Day of the Dead bw-3

by J. A. Jance

  He led Erik as far as the barred entrance at the far end of the cell-lined corridor. After he pushed a keypad, the door was unlocked by an invisible hand. As they walked to the far end of an empty corridor, the guard spoke into his radio. “Hey, Conrad. Get this. Our guy thinks he’s got one of those Get-out-of-jail-free cards. Wants to know if we’re going to give him back his clothes.”

  The unseen recipient of this information laughed, too. Meanwhile, the guard turned serious. “It’s a bail hearing,” he explained. “Those are pretty much come-as-you-are.”

  When Erik was led into the courtroom, Earl Coulter, wearing the same awful tie, appeared at his side. The proceedings were so amazingly short that Earl didn’t have time to fall asleep. In a matter of minutes a judge had agreed with the prosecutor’s claim that there was ample evidence that Erik LaGrange should be bound over for trial. When asked how he pleaded, Erik had to be nudged in the ribs before he choked out, “Not guilty.” There was never a question of bail.

  As Erik waited with the other prisoners to be returned to his cell block, he looked at them. Studying their faces, tattoos, and surly expressions, he tried to understand how it was that he was now one of them. Whoever they were, whatever they had done, these men, and others just like them or worse, were likely to be Erik’s companions for the rest of his life.

  With that realization, a black pall of despair engulfed him. He saw no way out.

  Delia Ortiz had barely slept all night. She’d been on her feet so much the previous day that her back was killing her. When she finally did sleep, she dreamed about the baby. It was always the same. The baby was born. She knew he was alive because she’d heard him cry, but when she asked the nurse to show him to her and let her hold him, the woman shook her head. “No,” she said, speaking in the style of the Tohono O’odham, “not right now. After.”

  Every time Delia dozed off, the dream reappeared. Each version was slightly different. Sometimes Fat Crack and Wanda were in the room. Sometimes Aunt Julia was there, although Aunt Julia had been dead now for two years. Sometimes only she and Leo were there with the doctors and nurses, but the basic part of the story was always the same. Delia would ask for the baby, only to be told no, she couldn’t have him. Each time the dream reached that point, she would awaken, panting for breath and with her heart pounding in her throat.

  It was almost sunrise when Delia finally drifted into a deep, dreamless slumber. She was so sound asleep, she didn’t notice when Leo crept out of bed. Planning to stop by the office on her way to Wanda’s house, she had set the alarm for seven, but when she finally awakened, it was nearly eleven. Leo had turned off her alarm. At first Delia was annoyed with Leo for letting her sleep, but when she discovered how much her back still hurt, she decided he was probably right. She had needed the rest far more than she needed to stop by her office.

  She lay in the room that had once belonged to Aunt Julia and thought about how her friends from D.C. would laugh if they saw her in this tiny house. In yuppie D.C., Aunt Julia’s place would have been considered less than a hovel. But coming from Great-aunt Julia, the adobe-walled house was an inheritance Delia treasured.

  The baby was disturbingly still, and Delia began to worry. Maybe the dream was right. Maybe this baby, too, had perished in her womb. Then, after several anxious minutes, he awoke from his nap and landed a solid kick in Delia’s ribs. Relieved, she rolled herself up onto the edge of the bed and looked down at her bare feet. Her ankles were still swollen, but not as badly as last night. She’d have to remember to take Leo’s advice and stay off her feet as much as possible.

  She took her time getting dressed. At this late stage of pregnancy, Delia didn’t have much choice when it came to maternity clothing. She had to settle for the stuffy, too-warm maroon dress that had been fine during the winter but was bound to be too hot this afternoon and tonight at the feast house at Ban Thak, but at least, for the graveside part of the services, Delia would be seated next to Wanda in one of the chairs under the canopy. By then she’d be ready for shade and a chair.

  It was almost noon when she drove into the Ortiz compound and spotted a flashy bright red convertible parked next to her mother-in-law’s door. Delia knew at once whose it was. Leo had spent months reconditioning Diana Ladd’s stupid Buick.

  “Great,” Delia muttered to herself. “I should have known she’d be here first.”

