Kiss the Bees bw-2

by J. A. Jance

  "Later on, when the song quit working and I was scared again, a bat came to me in the dark. It touched my skin and taught me not to be afraid of the darkness. The bat showed me how the darkness could work against the evil Ohb. The next time I sang after that, the song wasn't Nana Dahd' s anymore. It was my own song, Davy, but it worked the same way hers did. You believe that, too, don't you?"

  "Yes," Davy Ladd said. "I do believe it."

  For a time he looked off across the wide expanse of desert. "It's happened, hasn't it, Kulani O'oks," he added quietly, with a rueful smile that was, at the same time, both happy and sad. "You've become Medicine Woman, Lani, just like the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, just as Nana Dahd said you would. I guess it's time I got her medicine basket out of safekeeping and gave it to you."

  "Her medicine basket?" Lani asked.

  Davy nodded. "She gave it to me the day she died," he answered. "But only to keep it until you were ready. Until it was time for you to come into your own."

  Davy watched Lani's face. He expected her to brighten-to be his little sister again, delighted by some unexpected surprise. Instead, she frowned. He reached out to her, but she drew away from him.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "I have killed an enemy," she said. "I will need to undergo e lihmhun in order to be purified. While I am here alone for sixteen days, I'll have plenty of time to make my own medicine basket. There are only two things from Nana Dahd' s basket that I would like to have-the scalp bundle and that single broken piece of Understanding Woman's pottery. The rest of it should go to you, Davy, to Nana Dahd' s little Olhoni."

  Davy Ladd ducked his head to hide his tears. "Thank you," he said.

  The first glimpse Brandon Walker had of his future daughter-in-law, Candace Waverly, she was on her hands and knees, huddled close to Quentin Walker's badly injured body. With her face close to his, she was comforting him as best she could while they waited for the med-evac helicopter to show up and fly him off the mountain.

  Brandon Walker and Brock Kendall had left the charco and were heading for Gates Pass when the call came telling them that Lani had been found. The Pima County dispatcher reported that Lani was all right but that Brandon's son, Quentin, had been severely injured.

  When it came time to climb Ioligam, the months of woodcutting served Brandon Walker well. He might have been fifty-five years old and considered over the hill by some, but he scampered up the steep mountainside without breaking a sweat, leaving Brock Kendall in the dust.

  "Who are you?" Brandon demanded, looking down at the young woman crouched beside Quentin. He immediately assumed that she was somehow connected to the injured man. "And what the hell has this son of a bitch done to his sister?"

  "You must be Mr. Walker," Candace said.

  Brandon nodded.

  "I'm Candace Waverly," she said. "Your son David's fiancee. Quentin wanted me to give you a message. He said to tell you that he didn't kill Tommy. He said it was an accident, that Tommy fell in a hole in the cave. By the time Quentin was finally able to get him out, Tommy was dead. Quentin didn't tell anyone what really happened because he was sure people would think it was all his fault."

  "Tommy?" a winded Brock Kendall gasped as he finally reached the limestone outcropping. "I thought we were here about Lani. What's this about Tommy?"

  All the way out from Tucson, Brandon Walker had agonized over how he would treat his son, over what he would say. As a father, how could he forgive Quentin for hurting Lani? And now there was responsibility for Tommy as well?

  Brandon's legs folded under him. He dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands. This was too much-way too much. More than he could stand.

  "Dear God in heaven, Quentin," Brandon Walker sobbed. "How could you do it? How could you?"

  "Take it easy, Mr. Walker," Brian Fellows murmured, appearing out of nowhere and placing a comforting hand on Brandon's heaving shoulder. "Quentin didn't do it. He didn't take Lani, and he didn't hurt her."

  Brandon quieted almost instantly. "He didn't? Who did then? Who's responsible for all this?"

  "The man's name is Mitch Johnson," Brian answered.

  "Mitch Johnson!" Brandon exclaimed. It took only seconds for the name to register. "The guy I put away years ago for shooting up those illegals?"

  "That's the one."

  "Where is the son of a bitch? I'll kill him myself."

  "You don't have to," Brian said softly. "I think Lani already did it for you."

