Lattimore and Renteria may have worked for different agencies, but they did so in the same general geographical area. Each was a known quantity to the other, and there was a good deal of mutual respect—too much for either of them to play games. Another DPS investigator might have sent Sheriff Renteria packing, but Lattimore didn’t. As long as Renteria merely observed and kept his mouth shut, Lattimore let him stay. Unfortunately for Sheriff Renteria, they’d found far more than he had expected.
Jose’s last radio transmission to Dispatch had said he was making a routine traffic stop, but it turned out there was nothing routine about it. Information about the stop should have been available on the dashboard camera in Jose’s patrol car, but the camera had been smashed off its sticky pad mounting. Even the pieces were nowhere to be found.
What they had found, unfortunately, were two three-kilo bundles of grass as well as white powder that field- tested out as cocaine. It had all been stashed in the trunk of Jose’s patrol car. In addition, there were several hundred-dollars in loose hundred-dollar bills inside the trunk and blowing around the crime scene.
It was possible that the drugs and the money were part of something Jose was investigating, but there had been no mention of any such investigation in Jose’s paperwork or in his interactions with Dispatch. Lieutenant Lattimore and the other DPS investigators didn’t say anything about all that to Sheriff Renteria. They didn’t have to. Everybody understood what they were likely seeing—a drug deal gone bad.
As far as weapons were concerned, they found next to nothing. Jose’s service weapon was located at the scene, near where he’d been found. Apparently, it had been drawn but not fired. The CSI team found a few shell casings that they’d send in to NIBIN—the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. But there were so many weapons coming and going across the border these days, the idea that they’d come up with some kind of a match on the casings that would lead to first a weapon and then an actual owner was a long shot.
What wasn’t a long shot, and what Sheriff Renteria had to face, was the likelihood that Jose was dirty. The evidence found in and around Jose’s car was compelling, although until today, Sheriff Renteria wouldn’t have entertained that as a possibility. He would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Jose Reyes was true blue, but the evidence said otherwise.
Until that Saturday morning, Sheriff Renteria had been gearing up to run for a fourth and final term as sheriff, but that, was now unlikely. If one of his cops was dirty, there was a chance that others were as well. His whole department could come crashing down.
He finished his soda and then, sat dozing in the chair for the better part of two hours. At last he forced himself awake. He stripped off his bedraggled uniform and stepped into the shower. Half an hour later, shaved and wearing a freshly laundered uniform, he strapped his Glock on his hip and stuck his Stetson back on his head.
Earlier, he’d hated having to drive to Patagonia to give Teresa Reyes the terrible news that her husband was critically injured. This was even worse. Now he had to drive to Tucson and tell her that her hospitalized husband was most likely also a crook. Maybe she’d be as blindsided by the news as he had been. Then again, maybe not.
What if Teresa had suspected something and said nothing, or worse, what if she knew all about it? What if they were both crooks? Could a husband hide that kind of activity from his wife? Renteria knew he wouldn’t have been able to get away with that kind of stuff with Midge, never in a million years.
Shaking his head, Sheriff Renteria turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful police pursuit engine roared to life. He had already decided he would go to Tucson and tell her. He’d use everything he had learned while working as a deputy for sixteen years and as sheriff for ten to read Teresa’s reactions to what he had to say.
With any luck, she’d turn out to be completely in the dark. That’s what he hoped, anyway. And if she wasn’t? Then three little kids, one of them not yet born, were in for a very rough ride.
11
12:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10
Flagstaff, Arizona
When the first few bars of the “Hallelujah” chorus rang out from Sister Anselm’s iPhone, no one in the board of directors meeting raised an eyebrow. Over the years her fellow board members had learned that the ring tone meant a call from Bishop Francis Gillespie at the archdiocese in Phoenix. It also meant that Sister Anselm would be hightailing it out of the meeting to go wherever she was needed. Her role as patient advocate trumped everything else.
“How’s the weather up there?” Bishop Gillespie asked when Sister Anselm stepped outside the board room to answer.
“It’s snowing here more than it was when I drove up from Jerome this morning,” she said, “but it’s not that bad. Why?”
“Because my office has just been notified that a UDA was transported to the ICU at Physicians Medical in Tucson yesterday evening. She’s in bad shape, and there’s no one with her. How soon would you be able to go?”
In the old days, it might have taken time to arrange for transportation, but that was before Sister Anselm was able to drive herself. Although past retirement age, with encouragement and lessons from her friend Ali Reynolds, and with permission from Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm had gotten a driver’s license for the first time. After years of being driven to and fro, she now tooled around the state in her own all-wheel-drive red-and-white four-door Mini Cooper. Donated to the diocese by a generous parishioner, her Mini Countryman sported a whimsical bumper sticker that said, ACTUAL SIZE.
Sister Anselm glanced at her watch. Wherever she went, there was always a fully packed suitcase tucked into the Mini’s “boot” for just this kind of contingency, so there would be no need for her to go home before leaving for Tucson. The trip would take the better part of four and a half hours, depending on traffic and road conditions.
“If I leave right now, I could probably be at PMC by five.”
“Do you have chains?” Bishop Gillespie asked.
“And all-wheel drive,” Sister Anselm answered. “And I know how to use both.” She and Bishop Gillespie had become good friends, but she tended to get her back up when he fussed about her too much.
“All right, then,” Bishop Gillespie said. “Travel safely. I took the liberty of calling All Saints to let them know to expect you.”
The hospital now known as Physicians Medical Center had started out in the early twentieth century as a TB sanitarium under the auspices of the Sisters of Providence. For almost a hundred years, the nuns of All Saints Convent had been in charge. In recent years, the facility had been purchased by a group of physicians and transformed into a full-scale hospital.
Although PMC was no longer an officially designated Catholic hospital, many of the All Saints nuns, most of them trained nurses, continued to work there. And when Sister Anselm’s work took her to hospitals in and around Tucson, she preferred the structure and discipline of staying with her fellow nuns to staying at a hotel.
But having the bishop call to let them know she was coming counted as more unwarranted fussing. “I’ll call there again myself,” Sister Anselm said. “That way, if they’ve changed the gate or door codes, I won’t need to awaken someone if I arrive after lights out.”
Once off the phone with Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm sent an e-mail to Ali, offering her regrets about missing dinner. Her next call was to the convent in Jerome to let them know that she wouldn’t be coming home until further notice. The call after that was to Sister Genevieve, the current reverend mother at All Saints. The call went straight through to the mother superior’s cell phone.
“Good to hear from you,” Sister Genevieve said. “Bishop Gillespie said you might be coming.”
“Am I cleared for a late-night check-in if needed?” Sister Anselm asked.
Sister Genevieve’s answering laugh was hearty and welcoming. “Absolutely,” she said. “Your favorite guest room is ready and waiting.”
