by J. A. Jance
Teresa swallowed. “You mean like a bag?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, a bag. There was also some damage to his lower back. Apparently, two of the vertebrae were damaged by the fall. We’ve managed to stabilize them, too, and we’ve lowered his body temperature in an effort to prevent swelling in his spinal cord. In other words, we’re doing everything we can, but worst-case scenario, you need to be prepared for the idea that your husband may have long-term issues with both the intestinal damage as well as with his back.”
“You mean he might be paralyzed?”
“Possibly.”
Teresa absorbed that dire news in stricken silence.
“Can we see Daddy?” Lucy asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, young lady,” he said. “Your father’s too sick to see anyone right now except maybe your mother.”
Teresa managed to commandeer an abandoned wheelchair to transfer the kids and all their stuff from the OR waiting room to the recovery room waiting room. An hour after that, when Jose was moved from recovery to the ICU, she repeated the process. Once in the new waiting room, she came face-to-face with the ICU rules-no children under sixteen were allowed inside the unit. When Danny had been in the ICU, his parents had been there, too. They had looked after Lucy when Teresa went into Danny’s room. Now, alone with two girls and a husband in the ICU, Teresa Reyes needed help.
Up to that point, she had resisted calling her ailing mother, but now she did so. While she waited for Maria Delgado to sort out transportation from Nogales to Tucson, Teresa settled back in one chair with her feet and swollen ankles propped on another. Her cell phone rang as she started to doze off. She expected the call to be from her mother. It wasn’t.
“It’s Donnatelle, from Yuma. I just heard what happened,” Donnatelle Craig said. “How bad is it, and what can I do to help?”
Donnatelle and Jose had been classmates at the police academy. When Jose and Teresa got married, Jose had invited several of his fellow recruits to the wedding. Much to their mutual surprise, Teresa had hit it off with Donnatelle Craig, a black woman who was both a single mother and a deputy for the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department. The two women had stayed in touch ever since, sharing the occasional e-mail.
Teresa had been holding herself together for hours, and Donnatelle’s long-distance sympathy sapped her hard-won composure.
“It’s real bad,” Teresa said, her voice breaking. “Jose’s in the ICU. He may not make it.”
“Where are you? Which hospital?”
“Physicians Medical in Tucson.”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Nobody. My mother’s on her way. Right now it’s just the girls and me.”
“You’re there by yourselves?” Donnatelle demanded in disbelief. “You mean there’s no one there from Jose’s department?”
“Not so far. One of the deputies gave us a ride here. After he dropped us off, he had to leave again. I’m sure someone will show up eventually.”
“Do they have any idea who did it?” Donnatelle asked.
“From what Sheriff Renteria told me, Jose was shot in the course of a routine traffic stop.”
“Routine my ass,” Donnatelle muttered. “And somebody from his department should be there with you.”
That was what Teresa thought as well, but she didn’t say so.
“Let me make some phone calls,” Donnatelle said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Teresa closed her phone. Her mother was coming. Donnatelle would do what she could to help. What Teresa needed was a few moments of peace and quiet and maybe even a minute or two of sleep, but just then a firefight broke out between the two girls over who got which of the few toys Teresa had brought along. In the process of breaking up the fight, Teresa discovered that Carinda’s diaper needed to be changed. By the time she did that, Lucy was announcing she was hungry.
No, for Teresa Reyes, there was no time to sleep.
8
2:00 A.M., Saturday, April 10
Vail, Arizona
Alonzo Gutierrez was up early even though he had barely slept. All night long, whenever he drifted off, he’d been plagued with a recurring nightmare about being burned with cigarettes. He knew where that came from. After starting coffee, he went outside to collect his newspaper.
Yes, Al was twenty-five years old. Yes, he had grown up in a world where microwave ovens were everywhere. He didn’t remember a time when computers hadn’t been readily available. Even though he was a full-fledged member of the digital generation and reasonably computer-savvy, he still liked reading newspapers; liked the feel of newsprint in his hands. Delivering newspapers back home in Wenatchee was the first job he’d ever had.
He and three other young Border Patrol officers shared a four-bedroom house in Vail, outside Tucson. The house had been built before the real estate crash. When it didn’t sell, the developer had turned it and many of the other unsold houses in the neighborhood into rentals. It was a cost-effective place to live for four guys who weren’t making tons of money.
Al was the one who paid for the newspaper subscription. He also endured plenty of teasing from his roomies about reading a “dead-tree” paper, although he noticed that once he finished with it, the sports pages, at least, got plenty of use from guys who never helped pay for them.
That morning Al scanned the news pages of the Arizona Daily Sun,checking for any mention of the Three Points assault and wondering if the woman was alive. The paper had a reporter named Michelle Skidmore who specialized in immigration issues and wrote an ongoing column called “Crossings” that often dealt with crimes against illegal immigrants. That day’s column concerned vandals who routinely destroyed the watering stations that volunteers set up and supplied with potable water to keep migrating illegals from dying of dehydration.
The assault wasn’t mentioned there or anywhere else in the paper, either, that and the fact that there was no mention of it on the morning news while he was eating breakfast made Al wonder if Dobbs had buried the report. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time.
