“I’m Detective Rush,” she said. “Detective Ariel Rush with Phoenix PD, Homicide.”
“Sergeant Dobbs told me to expect a call from a homicide detective. What he didn’t say is who died.”
“I’m investigating the murder of a man who was found dead from blunt-force trauma and dumped in North Phoenix sometime early Friday morning. He has since been identified as Enrique ‘Chico’ Hernandez, who ran a high-end call girl operation in Phoenix. On Saturday, some young women—Mr. Hernandez’s employees—called to report that he and one of their roommates, a girl named Breeze Domingo—a young woman with a rose tattoo on her right breast—had gone missing sometime early Thursday morning. The reason the roommates came forward in the first place is that Chico’s name was the one on the rental agreement for their apartment. He had fallen behind in the rent. Without him there, the other girls were worried about being tossed out on their butts with nowhere to go and no protection.
“It wasn’t until Mr. Hernandez’s bloodstained vehicle was found abandoned in downtown Phoenix early yesterday afternoon that we were able to put the missing persons report together with the homicide. When we ran prints found in the vehicle through AFIS, we ended up getting a hit from another missing persons case, that of a fourteen-year-old girl named Rose Ventana who ran away from her home in Buckeye over three years ago. Since Rose was also reported to have a rose tattoo in a pretty distinctive location, I think it’s safe to assume that Breeze Domingo and Rose Ventana are one and the same. Since her prints were found at the scene of a homicide, that suggests she’s either a suspect or, at the very least, a person of interest.”
“How did you make the connection to the Three Points case?” Al asked.
“Her father,” Ariel said. “Initially, I called the house first thing this morning, thinking that if Breeze were in some kind of trouble, she might have turned to her family for help. The mother was completely in the dark. When I told her about finding the fingerprints, she was overjoyed, not because her daughter might be a person of interest in a homicide but because she was alive. That was the first hint she’d had in years that her daughter wasn’t dead. About that time Rose’s father came on the phone, and it turned out he already knew.”
“Stepfather,” Al corrected. “And yes, he knew because I told him yesterday.”
“Right,” Ariel agreed. “Stepfather. He was pissed. He thought you were the one who had called us into it. It wasn’t easy to get the whole story from him, because by then his wife was in the background, screaming at him and telling him that if someone thought her daughter was alive, he had no right to keep the information to himself. At any rate, Mr. Fox gave me your name and phone number because you had given him your card. When I tried reaching you and you weren’t in, they put me through to your supervisor.”
“Sergeant Dobbs.”
“Exactly,” Detective Rush said. “Who wasn’t at all overjoyed to hear from me. By now I expect James and Connie Fox are on their way to Tucson to try to see their daughter. Maybe not both of them, but for sure the mother. It turns out I’m headed for Tucson, too. From what I’m hearing, it seems likely that Breeze/Rose could be both a victim of a crime and a perpetrator. I’ll need to talk to her to sort all that out. I’d like to see you, too. I’d like to go out and take a look at the crime scene. Can you direct me to it?”
“Sure. No problem.” Al said. “I’ll be glad to take you there.”
“Was any kind of crime scene investigation done at the time?”
Al thought about the possible implications of any answer he might give. None of them were good. “I took a few photos, but that’s about it,” he said finally.
Detective Rush laughed. “Let me guess,” she said. “That would be because Sergeant Dobbs deliberately dropped the ball.”
“I didn’t say that,” Al told her.
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed, “because you didn’t have to. This isn’t my first day, Agent Gutierrez. I can figure out one or two things on my own. I’ve spent the past twenty years dealing with people like Kevin Dobbs. Generally, I give them two simple choices: Get out of my way or get run over.”
Detective Ariel Rush sounded like the polar opposite of Kevin Dobbs.
“I’m just passing Picacho Peak,” she said. “That’s the nearest landmark. Let’s visit the crime scene first and then go to the hospital. I’ll come by your place and pick you up.”
Al gave her the address and directions and then added, “I should probably call Sister Anselm and let her know Rose’s parents are on their way.”
“Who’s Sister Anselm?” Detective Rush asked.
“She’s Rose’s patient advocate.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s at the hospital in the ICU. As far as I can tell, her job is to look out for Rose’s interests, but in the hospital, she’s listed as Jane Doe, not Rose Ventana.”
“Got it,” Detective Rush said. “See you in a few.”
For a moment or two, after Detective Rush hung up, Al stood there, staring at his phone. Before he left the hospital, the previous night, Sister Anselm had given him her cell number. Should he call and warn her that Rose’s parents were on the way? After finding the number, he punched send.
When the nun answered, she sounded groggy, as though he had awakened her from a sound sleep.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But this is Al—Al Gutierrez. I just heard from a Phoenix homicide detective who figured out that Rose is still alive and called her parents. They’re on their way to the hospital.”
Sister Anselm switched to full alert. “Her parents are coming here? How soon should I expect them?”
“I don’t know, because I don’t know how long ago they left Buckeye,” Al said. “Probably fairly soon. Within the next hour or so.”
“Thank you so much for the warning, Mr. Gutierrez,” Sister Anselm said. “I’ll be sure to be there to run interference, should that prove necessary.”
33
10:30 A.M., Monday, April 12
Patagonia, Arizona
Patty Patton liked to say that she had worked for the post office in Patagonia since “Noah was a pup.” In view of the fact that her career with the U.S. Postal Service had started on a part-time basis when she was in high school and her mother, Lorna DeHaven, was the postmistress, that wasn’t far from wrong.
Patty had married her high school sweetheart, Roland Patton, two weeks after she graduated from Patagonia High. She and Roland, an “older man” of twenty, had planned on staying with her mother only long enough for them to get a place of their own. That plan had come to grief when, a month after the wedding, Roland had died in the crash of his crop-dusting aircraft.
Patty never remarried. She never left her mother’s house, and she never left the post office, either.
From the beginning, Patty had worn her blond hair in a bob, held in place by liberal applications of Aqua Net. Almost forty years later, the bob had turned gray, but it was still held in place by the same armor-like hair spray. Although Patty kept thinking about retiring, so far, that was all she was willing to do—think about it. When it came to husbands, jobs, or hairstyles, Patty Patton wasn’t interested in change for change’s sake.
For years the Patagonia post office had been downsized to a two-person operation. Patty hoisted the flag up the flagpole each morning and took it down at night. She sorted the mail into the individual boxes and into the plastic cartons Phil Tewksbury loaded into his truck. Phil took care of the janitorial end of the operation and kept their one mail truck in good repair. He also delivered mail to customers in outlying areas who didn’t have access to a post office box.
Over years of working together, the two of them had developed a fairly congenial relationship. They were both dependable and conscientious. They both came to work on time and went home on time. There were only two real bones of contention between them. One was Phil’s long hair, which he insisted on wearing in a limp comb-over, and the other had to do with the NFL. Phil was an avid Broncos fan; she was dyed-in-the-wool Dallas Cowboys.
That morning the truck dropped off the mail bags at seven. By eight, Patty had it sorted and was ready to open the window. Most of the time, her customers were in a hurry and totally focused on the mail. They wanted to
