by J. A. Jance
“Tucson is exactly right.”
“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 Te
resa’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?
When Teresa was nervous or upset, she often twisted her wedding band, moving it around on her finger. This time, when she attempted to do that, the ring wouldn’t budge. She looked at her hands. Her fingers looked swollen, but that was probably due to the way she had slept, lying flat on the couch with her hands beside her. She was sure that if she waited awhile, she’d be fine.
Leaving Jose’s room, she realized she was hungry. She left the girls occupied, with Donnatelle and made her way to the cafeteria. Her cell phone needed recharging, but there was enough power left in it to call her mother. Late in the evening, Teresa’s uncle had driven Maria back home.
“If you need me to come back, I will,” Maria said. “But I’m afraid I overdid it yesterday.”
“That’s fine,” Teresa said. “You get some rest. I’ve made arrangements to keep Donnatelle’s hotel room. When it’s time to go to bed, the girls and I will go there.”
“But you don’t have your car. Do you want me to ask Tomas to come get you?”
“Uncle Tomas has done plenty,” Teresa said. “If we need to, we’ll take a cab.” Her phone beeped, letting her know the battery was low. “Sorry, Mom,” she finished. “The phone is running out of juice.”
Teresa arrived back at the ICU waiting room just as a new person-a tall woman with a blond ponytail-was added to the mix. Donnatelle left the girls with their sticker books and rushed across the room to greet the newcomer. When Sister Anselm emerged from her patient’s room, she did a double take.
“Ali! For goodness’ sake. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” the blond woman said with a laugh.
“I had a call out. I told you I had one, that I was going to Tucson. That usually means either this trauma unit or the one at University Medical Center. But why are you here?”
“She’s a friend of Jose’s,” Donnatelle explained, answering for both of them. “I asked Ali to come help out because I have to leave for home shortly.” She turned to Teresa. “I’m not sure you’ve met. This is Jose’s friend Ali Reynolds, from Sedona.”
Standing up to be introduced, Teresa was painfully aware of how short she was. Among those three towering women, she wished she were taller than her five foot nothing. She also wished she weren’t so impossibly pregnant.
“I’m glad to meet you,” she said.
“I’m guessing you didn’t get my e-mail,” Ali said.
“No.”
“I told you I was coming. I’ll be here to help out when Donnatelle has to go home.”
Another helpful stranger, Teresa thought. She was grateful for the help but embarrassed that she needed it.
“You’re from Sedona? I’m sorry you had to come all this way.”
“It’s not so far,” Ali said. “And it was a beautiful drive, with all the wildflowers blooming. Besides, Jose really helped me out once. I’m here to return the favor. What needs doing?”
“Lucy and Carinda are working their way through their sticker books,” Donnatelle said, nodding toward the girls, who were at the table with their heads tucked together in concentration. “When they run out of interest in that, they’ll probably be ready for lunch. We had an early breakfast at the hotel. Come on. Let me introduce you to them, too.”
Donnatelle and Ali walked away. As Sister Anselm returned to her patient, Teresa couldn’t help wondering what kind of important person might be in the room across from Jose’s. Whoever she was, she merited having Sister Anselm looking after her around the clock. Maybe it was a well-known politician or some kind of celebrity.
Teresa turned to go back to her temporary command center of waiting room chairs when her path was blocked by the sudden appearance of a large man who stopped directly in front of her. “Mrs. Reyes?” he asked.
In the generally hushed atmosphere of the waiting room, his voice was so loud that it startled her.
“Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”
He was dressed in a sport jacket and a flashy tie. That meant he wasn’t a doctor. In fact, she suspected the man was a cop even before he reached into a pocket and produced an ID wallet and badge.
As Teresa squinted to read the name on the badge, she realized that she had a splitting headache. Somehow she hadn’t noticed that before. Now she did, discovering it at the same time as the letters on his ID wallet gradually sorted themselves into a name. Lattimore. The guy from the Department of Public Safety. This was the investigator Sheriff Renteria had told her about, the one who was investigating Jose’s shooting.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Teresa Reyes.”
“I’m Lieutenant Duane Lattimore with the Department of Public Safety. I’m charged with investigating your husband’s shooting. I was hoping to talk to you about it.”
When she looked up at the intimidating man looming above her, the room seemed to spin around him. For a moment she thought she might faint. She grabbed hold of the back of a chair to steady herself. Finally, she managed to focus.
“How’s he doing, by the way?” Lattimore asked.
“Hanging in,” Teresa said. “He’s in the ICU and listed as stable at the moment, but doctor says the next twenty-four hours are critical.”
Tired of looking up at the man and worried that she was about to fall, Teresa staggered around behind him and managed to regain her chair. She felt surprisingly dizzy, almost as though she were drunk. Sitting down helped settle some of the vertigo.
“What do you need?” she asked. “How can I help?”
“You might start by giving me the names of some of your husband’s associates,” Lattimore said.
“Associates. You mean like the cops he works with?”
“Please, Mrs. Reyes,” Lattimore said. “Let’s not play games. We found evidence at the scene
that indicates your husband is involved in a drug trafficking operation of some kind. We found even more evidence of that at your home earlier today.”
“At my home,” Teresa objected. “You went to my home?”
“We had a search warrant,” Lattimore said. “A properly drawn search warrant. What we found in your husband’s vehicle gave us probable cause to search his residence as well.”
“My husband is the victim here,” Teresa said, her voice rising in pitch. “He was shot. How dare you search our house?”
Pulling out a notebook, Lattimore made a show of opening it to the first blank page. Then he pulled a ballpoint pen out of his pocket. “Do you have any idea how long your husband has been involved in the drug trade?” he asked.
“Jose is not involved in the drug trade,” Teresa declared forcefully. “He never has been involved in the drug trade. He’s a police officer. He hates drugs. He hates people who sell drugs.”
Lattimore gave no indication that he’d heard her objection. “When we searched your home, we found plenty of evidence that says otherwise. Now, if you’d be so kind as to give me the names of some of his business associates, perhaps we can move on to finding out who did this.”
“You mean as in finding out who tried to kill him?” Teresa asked. “You’re going to stand there and try to tell me that you even care about who shot him? This is about something else. This is all about proving to the world that Jose did something wrong. It’s not about finding out who’s responsible for putting him here.”
Lattimore sat down beside her. “Now, now, Mrs. Reyes,” he said soothingly. “There’s no need to shout. Perhaps we should go somewhere less public so we can discuss this situation in private.”
Teresa was abruptly aware that the entire waiting room had gone quiet as everyone there tuned in on this conversation. Some of her anger retreated, leaving her vulnerable and more than a little afraid. She hoped there was safety in numbers.
“We’ll talk here,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
As if responding to the uncertainty in their mother’s voice, first Lucy and then Carinda abandoned the game they were playing with Donnatelle and came on the run. Once again, Lucy stationed herself protectively at her mother’s side, while Carinda catapulted into her lap.