Free Shoot, Don't Shoot by J. A. Jance Page A

the words that were printed there: JOANNA BRADY, SHERIFF, COCHISE COUNTY, BISBEE, ARIZONA.
    “And how will you be going to El Paso?” she asked.
    “Interstate Ten from Tucson,” he said.
    Joanna nodded. “That’s about what I figured,” she said, dropping the card on his table. “If I were you, I’d check my equipment for any violations before I left here. I’d also be very careful not to speed once I got inside Cochise County.”
    She waited while he reached out one meaty paw to pick up the card and read it.
    Because the Arizona Highway Patrol, not the Sheriff’s Department, patrols the segment of I-10 that slices through Cochise County from the Pima County line to the New Mexico border, Joanna knew her words to be nothing more than an empty threat. Still, when the man read the text on her business card, he blanched.
    He was still holding the card as Joanna walked away. If nothing else, the experience would give him something to think about the next time he tried to pick up a lone woman minding her own business in a truck stop.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Had Joanna been going to the Hohokam Resort Hotel that evening instead of later on during the week, it would have been easy to find. The only high-rise for miles around, the twelve-story newly finished hotel towered over its low-rise Old Peoria neighbors, its layers of lighted windows glowing like beacons as Joanna made her way north on Grand Avenue.
    The Arizona Police Officers Academy turned out to be directly across the street. It was also across the railroad tracks, however, and the only way to get there was to cross the railroad at Olive and then turn in off Hatcher.
    The triangular site was located in an area that seemed to be zoned commercial. Along both Seventy-fifth and Hatcher, a high brick wall marked two sides of the property. Entry was gained through an ornate portal. Two cast-concrete angels stood guard on either side of the drive. An arched lintel rose up and over behind them. One of the angels had lost part of a wing—probably to vandals—while the other was still intact. The words GOD IS LOVE were carved into the lintel itself.
    The verse wasn’t exactly in keeping with the mission of a police academy, but Joanna knew where it came from—a man named Tommy Tompkins. The Reverend Tommy Tompkins.
    For years the APOA had limped along in the deteriorating classrooms of a decommissioned high school in central Phoenix. Only recently had the academy moved to its new home in Peoria. The APOA’s good fortune came as a result of Tommy’s fall from grace. He and his two top lieutenants had been shipped off to federal prison on income tax evasion convictions. As his religious and financial empire collapsed, the property he had envisioned as world headquarters of Tommy Tompkins International had fallen into the hands of the Resolution Trust Corporation.
    On fifteen acres of donated cotton field, Tommy had planned to build not only a glass-walled cathedral, but also the dorms and classrooms that would have allowed him to indoctrinate a cadre of handpicked missionaries. By the time Tommy Tompkins International fell victim to the RTC, the planned complex was only partially completed. The classroom wing along with dormitories, a temporary residence for Tommy himself, as well as a few outbuildings were all that were or ever would be finished.
    When the place went up for grabs, the state of Arizona had jumped at the chance to buy the property at a bargain-basement price since the site lay directly in the path of a proposed freeway extension. While awaiting voter approval of road-building monies, the state had leased the complex to the multijurisdictional consortium running APOA. The transaction was accomplished with the strict understanding that little or no money would be spent on remodeling. As a result, angels continued to guard the entrance of the place where police officers from all over the state of Arizona received their basic law enforcement training.
    Maybe