna’s friend at the DEA, who tipped the scales in favor of mounting the operation when he offered Joanna the use of one of his crack squads of undercover agents. That way, all the visiting officers would be known to one another and, hopefully, unknown to whatever bad guys might show up.

At one o’clock in the morning, when Butch and Jonathan Becker had left, the outlined game plan had seemed feasible enough. At seven-thirty that same morning and in the cold, harsh light of day, it didn’t seem like nearly such a good idea.

Stiff, sore, sluggish from lack of sleep, and with her two black eyes glowing like purple beacons despite a dusting of Coverup, Joanna straggled into the office at ten after eight. When she tore off the topmost sheet on her desk calendar, it didn’t help her mood when she saw that the date was Friday the thirteenth. Leaving her purse on her desk, she hurried out into the lobby in search of a cup of coffee. She found Frank Montoya waiting by Kristin’s desk, a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of paperwork in the other.

“Whoa,” he said when he caught sight of Joanna. “That’s a matched pair of shiners if I ever saw one.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That’s not exactly what I wanted to hear.”

By the time Joanna returned to her office with her own cup of coffee, Frank was already seated at the conference table and sorting through copies of incident and contact reports. Joanna stopped by her desk and picked up two messages. Drew Gunderson’s name and telephone number was on one. The other was from Detective Hank Lazier with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

“What’s this?” Frank asked when she set Gunderson’s message in front of him.

“The name and number of the lawyer who set up Junior Dowdle’s guardianship arrangement.”

“Junior Dowdle?” Frank repeated. “You mean we’ve figured out Junior’s last name? We know where he lives? How did you do that?”

“I didn’t,” Joanna admitted. “Butch did. He located the mother with the help of some people from Special Olympics. Her name is Ellen Dowdle, and she’s in a nursing home in Rapid City, South Dakota. Because Ellen has been left incapacitated by a stroke, Junior was placed in the care of relatives-Ellen’s niece and the niece’s husband, Chuck and Irene Johnson. Last known address on them was in Mesa, but they’ve skipped. My guess is they’re the ones who ditched Junior at the arts fair. I’d also be willing to bet that just because they’re no longer caring for Junior doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped cashing the checks that were supposed to go for his care and upkeep. I want someone to start skip-chasing on them right away. I tried calling the lawyer, Drew Gunderson, last night, but he had already gone home for the day.”

“Would you like me to call him?” Frank asked.

“No,” Joanna said. “I will, but not until after I drink at least one cup of coffee and get my head screwed on straight. In the meantime, I need to bring you up to speed on the Jonathan Becker situation.”

“What about him? He’s still missing, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s not. I found him last night. Becker’s going to be at his wife’s funeral this afternoon, along with several other people.”

“What people?” Frank asked. “What all went on last night?”

“You’d be surprised,” Joanna told him. Half an hour later, Frank Montoya left Joanna’s office with a whole series of marching orders which included checking with the attending physicians for both Ross Jenkins and Dena Hogan as well as coordinating the joint operation which would include Adam York’s DEA squad along with Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal.

By ten o’clock that morning, Joanna was on the phone with Drew Gunderson in Aberdeen, South Dakota. “I wish I could say I’m surprised,” he said, when Joanna finished reeling off her story. “I never did like the man Irene Wilcox married. Smiles all the time, but smarmy. Tried to tell Ellen as much, but she insisted it would be all right. It was either let Irene and Chuck have Junior or send him to a home. Ellen’s kept her son out of a home all her life. In fact, I’m sure the strain of it is part of why she ended up having that stroke. She’s not very old, you know, only seventy-five.”

Listening to him, Joanna wondered how old Drew Gunderson was-probably some years older than Ellen Dowdle.

“I’ll have to make arrangements to go over to Rapid to see Ellen this weekend,” he continued. “I had other plans, but I’ll change them. Ellen and I will talk it over and try to decide what to do, although talking isn’t quite the right word. I talk and Ellen blinks-one for yes and two for no. I’m not sure what to do with Junior in the meantime. Is there someplace down there where you can send him to be cared for until I can make arrangements to have someone come get him?”