GIVEN IT WAS A BUSY Saturday afternoon at the hospital, it took D.D. and Phil some time to find a supervisor who knew Juanita Baez and could point them in the right direction. But thirty minutes later, they were ensconced in the staff lounge with Nancy Corbin, an ER nurse who supposedly was close to the victim.
“It’s true then?” the nurse was asking. She was a middle-aged woman with short-cropped blond hair and deep blue eyes. Her hands were shaking as she raised her coffee cup, but her face remained set, a woman who’d given and received bad news before in her life. D.D. appreciated the nurse’s composure. She didn’t have time for theatrics right then. Five hours after the first report of shots fired, time was not in their favor.
“We heard a report on the news. The family’s dead, Roxy’s missing?” the nurse continued.
“Did you know Juanita’s family?”
“The kids, sure. She talked about them all the time. Her family was her life.”
“What about Roxanna? Have you seen her today?”
“No. But the ER has been very busy. We keep the TV on in the waiting area, which is how we knew about the Amber Alert. If Roxy showed up—someone would’ve noticed.”
“When was the last time you saw Juanita?” Phil asked.
“Umm, we both worked graveyard Wednesday night. Juanita is designated night shift. She works Monday through Thursday graveyard, off for the weekends. I bounce around more, some days, some nights.”
“But Juanita’s schedule is set?” Phil pressed. “Isn’t that unusual for nursing?”
“Yes, but Juanita has seniority, plus not everyone wants to work nights. For her, however, it meant more time with the kids. She’d work eleven P.M. to seven A.M., which really turns out to be eight or nine A.M. Then she’d head to a local meeting—you know she’s an alcoholic, right?”
“Yes.”
“Post shift, straight to a meeting. That was very important to her. Then she’d finally make it home, sleep for three to six hours depending, and wake up when the kids returned from school. She’d spend all afternoon and evening with them before reporting back to work.”
“Grueling schedule,” D.D. observed. She was content to let Phil take the lead with the interview. She considered Phil the yin to her yang—while she was hard-edged and intense, his presence was warm, even comforting. Between his thinning brown hair and relaxed-fit trousers, he looked exactly like what he was, a happily married father of four, which for many nervous witnesses or arrogant suspects was the perfect fit. Certainly, Nancy Corbin had gravitated toward him from the first moment they’d sat down. It probably didn’t hurt that, receding hairline and all, Phil retained a certain older-guy charm.
“Please,” Nurse Corbin was saying now. “That’s only half the battle. On Fridays, Juanita basically had to keep herself awake all day, so she’d be tired enough to sleep Friday night and be back to days on Saturday and Sunday, before returning to night work on Mondays. Take it from me, that kind of flip schedule never gets any easier. But for Juanita that made the most sense. Night shift is good money, plus she could be home for her kids’ waking hours, even if it was at the expense of her own.”
“She sounds like a caring mom,” Phil said.
“Absolutely. She lost the kids once. I’m sure you’ve heard? She’s very open about it. As an alcoholic, her rock bottom was the day child services took her kids away. She had to battle addiction, depression, the entire system, to get her children back. She’ll tell you she counts every day with them as a blessing.” The nurse’s expression faltered, broke. She looked down at her mug, then raised it for another shaky sip of coffee. “Do you know who did this?” she asked quietly.
“Does she have any enemies? Maybe recently lost a patient, has a family who blames her?”
Nancy shook her head.
“What about her fellow nurses, doctors?” Phil pressed.
“Everyone liked Juanita. She’s solid under pressure, not one to complain or whine. And she has a wicked sense of humor. Night shift, you need these things.”
“She seeing anyone?” D.D. asked.
“You mean hospital staff? No. She was committed to Charlie. They were good together.”
“Any problems on the home front? Money troubles, relationship woes?”
“Money’s always tight.” Nancy shrugged. “Welcome to health care, where we can’t afford to help patients or pay the staff. Which is why Juanita worked nights instead of staying home with her kids. But I know things were tighter before she moved in with Charlie. She considered him a real godsend. Stable, hardworking guy, good with children, content not to party or drink. In the past year, she considered life to be looking up.”
“He didn’t drink?” D.D. asked, because Hector had implied that Charlie had had his own partying ways.
“No.” Nancy uttered the word firmly. “Juanita would never have stayed with him if he did. She’ll tell you, sobriety still isn’t easy for her. But she loves her kids. For her kids . . .”
“She works a crazy schedule and stays clear of the booze.”
“Exactly.”
“And she and Charlie were happy?”
“Wednesday night, she had nothing bad to say. You work graveyard, Detectives?”
“Back in my younger days,” Phil assured her. “Now it’s more of a twenty-four/seven gig.”
“Then you know what it’s like. There’s a bond that comes with being the only people alive when the rest of the world is sleeping. Juanita’s been working graveyard for the past three years. A lot of things come out during that amount of time.”
“You ever meet Charlie?” D.D. asked.
“Sure. If he was up and out to job sites early, he’d swing by with breakfast for Juanita. He seemed like a good guy. God knows I wouldn’t mind a handsome contractor dropping off a breakfast burrito for me at six A.M.”
“What about the kids?” Phil changed gears. “Roxanna’s sixteen, right? Not easy to have a teenage daughter.”
“Roxy? Hell, I’d adopt her. Organized, responsible. That girl is sixteen going on sixty, and Juanita knew it. Of all the things . . . I think Juanita regretted the toll her drinking took on Roxy most of all. After Hector left, during the dark days, as Juanita called them, Roxy took over care of her younger siblings. She fed them, did the laundry, got them off to school. If anything, Juanita was trying to figure out how to get Roxy to relax a little. Especially with Charlie around, Roxy could go back to the business of being a kid. But I don’t know if you can rewind the clock like that.”
“What about other family? His, hers?”
“As for Charlie, I don’t know. Juanita has a sister, Nina, with four kids. But they live in Philadelphia. When Juanita hit bottom and the state took her kids away, they were sent to foster homes because Juanita’s family was ruled as living too far away. Plus, I can imagine, having four kids of her own, Nina wasn’t crazy about taking in three more.”
“So, locally speaking . . .”
“I only hear about her, Charlie, and the kids. Oh, and Rosie and Blaze, of course.”
“Is Roxanna intense?” Phil interjected. “Maybe puts a lot of pressure on herself? We’ve heard she hasn’t been sleeping.”
Nancy paused, seemed to consider the question. She took another sip of coffee.
“Juanita’s been asking some questions,” she said at last.
“Some questions?” Phil asked, exchanging a look with D.D.
“It started with Lola, the younger daughter. She’s always been a handful—rebellious, unfocused, impulsive. Not to mention hanging out with the wrong crowd. But in September there was an incident. She was in trouble with a male teacher for not turning in her homework. He was lecturing her on how bad her grade would be, this was no way to start off the school year, et cetera. Apparently, Lola responded with some suggestions for how she could improve her grade. Some very explicit suggestions . . .” Nancy looked at them. “There were other kids in the classroom at the time, all of them, who then watched Lola reach down and . . . touch the teacher in places she shouldn’t have been touching.”