by J. A. Jance
“It’s great, all right,” David Ladd muttered while that post-coital pink haze disintegrated into a million pieces around him. He managed to infuse the words with a whole lot more enthusiasm than he felt, although “great” wasn’t exactly the word he would have chosen.
“And I love the ring,” Candace continued. “It’s gorgeous.”
“I’m glad you like it” was all David could manage. After all, what else could he say?
After making a quick trip down the Sasabe Road to take a report on a one vehicle/one steer accident in which only the steer had perished, Deputy Brian Fellows stopped off at the Three Points Trading Post to buy himself a much-needed Coke to get him through the rest of his long afternoon shift.
As summer heated up, daytime temperatures on the arid Sonoran Desert made working the night shift suddenly far preferable to working days. One of the local radio stations held an annual contest, offering a prize to the listener who successfully guessed the correct day, time, and hour when the “ice broke on the Santa Cruz.” Loosely translated, that meant the day, hour, and minute the thermometer finally broke one hundred for the year. From that time on, from the moment daytime temperatures crossed that critical century mark until well into September, Brian, along with any number of other low-totem-pole deputies, found himself working straight days.
With school out for the summer, the trading post was full of ten or so kids—two Anglo and the rest Indian—milling around between the banks of shelves. Brian smiled down at them. The Anglos grinned back, while the Indians shied away. The deputy liked little kids, and it hurt his feelings that the Tohono O’othham children were frightened of him. Because he knew some of the language, he tried speaking to them in Tohono O’othham on occasion. That always seemed to spook them that much more. Was it the color of his skin? he wondered. Or was it the uniform? Maybe it was a combination of both.
Back in his county-owned Blazer, he sat looking up and down Highway 86, watching passing vehicles made shimmering and ghostlike by the waves of heat rising off the blacktop. This quiet Saturday afternoon there didn’t seem to be much happening in his patrol area, which covered Highway 86 west from Ryan Field to the boundary of the Tohono O’othham Reservation, and along Highway 286 from Three Points south to Sasabe on the U.S./Mexican border.
It was boom time once again in the Valley of the Sun. Tucson and surrounding areas in Pima County were experiencing a renewed population growth, but this part of the county—the part included in Brian’s patrol area—wasn’t yet overly affected. Sometimes he would be called out to an incident on Sandario Road that led north toward Marana. There he could drive for miles without seeing another human or meeting another vehicle. The same held true for Coleman Road at the base of the Baboquivaris. And the back and forth chatter on the radio seldom had much to do with the area assigned to Deputy Brian Fellows. Those long straight stretches of highway leading to and from the reservation yielded more drunk drivers than other parts of the county. They also had more than a fair share of auto accidents. Those mostly happened at night on weekends.
Brian had been a deputy four full years. Other officers who had come through the academy after him were already starting to move up while Brian was still stuck in what was—in terms of departmental advancement—the equivalent of Outer Mongolia. But Brian was resigned to the fact that it could have been much worse. If Bill Forsythe had wanted to, he could have figured out a way to get rid of Brian Fellows altogether. In fact, considering Brian’s close connection to Brandon Walker, it was a little surprising that the ax hadn’t fallen in the wake of Brandon’s departure.
Still, Brian didn’t dwell on the unfairness of it all. He was too busy being grateful. After all, he was doing what he had always wanted to do—being a cop and following in Brandon Walker’s footsteps. As for the rest? Nothing much mattered. Brian was single and living at home. Taking care of his disabled mother in his off-hours pretty much kept him out of the dating game, so the low pay scale for young deputies didn’t bother him all that much, either.
There were times when Brian was struck by the irony of his position. He was persona non grata with the current administration of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department because of his relationship to the previous sheriff, who was, after all, no blood relation but the father of Brian’s half-brothers.
Tommy and Quentin had been four and five years older than Brian, and they had been the banes of the younger child’s existence. But if it hadn’t been for them, Brian never would have met their father, a man who—more than any other—became Brian’s father as well.
