Left for Dead

11

12:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10

Flagstaff, Arizona

When the first few bars of the “Hallelujah” chorus rang out from Sister Anselm’s iPhone, no one in the board of directors meeting raised an eyebrow. Over the years her fellow board members had learned that the ring tone meant a call from Bishop Francis Gillespie at the archdiocese in Phoenix. It also meant that Sister Anselm would be hightailing it out of the meeting to go wherever she was needed. Her role as patient advocate trumped everything else.

“How’s the weather up there?” Bishop Gillespie asked when Sister Anselm stepped outside the board room to answer.

“It’s snowing here more than it was when I drove up from Jerome this morning,” she said, “but it’s not that bad. Why?”

“Because my office has just been notified that a UDA was transported to the ICU at Physicians Medical in Tucson yesterday evening. She’s in bad shape, and there’s no one with her. How soon would you be able to go?”

In the old days, it might have taken time to arrange for transportation, but that was before Sister Anselm was able to drive herself. Although past retirement age, with encouragement and lessons from her friend Ali Reynolds, and with permission from Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm had gotten a driver’s license for the first time. After years of being driven to and fro, she now tooled around the state in her own all-wheel-drive red-and-white four-door Mini Cooper. Donated to the diocese by a generous parishioner, her Mini Countryman sported a whimsical bumper sticker that said, ACTUAL SIZE.

Sister Anselm glanced at her watch. Wherever she went, there was always a fully packed suitcase tucked into the Mini’s “boot” for just this kind of contingency, so there would be no need for her to go home before leaving for Tucson. The trip would take the better part of four and a half hours, depending on traffic and road conditions.

“If I leave right now, I could probably be at PMC by five.”

“Do you have chains?” Bishop Gillespie asked.

“And all-wheel drive,” Sister Anselm answered. “And I know how to use both.” She and Bishop Gillespie had become good friends, but she tended to get her back up when he fussed about her too much.

“All right, then,” Bishop Gillespie said. “Travel safely. I took the liberty of calling All Saints to let them know to expect you.”

The hospital now known as Physicians Medical Center had started out in the early twentieth century as a TB sanitarium under the auspices of the Sisters of Providence. For almost a hundred years, the nuns of All Saints Convent had been in charge. In recent years, the facility had been purchased by a group of physicians and transformed into a full-scale hospital.

Although PMC was no longer an officially designated Catholic hospital, many of the All Saints nuns, most of them trained nurses, continued to work there. And when Sister Anselm’s work took her to hospitals in and around Tucson, she preferred the structure and discipline of staying with her fellow nuns to staying at a hotel.

But having the bishop call to let them know she was coming counted as more unwarranted fussing. “I’ll call there again myself,” Sister Anselm said. “That way, if they’ve changed the gate or door codes, I won’t need to awaken someone if I arrive after lights out.”

Once off the phone with Bishop Gillespie, Sister Anselm sent an e-mail to Ali, offering her regrets about missing dinner. Her next call was to the convent in Jerome to let them know that she wouldn’t be coming home until further notice. The call after that was to Sister Genevieve, the current reverend mother at All Saints. The call went straight through to the mother superior’s cell phone.

“Good to hear from you,” Sister Genevieve said. “Bishop Gillespie said you might be coming.”

“Am I cleared for a late-night check-in if needed?” Sister Anselm asked.

Sister Genevieve’s answering laugh was hearty and welcoming. “Absolutely,” she said. “Your favorite guest room is ready and waiting.”

“If you want to give me the entry codes, I can let myself in. That way no one will have to wait up for me.”

“We haven’t changed the entry codes,” Sister Genevieve said. “But don’t worry about showing up late. You know me, I’m a night owl. I hardly ever go to sleep before midnight. Whenever you get here, I’ll most likely be on hand, ready and waiting to greet you and activate the gate.”

“All right, then,” Sister Anselm said. “I’m on my way.”

Having anticipated cassoulet for dinner, Sister Anselm had skipped lunch in Flagstaff. By the time she hit Cordes Junction, she was out of the worst of the weather, but she and her “ride” were running on empty. Eating a fast-food burger was a very poor substitute for one of Leland Brooks’s outstanding dinners, but fuel was fuel.

While in line at McDonald’s, she reached into the pocket of her jacket to locate her change purse, encountering the recently acquired Taser C2 that she kept there. She suspected that the other customers in the restaurant would have been surprised to know that the nice older lady, the one wearing gold-framed glasses and a conservative pin-striped pantsuit, was not only a nun but also armed and dangerous.

When she’d had a driver to get from place to place, Sister Anselm had gone on her rounds armed with nothing but her rosary beads and prayers. Things had changed. For one thing, several years earlier she had been kidnapped from a hospital setting in Phoenix. After that unsettling event, Ali had talked with her about making sure she could defend herself. She had resisted strongly.

St. Bernadette’s Convent in Jerome was a home for troubled nuns. Sister Anselm had spent the last three months dealing with an elderly nun—older than Sister Anselm anyway—who was recovering from hip replacement surgery as well as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Sister Louise had been walking home from a pharmacy to her convent in Dallas when she was attacked by a carload of young thugs. They had thrown her to the ground and wrenched her purse and shopping bag out of her hands. No doubt hoping to find money and/or powerful painkillers, the thieves had gotten away with a little over six dollars in change, Sister Louise’s three-month prescription for Boniva, and a box of Depends. Passersby had found her a few minutes later and summoned an ambulance. She had been taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon successfully replaced her damaged hip. What the Parkland physicians had not been able to fix was her sense of well-being.

That was Sister Anselm’s job, and she had been working on it. But dealing with Sister Louise’s troubles had brought home to Sister Anselm—more so than even her own kidnapping—that there were evil people in the world who were more than happy to target someone they thought to be helpless.

So now, when Sister Anselm drove from one end of the state to another, going about her business normally, there was one major difference. She had a weapon discreetly stowed in the pocket of her blazer. Her nonlethal protection was a gift from Ali, who’d warned that it should be carried on one’s person and not in a handbag. In Sister Louise’s mugging case, her purse had been taken out of play almost immediately.

Just because Sister Anselm was out in the world doing God’s work, there was no reason to be a victim, not if she could help it. If anyone tried to take her out, they’d be in for a big surprise.