Day of the Dead

by J. A. Jance

  But by then Gayle had already hopped out of bed. She pulled on clothing without taking her usual detour through the master bedroom’s spacious shower.

  “What, then?” she continued. “You probably want to go find some sweet little twat to have babies with! From what I’ve heard, having babies is vastly overrated.”

  Gayle’s words bristled with so much hostility that Erik couldn’t bring himself to say she was right. In the face of her fury he couldn’t admit that having a regular life—with a home and a wife and a couple of kids, and maybe even a dog—was exactly what he wanted.

  As Gayle strode down the hallway, buttoning her blouse, Erik went after her. “Come on,” he said. “Why are you so upset?”

  She rounded on him so suddenly that he almost smashed into her. “Why?” she demanded. “If you’re not smart enough to figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

  He caught up with her when she stopped in the kitchen long enough to slip on the high heels she had shucked off when she came in through the garage earlier in the afternoon.

  “Please, Gayle,” Erik pleaded, touching her shoulder. “Don’t do this. It’s all a misunderstanding.”

  She shrugged out from under his hand. “Misunderstanding?” she asked, glaring up at him. “I don’t think so. I read you loud and clear!”

  When they were in the bedroom—hers or his—she was always careful to keep the blinds closed and the lights properly dimmed. But out here in the kitchen with its bright fluorescent lighting and with anger distorting her features, the lines a team of skilled plastic surgeons usually kept at bay were clearly visible. Seeing them Erik realized suddenly that Gayle Stryker was old—old and shrill and very, very angry.

  Once she sped out of the garage, Erik’s first reaction was relief. This wasn’t how he would have chosen to end their relationship, but ending it was probably a good idea—if he ever was going to have a chance at a “normal” life. But then, after the first shock wore off, Erik realized how much else would be ending as well—his love life, his job, his company car. Those were all irretrievably intermingled. His involvement with Gayle affected every aspect of his life. Walking away from her meant walking away from everything else.

  When that realization hit him, he tried calling her cell phone—the one on a family-plan program that he and Gayle shared and where the bill never showed up at the offices of Medicos for Mexico. Erik called several times. She never answered, and he didn’t leave a message.

  Erik had spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how he would manage in a Gayle Stryker–free world. The future had looked pretty bleak and dismal to him in those black predawn hours. Now, reduced to almost crawling back down the mountain on his hands and knees, it looked even worse.

  Twelve

  Brandon sat in the Suburban outside the supermarket, watching people come and go, as he waited for Andrea Tashquinth to get off work. The more he thought about losing Fat Crack, the sadder he became. There had been many losses in Brandon Walker’s life, and no matter how many times it happened, dealing with the loss never became any easier.

  In giving Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch to Lani, Gabe Ortiz was passing a torch that possibly had been handed down from one medicine man to another stretching all the way back to that ancient medicine woman, Kulani O’oks.

  Brandon was a born and bred Mil-gahn. Try as he might, he could never quite reconcile in his mind how Fat Crack Ortiz could be both a devout Christian Scientist and a powerful medicine man. Was the same thing true for Lani? How could she possibly return to the Tohono O’odham Nation as a full-fledged physician and also as a medicine woman? Yet neither Fat Crack nor Lani seemed to have any doubt that these two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas would someday become reality.

  Brandon understood why Fat Crack had entrusted the medicine pouch to his old friend. He was saying good-bye. It meant Fat Crack knew he was dying. And what exactly am I supposed to do about it? Brandon wondered.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Much to his surprise, he had a full signal. He could call Lani right then if he wanted to, but should he? If that’s what Fat Crack had wanted—if he expected Lani to hurry home to be with him—wouldn’t he have said so?

  In the end, Brandon put the phone back in his pocket and continued to mull over what had transpired. Why, for instance, was Fat Crack so troubled that Delia and Lani weren’t friends?

