Dance of the Bones (17 page)

“His death is spookily similar to Amos Warren's in that his remains went undiscovered for a number of years. Then, when his body was found, the case was never solved. It's only a few years ago now since those remains were linked up to a missing persons case filed by Kenneth Mangum's mother in Phoenix.”

Brandon had been busily taking notes. “I believe it's time for me to go see your father,” he said.

Amanda smiled. “I was hoping you'd say that.”

“What about this?” he asked, reaching for the box and tapping the lid. “You said I should draw my own conclusions. Does that mean you'll let me go through what you've gathered?”

She nodded. “You're welcome to all of it,” she said, “even this.” She placed the book in the box before closing the lid. “I'm a librarian, though. That means I want it all back. When all this is over, I may use it to write my own damn book.”

Brandon stood up and hefted the box. “Assuming I do see your father—­your birth father—­is there anything you'd like me to tell him?”

“Yes,” Amanda Wasser said. “Tell him that someday I'd like to meet him.”

Brandon's phone rang while he was loading the box into the Escalade. Diana's name appeared on the screen. “Hey,” he said. “How's the festival going?”

“Busy, and there's a new wrinkle. Someone is holding an impromptu dinner this evening at El Charro downtown. I've been invited. You were invited, too, but I said that after last night you were probably dinnered out.”

“You've got that right.”

“The thing is, I won't be finished until nine or so. Do you mind coming back into town to pick me up or should I make arrangements for someone to give me a ride?”

“Tell me where and when. I'll be there with bells on.”

Brandon glanced at his watch as he got into the SUV. It wasn't noon yet. Rather than having to go back to the festival midafternoon, he now had several hours to do entirely as he pleased. He could go home and spend the afternoon poring through the banker's box, or he could speak to John Lassiter, the person most directly involved in the case. In the end, he literally tossed a coin. Heads, drive to Florence; tails, go home. The coin toss came up heads.

GABE LAY ON HIS BED,
playing with his Xbox. His mom was mad at him. Lani was mad at him. Probably everyone in the whole world was mad at him, including Tim. They often hung out together on Saturdays, usually at Gabe's house rather than at the Josés' place. Without Mrs. José or Mrs. Francisco there to look after things, going to Tim's house wasn't much fun anymore. One of the big attractions in the José household had always been the food. Now, with Carlos in charge, the food at Tim's house wasn't very good.

None of the brothers knew how to make popovers. These days Tim and his brothers lived on sandwiches and take-­out stuff from Bashas'—­food that didn't need cooking. The kinds of food that would drive Lani nuts, Gabe thought, especially peanut butter sandwiches made with white bread. Thinking about peanut butter made him glance at the dresser drawer where he'd hidden both Tim's mysterious note and the jar of peanut butter. What was that all about? Probably just some brother kind of thing. Tim's older brothers often teased him unmercifully, and maybe the peanut butter was Tim's way of getting back at them for a change.

Gabe sometimes wished he had brothers. Maybe Tim didn't always get along with the ones he had, but at least they were there. Tim wasn't alone, not really—­not the way Gabe was alone.

Gabe picked up his phone, the one Lani had taken away from him the day before. His dad had left it on the kitchen counter, and Gabe had found it when he went out to make some toast. He tried calling Tim again. Still no answer. That was odd. If Tim's plans for the day had changed, wouldn't he at least have let Gabe know? Disappointed, Gabe slid the phone back into the pocket of his jeans.

His bedroom door opened, and his mother poked her head inside. He could tell from the frown on her face that she was still angry that he hadn't stayed out on the mountain overnight.

“I have to go to the office for a ­couple of hours, then I'm going grocery shopping. Your dad's going to be late. There was some trouble out that way when he went to pick up Lani. You're to stay here until he gets home, understand?”

Gabe nodded.

“Oh, and if you talk to Timmy, let him know you're grounded. He can see you at school on Monday, but not for the rest of the weekend. Got it?”