  Except it turned out Diana wasn’t there after all. Lani was the one who answered the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lani said when she saw Delia. It wasn’t clear if the girl was saying she was sorry Fat Crack was dead, or if she was apologizing for something else. And it didn’t matter.

  “Yes,” Delia said, forcing herself to be civil. “It’s too bad, isn’t it.”

  Coming home to the house in Gates Pass about noon, Brandon noticed at once that Diana’s Invicta convertible was missing from the garage. He was struck with a momentary stab of fear. If Diana and Lani weren’t home, where were they? Inside, though, he found Diana safely tucked away in the office with her nose buried in her computer. Damsel lay at her feet.

  “Where’s Lani?” Brandon asked.

  “On her way to Sells,” Diana answered. “She wanted to spend some time with Wanda before the funeral starts, and she’s delivering our flowers in person.”

  Diana’s blase answer was totally at odds with Brandon’s gutroiling concerns. It set his teeth on edge. “You let her take the Invicta?” he objected.

  The perfectly reconditioned 1960 Buick Invicta, a bright Tampico Red convertible with its powerful engine, was Diana’s special baby. She’d bought it from the widow of the original owner, who’d unloaded it at a charity auction. After paying far too much for what was little more than a wrecked hulk, she’d had the sorry spiderweb-laden husk of a convertible trucked back to Arizona from San Diego and delivered to the Ortiz brothers’ garage at Sells. Leo, who had spent a lifetime keeping decrepit old cars and trucks limping along, had been overjoyed at the prospect of bringing a once-splashy classic back to pristine condition. He’d even hired an old upholsterer in Nogales, Sonora, who, for a price, had replicated the Invicta’s signature red-and-white Cordaveen imitation-leather interior.

  Once Leo had delivered her reconditioned prize into Diana’s waiting hands, she seldom let anyone else drive it-Brandon included. When she went into town to run errands, she’d slap on a scarf and take off, turning heads wherever she went. Brandon was astonished that Diana had turned Lani loose with that 325-horse-power engine. And to drive it to the reservation? That defied belief.

  “She tried starting the Camry,” Diana explained. “It wouldn’t turn over. She was going to jump it, but I told her not to bother. We’re taking the Suburban, right?”

  “She’d better not wreck the damned thing,” Brandon grunted. It was easier for him to complain about the Buick than it was to bring up what was really bothering him-Larry Stryker.

  Diana laughed his grousing aside. “Come on,” she said. “Don’t be paranoid. She’s only ever wrecked one car.”

  “That may be true,” Brandon agreed, “but the girl was born with a lead foot, and that 401-cubic-inch engine was made to fly.”

  In that moment they both thought back to a night several years earlier when Lani, a few days past her eighteenth birthday, had totaled her Toyota pickup. Returning from visiting a friend near Three Points, she had lost control of the vehicle on a tight curve at the top of Gates Pass. Miraculously, even though her vehicle had sailed off a cliff, it had landed upright and stayed there.

  When the dust finally cleared, Lani realized she wasn’t hurt. Not wanting to suffer the indignity of being driven home by one of her father’s former deputies, she’d asked the tow-truck driver for a lift. With the smashed remains of her car chained to the bed of the tow truck, she had arrived home at almost 2 A.M. and awakened her parents out of a sound sleep.

  That night, when he saw the wreckage, Brandon was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she was still alive that
he said almost nothing. The next day, though, he had visited the scene of the accident on his own. When he saw the cliff and the tracks her speeding Toyota pickup had sliced through the dry grass as it plowed off the roadway, he had felt sick to his stomach. Had Lani been thrown from the car, she would have been smashed to pieces on surrounding mounds of boulders and rocks. Her seat belt and exploding air bag had saved her life. Rather than dying or ending up in a hospital trauma unit, she’d walked away from the accident with nothing but a few cuts and bruises, one of which had left a tiny scar on the side of her left cheek.

  After leaving the scene, Brandon returned to the house and raised hell with Lani, railing at her-as only fathers can-about her irresponsibility and thoughtlessness. She paid her traffic fine as well as her increased car insurance premiums without a murmur of complaint. Although three years had passed without any further incidents, Brandon was petrified that Diana’s powerful Buick would prove too much of a temptation. On the other hand, he thought, if anyone tries coming after Lani when she’s driving the Invicta, they’ll have a hell of a time catching up.

