Left for Dead (9 page)

7:00
A.M
., Saturday, April 10
Sedona, Arizona

Awakening the next morning, Ali heard the steady thrum of B.’s treadmill
and the muffled sound of a television news broadcast from the exercise room down the hall. Slipping into a tracksuit she kept at his place for just these occasions, Ali made her way to his tiny but well-equipped gym. When she showed up, B. moved from the treadmill to the free weights. Ali was about to step onto the treadmill in his place when her phone rang. A glance at the caller ID didn’t help. The number was unfamiliar.

“Hello, Ali?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Donnatelle—Donnatelle Craig—from the academy.”

“Yes, Donnatelle. How are you?” Ali’s caller had enough confidence in her voice to make her unrecognizable. The realization made Ali smile. Clearly, this new Donnatelle was a far cry from the hesitant young woman Ali remembered from her time at the academy in Peoria.

Two and a half years earlier, Donnatelle had been in despair about her prospects and in danger of washing out of training. Ali had reached out a hand to help Donnatelle along, encouraging her with her firearms handling and target range shooting. In the end, Donnatelle successfully completed the course and graduated along with the rest of her class. The last Ali heard from her, Donnatelle was serving as a sworn deputy with the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department.

“I hope I’m not calling too early.”

“Not around here you aren’t,” Ali said. “I’m up and at ’em. How’ve you been?”

“I’m fine,” Donnatelle said. “But I’m calling with some bad news. Have you heard about Jose? I just got a Blue Alert about it.”

“You mean Jose Reyes from our class?” Ali asked.

“Yes,” Donnatelle said. “He’s been working for the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department. He was shot last night.”

Jose Reyes had been another academy classmate. Initially, he and Ali had butted heads, but by the time their training was over, they had not only buried the hatchet, they had acquired a genuine respect and fondness for each other. Jose had helped Ali care for a troubled friend named Brenda Riley when she had shown up in Peoria, drunk and begging for help. After that, Ali had returned the favor by helping Jose and Donnatelle master some of the academic aspects of their training.

It struck Ali as ironic that without her tutoring, neither Jose nor Donnatelle might have graduated from the academy. Almost three years later, they were both working in law enforcement, while Ali wasn’t. What was that old saying? Something about those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach.

“What happened?” Ali asked.

“He was on patrol a few miles outside Nogales. He was making a supposedly routine stop when he was shot at close range. When they found him, he was transported to a trauma unit. The last I heard, he was alive, but that’s about all. It’s bad.”

“Will he make it?” Ali asked.

“I just talked to his wife, Teresa. The jury’s still out,” Donnatelle answered grimly. “He was airlifted to Physicians Medical Center in Tucson, where he’s undergone surgery. According to Teresa, the hospital lists his condition as guarded.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” Ali agreed.

“It gets worse. Teresa is eight and a half months pregnant. She’s stuck at the hospital with her two preschoolers from a previous marriage.”

Clearly, Donnatelle had stayed in closer contact with Jose and his family than Ali had. She had heard that he was married, but the last bit—about three kids being involved in this looming tragedy—hit Ali hard.

She understood more than most exactly how tough it was to raise even one baby without a father. She’d had to do that herself when Dean, her first husband, had lost his battle with glioblastoma weeks before Christopher was born. If Jose Reyes died as a result of his wounds, he would leave behind a widow with three orphaned children.

“Do you have any contact information for them?” Ali asked.

“Sure do,” Donnatelle said. “Like I said, Jose’s wife’s name is Teresa—with a T-E rather than a T-H. About a year ago they bought a place in Patagonia.”

Donnatelle reeled off both a post office box as well as phone numbers and an e-mail address. Ali jotted down the information.

“I’m just now going off shift,” Donnatelle went on. “Tomorrow is my day off. It sounds like Teresa is completely overwhelmed and could use some help. My mom’s coming over to look after my kids. As soon as she gets here, I’m on my way to Tucson.”

“I can’t come down today,” Ali said. “I’ve got company coming for dinner. But I could show up tomorrow and stay for a day or so. You’ll keep me posted?”

“Sure will,” Donnatelle said.

“And speaking of your kids,” Ali said, “how are they?”

“Fine,” Donnatelle answered. “All three of them made the honor roll.”

“Good for them,” Ali said. “And good for you!”