  Brandon had never given much thought to Delia. He knew she was the tribal attorney. He knew, too, that she had married Fat Crack’s younger son, Leo. Wanda had told Diana something about a family squabble that had resulted in Leo and Delia’s moving out of the Ortiz Compound and into what had once been Delia’s aunt Julia’s place in Little Tucson. Wanda had been heartbroken about it, especially considering that Delia was even then pregnant with this boy child who would be the first grandson to carry on the Ortiz name.

  Thinking back on the pained expression on Fat Crack’s face when he had mentioned Delia and Lani, Brandon wondered if perhaps the breach within the Ortiz family had something to do with the Walkers. Maybe that was the reason Fat Crack had wanted to be certain Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch went to Lani.

  I’ll be sure she gets it, Brandon vowed as he opened the glove box and placed the medicine pouch inside.

  When he looked up again, Andrea Tashquinth was standing outside the supermarket’s sliding door and surveying the parking lot. Brandon slammed the glove box shut and locked it. Then he opened the door to the Suburban, motioned Andrea inside, and went to work.

  Larry Stryker woke up from his unintended nap and was surprised to see how much time had passed. The beer in the bottom of the bottle was too warm to drink. Looking at his watch, he sighed. Larry was tired. The morning heat had taken it out of him. Tomorrow he’d tell Al that he was through with golf for the summer. It was too damned hot to play.

  For two cents he would have retreated to his room right then, undressed, and gone to bed. Still, tired as he was, he really did need to go downstairs and feed her. Whatever else Larry had in mind, he had no intention of starving the girl.

  Had Gayle dropped by, he might have risen to the occasion and done something more creative, as he usually did on Saturday afternoons, but Gayle continued to be so besotted with Erik LaGrange that her showing up wasn’t likely. To Gayle’s credit, she didn’t flaunt her boy toys around Larry, and he was grateful for that. He was also grateful for what few crumbs of attention she deigned to give him now and then.

  He went into the kitchen and dropped a hamburger patty into a dirty frying pan. Tired as he was, he found himself looking forward to the feeding. What was this one’s name again? He liked to call them by name occasionally, but in order to remember, he’d have to check in his most recent notebook. He kept a record of each girl’s name there, along with a set of her photos.

  Down in the basement, this one would smell the meat frying. She’d be expecting the food and dreading it at the same time, but today she had nothing to fear. Physically Larry wasn’t up for anything more than watching her eat. He’d often let the girls go hungry for a while—twenty-four hours was just about right. When they were that famished, watching them eat was a real turn-on. He particularly liked the greedy way this one tore into her food. Even though he knew she didn’t want it and would have preferred to starve herself to death, but when she was hungry enough, she couldn’t help herself, either.

  It intrigued him that all the girls seemed to have one thing in common: they were terribly self-conscious about eating in front of him. It was almost as though having him observe them eat made them forget how to perform the simple mechanical functions of chewing and swallowing. He wondered sometimes if their shyness was due to the fact that he was watching, or if it was because they were always naked when they ate—they were naked and he wasn’t.

  Once, before he began relying on the premade hamburger patties, one of them had choked on a chunk of gristle in the piece of meat he had given her. She had choked and gagged a
nd finally spit it out, but he had forced her to eat it anyway. She had chewed and chewed and chewed for what seemed forever before she was finally able to choke it down. That was the ultimate power over someone—to know you could, if you wanted, force them to eat their own vomit.

  That was actually what Larry liked most—having them fear him. The more his girls tried not to submit, the better he liked it. When he was with Gayle, she was the one who called the shots, but that was about her needs, not his. In the basement, he was the one in control, but even there Gayle held the ultimate veto power. She would arbitrarily change girls on him. Just when he had one trained the way he wanted, Gayle would take her away. Then he’d have to do without until she came up with a replacement. Fortunately there was always a new girl available. Gayle would make a few inquiries, and within days or weeks, a new one would appear, drawn from the plentiful stock to be found at one of the many detention centers served by Medicos for Mexico.