  “How soon do you want to go?” Diana asked, changing the subject.

  Brandon glanced at his watch. “Give me half an hour,” he said.

  Still thinking about Lani and the convertible, he retreated to his own office, where a mess awaited him. TLC’s research librarians had been hard at work and turned up a prodigious amount of material. They had been in the process of faxing him multiple multipaged documents when his laser printer went nuts and started shooting sheets of paper in every direction. In fact, his laser printer was still in the process of whirring out one multipaged fax after another, sending the pages into a scattered jumble in the middle of the floor.

  “I know I said I wanted a haystack,” Brandon sighed, looking at the mess. “But this is ridiculous.”

  As Brian Fellows read through the autopsy results on the Yuma County case, the hair on his arms stood on end. It was scarily similar: evidence of vicious, long-term sexual abuse and torture resulting in internal damage and scarring. Marks on the remains indicated they had been severed with a sharp object, possibly a butcher knife.

  “I think we’re onto something,” Brian told PeeWee. “We need copies of all the other autopsies immediately, if not sooner.”

  “Which cases?”

  “Let’s start with El Centro, California, and Sierra Blanca, Texas,” Brian suggested. “If we can connect the dots between some of them-say, Yuma’s, ours, and one or two others-we may be able to pick up more later on. Whoever this guy is, he’s been doing his thing with impunity for a long time. I want us to be the ones who bring him in.” Stretching to ease his aching desk-bound shoulders, Brian glanced at his watch. “Damn!” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” PeeWee asked.

  “I’ve gotta go. I told Kath I’d be home by now. A friend of ours died over the weekend. We’re due at the funeral this afternoon at four.”

  “Get going, then,” PeeWee told him. “I’ll handle things here.”

  J. A. Jance

  Day of the Dead

  Twenty-Four

  The Baboquivari High School gym was filled to overflowing. Not only were the bleachers packed, so were the lines of folding chairs that covered the entire floor of the gym. An open casket, surrounded by lush banks of flowers, lay on a makeshift podium as the Desert People came to pay their last respects.

  Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz was someone who had left an indelible mark on his community. Years of running the car-repair/tow-truck operation with his two sons had given him a position of prominence on the reservation that had eventually vaulted him into the political arena, first as a tribal council representative from Sells and later as the tribal chairman. And the fact that he was Looks at Nothing’s hand-chosen successor had augmented his influence.

  The Reverend Jeremy Moon, the Korean-born pastor of Sells First Presbyterian Church, was a relative newcomer to the United States as well as to the Tohono O’odham Nation. He had been drafted into doing the service as a favor for Wanda Ortiz. During the pastor’s remarks, he kept referring to Gabriel Ortiz, making it clear that the Reverend Moon had never met Fat Crack and knew precious little about him.

  Feeling miserable, Delia Ortiz sat in the front row between Leo and Wanda. She was sure every person in the room knew the details of her very public disagreements with her late father-in-law. Still, regardless of Delia’s relationship with Fat Crack, she knew the man deserved better than this embarrassing excuse of a eulogy delivered by someone whose words didn’t come close to honoring a man the community had known and respected.

  When the Reverend Moon finally finished, he looked around the room. “Would anyone care to make additional comments about Mr. Ortiz?”

  Delia hadn’t planned on speaking at the funeral. For one thing, Wanda hadn’t asked her to, although, as tribal attorney, Delia was-next to Fat Crack himself-the most prominent member of the family. While the Reverend Moon looked expectantly around the room, Delia was surprised to find herself rising to her feet and moving forward. As she made her way up the steps, she stumbled and would have fallen. Baby, Fat Crack’s older son-the one she had rejected-reached out a steadying hand and caught her.

  By the time she reached the lectern and turned to face the audience, her knees were wobbly. Her nervousness wasn’t due to being unaccustomed to public speaking. She had been doing that for years. What worried her was speaking in front of this large assembly of her own people who were, in many ways, as alien to her as Fat Crack was to the Reverend Moon.