The whole idea disgusted him, but Al wasn’t about to run up the flag to the media or to anybody else. The brass had made it clear that contact with the media was forbidden for guys like him. The officers who had made the mistake of complaining to reporters about being told to let up on taking illegals into custody had been put on unpaid leave, and spending time on unpaid leave was something Al Gutierrez couldn’t afford. As for calling in an anonymous tip? He had a feeling those were a lot less anonymous than advertised. Cell phone calls could be traced. E-mails could be traced. And if he tried going over Sergeant Dobbs’s head, there would be hell to pay.
For right now, there was nothing for Al to do but put on his uniform and go do his shift.
Whatever had happened to that poor girl south of Three Points was someone else’s problem, not his. And with any kind of luck, over time, maybe Al’s resulting nightmares would go away.
9
7:00 A.M., Saturday, April 10
Sedona, Arizona
Awakening the next morning, Ali heard the steady thrum of B.’s treadmill and the muffled sound of a television news broadcast from the exercise room down the hall. Slipping into a tracksuit she kept at his place for just these occasions, Ali made her way to his tiny but well-equipped gym. When she showed up, B. moved from the treadmill to the free weights. Ali was about to step onto the treadmill in his place when her phone rang. A glance at the caller ID didn’t help. The number was unfamiliar.
“Hello, Ali?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Donnatelle-Donnatelle Craig-from the academy.”
“Yes, Donnatelle. How are you?” Ali’s caller had enough confidence in her voice to make her unrecognizable. The realization made Ali smile. Clearly, this new Donnatelle was a far cry from the hesitant young woman Ali remembered from her time at the academy in Peoria.
Two and a half years earlier, Donnatelle had been in despair about her prosp
ects and in danger of washing out of training. Ali had reached out a hand to help Donnatelle along, encouraging her with her firearms handling and target range shooting. In the end, Donnatelle successfully completed the course and graduated along with the rest of her class. The last Ali heard from her, Donnatelle was serving as a sworn deputy with the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department.
“I hope I’m not calling too early.”
“Not around here you aren’t,” Ali said. “I’m up and at ’em. How’ve you been?”
“I’m fine,” Donnatelle said. “But I’m calling with some bad news. Have you heard about Jose? I just got a Blue Alert about it.”
“You mean Jose Reyes from our class?” Ali asked.
“Yes,” Donnatelle said. “He’s been working for the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department. He was shot last night.”
Jose Reyes had been another academy classmate. Initially, he and Ali had butted heads, but by the time their training was over, they had not only buried the hatchet, they had acquired a genuine respect and fondness for each other. Jose had helped Ali care for a troubled friend named Brenda Riley when she had shown up in Peoria, drunk and begging for help. After that, Ali had returned the favor by helping Jose and Donnatelle master some of the academic aspects of their training.
It struck Ali as ironic that without her tutoring, neither Jose nor Donnatelle might have graduated from the academy. Almost three years later, they were both working in law enforcement, while Ali wasn’t. What was that old saying? Something about those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach.
“What happened?” Ali asked.
“He was on patrol a few miles outside Nogales. He was making a supposedly routine stop when he was shot at close range. When they found him, he was transported to a trauma unit. The last I heard, he was alive, but that’s about all. It’s bad.”
“Will he make it?” Ali asked.
“I just talked to his wife, Teresa. The jury’s still out,” Donnatelle answered grimly. “He was airlifted to Physicians Medical Center in Tucson, where he’s undergone surgery. According to Teresa, the hospital lists his condition as guarded.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” Ali agreed.
“It gets worse. Teresa is eight and a half months pregnant. She’s stuck at the hospital with her two preschoolers from a previous marriage.”
Clearly, Donnatelle had stayed in closer contact with Jose and his family than Ali had. She had heard that he was married, but the last bit-about three kids being involved in this looming tragedy-hit Ali hard.
She understood more than most exactly how tough it was to raise even one baby without a father. She’d had to do that herself when Dean, her first husband, had lost his battle with glioblastoma weeks before Christopher was born. If Jose Reyes died as a result of his wounds, he would leave behind a widow with three orphaned children.
“Do you have any contact information for them?” Ali asked.
“Sure do,” Donnatelle said. “Like I said, Jose’s wife’s name is Teresa-with a T-E rather than a T-H. About a year ago they bought a place in Patagonia.”
Donnatelle reeled off both a post office box as well as phone numbers and an e-mail address. Ali jotted down the information.
“I’m just now going off shift,” Donnatelle went on. “Tomorrow is my day off. It sounds like Teresa is completely overwhelmed and could use some help. My mom’s coming over to look after my kids. As soon as she gets here, I’m on my way to Tucson.”
“I can’t come down today,” Ali said. “I’ve got company coming for dinner. But I could show up tomorrow and stay for a day or so. You’ll keep me posted?”
“Sure will,” Donnatelle said.
“And speaking of your kids,” Ali said, “how are they?”
“Fine,” Donnatelle answered. “All three of them made the honor roll.”
“Good for them,” Ali said. “And good for you!”
