by J. A. Jance
Ali suspected that was true. For as long as she could remember, Bob Larson had spent every spare hour away from the business providing all kinds of essentials-from food to used furniture to firewood-for the homeless and working poor in the area.
“Once the Sugarloaf is gone, I’ll be the one with no outside interests,” Edie Larson continued. “I’m not about to take up golf or bowling at my age, but I don’t want to sit around reading trashy novels and eating bonbons, either. I’ll go completely stir-crazy. It’s like that friend of yours Sister Anselm. She does twice as much as people half her age. It’s what keeps her going. Running for office here in town is something I can do to make a difference.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Ali told her. “Including serving as your campaign manager.”
“Really?” Edie asked.
“Really. We’ll have our first strategy meeting as soon as I get back from Tucson.”
“Good,” Edie said. “That’ll give your father a little longer to get used to the idea.”
Me, too, Ali thought.
“So what are you doing down there anyway?” Edie asked.
“Helping a friend,” Ali said. She would have said more, but Edie cut her off. “Oops,” she said. “Customers. Gotta go.” And hung up.
When Ali had packed to come to Tucson, she’d expected to stay at a hotel where the bathroom would be included inside the room. At All Saints, there were two bathrooms, one at either end of a long hallway. Sister Genevieve had loaned her a bathrobe for that reason. Showered and dressed, Ali showed up at the refectory breakfast and found herself in the presence of a dozen nuns in habits. Accustomed to Sister Anselm’s mostly business casual attire, Ali was surprised by the traditional dress. She was also surprised by the congenial atmosphere, the easy laughter, and the good food.
Over tea and leftovers the night before, Sister Genevieve had recounted a little of All Saints’ history. The main building-the one with the kitchen, refectory, chapel, and Sister Genevieve’s quarters-had once been the ranch house for the old Coughnour Ranch, which stretched from the Tanque Verde River bottom to the foothills of the Catalinas on Tucson’s far east side. The ranch had been established by a man named James Coughnour in the early part of the twentieth century. As the second son in a wealthy East Coast shipbuilding family, James had headed west with his newly inherited share of the family fortune as well as a pair of badly damaged lungs. He had bought up huge tracts of land along the Tanque Verde River and turned it into a thriving cattle ranch that had morphed into one of Arizona’s primary meatpacking companies.
When James’s only heir, his beloved daughter, Caroline, expressed an interest in becoming a nun, James had come up with a plan that allowed her to have her way without his necessarily losing her. He agreed to let her go and to use his considerable fortune to create a sanatarium for lung-damaged patients so long as she joined an order that would take charge of running the facility. Caroline had gone on to join the Sisters of Providence. What had once been the main ranch house was transformed into the All Saints Convent. Caroline, renamed Sister Antoinette, had lived there for the remainder of her life.
Eventually the sanatarium was purchased by a group of physicians and turned into Physicians Medical Center, a hospital where most of the sisters of All Saints worked as nurses. Sister Anselm had first ventured into the community in her role as a counselor to troubled nuns when Sister Genevieve’s predecessor as reverend mother slipped into age-related dementia. Ever since, All Saints had served as Sister Anselm’s Tucson home away from home.
Breakfast was delicious, with slabs of warm homemade coffee cake and mounds of freshly scrambled eggs. Coffee was hot and plentiful, as was grapefruit juice from fruit that had been picked that morning from trees growing on the grounds. Sitting there with the congenial group of breakfasting nuns, Ali felt totally at home, benefiting from the fact that any friend of Sister Anselm’s was a friend of theirs.
The meal was winding down when Sister Anselm put in an appearance. She looked more tired than Ali had ever seen her. Sister Lucille, the cook, immediately bustled around, bringing her breakfast.
“We had another tough night,” Sister Anselm said in answer to Ali’s question. “But she’s sleeping, so I’m going to grab some sleep, too. In an actual bed. They’ll let me know if anything changes.”
