Dead Wrong (15 page)

There was a long pause before Millicent Ross spoke
again. “Oh my God! What happened?”

“Someone attacked her while she was sitting
in her truck, pulled her out of the vehicle, and beat her
up,” Joanna said. “And we’re not talking your
everyday, run-of-the-mill beating here, Millicent. They damn near
killed her. I was just talking to her doctor—Dr.
Waller,” she continued. “He needs the name of her next
of kin. I don’t seem to have any record of that. For some
reason the information appears to have been
either omitted or obliterated from her records.”

“It’s not strange at all,”
Millicent returned. “She doesn’t want to have anything
to do with those people, and I don’t blame her.”

“So she does have relatives?”

“Yes, of course she does.”

“Do you know who and where they are?”
Joanna pressed. “Do you know how we can reach
them?”

Joanna wanted that rape-kit consent form signed. If
contacting Jeannine’s parents was the only way to accomplish
that goal, then that’s what she would do.

“She was born in Truth or Consequences, New
Mexico,” Millicent said.

“Good,” Joanna said. “Are her
parents still there? Do you have a name and address?”

“You mustn’t contact them,”
Millicent said.

“Don’t be silly,” Joanna said.
“Their daughter has been injured and is in the hospital. Of
course I have to contact them. Why wouldn’t I?”

Millicent took a deep breath. “Do you know
anything about how Jeannine was raised or why she left
home?”

“A little, I suppose,” Joanna conceded.
“She told me once that she’d had a troubled
childhood.”

“Troubled?” Millicent snorted
derisively. “I’ll say it was troubled. Her father
sexually abused her regularly from the time she was little.
It’s her first conscious memory. When she finally got up
nerve enough to tell her mother about what was going on, her mother
called her a liar and threw her out of the house. Those people are
monsters. The way they treated Jeannine is absolutely criminal, but
to have them called in when she’s lying
helpless in a hospital bed and has no say in the
matter…No. You just can’t do that.”

“Millicent,” Joanna said.
“Someone needs to be here with her.”

“And I will be,” Millicent said at
once. “It’ll take me a little while to cancel my
appointments and make arrangements to close the clinic for the day,
but I’ll be there as soon as I can. You say she’s at
UMC? What’s her doctor’s name again? I’ll need to
talk to him.”

“Waller. Dr. Grant Waller.”

“All right,” Millicent Ross said.
“I’m on my way.”

After Millicent hung up, Joanna paced in the
breezeway. Dr. Waller had already alluded to the new patient
privacy rules on more than one occasion. And the sign posted on the
door into the ICU had been plainly marked: Authorized Visitors
Only.

In the narrowly observed rules of medical
treatment, Joanna guessed that the relationship between Millicent
Ross and Jeannine Phillips wasn’t going to qualify Millicent
as authorized. For more than ten minutes, Joanna walked back and
forth, wrestling with what was the right thing to do in a wrong
situation. Finally she redialed Millicent Ross’s number.

“Has something happened?” Millicent
demanded as soon as she heard Joanna’s voice. “Has her
condition gotten worse?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Nothing has
changed. But I was thinking. How much older are you than
Jeannine?”

“Love is love,” Millicent snapped back,
her voice suddenly cold. “Age has nothing to do with
it.”

“How much older?” Joanna persisted.

“Several years,” Millicent conceded
reluctantly. “My daughter’s a year older than Jeannine
is and my son’s a year younger. But still, I don’t see
how the difference in our ages has anything to do
with—”

“Actually it does,” Joanna said.
“In fact, it’s the whole point. Dr. Waller is a
stickler for the rules. He expects me to contact Jeannine’s
mother, so presumably he’s expecting her to show up even
though he has no idea where she lives or what her name
is.”

Suddenly Millicent grasped where this was going.
“If I were to show up claiming to be her mother, how would he
know the difference?”

“Exactly,” Joanna said, “but you
never heard it from me.”

“No,” Millicent Ross agreed. “I
certainly didn’t. Thank you, Joanna. I owe you
one.”

