J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead

by Jance, J. A.

  Holly hung up without bothering to say good-bye and without asking for Ali’s number, either. In other words, it would be a cold day in hell before she deigned to call back with information of any kind.

  Yes, Sheriff Maxwell had asked Holly to work with Ali on the missing persons situation, but that wasn’t going to happen. Maxwell was enough of a politician to have won a countywide election, and he was smart enough to sort his way through dealings with the ATF, but Ali suspected that some of the political wrangling inside his department had so far escaped his notice.

  Ali was still wondering what to do about that when the eighth floor of Saint Gregory’s Hospital came alive with activity. A gurney pushed by two ER attendants came racing down the corridor. Before the two attendants shoved the loaded gurney into the open door of room 816, Ali caught sight of the sedated patient lying there—a dark-haired young man, a teenager by the looks of him.

  The room’s door swung shut, and the elevator doors opened. Two separate groups of people hustled into the waiting room. Ali soon realized that although the people had arrived in two elevator loads, they were all members of the same group—the distressed loved ones of the young man, who had just disappeared into room 816.

  As the new arrivals talked excitedly among themselves, Ali was able to gather that the boy, James, had accidentally set fire to his jeans in the garage at his home while working on the fuel line of an old Ford F-150 pickup he’d been given for his sixteenth birthday.

  One especially distraught middle-aged woman, the boy’s mother most likely, hurried over to the door of room 816. While she donned the required antibacterial clothing, other concerned relatives—a grandmother, two aunts, a stray uncle, and two sisters, along with two not yet school-age younger children—settled into chairs in the waiting room, filling it with chatter and with a series of cell phone calls that would no doubt summon more relatives to come and join the vigil.

  The difference between the two patients—the boy in room 816 and the unidentified woman in 814—was remarkable. The young man’s arrival was accompanied by a whole retinue of care and concern. His presence filled the waiting room with people who were worried about his welfare.

  The woman in 814 was alone. Other than Caleb Moore, Sister Anselm, and Ali Reynolds, that nameless patient had no one. That thought had barely registered in Ali’s head when the situation suddenly changed. The elevator opened again, and this time a man in a gray business suit stepped out into the noisy room. Ignoring the clutch of James’s worried relatives, the newcomer made straight for the nurses’ station.

  Ali didn’t know the man’s name, but she immediately recognized him for who he was and what he represented. He was a fed. He pulled out an identification packet and thrust it toward the charge nurse.

  “Agent Gary Robson,” he announced perfunctorily. “I’m here to see the patient who was brought from Camp Verde last night.”

  Robson may have expected everyone to jump to his tune, but the charge nurse wasn’t impressed. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding up the logbook. “The patient’s condition is such that she can’t see anyone right now. You’re welcome to make an entry in the visitors’ logbook.”

  Unaccustomed to being told no, Agent Robson ignored the proffered book and raised his voice several notches.

  “Apparently you don’t understand,” he said. “I’m an officer of the law, and I’m investigating last night’s fire. I need to speak to the patient immediately. If she’s not available right now, perhaps I could speak to whoever is in charge of her care so we can get some idea as to when she will be available. Speaking to her is of the utmost importance.”

  “Hold on a minute,” the charge nurse said. “I’ll see what I can do.” She picked up a phone and dialed a number. “Someone to see you,” she said.

  Seconds later, the door to room 814 swung open and Sister Anselm appeared. “May I help you?” she asked.

  Robson swung around to face her. “I’m here about the Camp Verde fire victim. Are you in charge of her care?”

  She gave him what was clearly a reproving smile. “I doubt that,” she said. “I prefer to believe that God is in charge. What exactly do you require?”

  The rest of the room fell silent as James’s relatives tuned in to the confrontation.

  Agent Robson held up his identification, which Sister Anselm pointedly ignored. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on his face while placing her body squarely between him and the door to room 814.

  Realizing that his attempt to bully her wasn’t working, Agent Robson tried turning on the charm. “My sentiments exactly,” he said smoothly. The words were accompanied by what was intended to be a disarming smile. “God is definitely in charge. At least that’s what my mother always taught me.”

  From the bemused expression on Sister Anselm’s face, Ali understood that the nun recognized B.S. when she heard it, and she wasn’t buying any of it.

  “I’m with the ATF,” Agent Robson said finally. “That’s Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives.” With that, he pocketed his ID wallet and pulled out a business card, which he passed to Sister Anselm. She slipped it into her own pocket without comment and without examining it, either.

  Definitely not buying, Ali thought.

  “Our agency is in charge of the investigation,” he continued pompously. “We have reason to believe this may be a case of domestic terrorism, one with possibly national implications. Since it’s likely this woman, your patient, is our only real witness, we urgently need to speak with her. If you could let me know when she’ll be available for questioning, I’d be most appreciative. I’m sure you can see this is a matter of some importance, and I trust you’ll agree that the sooner we can speak to her, the better.”

  Ali noticed that Agent Robson’s account of things conveniently airbrushed Sheriff Maxwell’s department out of the picture. For a long time, Sister Anselm regarded the man with an an unsmiling, wordless gaze. Finally she turned toward the nurses’ station.

