Dead Wrong (14 page)

Was it possible that the unidentified woman was
actually Jeannine Phillips? “Early thirties?” Joanna
asked. “Anglo?”

Isabel nodded. “Stocky build. She was in
surgery when I
left. The hospital was giving
out information in hopes of identifying her.”

“Do you have the phone number?” Joanna
asked.

In answer, Isabel simply opened her cell phone,
punched it a couple of times, and then handed it over. Moments
later, Joanna was speaking to UMC’s information officer.
“This is Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady. One of my
female officers has gone missing, and I’m wondering if the
woman who was dropped off there earlier…”

In the course of the next minute and a half, with
Isabel Duarte looking on, Joanna was passed from one staff member
to another. Finally she found herself speaking to Dr. Grant
Waller.

“I’m given to understand you may be
acquainted with our unidentified patient?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Joanna said.
“One of my ACOs disappeared after the close of her shift last
night. I was wondering if…”

“The woman who was brought here early this
morning has come through surgery,” Dr. Waller replied.
“She’s currently in grave but stable
condition.”

“Is she going to be all right?” Joanna
asked.

The doctor’s tone shifted and became more
distant. “Due to privacy constraints,” he said,
“I’m unable to tell you any more about the severity of
the patient’s injuries, but I will say that if she had
arrived at our emergency room even twenty minutes later than she
did, you and I wouldn’t be having this
conversation.”

Joanna had been holding her breath. Now she let it
out.

“It would be helpful, however,” Dr.
Waller continued, “if we knew who she is. The emergency
surgery had to go forward when it did, signed authorization or no,
in order to save her life. But in order to treat her other
injuries…Would it be possible for you to stop by to see if
you can identify her?”

Joanna was already striding in the direction of her
team of investigators, with Isabel Duarte hurrying along behind
her. “I’m on the far side of Benson right now,”
she said. “With any luck, I can be at the hospital in a
little more than half an hour.”

“Good,” Dr. Waller said. “Just
check in at the desk in the lobby. I’ll send someone right
down to bring you to ICU.”

Joanna closed the phone and handed it back to
Isabel. For the first time in her life, she felt like hugging a
member of the media. “Thank you,” she said. “Give
me your card. I’ll see that you get an exclusive on
this.”

“You won’t have to worry about finding
us,” Isabel Duarte declared. “Larry and I will be right
on your heels.”

J
oanna
paused long enough to pull Frank away from the group of
investigators gathered around the abandoned truck. “I’m
on my way to Tucson,” she said.

“How come?”

“A badly injured unidentified female was
dropped off at UMC earlier this morning.”

“Jeannine?” Frank asked.

“Maybe,” Joanna said. “I’m
going to go check it out, but let’s not say anything to the
others until we know for sure. I don’t want to get
people’s hopes up. I’ll be back as soon as I
can.”

“Good luck,” Frank said. “It
sounds like we need it.”

Driving through Benson westbound on I-10, Joanna
called Kristin. “I’d like you to check Jeannine
Phillips’s employment records,” Joanna said. “I
need to know her next of kin.”

“This sounds bad,” Kristin said.
“Is it?”

“We don’t know,” Joanna replied.
“At least not yet. Regard
less, though,
I’m going to need to notify someone about what’s
happened.”

“I’ll get right back to you,”
Kristin said. When she called back a few minutes later, she sounded
dismayed. “The next-of-kin section is blank,” she
said.

“What about the beneficiary of her group life
insurance policy?” Joanna asked.

“All that’s listed here is the Humane
Society of Southern Arizona,” Kristin returned. “What
does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said,
“but thanks for the help.”

The troubling lack of next of kin made
Jeannine’s situation eerily similar to that of Bradley Evans,
who had lived such an isolated life that he had been forced to
choose his former mother-in-law as his beneficiary.

Mulling this new revelation as she drove, Joanna
suddenly remembered something Jeannine had mentioned to her in
passing months earlier—something that had hinted at a
troubled family life when she was growing up.

Forty minutes after leaving Texas Canyon, Joanna
pulled into the parking garage at University Medical Center and
walked across the chill but sunny breezeway to the front entrance.
The hospital may have been given over to the healing arts, but it
happened to be the place where Andy Brady’s life had come to
an end. It was also where Marianne and Jeff’s beloved Esther
had died in the aftermath of a heart transplant. Years of constant
construction and reconstruction had completely changed the lobby
from what Joanna remembered from previous visits, but the physical
changes did nothing to dispel the sense of impending doom that
flooded over her the moment she stepped through the glass sliding
doors.

Dr. Waller was good as his word. Once Joanna gave
her name to the receptionist, the doctor himself came downstairs to
retrieve her. His voice on the phone had led Joanna to expect
someone much older and larger. Grant Waller, however, turned out to
be a relatively small man and only a few years older than
Joanna.

