J. Jance - Left for Dead

As far as Teresa was concerned, it wasn’t all right, but for the moment, there wasn’t much she could do about it. That was how Olga operated, all sweetness and light when she wanted something. She had done it with Danny, and she was doing it again with her granddaughters, but today Teresa was too tired to summon any outrage about it; too tired to tell the pushy woman to go to hell; too grateful to have someone else show up at the hospital, willing to help out.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Bringing toys was a good idea. It’s been a long day, and the girls are bored to tears.”

Olga nodded in Maria Delgado’s direction on the way past. Teresa noticed that her mother didn’t respond. That was hardly surprising. Maria had never gotten over her outrage at the way Olga Sanchez had treated Teresa at Danny’s funeral. Even if Teresa was willing to forgive and forget, her mother wasn’t.

Donnatelle had the girls corralled in a corner of the room and was reading to them from the Dr. Seuss book Teresa had stuffed in her bag. They looked up warily as Teresa approached, bringing Olga and her shopping bags.

“This is your grandmother,” Teresa said simply. “Your other grandmother.”

“I’m your daddy’s mommy,” Olga said.

“But she’s dead,” Lucy said.

Jose’s mother had died suddenly a year ago.

“I’m your real daddy’s mommy,” Olga said. “You can call me Grandma Olga. And look. I brought you some toys. Do you want to see them?”

Knowing she’d been outmaneuvered, Teresa paused long enough to introduce Olga to Donnatelle, then she walked away as the girls dove for the bags. With everything that was going on, Teresa understood that she had only so much strength. With that in mind, it was important to choose her battles. This was a fight for another day and another time, when she wasn’t dog-tired and when she didn’t have a possibly dying husband lying in a bed in the ICU. When she was stronger, she would sit down with her daughters and explain this mystery. Teresa had always intended to tell the girls about Danny and Oscar and Olga, but she had imagined that it would be at some time far in the future, when the girls were old enough to understand

“You shouldn’t have let her get away with that,” Maria whispered to her daughter when Teresa was back in earshot.

By then Olga had pulled a camera out of her purse and started taking pictures. Lucy loved posing for photos, and anything Lucy did, Carinda wanted to do, too. The girls mugged for the camera while Olga snapped away. What could it hurt if Danny’s mother had photos of her granddaughters? Maybe it was time to get over some of those old hurts. Maybe it was time to move on.

“It’s called turning the other cheek, Mother,” Teresa said. “Right now, with everything else that’s going on, I need all the help I can get.”

“You’ll be sorry,” Maria predicted.

“Maybe,” Teresa said. She leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. “Right now I’m going to try to take a nap. Wake me in an hour.”

6:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10

Tucson, Arizona

There had been a rollover semi accident on the bridge where I-10 crossed the Gila River. If Sister Anselm had been listening to the traffic advisories from her GPS, she might have known about the accident in time to choose another route and come down through Chandler or Apache Junction. But the constant chatter from the GPS lady’s voice got in the way of Sister Anselm’s thinking time. Since she knew the way to PMC with her eyes closed, she left the GPS off, and when she got caught up in the hour-long traffic delay, there was nothing to do but sit and wait.

When Sister Anselm finally arrived at the PMC campus on Tanque Verde, she parked her Mini in the far corner of the large lot. She was healthy enough to walk. It seemed important to leave the parking places closer to the main entrance for people who needed them.

People meeting Sister Anselm Becker for the first time would have thought they were encountering a retired businesswoman. In public she favored tailored pantsuits with no-frills blouses. In hospital settings she wore flowered scrubs that let her blend in with the other health care professionals. Her silver hair was cropped short. Her lined face was devoid of makeup. She walked with a slight limp from her hip replacement surgery years earlier. Her most striking feature, however, were her blue eyes. Beaming with cheerful intelligence, they offered a window on her soul through a pair of plain wire-framed glasses. Sister Anselm was a woman of faith, and that was where it shone through-in her eyes.

She had walked the halls of Physicians Medical many times. Once inside the lobby, she had no need to ask for directions. She made her way directly to the hospital administration office, where she signed in as a visiting service provider and was issued a temporary identification badge. From there she went to the ICU. Before looking in on Jane Doe, Sister Anselm tracked down the charge nurse at the nurse’s station. Mona Lafferty was someone Sister Anselm had worked with on previous occasions.

“I wondered if you’d be able to come,” Mona said.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Sister Anselm answered. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s pretty heavily sedated but lucky to be alive.”

“No ID?”

“None.”

“Any distinguishing marks?”

“She’s got a tattoo of a rose on her right breast,” Mona said. “And what looks like cigarette burns and cuts all over her body.”

Tattoos were common enough on male illegals. Less so on the female of the species. As for the torture? That might have been used to extract information about friends and associates.

“Talking?”

Mona shook her head. “Not so far. Do you want to look at her chart?”

“Please. I’d like to take it to her room, if you don’t mind.”

Mona smiled. “Knock yourself out. Her room’s the second one on the right.”

With the chart in hand, Sister Anselm let herself into Jane Doe’s room. She stood for several long moments, staring down at the injured and unconscious woman. Sister Anselm had encountered damage from beatings before, but in her experience, this was one of the most brutal. The real surprise was that the woman was still alive.

Her head had been shaved so the wounds on her scalp could be stitched together. Both arms and one leg were broken, but due to skin damage from the burns and cuts, the broken limbs were encased in splints rather than plaster casts. Her jaw was wired shut. What was visible of her face was a road map of stitched cuts and vivid bruises. It looked as though both her nose and one eye socket had been damaged and would require reconstructive surgery. Wherever bare skin was visible, so were the scabby tracks that burning cigarettes had left all over her body.

Settling into the room’s single chair, Sister Anselm switched on a reading light and began to read. The list of injuries was appalling. At least four teeth had been knocked out of her mouth. So far Jane Doe had already undergone two separate surgeries to repair damage to her internal organs. The surgical intervention that had no doubt saved her life had also resulted in the removal of her uterus. The chart estimated the young woman’s age to be late teens or early twenties. When Jane Doe awakened from what was at the moment a medically induced coma, she would discover that having children of her own was no longer an option.

But not having children might be the least of it. She had sustained several blows to the head. So far there was no sign of brain swelling, but with any kind of head injury, there was always a possibility that the patient would be left with impaired mental faculties, which could necessitate relearning things like reading and writing.