“Okay,” he muttered. She left, and he allowed himself a few moments of gratitude. At least she hadn't taken his Xbox away, and she hadn't made him go shopping with her, either. It was bad enough that he'd had to go camping with Lani. If the kids from school saw his mother dragging him around the grocery store on Saturday morning, he'd never hear the end of it.

After his mom left, Gabe kept right on playing. Some time had passed—­he wasn't sure how much—­when someone knocked on the bedroom door. He was going for a really high score. Thinking the visitor was most likely Tim, Gabe called for him to come in.

A moment later Henry Rojas appeared in the doorway. Gabe knew Henry. He was one of the Shadow Wolves who worked with Dan Pardee. Henry's wife was a nurse at the hospital, and they lived in one of the units at the hospital compound, but as far as Gabe knew, Henry wasn't a good friend of either one of his parents. Among the Tohono O'odham, only relatives and very close friends ever ventured inside someone else's home and, even then, not without an express invitation.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I was talking to your friend Tim José,” Henry said. “He's in some trouble and asked me to come pick you up and take you to him. Oh, and he wants you to bring along the package he left for you last night.”

Gabe tried playing dumb. “What package?”

“You know which package,” Henry said. “Now get it and come on. There's not much time.”

“I'm grounded,” Gabe said. “My mom says I'm not allowed to go anywhere.”

“I don't give a rat's ass what your mom wants. Get the damned peanut butter and come on!” Henry's hand went to the grip of the pistol he wore on his hip. “I have a gun and I'm prepared to use it. Get moving.”

And so Gabe moved, stumbling toward the dresser and pulling open the drawer like a bumbling sleepwalker. He reached for the peanut butter jar, leaving the bag and the note behind. As his fingers closed around the plastic jar, he knew two things with sickening clarity. One, his best friend was in trouble, maybe even dead. And two, Henry Rojas, the man who stood blocking the doorway? He was clearly one of the Bad ­People—­PaDaj O'odham—­the very ones Lani had been trying to warn Gabe about. She had thought the José brothers were bad somehow, but Gabe understood that this man—­dressed in his uniform, wearing a badge, and carrying a weapon on his hip—­was someone truly evil.

With the jar in one hand and leaving the drawer partly open, Gabe straightened up and turned to face the intruder. Henry Rojas had yet to move. He stood there, still as can be, blocking the doorway.

“What happened to Tim?” Gabe asked.

“Believe me,” Rojas said, “you'll know soon enough. Now move.”

As Gabe walked past, Henry leaned toward him. “Walk straight,” he ordered. “Don't do anything out of line. I've got my Taser right here.”

It was only when Gabe looked at the Taser that he realized the man was wearing gloves—­surgical gloves. Henry had no intention of leaving any fingerprints behind.

As they stepped outside, there was no one around. It was a quiet Saturday morning. The other houses in the Ortiz compound seemed deserted. No children played kickball in the dirt outside. If women were inside neighboring houses doing chores or washing dishes, there was no sign of them, either. A block or so away, he saw ­people over by his dad's garage, but none of them was close enough for Gabe to call for help.

Henry marched him over to the passenger side of a truck that was parked just outside—­a black Chevrolet with a camper shell on it. It wasn't the Border Patrol vehicle Henry drove when he was on duty. This was private.

Henry opened the door to the cab. “Get in,” he ordered.

Gabe tried to twist away, but Henry grabbed his neck in a viselike grip and shoved him headfirst into the cab. Then, before Gabe could right himself, a jolt of electricity from a stun gun shot through his body. When he came to, a second or so later, Henry was removing a hypodermic needle from Gabe's bare arm.

“Hey,” he objected, “what are you doing?”

Henry didn't answer. He slammed the door shut, locking it with his key fob, before he walked around the front of the pickup to the driver's door. Gabe tried to unlock the door manually, but his muscles were still disrupted by the stun gun charge. Before he could make them respond properly, they went numb. Suddenly helpless, he fell back against the seat.

