Left for Dead ar-7

by J. A. Jance

  Rose nodded. “It’s okay,” she said.

  After listing the time, place, and people present, Ariel Rush launched off on her questions.

  “With the help of Agent Gutierrez here, I’m currently investigating the homicide of one Chico Hernandez. Since you and he were both reported missing by your roommates on Saturday, I assume you know him?”

  Rose nodded.

  “I also have a slide show that I’ve loaded onto my computer,” Detective Rush continued. “I’d like you to take a look at the photos and let me know if any one of those individuals is someone you recognize.”

  The montage contained ten photographs in all. Watching from several feet away, Sister Anselm noticed that most of them were mug shots and some were simple head shots. Two of them had a grainy texture that looked as though it might have come from some kind of security video. As Detective Rush clicked through, Rose watched the photos; Sister Anselm followed them while also watching Rose. The young woman’s eyes widened in shock at the third photo in the group, and again several shots later.

  “So do you recognize anyone here?” Detective Rush asked.

  The answer was obvious, and Rose didn’t try to deny it. She nodded.

  “I’m going to go back through the photos one at a time,” Detective Rush said. “You’ll notice each photo in the montage is numbered. If you recognize one of them, please tell me the appropriate number.”

  Rose stared at the computer screen while the photos reappeared. “Three,” she mumbled a few seconds later. “And eight.”

  “You recognize two of them?”

  Rose nodded again. Nodding was clearly easier for her than speaking.

  “And can you tell me how you know these gentlemen?”

  Rose’s eyes sought out Sister Anselm, asking for guidance on whether she should answer the question. During Rose’s time in the ICU, a remarkable bond of trust had grown between the patient advocate and her charge.

  “You need to tell her,” Sister Anselm said gently. “You need to tell Detective Rush all of it.”

  “Those men in the pictures. They took me to the desert,” Rose said. “Left me.”

  “They’re the ones who dumped you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they do anything else?”

  “Hit me; kicked me.”

  “Anything more?”

  This time Rose said nothing.

  “Tell me about Mr. Hernandez,” Detective Rush continued. “Was he your employer?”

  Rose hesitated but finally nodded.

  “Your pimp?”

  Again there was no answer forthcoming.

  “Ms. Ventana,” Detective Rush said. “As you are no doubt aware, girls on the street often don’t bother reporting rapes. They think they won’t be taken seriously by the law enforcement community, but that’s not true for me. Just because you may have worked as a prostitute in the past doesn’t make you fair game. So tell me about the two men in these photos-number three and number eight. In addition to beating you and kicking you, did they do anything else? Did they sexually assault you, for example?”

  There was another long pause before Rose’s whispered answer. “Yes.”

  “Earlier today, Mr. Gutierrez, the Border Patrol agent who found you, and I visited the crime scene near Three Points. We came away with trace evidence that may include DNA from one of your assailants. Unless you want to, you can’t be compelled to give me any information about your medical condition or the course of treatment, but it would be a huge favor to me and to my investigation if I were to know some of the details of your treatment. For example, at the time you were admitted to PMC, do you know if a rape kit was taken?”

  Rose looked questioningly at Sister Anselm, who nodded.

  “Yes,” Rose said finally. “It was.”

  “And if we can identify your attacker, is it your intention to press charges?”

  Again Rose looked to Sister Anselm for confirmation. Another nod.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “It is.”

  “I’ll need your signature on an actual police report to make that official,” Detective Rush said. She took possession of the briefcase, opened it, and dug out a piece of paper. For the next several minutes, she scribbled on it before handing it over to Rose. “I know signing with your hand in a splint is tough. If you can make an X at the bottom, we’ll have Sister Anselm and Mr. Gutierrez sign as witnesses. That way, I can make sure the kit is sent along to the crime lab so they can start processing it.”

  When the paper was properly signed and witnessed, Detective Rush returned to the interview. “Now, please tell me about the last time you remember seeing Mr. Hernandez.”