Joanna thought about Jenny, who wanted to be a
veterinarian. Even though Jenny wasn’t yet in high school,
Millicent Ross had been unfailingly encouraging about the chances
of Jenny’s achieving that somewhat lofty dream.

“No, you don’t,” Joanna said.
“You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I’m coming as soon as I can,”
Millicent said. “Will you still be at the hospital when I get
there?”

“Maybe,” Joanna said. “But it
might be best if we didn’t cross paths.”

“I understand,” Millicent returned.

“But there is one other thing we need,”
Joanna added. “Dr. Waller didn’t do a rape
kit.”

Joanna heard Millicent’s sharp intake of
breath. “You think she was raped?”

“I don’t know for sure, but performing
the exam is the only way to confirm whether or not she was. And
it’s also the only way to gather possible DNA evidence and
photograph her wounds for the legal record. Without a signed
consent form, that isn’t going to happen.”

“Believe me,” Millicent said
determinedly. “There will be a signed consent
form.”

“And insist they photograph whatever bruising
there is and also that they do scrapings from under her
fingernails,” Joanna added. “If she fought
them—and from the way the truck looks, I think she did
fight—there may be usable DNA material under her nails as
well. The problem is,” she added, “there’s always
a chance that, if word gets back to them, Jeannine’s parents
will show up at the hospital after all. What you do then, I
don’t know.”

“I’ll be able to handle it,”
Millicent Ross returned.

Relieved that she had done as much as she could,
both for Jeannine and for Millicent, Joanna put her phone away and
headed back to the emergency room, where she corralled the first
available clerk.

“I’m investigating that beating victim
who was brought in early this morning,” she said, showing the
clerk her ID. “I need the names of all the attendants who
were on duty at the time she was admitted.”

“I can get you a list if you like,” the
clerk said with a shrug. “But you see that guy over
there—the tall skinny one?”

“Yes.”

“His name’s Horatio. Horatio Gonzales.
He’s pulling a double shift right now. I’m pretty sure
he was here overnight.”

Horatio Gonzales was indeed tall—six-four at
least. And he wasn’t exactly skinny. Well-defined muscles
showed under his hospital scrubs. “What can I do for
you?” he asked when Joanna approached him with her ID in
hand.

“Were you here this morning when that beating
victim was dropped off?”

His dark eyes went even darker. “I was
here,” he said. “She was hurt real bad.”

“What about the three men who brought her in.
You saw them?”

“I guess,” he said.

“What can you tell me about them?”

Horatio shrugged. “Not much,” he
said.

“Do you think they were the ones who did
it?”

This time there was a spark of real anger when he
spoke. “No way!” he declared.

“But if they weren’t responsible, why
didn’t they stay around after they dropped her
off?”

“Why do you think?” he said.
“They didn’t speak much English. Maybe they were
illegal or something. Or maybe they didn’t have the right
kind of insurance for their vehicle or the right kind of license.
I’m sure they were scared. If they’d talked to a cop,
even a little lady cop like you, they might have gotten in some
kind of trouble.”

On most occasions a “little lady”
comment like that would have sent Joanna into a fury, but somehow,
coming from Horatio Gonzales, she understood it was due to their
very real disparity in size rather than a patronizing put-down.
Joanna Brady was tiny compared with him.

“They wouldn’t have gotten in trouble
with me,” she said. “That woman is a member of my
department. They saved her life. All I want to do is thank
them.”

That wasn’t entirely true, of course. Joanna
did
want to thank them. And they
wouldn’t be in any trouble as far as she was concerned, but
she desperately needed to know where they had found Jeannine.
Locating the crime scene was most likely her investigators’
only chance of finding any real evidence. The attack had begun
inside the truck. The rest of it had been carried out
elsewhere—in the desert someplace. Whatever evidence remained
would be there, too, waiting to be discovered.

