Brandon Walker 02 - Kiss Of The Bees (v5.0)

by J. A. Jance

  “My son’s,” Brandon Walker said, his voice cracking as he spoke.

  “Your son’s?”

  Brandon nodded. “His name is Quentin—Quentin Addison Walker. He’s only been out of Florence for a matter of months, so his prints should be on file.”

  Without another word, Alvin Miller walked over to a computer keyboard and punched in a series of letters. The whole lab was silent except for the air rushing through the cooling ducts and the hum of fans on various pieces of equipment. For the better part of a minute, that sound didn’t change. Then, finally, with a distinctive thunk, a printer snapped into action.

  Eventually, the print job was complete. Only when the lab was once again filled with that odd humming silence did Alvin reach out to retrieve the printed sheet from the printer. Preparing to hand it to Brandon, he glanced at it once. As soon as he did so, he snatched it away again and held it closer to study it more closely.

  “Holy shit!” Alvin exclaimed.

  “What is it?” Brandon asked.

  “I haven’t run the prints yet,” he said. “I was just about done enhancing them, but I recognize one of these. Has your son been out to visit you recently?”

  “My son and I are currently estranged,” Brandon Walker said carefully. “He hasn’t been anywhere near Diana’s and my house since before he was sent to prison. Not as an invited guest,” he added.

  “But this print—the one right here on the end,” Alvin said, handing the sheet over to Brandon at last. “That’s the same print I took off the desk in your office and also off one of the pieces of broken frame.”

  Brandon looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. The last print, the one in the corner, had a diagonal slice across it. Nodding, he handed the set of prints back to Alvin.

  “He almost cut his thumb in half with my pocket knife when he was eight,” Brandon said quietly. “He took my pocket knife outside and was showing off with his little brother when it happened. You’ll probably find the same prints on the tape and tape case as well.”

  “You think your son Quentin has something to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

  Brandon Walker sighed. In the space of a few minutes’ time, the former sheriff seemed to have aged ten years.

  “With my daughter’s murder,” he corrected. “It’s all on the tape, but before you turn it over to a detective, I want it checked for prints. Diana’s and mine are on there along with whatever others there are. You understand, don’t you, Alvin?” he asked. “I need to know for sure.” He glanced in Diana’s direction. “We both need to know.”

  “Right,” Alvin said.

  He took the bag and carried it over to his lab area, where he carefully dusted both the tape and the case with graphite, bringing out a whole series of prints. Then, using a magnifying glass, he examined the results for several long minutes.

  Finally, putting down the glass, he turned back to Brandon and Diana. “It’s here,” he said. “On the case, at least.”

  Brandon Walker’s eyes blurred with tears. His legs seemed to splinter beneath him.

  “I was afraid it would be,” he said. “We’d better go out front and talk to a detective. I’m sure whoever’s assigned to this case will need to hear that tape as soon as possible.”

  “How come?” Alvin Miller asked. “What’s on it?”

  Brandon Walker took a deep, despairing breath before he answered. “We believe…” he said, fighting unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady, “…that this is a recording of our daughter’s murder.”

  Together, Diana and Brandon Walker started toward the door. “Ask to talk to Detective Leggett,” Alvin Miller called after him. “He doesn’t know it yet, but it turns out he’s already working this case.”

  By the time Davy and Candace picked up their tickets at the counter and then went racing through the terminal to the gate, they were both worn out. Once aboard America West Flight 1, bound for Tucson, Candace fell sound asleep. Davy, although fidgety with a combination of nerves and exhaustion, fought hard to stay awake. They were flying in a 737, and Davy was stuck in one of the cramped middle seats, sandwiched between Candace, sleeping on his left, and a bright-eyed little old lady on the right. The woman was tiny. Her skin was tanned nut-brown. The skin of her lips and cheeks was wrinkled in that distinctive pattern that comes from years of smoking. Rattling the pages, she thumbed impatiently through the in-flight magazine.