  Larry wondered sometimes about that first girl in Mazatlán—the one Gayle had served to him with her limbs bound by Gayle’s own brightly colored scarves. After her “session,” the girl had been given money and food and sent on her way, but all that had happened while Larry was in the shower. Gayle told him she had helped the girl dress and had taken her home, but now, given what had happened to the ones who had followed in her footsteps, Larry doubted that was true. The way Daniella was starting out—Larry had no difficulty remembering her name—she most likely would have turned into a two-bit whore. Gayle had probably done the little slut an enormous favor by putting her out of her misery before she had a chance to grow up. As for the girls since then? For them, too, growing up had never been in the cards.

  Carrying the plate of food—the hamburger patty, a spoonful of cold refried beans, and a chunk of stale tortilla—Larry went to the basement door and unlocked it with the key he always carried on his belt. As soon as the door opened, he knew something was different. The emptiness of the place blew up around him—along with a coppery telltale odor he recognized at once. Even before he started down the stairs, he knew what to expect. Still, he was astonished by the carnage Gayle had left in her wake.

  Usually when this happened, Larry had done something wrong. Either he’d made some kind of blunder at work or done something Gayle didn’t approve of, and this was her way of punishing him for it. She never told him in advance when she was going to rob him of his latest plaything, and she never did it while he was home. Gayle would come to the house, use her own keys to gain access, and then leave the mess for him to find—and clear away—on his own.

  Shaking his head, Larry returned to the kitchen and dumped the food into the garbage. Then he went out to the garage for the power washer he would need to take the bloodstains off the basement’s polished concrete floors and walls.

  When she murdered Roseanne Orozco, Gayle Stryker had been cleaning up after her husband. One way or another, Larry had been cleaning up after Gayle ever since.

  Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz sat in the warm sun and considered his life. By Tohono O’odham standards, he had lived to a ripe old age—seventy-two. More and more he was thinking about what Looks at Nothing had once told him.

  “I have lost my sight,” S’ab Neid Pi Has had told his new protégé as they raced toward Diana Ladd’s Gates Pass home in Fat Crack’s speeding tow truck. “I have not lost my vision.”

  Only lately had he begun to have a partial understanding of what had happened eight years earlier, when Delia’s great-aunt Julia Joaquin had come to see him. As one of the movers and shakers in the village of Little Tucson, the old woman was ushered into the tribal chairman’s office with appropriate ceremony. Fat Crack had greeted her formally and in their native language. He’d been prepared for a certain amount of small talk, but Julia got straight to the point.

  “Do you remember my sister’s daughter, Ellie Chavez?” Julia asked. “And her little girl, Delia?”

  Fat Crack had closed his eyes and remembered that little girl with her luminous brown eyes, watching him from the shadows of Sister Justine’s garage as he labored to put the dead Falcon back together. He remembered how, later on, he had heard that Ellie Chavez had finally divorced her husband about the same time she graduated from college. He had also heard rumors that she’d taken a rich Anglo woman to be her lover, but Gabe Ortiz paid little attention to gossip.

  “I remember them both,” he said. “I knew them when Ellie was leaving to go to school—left and didn’t come back.”

  Julia frowned. “Things were bad between her and Manny. When one of the sisters from Topawa found a way for Ellie to go to college, she didn’t want to miss the chance. I lost track of Ellie years ago, but I’ve stayed in touch with Delia. Her mother has a doctorate now and lives somewhere back east.”

  “And Delia?” Fat Crack asked. “The last I heard she was going to law school.”

  Julia Joaquin nodded. “She works for the BIA in Washington, D.C.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Fat Crack said. “We need good Indian lawyers in Washington.”

  “I’m worried about her, though,” Julia said. “I’m afraid something’s wrong. She’s married now, to that Philip Cachora.”

  “Philip Cachora?” Fat Crack repeated. “From Vamori?”

  “From Vamori originally,” Julia said. “He met Delia at some fancy party in Washington.”

