Day of the Dead bw-3

by J. A. Jance

  Lani laughed. “That’s what I’ve heard, too. The only problem is, Tyler Ladd isn’t a Tohono O’odham kid, and I’m not sure his mom would want me to turn him into one.”

  Picking up Fat Crack’s leather pouch and clutching it to her, Lani Walker followed her father into the house.

  J. A. Jance

  Day of the Dead

  Twenty-One

  Brandon and Diana were both sleeping soundly the next morning when Damsel went nuts. “What’s up, Damn Dog?” Brandon mumbled sleepily. Just then the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” he told Diana as he hopped out of bed and pulled on clothing.

  He and Damsel reached the front door together as the doorbell rang again. Brandon used the security peephole to see who it was. Emma Orozco stood there, leaning on her walker. In the background her son-in-law, Sam Tashquinth, was hauling something unwieldy out of the back of his pickup and lugging it toward the gate. As he entered, Brandon saw Sam’s load was swathed in plastic garbage bags that had been duct-taped together.

  Shutting Damsel inside, Brandon stepped out on the porch. “Good morning, Emma,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Bring it,” Emma said to her son-in-law, pointing to a spot next to her on the porch.

  With a relieved sigh, Sam Tashquinth dropped his burden where she had indicated, while the old woman turned back to Brandon. “She’s here,” Emma said. “Roseanne’s baby.”

  “You dug her up?”

  Emma shrugged. “To ask permission we’d have to go before the tribal council. It would take too long. After dark last night, Sam and my grandson did it.”

  In terms of speed, taking shovels in hand without waiting for permission got the job done. In terms of establishing a chain of evidence, Emma’s self-appointed grave robbing was entirely wrong. Had Brandon been a sworn police officer, his reaction would have been tempered by evidentiary considerations. As part of TLC, he was conflicted by the need to get results for survivors while, at the same time, being able to hold someone accountable in a court of law.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sure it was a difficult decision.”

  “I want you to find Roseanne’s killer,” Emma said determinedly. “Even if he’s dead, I want to know he can’t ever do this again.”

  “Yes,” Brandon said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Do you want me to leave it here, Mr. Walker?” Sam Tashquinth asked.

  “My Suburban’s in the garage. We’ll put it there. I’ll go get the key.” He turned to Emma. “Would you like to come inside? My wife would be glad to make coffee…”

  “No,” Emma said at once. “Thank you. We should go. Sam has to get to work.”

  Brandon hurried inside. Diana was in the kitchen making coffee. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Emma’s out on the porch. They dug up Roseanne’s baby’s coffin. It’s on the porch, too.”

  “They dug up the baby?” Diana looked appalled. “Why?”

  Brandon removed the car keys from their pegboard hook. “We’re hoping DNA can identify the baby’s father-and help us find Roseanne’s killer.”

  “What should I do?” Diana asked, collecting herself. “Invite them in? Offer coffee?”

  “No,” Brandon said. “Emma told me they have to go back to Sells as soon as we load the casket into the Suburban.”

  When he went to help, Brandon was surprised by the weight of the casket. It was heavy enough that it took both men to heft it into the Suburban. The fetus itself would have been tiny. “Why such a big casket?” Brandon asked as he shut the luggage doors.

  Sam Tashquinth shrugged philosophically. “I asked that. Emma said the man at the mortuary told them it was the only size they had.”

  And one they could charge more for, too, Brandon thought.

  Once they were finished, Sam stepped away from the Suburban, vigorously rubbing both hands on his jeans. The Indian man was clearly relieved to have the casket out of his possession, and Brandon could see why. Even without taking Tohono O’odham taboos into consideration, the idea of driving around with a corpse in the back of his vehicle wasn’t Brandon’s idea of a good time, either.

  The barking dog woke Lani. She came out to the kitchen to find her mother unloading the dishwasher. She looked upset.

  “What’s going on?” Lani asked.

  “Somebody just dropped a dead baby off on the front porch. Your father is loading it into the Suburban.”