As Gabe drifted into unconsciousness, he had a strange thought. Lani had told him that the Bad ­People always came from the South. Henry Rojas was Navajo. Weren't Navajos from the North?

He'd have to ask Lani to explain that to him the next time he saw her.

 

CHAPTER 16

THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG
ago that in the summers, when it was very hot and the low-­lying water holes all dried up, the Desert ­People would leave their villages behind and go to the foothills at the base of one of I
'
itoi
'
s sacred mountains
—­
Ioligam, which means Manzanita, or Baboquivari, which means The Mountain That Is Small in the Middle.

The Elders
—­
Kekelimai
—­s
ay that once the sacred peak of Baboqui­vari was shaped like the thing the Milgahn
—­
the Anglos
—­
call an hourglass. One day Beautiful Girl
'
s brother returned from the heavens. In the quake that followed his arrival, the top of the hourglass broke off, leaving Baboquivari looking the way it does today, like a spool sitting in the middle of the desert.

BEFORE BRANDON HEADED FOR FLORENCE,
he made a call to clear the way. His younger son, Quentin, an intravenous drug user, had developed hepatitis C, which had morphed into cirrhosis before he had managed to store up enough meds to end it all with an overdose.

During the last year of his life, when Quentin had spent far more time in the infirmary than in his cell, Brandon and Diana had both been constant visitors. One or the other of them had been in the infirmary with him almost daily, providing care and comfort that would otherwise have been delegated to overworked and understaffed nurses and orderlies. Over time, surprisingly enough, they had developed a first grudging but eventually enduring friendship with the warden.

Brandon recognized that Warden Edward Huffman was a conscientious man doing a difficult job, and it seemed likely that Huffman saw Diana and Brandon for what they were, too—­a pair of heartbroken parents who, having failed at the task of saving their offspring from himself, were now doing the best they could to see him through to the other side. Maybe Huffman also related to the irony of Brandon's position—­that of a former sheriff who had been as helpless at raising his own son as any other father on the planet. For whatever reason, on Brandon and Diana's weekly and finally daily visits, they had been granted a kind of latitude to come and go that most prison visitors were denied.

It had been years now since Quentin died, but Huffman's name and phone numbers remained in Brandon's contacts list. Still parked outside Amanda Wasser's condo, Brandon located the record. Then, since it was Saturday, he dialed the warden's cell phone first.

“Huffman,” the man answered.

“Brandon Walker here.

“Long time no see. What's up?”

“I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“I understand John Lassiter has asked to see me, but I don't want to drive all the way up there if I'm not on the approved visitor list.”

“Let me check. I'll get back to you. Is this number all right?”

“It'll work.”

While Brandon waited for a return call, he thumbed through his fraying spiral notebook. Yes, he had an iPad. Yes, he used it occasionally, but when he needed to remember something and take notes, he still gravitated toward pen and paper. Glancing at the pages from his interview with Amanda, he underlined the passage about the second homicide—­that of Kenneth Mangum/Myers.

Closing his eyes, he was just able to remember the guy, sitting on the witness stand and swearing that John Lassiter had loved Amos Warren like a father and would never have done anything to harm him. Of the witnesses who were called to testify, Mangum was the only one who had failed to be present during the knock-­down, drag-­out fight in El Barrio, for the very good reason that Ken had been in the county jail at the time doing a six-­month stretch on a third DUI conviction.

Mangum had made an impassioned defense for his friend, but the jury had considered the source and had most likely disregarded his testimony completely when it came time to render their verdict.

Brandon's cell phone rang, with Huffman's name showing on the caller ID screen. “I couldn't do this for every inmate, but in all these years, Lassiter's got no bad-conduct problems. I've put your name on the list. When are you coming?”

“Today, if that's possible,” Brandon said. “And one more thing. I'd really appreciate it if I could use an interview room rather than the ordinary visitation room. I've got some materials I'd like John to go over, and it'll be easier if we could pass them back and forth across a table.”