None of the other boys—Davy Ladd included—had ever seemed to pay that much attention to anything Brandon Walker said or did. In fact, they all seemed to be at odds with him much of the time. Not Brian. For him, the former Pima County sheriff, even in defeat, had always been larger than life—the closest thing to a superhero that ever crossed the path of that little fatherless boy.
“How’s it going, Mr. Walker?” Brian Fellows had asked several months earlier, when he had stopped by the house in Gates Pass on his way back from patrol.
Brandon, working outdoors in his shirtsleeves, had looked up to see Brian Fellows, a young man he had known from early childhood on, step out of a Pima County patrol car.
“Okay,” Brandon said gruffly, reaching down to pull out another log of mesquite. “How about you?”
“Pretty good,” Brian replied, although the answer didn’t sound particularly convincing.
“How’s your mother?”
Brian’s mother, Janie Walker Fellows Hitchcock Noonan, had been Brandon Walker’s first wife. Years earlier, when Brian was a sophomore at Tucson High, his mother had been in what should have been a fatality car wreck. She had been paralyzed from the waist down. Janie’s boyfriend du jour—a lush who had actually been at the wheel of the car and who had walked away from the accident without a scratch—had skipped town immediately.
In subsequent years, most of the responsibility for his mother’s care had fallen on Brian’s narrow but capable young shoulders. Some people rise above physical tragedy. Janie Noonan wasn’t one of those. She was a difficult patient. For months she had railed at Brian, telling him that if he didn’t have guts enough to use a gun to put her out of her misery, the least he could do was bring her one so she could do the job herself.
By now Janie was fairly well resigned to her fate. She appreciated the fact that Brian had stayed on, patiently caring for her when most young men, under similar circumstances, would have moved out. That didn’t mean she treated him any better, though. Janie had grown into a helpless tyrant. In the absence of her other two sons, Brian became her sole target, but he was used to that. It seemed to him that his mother had simply taken up the role formerly filled by his older brothers, Quentin and Tommy.
“Nobody likes a Goody Two-shoes,” Quentin had told him on more than one occasion. “They think you’re nothing but a stupid little wimp.”
The difference between Brian Fellows and his best friend, Davy Ladd, was that Davy would usually rise to Quentin’s challenge and fight back, regardless of the bloody-nosed consequences. Brian was a survivor who kept his mouth shut and let the taunts wash over him.
By now, though, at age twenty-six, he was tired of being a “good boy.” He was beginning to see that there wasn’t much percentage in it, although he didn’t really know how to be anything else other than what he was.
“Mom’s about the same,” he said, answering Brandon Walker’s question in a matter-of-fact manner that didn’t brook sympathy.
Looking at this handsome young man in his deputy sheriff’s uniform, Brandon couldn’t help remembering a much younger version of the same young man, a little lost boy who had stood forlornly on the front porch of his ex-wife’s home each time Brandon had come by to pick up his own two sons, Quentin and Tommy.
Brandon no longer remembered where they had been going that day—maybe to a movie, maybe to the Pima County Fair, or maybe even to a baseball game. What he hadn’t forgot
ten was the solemn, sad-eyed look on Brian’s face that had changed instantly to sheer joy the moment Brandon asked him if he wanted to come along.
“You’re not taking him, are you?” Quentin had demanded, his voice quivering in outrage.
Brandon’s older son had a surly streak. Of all the kids, he had always been the sullen one—the spoiled brat with the chip on his shoulder. Janie had seen to that.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Brandon asked.
“Because he’s a pest,” Quentin spat back. “And a baby, too. He’ll probably wet his pants or have to go to the bathroom a million times.”
Brian had wavered on the porch for a moment, as if afraid that Quentin’s argument would carry the day. When Brandon didn’t change his mind, the boy had raced into the house to ask Janie for permission to go along. Moments later, he had come charging back outside.
“She said it’s all right. I can go!” Brian had crowed triumphantly, racing for the car.
