by J. A. Jance
Larry had no choice. Abandoning all pretext of gentleness, he rammed the bottle home. The girl’s body went rigid. She arched into the air, yelping in pain. Instantly Gayle was beside her. With one hand she stuffed a corner of the pillow into the girl’s mouth to muffle her cries. With the other she pressed down hard on the girl’s collarbone to help hold her still.
Afterward Larry had no conscious memory of how long he stood there, plunging the damaging bottle in and out of the girl’s body. At some point, Gayle was beside him, whispering in his ear, “Now do me,” she said.
At first he thought Gayle meant for him to use the bottle. He started to withdraw it, but Gayle shook her head. “Leave it where it is,” she said. “You don’t need it.”
Larry knew Gayle was right. He was ready.
The unnecessary bedding Gayle had peeled from the bed lay in a heap on the floor. She lowered herself into that impromptu cushion and pulled Larry down after her.
Ignoring the girl, who still lay, weeping softly, on the bed above them, Larry Stryker buried himself in his wife’s body. When it was over, Larry was convinced that not only was he a man again, he was also incredibly lucky to be partnered with Gayle, who had to be one of the smartest women in the world. And the sickest.
A little past noon, Brandon Walker pulled into the Ortiz Compound on the north side of Highway 86. The old broken-down gas station that had been Fat Crack Ortiz’s place of business when Brandon Walker first knew him had been replaced by a spanking-new building-Indian Oasis Mini-Mart. Fat Crack’s older son, Richard, sometimes called Baby Fat Crack, ran the mini-mart/gas station operation. One of Wanda Ortiz’s nephews ran the tow-truck part of the business, while Leo, the younger son, and two helpers served as resident mechanics.
Behind the mini-mart was what people now referred to as the Ortiz Compound. Three double-wide mobile homes were arranged around a dirt-floored ramada. The interior patio was shaded by a roof made of spiny ocotillo stalks held together by a net of chicken wire. One house belonged to Wanda and Fat Crack. The other was for their son, Richard, and his wife, Christine, a teacher from the school at Topawa. The third one, clearly empty now, had once been occupied by Fat Crack’s younger son, Leo, and his wife, Delia.
Brandon went directly to the front door of the house that belonged to Wanda and Fat Crack and rang the bell. Wanda Ortiz, smiling, opened the door and let him inside.
“He told me you’d be coming,” she said. “He’s out back. Come on this way.”
Wanda led Brandon through the house to the back door. Where once there had been three steps, there was now a sturdy wheelchair ramp.
“He’s down there,” Wanda said, pointing.
Brandon made his way down the ramp and into a gloom of shade. Fat Crack sat in the far corner of the space, dozing in a wheelchair.
Brandon had last seen Gabe Ortiz several months earlier, when he had come to Christmas dinner at Gates Pass, leaning heavily on a walker. The wheelchair was something new. It was warm but not quite hot in the late-April noonday sun. Even so, a blanket covered Fat Crack’s lap and was tucked in behind his legs.
“Gabe?” Brandon asked quietly.
Startled awake, Fat Crack looked straight past Brandon and asked, “Who is it?”
He’s blind, Brandon thought. Completely blind. “It’s me, Gabe,” he said aloud, swallowing the lump that rose suddenly in his throat. “Brandon Walker.”
Fat Crack relaxed. The corpulence that had given him his name was long gone. He seemed shriveled and old, with leathery skin as transparent and thin as parchment. “It’s good to see you, Brandon. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. There must be another chair somewhere.”
Brandon helped himself to a plastic lawn chair and dragged it close to Fat Crack’s. The shiny white surface of the plastic had been burned away by the sun. Worried that the chair might be too sun-damaged and brittle to hold his weight, Brandon tested it gingerly before settling on it.
“How come you knew I was coming?” he asked. “More of that spooky medicine-man stuff you and Lani are always talking about?”
Fat Crack laughed and pulled a cordless telephone receiver out from under the blanket that covered his lap. “Not even,” he said. “Diana called. She wanted to know if Wanda had any tamales and tortillas you could buy and take home for dinner tomorrow. The tortillas aren’t ready yet, but they will be. Just don’t forget them when it’s time to leave. Diana will kill you.”
