by J. A. Jance
Of course, with everything that had happened just before Christmas, the whole holiday season had turned into something of a bust. Then, at the last minute, Mel had been summoned to Washington, D.C. Homeland Security was putting on an antiterrorism dog-and-pony show for police chiefs from all over the country. Mel, the recently designated chief of police in Bellingham, had initially declined the invitation, saying she didn’t have the time or the travel budget to attend.
Then, someone in D.C. had taken a look at their RSVP list and realized that, in terms of diversity, they were on the low side when it came to female attendees. I suspected there were a couple of reasons for that, number one being that female chiefs of departments were still pretty much, as my mother would have said, “scarce as hens’ teeth.” And the top-drawer ones like Mel took their responsibilities seriously and probably figured they had better things to do with their time than to go trotting off to a meaningless conference in D.C. where they would be treated as little more than window dressing.
The upshot was, early in the week a new batch of invitations had been issued, ones that included Homeland Security coughing up all travel and hotel expenses—for the distaff chiefs. This struck me as an out-and-out case of discrimination toward the male attendees. Nonetheless, Mel had accepted the offer and flown off to D.C. on a red-eye late on Thursday. Her absence left me batching it in Seattle rather than spending a quiet weekend with her in our downtown condo.
With our plans shot to hell, I had called Scott, intending to bail on the party rather than go without Mel. Scott, however, had not only insisted that I come along, he even offered to pick me up so we’d all be able to use the express lanes. With their ETA less than half an hour away, I headed into the bedroom to get ready. Fifteen minutes later, showered, shaved, and wearing the Montblanc cologne Mel had given me for Christmas, I stepped into my walk-in closet and pulled down the garment bag that held my best suit.
After straightening my pocket square, I slipped one hand into the jacket pocket and noticed an object lurking there. As soon as I felt the contours, I recognized what it was—my Special Homicide badge. Drawing it out of the pocket and seeing the black band still wrapped around it hit me like a ton of bricks. The last time I had worn the suit had been for Ross Connors’s funeral.
Unbidden, a whole series of images from that terrible time flashed through my waking mind just as they often do in my dreams at night. First there was the supposedly carefree December evening. There had been flurries of snow as Mel and I headed for Seattle Center intent on a much-anticipated company party that never happened. Mel and I had stood together, frozen to the ground in horrified silence, as a speeding Range Rover, driven by a pair of totally clueless bank robbers, plowed into the side of Ross Connors’s town car as his driver attempted to make a left turn off Broad into the Space Needle parking lot.
Now, alone in my bedroom, I recalled the screams of sirens as first responders converged on the awful scene. I remembered heart-stopping moments as, one by one, I realized four people were dead. The two crooks, driving hell-bent for leather without seat belts, had both been thrown clear of their vehicle. They had died instantly.
The town car had been T-boned on the driver’s side. Racing to the vehicle, I checked on both Ross and his driver, Bill Spade, searching for pulses. There were none. The only sign of life inside the town car was in the front passenger seat where Harry Ignatius Ball, my immediate supervisor from the Special Homicide Investigation Team, sat howling in pain. His legs had been nearly severed by the sheet metal from the town car’s roof as it collapsed under the weight of a fallen utility pole.
When they hauled Harry away from the scene that night, rolling him first into the KOMO building at Fisher Plaza and then flying him by helicopter to Harborview, I was sure the man was a goner. But the docs at Harborview turned out to be miracle workers. He lost both his legs above the knee, but he lived.
In the aftermath of those events, with Ross barely cold in his grave, the newly appointed attorney general had laid waste to what had been Ross’s pet project, the Special Homicide Investigation Team. With little advance notice and less fanfare, S.H.I.T. became a thing of the past, and those of us who had worked there were out of a job.
While the rest of us were being kicked out onto the street, Harry was shut up in a hospital, first fighting for his life and later, in rehab, dealing with the grim realities of his new life as a double amputee. With nothing else to keep me occupied, I had assumed the task of fixing Harry’s Eastlake condo and turning it into a place he could use both while he was still mostly confined to a wheelchair and later—how much later I still didn’t know—when he would be fitted with a pair of new hi-tech legs.
The rehab job had been a complicated endeavor. While Harry bitched about his medically necessitated incarceration, I had been in charge of the Harry I. Ball Project, as we called it. Lots of people were ready and willing to make donations, but someone had to be in charge of handling those funds and properly thanking whoever had contributed. My mother would have been proud of all my handwritten thank-you notes.
For the design work, I had enlisted the help of Jim Hunt. There had been permits to obtain, contractors to juggle, materials to be purchased, to say nothing of endless days of design decisions. I didn’t care if I ever set foot in a lighting or plumbing fixture store again. Then, once work started, I was in charge of overseeing construction.
