Left for Dead ar-7

by J. A. Jance

  “What’s up?” Sister Anselm asked.

  “Jose’s been moved out of ICU. The girls and I are on our way to tell him that the baby is fine.”

  “How about Teresa?”

  “In recovery,” Ali said, “and the less said about that, the better. But here’s something you should take a look at.” She cued up Stuart’s photos and passed her iPhone to Sister Anselm.

  Sister Anselm studied the photos. “It looks like he’s deliberately concealing his features.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Ali agreed.

  “Can we go now?” Lucy insisted. “Please! And I need to go potty.”

  Taking the phone back and hoisting Carinda onto her hip, Ali set off toward reception. The hospital was laid out with wings spreading out from a central hub. After a stop at the first available restroom, they went to admitting, where they were given directions to Jose’s new room.

  Jose greeted them with a wan smile. “Hey,” he croaked. “How are my girls?”

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Lucy exclaimed. “We’ve got a brother. He’s real little. And he’s all red.”

  Jose looked to Ali for confirmation. “Isn’t this too early?”

  “Evidently not,” Ali said. “We just came from the nursery. He’s fine.”

  “And Teresa?”

  “She’s in recovery. She had to have a C-section.”

  “What’s a C-section?” Lucy asked again. Ali hadn’t answered the question the first time, and she didn’t this time, either.

  “Is she all right?” Jose asked.

  “As far as we know,” Ali said. “Your mother-in-law is with her. I’ve called a friend in Tucson to come help out with the girls.” Whoever had transported Jose from the ICU had been kind enough to collect the stash of kids’ stuff from the waiting room. Ali parked both girls in a chair, handed them a sticker book, and turned her attention to Jose.

  “I can’t believe it’s Sunday,” he said. “How can I have lost two whole days?”

  “It’s easy,” Ali said.

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “I came to help when Donnatelle had to leave.”

  “Donnatelle? From the academy? From Yuma? She was here, too? Did I see her?”

  “No. Teresa was the only visitor allowed in the ICU.”

  “How did Donnatelle find out about it?”

  “A Blue Alert went out on Saturday morning. She came as soon as she got off her shift.”

  “It’s like you all thought I was gonna die.”

  “You came very close,” Ali said. “So who did this? Do you have any idea?”

  He frowned. “It’s fuzzy. I was at work. I was making a traffic stop, and then bam. The next thing I knew, someone-a woman, I think-shot me in the gut.”

  “Tummy,” Lucy corrected from the chair. “‘Gut’ isn’t a nice word. Can we see your owie?”

  “Did they catch her?” Jose asked.

  Ali shook her head. “Do you know who it was?”

  “Not a clue,” Jose said. “That’s all I remember: an older woman with cataract glasses. And a scarf, I think. Yes. She was definitely wearing a scarf.”

  Ali took out her phone and dialed Juanita Cisco’s number. “One of your clients is awake at the moment,” Ali said when the attorney answered. “For someone who’s been out of it for a day and a half, he’s making pretty good sense. You’d better come talk to him before Lattimore gets a crack at him.”

  Jose was frowning when Ali got off the phone. “Who was that on the phone? And who is Lattimore?”

  “Lattimore is the DPS agent investigating your shooting. The woman on the phone is Juanita Cisco, your attorney.”

  “Why would I need an attorney? I’m the one who got shot. The woman who shot me is the one who needs an attorney.”

  “That’s what you’d think,” Ali said. “Unfortunately, you’d be dead wrong.”

  25

  3:00 P.M., Sunday, April 11

  Tucson, Arizona

  It took two and a half hours for Al Gutierrez to drive from Tucson to Buckeye and locate the address he had found online. The neighborhood was nicer than he had expected: fairly new houses, most of them with desert landscaping in the front and pools in the back.

  Much to his frustration, when he arrived at the right house and rang the bell, no one was home. He went back to the car and waited there for a while. Eventually, he began losing heart. What if Rose Ventana’s family had moved away for good? What if they were out of town on a trip of some kind? Finally, Al went knocking on doors and got lucky the first time out.