  Not sure how to begin, Delia glanced down at the front row in time to see both her husband and Baby smiling at her and nodding encouragingly. Those two nods, offered in unison, made it possible for her to speak.

  “I’m here today,” she began, “because Gigh Tahpani saved my life, not once but twice.” There was a subtle shift in the audience. Delia’s was the first reference to the beloved Fat Crack, as opposed to some stranger named Gabriel Ortiz. Sensing that the audience appreciated what she had said, Delia took a deep breath and continued.

  “When I was seven, our family situation was bad. My parents were having problems, and my mother needed to get away to go to school in Tempe. The nuns at Topawa helped by offering us the use of a broken-down car, one that wasn’t running. Fat Crack came in that old tow truck of his. It took all day long, but he got the car running again.

  “Leaving the reservation that day was what made it possible for my mother to get her education and for me to get mine. Years later, I was living in Washington, D.C., and I was having troubles with my husband-the same kind of troubles my parents once had. One day, when I barely knew where to turn, Fat Crack showed up and offered me a job-here at home, back on the reservation. When he first offered me the job, I told him no, but as many of you know from personal experience, telling my father-in-law no and making it stick were two very different things.

  “When I came back, my aunt Julia despaired that I’d ever find myself a nice man to marry. Wanda told me that by then, she and Fat Crack had reached much the same conclusions about their two sons, Baby and Leo, who were both confirmed bachelors. I sometimes wonder if Fat Crack didn’t shake a few feathers at us or do the Peace Smoke, because Baby and Christine are married now; so are Leo and I.”

  A wave of gentle but approving laughter washed around the room. When it died down, Delia resumed. “Gigh Tahpani was a medicine man. He didn’t really want the job, but he took it. He was careful about it and serious. Over the years he and I had our disagreements, but he was a good man-an honorable man. I will miss him every day from now on.”

  To the sound of polite applause, Delia stepped down from the podium. As she returned to her seat, Leo reached out and patted her knee appreciatively. At the same time, Lani Walker stepped up to the lectern. Lani was everything Delia wasn’t right then. Lani was young and slim and lovely. Delia felt old, fat, pregnant, and very, very jealous. What right did Lani have to stand up in public and pretend
that she, too, was a member of the Ortiz family?

  “My name is Lani Walker. When I was a baby, Wanda Ortiz saved my life. Later, when I was adopted, Gigh Tahpani and Wanda became my godparents.”

  Delia had heard the story of the Ant-Bit Child and how Wanda and Gabe Ortiz had helped arrange the baby’s unorthodox adoption when Lani’s own blood relatives, regarding the child as a dangerous object, had refused to take her. No doubt many of the people in the gym that afternoon remembered the story as well, but none of them stirred. They listened with rapt attention.

  “Later,” Lani continued, “when I needed a medicine man, Fat Crack stayed beside me during a very difficult time. Like Delia, I’m glad so many people came here today to honor him and, again like Delia, I will miss him forever.”

  Delia watched as Lani returned to her seat in the second row, looking poised and lovely and totally at ease. There was nothing Lani had said with which Delia could find fault. She had made no inappropriate claims of kinship, nor had she wallowed in a public display of grief, but the very fact that she had spoken at all still rankled. For a few moments, Delia herself had glimpsed part of what made Lani special-the very thing that Fat Crack had valued about her, and yet…

  As applause for Lani’s comments died away and someone else made his way to the lectern, Leo touched Delia’s knee. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  Delia nodded, but for some reason she was unable to speak. In spite of herself, she was beginning to see how her father-in-law had exerted the same kind of influence on Lani’s life as he had on Delia’s. Maybe Lani did have the right to be at the funeral, speaking and grieving. Maybe Delia herself was wrong.

  “I’m okay,” she said, but by then she was giving way to tears. As the next speaker began, Delia leaned on Leo’s shoulder and let him comfort her.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s all right.” But Delia wasn’t convinced. She suspected that by shedding tears in public she had let her father-in-law down one last time. With Fat Crack dead, there would be no way for Delia to redress the wrong she had done him.