The hurry-up remodeling project had come in on time but slightly over budget. Weeks earlier, Harry had finally been released from rehab. He had gone home under the supervision of a capable but nightmare-inducing retired RN named Marge Herndon, whom many regard as a clone of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She had been my grim-faced, overly bossy drill instructor/taskmaster during my stint of rehab following bilateral knee replacement, but she’d gotten the job done. I had suggested that Harry look into hiring her to help him once he was sent home. I never anticipated what happened once those two tough-minded individuals were thrown together. I had expected they’d initially lock horns and only gradually come to some kind of understanding. Instead, they’d gotten along like gangbusters from the outset, their shared addiction to tobacco having helped seal the deal. And if Harry thought, as I had, that Marge was bossy as all hell, he had so far failed to mention it.
Lost in thought, I had no conscious recollection of sinking down on the side of the bed, but that’s where I was when the phone rang.
“Hey,” Cherisse announced. “We’re here.”
There was still a lump in my throat, one I had to swallow before I could reply. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
On the ride down in the elevator, I attempted to compose myself. I realized that Scott and Cherisse were right to insist that I go to the gala. After all, there have been far too many fallen officers in my life for me to take a pass on Behind the Badge, and that’s what the evening would be about—remembering those folks and honoring them.
As the elevator descended, I enumerated them one by one, starting, of course, with the most recent—Delilah Ainsworth. Before Delilah came Sue Danielson; before Sue came the big guy, Benjamin Harrison “Gentle Ben” Weston; and before Gentle Ben there was my very first partner in Homicide, Milton “Pickles” Gurkey. Pickles had been on duty when he suffered a fatal heart attack during a shoot-out in the parking lot outside the Doghouse restaurant.
By the time I reached the lobby, I finally had my head screwed on straight. I stepped outside and climbed into the backseat of Scott’s Acura. Fortunately for me, Cherisse is a little bit of a thing. Once she moved her seat forward, I had plenty of leg room.
“How’s it going?” Scott asked from the driver’s seat.
“Fine,” I answered. “Just fine.”
It was a Mel Soames “fine”—a two-raised-eyebrows “fine.” What I meant but didn’t say was that I may have been
fine now, but I sure as hell hadn’t been fine a few minutes ago.
“I’m so glad you decided to come along after all,” Cherisse said. “It’ll be great fun.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said.
I doubted it would be any kind of fun, but since I was going anyway, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and decided to enjoy it.
CHAPTER 6
THE PEOPLE OF RATTLESNAKE SKULL village were angry with the Apache for stealing their food, but they were even angrier at Young Girl. Even though she had tried to warn them of the attack, they thought she had betrayed them. And so the council changed her name and said that from that time on she would be called Betraying Woman—Gagdathag O’oks.
Young Man had been badly hurt when the women beat him. They carried Young Man back to the cave. Then they brought Betraying Woman there as well along with everything she owned—her pots and baskets, her blankets and awl. Then, leaving Young Man and Betraying Woman inside to die, they asked I’itoi to bring down the mountain and close the entrance to the cave.
Betraying Woman stayed with Young Man until he died, caring for him as best she could. And even to this day, nawoj, my friend, when you hear the wind whispering through the manzanita—the bush for which Ioligam is named—you will know it is only Betraying Woman singing a song to Young Man.
Go to sleep, Sweet Ohb. Do not be afraid.
I will not let them hurt you. I will not let them come again
To beat you with their clubs and call you evil names.
No matter what they think, Sweet Ohb, we did not betray them.
They did not listen when I tried to warn them.
They did not listen when I tried to tell them
That you were not the one who stole from them,
That you were not the enemy who spoiled their fields.
No, Sweet Ohb, although we tried to tell them
They did not listen. But do not worry. I will not leave you.
We will stay here together, Sweet Ohb,
You and I together—alone and in the dark.
IT SEEMED TO BRANDON THAT they’d escaped the Authors’ Dinner a little earlier than usual. They drove most of the way home in companionable silence. Speedway Boulevard narrowed first from three lanes in each direction, to two, and finally to one as they followed the winding road up into Gates Pass and off onto the dirt track that led to the house.
As the city lights fell away behind them, the stars and a rising moon appeared in a now jet-black sky. When Brandon and Diana married and he had moved in with her and Davy, the house had been a long way out of town, and neighbors had been few and far between. Now the surrounding hillsides were dotted with McMansions, most of them far larger than the river rock relic Diana and her friend Rita Antone had turned from wreckage into a livable home. Their house and pool were far smaller and humbler than those of most of their neighbors, but they were also something most of the others were not—completely paid for.
Leaving the Escalade parked in the detached garage, Diana and Brandon headed for the house. As they did so, Bozo, their aging grand-dog, rose stiffly from his heated bed on the back patio and limped forward, tail a-wag, to greet them. Their son-in-law, Dan Pardee, had been Bozo’s original owner, or maybe, as Diana often pointed out, it had been the other way around. Dan had been Bozo’s handler in Iraq and credited him with saving his life in combat. When Dan’s deployment ended, he had used his own money to bring Bozo home to the United States. They had worked together as a K-9 unit attached to the Border Patrol’s Shadow Wolves.