“How are you?” Brandon asked.
“As blind as Looks at Nothing used to be,” Fat Crack answered with a chuckle. “Maybe that’s one of the medicine-man rules that S’ab Neid Pi Has forgot to tell me-that medicine men are supposed to be blind.” He paused. The smile on his face faded. “I’m an old man, Brandon,” he added. “I’m old and I’m dying.”
There it was then-all the cards laid out on the table. “Lani’s worried about that,” Brandon admitted. “She wants to be here to help.”
“I know,” Fat Crack replied. “But there’s nothing she can do. She’ll want me to check into a hospital and have me taking shots and pills. I’m not doing that, not even for Lani.”
“No,” Brandon said. “I suppose not.”
“When will she be home?”
“Sometime in the next two weeks,” Brandon answered. “Graduation is on the tenth of May, but she’ll be home before that. She’s skipping graduation and has rescheduled her finals.”
“Then I’d better hurry,” Fat Crack said. “If I could walk, I’d do what Looks at Nothing did and go out in the desert someplace by myself.” He paused again. “I don’t like being a burden,” he added. “It’s so hard on Wanda-harder on her than on me. But let’s not talk about that anymore. It’s not why you came to see me.”
Fat Crack Ortiz had been Brandon Walker’s friend for decades. The thought of losing him hurt like hell, but now that Fat Crack had changed the subject, Brandon did the same.
“It’s true,” Brandon agreed. “Emma Orozco came to see me yesterday. She wanted to know if I could help find her daughter’s killer, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Fat Crack nodded. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said it’s been a long time since her daughter died. More than thirty years.”
“A long time to wait for justice,” Fat Crack observed.
“Yes,” Brandon said.
“Are you going to help her?”
“I’m going to try, but why did she wait so long?”
Fat Crack shrugged and said nothing.
“She indicated her husband didn’t want her to pursue it. She waited until after he died.”
Fat Crack nodded. “Some people always thought Henry did it-that he got Roseanne pregnant and then killed her because he was afraid Emma would find out. No one ever proved he did anything wrong.”
“Nobody ever disproved it, either,” Brandon offered.
“Yes,” Fat Crack said. “That’s right.”
“What do you think?” Brandon asked.
“Henry Orozco was a good man,” Fat Crack answered finally, echoing what Diana had said. “I know that some men do bad things to their daughters, but not Henry. You could ask his other daughter, Andrea. She’s Andrea Tashquinth now. She’s the produce manager over at Basha’s.”
“Andrea Tashquinth is one of the people I planned to see today,” Brandon said. “You’re right. She works at Basha’s, and Emma said she’d be working today.”
“Good,” Fat Crack said.
“You remember when it happened, then?” Brandon asked.
“Oh, yes. I remember.”
“Were there any other suspects?”
“Not that I know of,” Fat Crack said, “although I don’t think anyone looked very hard.”
Both men were quiet for a moment, both thinking the same thing-that had Roseanne Orozco been an Anglo, more would have been made of her death and the search for her killer might well have been successful.
“Would you do me a favor?” Fat Crack asked.
&n
bsp; “Sure,” Brandon agreed quickly. “What do you need?”
Fat Crack reached under his blanket. From the same place where he had retrieved the cordless telephone, he now produced a leather bag-a huashomi-Looks at Nothing’s fringed buckskin medicine pouch, one the scrawny old man had always worn around his thin waist. The pouch was far more threadbare now than it had been the first time Brandon Walker had seen it in the parking lot of the Pima County Sheriff’s office almost three decades earlier.
Fat Crack had brought Looks at Nothing to the department and had waited patiently until Brandon showed up hours later. And there, under a mesquite tree next to the parking lot, Brandon had watched the old medicine man deftly fill and roll a homemade cigarette using wiw-Indian tobacco-rather than the unfiltered Camels Brandon had smoked prior to quitting several months earlier. After lighting the hand-rolled cigarette with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter that must have dated from World War II, Looks at Nothing had taken a long drag. Then ceremoniously saying the word nawoj-which, Brandon later learned, in the context of the Tohono O’odham Peace Smoke, means friendly gift-he passed it along, first to Fat Crack and then to Brandon Walker.
