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beneath the vehicle’s tires before the sheriff eventually asked, “Was Andy having trouble with anybody?”
    “Trouble?” Joanna repeated dully. “What do you mean trouble?”
    McFadden shrugged. “I don’t know. At work possibly or with any of the neighbors. When you live out in the country this way, you can run into some surprising complications. Remember that case down by Bisbee junction where two of Old Man Dollarhyde’s cattle drowned in those new people’s fancy swimming pool? I thought World War III was going to break out over that one for sure.”
    Joanna thought of her neighbors. The closest ones, Charlene and Bill Harris, lived a mile farther down High Lonesome Road on the right. They had two high school-aged girls who sometimes baby-sat for Jennifer. Then, across the road and up a shallow canyon was the Rhodes’s place which belonged to a spry octogenarian named Clayton Rhodes who still rode his fence line on horseback each year rather than using his aged pickup truck. Beyond the Harris place was that of a fairly re-cent arrival, Adrienne West with her fledgling herd of llamas. Among the neighbors on High Lonesome Road there had never been even the smallest hint of difficulty.
    “No,” Joanna replied. “Nothing like that. Besides, no one out here in the valley can afford a swimming pool.”
    “What about work?” McFadden asked.
    “None except ...”
    “Except what?”
    Embarrassed, she shrugged. “You know. The election and all that.”
    Andrew’s decision to run against Sheriff McFadden had caused a good deal of consternation in the Cochise County Sheriff’s department as well as in the community at large. Walter McFadden had already announced that this was the last time he would run for sheriff. As a result, most people felt that he shouldn’t have had any real opposition. Surprisingly, despite her husband’s determination to run, Joanna Brady was inclined to agree with that same general opinion. After all, McFadden had been her father’s undersheriff and hand-picked successor. Joanna still felt a good deal of loyalty to the man, but once Andy had committed to the race, Joanna had thrown herself into the campaign with all the fervor she had once devoted to her father’s re-election efforts.
    Joanna realized all this now as the truck sped on through the night. Regardless of what happened at University Medical Center, this year’s election campaign for Cochise County Sheriff was over for Andrew Brady.
    “You’re not thinking I had something to do with this, are you, Joanna?” the sheriff asked.
    “Of course not,” she replied honestly. “Not at all.”
    “Good,” Walter McFadden declared quietly. “I’d hate to think you did. I’m no cheater. When I win an election, I win it straight out or not at all.”
    Once again neither of them spoke while the truck ate up several miles of highway. Mc-Fadden was the first to break the silence. “Tell me, Joanna. Why’d he do it?”
    “Do what?”
    “File against me. Andy knew this would be my last term. I’d have been more than happy to see him run next time. Why’d he have to go and jump the gun like that?”
    Joanna studied the old man’s angular pro-file. Among Arizona’s collection of fifteen county sheriffs, Walter McFadden was considered something of an elder statesman. He was well liked and well respected.
    “I don’t know,” she answered. “Andy’s impatient. I guess he figured it was something he had to do. Anybody else would have fired him.”
    Walter McFadden shook his head. “That wouldn’t have been right,” he returned. “Every man’s got a God-given right to make a fool of himself if he wants to, but there must have been a reason. Did I do something to piss him off? Did I make him mad?”
    “If you did,” Joanna answered, “Andy never told me about it.”
    A plane went by overhead. Joanna sat for-ward and scanned the nighttime sky, hoping to catch sight of the medevac helicopter’s navigation