Despite ten more minutes of questioning, Hector
Gonzales
was unable to recall anything of use.
Looking at the list of names the clerk had given her left Joanna
feeling even more discouraged. The other ER attendants probably
wouldn’t be any more interested in answering Joanna’s
questions than Hector had been. She was standing near the entrance,
thinking, when an ambulance rolled up to the door. Watching the
action unfold, Joanna noticed, for the first time, the security
cameras discreetly set in the supporting columns on either side of
the driveway.

She turned and went straight back to the desk.
“Who monitors the security tapes?” Joanna asked.

“The campus cops do that,” the clerk
said. “We have nothing to do with it.”

Frank called her while she was driving from UMC to
the University of Arizona campus proper. “Any luck finding
the next of kin?” he asked. “The natives are restless.
If I don’t give the reporters some info pretty soon,
they’re going to go berserk.”

Joanna felt uneasy. Telling Millicent Ross
wasn’t exactly abiding by the rules, but she had done it, and
the chips would have to fall where they may. “It’s
handled as well as it’s going to be,” Joanna told him.
“Talk away.”

Ten minutes later she was on the U of A campus in
the cubbyhole office of Captain George Winters, the man in charge
of the University Police Department. “We usually have an
officer stationed at the ER entrance,” he said. “Last
night Dick went home sick around midnight, and we weren’t
able to locate a sub on such short notice. The best I can do for
you is to let you view the security tapes.”

Seated at a console, Joanna scrolled through a
series of security camera videos. The time readout read 03.33.46
when a 1980s vintage Chevy LUV pickup with a camper shell over the
bed pulled into view. Two people leaped out of the truck and went
running inside. Moments later, in a flurry of
activity, attendants—one of them clearly Horatio
Gonzales—appeared pushing a gurney. It took some time for
them to maneuver a blanket-swathed figure out of the pickup, load
her onto the gurney, and then roll her inside.

Once the patient disappeared into the building, the
three men from the pickup conferred briefly, then they all piled
back into the pickup and drove away. Try as she might, Joanna was
unable to make out the letters and numbers of the license plate.
The image simply wasn’t clear enough. Captain Winters had
given her two different tapes to review, taken via two different
cameras. When she examined the second one, taken from a slightly
different angle and from closer to the vehicle, she was able to
read the last three numbers on the license—464—and the
saguaro cactus that identified it as an Arizona plate, but the
preceding part of the license wasn’t visible at all.

Captain Winters came into the room as she finished
rewinding the second tape. “Did you find what you
needed?” he asked.

“Some, but not all,” she answered.
“Is it possible to make copies of these?”

“I don’t see why not,” he said.
“It’ll take a few minutes. Maybe you’d like to
come back for them later.”

“That’s all right,” she said.
“I’ll wait.”

While waiting, she redialed Frank Montoya.
“I’ve got a security video of the vehicle that dropped
Jeannine off at the hospital, but I can’t read the whole
license number—the image is too grainy. Where would you
suggest I go to have the images enhanced? Should I take the tapes
to the Arizona State Crime Lab here in Tucson?”

“No way,” Frank said. “Those guys
are a bunch of amateurs. Go to Pima Community College, the one out
on Anklam
Road. One of my cousins, Alberto
Amado, teaches computer science there. He does photo imaging on the
side. I’ll call and see if he’s in.”

“Please do that,” Joanna said.

By one o’clock that afternoon, with
Alberto’s help, Joanna was armed with the complete license
number from the Chevy LUV as well as the name and address of the
registered owner. She felt guilty as she called the Department of
Public Safety to put out an APB on a man named Ephrain Trujillo,
who listed a Douglas, Arizona, home address, but there wasn’t
any choice. No doubt, Mr. Trujillo was one of the good Samaritans
who had rescued Jeannine Phillips from certain death and brought
her to the hospital. That meant he and his friends were the only
witnesses who would be able to take Joanna and her investigators to
the spot where the attack had occurred.

Regardless of any adverse consequences for Mr.
Trujillo, Joanna understood that locating the crime scene was the
next essential piece of the puzzle.

Joanna felt guilty about making the call, but she
did it anyway. She had to. It was her job—her job and her
duty.