It had been Brandon’s first encounter with the Peace Smoke. He had been startled by the sharp, bitter taste. Only with the greatest of effort had he managed to keep from coughing. But even then, with the smoke still singeing his throat and lungs, Brandon Walker understood that he’d been allowed entry into something special-something most Anglos didn’t experience in a lifetime.
He watched now as Fat Crack once again extracted that same familiar lighter from the bag. “Would you help me? Wanda doesn’t like me to do it. She’s afraid I’ll burn the place down.”
“Sure,” Brandon said. “I’ll do my best.”
Even though Fat Crack couldn’t see to critique what he was doing, Brandon Walker felt self-conscious as he clumsily rolled the tobacco into a ragged imitation of a cigarette. “Now what?” he asked when he finished.
Wordlessly, Fat Crack handed him the lighter. The brass was worn thin. The grooves on the wheel had disappeared completely. To Brandon’s surprise, it lit after only one try. He held the sagging cigarette to his lips long enough to light it, then passed it to Fat Crack. “Nawoj,” he said.
They passed the cigarette back and forth between them several times. When it was close to burning their fingers, Brandon took it and ground it out in the dirt while the silence between the two men lengthened until it seemed to stretch on forever.
“They’re all lost girls, you know,” Fat Crack said thoughtfully.
Brandon felt as though he’d lost track of the conversation. “Who are?” he asked.
“Roseanne, Delia, and Lani.”
“Delia your daughter-in-law?” Brandon asked.
Fat Crack nodded. “Delia’s mother saved her and I brought her home. You and Diana saved Lani and are giving her back to The People. And I’itoi has chosen you to speak for Roseanne.”
Brandon was taken aback by Fat Crack’s suggestion. It seemed unlikely I’itoi would exhibit the slightest interest in an aging and discarded Anglo homicide detective, but the medicine man spoke with such conviction that Brandon couldn’t help believing it was true.
“Someday they’ll be friends, you know,” Fat Crack said at last.
Again Brandon was confused. Maybe the bitter tobacco was messing with his mental faculties. “Who’ll be friends?” he asked.
“My daughter-in-law and your daughter,” Fat Crack replied. “Delia and Lani. They’re both smart. They’ll do good things for The People, and eventually they’ll be friends.”
“I thought they were friends already,” Brandon said.
Fat Crack sighed, shook his head, and said nothing. For a moment or two he fumbled around with the blanket on his lap until he once again located the lighter. He gathered it up, along with the few remaining pieces of paper, and stuffed all of them into the huashomi. Then he picked up the bag and held it out toward Brandon.
“What’s this?” Brandon asked. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Take it,” Fat Crack said. “I don’t need it anymore. When Lani comes home, give it to her. Tell her Looks at Nothing and I-two old blind siwanis-both wanted her to have it.”
“All right,” Brandon said. “I will.” He stood up. He knew what Fat Crack was saying, knew what this meant. “Thank you,” Brandon added.
“You’re welcome,” Fat Crack said. “Now go find Wanda, and see if those tortillas are ready.”
J. A. Jance
Day of the Dead
Eleven
After a time the children and the butterflies came back to I’itoi, and the children were singing a new song. The children ran and danced as they sang, while the butterflies circled high above them.
This is the song the children sang as they danced with the butterflies:
They are so bright, they are so gay,
They run in the air and hide, and we
Cannot catch them.
I’itoi listened for the song of the butterflies, but the butterflies did not sing.
There were some birds resting in the cottonwood tree above where I’itoi was sitting. When the butterflies did not sing, u’uwhig-the birds-began to laugh.
The birds had been very jealous when they first saw hohokimal-the butterflies-come out of I’itoi’s bag. The butterflies were so beautiful. But now, when the butterflies had no song, u’uwhig laughed and sang and laughed.
Then I’itoi began to laugh, too. So did all the children.
For, you see, nawoj-my friend, when Elder Brother made the butterflies, he fell asleep. And all the children went to sleep, too. And so the poor butterflies were given no song. Their beauty is always bright. They do not change as they grow old, but the butterflies have no song.
