The doctor nodded. “Yes, a bag. There was also some damage to his lower back. Apparently, two of the vertebrae were damaged by the fall. We’ve managed to stabilize them, too, and we’ve lowered his body temperature in an effort to prevent swelling in his spinal cord. In other words, we’re doing everything we can, but worst-case scenario, you need to be prepared for the idea that your husband may have long-term issues with both the intestinal damage as well as with his back.”
“You mean he might be paralyzed?”
“Possibly.”
Teresa absorbed that dire news in stricken silence.
“Can we see Daddy?” Lucy asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, young lady,” he said. “Your father’s too sick to see anyone right now except maybe your mother.”
Teresa managed to commandeer an abandoned wheelchair to transfer the kids and all their stuff from the OR waiting room to the recovery room waiting room. An hour after that, when Jose was moved from recovery to the ICU, she repeated the process. Once in the new waiting room, she came face-to-face with the ICU rules—no children under sixteen were allowed inside the unit. When Danny had been in the ICU, his parents had been there, too. They had looked after Lucy when Teresa went into Danny’s room. Now, alone with two girls and a husband in the ICU, Teresa Reyes needed help.
Up to that point, she had resisted calling her ailing mother, but now she did so. While she waited for Maria Delgado to sort out transportation from Nogales to Tucson, Teresa settled back in one chair with her feet and swollen ankles propped on another. Her cell phone rang as she started to doze off. She expected the call to be from her mother. It wasn’t.
“It’s Donnatelle, from Yuma. I just heard what happened,” Donnatelle Craig said. “How bad is it, and what can I do to help?”
Donnatelle and Jose had been classmates at the police academy. When Jose and Teresa got married, Jose had invited several of his fellow recruits to the wedding. Much to their mutual surprise, Teresa had hit it off with Donnatelle Craig, a black woman who was both a single mother and a deputy for the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department. The two women had stayed in touch ever since, sharing the occasional e-mail.
Teresa had been holding herself together for hours, and Donnatelle’s long-distance sympathy sapped her hard-won composure.
“It’s real bad,” Teresa said, her voice breaking. “Jose’s in the ICU. He may not make it.”
“Where are you? Which hospital?”
“Physicians Medical in Tucson.”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Nobody. My mother’s on her way. Right now it’s just the girls and me.”
“You’re there by yourselves?” Donnatelle demanded in disbelief. “You mean there’s no one there from Jose’s department?”
“Not so far. One of the deputies gave us a ride here. After he dropped us off, he had to leave again. I’m sure someone will show up eventually.”
“Do they have any idea who did it?” Donnatelle asked.
“From what Sheriff Renteria told me, Jose was shot in the course of a routine traffic stop.”
“Routine my ass,” Donnatelle muttered. “And somebody from his department should be there with you.”
That was what Teresa thought as well, but she didn’t say so.
“Let me make some phone calls,” Donnatelle said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Teresa closed her phone. Her mother was coming. Donnatelle would do what she could to help. What Teresa needed was a few moments of peace and quiet and maybe even a minute or two of sleep, but just then a firefight broke out between the two girls over who got which of the few toys Teresa had brought along. In the process of breaking up the fight, Teresa discovered that Carinda’s diaper needed to be changed. By the time she did that, Lucy was announcing she was hungry.
No, for Teresa Reyes, there was no time to sleep.
8
2:00 A.M., Saturday, April 10
Vail, Arizona
Alonzo Gutierrez was up early even though he had barely slept. All night long, whenever he drifted off, he’d been plagued with a recurring nightmare about being burned with cigarettes. He knew where that came from. After starting coffee, he went outside to collect his newspaper.
Yes, Al was twenty-five years old. Yes, he had grown up in a world where microwave ovens were everywhere. He didn’t remember a time when computers hadn’t been readily available. Even though he was a full- fledged member of the digital generation and reasonably computer-savvy, he still liked reading newspapers; liked the feel of newsprint in his hands. Delivering newspapers back home in Wenatchee was the first job he’d ever had.
He and three other young Border Patrol officers shared a four-bedroom house in Vail, outside Tucson. The house had been built before the real estate crash. When it didn’t sell, the developer had turned it and many of the other unsold houses in the neighborhood into rentals. It was a cost-effective place to live for four guys who weren’t making tons of money.
Al was the one who paid for the newspaper subscription. He also endured plenty of teasing from his roomies about reading a “dead-tree” paper, although he noticed that once he finished with it, the sports pages, at least, got plenty of use from guys who never helped pay for them.
That morning Al scanned the news pages of the
The assault wasn’t mentioned there or anywhere else in the paper, either, that and the fact that there was no mention of it on the morning news while he was eating breakfast made Al wonder if Dobbs had buried the report. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time.
The whole idea disgusted him, but Al wasn’t about to run up the flag to the media or to anybody else. The brass had made it clear that contact with the media was forbidden for guys like him. The officers who had made the mistake of complaining to reporters about being told to let up on taking illegals into custody had been put on unpaid leave, and spending time on unpaid leave was something Al Gutierrez couldn’t afford. As for calling in an anonymous tip? He had a feeling those were a lot less anonymous than advertised. Cell phone calls could be traced. E-mails could be traced. And if he tried going over Sergeant Dobbs’s head, there would be hell to pay.
For right now, there was nothing for Al to do but put on his uniform and go do his shift.
Whatever had happened to that poor girl south of Three Points was someone else’s problem, not his. And with any kind of luck, over time, maybe Al’s resulting nightmares would go away.
9
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