J
oanna
could have left Tucson for Bisbee immediately after issuing the
APB, but she didn’t. The people in the LUV may have been
Mexican nationals, but they were familiar enough with Tucson to
have brought Jeannine to the only working trauma unit in the city.
It was possible that they knew their way around Tucson because they
lived and /or worked there. Joanna wanted to wait around to see if
the APB would bear fruit.

What she really craved for lunch was a hot dog from
one of the vendors parked along the side of the road, but those
didn’t come equipped with readily available rest rooms, and
at that point in her pregnancy, rest rooms were a moment-by-moment
necessity. She stopped instead at Las Cazuelitas, a Mexican food
joint on South Sixth near the freeway. It was one of the mysteries
of the universe that even a hint of crème brûlée
could give her indigestion while she could down tacos and refritos
with complete impunity.

Frank called while she was stowing away the last of
her lunch.
“We’re getting ready to
haul Jeannine’s truck back to the Justice Center,” he
said. “It’ll be easier for Dave and Casey to work on it
if it’s inside the garage instead of sitting out in the
open.”

“Any word on the APB?” Joanna
asked.

“Not so far.”

“What’s everyone doing?”

“Until we can get some kind of break on
Jeannine’s case, there’s not much more for the
detectives to do here. The Double Cs and Debbie are on their way to
Sierra Vista. Debbie’s going to be checking on primer paint
purchases, and Ernie and Jaime are going to try to check out that
Markham woman. We figured we should keep working on that while we
can. You do know that Ernie will be out tomorrow—for his
procedure?”

“I thought that was scheduled for
Friday,” Joanna said.

“There was some kind of change in plans, and
they moved it up. I think Ernie is anxious to get it over
with,” Frank continued. “But we’ve got two major
cases hanging fire. Having him out right now is going to put us in
a hell of a bind.”

“We’ll get through it,” Joanna
assured him. “We always do.”

She had paid for her food and was making one last
trip to the rest room when her phone rang again. “A patrol
officer from Tucson PD just spotted that LUV,” Frank
reported. “It’s parked near a construction project on
the far north side of town, on the northeast corner of the
intersection at Campbell and Sunrise. Tucson Dispatch wants to know
what you want them to do about it.”

“Have them keep the vehicle under observation
until I get there,” Joanna said. “If the guy leaves,
have them follow but don’t stop. I already told you that the
driver is a potential witness—a person of interest rather
than a suspect.”

“I’ll remind them,” Frank
said.

“And since we’re dealing with people
whose ability to speak English is limited, how soon can you meet me
there?” Joanna asked. “I’m going to need backup
as well as a translator.”

“Fortunately I was just getting ready to head
back to Bisbee from Texas Canyon,” Frank said.
“I’ll be there ASAP.”

After being patched through to Tucson PD, Joanna
stayed in touch via radio while she drove from one end of Tucson to
the other. Not wanting to attract any kind of notice, she traveled
without benefit of lights or siren. When she arrived at Sunrise and
Campbell, she found a Tucson PD patrol car waiting for her in a
restaurant parking lot on the northwest corner of the intersection.
Across the street, parked in among a dozen or so equally
dilapidated vehicles, was the battered LUV she had seen in the UMC
security video.

As she pulled in next to the patrol car, a
uniformed officer stepped out of the waiting vehicle and hurried
toward her. “I just got another call,” he said.
“Do you need me to stay here or…?”

“No,” Joanna said, “it’s
fine. One of my officers is on his way and will be here soon. You
go ahead.”

The officer left, and Joanna settled in to wait.
Across the street a crew of about a dozen men were at work
constructing a concrete block wall. It was hard physical labor, and
they worked at a steady but unhurried pace. Two men were using
wheelbarrows to drag stacks of block from a nearby flatbed trailer
over to where other workers were laying the blocks. Another two
maintained a steady supply of cement from a mixer. One of the men
manhandling a wheelbarrow looked a lot like the guy who had
scrambled out of the camper shell in Alberto Amado’s
digitally enhanced security video. Joanna recognized one of the
guys at the cement mixer as the passenger from the front of the
pickup. The driver, however, wasn’t visible.

