“Well, yes,” Patty said. “I suppose I am.”
“Talk to Sheriff Renteria. Do not talk to Olga,” Ali advised.
“All right,” Patty agreed. “I will.”
She ended the call and put down the phone. Then she sat there and read through all the letters. The last one in the stack, the most recent, was a simple thank-you card-to Phil for changing Olga’s flat tire. As far as Patty could see, this was all harmless, innocent stuff. Olga Sanchez was a neighbor, a local, someone Patty Patton had known all her life. Ali Reynolds was an outsider; a stranger.
In the small-town world of Patagonia, that’s what tipped the scales for Patty Patton that night-insider versus outsider; neighbor versus stranger. Olga was in; Ali was out. Patty knew she would call the sheriff eventually because she had said she would, but not until after she had given Olga Sanchez a heads-up. Patty knew how what appeared to be a perfectly platonic relationship between Olga and Phil would be viewed through the prism of Patagonia’s small-town gossip, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Patty stuffed the packet of letters into her purse. Picking up her keys and shutting off the light, she locked the door behind her and headed out. The Lazy S was only ten miles south of Patagonia on Harshaw Road, but it would take the better part of an hour to get there. It was full dark out. Much of the unpaved road was open range, where wandering cattle made nighttime driving treacherous.
It was fine for Patty to head out on what she regarded as an errand of mercy. It was not fine to wreck the Camaro in the process. She drove carefully and smoked one cigarette after another along the way.
When her tires lumbered across the cattle guard at the entrance to the Lazy S, Patty could see the house in the distance. With no lights glowing in any of the windows, she guessed no one was home. Still, having come that far, she decided not to leave without at least going to the door. A minivan was parked next to a gate that led into a small fenced yard, and she pulled up next to it. When the Camaro stopped, a small dog, barking frantically, came racing to the front gate. The dog, a Jack Russell terrier-like creature, sounded completely prepared to go into full- attack mode, and Patty was glad he was apparently locked inside the yard.
It wasn’t until she looked away from the dog that she saw, caught in her still-glowing headlights, the figure of a man sitting in a chair near the front door of the covered front porch. Despite the fierce racket from the dog, he sat with his chin resting on his chest as though he were asleep.
Warily, still worried about the dog, Patty rolled down the window. “Hello,” she called. “Are you all right?” The man didn’t move or respond in any fashion.
Patty switched off the engine and her headlights. Left in darkness, she got out of the car, opened the trunk, and dug out the powerful trouble light she kept there. She wished she had the doggie bag of dinner leftovers she had taken home from the cafe, but those were already at home in her fridge. She would have to talk her way around the fierce little dog without the benefit of food.
She approached to the gate. The dog had retreated to the porch but he immediately came charging back to the gate.
“Sit!” Patty ordered. She gave the command with feeling and was amazed when it worked. The dog sat.
“Stay!” she ordered as she eased open the gate. That command worked too. Patty Patton wasn’t a dog person. “Sit” and “stay” were the only commands she knew, but it turned out they were the only ones she needed.
Leaving the dog next to the gate, she walked up the gravel walkway. She was almost to the porch and shining the light on the man when she saw the blood pooling on the wooden-plank flooring under the chair. Oscar Sanchez wasn’t asleep. He hadn’t heard the barking dog because he was dead.
For the first time in her life, Patty Patton wished she had a cell phone. For a time she stood there, staring at him, while the flashlight trembled in her hand. Raising the light, she walked behind the man and saw the hole in the back of his head, a small hole that went into the base of his skull and angled down through his body. There was very little blood in the entry wound. The blood had to come from somewhere else-a place she couldn’t see.
Patty stood transfixed, staring at the body. Should she go back to town and summon help, or should she try the front door?
Mindful that this would be a crime scene, she used the tail of her shirt to try turning the doorknob. It opened. As she let herself inside, she worried about finding another body in the room, but there wasn’t one. She saw no sign of a struggle, and no phone, either. Nothing seemed to be out of order. Picking her way across the room, she stepped into the kitchen, and that’s where she found an old-fashioned dial phone mounted on the wall next to the kitchen cabinets.
Her hand was shaking. It was all she could do to get her dialing finger into the proper holes.
“Nine-one-one. What are you reporting?”
“I’m at the Lazy S Ranch on Harshaw Road,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “Oscar Sanchez is dead. I think he’s been shot.”
48
6:00 P.M., Monday, April 12
Tucson, Arizona
Angel Moreno had spent a very busy but very profitable afternoon. When he told Sal and Tony that Humberto had a job for them, the two dopes came along as nice as you please. They were now disposed of, wrapped in a roll of orange shag carpeting and dropped off in the landfill north of Coolidge.
Long experience had taught Angel Moreno that orange shag was the best bet for that kind of job. Even when things started to leak, the colors more or less matched, and no one went near orange shag these days if they could help it. He had left the landfill with an empty panel truck and a feeling of accomplishment. Two down; one to go.
Another thing experience had taught Angel was that there was no disguise quite as effective as pretending to be a janitor with a mop. Or, in this case, a janitor with an immense floor polisher. He had brought one along in his van when he drove down from Phoenix, just in case. And he had been right. It turned out that the long hallways at Physicians Medical Center were uniformly in need of polishing.
The one thing he had expected to be a real challenge-laying hands on a hospital employee badge-had turned out to be no challenge at all. Halfway through his second pass in the parking lot, he found a Van Pool van complete with a conveniently unlocked door and a valid PMC employee badge lying right on the dashboard. Angel was able to filch it without setting off so much as a beeping auto alarm. That was the thing he really liked about auto alarms-if doors weren’t properly locked, an alarm didn’t make a sound.
Armed with the badge lanyard attached to the pocket of a pair of anonymous scrubs, he was ready. The polisher was mounted on the front of a wheeled cart that held a tall plastic container with a convincing collection of mops and brooms. The bottom of the container held a small canvas bag with one particular item that wasn’t remotely related to janitorial supplies.
Pushing his way across the parking lot, he used the badge to enter a locked door at the rear of the building next to the Dumpsters. That was the most dangerous time, getting inside the building. Once he was in, however, he didn’t rush. He checked the map in the lobby so he knew where to find the ICU, but he was in no hurry to get there. In fact, the later he arrived, the better. All he had to do in the meantime was polish floors like crazy. As long as he kept the ID tag so the name didn’t show, and kept his face averted around security cameras, Angel was secure in the knowledge that no one would notice.
Except this time they did notice. Everywhere he went at Physicians Medical, people smiled at him or greeted him, asking him things like “How’s it going?” That was not a good situation for someone accustomed to being invisible while in plain sight.
It was unsettling, but not enough so for him to back off or give up. After all, Humberto had paid him in advance, and Angel had no intention of screwing this up. Angel Morales knew all too well what happened to people who promised something to Humberto Laos and then didn’t deliver.
