by J. A. Jance
Grabbing a soda from the fridge, he stumbled into the living room. Yes, Midge was gone, but her influence lingered. He made sure he put the soda can on a coaster on the side table before dropping heavily into his recliner. The boots came off next. He wiggled his toes and massaged the aching balls of his feet. He’d spent almost eight solid hours tramping around the crime scene. In the old days, that wouldn’t have bothered him. These days? Well, that was another story.
Dispatch had awakened him out of a sound sleep when they called to notify him of the Reyes shooting. He remembered staring blearily at the clock face with 2:37 A.M. glowing in red letters as he picked up the phone. He had known before he ever said hello that it was going to be bad.
He was dressed and out of the house two minutes later. With siren blaring and lights flashing, he had raced to the scene, beating the air ambulance en route from Tucson by a good ten minutes. The local EMTs were there, doing what they could to stabilize their patient. Sheriff Renteria was the one who suggested they use the golf course parking lot as rendezvous point for the helicopter. He stood to one side, watching helplessly, as they loaded Jose’s gurney into the chopper.
As the helicopter became airborne, Sheriff Renteria headed for Patagonia to tell Teresa what had happened. He had been a cop for a long time. He had done plenty of next-of-kin notifications in his time. Usually, the people involved were strangers. This was personal.
He had known the Reyes family forever. He and Carmine, Jose’s father, had attended the same high school and played football and basketball together. He was shocked when Carmine died, and had seen his grieving son spend his late teens and early twenties skating on the edges of serious trouble.
As a member of the sheriff’s department, Manuel Renteria had done what he could to help Jose along. Finally, things started to click. Jose had signed up at the local community college and started taking classes. It was pretty clear that Jose’s interest in studying criminal justice was a direct result of the interest Manuel had shown in him over the years. In the end, however, what had made all the difference for Jose was Teresa.
The sheriff had been delighted when he heard that Jose had started courting Teresa Sanchez. Manuel had known her family, too—Midge had been good friends with Teresa’s mother, Maria. Teresa was a struggling single mother, a pregnant widow with a toddler, when Jose appeared on the scene. The truth was, Jose’s involvement with Teresa Sanchez was the main reason Sheriff Renteria had offered to hire Jose.
When Jose and Teresa married, the sheriff was invited to attend. He had been honored by the invitation, but Midge’s death was still too raw and new for him to go to a church and hear anyone else repeat those fateful words “in sickness and in health.” On the day of the wedding, he made sure something came up at the last minute that made it impossible for him to attend.
All this time, Sheriff Renteria had thought Jose was walking the straight and narrow. Now he didn’t know what to think.
Yes, Sheriff Renteria had spent eight hours at the crime scene, but it wasn’t his crime scene. Officer-related shootings had to be investigated by an outside agency. Renteria had spent all that time standing on the sidelines while investigators from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, led by Lieutenant Duane Lattimore, combed through every inch of the crime scene.
Lattimore and Renteria may have worked for different agencies, but they did so in the same general geographical area. Each was a known quantity to the other, and there was a good deal of mutual respect—too much for either of them to play games. Another DPS investigator might have sent Sheriff Renteria packing, but Lattimore didn’t. As long as Renteria merely observed and kept his mouth shut, Lattimore let him stay. Unfortunately for Sheriff Renteria, they’d found far more than he had expected.
Jose’s last radio transmission to Dispatch had said he was making a routine traffic stop, but it turned out there was nothing routine about it. Information about the stop should have been available on the dashboard camera in Jose’s patrol car, but the camera had been smashed off its sticky pad mounting. Even the pieces were nowhere to be found.
What they had found, unfortunately, were two three-kilo bundles of grass as well as white powder that field-tested out as cocaine. It had all been stashed in the trunk of Jose’s patrol car. In addition, there were several hundred-dollars in loose hundred-dollar bills inside the trunk and blowing around the crime scene.
It was possible that the drugs and the money were part of something Jose was investigating, but there had been no mention of any such investigation in Jose’s paperwork or in his interactions with Dispatch. Lieutenant Lattimore and the other DPS investigators didn’t say anything about all that to Sheriff Renteria. They didn’t have to. Everybody understood what they were likely seeing—a drug deal gone bad.
As far as weapons were concerned, they found next to nothing. Jose’s service weapon was located at the scene, near where he’d been found. Apparently, it had been drawn but not fired. The CSI team found a few shell casings that they’d send in to NIBIN—the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. But there were so many weapons coming and going across the border these days, the idea that they’d come up with some kind of a match on the casings that would lead to first a weapon and then an actual owner was a long shot.
What wasn’t a long shot, and what Sheriff Renteria had to face, was the likelihood that Jose was dirty. The evidence found in and around Jose’s car was compelling, although until today, Sheriff Renteria wouldn’t have entertained that as a possibility. He would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Jose Reyes was true blue, but the evidence said otherwise.
Until that Saturday morning, Sheriff Renteria had been gearing up to run for a fourth and final term as sheriff, but that, was now unlikely. If one of his cops was dirty, there was a chance that others were as well. His whole department could come crashing down.