  “Thursday. Going to Fountain Hills.”

  “To Fountain Hills?” Detective Rush confirmed. “Why there?”

  “Client,” Rose replied.

  “What client? Did you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Was the client in the photo montage?”

  “No.”

  “So you went to a house in Fountain Hills to see a client. What happened there?”

  “He burned me,” Rose whispered. “Cut me. Raped me. He liked hurting me.”

  “Do you know his name? Do you remember an address or a street name?”

  Rose thought for a long time before answering. “Big house,” she said. “Last street. Backed up to the desert.”

  “More than one story?”

  Rose closed her eyes as if trying to concentrate. “Two,” she said, “and a basement.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Big gate, guardhouse, steep hill.”

  “If I brought you photos of gates in Fountain Hills, would you be able to recognize the right one and choose it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I hope so,” Detective Rush said. “We want to find the guys who dumped you, the ones in the photos, but I believe the guy in the house in Fountain Hills is a big-time bad guy. We know of at least three other possible victims, all of them dead but all showing injuries similar to yours-evidence of burning and of cutting.”

  “All dead?” Rose asked.

  Detective Rush nodded. “Dead, but with no DNA.”

  “Condom,” Rose muttered.

  Detective Rush paused. “Wait. He used a condom when he assaulted you?”

  Rose nodded.

  “But the guys who dumped you did not?”

  “No.”

  “That probably means one of two things,” Detective Rush said. “It could be that the guy in Fountain Hills is worried about picking up a local garden-variety STD. It’s also possible that he’s worried about leaving DNA lying around because he knows it may already be listed in the DNA database.”

  Detective Rush seemed to be casting around for another set of questions, but Sister Anselm called a halt. “That’s all Rose can do for right now. She needs to rest.”

  The detective closed her computer. “That’s all right,” she said. “She may have given me exactly what I need to know.”

  45

  5:00 P.M., Monday, April 12

  Patagonia, Arizona

  Once in her Camaro, Patty Patton drove away from the Tewksbury crime scene with every intention of going straight home. But then she started thinking about those flat-rate boxes. At this point she was still prepared to shout Christine’s innocence from the rooftops, but she was no longer so sure about Phil.

  How dare he pull her post office-her blemish-free post office-into this kind of controversy? And if he had used the flat-rate boxes to move drugs around, had he carried them from one place to another in his mail truck, a vehicle that was assigned to her operation?

  That ugly realization hit home, leaving Patty so upset that she could barely see to drive. When she came to the driveway of her house, she drove straight past it. Instead, she returned to the post office and pulled in back, next to the locked storage yard with the mail truck sitting inside, safe and secure under lock and key.

  The truck looked harmless enough, sitti
ng there all by itself. There was nothing sinister about it, nothing to indicate it had participated in any kind of wrongdoing, but for Patty’s own peace of mind, she needed to know. Was Phil Tewksbury true blue, or had he played her for a fool all these years?

  Making up her mind, she put the Camaro back in gear, made a rooster-tail U-turn, and drove two blocks farther east to the parking lot of the San Rafael Cafe. It was getting on toward dinnertime, and there were several cars parked in the lot. Eventually, she found the one she was looking for: Border Patrol K-9 unit #347.

  Several of the local Border Patrol agents, young bachelor types looking for lower rent, had taken rooms in various houses around town. Mark Embry, of unit #347, and his German shepherd, Max, were Patty’s hands-down favorites.

  Once a week Mark’s mother sent her son a care package-homemade cookies and/or books-in a flat-rate box. The packages, shipped special delivery, came every Friday morning like clockwork, and Friday afternoon, once he was off shift, Mark would come by the post office to pick up his goodies. When he came in to pick up the mail, he always ignored the no dogs allowed sign and brought Max inside. When Max was the dog in question, Patty ignored the sign, too.