  “I’ll take the logbook, please,” she said. When the charge nurse handed it over, Sister Anselm in turn offered it to Agent Robson.

  “What’s that?” he asked, even though he’d already been told.

  “A visitors’ log,” Sister Anselm explained. “For right now, if you’d be so good as to jot down your name and contact information—”

  “I’m not here to sign someone’s guest book,” he declared. “I don’t think you understand. This is a critical investigation. I need to know when I can talk to her. In person.”

  “And you don’t seem to understand this is a hospital,” Sister Anselm returned coolly. “Our job here is to care for our patients to the best of our ability, which includes protecting them from any unwanted intrusions, official or not. On this floor especially, we limit visitors to people who are directly related to the patient. No exceptions.”

  “So where are her relatives, then?” Robson said. “Let me speak to one of them.”

  Sister Anselm did smile at that. “I’m sure you’re entirely aware that the patient in question has yet to be identified. Until she is, we have no way of contacting her relatives. Perhaps you could assist us with that part of the equation.”

  “I doubt that,” Agent Robson said. “Not without some quid pro quo.”

  “Then you and I have nothing more to say to each other.” Sister Anselm returned the logbook to the nurse and turned away. Going back the way she had come, she disappeared beyond the door to room 814, which she closed firmly behind her. She didn’t bother posting a No Visitors sign. It wasn’t necessary.

  For a moment, Agent Robson stared after her. Then, turning, he stalked off toward the elevator. The waiting room remained mostly quiet until the doors to the elevator slid shut. Only then did the tension in the room evaporate as James’s assembled relatives resumed their conversations. Unnoticed by everyone else, Ali threaded her way to the counter. “Could I have the logbook, please?”

  “Again?”

  “I forgot somethin
g,” Ali said.

  Taking the book back to her chair, she opened it again. On the first blank page beyond Caleb Moore’s carefully written words, Ali added the following entry:

  Agent Robson of the local ATF office stopped by with the expectation of interrogating you about the events at Camp Verde. Sister Anselm refused to give him access.

  When requested to do so, he declined to write in the logbook. This entry is written by Alison Reynolds, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department.

  Returning the book to the nurses’ station, Ali went back to her chair, where she sat quietly for a few moments, holding her computer on her lap. The conversation ebbed and flowed around her while she thought about what had just happened. Both Caleb Moore and Agent Robson had come to the burn unit with full confidence that the woman they were looking for was to be found there. So had the reporters who had shown up in the hospital lobby earlier that day.

  Sister Anselm seemed to be concerned about locating her patient’s relatives in the hope of repairing whatever damage might have occurred in those relationships, but Ali knew that identifying those relatives would pose its own risk, because Ali understood the grim reality of homicide. In most cases, victims perish at the hands of someone they know and love—an estranged lover or partner, an angry spouse, a distraught or overwhelmed parent. From the time children are old enough to be warned about such things, everyone is on the lookout for “stranger danger.” Few people give any thought to some of the very dangerous folk who are much closer at hand.

  Once the woman’s relatives arrived in the waiting room to mingle with James’s concerned family members, there was a very good possibility that her attempted killer, the person who had set the fire, would be there as well.

  He or she would use a mask of concern to disappear into the background while waiting for an opportunity to finish what had been started. Since only relatives were allowed inside burn-unit rooms, that meant there was a good chance the helpless woman would end up being left alone and at the mercy of her attempted killer.

  The very idea filled Ali with a sense of dread. Identifying the woman had seemed like a good idea right up until it turned deadly. Feeling sick over the apparent contradiction, Ali still tried to do what Sheriff Maxwell had asked her to do—identify the victim.

  It was plain enough that Holly Mesina wasn’t going to get back to her with anything useful, so Ali attempted to search out the missing persons information on her own.

  She knew from personal experience that, with some exceptions, taking missing person reports about adults is a very low priority in most law enforcement jurisdictions. Immediate reports were taken with regard to missing children and for adults who were considered to be at risk due to dementia or other medical issues. When it came to adults who weren’t at risk? Forget it. Adults were supposedly free to come and go at will. Their worried relatives were encouraged to behave like the boy in that old country tune who was advised to “take an old cold tater and wait.” They were expected to wait until enough time had passed that an official report was deemed warranted.

  In the old days, concerned relatives would have had to accept that official line as the gospel. Other than going around their neighborhoods and tacking flyers and photos on telephone poles, there hadn’t been much they could do in the meantime. Ali Reynolds understood better than most that the Internet had changed that dynamic. The Internet didn’t come with a twenty-four-hour mandatory waiting period.

  Ali knew that her only hope of staving off disaster was to be there first—to identify the woman and find her would-be killer before the would-be killer found them. With that in mind, Ali opened her computer again and logged on.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ali’s initial Internet search went nowhere. Checking on an Arizona missing persons list she found only one possible prospect. The woman was in her nineties and much older than Dave’s “sixty or seventy” estimate, but she had disappeared from an adult day-care facility in Chandler around the right time—midafternoon of the previous day. When Ali called for more information, she struck out. The woman who answered the phone apologized profusely; her mother had been found in the early evening hours only a few blocks away from the facility. In all the hubbub the daughter had forgotten to remove the posting but she said she would do so immediately.

