TRIAL BY FIRE (15 page)

Once the woman’s relatives arrived in the waiting room to mingle with James’s concerned family members, there was a very good possibility that her attempted killer, the person who had set the fire, would be there as well.

He or she would use a mask of concern to disappear into the background while waiting for an opportunity to finish what had been started. Since only relatives were allowed inside burn-unit rooms, that meant there was a good chance the helpless woman would end up being left alone and at the mercy of her attempted killer.

The very idea filled Ali with a sense of dread. Identifying the woman had seemed like a good idea right up until it turned deadly. Feeling sick over the apparent contradiction, Ali still tried to do what Sheriff Maxwell had asked her to do—identify the victim.

It was plain enough that Holly Mesina wasn’t going to get back to her with anything useful, so Ali attempted to search out the missing persons information on her own.

She knew from personal experience that, with some exceptions, taking missing person reports about adults is a very low priority in most law enforcement jurisdictions. Immediate reports were taken with regard to missing children and for adults who were considered to be at risk due to dementia or other medical issues. When it came to adults who weren’t at risk? Forget it. Adults were supposedly free to come and go at will. Their worried relatives were encouraged to behave like the boy in that old country tune who was advised to “take an old cold tater and wait.” They were expected to wait until enough time had passed that an official report was deemed warranted.

In the old days, concerned relatives would have had to accept that official line as the gospel. Other than going around their neighborhoods and tacking flyers and photos on telephone poles, there hadn’t been much they could do in the meantime. Ali Reynolds understood better than most that the Internet had changed that dynamic. The Internet didn’t come with a twenty-four-hour mandatory waiting period.

Ali knew that her only hope of staving off disaster was to be there first—to identify the woman and find her would-be killer before the would-be killer found them. With that in mind, Ali opened her computer again and logged on.

Ali’s initial Internet search went nowhere. Checking on an Arizona missing persons list she found only one possible prospect. The woman was in her nineties and much older than Dave’s “sixty or seventy” estimate, but she had disappeared from an adult day-care facility in Chandler around the right time—midafternoon of the previous day. When Ali called for more information, she struck out. The woman who answered the phone apologized profusely; her mother had been found in the early evening hours only a few blocks away from the facility. In all the hubbub the daughter had forgotten to remove the posting but she said she would do so immediately.

Frustrated but with nothing else to do just then, Ali absently Googled “Angel of Death.” She found the
Arizona Sun
profile of Sister Anselm as the third item down on the first search page.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH
by Nadine Hazelett

When Marta Esperanza Mendoza was found in the desert near Tucson in August of last year, she was near
death. The illegal immigrant had suffered a combination of sunstroke and dehydration. She was airlifted to Tucson Medical Center, where she was hospitalized in critical condition.

Abandoned by the group of smugglers who had brought her across the border, she had no documents, no insurance, no family in attendance. The fact that she spoke only Spanish made communicating with her doctors and nurses cumbersome.

Enter the Angel of Death—Sister Anselm Becker, a Sister of Providence. For the past five years she has been summoned to help out with similar cases throughout Arizona. Dubbed a “patient advocate,” Sister Anselm has traveled the state providing comfort and counsel to gravely injured people who might otherwise have had no one in their corner. Her work is sponsored by an anonymous donor under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix.

Trained as both a palliative nurse and a psychologist, and fluent in several languages, Sister Anselm is summoned from her home convent in Jerome by area hospitals when they have need of her services. She often works with gravely injured patients who have difficulty communicating with medical care providers. In the case of undocumented aliens, all that may be necessary is a skilled translator who can cross the language barrier and explain the medical aspects of the situation to the various patients as well as to their families.

“Doctors and nurses provide treatment,” Sister Anselm said, “but they’re not necessarily good at communicating, primarily because they don’t have time. That’s
what I bring to the table—time, and the ability to explain to patients and their loved ones what’s going on.

“Occasionally my job requires me to outline the various procedures and inform the patient of the attendant risks arising out of that care. People who find themselves in those kinds of circumstances are often isolated from their families. If and when family members are located, I explain those things to them as well.”