“No word from her family?” Ali knew that healing broken families was as much a part of Sister Anselm’s mission as healing broken bodies.
The nun shook her head. “I was hoping we’d hear from them, but there’s nothing so far, and that’s probably just as well. She’s too fragile to deal with the added stress. What about you? What’s on your agenda?”
“I’m going to go check on all my charges-Haley and Lucy and Carinda. I’m hoping to locate some help for Teresa when she’s released from the hospital and goes back home. And Juanita Cisco wants me to look into Jose’s situation at the sheriff’s department and find out why his fellow officers are treating him as a leper as opposed to a wounded hero.”
Sister Anselm nodded. “I wondered about that, too.”
31
8:00 A.M., Monday, April 12
Nogales, Arizona
Sheriff Renteria called into his office as he drove into town. “Going to get a haircut,” he told his secretary. “I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
Sheriff Renteria didn’t need a haircut so much as he needed information. In the old days, crooks and cops had found common ground in churches. They may have been good guys and bad guys, but they were Catholic good guys and bad guys, with priests functioning as the diplomats who moved back and forth between them.
That was no longer true. A lot of the younger people on both sides had moved away from the Church. Now the man who stood with a foot in both camps was Sheriff Renteria’s cousin, his father’s brother’s son, the barber Ignacio.
When Sheriff Renteria arrived, the barbershop was empty. Ignacio was sitting in his barber chair, reading a newspaper. He smiled, picked up his cape, and shook it out. “Need a little trim?” he asked.
“A little.”
Manuel didn’t have much to trim these days. Ignacio fired up his clipper and went to work. As long as the clipper was running, neither man spoke.
“What do you hear from Pasquale?” Manuel asked once the shop went silent. They both knew what he meant-that they were talking about the shooting.
“He didn’t do it,” Ignacio answered at once. “The people he works for didn’t do it, either. That was the agreement he made with you, that your guys wouldn’t be targeted.”
That was the informal peace treaty Sheriff Renteria had negotiated with Pasquale years ago, back when he was first elected. Some would have called it a deal with the devil. There had been nothing in writing. The sheriff had met with Pasquale in his father’s barbershop. The two had spoken briefly, then they shook hands. That had been it. The drug business was like a many-headed hydra. An agreement with one division didn’t necessarily cover another, but as far as the Nogales area was concerned, Pasquale had enough influence to make it work.
“Was Deputy Reyes dealing?” Manuel asked.
On the surface, it was a stupid question. Sheriff Renteria had seen the evidence himself-the plastic-wrapped packages in the trunk of Jose’s patrol car; the hundred-dollar bills lying scattered on the ground like so many dead leaves.
“Pasquale says no,” Ignacio said quietly. “At least not for the Nogos.”
“What would happen if he was dealing for someone else?”
“That would mean he was poaching on Nogo territory,” Ignacio said. “Pasquale wouldn’t like it, and it would also take your deal off the table. What if somebody set him up to look like he was dealing?”
In the mirror, Manuel Renteria met and held his cousin’s gaze. “Any idea who?”
Ignacio shook his head.
“We found drugs at the scene,” Manuel said. “If they didn’t come from Pasquale, where did they come from?”
“I’m sure Pasquale is asking the same question.”
Ignacio brushed loose hair from the back of Renteria’s neck, removed the cape, snapped it clean, and folded it up.
“Thanks,” Sheriff Renteria said. “Tell Pasquale I said hello.”
Standing up, he pulled out his wallet and pulled out five ten-dollar bills. One at a time, he counted them into Ignacio’s outstretched hand-ten bucks for the haircut and forty bucks for the tip, in every sense of the word. As far as Sheriff Renteria was concerned, it was well worth it. Ignacio had hinted at a possibility the sheriff hadn’t considered-that maybe Jose Reyes really had been set up.
