Authors: J. A. Jance
Stand Down (8 page)
Making his way back down the streambed, he kept a close watch on his footing, avoiding loose rocks wherever possible. With the heavily laden pack on his back, even a small fall might result in a twisted ankle or a broken bone, and one of those could be serious business when he was out here all by himself with no way of letting anyone know exactly where he was and no way of summoning help. And rocks weren't the only danger.
On this late-Âspring afternoon, rattlesnakes emerging from hibernation were out in force. In fact, halfway back to his truck, a diamondback, almost invisible on the sandy surroundings, slithered past him when he stopped long enough to wipe away the sweat that was running into his eyes. That pause had been a stroke of luck for both Amos and the snake. If left undisturbed, snakes didn't bother him. Most of the time, they went their way while Amos went his. But if he'd stepped on the creature unawares, all bets would have been off. One way or the other, the snake would have been dead and even, in spite of his heavy hiking boots, Amos might well have been badly bitten in the process.
Amos's lifetime search for gemstones, minerals, fossils, and artifacts had put him in mountains like this for decades. Watching the snake slide silently and safely off into the sparse underbrush served as a reminder that snakes, javelinas, bobcats, deer, and even black bear had been the original inhabitants of this still-Âuntamed place. Humans, including both the Tohono O'odham and the Apache who had roamed these arid lands for thousands of years, were relative, and probably somewhat unwelcome, intruders. White men, including Amos himself, were definitely Johnny-Âcome-Âlatelies in this solitary place.
Reshouldering his pack, Amos allowed as how he was missing John's presence about then. These days, he was finding it harder to go back downhill than it was to climb up. And with the weight in the pack? Well, he would have appreciated having someone to carry half the load. John might have said they were quits, but as far as Amos was concerned, they were still partners, and they would split everything fifty-Âfifty.
And there he was doing it againâÂthinking about John. An hour or so after the altercation, when Amos had left the bar, he might have looked as though he hadn't a care in the world, but he did. His heart was heavy. He might have won the battle, but he was worried he had lost the war.
Despite the fact that they weren't blood relations, they were peas in a pod. Hot-Âtempered? Check. Too fast with the fists? Check. Didn't care to listen to reason? Check. Thirty years earlier, Amos had hooked up with a girl named Hattie Smith, who had been the same kind of bad news for him as Ava was for John. A barroom fight over Hattie the evening of Amos's twenty-Âfirst birthday had resulted in an involuntary manslaughter charge that had sent Amos to the slammer for five to ten. He recognized that there was a lot of the old pot-Âand-Âkettle routine here.
Yes, Amos had gotten his head screwed on straight in the course of those six years. He had read his way through a tattered copy of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
that he found in the prison library, giving himself an education that would have compared favorably to any number of college degrees. Even so, he didn't want John to go through the same school of hard knocks. He wanted to protect the younger man from all that because John Lassiter was the closest thing to a son Amos Warren would ever have.
John had grown up next door to Amos's family home. They had lived in a pair of dilapidated but matching houses on a dirt street on Tucson's far west side. Amos lived there because he had inherited the house from his mother. Once out of prison, he had neither the means nor the ambition to go looking for something better. John's family rented the place next door because it was cheap, and cheap was the best they could do.
To Amos's way of thinking, John's parents had been little more than pond scum. His father was a drunk. His mother was a whore who regularly locked the poor kid outside in the afternoons while she entertained her various gentleman callers. On one especially rainy, winter's day, Amos had been outraged to see John, sitting on the front porch, shivering in the cold. He'd been shoved outside in his bare feet and a ragged pair of pajamas.
Amos had ventured out in the yard and stood on the far side of the low rock wall that separated them. “What're you doing?” Amos had asked.
“Waiting,” came the disconsolate answer. “My mom's busy.”
For months, Amos had seen the cars coming and going in the afternoons while old man Lassiter wasn't at home. Amos had understood all too well what was really going on. He also knew what it was like to be locked out of the house. Back when he was a kid, the same thing had happened to him time and again. In his case, it had been so Amos's father could beat the crap out of Amos's mother in relative peace and quiet. What was going on in the Lassiter household might have been a slightly different take on the matter, but it was close enough.
Without a word, Amos had gone back inside. When he reappeared, he came back to the fence armed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Hungry?” he asked.
Without further prompting, the boy had scampered barefoot across the muddy yard. Grabbing the sandwich, he gobbled it down.
“My name's Amos. What's yours?”
“John,” the boy mumbled through a mouthful of peanut butter.
“Have you ever played Chinese checkers?”
John shook his head. “What's Chinese checkers?”
“Come on,” Amos said. “I'll teach you.”
He had hefted the kid up over the wall, shifted him onto his hip, and carried him to his own house. That had been their beginning. Had Amos Warren been some kind of pervert, it could have been the beginning of something very bad, but it wasn't. Throughout John's chaotic childhood, Amos Warren had been the only fixed point in the poor kid's life, his only constant. John Lassiter, Sr., died in a drunk-Âdriving one-Âcar rollover when his son was in fourth grade. By the time John was in high school, his mother, Sandra, had been through three more husbands, each one being a step worse than the one preceding.