Often, one of Sister Anselm’s primary goals is to reunite critically injured patients with their loved ones. “With comatose patients, the arrival of a loved one sometimes may stimulate them enough to awaken, but communicating with severely injured patients in short questions that require only yes-or-no blinks takes time. Again, that’s the gift my mission brings to the process—time. I don’t punch a time clock. I have all the time in the world.”

When asked how often she succeeded in reuniting patients with their loved ones, Sister Anselm admitted that is seldom the case. Many of her patients succumb to their injuries long before relatives can be located. That’s what happened with twenty-six-year-old Ms. Mendoza.

Sunstroke left Mendoza paralyzed, unable to speak, and close to death. Doctors were unable to reverse the effects of her stroke as well as of her severe dehydration. Eventually she died, but Sister Anselm’s efforts didn’t end with the woman’s death. The self-styled patient advocate continued to search for the young woman’s family and eventually managed to locate them in the city of Guadalupe Victoria, Sinaloa, Mexico. When
Alfreda Ruidosa came to Arizona to retrieve her daughter’s remains, all Sister Anselm had to offer the woman was a logbook that documented all the people who had interacted with her daughter in her last days.

Contacted at her home in Mexico last week and speaking through a translator, Alfreda Ruidosa said that she keeps her daughter’s logbook with her family Bible. “At least I know my Marta didn’t die alone,” she said.

Unfortunately, however, that’s how things turn out in most of the cases that involve Sister Anselm. Because she is often summoned to deal with only the most severely injured, it’s not too surprising that many of those patients don’t survive. Hospital personnel who often welcome Sister Anselm’s help in those instances are also the ones who have dubbed her the Angel of Death, since once she’s involved with a patient, death often follows.

Hospitals who make use of Sister Anselm’s services dodge liability issues by signing a waiver that allows her to function as a contractor, a private-duty care provider. To date no legal actions have been pursued against hospitals in relation to their use of Sister Anselm’s services.

Ali stopped reading and stared off into space. How had Nadine Hazelett come up with those kinds of statistics? Surely the hospital records shouldn’t have been made available to a journalist—but they evidently had been. No wonder Sister Anselm’s mother superior had been bent out of shape about it. The diocese probably wasn’t too happy, either, since that last sentence was nothing short of an open invitation for some personal-injury
lawyer to come charging into the situation and make life miserable for everyone.

Ali’s phone rang. A glance at the readout told her the caller was Edie Larson. “Hi, Mom,” Ali said.

“B. stopped by the restaurant earlier,” Edie said. “I told him you’re down in Phoenix at the hospital with that woman from the fire.”

Like Nadine Hazelett, Ali’s mother seemed to have access to information she probably shouldn’t have.

“Is she going to live?” Edie asked.

“I don’t know,” Ali answered. “No information has been released about that so far.”

“But you’re the public information officer,” Edie objected.

“That’s true,” Ali said, “but no information about that has been released to me, either.”

“Oh,” Edie said.

She sounded disappointed. No doubt she had expected to have an inside track as far as the investigation was concerned. After all, what was the point of having her daughter work for the sheriff’s department if Edie wasn’t allowed first dibs on news about whatever was happening?

“What’s all that noise in the background?” Edie asked.

The small waiting room was jammed with James’s collection of relatives, several of whom were arguing noisily among themselves.

“I’m in a waiting room,” Ali explained. “Another patient came in a little while ago. Several of his family members are here now, too.”

“Are you coming back tonight?” Edie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ali said. “I’ve reserved a hotel room, but I haven’t checked in yet. I came straight to the hospital instead.”

“But you’ll have a room if you need one,” Edie said, sounding relieved. “I don’t like the idea of your driving up and down the Black Canyon Highway all by yourself at all hours of the day and night. Not after what happened in Camp Verde. There are all kinds of nutcases out and about. I worry about you, you know.”

That’s the real reason for the call,
Ali thought.
She’s worried.

“I can take care of myself, Mom,” Ali said reassuringly. “I have my Taser.”

