J. Jance - Left for Dead

“What about the mayor thing?” Ali asked.

“Yes,” Edie said, “the mayor thing is still on. Your father hasn’t exactly come around, but I’m guessing he will eventually.”

Ali thought so, too. “He usually does.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Edie objected. “When you say it that way, you make your father sound henpecked.”

“What I’m really saying is that you deserve each other,” Ali said. “You both have your moments.”

“All right, then,” Edie said, changing the subject. “How are things on your end? How is your friend doing?”

“Better,” Ali said, looking at Teresa’s uncle, sitting in stolid silence in her front seat. “Better but not completely out of the woods.”

A few miles later, Ali’s next call was from Leland Brooks. The cement pour had gone well. Neither of the Askins nominees had RSVPed, but it was early days, the two teas were almost a whole week away. As for the garden? The long-term weather report indicated that some of the hardier items could start being planted the following week.

“So things are moving forward?” Ali asked.

“Absolutely, madam,” he said. “You didn’t think I’d let you down, did you?”

“No,” Ali said. “Actually, I didn’t.”

Feeling guilty about carrying on not one but several telephone conversations in her passenger’s presence, Ali switched her phone off. By then they had turned off I-10 onto Highway 83. Ali was trying to figure out how to initiate a conversation with this relative stranger when Tomas Kentera did it for her.

“Why do you think Sheriff Renteria ordered his people to stay away from the hospital?” Tomas asked.

“He what?” Ali demanded.

“I know lots of people in Nogales, and that’s what they’re saying-that Sheriff Renteria ordered his people to stay away from the hospital and from Jose.”

Ali was astonished. “That can’t be.”

“Have you seen any people from the sheriff’s department at the hospital?”

“No, but-”

“Someone should ask the sheriff about this,” Tomas said. “I would really like to know.”

“Believe me,” Ali said determinedly, “so would I.”

Teresa and Jose’s mobile home was located in a housing development that had mostly failed to develop. Ten acres had been divided into ten one-acre lots, seven of which remained empty. Two other mobile homes, one obviously a derelict, were situated on the property. The Reyes lot was the only one that was completely fenced.

It was just past noon when Ali stopped at the gate. Tomas got out to open it. The minivan sat in a free-standing carport at the back of the house. Teresa had told Ali that the car keys were in a drawer in the kitchen and that a spare house key could be found under an empty flowerpot sitting next to the front steps. The key wasn’t there, but by the time Ali reached the front steps, she realized no key would be necessary, because the front door stood ajar.

Ali knew that Duane Lattimore had executed a search warrant on the house, but it seemed unlikely that he would have gone off leaving it unsecured. She suspected that an enterprising burglar might have decided to take advantage of the current uproar in Teresa and Jose’s lives. If so, it was possible the intruder might be inside the home.

Holding up one hand and motioning for Uncle Tomas to stay where he was, Ali eased her way up the wooden steps. By the time she was ready to pull the door open the rest of the way, she had her Glock 17 out of its small-of-the-back holster.

Ali peered around the door frame and came to an abrupt stop. During the time she had worked with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, she had seen the messy aftermath of several executed search warrants. This wasn’t anywhere close to messy. Everywhere Ali looked, she saw wanton destruction.

Living room and dining room furniture had been overturned and the upholstery shredded, spilling fill into snowdrift like piles of cotton. Lamps had been flung to the floor and broken; a glass coffee table had been smashed into thousands of shards. In the kitchen, the fridge had been tipped over on its side, spilling contents into a sticky, broken-jarred mess on the floor. Drawers had been removed from the cupboards, dumped, and then stomped apart. Dishes and glassware had been pulled out of cupboards and smashed to pieces. Something that looked like super glue covered the glass stove top. What appeared to be a collection of cookbooks had been thrown to the floor, and something wet and sticky, like Karo syrup, had been poured over them, swelling the covers and sticking the pages together in a sodden mass.

Picking her way through the debris field as carefully as possible, Ali searched the remainder of the house, feeling more and more heartsick as she went. In the room Jose and Teresa had prepared for Carmine’s nursery, Ali found the wreckage of a crib and mattress as well as a demolished changing table. Diapers, tiny clothing, and piles of receiving blankets had been thrown on the floor and then covered with a thick substance that appeared to be a mixture of the contents of two Costco-size containers, one of baby powder and one of lotion. The last bedroom-the one at the far end of the mobile, which evidently belonged to Lucy and Carinda-seemed to have been spared, making Ali wonder if the intruder had run out of time or energy or both.

On the opposite end of the house, in Teresa and Jose’s master bedroom, the level of destruction once again escalated. Gaping holes had been slashed into the mattress and box spring. Clothing had been pulled from the closet, ripped apart, dumped on the floor, and soaked with bleach from an empty two-gallon jug that lay nearby. Bottles of still-tacky nail polish had been spilled onto the torn bedding, sparing none of it. Bottles of shampoo and conditioner and lotion had been poured into an oddly flowery-smelling soup in the bathtub. Chunks of jaggedly broken glass left in the bottom of that mixture presented a cutting hazard for anyone trying to clean up the mess.

After searching the house from end to end and finding no intruders, Ali returned to the living room, where she found Tomas Kentera standing dumbstruck, staring at the destruction.

“Who would do such a thing!” he exclaimed. “And why?”

Ali had no ready answer for that question. Shaking her head, she put away her Glock, pulled out her cell phone, turned it on, and dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one,” the operator replied. “What are you reporting?”

“A burglary,” Ali said. She read the address Teresa had given her to program into the GPS. “That’s just north of Patagonia, between Patagonia and Sonoita.”

“I’m aware of where it is,” the operator said. “Is anyone injured?”

“No. Someone broke into the house while no one was home.”

“And the intruder is no longer at that location, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Ali said, “but-”

“That address is in the county, so responders would be coming from the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department. However, many of their personnel are currently involved in a complex emergency situation. If there’s no immediate threat to life or property at your location, I’ll need to take a report. They’ll send someone out as soon as a deputy becomes available. What is your name, please?”

Ali gave her name, but before she could say anything more, the operator interrupted.

“I’m sorry. I’m going to need to take another call. Someone will be there as soon as possible.”

With a click, she was gone. When Ali turned to look at Tomas, he was bent over and reaching into a pile of what looked like the debris of a kitchen junk drawer. He pulled out a key fob, held it up, and waved it triumphantly in the air.

“Look what I found,” he said. “The minivan keys. Why didn’t they steal it?”