by J. A. Jance
Dr. Patterson was Phil’s doctor rather than Christine’s. Doc Manning, who had been her doctor once, had been dead for seven years. Since Christine refused to leave the house for any reason, finding a new doctor for her or even taking her to a dentist for a simple and much-needed cleaning or filling wasn’t exactly an option.
Which was why Phil decided to ask his doctor for advice. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about my wife.”
“Wife?” Patterson asked, looking dismayed. “All these years I thought you were a widower. I noticed you wore a wedding ring, but since you never mentioned having a wife, I assumed she was deceased.”
“Not exactly,” Phil said. “But she does have issues. For one thing, I’m worried about her diet. The only thing she eats is oatmeal.”
“Oatmeal?” Dr. Patterson repeated. “As in oatmeal three meals a day? No protein? No vegetables?”
Phil shook his head. “Nothing but. Whenever I try giving her anything else, she tosses it in the garbage.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Years,” Phil admitted. Fifteen going on sixteen, like it says in the song, Phil thought, but he didn’t say it aloud.
“So tell me,” Doc Patterson said. “What’s the deal with the oatmeal?”
Phil took a deep breath before he answered. “It’s what we used to eat for breakfast on Christmas morning, before Cassidy opened her stocking or her presents.”
Dr. Patterson gave Phil a quizzical look. “Cassidy?” the doctor asked. “Who’s Cassidy?”
Phil knew he was in for it now. That was the main reason he avoided talking about Christine—so he wouldn’t have to go over the painful details of Cassidy’s death, which had led, inevitably, to everything else. This time, though, more for Christine’s sake than for his own, he told the whole story.
“So your wife blames you for your daughter’s death?” Patterson asked when Phil finished.
Phil nodded. “Every day and in every way.”
“And you’ve kept the same Christmas tree up and lit for fifteen years? Isn’t it dirty?”
“She dusts it sometimes,” Phil says. “When I’m out of the house or when she thinks I’m sleeping. She wipes off the ornaments and brushes off the cobwebs.”
And replaces some of the bulbs, Phil thought.
That was the first time the bulb-replacement scenario had surfaced in his mind as a coherent thought, when he was talking to Dr. Patterson. He’d thought about it a lot since, but he hadn’t said the words aloud—not to Doc Patterson and not to anyone else, either.
“Have you considered having a psych evaluation?” Patterson asked.
Phil grinned ruefully. “For her or for me?” he asked. “Because I’m probably as much of a nutcase as she is for putting up with it all this time. Seriously, the only way I could get her out of the house is by force, and I’m not going to do that. At first people told me she was grieving and that it would take time. Then they told me she was depressed. Now I think most people have forgotten about her. If they think about her at all, it’s like, ‘Oh, you know, the crazy lady who keeps her Christmas tree up all year long.’”
“Everyone has forgotten about her but you,” Dr. Patterson said.
Phil nodded as tears stung his eyes. “It’s my fault,” he said. “That makes Christine my responsibility.”
“So it’s like that movie Groundhog Day,” Patterson said thoughtfully. “Every morning she wakes up, eats her oatmeal, and thinks that your daughter is going to come out into the living room and open her presents. Are they still there, too?”
“All but one,” Phil answered. “The rest of them are wrapped and unopened.”
Patterson blew out a breath of air and considered for a moment before he spoke again. “It’s a little difficult to diagnose a patient without ever seeing him or her. Would you say your wife is overweight?”
“No,” Phil answered. “More like too skinny than too fat.”
“Any mobility issues?”
“She can walk when she wants to. And I know she does when I’m not around. At night I hear her pacing in her room, but during the day she mostly just sits in the recliner in the living room and stares at the tree. I try to get her to shower once a week.”
“She sounds depressed,” Dr. Patterson said.
“I think so, too.”
“Would she take medication if you offered it to her?”
Phil shook his head. “Probably not,” he said. “I had some leftover antidepressants my old doctor had given me. I tried giving them to Christine. She accused me of trying to poison her.”
“What about her teeth?”
“She’s lost several so far. I begged her to go to the dentist. She says that since I’m the only one who sees her, what does it matter?”
“Presumably, your wife isn’t in the best of health, but then neither are you,” Patterson said. “Your blood pressure is off the charts. So is your cholesterol. If we don’t get a handle on those, chances are she’ll outlive you. Then what will happen to her?”
Patterson had posed that question aloud for the first time several weeks earlier, and Phil had been grappling with the issue ever since. They had no kids—no surviving kids—who could be called on to help out in the face of a long-term health crisis. As Christine had turned into more and more of a hermit, the people who were once their friends had slowly drifted away. So had their relations. For now this was Phil’s fight and nobody else’s.
That was what had prompted him to bite the bullet and replace the windows. It was why he was painting the exterior of the house and garage. His next plan was to redo the kitchen and replace the appliances. Next up after that would be the bathroom. And finally, the living room. If Christine was ever left alone with a caregiver, it would be in a house that was in the best shape Phil could manage.
