Kiss of the Bees w-2

by J. A. Jance

  Since his election, Sheriff Forsythe had hit Alvin Miller where it hurt the worst—in the budget department, chopping both money and staff. The “automated” part of AFIS sounds good, but the part that precedes the automation—enhancing the prints so the computer can actually scan and analyze them—is a labor-intensive, manual process. Forsythe had cut so far back on staffing the fingerprint lab that it should have been impossible for it to function—would have been impossible—had the lab been left in any hands less capable or dedicated than those of Alvin Miller.

  He worked night and day. He put in his eight hours on the clock and another eight or so besides almost every day, Saturdays and Sundays included. Only forty hours a week went on the clock; a whole lot more than forty were freebies.

  Because Alvin had so much hands-on practice, he was incredibly quick at manually enhancing those prints. He could read volumes into what looked like—to everyone else’s untrained eyes—indecipherable circles and smudges. When it came to fingerprints, Alvin found each was as unique as he’d always heard snowflakes were supposed to be. And once he had dealt with a print, he remembered much of what he saw. Twice now, he had managed to make a hit—fingering a current resident in the Pima County Jail for another unrelated crime before feeding the information into the computer.

  When Carley Fielding, Pima County’s weekend lab tech, called earlier that evening to see what she should do with the three boxes of bones Detective Leggett wanted printed, Alvin Miller happened to be in and working. Lifting fingerprints off human bones was nothing Alvin had ever done before. The prospect was interesting enough to take him away from whatever he had been working on before.

  It turned out that bones were easy to process. It didn’t take long for Alvin to figure out that more than one person had handled the bones. Some had done so with gloves on, but only one had handled them bare-handed. Alvin sorted through one set of dusted prints after another until he was convinced that he had found the best possible one.

  That was where he was when his phone rang. “Al?” a familiar voice asked. “What the hell are you still doing there working at this time of night?”

  “Sheriff Walker!” Alvin Miller exclaimed. A pleased smile spread over his face as he recognized his former boss’s voice. “How’s it going?”

  “Not all that good. I need some help.”

  “Hey, if there’s something I can do,” Al Miller told him, “you’ve got it.”

  “I know,” Brandon Walker said. “And as it turns out, there is something you can do, Al, because I just happen to have a houseful of fingerprints that need to be lifted.”

  “What house?” Alvin Miller asked.

  “Mine.”

  “The same one you lived in before? The one out in Gates Pass?”

  “That’s it. But I don’t want to get you in trouble with your new boss by taking you away from something important.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alvin Miller said with a grin. “My new boss isn’t going to say a word. As far as Bill Forsythe and his damned time clock are concerned, I’m not even working tonight. That being the case, I can come and go as I damned well please. See you in twenty minutes or so, give or take.”

  Once Brandon was off the phone with Alvin Miller, Diana took her turn and tried dialing the number Davy had left on his message. She was surprised when a faraway desk clerk told her that she had dialed the Ritz-Carlton. She was even more surprised when the voice of a sleep-dulled young woman answered the phone. Moments later Davy’s voice came through the receiver as well.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  Just hearing her son speak brought Diana close to tears. She had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could answer. “Not all that well at the moment,” she said. “Lani’s missing.”

  “What?” Davy asked.

  “Lani’s gone,” Diana said bleakly.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean she’s not here. She never showed for that concert with Jessica, and she didn’t show up for work today, either.”

  “Maybe she went to visit somebody else. Have you checked with her other friends?”

  “We’re checking,” Diana said, “but I thought you’d want to know what was going on.”

  “You don’t think she’s been kidnapped, or something, do you?” Davy demanded. “Shouldn’t somebody contact the FBI?”

  “Brandon is handling it.”

  “What can I do to help?” Davy asked urgently.

  “Nothing much, for right now,” Diana answered. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Are you and Dad going to be all right?”

  Diana felt herself choking on the phone. “We’ll be okay,” she said. “But hurry home. Hurry as fast as you can. And call every night so we can keep you posted.”

  “I will,” Davy said. “I promise.”

  A stricken David Ladd handed the phone over to Candace. “I was right,” he said. “Something awful has happened. Lani’s gone.”

  Candace was the one who put the phone back in its cradle and switched on the light. “Gone where?” she asked.

  Davy shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

  “Your parents think she’s been kidnapped?”

  “Maybe, but they’re not sure. Candace, I’ve never heard my mother this upset. She never even asked who you were.” While he spoke, Davy had crawled out of bed and was starting toward the bathroom.

  “What are you doing?” Candace asked.

  “I’m going to shower and get dressed.”

  “But why?”

  “So I can leave. You heard me. I told Mom I’d be there as soon as I can. If I go right now, I can be halfway to Bloomington before morning rush hour starts.”

  “We,” Candace said pointedly. “If we leave right now. Besides, it’s Sunday; there isn’t going to be a rush hour.”

  David nodded. “I meant we,” he said.

  “Doesn’t that seem like a stupid thing to do?” Candace asked.

  “Stupid? Didn’t you hear what I said? This is a crisis, Candace. My family needs me.”