  Frustrated but with nothing else to do just then, Ali absently Googled “Angel of Death.” She found the Arizona Sun profile of Sister Anselm as the third item down on the first search page.

  THE ANGEL OF DEATH

  by Nadine Hazelett

  When Marta Esperanza Mendoza was found in the desert near Tucson in August of last year, she was near death. The illegal immigrant had suffered a combination of sunstroke and dehydration. She was airlifted to Tucson Medical Center, where she was hospitalized in critical condition.

  Abandoned by the group of smugglers who had brought her across the border, she had no documents, no insurance, no family in attendance. The fact that she spoke only Spanish made communicating with her doctors and nurses cumbersome.

  Enter the Angel of Death—Sister Anselm Becker, a Sister of Providence. For the past five years she has been summoned to help out with similar cases throughout Arizona. Dubbed a “patient advocate,” Sister Anselm has traveled the state providing comfort and counsel to gravely injured people who might otherwise have had no one in their corner. Her work is sponsored by an anonymous donor under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix.

  Trained as both a palliative nurse and a psychologist, and fluent in several languages, Sister Anselm is summoned from her home convent in Jerome by area hospitals when they have need of her services. She often works with gravely injured patients who have difficulty communicating with medical care providers. In the case of undocumented aliens, all that may be necessary is a skilled translator who can cross the language barrier and explain the medical aspects of the situation to the various patients as well as to their families.

  “Doctors and nurses provide treatment,” Sister Anselm said, “but they’re not necessarily good at communicating, primarily because they don’t have time. That’s what I bring to the table—time, and the ability to explain to patients and their loved ones what’s going on.

  “Occasionally my job requires me to outline the various procedures and inform the patient of the attendant risks arising out of that care. People who find themselves in those kinds of circumstances are often isolated from their families. If and when family members are located, I explain those things to them as well.”

  Often, one of Sister Anselm’s primary goals is to reunite critically injured patients with their loved ones. “With comatose patients, the arrival of a loved one sometimes may stimulate them enough to awaken, but communicating with severely injured patients in short questions that require only yes-or-no blinks takes time. Again, that’s the gift my mission brings to the process—time. I don’t punch a time clock. I have all the time in the world.”

  When asked how often she succeeded in reuniting patients with their loved ones, Sister Anselm admitted that is seldom the case. Many of her patients succumb to their injuries long before relatives can be located. That’s what happened with twenty-six-year-old Ms. Mendoza.

  Sunstroke left Mendoza paralyzed, unable to speak, and close to death. Doctors were unable to reverse the effects of her stroke as well as of her severe dehydration. Eventually she died, but Sister Anselm’s efforts didn’t end with the woman’s death. The self-styled patient advocate continued to search for the young woman’s family and eventually managed to locate them in the city of Guadalupe Victoria, Sinaloa, Mexico. When Alfreda Ruidosa came to Arizona to retrieve her daughter’s remains, all Sister Anselm had to offer the woman was a logbook that documented all the people who had interacted with her daughter in her last days.

  Contacted at her home in Mexico last week and speaking through a translator, Alfreda Ruidosa said that she keeps her daughter’s logbook with her family Bible. “At least I know my Marta didn’t die alone,�
�� she said.

  Unfortunately, however, that’s how things turn out in most of the cases that involve Sister Anselm. Because she is often summoned to deal with only the most severely injured, it’s not too surprising that many of those patients don’t survive. Hospital personnel who often welcome Sister Anselm’s help in those instances are also the ones who have dubbed her the Angel of Death, since once she’s involved with a patient, death often follows.

  Hospitals who make use of Sister Anselm’s services dodge liability issues by signing a waiver that allows her to function as a contractor, a private-duty care provider. To date no legal actions have been pursued against hospitals in relation to their use of Sister Anselm’s services.

  Ali stopped reading and stared off into space. How had Nadine Hazelett come up with those kinds of statistics? Surely the hospital records shouldn’t have been made available to a journalist—but they evidently had been. No wonder Sister Anselm’s mother superior had been bent out of shape about it. The diocese probably wasn’t too happy, either, since that last sentence was nothing short of an open invitation for some personal-injury lawyer to come charging into the situation and make life miserable for everyone.

  Ali’s phone rang. A glance at the readout told her the caller was Edie Larson. “Hi, Mom,” Ali said.

  “B. stopped by the restaurant earlier,” Edie said. “I told him you’re down in Phoenix at the hospital with that woman from the fire.”

  Like Nadine Hazelett, Ali’s mother seemed to have access to information she probably shouldn’t have.

  “Is she going to live?” Edie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ali answered. “No information has been released about that so far.”

  “But you’re the public information officer,” Edie objected.

  “That’s true,” Ali said, “but no information about that has been released to me, either.”

  “Oh,” Edie said.

  She sounded disappointed. No doubt she had expected to have an inside track as far as the investigation was concerned. After all, what was the point of having her daughter work for the sheriff’s department if Edie wasn’t allowed first dibs on news about whatever was happening?