  As expected, the dog was waiting patiently in the backseat of Mark’s vehicle. That meant Max’s handler was in the restaurant chowing down on dinner. When Patty went inside, she found Mark seated at the counter. As Patty slipped onto the stool next to him, he looked up from his hamburger plate and smiled.

  “Afternoon, Ms. Patton,” he said. “How are things?”

  Patty didn’t know how much he knew or didn’t know about the situation with Phil Tewksbury. She wanted to have Mark’s help without having to reveal too many details.

  “I hear that dog of yours is pretty smart,” she ventured.

  Mark nodded. “Max is the best,” he agreed.

  “He can tell if drugs are in a vehicle, right?” she said.

  “Absolutely. As soon as he smells them, he alerts and lets me know.”

  “What about if drugs were there and aren’t anymore?”

  “Once we have the alert, it’s my job to locate the merchandise. There are times we know that a certain vehicle has been used in the drug trade even though the drugs aren’t actually present when we search it.”

  “So there’s a residual scent.”

  “You and I probably wouldn’t notice it, but Max does. Why? What’s this all about?”

  “Since you’re not on duty, I’m wondering if you and Max could do me a favor. An unofficial favor.”

  “Sure thing,” Mark said. “Whatever you need.”

  “I’d like you to bring Max and follow me around to the back of the post office.”

  Without further objection and leaving money on the counter to cover his tab, he followed her out of the restaurant. When they reached the back of the post office, she used her key to let Mark and his dog into the yard where the truck was parked. Issuing the command “find it,” Mark let the dog go. Max trotted around the whole expanse of yard, and absolutely nothing happened-not one thing.

  “Try leading him over to the truck,” Patty suggested.

  Mark obliged, but again, there was no reaction.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s here.”

  “Thanks, Mark,” Patty told him. “I appreciate the help.”

  Patty’s heart was lighter as she watched them leave. Whatever Phil had been doing, he hadn’t been using the truck. That was a huge relief. After closing and resecuring the gate, she decided on a whim that she’d go back to the cafe and have some dinner.

  46

  6:30 P.M., Monday, April 12

  Nogales, Arizona

  Sheriff Renteria went back to his office, sat behind his desk, considered his options, and waited for a phone call.

  He was faced with two entirely separate cases, only one of which was his to solve. He didn’t have to call Duane Lattimore and ask to review the Reyes crime scene photos because he remembered what he had seen there all too well. The scattered money; the drugs; the bullet casings; and something that had seemed more puzzling than important at the time-an empty flat-rate box from the United States Postal Service. Now that he had been to the Phil Tewksbury homicide scene, and now that he had seen those other flat-rate boxes, all of them stuffed full with plastic-wrapped containers of marijuana, he knew that the cases were related. Knew as in knew in his gut. What he was waiting for now was the fingerprint evidence.

  Flat-rate boxes with fingerprints had been found at both crime scenes and in the course of the search warrant execution at the Reyes residence. The same prints had been found on the lug wrench at the scene of the shooting. Because of his connections inside the crime lab, Sheriff Renteria already knew that none of those prints belonged to either Jose or Teresa Reyes, and when the prints had been run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, there hadn’t been any hits.

  Sheriff Renteria hoped that tonight all that would change. He had sent Detective Zambrano on a mission to the coroner’s office to pick up a set of prints from Phil Tewksbury’s body and take them to Tucson. He was hoping that the prints, along with the stack of other evidence found in Phil Tewksbury’s truck-the head scarf, wig, and sunglasses-would seal the deal. As far as Renteria was concerned, the story seemed pretty straightforward. Phil shoots Jose Reyes; Christine bashes Phil’s head in; Christine gets shipped off to the funny farm; end of story; two cases closed. What he needed was to find solid leads that would link the two men.

  When his phone rang, Renteria grabbed it during the first ring.

  “Okay,” Zambrano said. “I’ve got Phil’s prints from the coroner, and I’m on my way to the crime lab.”