  “A dead baby? For Dad?” Lani was mystified. “How come?”

  “It’s a case Dad’s working on for TLC-a girl from the reservation who was pregnant when she was killed some thirty years ago. Dad’s hoping that modern DNA testing can shed some light on the case.”

  “He really is working for that volunteer cold-case group?”

  Diana nodded. “It’s been good for him-given him back a sense of purpose, but I don’t think he expected to have a casket turn up on the doorstep at six o’clock in the morning. Come to think of it, neither did I.”

  After pouring three cups of coffee, Diana took hers and headed for her office. Lani and Damsel waited until Brandon came in from outside to wash his hands. Lani handed him his coffee, then, calling Damsel, she headed for the door. “Let’s sit outside in the sun,” she said. “Mom told me about the case you’re working on, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

  Out on the patio, Brandon told Lani about Roseanne Orozco and what had happened to her. Lani had been the same age as Roseanne when she had lived through her own harrowing experience at the hands of Mitch Johnson. Hearing the story of another Tohono O’odham girl, one who had not survived a similarly savage attack, left Lani feeling half sick. It also explained why her father was so deeply involved.

  They had drunk that first pot of coffee and the better part of a second before Diana joined them on the patio. “I’m done answering e-mail,” she said. “Can I interest anybody in breakfast?”

  Brandon nodded. “Sounds good,” he said, “but first I need to call Ralph Ames and find out what he wants me to do about our early-morning guest.”

  As he headed for his office, Lani turned to her mother. “You’re right,” she said. “Dad really is happy to be working again.”

  Ralph Ames answered on the second ring. “You’re up and around early,” he said.

  “Well,” Brandon replied, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I have Roseanne Orozco’s baby.”

  “Good,” Ames returned. “We should be able to start the DNA testing right away. I’ve found a place here in Seattle that may be able to get results on fetal remains. What’s the bad news?”

  “I’ve got the whole body,” Brandon replied. “Coffin and all. The grandmother had it dug up overnight and delivered it to my doorstep bright and early this morning.”

  Ralph Ames paused for a moment. “I guess that means we don’t have to worry about going through the tribal council.”

  “You could say that,” Brandon agreed. “But whoever’s doing the testing won’t want us to ship them a loaded coffin.”

  “Right. Let me give them a call and get right back to you,” Ames said.

  The phone rang again a few minutes later. “Here’s the deal,” Ralph told him. “The customer relations lady at Genelex tells me we’ll need heart tissue. Was the baby embalmed?”

  “I asked that. The grandmother doesn’t know.”

  “It’s evidently more difficult to get results from embalmed tissue,” Ralph told him. “But they’ll be glad to try. Where do you want the kit sent?”

  “Kit?” Brandon asked.

  “A nonstandard tissue-collection kit,” Ralph said. “They’ll FedEx it to whoever’s obtaining the sample for us.”

  “I suppose that’s better than shipping a coffin across the country,” Brandon returned.

  “They want the sample collection to be done by an official agency, preferably a medical examiner’s office. How’s your track record with your local ME?”

  “It wasn’t bad
years ago,” Brandon said, “but times have changed. I’ve been out of the game for a while. My showing up at the morgue with a thirty-two-year-old corpse in the back of my car is likely to go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter.”

  Ralph chuckled. “See what happens,” he said. “If you can’t find anyone willing to do the job, let me know.”

  “Sure thing,” Brandon said. “I’d best get started.”

  Larry Stryker’s back hurt. He’d done a lot of unaccustomed physical labor over the weekend. He was getting too old to wrestle mattresses around by himself, but he’d managed. He’d done it. The basement room was ready again-ready and waiting.

  Disappointed that Gayle had slipped away without staying the night, he dragged his aching body out of bed and staggered into the bathroom to get ready for work. He kept a radio there so he could listen to news while he showered and dressed. Today the lead story was about the murder of an unidentified female homicide victim whose body had been found near Vail on Saturday morning. An unnamed suspect had been arrested in connection with the case. The victim, estimated to be in her mid- to late teens, was thought to be Hispanic in origin.