  “I didn’t say going was stupid. Driving is. Why not fly?” Candace asked. “We can put the tickets on my AmEx. If we take a plane, we can be in Tucson by noon. Driving, that’s about as long as it would take us to make it to the Iowa state line.”

  “What about the car? What about all my stuff?”

  “I’ll call Bridget,” Candace said decisively. “She works only a few blocks from here. If we leave the parking claim ticket at the desk, she can come over on Monday after work, pick up the car, and take it home with her. She and Larry can keep it with them until we can make arrangements to come back and get it later. In the meantime, we can take a cab to the airport. That’s a lot less trouble than fighting the parking-garage wars.”

  Candace wrestled a city phone book out of the nightstand drawer and started looking through it.

  “What are you doing?” David asked.

  “Calling the airlines to find the earliest plane and get us a reservation.”

  David looked at her wonderingly. “You’d do this for me? Go to all this trouble?”

  She looked at him in mock exasperation as the “all lines are busy” message played out in her ear. “David,” Candace said, “we’re a team. I’ve been telling you for months now that I love you. If there’s a crisis in your life, then there’s a crisis in mine, too.”

  Just then a live person somewhere in the airline industry must have come on the phone. “What’s your earliest flight from Chicago to Tucson?” she asked. There was a long pause. “Six A.M.?” she said a moment later.

  Looking at the clock on the nightstand, Candace groaned. “Not much time for sleep, is there? But that’s the one we need. Two seats, together, if you have them.” There was a pause. “The return flight?” She glanced questioningly in David’s direction. “I don’t know about that. I guess we’d better just leave the return trip open for now.”

&
nbsp; After making arrangements to pay for the tickets at the counter, Candace put down the phone. “Don’t you think we ought to try to sleep for another hour or so? We don’t want to get there and be so shot from lack of sleep that we can’t help out.”

  Obligingly, Davy lay back down on the bed, but he didn’t crawl back under the sheets because he didn’t expect to fall asleep again. He did, though. The next thing he knew, the alarm in the clock radio next to his head was going off. It was four-thirty.

  From the light leaking out of the bathroom and from the sound of running water, he could tell that Candace was already up and in the shower. Moments later, David Ladd was, too.

  He was standing under the steaming spray of water when he remembered his dream from the day before—the dream and Lani’s horrifying scream.

  Rocked by a terrible sense of foreboding, Davy braced himself against the shower wall to keep from falling. He knew now that the scream could mean only one thing.

  Dolores Lanita Walker was already dead.

  14

  When the Indians heard the bad news—that PaDaj O’othham were coming again to steal their crops—they held another council. Everybody came. U’uwhig—the Birds—told their friends the Indians about a mountain which was not far from their village and quite near their fields. The people went to this mountain, and on the side of it they built three big walls of rock.

  Those walls of rock are there, even to this day.

  Then all the women and children went up on top of the mountain, behind the walls of rock. But the men stayed down to protect the fields.

  Soon the Bad People of the South came once again.

  The Wasps, the Scorpions, and Snakes were leading them. But Nuhwi—the Buzzards—and Chuk U’uwhig—the Blackbirds—and all the larger birds were on guard. Nuhwi—Buzzard—would catch Ko’owi—Snake—and break his back. Tatdai—Roadrunner—watched for the Scorpions, and Pa-nahl—the Bees—fought Wihpsh—the Wasps.

  So at last the Bad People were driven away. The Desert People returned to their village and their fields. They built houses and were very happy. A great many of the Bad People had been killed in this fight, so it was a long time before they felt strong enough to fight again. But after a while they were very hungry. And Wihpsh—the Wasps—carried word to them that the Indian women were once again filling their ollas and grain baskets with corn and beans and honey.

  This time PaDaj O’othham waited until it was very dry and hot. Then they started north.

  This time Shoh’o—Grasshopper—had listened to the plans of the Bad People. Shoh’o started to jump to reach his friends, the Desert People, and warn them. The harder and faster Grasshopper jumped, the longer grew his hind legs. Still he could not go fast enough. So he took two leaves and fastened them on and flew. Before he arrived, he wore out one pair of leaves and put on another pair. To this day Shoh’o—Grasshopper—still carries one large thin pair of wings, and another thin small green pair.

  One minute Deputy Fellows was wide awake, staring at the doors to the ICU waiting room. The next minute, Gabe Ortiz was shaking him awake.

  “Brian?”

  Brian’s eyes flicked open. It took a moment for the face in front of his to register. “Fat Crack!” he exclaimed. “How the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

  “Delia Cachora, Manny Chavez’s daughter, works with me out on the reservation. When we heard about her father, I offered to drive her into town.”

  Brian glanced around the waiting room. No one else was there. “Where is she?” he asked.

  “A nurse took Delia in to see him,” Fat Crack said. “How does it look?”

  Brian shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “It’s his back. Broken.”

  “How did it happen?” Gabe Ortiz asked. “I heard it had something to do with Rattlesnake Skull.”

  Brian nodded. “At the charco. It sounds as though he came across someone—an Anglo—digging up bones there by the water hole. We think Mr. Chavez thought the guy was digging up ancient artifacts and tried to stop him. The guy attacked Mr. Chavez with a shovel.”