  David sat there, bolt upright and petrified, worried sick that if he did fall asleep, he would instantly be overtaken by yet another panic attack. If, as the emergency room doctor had insisted, the attacks were stress-induced, then Davy figured he was about due for another one. There was, after all, some stress in his life.

  His experience with Candace in the hotel earlier meant that he was no longer quite so concerned about what she would think of him when another attack came along. What would other people think, though? The lady next to him, for instance, or the flight attendants hustling up and down the aisle, dispensing orange juice and coffee, what would they do? He could imagine it all too well. “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of them would intone into the intercom. “We have a medical emergency here. Is there a doctor on board?”

  Stress. Part of that came from finishing school and going home and getting a real job without even taking whatever had happened to Lani into consideration. In the years while Davy was attending law school in Chicago, he had held himself at arm’s length from his family back home. Somehow it seemed to him that there wasn’t room enough in his heart for all of them at once—for the Arizona contingent and for the Ladd side of the family in Illinois. To say nothing of Candace.

  Looking at her sleeping peacefully beside him, Davy couldn’t quite believe she was there. In his scheme of things, Candace had always been part of his Chicago life, and yet here she was on the plane with him, headed for Tucson. Not only that, she was going there with Astrid Ladd’s amazingly large diamond engagement ring firmly encircling the ring finger on her slender left hand.

  Davy hadn’t exactly popped the question. Nevertheless, they were engaged. Candace was planning a quick wedding in Vegas while Davy squirmed with the knowledge that his mother and stepfather had barely heard her name. He hadn’t told them any more about her than he had told them about his other passing romantic fancies. It hadn’t seemed necessary.

  Now, given the circumstances, telling was more than necessary. It was essential and tardy and not at all one-sided. Just as he hadn’t talked about Candace to his parents, the reverse was also true. There was a whole lot he hadn’t told Candace, either.

  The lush lifestyle in which Candace Waverly had grown up in Oak Park, Illinois, was far different from what prevailed in the comparatively simple house in Gates Pass. And if Candace’s experience was one step removed from the Tucson house, it was forever away from Rita Antone’s one-room adobe house—little more than a shack, really—which had been Nana Dahd’s ancestral home in Ban Thak.

  Coyote Sitting, Davy thought. Just the names of the villages were bad enough. Hawani Naggiak—Crow Hanging; Komkch’eD e Wah’osidk—Turtle Wedged; Gogs mek— Burnt Dog. Davy knew them equally well in English and in Tohono O’ othham, but what would Candace think when he tried to explain them to her?

  Conflicting geography was one thing. What about when he started dealing in the crossed wires of personalities? There had been no particular need to tell Candace much about being raised by Rita Antone, who in turn had been raised by her own grandmother, Understanding Woman. Over time Davy had mentioned a few things, of course, but only the simple, straightforward parts, not any of what Richard Waverly, Candace’s father, would derisively call the woo-woo stuff.

  Davy had never mentioned Looks At Nothing’s Peace Smoke, for instance. He hadn’t told Candace or any of her family how the blind old medicine man from his childhood would light his foul-smelling wild tobacco with a flame sparked by his faithful Zippo lighter. He hadn’t told them about Looks At Nothing’s spooky way of knowing things b
efore they happened or of the blind man telling others what he had “seen” in his divining crystals.

  How would Candace and her family react to a discussion of medicine men and divining crystals—and medicine baskets, for that matter? Or try scalp bundles on for size. The one from Rita’s medicine basket—an Ohb scalp bundle, no doubt—was the main reason Rita’s medicine basket was still sitting in his parents’ safety deposit box eleven years after Rita’s death.

  Davy was sure now that the scalp bundle had been the primary reason Rita had insisted that it be kept out of Lani’s hands until she was old enough to handle it with proper respect. Davy cringed at the idea of sitting down and trying to explain to Richard Waverly how improper handling of a scalp-bundle could bring on a bout of Enemy Sickness, the best cure for which was a medicine man singing scalp-bundle songs at night.