  Pima County Detective Dan Leggett was used to calling the shots when it came to conducting interviews. He would have preferred talking to Lani Walker in the air-conditioned splendor of the visiting FBI agent's Lincoln Town Car, but the medicine man-the one Brandon Walker called Fat Crack-refused to let the girl come down off the mountain. Ioligam was well inside reservation boundaries. The road where the Town Car was parked was not. Short of escorting Lani down to the car at gunpoint, Leggett wasn't going to get her to leave.

  And so the detective took himself up the mountain to her. He found Lani and Fat Crack sitting together off to one side of the entrance to the cave. Lani was still wrapped in a blanket, as though the increasing heat of the day still hadn't penetrated to the chilled marrow of her bones. She sat watching in somber silence while several deputies trudged down the mountainside lugging the stretcher holding the crushed earthly remains of one Mitch Johnson.

  Detective Leggett was still mildly irritated with Mr. Tribal Chairman, Gabe Ortiz. After all, it was the medicine man's message, sent via his wife, that had pulled Brandon Walker, Brock Kendall, and a number of other operatives off on an early-morning wild-goose chase to Rattlesnake Skull Charco. As a police officer, Leggett didn't put much stock in medicine men even if Ortiz's prediction of where they would eventually find Lani Walker had been off target by a mere mile or two.

  "If you'd excuse us for a little while," Detective Leggett said to Gabe Ortiz, "I'll need to ask Miss Walker a few questions now."

  Lani motioned for Gabe to stay where he was. "I'd like Mr. Ortiz to stay," she said.

  "If Mr. Ortiz were your attorney, of course, he'd be welcome to stay, but I'm afraid regulations don't make any provisions for medicine men…"

  "I'm not an attorney, but I am the tribal chairman and this is tribal land," Gabe Ortiz said with quiet but unmistakable authority. "I am here as Lani's elder and as her spiritual adviser. Since this is my jurisdiction, if she wants me to stay, I stay."

  Leggett may not have been much of an advocate of ethnic diversity when it came to medicine men, but the words "tribal chairman" struck a responsive chord.

  "Of course," he said agreeably, turning back to Lani. "Since Miss Walker wants you here, you're more than welcome to stay."

  The interview, conducted in the full glare of what was now midday sun, took an hour and a half. When it was over, Dan Leggett's shirt and trousers were soaked through with sweat, and he was so parched he could barely talk. Lani still sat swathed in her blanket.

  Despite her ordeal, Lani answered his questions with a poise that was surprising to see in someone so young. She responded to simple and complex questions alike with calm clarity. Her harrowing version of Mitch Johnson's physical assault with the kitchen tongs was enough to make Leggett feel half sick, but Lani recounted her ordeal without seeming to be affected by what she was saying. Her steadiness made Leggett wonder if she was really as fine as she claimed or if, perhaps, she might still be suffering from shock.

  "That's about it," he said, closing his notebook after the last of his questions. "I think we probably should get you into town and have you checked out by a doctor."

  "No," Gabe Ortiz said firmly. "Lani has killed an enemy. She can't go to town. She has to stay out here by herself, away from her village and family, until she finishes undergoing the purification ceremony."

  "How long will that take?" Leggett asked, imagining as he did so an evening's worth of cedar drumming.

  "Sixteen days," Gabe Ortiz answered.
>
  "Sixteen days? Even though it's most likely self-defense, there'll have to be an inquest or maybe even a preliminary hearing."

  "They will have to wait for the sixteen days," Gabe Ortiz told him.

  Leggett looked around at the empty desert. "She's going to stay here? In the middle of nowhere?"

  Ortiz nodded. "I've already sent my son off to pick up a tent and whatever other supplies she may need. I myself will bring her food and water. Her wounds will be treated in the traditional way."

  For the first time in the whole process, Lani Walker's eyes filled with tears. "Thank you," she said.

  Diana met Brandon at the door when he came home from the hospital late that evening. "Is Quentin going to make it?"

  Brandon paused long enough to hang his keys up on the Peg-Board. "Probably," he said.

  "And the bones?"

  Brandon sank down beside the table and Diana brought him a glass of iced tea. "I called Dr. Sam," he said. "He ran the dental profile through his computer. The bones they found at Rattlesnake Skull belong to Tommy, all right."