Lost in thought, Phil absently stirred the pot of oatmeal. Once it was finished, he divided it into the three microwaveable plastic bowls and set them on the kitchen counter before putting the dirty saucepan in the dishwasher to run with yesterday’s dishes. Then he moved the uniforms into the dryer and loaded the bedding into the Maytag. Glancing up at his grandmother’s antique teapot-shaped clock, he saw that it was ten to seven—time for his one bit of daily self-indulgence.
Every morning before work and on weekends, too, Phil stopped by the San Rafael Café to have a leisurely breakfast and shoot the breeze. His breakfast choices at the café tended to include crisp bacon and over-easy eggs, something he had no intention of mentioning to Doc Patterson.
After breakfast, he’d come home, do the ironing, paint the garage trim, and do the rest of his chores, all the while hoping that Ollie would be waiting to see him when he delivered her mail on Monday afternoon.
19
11:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11
Marana, Arizona
On Sunday morning, heading down I-17, Ali used her Bluetooth to call Victor Angeleri, the criminal defense attorney who had been her go-to guy when she was accused of murdering her former husband and needed one. He had given her his home number back then, and she still had it. Fortunately, it was April and daylight saving time in most of the rest of the country. With Arizona and California in the same time zone at this time of year, she doubted she was in any danger of waking him up.
“Long time, no hear,” Victor said cheerfully when Ali identified herself. “You’re not offloading inconvenient husbands again, are you?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “And if you recall, I didn’t do that the first time, either. Right now I’m calling for a friend of mine—a cop in southern Arizona who got shot the other night and is now under suspicion as a drug trafficker. He’ll probably be able to get help from the local police officers’ legal defense fund, but that will take time and paperwork. I’m looking for someone to step in sooner than that.”
“I may have a contact or two in Tucson,” Victor said. “Is Tucson close enough?”
“Tucson is exactly right.”<
br />
“Can your friend pay the going rate?”
“Probably not. He’s in the hospital with serious injuries and serious meds. Because it’s an officer-involved shooting, it’s being investigated by the Department of Public Safety. I’m worried that if the DPS investigator shows up for an initial interview while Jose is under the influence of medication—”
“That your friend may blow it.”
“Exactly. I’m not offering to sign on for his whole defense, but I am willing to pay the freight for him to have representation during that initial interview process.”
“It sounds like you’re still busy spending your former husband’s cash,” Victor said with a laugh, “but let me see what I can do.”
An hour later, as Ali approached Marana on Tucson’s north side, her phone rang again. The number in the readout was unlisted.
“Ali Reynolds?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Juanita Cisco. Victor Angeleri and I go way back. When he gives me a heads-up about something, I generally pay attention, which is why I’m calling. He told me that this concerns a friend of yours, a police officer who’s in the hospital with gunshot wounds.”
“That’s right. Jose Reyes, a Santa Cruz County deputy, is the victim. Unfortunately, investigators now suspect that the shooting was the result of a drug deal gone bad.”
“Jose is related to you how?”
“We’re not related. We’re friends.”
“But you’re the one who’s hiring me, not him and not his wife. Why? What’s your interest in all this?”
“As I said, we’re friends. The shooting investigation is being handled by the Department of Public Safety. Eventually, Jose will probably have representation from the police officer’s legal defense fund, but I want him to have someone on hand today if he ends up subjected to an initial interview when he’s in the hospital and more or less out of it.”
“I don’t much like being called in as a pinch hitter,” Juanita said, “but I suppose I could do it. You haven’t asked me how much I charge, especially if I come in on a Sunday. My billing includes this phone call, by the way, and any necessary travel.”
“Yes,” Ali assured her. “Whatever it is, I’m good for it.”
“All right. Which hospital?”
“Physicians.”
“PMC isn’t far from where I live, which is fine for today, but it’s all the way across town from my office if the interview happens tomorrow or the next day. Are you at the hospital now?”
“Not yet. I’m on my way there.”
“When did the shooting happen?”
“Sometime Friday night. Maybe Saturday morning.”
“And the detective on the case made no effort to interview the victim or his family yesterday?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“That could be bad. He’s probably getting his ducks in a row before he comes calling. Do you have a name on the DPS investigator?”
“I believe Donnatelle told me that his name is Lattimore.”
“I don’t know him. Who’s Donnatelle?”
“Another friend,” Ali answered.
“Right. This Jose guy must be something, to have a wife and a whole raft of devoted female friends who are all ready to go to the mat for him,” Juanita said. “Okay. Call if you need me. Here’s the number. I should be home all afternoon, and I can be at the hospital in under ten minutes.”
20
9:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11
Vail, Arizona
The fact that one of Al Gutierrez’s regular days off was Sunday was a bone of contention with his roommates. He didn’t venture out of his room until everyone else had either gone to bed or gone on duty. Someone had dragged the Sunday paper inside and rifled through it. The sports page had suffered a severe coffee spill. Fortunately, his roommates never bothered with the rest of the paper.
Once again, Al read through it carefully, looking for some reference to the assault incident. Despite his morning paper, he was far from a Luddite, so he logged on to the Internet. The whole time Al had been at work the day before, he had considered his options. Just because Dobbs was going to sit on this didn't mean that Al had to.
