Left for Dead (8 page)

By the time Lucy turned two, Teresa was pregnant again, and she and Danny were fighting more and more. Finally, she gave him an ultimatum. Either he grow up and get a job, or she was taking Lucy and leaving. She had been screaming at him when he stormed out of the house and drove away.

It was later that night when the cop knocked on her door. Still in a
rage, Danny had gone to some of his favorite South Tucson hangouts, where he and his friends had done some serious drinking. Just before closing time, there was an altercation that went from inside a bar to outside. Out in the parking lot, one of the guys from the fight got in his car and drove away. A few minutes later, he came back, driving past where Danny and his friends were gathered. The driver’s window rolled down. Danny was shot at point-blank range without the vehicle ever coming to a stop.

At the time, the car Danny was driving was registered in his mother’s name. The address on his license was Olga Sanchez’s Tucson address. For that reason, Danny’s parents were the first to be notified of the shooting. They had been at the hospital for some time before Olga thought to send someone to let Teresa know what had happened. The cop who had rung her doorbell that night had been kind enough to take Teresa and Lucy to the hospital.

The next three days had been a nightmare. Danny’s grim-faced doctors had made it clear from the beginning that it was unlikely their critically injured patient would survive. Even if he did, the kind of catastrophic brain damage he had suffered would probably leave him permanently paralyzed. While Danny’s father had stayed in the background, Olga had been front and center, weeping hysterically and railing at her daughter-in-law. If only Teresa had been a better wife to Danny, maybe he wouldn’t have been out partying in the middle of the night. As far as Olga was concerned, what had happened had everything to do with Teresa’s behavior and nothing at all to do with her son’s bad choices.

Teresa already had a toddler to care for and was expecting a second baby. The prospect of caring for a helpless and possibly bedridden husband was more than she could take. She was actually relieved when, three nights after he was shot, the lines on Danny’s monitor went flat, announcing to the world that he was gone. Yes, she grieved for him, but more for what she had hoped to have with him rather than what she’d had.

Because Danny had no job, there was no group insurance. In fact, there was no insurance of any kind. Danny’s parents had paid the medical bills, which Teresa suspected were astronomical. They also paid for the funeral at the old Catholic church on South Sixth and Twenty-second, only a few blocks from where Danny had been
gunned down. At the hospital, Oscar had told Teresa that she and the girls were welcome to come live on the ranch with them. It was a generous offer, and it meant that Teresa’s girls would have wanted for nothing. Teresa had been considering it right up until the scene at the funeral when Olga lit into Teresa again, proclaiming in public that Danny’s death was all her fault.

For Teresa, that was the final straw. A few weeks later, when the rent came due and she had no money, Teresa didn’t even consider accepting Olga and Oscar’s help. Instead of taking the easy way out, Teresa had rented a U-Haul truck. With the help of Uncle Tomás, her mother’s younger brother, and a couple of cousins, she had moved out of the house and back into her widowed mother’s tiny place in Nogales. Her uncle had helped her get a job as a receptionist for one of the trucking companies headquartered in Nogales. That was where she was working when Jose came back into her life through a friend of his who was a driver for the same company.

Teresa and Jose had known each other slightly in high school, but he had been one of those boring good guys who, at the time, hadn’t gotten a second glance. Jose had known Danny, too. They had played football together, but they hadn’t been pals.

Teresa had been pregnant with Carinda when she started dating Jose shortly after Jose had been hired by the sheriff’s department. They had married days after his graduation from the academy.

The last time Olga communicated with Teresa was the day of Danny’s funeral, but just because she wasn’t talking to Teresa didn’t keep her from talking about her. Word of the rumors made their way back to Teresa. Olga told anyone who would listen that she was sure Teresa and Jose had been an item long before Danny’s death. It hurt Teresa to think that the girls’ grandmother had shut them out of her life—that in order to punish Teresa for something she hadn’t done, Olga had resolutely turned her back on Lucy and Carinda. That was too bad for Olga, and too bad for the girls, but for Teresa, given the choice between having a relationship with her toxic former mother-in-law and having Jose Reyes as her husband, it was no contest.

Now Teresa’s life was about to undergo another sea change. What if Jose died? Then she’d be on her own again, this time with three kids to support instead of two. She had become involved with Jose because he was Danny’s exact opposite. Jose was a good guy. She had known
instinctively that he would be a good provider. Yes, she had worried about him being a police officer. She read about police officers dying on the job all the time, but she had also read about officers who retired after thirty-plus years on the job without ever firing a round in the line of duty. When Jose put on his uniform and went to work, she simply closed her mind to the possibility that he might die.

With Jose lying unconscious in the ICU, Teresa forced herself to face facts. If he died, there would probably be some insurance benefits. Jose had put Teresa on the county paperwork as his beneficiary even before they tied the knot. Even so, raising kids was expensive. Teresa knew that she’d probably end up losing the house in Patagonia. It had been Jose’s dream house but not hers, and Teresa alone wouldn’t be able to cover the expenses. She’d have to go back to Nogales to live with her mother again; she’d have to see if she could get her old job back.

“Here we are,” Deputy Carson said.

For the last twenty miles of the trip, Teresa had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t said a word. They had driven all the way across the city without her noticing. They arrived at the hospital at almost three in the morning. Deputy Carson stayed in the car with the two sleeping kids while Teresa walked into the main entrance to get directions.

With Deputy Carson’s help, Teresa eventually managed to get the two girls and all their stuff hauled to the waiting room outside the OR. Three hours later, with the girls waking up and asking nonstop questions, a surgeon emerged from the operating room. “Mrs. Reyes?” he asked, holding out his hand.

Teresa had tried to prepare herself for the bad news. Nodding, she stood up, holding Carinda on her hip while Lucy, suddenly shy, ducked out of sight behind her.

“Yes,” Teresa said, taking the proffered hand.

“I’m Dr. William Lazlo, your husband’s surgeon. The good news is that he’s survived the surgery. He’s being transferred to a recovery room. It’s a miracle that he didn’t bleed to death before he got here. The EMTs did a great job of stabilizing him. We’ve done what we could to repair the damage, but we had to resection his bowel. For right now he’ll have a stoma—you know what that is?”

Teresa swallowed. “You mean like a bag?”

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.

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
Arizona Daily Sun,
checking for any mention of the Three Points assault and wondering if the woman was alive. The paper had a reporter named Michelle Skidmore who specialized in immigration issues and wrote an ongoing column called “Crossings” that often dealt with crimes against illegal immigrants. That day’s column concerned vandals who routinely destroyed the watering stations that volunteers set up and supplied with potable water to keep migrating illegals from dying of dehydration.

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.