Despite John's mother's singular lack of mothering and because he ate more meals at Amos's house than he did at home, John had grown like crazy. More than six feet tall by the time he was in seventh grade, John would have been a welcome addition to any junior-Âhigh or high-Âschool athletic program, but Sandra had insisted that she didn't believe in “team sports.” What she really didn't believe in was going to the trouble of getting him signed up, paying for physicals or uniforms, or going to and from games or practices. Amos suspected that she didn't want John involved in anything that might have interfered with her barfly social life and late-Âafternoon assignations, which were now conducted somewhere away from home, leaving John on his own night after night.
Amos knew that the good kids were the ones who were involved in constructive activities after school. The bad kids were left to their own devices. It came as no surprise to Amos that John ended up socializing with the baddies. By the time he hit high school, he had too much time on his hands and a bunch of badass friends.
As a kid, Amos had earned money for Saturday afternoon matinees in downtown Tucson by scouring the roadsides and local teenager party spots for discarded pop bottles, which he had turned over to Mr. Yee, the old man who ran the tiny grocery store on the corner. When Amos happened to come across some pieces of broken Indian pottery, Mr. Yee had been happy to take those off his hands, too, along with Amos's first-Âever arrowhead. From then on, the old Chinaman had been willing to buy whatever else Amos was able to scrounge up.
Once Amos got out of prison, he discovered there weren't many employment options available for paroled felons. As a result, he had returned to his onetime hobby of scouring his surroundings for treasures. He knew the desert flatlands like he knew the backs of his own hands, and he knew the mountains as well, the rugged ranges that marched across the lower landscape like so many towering chess pieces scattered across the desert floorâÂthe Rincons and the Catalinas, the Tortolitas and the Huachucas, the Pelloncios and the Chiricahuas. Now, though, with the benefit of Amos's store of prison-Âgained knowledge, he was far more educated about what he found. He was able to locate plenty of takers for those items without the need for someone like Mr. Yee to act as a middleman. He earned a decent if modest living and was content with his solitary life. Then John Lassiter got sent to juvie. Amos, claiming to be the kid's most recent stepfather, was the one who had bailed him out and took him home. From then on, that's where John had livedâÂin the extra room at Amos's house rather than next door with his mother.
By then, Amos could see that the die was cast. John wasn't going to go to college. If he was ever going to amount to anything, Amos would have to show him how to make that happen. From then on, Amos set out to teach John what he knew. Every weekend and during the long, broiling summers, John went along with Amos on those long desert scavenger hunts. Most of the time, John made himself useful by carrying whatever Amos found. Nevertheless, he was an apt pupil. Over time, he became almost as good at finding stuff as Amos was, and between them, their unofficial partnership made a reasonably good living.
Not wanting to attract attention to any of his special hunting grounds, Amos usually parked his jeep a mile at least from any intended target. This time, he had left the vehicle hidden in a grove of mesquite well outside the mouth of the canyon. Approaching the spot where he'd left the truck, Amos caught a tiny whiff of cigarette smoke floating in the air.
John was a chain smokerâÂsomething else the two of them argued about constantly, bickering like an old married Âcouple. This time, however, Amos's spirits lifted slightly as soon as his nostrils caught wind of the smoke. This out-Âof-Âthe-Âway spot was a place he and John visited often. Maybe the kid had come to his senses after all and followed him here. Maybe it was time to apologize and let bygones be bygones, and if John wanted Ava Martin in his life, so be it.
Once inside the grove, Amos looked around and saw no sign of John or his vehicle, either. That was hardly surprising. Maybe he had chosen some other place to park. There was always a chance John had gone out to do some scavenging of his own.
Amos turned his attention to the pack, unshouldering it carefully and settling it into the bed of the truck. Reaching inside the pack, his fingers located the wadded-Âup shirt. Feeling through the fabric, he was relieved to find that the pot was still in one piece.
A new puff of smoke wafted past him. That was when he sensed something else, something incongruous underlying the smell of burning cigaretteâÂa hint of perfume. He turned and was dismayed to see Ava standing a mere five feet away. She was holding a weapon that Amos reckoned to be a .22 revolver, probably the very one he had given John for his birthday several months earlier.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Where's John?”
“Don't move,” she warned. “I know how to use this thing.”
“Where's John?” Amos repeated.
“He's not here?”
“Why are you? How did you know to come here?”
“John and I have been here together several times. You know, for picnics and such. He told me this was where you'd be today.”
Outrage boiled in Amos's heart. John had brought her here? He'd shown her this very special hunting ground, one Amos had shared with no one else but John?
The depth of her betrayal was breathtaking. Amos took a step forward. “Why, you little bitch . . .” he began. He never had a chance to finish his threat.
Ava had told him the truth. She really did know how to use the weapon in her hand. Her first bullet caught him clean in the heart. Amos Warren was dead before he hit the ground. The second and third bulletsâÂthe unnecessary ones? Those she fired just for good measureâÂsimply because she could. And those were what the prosecutor would later label as overkill and a sign of rage when it came time to try John Lassiter for first-Âdegree murder.
Â
J
.
A
.
JANCE
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, the Ali Reynolds series, and four interrelated thrillers about the Walker Family as well as a volume of poetry. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.
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.
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Joanna Brady Mysteries
The Old Blue Line: A Joanna Brady Novella
J. P. Beaumont Mysteries
Ring in the Dead: A J. P. Beaumont Novella
Walker Family Mysteries
Ali Reynolds Mysteries
Web of Evil
Hand of Evil
Cruel Intent
Trial by Fire
Fatal Error
Left for Dead
Deadly Stakes
Moving Target
Cold Betrayal
And the novella
A Last Goodbye