“Whatever you're bringing in will have to go through security, and you'll need to have someone from the prison sit in on the interview, but I don't have a problem with your using a room. What time should we expect you?”

“I'm leaving right now. Should take me a little less than two hours.”

“I'll be sure the room is ready when you get here.”

“Thanks,” Brandon said.

“You're welcome,” Huffman replied, “and say hello to your lovely wife.”

When the call ended, Brandon turned back to his contact list, found Ralph Ames's number, and dialed it.

“Hey, Brandon,” Ralph said when he answered. “What's up?”

“A guy who's in prison doing life without, a guy I arrested years ago, has contacted me asking for us to look into that case. Even though he's served decades for the crime, he still claims he didn't do it. A group named Justice for All has worked out a time-­served deal if he pleads guilty to second degree, but he turned that down. Says he won't take a plea for something he didn't do.”

“You're the guy who arrested him in the first place, and now he's asking for your help? That's a little unusual.”

“It's the first time it's happened to me,” Brandon agreed, “and I have no idea how he knew of my connection to TLC. Still, I'd like to take a look at it. The thing is, I've just been informed that there's another unsolved case—­at least I think it's unsolved—­that may or may not be related to this one. One of the witnesses from this case, someone who testified on the defendant's behalf, was murdered in Seattle sometime back in the eighties. Isn't there someone you've been telling me about, a friend of yours from up there, that you've been trying to recruit for TLC?”

“Indeed there is,” Ralph replied. “His name's J. P. Beaumont. He's a good friend with way too much time on his hands at the moment. He worked for Seattle PD for years and was on a statewide Special Homicide Investigation Team for a number of years after that. Special Homicide was disbanded a ­couple of months ago. I've been trying to bring him on board, and I've been getting nowhere fast.”

“You say he was working for Seattle PD in the eighties?”

“Around then, but I'm not sure of the exact dates.”

“The eighties are about the right time frame. Would you mind giving him a call to see if he'd be willing to take a look at the case in question?”

“I have a better idea,” Ralph replied. “Beau and I are pals. He can tell me no six ways to Sunday and never blink an eye. I suspect he'll have a lot tougher time saying no to a request for help from a complete stranger. Why don't you call him directly?”

“You don't think he'll mind?”

“If he does, have him take it up with me. I'll text you his contact card.”

Brandon's message signal dinged thirty seconds later with Beaumont's contact card. No work phone was listed, only a home number and a cell. Since it was the weekend, Brandon opted for the home number. The phone rang six times before the voice-­mail prompt came on.

“Beau here,” a male voice said. “You know the drill. At the sound of the tone, leave your name and number. I'll get back to you.”

Brandon did as he was told, then he fired up the Escalade and headed for Florence and for what he knew would be an unwelcome trip down memory lane.

AT THE CRIME SCENE NEAR
Rattlesnake Skull village, time slowed to a crawl. There was endless backing and forthing among the various officers about jurisdictional issues and equally endless milling around the crime scene before it was finally time for the FBI interviews.

Naturally Lani and Leo were separated for that process. Leo and Agent Armstrong sat in Leo's pickup while Lani and Angelica Howell stayed in the agents' Suburban. Agent Howell was dismissive and overbearing. Lani had no doubt that Agent Howell saw Lani as a “Native American” woman or maybe even as an “indigenous person” who was bone tired from lack of sleep and worry, who was grimy from sleeping out overnight, and who smelled of woodsmoke. Lani recognized the symptoms. She'd been on the receiving end of that kind of dismissive Anglo arrogance all her life.

“So you were asleep and awakened to the sound of what you believe was automatic gunfire?” Agent Howell asked, with an audible sneer underlining the word “believe.”

“It was automatic gunfire,” Lani replied. “Anyone who's watched television in the last ten years recognizes automatic gunfire when they hear it.”

“And what time was that?”

“When I looked at my watch, it said 4:16,” Lani answered, “but that was later, after the second round of gunfire and when the vehicle left the charco and headed back toward the highway.”