If I’m no better judge of people than that, Sheriff Renteria told himself, then maybe it’s time for me to hang up the badge.
He finished his soda and then, sat dozing in the chair for the better part of two hours. At last he forced himself awake. He stripped off his bedraggled uniform and stepped into the shower. Half an hour later, shaved and wearing a freshly laundered uniform, he strapped his Glock on his hip and stuck his Stetson back on his head.
Earlier, he’d hated having to drive to Patagonia to give Teresa Reyes the terrible news that her husband was critically injured. This was even worse. Now he had to drive to Tucson and tell her that her hospitalized husband was most likely also a crook. Maybe she’d be as blindsided by the news as he had been. Then again, maybe not.
What if Teresa had suspected something and said nothing, or worse, what if she knew all about it? What if they were both crooks? Could a husband hide that kind of activity from his wife? Renteria knew he wouldn’t have been able to get away with that kind of stuff with Midge, never in a million years.
Shaking his head, Sheriff Renteria turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful police pursuit engine roared to life. He had already decided he would go to Tucson and tell her. He’d use everything he had learned while working as a deputy for sixteen years and as sheriff for ten to read Teresa’s reactions to what he had to say.
With any luck, she’d turn out to be completely in the dark. That’s what he hoped, anyway. And if she wasn’t? Then three little kids, one of them not yet born, were in for a very rough ride.
11
12:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10
Flagstaff, Arizona
When the first few bars of the “Hallelujah” chorus rang out from Sister Anselm’s iPhone, no one in the board of directors meeting raised an eyebrow. Over the years her fellow board members had learned that the ring tone meant a call from Bishop Francis Gillespie at the archdiocese in Phoenix. It also meant that Sister Anselm would be hightailing it out of the meeting to go wherever she was needed. Her role as patient advocate trumped everything else.
“How’s the weather up there?�
� Bishop Gillespie asked when Sister Anselm stepped outside the board room to answer.
“It’s snowing here more than it was when I drove up from Jerome this morning,” she said, “but it’s not that bad. Why?”
“Because my office has just been notified that a UDA was transported to the ICU at Physicians Medical in Tucson yesterday evening. She’s in bad shape, and there’s no one with her. How soon would you be able to go?”
In the old days, it might have taken time to arrange for transportation, but that was before Sister Anselm was able to drive herself. Although past retirement age, with encouragement and lessons from her friend Ali Reynolds, and with permission from Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm had gotten a driver’s license for the first time. After years of being driven to and fro, she now tooled around the state in her own all-wheel-drive red-and-white four-door Mini Cooper. Donated to the diocese by a generous parishioner, her Mini Countryman sported a whimsical bumper sticker that said, ACTUAL SIZE.
Sister Anselm glanced at her watch. Wherever she went, there was always a fully packed suitcase tucked into the Mini’s “boot” for just this kind of contingency, so there would be no need for her to go home before leaving for Tucson. The trip would take the better part of four and a half hours, depending on traffic and road conditions.
“If I leave right now, I could probably be at PMC by five.”
“Do you have chains?” Bishop Gillespie asked.
“And all-wheel drive,” Sister Anselm answered. “And I know how to use both.” She and Bishop Gillespie had become good friends, but she tended to get her back up when he fussed about her too much.
“All right, then,” Bishop Gillespie said. “Travel safely. I took the liberty of calling All Saints to let them know to expect you.”
The hospital now known as Physicians Medical Center had started out in the early twentieth century as a TB sanitarium under the auspices of the Sisters of Providence. For almost a hundred years, the nuns of All Saints Convent had been in charge. In recent years, the facility had been purchased by a group of physicians and transformed into a full-scale hospital.
Although PMC was no longer an officially designated Catholic hospital, many of the All Saints nuns, most of them trained nurses, continued to work there. And when Sister Anselm’s work took her to hospitals in and around Tucson, she preferred the structure and discipline of staying with her fellow nuns to staying at a hotel.
But having the bishop call to let them know she was coming counted as more unwarranted fussing. “I’ll call there again myself,” Sister Anselm said. “That way, if they’ve changed the gate or door codes, I won’t need to awaken someone if I arrive after lights out.”
Once off the phone with Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm sent an e-mail to Ali, offering her regrets about missing dinner. Her next call was to the convent in Jerome to let them know that she wouldn’t be coming home until further notice. The call after that was to Sister Genevieve, the current reverend mother at All Saints. The call went straight through to the mother superior’s cell phone.
“Good to hear from you,” Sister Genevieve said. “Bishop Gillespie said you might be coming.”
“Am I cleared for a late-night check-in if needed?” Sister Anselm asked.
Sister Genevieve’s answering laugh was hearty and welcoming. “Absolutely,” she said. “Your favorite guest room is ready and waiting.”
“If you want to give me the entry codes, I can let myself in. That way no one will have to wait up for me.”
“We haven’t changed the entry codes,” Sister Genevieve said. “But don’t worry about showing up late. You know me, I’m a night owl. I hardly ever go to sleep before midnight. Whenever you get here, I’ll most likely be on hand, ready and waiting to greet you and activate the gate.”