  “Jim’s at work,” the woman next door told him helpfully. “He doesn’t usually get home until almost dinnertime. On Sundays, Connie and the girls spend most of the day at church. I can take a message for them.”

  Al didn’t want to leave a message. He had driven over a hundred miles, one way, to talk to Rose Ventana’s family in person. That was the whole point.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll go grab some food and come back later.”

  He went to a nearby Pollo Loco, where he stayed until a quarter past five. Al had gleaned a lot of information about the family from the articles. He wanted to be sure James Fox would be home when it came time to deliver the news. Al expected it would be easier to speak to the stepfather and harder to speak to the mother and sisters. It had been three years, but he was pretty sure they were still grieving.

  When he drove up to the house the second time, a BMW sedan was parked in the driveway, and a man with a Michelob Ultra in hand sat on a lawn chair on a covered front patio. Al recognized the man from the photos. This was definitely the stepfather, although he had aged considerably since the first television interview three years earlier.

  The whole time Al was driving, he had contemplated how he would approach the family. He wanted to be thorough, calm, and convincing. If it had been a matter of straight good news or bad news, he suspected it would have been simpler. He could tell them that he believed their daughter was alive. At least she had been alive the last time he saw her, and he hoped she still was, though there was always a chance that she would die before they could get there.

  “Mr. Fox?” Al asked, holding out his hand. “My name is Alonzo Gutierrez.”

  James Fox ignored the hand and took a drink of his beer while studying Al’s face with an unapologetic stare. “My next-door neighbor said somebody stopped by earlier looking for us. Was that you?”

  Al nodded.

  “She said you looked like a cop. Are you?”

  “Not exactly. Border Patrol.”

  “Well, Mr. Border Patrol,” James Fox said sarcastically, “what do you want?”

  This wasn’t starting off the way Al had anticipated. Fox seemed hostile and angry and not the least bit welcoming.

  “It’s about your daughter,” Al said. “It’s about Rose.”

  “Sure it is,” Fox said. “First of all, Rose is my stepdaughter, not my daughter. Second of all, she’s dead. She died three years ago. I suppose you’re here claiming you found the body?”

  “It’s possible she isn’t dead-” Al began.

  Fox ignored the interruption. “In that three years, my family has been through enough hell to last a lifetime. We don’t need any more worthless yahoos showing up trying to jack my wife around by lifting money out of her pocket. They always claim they know where Rose is and say they’ll help us find her and all kinds of claptrap. Some of ’em are psychics; all of ’em are jerks; but they all have one thing in common: They claim they can tell Connie exactly what happened to her daughter, and all she has to do is cough up a thousand bucks. Or two. We’re not playing that game anymore, and we’re not going through this again. It hurts too much. Now get the hell out of here before my wife gets home.”

  “I’m not asking for money,” Al countered. “I just wanted to let you know that I believe I know what happened to her-to your stepdaughter. Someone beat her up pretty badly on Friday and left her for dead. She was found near Three Points, w
hich is west of Ryan Field. She’s in the ICU in Physicians Medical Center. I believe she’s alive, although I don’t know that for sure.”

  Fox set his empty beer bottle down on a nearby table. Then he stood up and stepped closer to Al, invading his space. “And you know all this how?”

  Al stood his ground. “Because I’m the one who found her,” he said. “I was out on patrol and found her.”

  “If this is supposed to be some kind of official notification, why aren’t you in uniform? Why didn’t you show me your badge?”

  “This isn’t an official notification. As I said, I found an injured woman out in the desert-beaten, burned, cut. It looked like she had been through hell. Everyone thought she was an illegal immigrant, but she spoke English, not Spanish. I called for a chopper and had her airlifted into town.”

  “If this isn’t an official notification, why are you here? What do you want?”

  Al thought about that for a minute-about Kevin Dobbs and the apparently buried “official” report. “Because someone needed to do it,” he answered. “And because no one else seemed to give a damn.”

  “Our Rose has been gone for three years. What makes you think this woman you found in the desert is her?”