Erik had just started back down the mountain when it happened. A piece of loose rock gave way under his foot. His right ankle twisted inside his boot, and down he went. On the steep mountain-side the fall might have been disastrous. Fortunately, he slid face-first into a clump of mesquite. The roots of that hardy desert-dwelling shrub were strong enough to hold his weight. He ended up with his face, hands, and arms scratched and bloody, but at least he wasn’t dead. It was still a hell of a long way down the mountain, but it could have been much worse.
As the injured ankle began to swell, he loosened the laces, but he didn’t dare remove the boot altogether. He could probably hobble down the trail but only with the boot on. Going barefoot wasn’t an option. Neither was using his cell phone to call for help. That was one of the lessons in self-reliance Grandma had drilled into Erik’s head as a boy: “Don’t call for help too soon. Wait until you really need it.”
Not that she had squandered any time lecturing him about it. Gladys Johnson had taught her grandson self-reliance the old-fashioned way-by example. When her husband, Harold, returned from the Battle of the Bulge a crippled and broken man, Gladys did what had to be done. She found a job as a grocery-store clerk and supported both her husband and her daughter. When the doctor said that the VA hospital in Tucson, Arizona, offered Harold the best chance of recovery, she’d packed up her family and driven there in a ’53 pickup truck, hauling her family’s worldly possessions in the back of the pickup and in the flimsy trailer she’d hitched on behind the truck.
When Gladys and Harold’s daughter died of cancer at age twenty-five and their grieving son-in-law had dropped six-month-old Erik off on Gladys’s doorstep shortly thereafter, saying he couldn’t do it, he just couldn’t do it, Gladys had handled that as well. And she had done it all without complaint.
So get yourself up off your butt and start down the damned mountain, Erik told himself that sunny April morning. As Grandma would say: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”
Wanda Ortiz came out to the ramada a few minutes after Brandon Walker drove away with two dozen each of tamales and flour tortillas packed in a foam ice chest.
“It’s getting hot out here,” she said to her husb
and. “Don’t you want to come inside?”
“No,” Fat Crack replied. “I’m fine.”
Shrugging and more than a little exasperated, Wanda returned to the house, leaving Fat Crack where he was. The chill Gabe Ortiz felt in his bones right then had little to do with the weather. He and Brandon had smoked the Peace Smoke many times over the years. Doing so today had been Fat Crack’s own friendly gift, a way of saying thank you and good-bye. But now that it was over-now that he had given away the medicine pouch and the sacred tobacco, he was left with a terrible sense of neijig-of foreboding.
Fat Crack had grown accustomed to having glimpses into the future. For instance, when Leo and Delia had come to the house to tell them Delia was pregnant, Fat Crack had known at once that the baby would shrivel and die in his mother’s womb. Fat Crack hadn’t told Leo and Delia that dreadful news. He had kept it to himself, just as he also had not betrayed his knowledge that this new baby, another little boy, would thrive and grow up to be tall and strong.
With his old friend Brandon Walker, Fat Crack knew something wasn’t right. Had the medicine man still possessed Looks at Nothing’s precious crystals, even without his eyesight they might have helped him clarify in his own mind exactly what was happening. As it was, he was cursed with a sense that something was wrong without any means of preventing whatever it was from happening.
Fat Crack wondered if his disquiet could have something to do with the very thing he had spoken with Brandon about-the coming conflict between two powerful women, between Delia and Lani. Closing his eyes, Fat Crack remembered the first time he had seen them both, these two women whose power struggle might well divide the Desert People. With Lani it had been the day he and Wanda had picked the little Ant-Bit Child up from the hospital and taken her to the Walkers’ place in Gates Pass. And even as they did it-even as they delivered the little Indian baby into the hands of the Anglos who would be her parents-Fat Crack had been blessed with the unerring sense that he was doing the right thing. With Delia Chavez Cachora Ortiz, things weren’t nearly so clear-cut.
Sister Justine had summoned Gabe Ortiz to Topawa early that long-ago Wednesday morning. He had driven there in the old blue-and-white tow truck that had come with the business when he’d purchased it years earlier. The truck was disturbingly unreliable. There was always a chance the tow truck would need to be towed back to Sells, along with whatever vehicle Fat Crack had been summoned to aid.