  Fat Crack was shaking his head when an Indian woman in her mid- to late thirties emerged from behind the doors to the ICU. “He’s still unconscious,” she said, addressing Gabe Ortiz. “No one knows when he’ll come out from under the anesthetic. His condition is serious enough that somebody had a priest come around and deliver last rites. The nurse said he was really bent out of shape about that. My father stopped being a Catholic a long time ago.”

  Blushing, Brian stood up. “You must be Delia Cachora. I’m Deputy Fellows,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid the priest business is all my fault. When we found your father, he was saying something over and over in Tohono O’othham. I thought he was calling for a priest—pahl. It turns out he was saying pahla.”

  “Shovel,” Fat Crack supplied.

  Brian Fellows nodded. “That’s right. Shovel. I’m sorry if the priest upset him.”

  Delia Chavez Cachora gave him a puzzled glance. “Where did you learn to speak Tohono O’othham?” she asked.

  “From a friend of mine,” he answered. “Davy Ladd.”

  Delia’s reaction was instantaneous. Without a word, she turned away from both men and stalked from the waiting room. Brian turned to Gabe.

  “I’m really sorry about all the confusion. I guess she’s upset. The problem is, I’m supposed to try to talk to her. The detective left me the job of asking her some questions, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work. Was it the priest stuff?” Brian asked. “Or do you think it was something I said?”

  Gabe Ortiz smiled and eased himself into the chair next to the one where Brian had been sitting earlier. He folded his arms across his broad chest and closed his eyes.

  “No, Brian,” Gabe replied. “I believe it was something I said. Sit down and take a load off. Delia’s upset at the moment, but if we just sit here and wait, eventually she’ll come around.”

  Quentin had told Mitch to wake him up as soon as they got to the turnoff to Coleman Road. It bothered Mitch a little that where they were going was so damned close to where the Bounder was parked. He had chosen that particular spot because there, on the edge of the reservation, was about as far from town as he could get. But it was natural that the edge of the reservation, rather than the middle of it, was where Quentin would have discovered his treasure trove of Native American pots.

  Still, as long as Mitch played his cards right, it didn’t matter that much. He glanced toward Lani. Obviously he had measured out a better dosage this time. The amount of drug Mitch had used, combined with his threat to kill Quentin, was working well enough. Lani Walker was docile without being comatose. That might prove beneficial. If the terrain was as rough as Quentin claimed it would be, Mitch would probably need Lani to be able to climb on her own power rather than being carried or dragged.

  Quentin himself was Mitch’s biggest concern as they drove west toward the reservation. Would he be able to rouse Quentin enough when the time came to get him to do what was needed? If not, he might have to do an on-the-fly revision of his plan and let the pots go. They had been gravy all along—an extra added attraction. What was not optional was how he left Quentin and Lani once Mitch was ready to walk away. He would arrange the bodies artfully.

  Lani would be found right alongside the remains of her killer. The scenario would be plain for all to see. After murdering and mutilating his sister, the record would show that Quentin Walker had taken his own life.

  How do you suppose you’ll like them apples, Mr. Brandon Walker? Mitch Johnson grinned to himself. It should give you something to think about for the rest of your goddamned natural life.

  The turnoff was coming up. “Okay now,” Mitch said to Lani. “Nap time’s over. Wake him up so he can give me directions.”

  Lani turned to Quentin. “Wake up,” she said. He didn’t stir.

  “Come on, girl,” Mitch said, once again grasping her lower thigh. “I know you can do better
than that!” He didn’t bother to tighten his grip. He didn’t have to. Obviously, Lani Walker had learned how to take orders.

  “Come on, Quentin,” she said, shaking her brother’s shoulder. “You have to wake up now.”

  Quentin tried to dodge the commanding voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He was enjoying his sleep. There was no reason for him not to. And who the hell was this woman who was so damned determined to wake him up?

  He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the face hovering in front of his. When the world spun on its axis, Quentin shut his eyes immediately. He tried to shut his ears as well.

  “Quentin!” Another voice this time. A male voice. “Wake the hell up and get busy!”

  Mitch. Mitch Johnson, and he sounded pissed. Quentin struggled to open his eyes. “Where are we, Mitch?” Quentin mumbled, not quite able to make his tongue and mouth work in any kind of harmony. “Whazza problem?”

  “The problem is we’re almost to Coleman Road, and I don’t know what the hell to do next.”

  “Doan worry ‘bout a thing,” Quentin murmured, closing his eyes once more. “Just lemme sleep a little longer.”

  “Wake him up!” Mitch demanded. “Slap him around if you have to, but get his eyes open.”

  Quentin felt a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He opened his eyes once more.

  A woman’s face—a girl’s, really—hovered anxiously over him. It took a matter of seconds for the dark hair and eyes to arrange themselves into a recognizable creature. As soon as that happened, Quentin could barely believe it. Lani! The shock of recognition stunned him and brought him out of his stupor, although as soon as he tried to sit up, a fierce attack of vertigo once again sent the interior of the Bronco whirling around him.