That was the main reason Donnatelle had been determined to make it through the academy. She had wanted to set a good example for her kids, and she was obviously doing so.

They hung up after that. Ali stood with her cell phone in hand and her dialing finger poised to dial Teresa Reyes’s cell phone number. Ultimately, she didn’t call. For one thing, Teresa Reyes didn’t know Ali from Adam, and in the midst of this crisis, she didn’t need to be juggling phone calls from people she didn’t know. Helping out in person would be different. Even now, years after her first husband’s death, Ali could remember the people, some of them distant acquaintances or friends of friends, who had simply shown up unannounced at the hospital or at the apartment to help Ali with her dying husband and later with her newborn son.

Ali knew right then that she’d be on her way to Tucson first thing
on Sunday morning. Maybe she didn’t owe it to the Reyes family, but she did to the people who had helped her when she needed it. They had paid it forward, and now she would pay them back.

“What’s up?” B. asked. He was still hard at work on the elliptical machine.

“Jose Reyes, one of the guys from the academy, got shot Saturday night.”

“That deputy down in Santa Cruz County?”

Ali nodded.

“It was on the news a little while ago,” B. said. “I thought the name sounded familiar, but I didn’t make the connection. Wasn’t he the one who blacked your eye just before that Labor Day weekend?”

“That’s the one,” Ali answered with a smile. “He’s also the one who helped me out when Brenda Riley was in such bad shape. Donnatelle Craig, one of our classmates, heard about it on a Blue Alert and called from Yuma to let me know.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Can’t tell,” Ali answered. “He’s been airlifted to Tucson for surgery. According to Donnatelle, he and his wife are expecting a baby in a matter of weeks, and there are two older kids as well.”

“Tough,” B. said.

Nodding her agreement, Ali stepped onto the treadmill and punched in her settings. “Sister Anselm is coming for dinner tonight, and Leland has been cooking up a storm. Tomorrow I’ll drive down to Tucson and see what I can do to help. Being in a hospital waiting room with an injured husband and little kids is no picnic.”

“Speaking of Brenda Riley,” B. said after a pause, “what do you hear from her these days? Is she still sober?”

Brenda Riley and Ali Reynolds had been contemporaries working for sister television stations back in the days when Ali was a television newscaster in L.A. They had been forced off-screen about the same time, due to having reached the female equivalent of a pull-by date. Since that was about the same time Ali’s second marriage blew up, she had come home to Sedona to get her her life back in order and recover. Brenda had done the opposite. She had gone on a bender that lasted for a couple of years and nearly killed her.

While Brenda was in the process of sobering up, she’d had the misfortune of falling under the spell of a cyberstalker. When the situation
had gone from bad to worse, Ali, with the help of a Grass Valley homicide detective named Gilbert Morris, had managed to pull Brenda’s fat out of the fire.

Much to Ali’s surprise, in the ensuing months, Detective Morris and Brenda had morphed into a romantic item, complete with a beachside wedding Ali had attended solo because B. was off on some business trip or other. After the ceremony, Gil and Brenda had laughingly told Ali that theirs was a match made in hell rather than heaven.

“Yes, she’s still sober,” Ali said. “She wrote a book that's due out soon. You do remember that her mother died, don’t you?”

“Not really,” B. admitted.

“Brenda’s share of the estate evidently came to quite a chunk of change. Last month Gil was able to pull the pin on his job with the Grass Valley PD.”

“He’s a little young to be retired, isn’t he?” B. asked.

“He’s only retired from law enforcement,” Ali answered. “He and Brenda are in the process of buying an operating B-and-B in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland isn’t all that far from Redding, where Gil’s kids live with his ex-wife.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” B. said.

“Having an ex-wife?”

“No, running a B-and-B. It’s a job description that automatically requires the owner to be civil to a bunch of yahoo customers first thing in the morning,” B said. “Before you even have your first cup of coffee. Spare me.”

“Because you’re a grump in the morning?” Ali asked.

“Pretty much,” B. agreed.

When their joint workout was over, Ali and B. paused in the kitchen long enough to share a cup of coffee and two pieces of leftover pizza. Coffee beans kept in the freezer were the only fresh food that could survive B.’s long absences without going bad. Ali was grateful for the pizza. After spending the night living in sin at her place or B.’s, she was capable of showing up at the Sugarloaf and brazening it out with her parents, but she didn’t like doing it.

