J. Jance - Left for Dead

“Exactly. I’m not offering to sign on for his whole defense, but I am willing to pay the freight for him to have representation during that initial interview process.”

“It sounds like you’re still busy spending your former husband’s cash,” Victor said with a laugh, “but let me see what I can do.”

An hour later, as Ali approached Marana on Tucson’s north side, her phone rang again. The number in the readout was unlisted.

“Ali Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Juanita Cisco. Victor Angeleri and I go way back. When he gives me a heads-up about something, I generally pay attention, which is why I’m calling. He told me that this concerns a friend of yours, a police officer who’s in the hospital with gunshot wounds.”

“That’s right. Jose Reyes, a Santa Cruz County deputy, is the victim. Unfortunately, investigators now suspect that the shooting was the result of a drug deal gone bad.”

“Jose is related to you how?”

“We’re not related. We’re friends.”

“But you’re the one who’s hiring me, not him and not his wife. Why? What’s your interest in all this?”

“As I said, we’re friends. The shooting investigation is being handled by the Department of Public Safety. Eventually, Jose will probably have representation from the police officer’s legal defense fund, but I want him to have someone on hand today if he ends up subjected to an initial interview when he’s in the hospital and more or less out of it.”

“I don’t much like being called in as a pinch hitter,” Juanita said, “but I suppose I could do it. You haven’t asked me how much I charge, especially if I come in on a Sunday. My billing includes this phone call, by the way, and any necessary travel.”

“Yes,” Ali assured her. “Whatever it is, I’m good for it.”

“All right. Which hospital?”

“Physicians.”

“PMC isn’t far from where I live, which is fine for today, but it’s all the way across town from my office if the interview happens tomorrow or the next day. Are you at the hospital now?”

“Not yet. I’m on my way there.”

“When did the shooting happen?”

“Sometime Friday night. Maybe Saturday morning.”

“And the detective on the case made no effort to interview the victim or his family yesterday?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“That could be bad. He’s probably getting his ducks in a row before he comes calling. Do you have a name on the DPS investigator?”

“I believe Donnatelle told me that his name is Lattimore.”

“I don’t know him. Who’s Donnatelle?”

“Another friend,” Ali answered.

“Right. This Jose guy must be something, to have a wife and a whole raft of devoted female friends who are all ready to go to the mat for him,” Juanita said. “Okay. Call if you need me. Here’s the number. I should be home all afternoon, and I can be at the hospital in under ten minutes.”

9:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11

Vail, Arizona

The fact that one of Al Gutierrez’s regular days off was Sunday was a bone of contention with his roommates. He didn’t venture out of his room until everyone else had either gone to bed or gone on duty. Someone had dragged the Sunday paper inside and rifled through it. The sports page had suffered a severe coffee spill. Fortunately, his roommates never bothered with the rest of the paper.

Once again, Al read through it carefully, looking for some reference to the assault incident. Despite his morning paper, he was far from a Luddite, so he logged on to the Internet. The whole time Al had been at work the day before, he had considered his options. Just because Dobbs was going to sit on this didn't mean that Al had to.

He put the words “rose tattoo” into the search engine. Google came up with over three million hits, many of them having to do with a rock-and-roll band named Rose Tattoo. Then he tried “missing women with rose tattoos.” That gave him 305,000 hits. Disturbed and disheartened to think there could be that many missing women with rose tattoos on their bodies, he began scrolling through them. It was slow, painstaking work, and it took him the better part of the morning.

One of his searches led him to the website of America’s Most Wanted. Al remembered when his mother used to watch that program, though he never had. Still, when he landed on their missing persons page, he tried “rose tattoo” again. This time it worked. Four hits. As soon as he hit the one at the bottom of the list and saw the name Rose Ventana and the words “Buckeye, Arizona,” he believed he was getting somewhere.

He read everything he could about Rose Ventana-about her family’s long search for their missing daughter and sister. He read the interviews they gave every year in February on the day Rose disappeared. Al wanted to pick up the phone and call them right then, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to give them the wonderful news that he might have found their missing daughter and that she might be alive only for them to discover that she wasn’t.

Al’s victim-Rose, he was sure-had been alive when the Air Evac helicopter lifted off to take her to Physicians Medical Center. Considering the extent of her injuries, he was convinced she was still there, if she hadn’t died in the meantime.

That was when he hit on the idea of going to the hospital and taking some flowers to the injured woman. If the patient was dead, the hospital most likely wouldn’t accept the flowers, would they? That was about the time he reconsidered the idea of making a phone call to Rose Ventana’s family. With the help of a people-finding website, he was able to track down a Buckeye street address for Connie and James Fox.

Whenever there was a death, cops always made every effort to notify the next of kin in person. Was it out of respect for the dead, or was it to have someone there if emergency medical care were required? What about if the notification were about someone who wasn’t dead? What, if after being thought dead for years, that person suddenly turned up alive? Wouldn’t that good news be just as mind-numbingly shocking to the grieving family members as bad news?

Al dressed in a U of A sweatshirt that he’d picked up during that year’s March Madness celebration. He put on his Mariners baseball cap and pulled it down over his eyes. Looking at himself in the mirror, he had to laugh. He looked like any one of a number of would-be bank robbers. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but he hoped it was good enough to keep Sergeant Dobbs off his back.

With that, Al headed for Costco. The one closest to the hospital was on Grant, near Wilmot. Wandering through the flower section, he saw the foil-wrapped Easter lilies and knew they were just right.

After all, Easter was about the resurrection. Wasn’t this the same thing?

10:00 A.M., Sunday, April 11

Tucson, Arizona

Teresa Reyes awakened when her daughters came racing through the waiting room, squealing, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.”

“Look what Donnatelle got us,” Lucy said gleefully. “A new dress. From Target.”

It turned out to be two matching dresses, actually-one for Lucy and one for Carinda.

“Very pretty,” Teresa said, peeling the girls off her and struggling to sit up. “Did you tell her thank you?”

Both girls nodded.

“Can we go show Daddy?” Lucy wanted to know.

“No,” Teresa answered.

She looked at the clock on the wall and was astonished to see that she had slept for almost six hours. Just then Sister Anselm, the nun who might as well have been Teresa’s guardian angel, emerged from one of the rooms on the other side of the unit.