J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“The two in the hospital at Sierra Vista and the one in Bisbee are all in satisfactory condition. Philippa Brinson has been released. The patient who was transported to Tucson is in the ICU at Tucson Medical Center. She’s listed as critical and may not make it.”

“What about the nurse?”

“She’s still in the jail. This is her third DUI in as many years. She’s asking for a public defender.”

On the one hand, Jaime was just giving her information, but there was something in his guarded tone that warned Joanna something was wrong-something that had nothing to do with what had happened at Caring Friends or at Action Trail Adventures.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Rubbing his forehead with one hand, Jaime sank back into his chair. For a long moment after that, he stared out the window, disconsolately examining the limestone cliffs that crowned the steep hillsides behind the Cochise County Justice Center.

“What?” Joanna asked again. Then she remembered the previous day’s difficulty with Jaime’s nephew. “Is this about Luis?”

Jaime nodded. “I went to the high school late yesterday afternoon and spoke to the principal.”

“Debra Highsmith isn’t one of my favorites,” Joanna said.

“Mine, either,” Jaime said. “But she came through this time. The office keeps a comprehensive list of all the padlocks on the lockers-a list of who has which locker and what the combination is. The students and the parents sign a contract at the beginning of the year. If the lock on any given locker isn’t on the official list or on the right locker, the administration has the right to cut it off.”

“You’re saying you went through Luis’s locker?” Joanna asked.

Jaime nodded bleakly, and Joanna’s heart sank. She knew a lot of bad stuff had a way of turning up in high school lockers these days, everything from illicit drugs to illicit weapons.

“I take it you found something?”

“It’s a letter,” Jaime said. “A letter Luis wrote to his father in prison, asking if he knew where his mother was.”

“That’s hardly surprising,” Joanna said. “In fact, under the circumstances, I’d be surprised if he didn’t try to find her. Luis could have had lots worse things in his locker.”

“The letter hadn’t been opened until I opened it,” Jaime continued. “Someone at the prison had sent the envelope back to Luis with the word D-E-C-E-A-S-E-D written across the address in big red letters.”

Joanna was appalled. “Luis’s father is dead and that’s how the poor kid found out about it?”

Jaime nodded. “Whoever crossed out the address had no idea who Luis was. The return address is to a PO box in Bisbee-a PO box Luis rented in his mother’s name and without my knowledge, by the way. He evidently forged his mother’s name to make it work, and he was using the address to try to find her-to find Marcella. I guess he didn’t want Delcia and me to know what he was up to.”

“How long ago did the letter come?”

“A month ago,” Jaime said. “Which is about the time things started going downhill with him at school. Before that he had been doing fine. After this came, he fell apart.”

“And when did his father die?” Joanna asked. “Were you able to find that out?”

“I called California first thing this morning and spoke to the warden’s office,” Jaime said. “Marco Andrade died the last week in October. On October 31. Someone shanked him in the shower. According to the corrections officer I spoke to, they have no idea who’s responsible. It was a medium security facility with more drug dealers than anything else.”

“Why wasn’t Luis notified?” Joanna asked.

“That’s what I wanted to know as well,” Jaime said. “Marcella is listed on Marco’s prison records as his next of kin, but the address he gave was her old one. When she and Luis moved down here from Tucson, she didn’t tell anyone where she was going and she didn’t leave a forwarding address, either.”

“Because she didn’t want to be found,” Joanna added.

Jaime nodded. “Because she and Marco had evidently ripped off money from one of their fellow drug dealers or maybe from one of their drug suppliers. I don’t know which. At any rate, according to the warden’s office, they did attempt to notify the family about Marco’s death.”

“But they didn’t try very hard,” Joanna added.

“Exactly,” Jaime agreed. “But if whoever did this was able to get to Marco inside the walls of the prison, what if they decide to come after Luis? Any bad guy who gets a look at Marcella’s missing persons report will know everything he needs to know. If she was reported missing from here, this is the logical place to find her son. Bisbee’s a small town. If somebody comes here looking for Luis, they won’t have much trouble finding him.”

“In hopes he might still have the missing money,” Joanna said.

Jaime nodded again.

“Did you tell the warden’s office that Luis is your nephew?”

“I didn’t even mention Luis,” Jaime replied.

“I seem to remember your telling me about one of Marco’s drug-dealing pals in particular…” Joanna began.

“That’s right,” Jaime said. “His name is Juan Francisco Castro. His street name is Paco. He used to live in Tucson and was a minor player for the Cervantes gang out of Cananea. Supposedly he’s the one Marco and Marcella ripped off.”

“Where’s Paco now?” Joanna asked.

“He seems to have disappeared. I have some pals inside Tucson PD, and I’ve made some discreet inquiries. No one seems to have any idea where Paco is at the moment. For all I know, he could be dead or he may have gone back to Mexico.”

“Is there a chance he landed in the same prison where Marco died?” Joanna asked.

Jaime shook his head. “Nope. I already asked. That would have been too easy.” For several long moments they sat in silence. Finally Jaime continued. “So what do I do about Luis?” he asked glumly. “How do I handle this?”

“We,” Joanna said, emphasizing the pronoun. “We handle it by protecting him. We do everything in our power to protect him, including, if necessary, sending him to live someplace else until we find out who was responsible for his father’s death.”

If need be, we’ll send your whole family somewhere else, Joanna thought.

“But what do I tell him?” Jaime insisted.

“You tell him exactly what you told me,” Joanna replied. “That you’re afraid whoever killed his father might come looking for him next.”

“There’s a problem with that.”

“What problem?”

“I wouldn’t have known Marco was dead if I hadn’t broken into Luis’s locker. How’s he ever going to trust me again when he finds out about that? He probably already knows, because there was a new lock on his locker when he got to school this morning.”

“Look,” Joanna said, “you broke into his locker because you love him. Tell him you knew something was bothering him and you were trying to find out what it was.”

“I suppose I could lie to him,” Jaime said. “What if I told him I found out about Marco through work?”

Joanna stood up. She came around the desk and sat down next to Jaime. “Don’t do that,” she urged, placing a hand on his knee. “A lie takes constant maintenance. One thing leads to another until it screws up your life. You know that. It’s what you do in interview rooms-you catch crooks in the little lies so you can nail them on the big ones.

“Considering the kinds of stunts your sister pulled over the years, don’t you think your nephew has been lied to enough? Even if Marco was a bad father, he was still Luis’s father. Tell him the truth about how you found out and then be there for him when he needs you to be. It takes time to grieve. That poor kid has been doing it all on his own. No wonder he’s been a problem at school.”