“Thank you for coming, Sheriff Brady. You
made very good time.”

“There wasn’t much traffic,” she
said, which was nothing less than an out-and-out lie.

“Let’s go upstairs and see if you can
identify our patient for us,” he said, leading the way.

Upstairs in the surgical ICU waiting room, she was
escorted past a group of anxious people gathered there. Once inside
the unit, she was motioned into a rest room and directed to wash
her hands before donning a gown, mask, hair covering, booties, and
latex gloves.

“The patients in this unit are very
ill,” Dr. Waller explained. “We don’t take any
unnecessary chances. We’re working to prevent secondary
hospital-based infections.”

When Joanna was properly attired, she was led down
the hallway and into a dimly lit room where the only sound was the
gentle beeping of a monitor. A sleeping figure lay on the bed.
Stepping closer, Joanna saw that the patient’s head was
almost entirely swathed in bandages. One eye and one badly bruised
cheek was all that was visible, but it was enough.

“It’s Jeannine,” Joanna managed
as her legs turned to jelly beneath her. “Jeannine
Phillips.”

Supported by Dr. Waller’s steadying arm,
Joanna was led out into the hallway and lowered onto a chair at the
nurses’ station. “Are you all right?” he
asked.

“Just a little woozy,” Joanna answered.
“It hit me harder than I expected. She looks
awful.”

Waller nodded. “I suspect she’s going
to lose the sight in that one eye, and she’ll probably
require reconstructive facial surgery, but what you saw in there
was only the tip of the iceberg. She had severe internal injuries.
We had to remove her spleen and one kidney. With all that and the
amount of blood she had lost, it’s a miracle she made it to
the hospital alive.”

“Will she live?” Joanna asked.

Waller shook his head. “Too soon to
tell,” he said. “What I need now, though, is
information—her name and the name of her next of kin. It
would also help if you could provide any insurance information,
although of course we’ll continue treating her in any case,
regardless of whether or not she’s insured.”

While speaking, Waller had removed a PDA from a
coat pocket. He paused with the stylus poised at the ready.
“Did you say her name is Jeannie?” he asked.

“Jeannine,” Joanna corrected,
“Jeannine Phillips,” spelling out both names, one
letter at a time.

“Next of kin?”

“I don’t have that information right
now,” she said. “Once I have it, I’ll get it to
you right away.”

“The sooner the better,” Dr. Waller
said, returning the PDA to his pocket. “I’ll be going
then,” he added. “You can leave the gown and booties in
a receptacle in the rest room.”

But Joanna wasn’t ready to be dismissed quite
that easily. “What do you think happened to her?” she
asked.

Waller turned back to her. “Sheriff
Brady,” he said, “with all due respect, I really
can’t give you any additional information. Considering the
new federally mandated patient confidentiality
rules, I’ve probably said too much already.
Since you’re not a parent or spouse or on a list to receive
her private medical information…”

Joanna bridled at his patronizing tone. “With
all due respect,” she returned curtly, “at the very
least my agency is conducting an aggravated assault investigation,
one that could well turn into a homicide if Jeannine dies. In that
case, I’m sure the autopsy will tell me everything I need to
know about her private medical information. In the meantime,
you’re all I’ve got.”

They were still at the nurses’ station. Dr.
Waller glanced around as if concerned someone might overhear what
was said. When he spoke, he did so in an undertone. “She was
stripped naked, kicked, and stomped, and left to die,” he
said at length. “And when I say kicked, I mean kicked within
an inch of her life. She has severe internal injuries, several
broken ribs, and compound fractures of both arms and legs. You
already saw what they did to her face.”

“They?” Joanna asked. “You mean
there was more than one?”

Waller nodded. “Some of the bruises show
actual shoe prints,” he said. “There was more than one
pattern.”

“Will we be able to have photos of the shoe
patterns?” Joanna asked.

Dr. Waller nodded grimly. “Eventually, I
suppose,” he said.

“Was she raped?”

“That I don’t know,” Dr. Waller
said. “We’ve been a little too busy saving her life to
spend any time processing a rape kit.”

“If DNA evidence is available, I want
it,” Joanna said. “It may be the only way to nail these
bastards.”

But Waller, having given a little, retreated back
into the world of rules and procedures. “We’d need a
signed consent form for that.”

“Jeannine is in no position to sign
anything,” Joanna pointed out.

Waller shrugged. “That’s why we need to
speak to her next of kin,” he said. “One of her
relatives could probably give consent.”

“What if I speak to them first?” Joanna
asked. “What should I tell them?”

Dr. Waller sighed again. “I don’t
really recommend that. Next-of-kin notifications are best left to
the professionals.”

“I am a professional,” she reminded
him. “A law enforcement professional. It turns out I, too,
have had some experience with next-of-kin notifications.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Of
course.”