  Gabe Ortiz closed his eyes and considered the odds against such a thing happening. The idea that two people born a few miles apart on the same Arizona Indian reservation would meet, fall in love, and marry in a big city on the far side of the continent seemed highly unlikely.

  “Philip Cachora has been gone for a long time, too.”

  “Even longer than Delia,” Julia Joaquin agreed. “He went off to Santa Fe to become an artist. And I guess he did, too.”

  “Why are you worried?” Fat Crack asked.

  “She doesn’t say anything, but her letters are different now,” Julia said. “And since you’re going to Washington…”

  When she mentioned that, Fat Crack finally understood part of the reason for Julia Joaquin’s visit to his office. Tohono O’odham tribal chairman Gabe Ortiz, along with leaders from several other reservations in the Western states, was due to attend an Indian gaming conference to be held in Washington, D.C., the following month.

  “She might not appreciate my interference,” Fat Crack said uneasily.

  “I don’t expect you to do anything,” Julia said quickly. “But I thought if you could just see her, maybe you could tell me if she’s okay.”

  And that’s when he understood the rest of it. The tribal council was sending the tribal chairman on a mission to Washington. Julia Joaquin was sending a medicine man.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. How do I reach her?”

  Julia reached in her pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it over. On it was a street address but no phone number.

  That was why, a month later, late in the day, Fat Crack found himself standing on Kalorama Street in front of a three-story walk-up. The information operator had informed him that the telephone number for Philip Cachora was unlisted, leaving Fat Crack no choice but to show up unannounced on Delia and Philip’s doorstep.

  Approaching the door of the building, Fat Crack rang the bell next to their name and waited for several minutes. Finally, when he was about to walk away, a disembodied male voice spoke through an intercom. “Yes?”

  If this was Philip Cachora, his voice was strangely slurred. “Is Delia here?” Fat Crack asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Gabe Ortiz—a friend of hers from back home.”

  “I don’t remember her mentioning you.”

  “She might have known me as Fat Crack.”

  “Fat Crack?” Philip repeated slowly. “The guy with the tow truck?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just a minute. I’ll be right down.”

  Less than a minute lat
er, the front door opened. A slight young man—a blond teenager—burst out of the doorway and then hurried down the street at a half-trot, shoving in his shirttail as he went. A full minute later, another figure appeared at the door—this one recognizably Tohono O’odham.

  Philip Cachora was a burly man in his midforties. He exhibited all the obvious traits of an urban Indian gone to seed. He stepped outside the front door and pulled it closed behind him. When he let go of the door, Philip stumbled and faltered. He had to place one hand on the building’s outside wall to steady himself. His breath reeked of beer. The distinctive odor of marijuana clung to his hair and clothing.

  “Delia’s not home,” he muttered.

  “When do you expect her?”

  Reflexively, Philip glanced at his watch, then shrugged. “Don’ know,” he mumbled thickly. “After. She’s at a meeting somewhere.”

  Philip Cachora had been away from the reservation for a long time, but time and distance had yet to strip him of his distinctively Tohono O’odham manner of speech. “Why’dya want her?”

  There was more than a hint of belligerence in his voice. Fat Crack Ortiz had dealt with enough pissed-off drunks to read the signals and be wary. Philip was two decades younger and much heavier than him. That didn’t make Philip tougher than Fat Crack, but it did make him dangerous.

  Without having to be told, Fat Crack knew much of what was going on. It made him sad. All those years ago, Ellie Chavez had taken her young children and fled her abusive husband. By doing so she must have hoped to save them all. Despite Ellie’s best efforts, her daughter had married a man much like her own father. No wonder her letters to Julia Joaquin had changed. She was probably too embarrassed to admit that she was repeating her mother’s mistakes.

  “I was thinking about offering her a job,” Fat Crack replied.

  In actual fact, he hadn’t been thinking about it until the words burst unbidden from his mouth. He had known for months that Elias Segundo, the current tribal attorney, was thinking about retiring due to ill health. It wouldn’t have been right to start a job search for his replacement before Elias was ready, but now…