Three years earlier, Dan and Bozo had gone after an illegal border crosser who had been packing two kilos of meth. Fleeing up the side of a mountain, the smuggler had, deliberately or not, sent an avalanche of rocks and boulders roaring down the mountainside behind him. Dan had managed to escape injury by diving out of the way. Bozo wasn’t as lucky. A vet had been able to save the dog’s life and wire his shattered shoulder back together, but Bozo’s resulting limp meant that his K-9 unit days were over. When Dan’s next K-9 partner, Hulk, arrived, Bozo had gone into mourning every day when Dan and the new dog left to go on duty. The best solution anyone could come up with, supplied by Lani, had been for Bozo to go live with Grandpa and Grandma.
There was a doggy door in the back of the house, one that Bozo steadfastly refused to use. He much preferred to be outside rather than in, but wherever he was, inside or out, he would wait patiently until a passing human opened the door before entering or exiting. Brandon suspected that the plastic sheeting hitting his shoulder bothered Bozo too much, and Brandon was the one who had insisted on installing a heated dog bed outside on the patio for Bozo to use on these still very chilly desert spring evenings.
“You’re making him soft,” Dan had objected when he saw the bed. “He never needed anything like that when we were in Iraq.”
“He isn’t in Iraq,” Brandon had countered. “He’s a veteran. He’s home now. He gets a heated bed. End of story.”
And it was.
Brandon unlocked the back door, switched on the kitchen light, and let Diana inside. “You go on to bed,” he told her. “Bozo and I are going to sit out here and be quiet together for a little while. Being stuck in crowds of people with all of them talking at once wears me out.”
“Suit yourself,” Diana said. “But if you’re going to be out here very long, turn on your heater, too.”
Flicking the switch, Brandon turned on one of the infrared heat lamps that lined the wooden ceiling of the patio and dropped into one of the chairs. Bozo stood beside him long enough to have his ears rubbed. Then, as if realizing they’d be there for a while, the dog limped back to his bed. He circled twice. With a contented sigh, Bozo lay down to sleep while Brandon leaned back to think.
That was what he needed at the end of a far too social evening—a little peace and quiet, with the delicate perfume of orange blossoms drifting on the chilly air.
AFTER LEO LEFT LANI AND Gabe alone on the mountain, the first order of business was to build a fire pit. While Gabe reluctantly set about doing that, Lani unpacked the food and dishes. Once the fire was going, she emptied a bowl of precooked beans into the pot to heat. They were tepary beans, the ones the Tohono O’odham had traditionally grown and used long before the arrival of pinto beans.
The beans in question may have been part of Tohono O’odham’s ancient customs and traditions, but Lani’s manner of transporting them was not. She had loaded them into the backpack inside a sturdy plastic Ziploc container. She realized with some satisfaction, however, that the battered enameled pot she’d brought to heat them was the same one Fat Crack had used to prepare her evening meals during her sixteen-day purification ceremony. The dishes into which she ladled the steaming beans were also the ones she and Fat Crack had used back then.
Tonight she and Fat Crack’s grandson ate their food in a cloud of stubborn silence. When it was over, Lani heated some water and made a hot drink of prickly pear juice and water sweetened with honey.
“I’d rather have a Coke,” Gabe said.
“I’m sure you would,” Lani said mildly, “but sodas aren’t the point of this trip.”
“What is?”
She glanced at the fire. “Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?” she asked.
“Not really,” Gabe replied.
“You used to know it.”
Gabe shrugged. “So?”
“Then maybe I should remind you.” She told the story then, from beginning to end.
“So that’s what this is about?” Gabe asked sarcastically when she finished telling him the story of Young Man and Betraying Woman. “We’re just going to sit around out here in the middle of nowhere and tell ghost stories all night?”
Lani felt discouraged. This should have been a time when she could give Fat Crack’s grandson the benefit of some of t
he old man’s wisdom. For years, she had imagined coming here with the boy when he was almost, if not completely, grown, and being able to share the Peace Smoke with him. She had hoped to be able to tell him about her battle with the evil ohb; about how Bat and the spirit of Betraying Woman had aided her in the fight; and about how Fat Crack had helped her deal with the aftermath of that awful day.
That’s what she had always wanted to do, but somehow Gabe had morphed into a difficult young man who had no patience for or interest in the old ways. It saddened Lani to think that perhaps he had drifted completely beyond her reach.
She took a deep breath. “You used to love the I’itoi stories,” Lani pointed out. “When you were little, you used to come to the hospital with me. You liked to visit the patients, especially the old ones. Sometimes you would listen while they told stories, and sometimes you would do the telling.”
“I was little then,” Gabe countered. “I believed in all that crap back then, along with Santa Claus and other stupid stuff that I don’t believe in anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I grew up.”
Lani reached over to her backpack and pulled out her medicine basket. Inside she found the soft leather pouch that held her divining crystals. Lani supposed that those four pieces of lavender-colored rock must have originally come from the wreckage of a geode that had been smashed to pieces long ago. The tiny rocks themselves, as well as the worn pouch that held them, had been passed down from S-ab Neid Pi Has—Looks at Nothing—to Gigh Tahpani—Fat Crack—and from Fat Crack to Lani. She had always supposed that one day they would go to Gabe. At the moment that outcome seemed unlikely.