Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [118]
Then, as suddenly as Joanna had driven into the cloudburst, she emerged on the far side of it into blazingly bright sunlight that turned the pavement surface a shimmering silver. Switching off the air-conditioning, she opened the windows and left them open. In the aftermath of the storm, outside temperatures had dropped a good twenty degrees. The distinctively refreshing smell of summer rain on sun-warmed creosote bushes washed through the Civvie. It wasn’t enough to dispel all her concerns about the impending visit with Stella Adams, but it helped.
When Joanna reached the Divide outside Bisbee, the storm clouds had been replaced by bright blue, rain-washed skies. The pavement on the road was still slightly wet, while hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascaded down the rocky cliffs of the Mule Mountains. On both sides of the Divide, washes ran bank to bank with muddy, swiftly moving water. As a lifelong resident of southern Arizona, Joanna knew how treacherous those fast-moving floods of water could be. Every year someone, usually a hapless visitor from out of state, would drown after being surprised by flood-waters from a downpour that had happened miles away.
Ignoring the turnoff to the Justice Center, Joanna drove straight to Stella and Denny Adams’s home on Arizona Street, just across from Warren Ballpark. There were no cars parked in the driveway or on the street in front of the low-slung iron fence, but Joanna parked along a concrete-lined drainage ditch. It, too, was running with several inches of swiftly moving water. Then she walked across a narrow footbridge, through a gate, and up onto the front porch, where she rang the doorbell.
Inside she heard the muffled sound of a television set tuned to something that sounded like MTV. Moments after the doorbell rang, the TV set was silenced. A few seconds after that, the door opened and there stood Nathan Adams. The sight of him was enough to take Joanna’s breath away. When she had first seen Eddie Mossman, she remembered that he had looked familiar somehow, even though she was certain she had never seen the man before. Now she knew why. Nathan Adams looked just like Eddie Mossman—just like his grandfather.
Or was it also, Joanna wondered for the first time, just like his father? No one had said as much. No one had admitted that, at the time Carol Mossman had fled Mexico with her two younger sisters, Stella might have been pregnant with her own father’s child. And the simple fact that no one had mentioned it made Joanna wonder that much more whether it was true.
“Yeah?” Nathan said. “Whaddya want?”
“Is your mother home?” Joanna managed. “There’s something I need to talk to her about.”
“She’s not here.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
Nathan Adams shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “Could be an hour or two, maybe longer.”
“What about your dad?” Joanna asked hopefully.
“He stays at an apartment up in Tucson during the week,” Nathan explained. “He’s usually only home on weekends.”
“Oh,” Joanna said. “I’ll be going then.”
“Want me to have her call you when she gets in?”
“No,” Joanna said. “Don’t bother. I’ll talk with her tomorrow.”
As Joanna walked back across the wide porch, the door slammed behind her. A moment later, the atonal thumping of MTV returned. Joanna retreated to the Civvie and then sat there for several long minutes without turning the key in the ignition.
Is that the truth? she wondered. Is Nathan the product of an incestuous relationship between Stella and her father? And if so, does he have any idea about the truth of the situation?
Joanna remembered Nathan as he had appeared when she had first laid eyes on him that day in the lobby of the Justice Center. He had struck her as a surly, smart-alecky teenager—typical, in other words. She had thought him spoiled, doted on, and more than a little obnoxious, but normal—utterly normal. But could you be a normal teenager if you knew that kind of awful truth