“So what can I tell them?” Joanna
persisted. “How would you characterize her
condition?”

“Grave,” Waller said at last.
“Her condition is grave but stable.”

With that, Dr. Waller walked away. Joanna went into
the rest room and removed her hospital garb. When she walked out
through the waiting room, she was aware that the people there were
watching her. She knew that, even caught up in their own pain, they
all were wondering which patient this very pregnant law enforcement
officer had been allowed to visit and why.

On her way down in the elevator, Joanna puzzled
about her next move. Jeannine may not have disclosed information
about next of kin on her employment records, but there was someone
who might have access to information that wasn’t in the
written record—someone who was waiting and worrying and
wondering what was going on—Millicent Ross.

When the elevator door opened, Joanna had her phone
in her hand and was preparing to use it when, on a bench near the
front door, she caught sight of Isabel Duarte. As the reporter
sprang to her feet and hurried to meet her,
Joanna returned her phone to her pocket.

“Is it her?” the reporter asked.

“Yes.” The answer was out before Joanna
had time to think about whether or not replying was the right thing
to do.

“Is she going to be all right?”

Joanna was struck by the expression on
Isabel’s face and the way she asked the question. She seemed
less focused on getting the story than she was about voicing
concern for a fellow human being. Even so, in answering, Joanna
took her cue from the way Dr. Waller had danced around the
issue.

“We’re not making any comment about her
condition at this time.”

Nodding, Isabel looked slightly disappointed.
“But you did promise me an exclusive,” she objected.
“If we hurry, we can just make the deadline for the
Noon News.
”

So the story was part of it after all. Joanna had
lots of other things that urgently needed doing, but Isabel was
right. Joanna had promised, and without the reporter’s timely
intervention, it was likely Jeannine Phillips’s whereabouts
would still be a mystery.

“You’re right,” Joanna agreed.
“That is what I said. Is your camera guy around here
somewhere?”

“He’s outside smoking a
cigarette.”

“Let’s go do it then,” Joanna
said.

When summoned from his cigarette break, the
cameraman grimaced, ground out the stub, and then grudgingly hefted
the camera to his shoulder. Standing posed before the UMC logo,
Joanna held a microphone in her hand and spoke into the lens.
“This morning a Cochise County Animal Control officer was
attacked and severely beaten in northeastern Cochise County.
We’re currently withholding the victim’s name, pending
notifica
tion of next of kin, but I can assure
you, my department will leave no stone unturned until we have
brought all those responsible to justice.”

“Thank you,” Isabel said, when she came
to retrieve her microphone.

“It wasn’t much,” Joanna said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t say more.”

Isabel smiled. “It’s more than anyone
expects me to get,” she said. “The news director
didn’t send me to the hospital in the middle of the night
because he thought I’d actually come away with a
story.”

“You think this will help show him what you
can do?”

“Something like that.”

“But whatever made you think that there might
be a connection between the woman here and the incident at Texas
Canyon?”

The reporter shook her head. “I’m not
sure,” she said. “I heard the police scanner reporting
that the missing officer was a woman, and I just put two and two
together. I guess you could say it was gut instinct or maybe even
woman’s intuition.”

“Good gut instinct,” Joanna said,
shaking the reporter’s hand. “Thank you.”

Once Isabel and her cameraman had left, Joanna
settled onto a concrete bench next to a reeking outdoor ashtray and
dialed Frank Montoya’s number. “It’s her,”
Joanna said when he answered. “It’s
Jeannine.”

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Very bad.”

“Is she going to live?” Frank asked
after a pause.

“Too soon to tell.”

“Want me to contact her next of kin?”
he asked.

“No,” Joanna returned.
“I’ll do it. There’s evidently some
kind of discrepancy with the office records.
Notifying them isn’t going to be the kind of slam dunk
you’d think it would be.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “Once
it’s done, I’ll talk to the press. There’s a
swarm of reporters out here, all of them clamoring for
information.”

“Not all the reporters are there,”
Joanna corrected. “One of them, Isabel Duarte from KGUN,
ended up following me here to the hospital. I gave her a brief
statement, but I didn’t ID the victim.”

“The others are going to be bent out of
shape,” Frank said.

“Too bad. She was on the ball, and they
weren’t.”

“But you don’t usually talk to the
press.” Frank sounded puzzled.

“I made an exception this time,” Joanna
said. “I’ll get back to you later.” She ended the
call, then located Millicent Ross’s number in her
incoming-calls list and punched the button.

“Hello?” Millicent said anxiously when
she picked up. “Joanna?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found her?” Millicent
demanded. “Is she all right?”

Joanna took a steadying breath before she answered.
“I have found her,” she said. “But she’s
not all right. Jeannine’s at University Medical Center in
Tucson—in grave but stable condition.”