  Dr. Sam was short for Swaminathan Narayanamurty, a professor of biometrics at the University of Arizona. Together Dr. Sam and Brandon Walker had come up with the idea of amassing a database of dental records on reported Missing Persons from all over the country. Brandon Walker's effective lobbying before a national meeting of the Law Enforcement and Security Administrators had enabled Dr. Sam to gain some key seed money funding years earlier. That initial grant had grown into a demonstration project.

  During the election campaign, Bill Forsythe had brought that project up, implying that Brandon's interest in the project had been based on personal necessity because of his own son's unexplained disappearance rather than on sound law enforcement practices. Personal or not, the connection had been strong enough that on this warm summer Sunday, Dr. Sam had been only too happy to interrupt a week-long stay in a cabin on Mount Lemmon to run the profile of the skull Dan Leggett had retrieved from Rattlesnake Skull Charco.

  "Detective Leggett says he thinks Quentin was in the process of moving the bones out of the cave for fear Johnson would see them, when Manny Chavez stumbled into the area. Quentin must have panicked and attacked the man."

  "I'm sorry," Diana said. "About Quentin and Tommy."

  "Don't be sorry about Tommy," Brandon told her. "At least we know now that it was over quickly for him, that he didn't suffer. It's closure, Di. It's something I've lain awake nights worrying about for years."

  The doorbell rang. "Oh, for God's sake," Brandon grumbled irritably. "Who can that be now?"

  A moment later, a sunburned Candace Waverly appeared in the kitchen doorway. "It's Detective Leggett," she said. "He was wondering if he could see you two for a few minutes."

  Wearily, Brandon rubbed his whisker-stubbled chin. "Sure," he said. "Send him on in."

  "Sorry to bother you," the detective said, placing a worn Hartmann briefcase on the kitchen table. "I know you've both had a terrible two days of it, but I wanted to stop by and show you some of this before I turn it over to the property folks."

  Opening the case, he pulled out a pair of latex gloves. While he was putting them on, Diana glanced at the loose piece of paper-a faxed copy of a mug shot-that lay fully exposed in the open briefcase. A sharp intake of breath caused both men to look at her with some concern as all color drained from her face.

  "Diana, what's the matter?" Brandon demanded. "What's wrong?"

  Diana's hand trembled as she reached out and picked up the paper. "It's him," she moaned. "Dear God in heaven, it is him!"

  The paper fluttered out of Diana's hand. Brandon caught it in midair and studied it himself. "That's Mitch Johnson, all right," he said.

  "It may be Mitch Johnson, but it's Monty Lazarus, too," Diana whispered. "He looked older and he wore a red wig, but I'd recognize him anywhere."

  "Monty Lazarus!" Brandon repeated. "The reporter who interviewed you?"

  "Yes."

  Confused, Detective Leggett looked from husband to wife. "Who the hell is Monty Lazarus?" he asked.

  Brandon put both hands protectively on Diana's shoulders before he answered. "The publicity department at Diana's New York publisher set her up to do an in-depth interview yesterday with someone named Monty Lazarus who was supposedly a stringer with several important magazines. Except it turns out he isn't a stringer at all. He isn't even a writer. He's Mitch Johnson, ex-con, somebody who vowed that he'd get me one day for sending him up."

  Leggett shook his head. "It's actually worse than that," he said. "These are documents I've just now removed from Mitch Johnson's motor home out on Coleman Road."

  Saying that, he handed Diana Walker a pair of gloves and a pair of manuscript boxes. One was packed to overflowing while the other was less than half-full.

  "You might want to take a look at these, Mrs. Walker, but put on gloves before you do it. Fingerprints and all. Meantime, Brandon, there's something I need to show you out in the car."

  Brandon Walker followed Leggett out to the driveway where the detective popped the trunk on his Ford Taurus. There, illuminated in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, lay Mitch Johnson's awful charcoal nude of Dolores Lanita Walker.

  "Where did this god-awful thing come from?" Brandon choked.

  "From Mitch Johnson's motor home," Kendall answered. "I smuggled it out. Along with this one, too." He took out a second sketch, one of Quentin Walker. "Neither one of these is on any of the evidence lists. I brought them here so you'd have a chance to get rid of them."