At the stroke of three, all work stopped. As block
layers began gathering and cleaning tools and equipment and putting
them away, Joanna reached for her phone. “Where are you,
Frank?” she asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
“It looks like they’re closing up shop.”

“I just turned off I-10 onto Kino,” he
said. “It’ll take me another fifteen minutes to reach
your location.”

“Hurry,” she urged. “Otherwise
they’ll all be gone by the time you get here.”

“I understood from Dispatch that someone from
Tucson PD was there with you.”

“He was here, but he had to leave,”
Joanna said. “He had another call.”

“Just follow them, then,” Frank
advised. “Let me know where they end up, and I’ll go
there.”

Unwilling to risk losing track of the pickup in
afternoon traffic, Joanna was already putting her Crown Victoria in
gear. It seemed unlikely that Ephrain Trujillo commuted more than a
hundred miles one way from his home in Douglas to a job in Tucson.
That meant he was probably staying somewhere in the Tucson area.
Joanna didn’t want to delay speaking to him until the
following day, when he might not reappear at the job site.

“I’m going to go talk to him,”
Joanna said into the phone. “Get here as soon as you
can.”

“Wait a minute, Joanna,” Frank said.
“For God’s sake. Are you even wearing a
vest?”

“What do you think?” she returned, and
then she hung up.

The truth was, she wasn’t wearing a
vest—hadn’t worn one in weeks because the one she owned
no longer fastened around her bulging belly. But these were the
guys who had saved Jeannine’s life, right? Surely they
wouldn’t hurt her.

A middle-aged Hispanic man was approaching the
pickup with his car key extended when Joanna pulled in behind the
LUV, effectively blocking its exit.

“Mr. Trujillo,” she called.
“Could I speak to you for a minute?”

He turned to look at her. Two younger men,
presumably his passengers, had been walking in the direction of the
LUV as well. They stopped and melted back into the construction
site. Joanna made no effort to stop them. The driver was the one
she wanted. His face, hair, and worn work clothes were all covered
with a thin layer of grimy gray dust that made him resemble a
ghost. The man’s hardened gaze left Joanna wishing that she
weren’t alone.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Hearing his heavily accented but perfect English,
Joanna was relieved. While waiting in the car she had struggled to
imagine how, without Frank Montoya there to translate, she’d
be able to communicate with this man.

“The woman you took to the hospital this
morning works for me,” Joanna said hurriedly. “I wanted
to say thank you.”

The man’s expression softened slightly.
“She is still alive then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And she will live?”

“The doctors don’t know, but she
wouldn’t have even a chance at living if it hadn’t been
for you.”

“I’m glad,” he said, inserting
his key in the lock. “I’ll be going then.”

“No,” Joanna objected. “Please.
We need to find the people who did this. Did you and your friends
see what happened?”

Ephrain Trujillo looked at her and didn’t
answer, but his silence spoke volumes. He didn’t trust her,
and Joanna understood
why. There was a gulf of
antipathy between Joanna Brady with her uniform and badge and this
hardworking laborer and his most likely illegal friends. For
immigrants without green cards, Joanna represented the enemy.
People like her were the ones who stood in the way of UDAs coming
to the United States, doing work American citizens had no desire to
do, earning a living wage, and supporting their families back home
in Mexico or Nicaragua or El Salvador. But in order to learn the
truth about what had happened to Jeannine Phillips, Joanna had to
find a way to bridge that gap.

“I don’t work for the Border Patrol or
INS,” Joanna explained. “It makes no difference to me
whether or not you and your friends have green cards. I simply need
to know what you saw and where it happened.”

“Are you placing me under arrest?”

“No,” Joanna returned.
“You’re not under arrest and you won’t be.
Neither will your friends, but I do need your help. Please, Mr.
Trujillo. Jeannine’s arms and legs are broken. Her face has
been smashed. She will most likely lose the sight in one eye. The
doctors removed one kidney and her spleen. The people who did this
must be caught. You helped her once by saving her life. Please help
her again.”