He thought about it for a time, but not for long. As much as he wanted to believe it, he couldn’t. There was too much compelling evidence that said otherwise.
32
9:00 A.M., Monday, April 12
Vail, Arizona
Al Gutierrez was returning from a morning run when his phone rang. “What the hell were you thinking?” Sergeant Kevin Dobbs demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“You had no business going off Lone Rangering it. Now I’m in deep caca with the higher-ups, and you’re in deeper caca with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the ‘informal’ visit you paid to Buckeye yesterday. You weren’t in uniform. You weren’t on duty. I just got off the phone with a homicide detective from Phoenix. She’s all over my butt, asking all kinds of difficult questions. Before she called me, she tried calling Pima County to ask about the progress of the investigation on the assault near Three Points. When they didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, guess what? She started nosing around with Border Patrol, and somebody pointed her in my direction. Thank you very much for that, by the way. Really appreciate it. I told her the paperwork on the assault must have gotten lost between here and Pima County. I expect you to back me up on that, by the way.”
Al had found the injured girl on Friday afternoon. This was only Monday morning. “Paperwork gets lost all the time,” he said. “What’s the big deal? And why a homicide detective?”
“The big deal is that your ‘assault victim’ is evidently a missing person in two jurisdictions and a homicide suspect in another. It’s like she’s all over the place, and I’m the one left holding the bag. So while I’m straightening out the paperwork, you can expect a phone call from the homicide cop. I gave her your number. Her name’s Rush-Detective Ariel Rush.”
“What do you want me to tell her?”
“That we handed our report in on Friday and have no idea what happened to it afterward. That we’re sending a duplicate over to Pima County. As for why you were following up on something when you were out of uniform and it wasn’t your concern? Knock yourself out. Tell ’em whatever the hell you want, but if it comes back and bites me in the butt, you’re looking at a minimum three-day suspension.”
Call waiting buzzed, but Dobbs had already hung up before Al switched from one line to another.
“Al Gutierrez?” a woman asked.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
“I’m Detective Rush,” she said. “Detective Ariel Rush with Phoenix PD, Homicide.”
“Sergeant Dobbs told me to expect a call from a homicide detective. What he didn’t say is who died.”
“I’m investigating the murder of a man who was found dead from blunt-force trauma and dumped in North Phoenix sometime early Friday morning. He has since been identified as Enrique ‘Chico’ Hernandez, who ran a high-end call girl operation in Phoenix. On Saturday, some young women-Mr. Hernandez’s employees-called to report that he and one of their roommates, a girl named Breeze Domingo-a young woman with a rose tattoo on her right breast-had gone missing sometime early Thursday morning. The reason the roommates came forward in the first place is that Chico’s name was the one on the rental agreement for their apartment. He had fallen behind in the rent. Without him there, the other girls were worried about being tossed out on their butts with nowhere to go and no protection.
“It wasn’t until Mr. Hernandez’s bloodstained vehicle was found abandoned in downtown Phoenix early yesterday afternoon that we were able to put the missing persons report together with the homicide. When we ran prints found in the vehicle through AFIS, we ended up getting a hit from another missing persons case, that of a fourteen-year-old girl named Rose Ventana who ran away from her home in Buckeye over three years ago. Since Rose was also reported to have a rose tattoo in a pretty distinctive location, I think it’s safe to assume that Breeze Domingo and Rose Ventana are one and the same. Since her prints were found at the scene of a homicide, that suggests she’s either a suspect or, at the very least, a person of interest.”
“How did you make the connection to the Three Points case?” Al asked.
“Her father,” Ariel said. “Initially, I called the house first thing this morning, thinking that if Breeze were in some kind of trouble, she might have turned to her family for help. The mother was completely in the dark. When I told her about finding the fingerprints, she was overjoyed, not because her daughter might be a person of interest in a homicide but because she was alive. That was the first hint she’d had in years that her daughter wasn’t dead. About that time Rose’s father came on the phone, and it turned out he already knew.”