  "Thank you, Dan," Brandon Walker said gratefully. "I'll take care of them right away."

  With Brandon carrying Lani's picture by the corners, holding it as though it were the rancid carcass of some long-dead thing, and with Dan Leggett lugging the sketch of Quentin, the two men walked into the backyard. There Brandon grabbed an armload of chopped firewood from his never-ending stack and threw several branches into the barbecue grill. Minutes later, the two offending pictures had been reduced to a pile of paper-thin ashes.

  "That's that," Brandon said, dusting soot from his hands and onto his pant legs.

  "There are two other pictures," Dan Leggett said quietly.

  "Of Lani and Quentin?"

  "No," Leggett said somberly. "If there are others of them, we haven't found them yet. The two pictures I'm talking about are of someone else. They're titled 'Before' and 'After.' "

  "They're both of the same man," Leggett replied. "Before and after a murder. Unless I'm sadly mistaken, the victim will turn out to be Mitch Johnson's ex-wife's second husband. That big-time developer who got carved up down in Nogales a few months back."

  "Larry Wraike?" Brandon Walker croaked in surprise. "But I thought a prostitute did that."

  "So did everybody else," Leggett replied. "Me included."

  The two men went back inside. In the kitchen they found Diana sifting through a stack of papers. Her haunted eyes met Brandon's the moment he stepped into the room.

  "Fat Crack was right," she said. "The danger did come from my book."

  "What do you mean?" Brandon asked.

  "Some of this is Andrew Carlisle's personal diary, Brandon," she told him, holding back the single detail that some of the passages had been addressed directly to her, that even back in 1988, Carlisle had intended that someday Diana Ladd Walker would read what he had written.

  "Carlisle and Mitch Johnson were cellmates for years up in Florence," Diana continued. "It's all here in black and white. It started the first day when I went to Florence to interview Carlisle for the book. That's when Carlisle found out Quentin was up there, too. They targeted him that very day, Brandon. They set him up, and that's what this whole thing is about-revenge. Andrew Carlisle was still after me and Mitch Johnson was after you. Lani was the perfect way to get to us both. And that's not all."

  "Not all?" Brandon echoed. "How could there be more?"

  "This," Diana said. She held up what seemed to be the title page of
a manuscript.

  "What is it?" Brandon asked.

  "Do you remember when Garrison died I told you the manuscript he was working on disappeared?"

  Brandon nodded.

  "This is it," Diana said. "I recognized the typeface from his old Smith-Corona the moment I saw it. It's called A Death Before Dying. It's supposedly a work of fiction about a college instructor-a handsome man-presumably happily married to a lovely wife. Gary didn't have sense enough to change things very much. The husband taught freshman English; the wife was an elementary school teacher."

  "So?" Brandon asked a little impatiently. "I've heard you say yourself that first novels are always autobiographical."

  Diana nodded. "They are, and there was an ugly secret running just below the surface of this one. All the while the teacher thinks she's happily married, the husband is carrying on with another professor-a male professor. Believe me, it's a very special relationship to which the young wife proves to be an unyielding obstacle."

  "You're saying Garrison and Carlisle had something going, something sexual?"

  Diana nodded. "I think so," she said.

  "That would make sense then," Brandon said. "It would certainly explain some of the hold Carlisle wielded over the man."

  "Some of it," Diana agreed. "The kicker is here, though, on the very last page. The last written page because the manuscript is clearly incomplete. The last scene is mostly a dialogue between the two men. They're sitting in a bar, talking. Planning exactly how they're going to unload the inconvenient presence of that meddlesome wife."

  "You?" Brandon asked.

  Diana nodded. Her voice sounded far more self-possessed than she felt. "If I had gone to the dance with them that night," she said, "my guess is I would have been the one who died at Rattlesnake Skull Charco, not Gina Antone."

  For sixteen days and nights Lani Walker stayed in the tent Baby and Fat Crack Ortiz had erected for her near the base of Ioligam. She spent her days weaving a rectangular medicine basket. When it was finished, the lid fit perfectly. Lani held it up to the light and studied the final product with no small satisfaction. It was not as well done as one of Nana Dahd' s own baskets, but it would do.