“Where it turned left toward Sells rather than heading into town?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly were you doing out here on the mountain?” Agent Howell wanted to know.

“I was here with my godson, Gabe Ortiz. Leo, the man in the truck, is Gabe's father. He came out this morning to pick me up. I asked him to stop at the charco on the way back to Sells. That's when we found the bodies.”

“You knew there would be bodies there?”

“I thought there might be.”

“You said you came here with your godson. Seems like it might be a little cold for an overnight campout at this time of year. Where exactly were you?”

Lani pointed back to Ioligam. “Up there,” she said. “I can show you if you'd like.”

“How old is your godson, and where is he?”

“He's not quite fourteen. As for where he is right now? He's at home. We had an argument, and he left.”

“Left how?”

“He walked off the mountain and went home.”

“In the middle of the night? In the dark?”

“It wasn't that dark,” Lani said. “There was moonlight. There was starlight. You should try it sometime.”

Just as Lani had felt the desert go silent after the gunfire, she felt a sudden shift in Agent Howell's focus. “What kind of an argument?”

“Do you have a godmother?” Lani asked.

“A godmother?” Agent Howell asked. “Why would you ask that?”

“Do you?” Lani persisted.

“Of course not. My parents didn't believe in that kind of thing.”

“Well, we do here,” Lani said. “For the Tohono O'odham, godmothers play an important role. We're part of the child's life; if we suspect that child is straying onto the wrong path, godmothers try to offer guidance away from the bad and back to the good.”

“That's what was happening with Gabe?”

Having said that much, Lani had no choice but to continue. “His parents were worried that he was slipping into things he shouldn't, and they asked me for help. That's why we came here—­to talk about those things—­and that's what the argument was about. His parents were worried about some of the kids Gabe was hanging around with who were pulling him away from the old ways.”

“As I understand it, Gabe's mother is Delia Cachora Ortiz, the tribal chairwoman?”

“The tribal chairman,” Lani corrected. “We're Indians. We don't have to be politically correct.”

If Agent Howell noticed the verbal slap, she didn't acknowledge it. “So you and Gabe argued and he left. What time was that?”

“I have no idea.”

“You knew to the minute when the gunshots happened. I should think you'd remember what time a kid walks off into the wilderness on his own.”

“Gabe and I came to Ioligam—­”

“To what?” Agent Howell interrupted.

“Ioligam. That's what we call Kitt Peak. In our tradition, it's a sacred place. I brought Gabe here to have a serious discussion about the old ways, about right and wrong. That means the time I spent with Gabe last night was done on Indian time. It's time ruled by what's important—­by day and night, light and dark, the sun and the stars. It has nothing at all to do with hours, minutes, and seconds. As for the shooting? That didn't happen on Indian time. The shooting was all about your tribe, Agent Howell, and I knew that in the Milgahn world—­the Anglo world—­knowing the exact hour and minute would be important.”

“So Gabe left,” Agent Howell said. “What did he take with him?”

“His grandfather's blanket.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.”

“No food, no water, no cell phone?”

“No, none of that.”

“What about weapons? Did Gabe have any weapons with him?”

“Wait, is that where this is going? You think Gabe had something to do with what happened here? He left hours before the shooting happened.”

“You said he's home now?”

Lani nodded.

“Did anyone notice what time he arrived there?”

“I doubt it. His parents were at the dance at Vamori last night. They didn't get home until early this morning, just before Leo came to pick us up. They didn't check Gabe's room when they got home because they still thought he was up here with me.”

Someone tapped on the driver's window, and Agent Howell buzzed it down. “We've got a tentative ID,” Agent Armstrong said. “We need to go. You can finish this later.”

Agent Howell turned back to Lani. “Do you have a phone number? How can I reach you?”

“Just call the hospital in Sells,” Lani told her. “Ask for Dr. Walker-­Pardee. They'll know how to find me.”