  Old Man Waverly will just love that one, Davy thought.

  And yet, those things—which he could imagine Candace and her family not quite understanding—were far too much a part of Davy’s life and experience for him to dismiss them. The stories about I’itoi and Earth Medicine Man were as deeply woven into Davy’s background as Aesop’s Fables and the Brothers Grimm were into Candace’s. How would somebody raised on watered-down versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella respond to having her son or daughter hear about how I’itoi chopped the head off the monster Eagleman’s baby?

  Almost without realizing what he was doing, Davy reached into his pocket and pulled out Father John’s rosary. At age twenty-seven, David Ladd closed his eyes and saw in his mind’s eye those three aged adults who had played such important roles in his childhood—Rita, Looks At Nothing, and Father John. They were all so very different and yet, despite those differences, they had drawn a healing circle of love around him—a little half-orphaned Anglo boy—and held him safe inside it.

  How had they done that? And if, from the vantage point of being that well-loved child, Davy himself couldn’t answer that question, how in God’s name would he ever be able to explain it to anyone else, including Candace Waverly?

  By then the beads were laid out across his palm. He began slowly, one bead at a time, silently moving his lips as he recited the words. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  Halfway through the process, probably somewhere over Colorado, someone tapped on his right arm. Startled, he looked up. The lady next to him was smiling a benignly cheery smile.

  “I know just how you feel,” she said. “I used to be afraid of flying, too, young man. But they have classes for that kind of thing these days. I took one at Pima Community College a few years back. You might look into taking one yourself. Those classes don’t cost very much, and they help. They really do.”

  Blushing furiously, Davy dropped Father John’s losalo back into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to look into it as soon as I have a chance.”

  Leaving the hospital, Fat Crack Ortiz stopped by the Walker house in Gates Pass long enough to see that no one was home. After that he headed the Crown Victoria toward Sells. No doubt the dance was still going strong, but he didn’t even pause at the Little Tucson turnoff. Instead, he drove on home.

  When he had warned Brandon Walker of danger the day before, it hadn’t occurred to him that the danger in question, the evil emanating from Diana’s book, might fall on Lani. He had expected Diana herself to be the target, never Lani.

  Once he reached the house, he was grateful to discover that Wanda still wasn’t home. Although she tolerated his medicine-man status, she certainly wasn’t thrilled by it. Gabe went straight to the wooden desk and retrieved Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch. Then he went outside. Using a stick of mesquite, he stood in the middle of the dirt-floored patio and used the stick to draw a circle around himself. Then he eased himself down on the hard ground in exactly the way the old blind medicine man would have prescribed.

  With the porch light providing the only light, he opened the pouch and took out a rolled cigarette made from wiw—wild tobacco—that Fat Crack had carefully gathered and rolled into the ceremonial cigarettes. Digging further, he located Looks At Nothing’s old Zippo lighter, which had become almost as much a part of the duajida—the nighttime divination ceremony—as the billowing smoke itself. Then, opening a second, smaller bag made of some soft, chamois like material, Fat Crack peered inside at the crystals he knew were there.

  In all the years Fat Crack Ortiz had been in possession of the medicine pouch, he had seldom touched the crystals or taken them out of their protective bag. But if any occasion called for the use of Looks At Nothing’s most powerful medicine, this was it. Lani Walker was in danger. The old medicine man had been dead long before Rita Antone’s ant-kissed child had been born. Nonetheless, his influence, even from the grave, had directed almost every aspect of Lani’s young life, from her unusual adoption to the things she had been taught by the people who had been placed in charge of caring for her.

  The responsibility of caring for the child had been left to a number of people, but Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch had been entrusted to Fat Crack alone. The treasured pouch had come to him with the understanding that the Medicine Man with the Tow Truck would save it for Looks At Nothing’s real successor. For a time, while the children were young, Fat Crack had fooled himself into believing that the mantle would fall to one or the other of his own two sons—to either Richard or Leo. And then, when Rita had insisted on taking Clemencia Escalante to raise, she had told her nephew that perhaps the ant-marked baby was the one Looks At Nothing had told them about. Over the years, Fat Crack had come to believe that was true.

