J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“What about the other attendant?”

“Same deal. I sent a deputy to the address where she supposedly lives. He says it looks like she’s skipped town.”

“And the nurse?” Joanna asked.

Tom Hadlock nodded in the direction of a tow truck that was hooking on to an older-model Toyota sedan. “Her name is Sylvia Cameron. She was supposed to be on duty today but called in sick. She showed up tonight about the same time we did. She stepped out of her vehicle smelling like a brewery and couldn’t walk a straight line. If somebody looks like she’s drunk and smells like she’s drunk, she probably is drunk. We administered a Breathalyzer.”

“How’d she do?” Joanna asked.

“She blew a.20,” Tom replied. “She’s on her way to jail right now. She already has two other DUI convictions.”

“No wonder she called in sick,” Joanna said. “Once she sobers up, maybe we’ll have a chance to talk to her about what’s really going on here.”

“Exactly,” Tom agreed. “As it says in the brochure, Caring Friends is supposed to provide ‘skilled nursing care. ’ It looks to me like the care in question was being provided mostly by unskilled illegal immigrants supervised by somebody too drunk to talk or walk, to say nothing of drive.”

“What about our missing person?” Joanna asked. “Any word on Ms. Brinson?”

“Not so far,” her chief deputy told her. “The K-9 unit was able to follow her trail all the way out to the highway and across to the other side. Terry says that after that he lost her.”

“So someone may have picked her up and given her a ride into town.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed. “Most likely someone headed eastbound, toward Bisbee.”

“Have we located her next of kin?”

“Not yet. The niece in Phoenix still hasn’t returned our calls.”

“Whether she’s been notified or not, we still need to get the word out on this,” Joanna said. “It’s going to be cold tonight. We need to find her.”

Tom nodded in agreement. Joanne knew that if the missing patient died of exposure, Tom’s summoning a homicide detective was a good call.

“While I go inside to check things out, how about if you talk to the news producers for the Tucson TV outlets and see if you can get them to make an announcement on the ten o’clock news. We’re probably too late to make the broadcast that comes on at nine.”

Tom Hadlock was still so new in his dual positions as Joanna’s chief deputy as well as her media relations officer that he had yet to establish the kind of rapport Frank Montoya had enjoyed with some of the local newsfolk.

“I’ll do my best,” he agreed. “All their contact information is on the computer in my Crown Victoria, but before you go inside, you’d best prepare yourself. It’s pretty bad.”

The brochure photos may have looked lovely, but the conditions inside Caring Friends weren’t just bad; they were appalling. Detective Howell met Joanna at the door to give her the tour.

Stepping inside one room, Joanna found her nostrils assailed by a sour, all-pervading odor. “What’s that awful smell?” she asked.

Debra nodded toward the bed, where a tangled mess of soiled bedclothes indicated someone had been left lying in her own filth. “This is the one with the bedsores,” the detective added grimly. “As far as I’m concerned, this seems way more serious than simple neglect,” she said. “More like reckless endangerment. Animal Control takes better care of the stray animals they have locked up in the pound.”

And it was true. There were six rooms in all. Each contained a bed, a single chair, and a small bedside dresser. The bedding in the other occupied rooms was also disgustingly filthy. The bed in the empty room was clean and made up and awaiting the arrival of another resident.

Another victim, Joanna thought.

In one of the rooms a set of cut-through Flex Cuffs lay near the legs of a chair. Whoever had been bound to the chair had been left there long enough that she had soiled herself.

“The woman in this room was still confined to her chair when deputies arrived,” Debra said. “The EMTs cut her loose. Ms. Brinson was evidently in a chair, too, but she somehow managed to walk it over to the dresser and found a nail clipper. That’s what she used to cut her own restraints.”

“Smart lady,” Joanna said.

Deb nodded. “Smarter than they thought.”

“We’ll need to document all of this.”

The detective nodded again. “I know,” she said. “I’ve already put in a call for Dave Hollicker to come here and bring his camera.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Have him inventory and photograph everything.”

“What the hell’s going on?” someone demanded behind them.

Standing in the narrow hallway, Joanna turned in time to see a tall dark-haired woman in a turquoise-colored brushed-silk pantsuit come storming toward them. She was clearly angry. Only when she reached them did Joanna recognize the woman from her photo on the brochure. This had to be Alma DeLong.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, looking from Joanna to Debra and then back again. “This is private property. What do you think you’re doing here?” She was spoiling for a fight.

Trying to defuse the situation, Joanna stepped forward and identified herself. “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady, Ms. DeLong,” she said, holding out her hand. “Please calm down. My people and I are here in response to a missing persons report. One of the patients here has gone missing.”

Ignoring the proffered handshake, Alma continued her tirade. “I have no intention of calming down!” she replied. “I happen to own this place, every inch of it. Now, where are my residents? What have you done with them? You can’t come waltzing in here without a search warrant.”

Alma’s right hand strayed toward the pocket of her jacket, and Joanna’s heart skipped a beat. The previous summer, one of her newer deputies, Dan Sloan, had been shot to death with his own weapon while trying to apprehend a homicide suspect. That life-ending tragedy had set Joanna off on a one-woman campaign to arm her officers-herself included-with effective but nonlethal Tasers. It hadn’t been easy to make that kind of department-wide change in the face of falling revenues. Buying new equipment and making sure she and her officers knew how to use it had been an expensive proposition, but Joanna had managed to convince the Board of Supervisors that using Tasers was a cost-effective alternative to handguns or batons in many combat situations.

Her biggest selling point had been the proposition that Tasers would improve the bottom line when it came to preventing line-of-duty deaths and injuries. Officers sometimes hesitated before deploying a lethal weapon, and it was often that single moment of hesitation-those bare seconds when a cop asks himself whether or not he should pull the trigger-that proved fatal. And if the criminal managed to get control of the officer’s weapon-as had happened in Danny Sloan’s case-the officer might well end up on the ground after being Tased, but at least he or she wouldn’t be dead.

Tasers were now Joanna’s officers’ first line of defense. That was the case for Joanna as well. She still carried her Glock, but she also wore a Taser X26 along with her Kevlar vest. She didn’t leave home without them, not even tonight on what had seemed to be nothing more than a simple missing persons call-out. That’s what happened when you were a cop. You could never tell in advance what might happen. Better to be safe than sorry. And she drew her Taser now, but before she could fire it, Alma’s hand emerged from her pocket holding a cell phone rather than a weapon.

Focused solely on her cell phone, Alma seemed oblivious to what had just happened. Instead, she flipped open the phone. Then, turning her back on both Joanna and Deb Howell, she punched in a series of numbers. “I’m calling my attorney, by the way,” she announced over her shoulder. “Believe me, Don Foster will be happy to set you straight.”