J. Jance - Left for Dead

Earlier, when Sister Anselm read Jane Doe’s chart, she had noted that the doctors estimated the patient was between seventeen and twenty years of age. Once the waiting room quieted enough to allow for concentration, Sister Anselm picked up her iPhone and scrolled directly to the website for the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Once at the website, Sister Anselm entered the words “rose tattoo” into the search engine. Within moments she had half a dozen hits. Several of them specified that the tattoo in question was on either a right leg or a left leg. One said it was on the right arm. Three of those had been found on the bodies of unidentified murdered young women whose information had been added to the listing by law enforcement agencies seeking both the girls’ killers as well as their families.

At the very bottom of the list was the only one that mentioned a tattoo of a single rose on the inside of the right breast. That listing, for a girl named Rose Ventana from Buckeye, Arizona, was dated three years earlier, when the missing girl’s age was noted as fourteen. The listing was accompanied by what appeared to be a school photo of a smilingly beautiful young woman, a photo that bore no resemblance to the shaved head and the shattered visage lying on a hard pillow in Physicians Medical’s ICU.

Even so, Sister Anselm’s heart quickened as she scanned through the information. From the girl’s point of view, three years was a long time to be away from home. From a grieving parent’s point of view, three years of waiting and hoping and dreading must have seemed like forever. Sister Anselm was convinced the distraught parents would welcome their long-lost daughter, damaged or not, with open arms, but she didn’t pick up her phone to call them. Her first responsibility, as patient advocate, was to her patient.

Over the years Sister Anselm had learned that many of her patients had chosen to strike out on their own because of some conflict that existed in the family home. Until she was sure Jane Doe wanted to be returned to her family, Sister Anselm would keep the knowledge to herself.

She contented herself with doing a computerized search for articles dealing with the long-ago disappearance of Rose Ventana, who had left for school as usual one February morning and then simply vanished. Foul play was suspected, although no body was ever found.

Rose’s mother, Connie Fox, a tattoo artist by trade, was the one who had created the tattoo, and she was the one who had mentioned it in the press. Articles included statements from James Fox, Rose’s stepfather, who was briefly considered a person of interest in Rose’s disappearance. He was quoted several times, as were Rose’s two younger sisters. Subsequent articles done on the first, second, and third anniversaries of Rose’s disappearance showed the mother and stepfather standing side by side. In all of the photos, the stepfather looked every bit as grief-stricken as the mother, but Sister Anselm wondered if that was true. In her work, she had seen much of the world’s evil underbelly, and her knowledge was anything but theoretical. She knew the kinds of unsavory family situations that often drove children to run away.

Rose had been off on her own since she was fourteen. She might have been close to death from a beating and terribly dehydrated when she was brought to the hospital, but she certainly wasn’t starving. In those intervening years, Rose had eaten well enough. So how had she managed to support herself and provide for food and shelter?

Sister Anselm knew that fourteen-year-olds weren’t generally employable in the regular job market; prostitution remained the most likely occupation of choice for underage girls. She also understood that these days prostitution was seldom a solo endeavor. It was a world where freelancing was frowned upon by the guys running the show. If Rose Ventana had been absorbed into the shadowy world of prostitution, that was most likely the source of her attacker-a disgruntled John or an angry pimp. Sister Anselm worried that if the perpetrator learned his victim was still alive, he might well try again.

Yes, Sister Anselm was fairly certain she now knew the name of her Jane Doe patient. For the time being, she had no intention of mentioning that fact to anyone but the patient herself. Instead, when the charge nurse finally cleared her to return to Jane Doe’s room, she settled into her chair, took her sleeping patient’s hand, the one without the cast, and held it.

Earlier, thinking her patient was an illegal, Sister Anselm had spoken to her in both English and Spanish. She deemed that no longer necessary.

“My name is Sister Anselm,” she said softly. “I’m here to help you.”

7:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11

Patagonia, Arizona

Phil Tewksbury crawled out of his warm bed and started in on his Sunday chores. He went into the kitchen and turned on Mr. Coffee. Then he unloaded the dishwasher and got his weekly wash under way by loading that week’s dirty uniforms into the aging Maytag. The uniform load went first. While the next load-bedding and towels-was washing, he’d get the uniforms ironed.

He checked the freezer. He had a selection of microwave dinners, enough to make it through the week. Next weekend he’d have to go shopping. Once he had made a real effort to cook decent meals. Now he barely bothered. Why should he? Microwave dinners worked fine for him. As for Christine? Oatmeal was what she wanted-that was all she wanted, three meals a day, 365 days a year.

Oatmeal with skim milk and brown sugar. Phil could hardly stand to look at the stuff anymore, but that was what she wanted and what she ate, so he cooked up a big batch every morning, dividing it into three separate containers-one for breakfast, when she bothered to get out of bed; one for lunch, which she ate usually while he was out delivering mail, and one for dinner. She often ate the third batch long after he had gone to bed. God forbid they should sit at the same table during dinner and actually talk.

When he was working, people knew him. Everybody nodded at the mailman. Little kids waved at the mailman, though they didn’t know him particularly well because he avoided talking about himself and his difficult home situation as much as possible. Phil had broken his silence with Ollie because she was different and because she understood. As far as other people were concerned? The details of his life were nobody else’s business. As far as Phil was concerned, explaining Cassidy’s death to others and admitting what her loss had done to his marriage was far too painful.

A few months ago, with Ollie’s encouragement, Phil had broached the subject with one other individual-his own physician. He had finally broken his self-imposed silence. Worried about the long-term effects of Christine’s oatmeal-only diet on her overall health, Phil had mentioned the subject during his own annual physical.

Dr. Patterson was Phil’s doctor rather than Christine’s. Doc Manning, who had been her doctor once, had been dead for seven years. Since Christine refused to leave the house for any reason, finding a new doctor for her or even taking her to a dentist for a simple and much-needed cleaning or filling wasn’t exactly an option.

Which was why Phil decided to ask his doctor for advice. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about my wife.”

“Wife?” Patterson asked, looking dismayed. “All these years I thought you were a widower. I noticed you wore a wedding ring, but since you never mentioned having a wife, I assumed she was deceased.”

“Not exactly,” Phil said. “But she does have issues. For one thing, I’m worried about her diet. The only thing she eats is oatmeal.”