Over her husband’s objections, Edie Larson had handed out Taser C2s to everyone for Christmas that year. A previous misadventure with a serial killer had turned Edie Larson into a militant Taser enthusiast. Tasers and accompanying training videos were what had been wrapped and placed under the tree for Ali, Christopher, and Athena to open on Christmas morning. Since Ali’s father was still adamantly opposed to all things Taser, his prettily wrapped box of the same size and shape had contained a lump of coal.

“Good,” Edie said. “I’m glad you have it with you.”

Ali was also carrying her Glock, but she didn’t mention that. Edie was a lot less open-minded when it came to actual handguns.

“Are you staying at a decent place?” Edie continued. “I hope it’s not one of those dodgy hotels your dad is always choosing.”

Ali was relatively sure that her father had never willingly set foot inside a Ritz-Carlton, certainly not as a paying customer, but there was no reason to rub that in.

“No,” Ali told her mother. “It’s a very nice place. I’ll be fine.”

Edie rang off after that, leaving Ali to consider that mothers continue to be mothers no matter how old their children. She was about to go back to reading the article when someone spoke to her. “Ms. Reynolds?”

Ali looked up to find a very tall black man standing in front of her. The name on his badge said
Roscoe Bailey, RN,
but his tall, thin frame suggested basketball player far more than it did nurse.

“Yes,” Ali answered. “That’s me.”

“Sister Anselm would like a word,” he said. “This way, please.”

It was more a command than a request. Closing her computer, Ali stood and followed him down the hall. She was surprised to find that while she had been reading the article, a security guard—an armed security guard—had been seated on a chair just outside room 814. Sister Anselm stood at the end of the hallway, looking out a window at Camelback Mountain, looming red in the afternoon sun. It was much the same view as from Jake Whitman’s administrative office, but from a higher floor.

The nun glanced away from the window at Ali’s approach. “I’ve always loved the desert,” she said. “For many newcomers, Arizona seems desolate. Not for me. When I see this mountain especially, I know I’m home.”

Ali understood what she meant. During her own years of East Coast exile and while she had lived in California, she had often flown home via Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. She, too, had always searched eagerly out the windows for that first welcoming glimpse of Camelback.

“You wanted to see me?” Ali asked.

“I’d like to talk to you,” Sister Anselm said, “but not here at the hospital. Are you familiar with the area?”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you know where the Ritz-Carlton is?”

Ali smiled. “I have a room there. Why?”

“That makes sense,” Sister Anselm said. “It’s the closest hotel. I often stay there myself when I’m here at Saint Gregory’s. They serve a marvelous afternoon tea in the lobby. My patient is sleeping. I probably have an hour or two before I’m needed again. Would you care to join me for tea?”

At first Ali was taken aback by the news that Sister Anselm also stayed at the Ritz, but then Ali recalled what she had read in the article about the anonymous benefactor who bankrolled Sister Anselm’s mission.

“Of course,” Ali said. “My car is down in the garage. If you’d like a ride—”

“No,” Sister Anselm said at once. “That won’t do. We shouldn’t be seen leaving the hospital together. Too many people nosing about. You go there and get a table. I’ll join you in fifteen minutes or so.”

Ali got the hint. Sister Anselm wanted to speak to her privately, and in a place where their conferring would be less noticeable than it would be on the grounds of the hospital. Besides, the chance to be briefed by Sister Anselm seemed like a good enough reason to abandon her post in the waiting room.

Fifteen minutes later, Ali was checked into the hotel. Her luggage had been taken up to her room, and she was ensconced at a small table for two just to the right of the entrance to the dining room. The room was alive with people having tea, including a noisy corner spot where several tables had been pushed together to accommodate a lively group of Red Hat Ladies.

By the time Sister Anselm entered the lobby, she had ditched the green scrubs in favor of a dark charcoal-gray pantsuit. The pinstriped outfit looked far more like formal business attire than it did a nun’s habit. Ali noticed that as Sister Anselm
walked through the lobby she was greeted warmly and by name by both the concierge and the hostess.