“All right, then,” Sister Anselm said. “I’m on my way.”
Having anticipated cassoulet for dinner, Sister Anselm had skipped lunch in Flagstaff. By the time she hit Cordes Junction, she was out of the worst of the weather, but she and her “ride” were running on empty. Eating a fast-food burger was a very poor substitute for one of Leland Brooks’s outstanding dinners, but fuel was fuel.
While in line at McDonald’s, she reached into the pocket of her jacket to locate her change purse, encountering the recently acquired Taser C2 that she kept there. She suspected that the other customers in the restaurant would have been surprised to know that the nice older lady, the one wearing gold-framed glasses and a conservative pin-striped pantsuit, was not only a nun but also armed and dangerous.
When she’d had a driver to get from place to place, Sister Anselm had gone on her rounds armed with nothing but her rosary beads and prayers. Things had changed. For one thing, several years earlier she had been kidnapped from a hospital setting in Phoenix. After that unsettling event, Ali had talked with her about making sure she could defend herself. She had resisted strongly.
St. Bernadette’s Convent in Jerome was a home for troubled nuns. Sister Anselm had spent the last three months dealing with an elderly nun—older than Sister Anselm anyway—who was recovering from hip replacement surgery as well as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Sister Louise had been walking home from a pharmacy to her convent in Dallas when she was attacked by a carload of young thugs. They had thrown her to the ground and wrenched her purse and shopping bag out of her hands. No doubt hoping to find money and/or powerful painkillers, the thieves had gotten away with a little over six dollars in change, Sister Louise’s three-month prescription for Boniva, and a box of Depends. Passersby had found her a few minutes later and summoned an ambulance. She had been taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon successfully replaced her damaged hip. What the Parkland physicians had not been able to fix was her sense of well-being.
That was Sister Anselm’s job, and she had been working on it. But dealing with Sister Louise’s troubles had brought home to Sister Anselm—more so than even her own kidnapping—that there were evil people in the world who were more than happy to target someone they thought to be helpless.
So now, when Sister Anselm drove from one end of the state to another, going about her business normally, there was one major difference. She had a weapon discreetly stowed in the pocket of her blazer. Her nonlethal protection was a gift from Ali, who’d warned that it should be carried on one’s person and not in a handbag. In Sister Louise’s mugging case, her purse had been taken out of play almost immediately.
Just because Sister Anselm was out in the world doing God’s work, there was no reason to be a victim, not if she could help it. If anyone tried to take her out, they’d be in for a big surprise.
12
12:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10
Patagonia, Arizona
That Saturday morning, it took Phil Tewksbury longer than usual to run his mail delivery route. Everyone he met along the way wanted to talk about the Santa Cruz deputy who had been shot while on duty the night before. Phil knew the guy’s name, Jose Reyes, and where he lived, because he was on Phil’s delivery route, but that was all he knew. Details about the shooting itself were pretty scarce, although when they were available, Phil figured that the Patagonia post office would be information central.
Once his mail truck was back in its spot inside the fenced lot behind the post office, Phil hurried home and settled in to spend the rest of the weekend painting the weathered outside trim on his house and garage.
Considering the problems inside the house, including several thorny issues he was not yet ready to tackle, the paint and the new double-paned windows were like putting lipstick on a pig, but for the first time in years, he was working on the house with a sense of purpose rather than a sense of despair. To his amazement, he found himself whistling while he worked. That hadn’t happened in a very long time.
Not that anything had happened. It hadn’t. Not yet. But there was the possibility that something would happen. He had a hope that something might happen, and that made all t
he difference.
Finished with the trim on the dining room window, he moved on to the ones in the living room. That was when the whistling stopped. For years, the broken seal in the old windows had left a film of fog between the living room and the outside world. Through the blur, no one could see in or out. Now it was all there and clearly visible—Christine, or at least the shabby wreckage of Christine and the dilapidated fifteen-year-old Christmas tree with its burden of dusty ornaments and strings of mostly nonworking lights.
He had told Christine years ago that once the last of the lights burned out, the tree was gone. No matter what she said, he was taking it down then. Recently, he had come to suspect that she must have a secret stash of lights hidden somewhere and was using the spares to replace one or two dead bulbs at a time. It reminded him of that lady in one of the old Greek legends he had read back in high school. Her husband had gone away on a trip and was supposedly lost at sea. Someone wanted to marry her, and she said yes, but she told her would-be suitor that she had to finish weaving a rug first. So every day she wove like crazy, and every night, when no one was looking, she tore up that day’s work.
If that was what was happening, Christine was a lot cagier about it than Phil had given her credit for being. On the other hand, maybe some of those old lights, made back in the day when Christmas lights came from the U.S. instead of China, were just that much better than the ones you could buy today. Better or worse, depending on your point of view.
Christine sat there now, in her chair next to the tree, watching him, but not with any kind of curiosity or connection or interest. He might have been a living color image performing on a television screen; not that she watched TV, either. She mostly stared at the tree, day after day, year after year.