Left for Dead

10

2:30 P.M., Saturday, April 10

Tubac, Arizona

It was early afternoon when a weary Sheriff Manuel Renteria pulled into the attached garage at his house on the outskirts of Tubac. He parked his dusty patrol car next to his refurbished candy-apple-red Dodge Charger and then sat there for a few minutes, gauging how tired he was. Halfway through his third four-year term of office, this had been his worst day ever on the job.

“I’m too damned old for this crap,” he muttered to himself as he made his way into his too-quiet house.

The stucco tract home in Tubac was covered with trellises of bright pink bougainvillea that climbed the outside walls. Once, the house and the yard had been a lively place with kids coming and going at all hours and a dog or two racing to the gate or the door to greet him.

Back then, when he came home from work, the house was always filled with the smells of cooking, because that was the way Midge was. She loved to cook, and she always had something simmering on top of the stove or baking in the oven. Now there was no one here but him, and the only cooking that went on was in the microwave as he heated up an occasional Hungry-Man frozen dinner.

The kids were grown and gone, Midge had been dead for five years, and two months earlier he’d had to put down his aging German shepherd, Charger, named after the car, of course.

Manuel would never be able to admit it to his kids, but right now he missed Charger more than he missed Midge. He guessed that over time he had gotten used to her being gone. The loss of the dog was still too new. Up until a few weeks ago, he’d still been able to help Charger into the Dodge to take long Sunday drives. Charger loved riding shotgun, with his nose stuck out the window and mariachi music pounding through the muscle car’s killer sound system.

Inside the house, Renteria hung his Stetson on the hat hook next to the back door. Stripping off his belt and his holstered 9mm Glock 17, he hung them there, too. Midge would have disapproved of his leaving his weapon in the kitchen, but she was gone now.

Grabbing a soda from the fridge, he stumbled into the living room. Yes, Midge was gone, but her influence lingered. He made sure he put the soda can on a coaster on the side table before dropping heavily into his recliner. The boots came off next. He wiggled his toes and massaged the aching balls of his feet. He’d spent almost eight solid hours tramping around the crime scene. In the old days, that wouldn’t have bothered him. These days? Well, that was another story.

Dispatch had awakened him out of a sound sleep when they called to notify him of the Reyes shooting. He remembered staring blearily at the clock face with 2:37 A.M. glowing in red letters as he picked up the phone. He had known before he ever said hello that it was going to be bad.

He was dressed and out of the house two minutes later. With siren blaring and lights flashing, he had raced to the scene, beating the air ambulance en route from Tucson by a good ten minutes. The local EMTs were there, doing what they could to stabilize their patient. Sheriff Renteria was the one who suggested they use the golf course parking lot as rendezvous point for the helicopter. He stood to one side, watching helplessly, as they loaded Jose’s gurney into the chopper.

As the helicopter became airborne, Sheriff Renteria headed for Patagonia to tell Teresa what had happened. He had been a cop for a long time. He had done plenty of next-of-kin notifications in his time. Usually, the people involved were strangers. This was personal.

He had known the Reyes family forever. He and Carmine, Jose’s father, had attended the same high school and played football and basketball together. He was shocked when Carmine died, and had seen his grieving son spend his late teens and early twenties skating on the edges of serious trouble.

As a member of the sheriff’s department, Manuel Renteria had done what he could to help Jose along. Finally, things started to click. Jose had signed up at the local community college and started taking classes. It was pretty clear that Jose’s interest in studying criminal justice was a direct result of the interest Manuel had shown in him over the years. In the end, however, what had made all the difference for Jose was Teresa.

The sheriff had been delighted when he heard that Jose had started courting Teresa Sanchez. Manuel had known her family, too—Midge had been good friends with Teresa’s mother, Maria. Teresa was a struggling single mother, a pregnant widow with a toddler, when Jose appeared on the scene. The truth was, Jose’s involvement with Teresa Sanchez was the main reason Sheriff Renteria had offered to hire Jose.

When Jose and Teresa married, the sheriff was invited to attend. He had been honored by the invitation, but Midge’s death was still too raw and new for him to go to a church and hear anyone else repeat those fateful words “in sickness and in health.” On the day of the wedding, he made sure something came up at the last minute that made it impossible for him to attend.

All this time, Sheriff Renteria had thought Jose was walking the straight and narrow. Now he didn’t know what to think.

Yes, Sheriff Renteria had spent eight hours at the crime scene, but it wasn’t his crime scene. Officer-related shootings had to be investigated by an outside agency. Renteria had spent all that time standing on the sidelines while investigators from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, led by Lieutenant Duane Lattimore, combed through every inch of the crime scene.

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.

If I’m no better judge of people than that, Sheriff Renteria told himself, then maybe it’s time for me to hang up the badge.

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.