“No,” Olga said. “Leave it alone. Better yet, shut it off. I’m tired of the damned thing ringing every two minutes.”
Ali reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and made a show of turning it off. When she returned the phone to her jacket pocket, she thumbed open the trigger guard on her Taser. Her best bet would be to take Olga down with that before they ever got in the car. To that end, she decided to feign complete compliance.
“Which bag goes first?” Ali asked.
“That one,” Olga said, pointing to the larger one nearest the door. “Open the door and lead the way. If you try to pull anything, I promise I will shoot you.”
Ali knew that wasn’t an idle threat. The moment she opened the door, however, she heard the wail of approaching sirens. Olga heard them, too. There were several nearby major cross streets. It was possible the sirens were headed somewhere else. Ali hoped they weren’t.
“Back inside,” Olga barked. “Now. You sit on the couch.”
Ali let go of the suitcase, walked over to the couch, and sat. Olga edged to the window again and peered out through the slats of the closed blind. Even with the blinds closed, Ali could see the pulsing blue flashes from at least one arriving patrol car.
“Crap,” Olga said. “They’re already here.”
With Olga’s attention focused on what was happening outside, Ali had managed to ease her Taser out of her pocket, but she left it lying in her lap, out of sight under her hand.
There was a sharp rap on the door. “Police,” an officer said. “Open up.”
“They’ve got you, Olga,” Ali said. “Give it up. Just tell me where the girls are.”
For an answer, Olga Sanchez dropped the slat of blind and turned back to Ali. In one fluid motion, she raised the gun to her own head and fired. As Olga tumbled to the floor, the front door burst open. Weapon drawn, a uniformed patrol officer bounded into the room. He stopped just inside the doorway and took in the whole scene. He looked first at the fallen woman and then at Ali. “Are you Ali Reynolds?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Ali held up her Taser with two fingers. “I was going to Tase her, but I didn’t have a chance. And I’ve got a Glock 17 in a back holster. What about that?”
“I’ll need to take those for the time being,” the officer said. Once Ali complied, he walked over to Olga, reached down, and felt for a pulse. After a moment, he shook his head. “She’s gone. What about the little girls? We were told there should be a pair of little girls here as well.”
Ali stood up. “She wouldn’t tell me where they are. She evidently gave them some kind of sedative before I got here.”
“You haven’t seen them?”
“Not so far.”
“We’d better see if we can find them,” the officer said.
Ali started toward the room that had to be the kitchen with the cop on her heels.
On the kitchen counter, Ali found an almost empty container of pralines-and-cream ice cream. In the sink, there were two dessert dishes and two teaspoons, as well as an ice cream dipper.
“Don’t touch anything,” the cop cautioned.
“I’m not,” Ali said. “But if Olga brought the girls here for their ice cream, they must be here somewhere. They didn’t have that much of a head start on me.”
Room by room, Ali and the uniformed officer went through the entire house—kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, and utility room—without finding any sign of the girls. None. Ali had let herself out through the back door and was wondering where else to look when she saw the Buick that Olga had been prepared to leave parked in the driveway while she flew off to Mexico.
By then the cop had gone back inside to deal with the arrival of a slew of other officers. Ali tried the driver’s door. It was locked. She could have gone inside and searched for the key, but she didn’t. Instead, she ventured far enough into the xeriscaped yard to pick up a fist-size hunk of river rock, which she flung through the driver’s-side window.
A young uniformed cop who had been left out on the street to keep an eye on the scene came racing up to her. “Hey, lady,” he demanded. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Ali had already unlocked the door, pulled it open, and hit the trunk release. By the time the officer reached her, Ali was at the back of the vehicle, staring into the trunk. Both girls were there—unconscious and scarily still, but both of them were breathing.
“I need an ambulance!” Ali yelled. “Two of them. Now!”
The young cop skidded to a stop next to her, looked down into the trunk, and reached for his radio.
54
8:00 P.M., Monday, April 12
Tucson, Arizona
Eventually, the crowd cleared out. It was a good thing, too. Angel had been manhandling the polisher for hours, and his shoulders were killing him. As the last of the news crews began gathering up equipment, Angel did the same. He unplugged the polisher and rolled up the cord. Then he went outside and moved his van to an empty spot in the front row of the parking lot. Next he rolled his cart and polisher outside and loaded them into the van. When it was time to leave, he would need to leave in a hurry.
He returned to the corridor as the news crew was leaving and as the mother, finished with her interview ordeal, disappeared into her daughter’s room. She came out a minute or so later and headed for the lobby.
Angel was relieved to see her go. That meant there was only the girl and the elderly nurse left. He took a seat in the waiting room, sat down, and waited, all the while wondering how long it would take. Under five minutes later, the nurse emerged. She paused in the doorway, looked around, and then headed for the nurses’ station.
Angel knew he had moments to make this work. As soon as her back was turned, he darted into the room, easing the loaded syringe out of his pocket as he went. He was all the way inside the darkened room and reaching for the form on the bed when the charge from a Taser knocked him senseless.
Someone might have told him to drop it, but Angel couldn’t be sure. When he came back around, the Taser dart was stuck to his chest and his arms were secured by a pair of handcuffs.
“I don’t know who you are,” a woman’s voice said, “but you’re under arrest. What’s in the syringe?”
“What syringe?” Angel said. “I don’t have any syringe.”
The nurse came back then, too. She was smiling and talking on a telephone. “It worked like a charm, Bishop Gillespie. We got him!”
The nurse seemed to think this was funny. Angel Moreno did not, because he knew he was a dead man. If the cops didn’t kill him, Humberto Laos sure as hell would.
55
9:00 P.M., Monday, April 12
Tucson, Arizona
When the ambulance got to Olga’s house on Longfellow, it practically took an act of Congress to get the EMTs to agree to take Lucy and Carinda to Physicians Medical instead of Diamond Children’s Hospital. The point was, with the rest of the family at PMC, it made no sense to send the girls anywhere else.
Crime scene investigators had found an empty prescription bottle for Ambien in the trash in Olga’s kitchen, so the medical personnel had a fairly good idea what the girls had been given. When the ambulances pulled out,