“I’m going to miss you,” Ali said.

“No, you won’t,” B. replied. “You’ll be too busy planting that garden of yours to even notice I’m gone.”

“You’re wrong,” Ali told him. “I’ll notice.”

Sometime later, knowing that B. needed time to get gathered up and packed, Ali kissed him goodbye and headed home, where she found she had the place to herself. Leland was out doing some last-minute shopping for dinner, while the house was filled with the tangy aromas of the duck-breast and sausage-laced cassoulet they would share that evening with Sister Anselm.

Stopping off long enough to pour herself a cup of coffee, she went into the library, where there was a distinct chill in the air. A storm had blown in overnight, driving away yesterday’s bright blue sky. Outside her window, a few flurries of snowflakes drifted from an overcast sky.

“So much for spring,” Ali muttered, lighting the gas log in the fireplace.

At her desk, Ali set her cup down in the empty space next to her computer and found herself missing her kitty. For years, that spot on her desk had been one of Samantha’s favorite perches. Trying not to miss Sam too much, Ali booted up her computer and began looking for articles about a recent officer-involved shooting near Nogales. She was busy reading through a collection of online news articles when her new-e-mail notice dinged. Checking the list, she found a message from Sister Anselm.

Sorry. Just had a call out. On my way to Tucson. Please give Mr. Brooks my regrets. So sorry to miss his cassoulet.

An energetic seventy-something, Sister Anselm split her time between serving as a resident psychologist at St. Bernadette’s, a facility for troubled nuns in Jerome, and acting as a special emissary for the head of the the Phoenix diocese, Bishop Francis Gillespie. A “call out” meant that she had been summoned to serve as the patient advocate for some unfortunate who had landed in a hospital somewhere in Arizona without anyone to act as an intermediary between the injured patient and the medical community.

The vast majority of Sister Anselm’s patients were UDAs who came to grief while making the dangerous trek north and hoping to cross the border undetected somewhere in the wilds of the Arizona desert. Some of her patients came with injuries suffered in fierce car chases that routinely scattered dead and dying illegals along isolated
stretches of Arizona roadways. Some of them, attempting to cross the border on foot, were abandoned by coyotes without sufficient food or water to survive in the unrelenting desert. Sometimes Sister Anselm’s patients were found close to death from dehydration or starvation or sunstroke. Others were clearly the victims of vicious acts of violence perpetrated either by their supposed guides or by their fellow illegals.

The most seriously injured ended up in hospitals with no idea of what had happened to them or how they had come to be there. Isolated and alone, they found themselves being treated by doctors they couldn’t understand. Usually they had no one to help them navigate the unknown health procedures that might or might not save their lives. In those situations, Sister Anselm often turned out to be their only ally. She knew what it was like to be lost and alone in a foreign land because it had happened to her.

Sister Anselm had been born as Judith Becker into a German-American family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to the beginning of World War II. When war broke out, her father, Hans, a recent immigrant, was arrested on suspicion of being a German spy and sent to a war relocation center in Texas, where he developed TB. His wife, Sophia, a natural-born citizen, renounced her U.S. citizenship and went to Texas to care for him, taking her two young daughters with her.

The father. Hans, died on board a Swedish ocean liner during an abortive prisoner-of-war exchange, leaving his widow and daughters to soldier on as displaced persons in war-torn Europe. By then Sophia had also developed TB. When she, too, died, her orphaned daughters were taken in and cared for by the sisters in a small convent in France. The older of the two girls had rebelled against her religious caretakers and come to a bad end on the streets of Paris by the time she was seventeen. The younger girl, Judith, had grown up to become a nun herself—Sister Anselm.

Blessed with a natural facility for foreign tongues, she was fluent in several languages and conversant in several more. Sister Anselm’s personal history of utter abandonment while she was a child had left her with an affinity for people in similar circumstances. It was her skill as a translator that had brought Sister Anselm and her story to the attention of a young American priest named Father Gillespie at Vatican
II in Rome. Years later, when Father Gillespie was appointed bishop of the Phoenix Diocese, he had sought out Sister Anselm and brought her back to the land of her birth where he put her to work interceding on behalf of people who otherwise would have no voice.