  “Have you spoken to Lattimore about all this?”

  “Yes. I figured we’d have to clue him on what we had on the Tewksbury case so we could get access to what he has on the Reyes shooting. But even though we may have identified Lattimore’s shooter, he’s not backing off his investigation.”

  “He’s still going after Jose and Teresa for possible drug dealing?”

  “Yup. He’s got that bit in his teeth, and he’s running with it. I suggested we get together at the department tomorrow morning around ten and figure out the next step. He’s not going to like it, but from where I’m standing, we’re all going to have to work together. Reyes and Tewksbury may be two separate cases on paper, but it’s looking more and more to me like they’re related.”

  “What’s next on your agenda?” the sheriff asked.

  “I had hoped to get Patty Patton’s interview out of the way tonight,” Zambrano said, “but by the time I get back from Tucson, it’ll probably be too late. I’d rather interview Patty at home than at the post office. Once news gets out about what happened to Phil, that place is going to be like Grand Central Station. For right now I’m planning on interviewing her as soon as we get the Lattimore meeting out of the way.”

  “You can only do what you can do,” Sheriff Renteria said. He didn’t add the words “with the least amount of overtime possible,” but he could have. “When you do get around to interviewing Patty, be gentle with her. She’s taking Phil’s death pretty hard.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Zambrano said. “They worked together for twenty years. That’s longer than I’ve been married.”

  “What’s the situation on obtaining those additional search warrants?”

  “We’re hoping to have the warrants for the phone and bank records by noon tomorrow. On the other hand, there’s a chance they’ll come through tonight. I’ve got a deputy out chasing a judge.”

  “Good.

  Renteria wondered if a search of Phil Tewksbury’s phone records was where they’d find some meaningful connections between Phil and Jose Reyes. So far, the only thing they knew for sure was that Phil had delivered the mail to Jose and Teresa’s home.

  It pained Sheriff Renteria to think that both Phil and Jose, two supposedly fine, upstanding men,
had somehow been enticed into the deadly easy-money world of illicit drugs. And that was only part of the sheriff’s worry. That old saw about one bad apple kept running through his mind. He wondered how many other people, ones who were also considered pillars of their Santa Cruz County communities, would also be implicated before the two investigations came to an end.

  For a time after Zambrano hung up, Renteria remained at his desk, staring at the photo of Midge that still sat on the credenza on the far side of his office. That picture was a particular favorite of his, taken during Midge’s senior year in high school. He kept it there as a reminder not only of their own marriage but also as a reminder of what marriage was all about. That brought him right back to Phil and Christine Tewksbury.

  Unfortunately, the sheriff knew a good deal about the tragedy that had wrecked Phil and Christine’s lives. A deputy back then, Renteria had been one of the responding officers summoned by Phil’s frantic 911 call the night of the accident. Phil had been charging through the underbrush along the shoulder of the road, desperately searching for some trace of his missing daughter, who, he claimed, had been asleep in the backseat. At first, when there was no sign at all of the girl, there had been some concern that maybe Phil was mistaken, that injuries from the accident had left him confused, making the distraught father think his daughter had been with him when she really wasn’t.

  Everyone but Phil himself had pretty well given up searching for Cassidy when the tow truck arrived on the scene. The driver had asked several of the people gathered there-deputies and onlookers-to line up on the passenger side of the vehicle and see if they could manhandle it back onto its wheels. Renteria had been one of the six or seven men who turned their shoulders to the task. When they succeeded on the third try, that was where they found the lifeless body, pinned flat beneath the wreckage.

  The end of Cassidy Tewksbury’s short life marked the beginning of her parents’ never-ending tragedy. In the days between Christmas and New Year’s, Deputy Renteria had been in and out of their house several times, filling out necessary paperwork and gathering information for his written reports. What still haunted him about those long-ago events were the contrasts he had seen everywhere he looked.