  Standing in front of the mirror, razor in hand, Larry smiled at his steamy reflection and experienced that incredible rush that always flooded through him at times like these. His most recent girl was dead, and Erik LaGrange was in jail, but for Larry nothing at all had changed. Except for one thing: Once news of Erik LaGrange’s identity leaked to the press, Medicos for Mexico would be overrun with reporters. Bearing that in mind, Larry chose that day’s clothing with care. If his photo was going to be in the papers or on television, he wanted to look his best.

  During the hour-long drive into town, a few shadows of doubt crept into his thoughts. Always before, through years of disposing of bodies, Gayle had done so in ways that had never led back to Gayle or Larry or Medicos for Mexico. This was different. Was it possible that fury over Erik’s betrayal had carried Gayle a step too far? Was she losing her touch? Still, despite his misgivings, Larry knew from what Gayle had said the night before that maintaining a united front was essential. And since Larry’s name topped the Medicos for Mexico organization chart, he would have to be there to answer questions about their jailed employee.

  That was Larry’s part of the job. His reward for hanging tough would come at the end of the week, when Graciella Duarte sent him the next occupant for the room downstairs. In the meantime, he’d have to remember to buy another mattress for the cot and a few more plastic tarps.

  Kath was gone by the time Brian woke up, which wasn’t a good sign. She usually kissed him good-bye when she left for an early shift. When he went into the kitchen and found she hadn’t made coffee, either, he knew he was in trouble. They generally managed only one day off together each week. Kath didn’t take kindly to being cheated out of it-even if the reason was work-related. Especially if it was work-related.

  At least we’ll be together at the funeral this afternoon and the feast tonight, Brian told himself. Maybe that’ll get me out of the doghouse.

  Haunted by his mother’s scattershot approach to love and marriage, Brian had entered into his union with Kath determined to make it work. It was a challenge to combine law enforcement careers with two different agencies in the same household. As for having kids? That was too complicated even to consider.

  He showered and dressed. An hour later, he was sitting in his cubicle poring over faxes of information from the other similar cases he had located on Sunday. For several of them, he had only cursory reports, but the details were surprisingly familiar. The bodies, so far all unidentified, had been strewn in the desert-just the way this Saturday’s victim had been. In two others-one near Sierra Blanca, Texas, and one near El Centro, California-the dismembered remains had been stuffed into Rubbermaid trash containers. He was reading through one from Yuma County-the one where AFIS had picked up that single fingerprint-when a clerk dropped off Roseanne Orozco’s dusty paper file. Her case, dredged out of the archives, seemed eerily similar to the others.

  The Papago Tribal Police, as they were then called, had been the primary investigative agency. Having played a secondary role, Pima County didn’t have extensive involvement. The Orozco file was painfully thin, but the facts were clear. Roseanne’s dismembered body had been found by highway workers collecting trash along Highway 86 west of Sells. The body had been hacked to pieces and stuffed into a Coleman cooler. An autopsy had revealed that the fifteen-year-old homicide victim had been pregnant at the time of her death. For some reason, Henry Orozco, the girl’s father, was initially considered to be a prime suspect both in terms of Roseanne’s death and as the father of her unborn child. When a blood test excluded him as the baby’s father, he was dropped as an official suspect in the murder investigation as well. Within weeks of Roseanne’s death, new entries in the file ceased completely as the investigation was left to go dormant.

  Even so, Brian thought, Brandon remembered her the moment I brought it up. Why? There was no mention of Brandon Walker’s name in the file. His signature didn’t appear on any of the reports. Still, it was a case that stuck with him decades later.

  Brian reached for his phone and dialed the Walker place in Gates Pass. Lani answered. “Hi, Brian,” she said. “You missed a great dinner last night.”

  “I know,” he said. “Had to work. Sorry. Is your dad around?”

  “No. He left a little while ago. Do you have his cell-phone number?”