  “I saw the tattoo, Mr. Fox. A rose tattoo that’s right here.” He pointed to a spot on his chest. “This morning I sat down with my computer and started looking for missing persons with rose tattoos. That’s how I found you. When I saw the picture of the tattoo on the Internet and the part about her being from Buckeye, Arizona, it hit me that the girl I found might be her.”

  The man’s anger dissipated some. At least he was listening, and he no longer looked as though he were ready to punch Al’s lights out. He seemed to want to believe what Al was telling him, but he wasn’t quite there.

  “And you came all this way to tell me?”

  Al nodded.

  “If you’ve seen the information on the various sites, did you look at the photos? Does the woman you found look like the girl in any of those photos?”

  Al thought about the assault victim’s bruised and battered face; her missing teeth; her misshapen features. “No,” he said at last. “The way she looks right now, it would take dental records or fingerprints or DNA to tell for sure. She was messed up pretty bad. Whoever did it meant for her to be dead. She was supposed to be dead. If I hadn’t come along when I did and chased them off, she probably would be dead.”

  “And she may still die?”

  Al nodded.

  “So you expect me to tell my wife that you may have found our long-lost daughter, but she may be dying. In fact, by the time you got here to the house, she might have already been dead. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Fox said. “Maybe you’re not like the other guys. Since you’re not demanding money, maybe your heart’s in the right place, but I’m not going to jump in the car and head for Tucson. Tomorrow I’ll get in touch with the Buckeye Police Department and have someone look into this.”

  “Don’t you want to tell your wife?” Al asked.

  “No, I don’t. Haven’t you been listening? Every time somebody shows up saying they knew where Rose is, Connie gets her hopes up. And every time, when it turns out that they’re lying or deluded or just plain wrong, it breaks her heart all over again. If and when the cops can verify this, I’ll tell her. Not before. Even if the girl you’re talking about is Rose, what would be the point of finding her and having her die anyway? Now get the hell out of here before my wife gets home. Please.”

  Clearly, the conversation was over. Al turned and started away.

  “You got a business card on you?” Fox asked. “I’ll pass your name along to the local guys.”

  The business cards in Al Gutierrez’s wallet were all Border Patrol cards. At that point, however, it didn’t seem to make much difference. Al took one of them out, walked back to Fox, and handed it over.

  “Thanks,” James Fox said, slipping it into his shirt pocket.

  “You’re welcome,” Al told him.

  As he drove away, Fox was standing in front of the house, watching him go. Al was surprised by the man’s lack of urgency. If it had been his kid or his wife’s kid, he was sure he would already have been in the car and on his way to Tucson.

  The two-and-a-half-hour return trip seemed to take less time because Al now knew the way. He spent the whole trip beating himself up for being a fool and for not minding his own business. He had tried to do the right thing. It had blown up in his face. He had expected that Rose’s parents would be thrilled to hear the news and they would come rushing to see their daughter. Instead, he had gotten the brush-off. The stepfather had said he’d contact the Buckeye Police Department. Somehow Al doubted it, but that wasn’t his problem. If Rose Ventana’s family didn’t care whether she was alive or dead, why should he? What Al Gutierrez needed to do was go back to work on Tuesday and forget all about it.

  But he couldn’t. He had saved her life, and as he’d said, nobody else seemed to give a damn. Not her family. Not Kevin Dobbs. No one.

  When Al reached the intersection of Grant and the freeway, he had a decision to make. Keep going east and go home, or turn off and go to the hospital. He turned off.

  26

  3:00 P.M., Sunday, April 11

  Tubac, Arizona

  It was while he was eating his lonely Sunday-night dinner when Manuel Renteria missed Midge the most-Midge and her tamales. Theirs had been a mixed marriage. They were still newlyweds when Manuel’s mother had taken her Anglo daughter-in-law in hand and taught her how to make tortillas and tamales. When Midge was alive, that was what they usually had on Sunday nights-Midge’s homemade tamales.

  Now Sheriff Renteria pushed aside the leavings of his Hungry-Man microwave dinner and sat at his kitchen table, surveying a stack of documents he never should have had in his possession.