“I get to ride shotgun!” Quentin had snarled, but Brian hadn’t cared about that. The backseat was fine with him. At that point he would probably have been grateful to sit in the trunk.
“You’ll take turns,” Brandon had told Quent, trying to instill in him a sense of sharing and fair play. And that was how it worked from then on—the boys had taken turns. But Brandon Walker’s lessons in enforced sharing had been lost on Quentin. Rather than teaching him how to be a better person, Brandon Walker’s kindness to Quentin’s half-brother fostered an ugly case of burning resentment that spanned the whole of Brian Fellows’s childhood.
“How about a cup of coffee or glass of iced tea?” Brandon had asked finally, emerging from a tangled skein of memory. Brian’s face had brightened into almost the same look Brandon remembered from that day on the porch.
“Sure, Mr. Walker,” he responded. “Coffee would be great.”
In all those intervening years, while the other three boys had gone through their various stages of smart-mouthed rebellion, Brian had never called Brandon anything but a respectful “Mr. Walker.”
Shaking his head, Brandon led the way into the house. One of his main regrets at losing the election had been missing the chance to watch this promising young man mature into the outstanding police officer he would someday be. That was something else Quentin had cost him—the opportunity of seeing ‘little’ Brian Fellows grow into Brian Fellows, the man.
“People at the department are asking about you,” the young deputy said, as he settled onto a chair at the kitchen table.
“You don’t say,” Brandon replied gruffly. “Well, go ahead and tell them I’m fine. On second thought, don’t tell them anything at all. If you’re smart and want to get anywhere in Bill Forsythe’s department, you won’t even mention my name, much less let on that you know me.”
After Brandon poured cups of coffee, the two men were quiet for a few moments. Brandon didn’t mean to pry, but in the end he couldn’t resist probing.
“How are things going out there?” he asked. “I mean, how are things at the department really going?”
Brian shrugged. “All right, I guess. But there are lots of people who miss you. Sheriff Forsythe’s”—Brian paused, as if searching for just the right word—“he’s just different, I guess. Different from you, that is,” he finished somewhat lamely.
“You bet he is,” Brandon replied, not even trying to keep the hollow sound of bitterness out of his voice. “The voters in this county wanted different. As far as I can see, they got it.”
Once again the two men fell silent. For a moment Brandon Walker felt vindicated.
A parade of boyfriends and briefly maintained husbands had wandered through Janie’s life and, as a consequence, through the lives of her three sons as well. One of them—Brian no longer remembered which one—had told him that children should be seen but not heard. Brian had taken those words to heart and had turned them into a personal creed. What had once been a necessary tool for surviving Quentin’s casual and constant brutality had become a way of life. Brian Fellows answered questions. He hardly ever volunteered information, although Brandon Walker could tell by looking at him that the young man was clearly troubled about something.
“So what brings you here today?” the older man asked at last.
Brian ducked his head. “Quentin,” he answered.
“What about Quentin?”
“He’s out,” Brian answered. “On parole.”
“Where’s he living?”
“Somewhere in Tucson, I suppose. I don’t know for sure where. He hasn’t come by here, has he?”
Brandon shook his head. “He wouldn’t dare.”
Brian sighed. “He has been by the house a couple of times, wanting money and looking for a place to stay. I had to make him leave, Mr. Walker, and I thought you should know what’s going on.”
“What is going on?” Brandon asked.
Brian swallowed hard. “He came by to hit Mom up for money, for a loan, he called it. She had already written him two checks for a hundred bucks each, before I caught on to what was happening. She can’t afford to be giving him that kind of money. She still has some, but with the nurse and all the medical expenses, it’s not going to last forever. I don’t know what to do.”
“Go to court and get a protection order,” Brandon Walker said at once. “Janie has given you power of attorney so you can handle her affairs, hasn’t she?”
Brian nodded. “Yes.”
“As her conservator, you have a moral and legal obligation to protect her assets.”