He put the words “rose tattoo” into the search engine. Google came up with over three million hits, many of them having to do with a rock-and-roll band named Rose Tattoo. Then he tried “missing women with rose tattoos.” That gave him 305,000 hits. Disturbed and disheartened to think there could be that many missing women with rose tattoos on their bodies, he began scrolling through them. It was slow, painstaking work, and it took him the better part of the morning.
One of his searches led him to the website of America’s Most Wanted. Al remembered when his mother used to watch that program, though he never had. Still, when he landed on their missing persons page, he tried “rose tattoo” again. This time it worked. Four hits. As soon as he hit the one at the bottom of the list and saw the name Rose Ventana and the words “Buckeye, Arizona,” he believed he was getting somewhere.
He read everything he could about Rose Ventana—about her family’s long search for their missing daughter and sister. He read the interviews they gave every year in February on the day Rose disappeared. Al wanted to pick up the phone and call them right then, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to give them the wonderful news that he might have found their missing daughter and that she might be alive only for them to discover that she wasn’t.
Al’s victim—Rose, he was sure—had been alive when the Air Evac helicopter lifted off to take her to Physicians Medical Center. Considering the extent of her injuries, he was convinced she was still there, if she hadn’t died in the meantime.
That was when he hit on the idea of going to the hospital and taking some flowers to the injured woman. If the patient was dead, the hospital most likely wouldn’t accept the flowers, would they? That was about the time he reconsidered the idea of making a phone call to Rose Ventana’s family. With the help of a people-finding website, he was able to track down a Buckeye street address for Connie and James Fox.
Whenever there was a death, cops always made every effort to notify the next of kin in person. Was it out of respect for the dead, or was it to have someone there if emergency medical care were required? What about if the notification were about someone who wasn’t dead? What, if after being thought dead for years, that person suddenly turned up alive? Wouldn’t that good news be just as mind-numbingly shocking to the grieving family members as bad news?
Al dressed in a U of A sweatshirt that he’d picked up during that year’s March Madness celebration. He put on his Mariners baseball cap and pulled it down over his eyes. Looking at himself in the mirror, he had to laugh. He looked like any one of a number of would-be bank robbers. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but he hoped it was good enough to keep Sergeant Dobbs off his back.
With that, Al headed for Costco. The one closest to the hospital was on Grant, near Wilmot. Wandering through the flower section, he saw the foil-wrapped Easter lilies and knew they were just right.
After all, Easter was about the resurrection. Wasn’t this the same thing?
21
10:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11
Tucson, Arizona
Teresa Reyes awakened when her daughters came racing through the waiting room, squealing, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.”
“Look what Donnatelle got us,” Lucy said gleefully. “A new dress. From Target.”
It turned out to be two matching dresses, actually—one for Lucy and one for Carinda.
“Very pretty,” Teresa said, peeling the girls off her and struggling to sit up. “Did you tell her thank you?”
Both girls nodded.
“Can we go show Daddy?” Lucy wanted to know.
“No,” Teresa answered.
She looked at the clock on the wall and was astonished to see that she had slept for almost six hours. Just then Sister Anselm, the nun who might as well have been Teresa’s guardian angel, emerged from one
of the rooms on the other side of the unit.
“So you’re awake,” Sister Anselm said with a smile. “You must have been exhausted, to be able to sleep that peacefully on a lumpy couch with people coming and going all around you.”
“How’s Jose?” Teresa asked. “I should probably go check on him.”
“He’s doing well,” Sister Anselm said. “I checked on him about half an hour ago. Everything was fine. He’s stable. No changes in his condition.”
“When can we see Daddy” Lucy asked. “I want to see him. Now.”
“Not until he moves out of this room and into another one,” Teresa explained.
“Tell your mommy that we got some sticker books, too,” Donnatelle said, taking charge of the girls once again. “Let’s go play with those and give your mom a chance to wake up.”
Teresa stripped off the blanket and sat up. Her shoes were on the floor, but when she tried to put them on, they felt like they were at least one size too small, maybe even two. “What about having some breakfast?” she asked the girls.
“We already ate,” Lucy told her. “At the hotel.”
“Thank you,” Teresa said to Donnatelle. “For everything.”
“No problem,” Donnatelle said. “They were very good girls. We had breakfast first, and then we went to Target to look for dresses.”
Looking from Sister Anselm to Donnatelle, Teresa couldn’t help but be astonished by their kindness. Donnatelle had dropped everything and driven halfway across the state to help out. Sister Anselm had volunteered to look out for Jose so Teresa could grab a few hours of sleep. She would have to revise her thinking—two guardian angels, not just one.
With the girls happily occupied at a table in the corner of the room, Teresa limped into the restroom. Revived by sleep and refreshed by splashing cold water on her face and smoothing down her hair, she made her way into Jose’s room. Sister Anselm was right. He was sleeping. She stood by his bed for some time. Was it possible that he had done what Sheriff Renteria had said? If so, Jose had succeeded in showing one face to her and his colleagues and another to the criminal world. Was it possible for the man she loved to be everything he had claimed to despise?