  Santa Cruz County was too small and too poor to have a crime lab of its own. As a consequence, any forensic work the county needed done was sent to the state crime lab in Tucson on a contract basis. Sheriff Renteria had been in the law enforcement business in Santa Cruz County for a very long time. He knew most of the people who worked in the crime lab, not just the scientists in the labs but their bosses and their bosses’ bosses. He also knew their wives and their kids-who played soccer; who was going to ASU; who had signed up for the marines.

  In other words, Sheriff Renteria was connected. And when he called in his markers, the people at the crime lab delivered. In this instance, he had run up the flag on the Reyes shooting, even though it was not his case to investigate. Duane Lattimore’s evidence was not Manuel Renteria’s evidence, but he had it anyway.

  Naturally, the reports from the crime lab went first to the DPS investigator, but after that and on an “unofficial basis,” most of that same information turned up on Manuel Renteria’s private fax machine at his home in Tubac. With any luck, Lattimore would never be the wiser.

  Manuel Renteria knew, for instance about the results from the search of Jose and Teresa Reyes’s mobile home in Patagonia. Several plastic containers of grass, each in the neighborhood of three kilos and conveniently packaged for flat-rate USPS shipping, had been found on the floor at the back of the entryway closet. These were amounts that would automatically trigger charges that included the words “intent to distribute.” The sheriff studied that notation for a long time, trying to come to terms with the very idea that either Jose Reyes or his wife, Teresa, could be involved in the drug trade.

  Manuel had known both these people for years. He had seen the couple out in public with Teresa’s two girls in tow on more than one occasion. They struck him as good parents-caring parents-and the idea that they would leave that much grass in a place that was so easily accessible to the girls didn’t fit.

  Then there was the money. According to the crime lab report, a stash of over five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills had been found in a plastic container in Teresa’s underwear drawe
r. Only one set of fingerprints had been found on the outside of the container. Due to the location, it was safe to assume the prints would turn out to be Teresa’s, although no copies of her prints were currently available. A notation from Lattimore indicated that her comparison prints were in process, but Sherif Renteria wasn’t sure what that meant.

  The crime lab was proceeding with an examination of the cash, lifting fingerprints whenever and wherever possible. The bills from the dresser drawer, along with the ones that had been found lying loose at the crime scene after Jose’s shooting, all had traces of cocaine and methamphetamines. As far as Sheriff Renteria was concerned, that didn’t mean much. He suspected that most of the hundred-dollar bills currently in circulation in southern Arizona had been used in drug trafficking somewhere along the way and most likely held the same kinds of trace evidence.

  The presence of flat-rate USPS shipping boxes in the search warrant inventory rang an unwelcome bell. He remembered seeing one of those on the ground near Jose Reyes’s vehicle. Was that how crooks were transporting drugs these days? In a way that seemed smart-a lot like hiding something in plain sight-but if that were the case, how did they get the shipments past the various Border Patrol checkpoints where drug-sniffing dogs checked every vehicle?

  Unidentified prints had been found on shipping boxes but not on the packaged bags inside the shipping boxes. The prints had been run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, but so far there had been no hits. That was odd. If Deputy Reyes had handled the boxes, his prints would have been there, unless he had used latex gloves. Since he was a police officer, a record of his prints would be in the AFIS database.

  So whose were the unidentified prints? Teresa’s, maybe? If that turned out to be the case, three little kids were about to be left alone, not orphaned but worse. The very thought turned Sheriff Renteria’s stomach. He went into the living room, retrieved a bottle of Jose Cuervo from the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a generous shot.

  Back at the table, he looked through the blurry facsimile copies of the crime scene photos, trying to sort out how the shooting had occurred. There was a gravel road, a narrow single-lane track where it left the pavement, which widened into a turnaround at the spot where the shooting had taken place. Situated at the top of a small hill, it was unofficially dubbed Necker’s Knob, because it was a known hangout for teenagers bent on drinking and/or screwing. After the shooting, the other vehicle had been able to drive away without leaving any identifiable tracks.