With a pained expression on his face, Brian nodded again. “But Quentin’s my brother,” he said.
“And he’s my son,” Brandon replied. “But that doesn’t give him a right to steal from his own mother.”
“So you don’t think I did the wrong thing, by not letting him stay at the house?”
With his heart aching in sympathy, Brandon looked at the troubled young man sitting across from him. “No,” he had said kindly. “I don’t blame you at all, and neither will anyone else. With people like Quentin loose in the world, you have a responsibility to protect yourself. If you can, that is. And believe me, Brian, since I happen to be Quentin’s father, I know that isn’t easy advice to follow.”
Months after that last courtesy visit to Gates Pass, Brian was sitting in his air-conditioned Blazer next to the trading post at Three Points, sipping his Coke and wondering how soon his friend Davy would be home when the call came in over the radio. An INS officer was requesting assistance. The dispatcher read off the officer’s location.
“Highway 86 to Coleman Road. First left after you cross off the reservation. It gets confusing after that. The INS officer says just follow her tracks. You’re looking for a charco.
“By the way,” the dispatcher continued. “Are you four-wheeling it today?”
“That’s affirmative,” Brian said, putting the Blazer in gear.
“Good,” the dispatcher told him. “From the sounds of it, if you weren’t, I’d have to send in another unit.”
With lights flashing and siren blaring, Brian Fellows sped west on Highway 86. At first he didn’t think anything about where he was going. He was simply following directions. It wasn’t until he turned off the highway that he recognized the place as somewhere he had been before. He had gone to that same charco years earlier, the summer Tommy disappeared. The four of them had gone there together—Quentin and Tommy, Davy Ladd and Brian.
By then, though, he was too busy following the tracks to think about it. Kicking up a huge cloud of dust, he wheeled through the thick undergrowth of green mesquite and blooming palo verde. He jolted his way through first one sandy wash—the one where Quentin had gotten stuck—and then through another, all the while following a set of tracks that could only have been left by one of the green Internationals or GMC Suburbans the Immigration and Naturalization Service sends out on patrol around the desert Southwest, collecting illegal aliens and returning them to the border.
Brian spotted the vehicle eventually, an International parked next to the shrine he remembered, Gina Antone’s shrine. The small wooden cross, faded gray now rather than white, sat crookedly in the midst of a scattered circle of river rocks.
Maybe while Davy’s home, Brian thought, parking his Blazer, we can come out here with flowers and candles. We can paint the cross and fix the shrine up the same way we did before.
It was nothing more than a passing thought, though, because right then, Deputy Brian Fellows was working. When he stepped out of the Blazer, there was no sign of life. “Anybody here?” he called.
“Over here,” a woman’s answering voice returned from somewhere in the thick undergrowth. “And if you’ve got any drinking water there with you, bring it along.”
Brian grabbed a gallon jug of bottled water out of the back of the Blazer and then started in the direction of the woman’s voice. “Watch out for the footprints,” she called to him. “You’re probably going to need them.”
Glancing down, Brian saw what she meant. Something heavy had been dragged by hand through the sandy dirt, leaving a deep track. A single set of footprints, heading back toward the charco, overlaid the track. As instructed, Brian Fellows detoured around both as he made his way into a grove of mesquite. Ten yards into the undergrowth he came to a small clearing where a woman in a gray-green uniform was bending over the figure of a man. He lay flat on his back, with his unprotected face fully exposed to the glaring sun. A cloud of flies buzzed overhead.
“What happened?” Brian asked.
The woman looked up at him, her face grim. “Somebody beat the crap out of this guy,” she said.
Brian handed over his jug of water. By then he was close enough to smell the unmistakable stench of evacuated bowels, of urine that reeked of secondhand wine.
“He’s still alive then?” Brian asked.
“So far, but only just barely. I’ve called for a med-evac helicopter, but I don’t think he’s going to make it. He can’t move. Either his back’s broken or he’s suffering from a concussion, I can’t tell which.”