“Stepfather,” Al corrected. “And yes, he knew because I told him yesterday.”
“Right,” Ariel agreed. “Stepfather. He was pissed. He thought you were the one who had called us into it. It wasn’t easy to get the whole story from him, because by then his wife was in the background, screaming at him and telling him that if someone thought her daughter was alive, he had no right to keep the information to himself. At any rate, Mr. Fox gave me your name and phone number because you had given him your card. When I tried reaching you and you weren’t in, they put me through to your supervisor.”
“Sergeant Dobbs.”
“Exactly,” Detective Rush said. “Who wasn’t at all overjoyed to hear from me. By now I expect James and Connie Fox are on their way to Tucson to try to see their daughter. Maybe not both of them, but for sure the mother. It turns out I’m headed for Tucson, too. From what I’m hearing, it seems likely that Breeze/Rose could be both a victim of a crime and a perpetrator. I’ll need to talk to her to sort all that out. I’d like to see you, too. I’d like to go out and take a look at the crime scene. Can you direct me to it?”
“Sure. No problem.” Al said. “I’ll be glad to take you there.”
“Was any kind of crime scene investigation done at the time?”
Al thought about the possible implications of any answer he might give. None of them were good. “I took a few photos, but that’s about it,” he said finally.
Detective Rush laughed. “Let me guess,” she said. “That would be because Sergeant Dobbs deliberately dropped the ball.”
“I didn’t say that,” Al told her.
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed, “because you didn’t have to. This isn’t my first day, Agent Gutierrez. I can figure out one or two things on my own. I’ve spent the past twenty years dealing with people like Kevin Dobbs. Generally, I give them two simple choices: Get out of my way or get run over.”
Detective Ariel Rush sounded like the polar opposite of Kevin Dobbs.
“I’m just passing Picacho Peak,” she said. “That’s the nearest landmark. Let’s visit the crime scene first and then go to the hospital. I’ll come by your place and pick you up.”
Al gave her the address and directions and then added, “I should probably call Sister Anselm and let her know Rose’s parents are on their way.”
“Who’s Sister Anselm?” Detective Rush asked.
“She’s Rose’s patient advocate.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s at the hospital in the ICU. As far as I can tell, her job is to look out for Rose’s interests, but in the hospital, she’s listed as Jane Doe, not Rose Ventana.”
“Got it
,” Detective Rush said. “See you in a few.”
For a moment or two, after Detective Rush hung up, Al stood there, staring at his phone. Before he left the hospital, the previous night, Sister Anselm had given him her cell number. Should he call and warn her that Rose’s parents were on the way? After finding the number, he punched send.
When the nun answered, she sounded groggy, as though he had awakened her from a sound sleep.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But this is Al-Al Gutierrez. I just heard from a Phoenix homicide detective who figured out that Rose is still alive and called her parents. They’re on their way to the hospital.”
Sister Anselm switched to full alert. “Her parents are coming here? How soon should I expect them?”
“I don’t know, because I don’t know how long ago they left Buckeye,” Al said. “Probably fairly soon. Within the next hour or so.”
“Thank you so much for the warning, Mr. Gutierrez,” Sister Anselm said. “I’ll be sure to be there to run interference, should that prove necessary.”
33
10:30 A.M., Monday, April 12
Patagonia, Arizona
Patty Patton liked to say that she had worked for the post office in Patagonia since “Noah was a pup.” In view of the fact that her career with the U.S. Postal Service had started on a part-time basis when she was in high school and her mother, Lorna DeHaven, was the postmistress, that wasn’t far from wrong.
Patty had married her high school sweetheart, Roland Patton, two weeks after she graduated from Patagonia High. She and Roland, an “older man” of twenty, had planned on staying with her mother only long enough for them to get a place of their own. That plan had come to grief when, a month after the wedding, Roland had died in the crash of his crop-dusting aircraft.