Unseen on her end of the phone, Ali rolled her eyes. It wasn’t exactly news that Edie Larson went to bed with the chickens so she could be up at O-dark-thirty, in time to do the day’s worth of baking at the Sugarloaf.
“It will be early,” Ali promised. “Athena says her softball game should be over right around five. She’ll come here straight from school. That means we should be able to sit down to dinner by five-thirty at the latest.”
“You’re sure Mr. Brooks doesn’t mind cooking for all of us?” Edie asked.
“I’m sure,” Ali said.
“Do you want us to bring something?”
“Just yourselves,” Ali told her, “and your appetites.” She went into the kitchen to give Leland a revised guest list. “Everybody’s coming, twins and all.”
“I think I’ll do a flan for dessert, then,” he said. “Colleen especially likes that.”
His statement confirmed something Ali already suspected—that Colleen Reynolds had Leland Brooks wrapped around her pudgy little finger.
“Do you need any help?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Leland said, but he gave her a disparaging look that, roughly translated, meant “Are you kidding?”
“All right, then,” Ali said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Taking another cup of coffee, Ali returned and found a few more late-breaking articles about the Reyes shooting, but they told her less than she had already learned from Donnatelle. Ali didn’t know the exact distance between Yuma and Tucson, but it was bound to include several hours’ worth of driving time. In the meantime, Ali used the address information from Donnatelle to send Teresa Reyes an e-mail:
Considering the catastrophe that had befallen the Reyes family, writing a note and offering to come help seemed like a puny gesture, but it was better than doing nothing.
10
2:30 P.M., Saturday, April 10
Tubac, Arizona
It was early afternoon when a weary Sheriff Manuel Renteria pulled into the attached garage at his house on the outskirts of Tubac. He parked his dusty patrol car next to his refurbished candy-apple-red Dodge Charger and then sat there for a few minutes, gauging how tired he was. Halfway through his third four-year term of office, this had been his worst day ever on the job.
“I’m too damned old for this crap,” he muttered to himself as he made his way into his too-quiet house.
The stucco tract home in Tubac was covered with trellises of bright pink bougainvillea that climbed the outside walls. Once, the house and the yard had been a lively place with kids coming and going at all hours and a dog or two racing to the gate or the door to greet him.
Back then, when he came home from work, the house was always filled with the smells of cooking, because that was the way Midge was. She loved to cook, and she always had something simmering on top of the stove or baking in the oven. Now there was no one here but him, and the only cooking that went on was in the microwave as he heated up an occasional Hungry-Man frozen dinner.
The kids were grown and gone, Midge had been dead for five years, and two months earlier he’d had to put down his aging German shepherd, Charger, named after the car, of course.
Manuel would never be able to admit it to his kids, but right now he missed Charger more than he missed Midge. He guessed that over time he had gotten used to her being gone. The loss of the dog was still too new. Up until a few weeks ago, he’d still been able to help Charger into the Dodge to take long Sunday drives. Charger loved riding shotgun, with his nose stuck out the window and mariachi music pounding through the muscle car’s killer sound system.
Inside the house, Renteria hung his Stetson on the hat hook next to the back door. Stripping off his belt and his holstered 9mm Glock 17, he hung them there, too. Midge would have disapproved of his leaving his weapon in the kitchen, but she was gone now.
Grabbing a soda from the fridge, he stumbled into the living room. Yes, Midge was gone, but her influence lingered. He made sure he put the soda can on a coaster on the side table before dropping heavily into his recliner. The boots came off next. He wiggled his toes and massaged the aching balls of his feet. He’d spent almost eight solid hours tramping around the crime scene. In the old days, that wouldn’t have bothered him. These days? Well, that was another story.
Dispatch had awakened him out of a sound sleep when they called to notify him of the Reyes shooting. He remembered staring blearily at the clock face with 2:37 A.M. glowing in red letters as he picked up the phone. He had known before he ever said hello that it was going to be bad.
He was dressed and out of the house two minutes later. With siren blaring and lights flashing, he had raced to the scene, beating the air ambulance en route from Tucson by a good ten minutes. The local EMTs were there, doing what they could to stabilize their patient. Sheriff Renteria was the one who suggested they use the golf course parking lot as rendezvous point for the helicopter. He stood to one side, watching helplessly, as they loaded Jose’s gurney into the chopper.
As the helicopter became airborne, Sheriff Renteria headed for Patagonia to tell Teresa what had happened. He had been a cop for a long time. He had done plenty of next-of-kin notifications in his time. Usually, the people involved were strangers. This was personal.
He had known the Reyes family forever. He and Carmine, Jose’s father, had attended the same high school and played football and basketball together. He was shocked when Carmine died, and had seen his grieving son spend his late teens and early twenties skating on the edges of serious trouble.
As a member of the sheriff’s department, Manuel Renteria had done what he could to help Jose along. Finally, things started to click. Jose had signed up at the local community college and started taking classes. It was pretty clear that Jose’s interest in studying criminal justice was a direct result of the interest Manuel had shown in him over the years. In the end, however, what had made all the difference for Jose was Teresa.
The sheriff had been delighted when he heard that Jose had started courting Teresa Sanchez. Manuel had known her family, too—Midge had been good friends with Teresa’s mother, Maria. Teresa was a struggling single mother, a pregnant widow with a toddler, when Jose appeared on the scene. The truth was, Jose’s involvement with Teresa Sanchez was the main reason Sheriff Renteria had offered to hire Jose.
When Jose and Teresa married, the sheriff was invited to attend. He had been honored by the invitation, but Midge’s death was still too raw and new for him to go to a church and hear anyone else repeat those fateful words “in sickness and in health.” On the day of the wedding, he made sure something came up at the last minute that made it impossible for him to attend.
All this time, Sheriff Renteria had thought Jose was walking the straight and narrow. Now he didn’t know what to think.
Yes, Sheriff Renteria had spent eight hours at the crime scene, but it wasn’t his crime scene. Officer-related shootings had to be investigated by an outside agency. Renteria had spent all that time standing on the sidelines while investigators from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, led by Lieutenant Duane Lattimore, combed through every inch of the crime scene.