  Carefully, patiently, Fat Crack unknotted the drawstring that held the chamois bag closed. Holding out an upturned hand, he dumped the collection of crystals into his palm. There were four of them in all. As soon as Fat Crack saw the four of them winking back the reflected glow of the porch light, he had to smile. Four crystals made sense. After all, as everyone knows, all things in nature go in fours.

  Arranging them side by side, Fat Crack laid the crystals and the cigarette and lighter out on the spread leather surface of the pouch, then he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. Carefully he thumbed through the school pictures of his own children and grandchildren until he found the one Lani had given him the year before at Christmas.

  He lit the cigarette and let the smoke swirl around him in the late-night breeze. There was no one sitting in the circle with him, but Fat Crack raised the cigarette and blew a puff of smoke in each of the four directions, just as Looks At Nothing had taught him, saying “Nawoj” as he did so.

  While the cigarette still glowed in his fingertips, Fat Crack lifted up the first crystal and held it over Lani’s picture. Nothing happened. It was the same with the second crystal and with the third as well.

  The sky was gradually lightening in the east and Fat Crack was already thinking how foolish he must look sitting there on the ground when he picked up the fourth crystal and held it over the picture. What happened then was something he could never explain. It simply was. The picture on the paper changed ever so slightly until something else superimposed itself over Lani’s smiling face.

  At first Fat Crack thought he was seeing the head of a rattlesnake, its jaws open wide to swallow something, its fangs fully exposed. This was not a snake’s head. It was, in fact, a snake’s skull—ko’oi koshwa. Then, as Fat Crack leaned down to examine the picture more closely, he realized the picture underneath the skull seemed changed as well. In the slowly eddying smoke, he saw that Lani’s eyes were missing. Instead of eyes smiling back at him, there were only empty sockets.

  The message from the divining crystals was clear. If Lani Walker wasn’t already dead, she soon would be.

  Fat Crack’s hands shook as he carefully returned the crystals and lighter to the medicine pouch. He was just closing it and trying to decide what to do with this newfound, awful knowledge when the headlights fr
om Richard Ortiz’s tow truck flashed across the yard. With an agility that surprised Fat Crack even as he did it, he heaved his hefty frame up off the ground and hurried toward the truck. He reached the rider’s door just as Wanda climbed out and turned to tell Richard good-bye.

  “Oi g hihm,” Fat Crack said to his son, hoisting himself up into the seat Wanda had just vacated. Literally translated, oi g hihm means “Let’s walk.” In the everyday language of the reservation, however, it means “Let’s get in the pickup and go.”

  “Where are you going?” Wanda demanded, catching the door before Gabe had a chance to close it.

  “To Rattlesnake Skull Charco,” he said. “Call Brandon Walker and tell him to meet me there. Tell him that’s where we’ll find Lani. Tell him to hurry before it’s too late.”

  “What’s wrong with Lani?” Wanda Ortiz asked in alarm. “Is she hurt, sick? What’s going on?”

  “She’s been kidnapped,” Fat Crack answered without hesitation. “I believe she’s been taken by someone connected to the evil Ohb. If we don’t find her soon, that person is going to kill her, if he hasn’t already.”

  Wanda nodded and stepped back from the truck. “I’ll call the Walkers right away,” she said.

  Richard Ortiz shifted the tow truck into reverse. “We’re not talking more of that old medicine-man nonsense, are we?” he asked dubiously.

  This was no time for a philosophical discussion. “Shut up and drive, Baby,” Fat Crack told his son. “And while you’re at it, put the flashers on.”

  “You think it’s that serious?”

  “You bet,” Fat Crack told him. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  Quentin had come back to the cavern, picked up the second load of pottery, and had gone to carry it back down the mountain. Soon he would be back for the third and last load. Lani knew that was when Mitch Johnson would make his move. That was when he would kill them.