That was the main reason Donnatelle had been determined to make it through the academy. She had wanted to set a good example for her kids, and she was obviously doing so.
They hung up after that. Ali stood with her cell phone in hand and her dialing finger poised to dial Teresa Reyes’s cell phone number. Ultimately, she didn’t call. For one thing, Teresa Reyes didn’t know Ali from Adam, and in the midst of this crisis, she didn’t need to be juggling phone calls from people she didn’t know. Helping out in person would be different. Even now, years after her first husband’s death, Ali could remember the people, some of them distant acquaintances or friends of friends, who had simply shown up unannounced at the hospital or at the apartment to help Ali with her dying husband and later with her newborn son.
Ali knew right then that she’d be on her way to Tucson first thing on Sunday morning. Maybe she didn’t owe it to the Reyes family, but she did to the people who had helped her when she needed it. They had paid it forward, and now she would pay them back.
“What’s up?” B. asked. He was still hard at work on the elliptical machine.
“Jose Reyes, one of the guys from the academy, got shot Saturday night.”
“That deputy down in Santa Cruz County?”
Ali nodded.
“It was on the news a little while ago,” B. said. “I thought the name sounded familiar, but I didn’t make the connection. Wasn’t he the one who blacked your eye just before that Labor Day weekend?”
“That’s the one,” Ali answered with a smile. “He’s also the one who helped me out when Brenda Riley was in such bad shape. Donnatelle Craig, one of our classmates, heard about it on a Blue Alert and called from Yuma to let me know.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Can’t tell,” Ali answered. “He’s been airlifted to Tucson for surgery. According to Donnatelle, he and his wife are expecting a baby in a matter of weeks, and there are two older kids as well.”
“Tough,” B. said.
Nodding her agreement, Ali stepped onto the treadmill and punched in her settings. “Sister Anselm is coming for dinner tonight, and Leland has been cooking up a storm. Tomorrow I’ll drive down to Tucson and see what I can do to help. Being in a hospital waiting room with an injured husband and little kids is no picnic.”
“Speaking of Brenda Riley,” B. said after a pause, “what do you hear from her these days? Is she still sober?”
Brenda Riley and Ali Reynolds had been contemporaries working for sister television stations back in the days when Ali was a television newscaster in L.A. They had been forced off-screen about the same time, due to having reached the female equivalent of a pull-by date. Since that was about the same time Ali’s second marriage blew up, she had come home to Sedona to get her her life back in order and recover. Brenda had done the opposite. She had gone on a bender that lasted for a couple of years and nearly killed her.
While Brenda was in the process of sobering up, she’d had the misfortune of falling under the spell of a cyberstalker. When the situation had gone from bad to worse, Ali, with the help of a Grass Valley homicide detective named Gilbert Morris, had managed to pull Brenda’s fat out of the fire.
Much to Ali’s surprise, in the ensuing months, Detective Morris and Brenda had morphed into a romantic item, complete with a beachside wedding Ali had attended solo because B. was off on some business trip or other. After the ceremony, Gil and Brenda had laughingly told Ali that theirs was a match made in hell rather than heaven.
“Yes, she’s still sober,” Ali said. “She wrote a book that's due out soon. You do remember that her mother died, don’t you?”
“Not really,” B. admitted.
“Brenda’s share of the estate evidently came to quite a chunk of change. Last month Gil was able to pull the pin on his job with the Grass Valley PD.”
“He’s a little young to be retired, isn’t he?” B. asked.
“He’s only retired from law enforcement,” Ali answered. “He and Brenda are in the process of buying an operating B-and-B in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland isn’t all that
far from Redding, where Gil’s kids live with his ex-wife.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” B. said.
“Having an ex-wife?”
“No, running a B-and-B. It’s a job description that automatically requires the owner to be civil to a bunch of yahoo customers first thing in the morning,” B said. “Before you even have your first cup of coffee. Spare me.”
“Because you’re a grump in the morning?” Ali asked.
“Pretty much,” B. agreed.
When their joint workout was over, Ali and B. paused in the kitchen long enough to share a cup of coffee and two pieces of leftover pizza. Coffee beans kept in the freezer were the only fresh food that could survive B.’s long absences without going bad. Ali was grateful for the pizza. After spending the night living in sin at her place or B.’s, she was capable of showing up at the Sugarloaf and brazening it out with her parents, but she didn’t like doing it.
“I’m going to miss you,” Ali said.
“No, you won’t,” B. replied. “You’ll be too busy planting that garden of yours to even notice I’m gone.”
“You’re wrong,” Ali told him. “I’ll notice.”
Sometime later, knowing that B. needed time to get gathered up and packed, Ali kissed him goodbye and headed home, where she found she had the place to herself. Leland was out doing some last-minute shopping for dinner, while the house was filled with the tangy aromas of the duck-breast and sausage-laced cassoulet they would share that evening with Sister Anselm.
Stopping off long enough to pour herself a cup of coffee, she went into the library, where there was a distinct chill in the air. A storm had blown in overnight, driving away yesterday’s bright blue sky. Outside her window, a few flurries of snowflakes drifted from an overcast sky.
“So much for spring,” Ali muttered, lighting the gas log in the fireplace.