Ephrain sighed. “What do you wish to
know?”

“Where did you find her?” Joanna asked.
“How did you find her?”

Shaking his head, Ephrain walked to a stack of
unused blocks and sat down on it. Joanna followed, taking out a
notebook as she went. When she reached the stack of bricks, he took
off his bandanna and used it to whack some of the dust off the
bricks beside him, cleaning a place for her to sit.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded and went on. “My wife’s
nephew and two of his friends came across the border near Naco the
night before last and made it to our home in Douglas. My wife was
worried about them being there. She called and asked me to go down
and get them. Her nephew had a job that was promised to him on a
farm up near San Simon, and I thought that, with this big job to do
here in Tucson, my boss would maybe hire his friends. So I went
down to Douglas after work yesterday afternoon to pick them
up.”

“You’re saying there were three of
them, not just two?”

“That’s right. It was already late when
we left Douglas, and the trip here took a long time. We had to come
up the back way, through McNeal, because there’s a big Border
Patrol checkpoint between Douglas and Elfrida. The place where my
nephew was going is a long way north of San Simon on a dirt road.
As we were driving there, I came around a curve and saw a truck
parked along the road. I saw the light rack on top and was sure it
was Border Patrol and that we would be stopped. But then, when we
got closer, I saw all the little dog doors on the side. So I knew
it wasn’t Border Patrol after all.”

“The truck was just parked along the road?
Where?”

“A couple of miles north of San
Simon.”

“Did you see anyone in it or around
it?”

“The engine was running—most likely
because it was so cold—and someone was inside,” Ephrain
acknowledged.

“What time was that?” Joanna asked.

“One o’clock or so. Maybe
later.”

“And then?”

“We drove on up the road and dropped my
nephew off. Then we turned around and came back. It’s a long
way and the road is very rough, so it took an hour or so. But when
we got close
enough to see where the truck had
been parked, there were lights there—lots of them.”

“What kind of lights?”

“Car lights. Headlights. I wanted to know
what was going on, but I didn’t want them to see us. I shut
off my headlights and drove for a while by moonlight. Then, when I
was afraid they might hear the engine, I got out of the truck and
walked closer.”

“By yourself, or did the others walk with
you?”

“I have my green card,” Ephrain
answered. “The others don’t. I told them to wait in the
truck. I walked close enough until I could hear her. She was
screaming, begging for them to stop. They were laughing and
shouting. ‘Kick her again,’ one of them said.
‘Kick her again.’ And they did,” he added.
“Once you have heard that sound—the sound of someone
being kicked in the belly or the ribs—or once you’ve
felt it, you don’t forget.”

He paused and wiped his face with the soiled
bandanna. When he took the cloth away, some telltale dampness
lingered on his cheek. Joanna couldn’t help but wonder where
it was that Ephrain Trujillo had come to know so much about how it
felt and sounded for one human being to kick another.

“And then what happened?” Joanna
asked.

“They were too busy having a good time to
notice me.”

“How many were there?”

“I don’t know. Half a dozen,
maybe.”

“Men?” Joanna asked. “And could
you see them?”

“Not very well. They were behind their
cars.”

“Behind them?”

“They were all in a circle. The cars, four of
them at least, had their lights on and were shining on the circle.
That way they could all see what was going on. Animals!”
Ephrain spat disgust
edly into the dust beside
him. “They wanted light so they could see what they were
doing to her.”

Had she been able to, Joanna might have spat, too,
but her mouth was too dry. “What happened then?” she
asked.

Ephrain shrugged. “I made them stop,”
he said.

“You did?” Joanna asked. “By
yourself? I thought you said your friends stayed in your truck. But
still, even with three of you, you were still
outnumbered.”

“I made them stop,” Ephrain repeated,
emphasizing the first word so there could be no mistake about it.
“By myself,” he added. He turned and looked at her.
“The world is a dangerous place,” he said softly.
“If you are raised in a certain way or in a certain place,
you have to learn to take care of yourself. If you don’t, you
die.”