  “I do,” Brian said. “Thanks.” But before he had a chance to dial, PeeWee arrived and settled at his own desk. “What are you up to?” he asked.

  Wanting his conversation with Brandon Walker to be private, Brian put down the phone. He had been sorting the faxed case files into two separate stacks: scattered remains versus contained remains. He added Roseanne Orozco’s file to the second stack and passed the piles along to Detective Segura. “Anyone for a serial killer?” he asked.

  While PeeWee scanned the material, Brian walked down the hall. Returning minutes later with coffee, he found PeeWee engrossed in the files.

  “You may be right about these being related,” PeeWee said, tapping the stack of faxes that dealt with containerized remains. “These may be connected, too, but this one?” He tapped the Orozco file, which he had pushed to one side. “LaGrange is too young for this one, but I’ll check his credit card transactions to see if we can put him in the vicinity for any of the others.”

  PeeWee took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. “You picked all this stuff off the computer in a matter of hours. How come you’re the first investigator to make the connection?”

  “Because I’m smarter than the average bear?” Brian asked with a laugh. “No, it’s the same old thing. Nobody else found it because nobody else was looking. I’m guessing these are all throwaway kids. They went missing and nobody even bothered to file a missing persons report.”

  “And without some relative keeping the heat on…” PeeWee added.

  They both knew why active cases went cold. Time passed and nothing happened. With no grieving relatives maintaining pressure, the respective investigative agencies finally stopped looking.

  “Somebody’s applying pressure now,” Brian said. “You and me. So let’s get cracking. I’ll call Yuma and talk to the detectives over there. The Vail autopsy is scheduled for ten. Who’s going to do that?”

  “I’ll flip you for it,” PeeWee said, tossing a coin in the air. “Heads you go. Tails I do.”

  The coin came up heads. “Too bad, buddy.” PeeWee grinned. “This is one damned autopsy I’m happy to miss.”

  Brandon drove to the back side of Kino Community Hospital and pulled up in front of the Pima County medical examiner’s office. He had come here often enough in the distant past, back when what he still considered the “new” hospital first opened. It had been years now since he’d had any official business with the ME’s office. He wondered what kind of reception he should expect when he showed up with a nonroutine corpse and
a nonroutine request for a DNA sample.

  Brandon walked through one door into a locked entry. While waiting to be buzzed in through a security door, he studied a reader board that listed the names of staff doctors and field investigators. Of those, he recognized only one-associate medical examiner Dr. Frances Daly. Brandon remembered Fran Daly as a brash young woman fresh out of school and just starting her first job. At the time, female MEs had been rare. No one had thought Fran Daly would last, but she had-lasted and thrived. She had moved up through the ranks and was now second in command.

  “Yes?” a voice asked over an intercom. “May I help you?”

  Brandon knew to start at the top, or close to it. “I’m here to see Dr. Daly,” he said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I’m a friend. Name’s Brandon Walker.” The disembodied voice sounded too young to remember that someone named Brandon Walker had once been sheriff of Pima County.

  The lock buzzed. Brandon let himself inside. In the old days he had come into the place via this back door-the official cop entrance-but the office had seemed larger then. Now it was cluttered with a collection of apparently new and old desktop computers that covered every available surface. Behind the counter stood a young woman about Lani’s age. Her face was marred by a series of piercings-lips, nose, and chin. The gold and silver studs stuck in her flesh made Brandon’s heart flood with gratitude that Lani had so far avoided body piercings-at least ones her father could see.

  “I’ll see if Dr. Daly is available,” the young receptionist said. “What’s your name again?”

  “Walker,” he repeated patiently. “Brandon Walker.”

  He half expected to be left cooling his heels. Instead, bare moments later, Fran Daly burst into the outer office. If anything, her colorful cowboy shirt was more outrageous than ones she’d worn years before. Her snakeskin boots were far more expensive than those she had worn in the old days.

  “Why, Sheriff Walker,” she said, flashing him a gap-toothed smile and giving his hand a powerful shake. “It’s been years. How good to see you again! What can we do for you?”