by J. A. Jance
“Lani, please. Answer me. Are you all right?”
There was a groan—little more than a moan, really. It came from beyond Lani’s hiding place. From beyond and below it. From the bottom of the hole into which Lani herself had almost fallen.
She heard the sound and was chilled. It meant that down there somewhere, far beneath the surface of the cave, the evil Ohb was still alive. He had taken her bait. The boot had done its work, but the fall hadn’t killed him. Even now she could hear movement as he struggled to rise from where he had fallen. Lani knew with a certainty that she had never known before that as long as Mitch Johnson lived, every member of Diana and Brandon Walker’s family would be in mortal danger.
Coming out from behind the stalagmite, Lani felt around her in the dark. She remembered being told once that limestone caves are fragile—that the formations break off easily and that they need to be protected from human destruction.
“I’m okay, Davy,” she called. “But don’t come in right now. I think he’s hurt, but he may still be able to shoot. We need help. Go get someone with guns and lights and bulletproof vests.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Go now. Please go!”
She heard Davy shuffling back down the passageway just as Mitch Johnson groaned again. Feeling her way around the floor of the cavern, she located another stalagmite, one that was much smaller than the hulking giant behind which she had hidden. This one was about a foot in circumference and three to four feet high.
“Ants are very strong,” Nana Dahd had told her. “When they have to, they can carry more than their own weight.”
Positioning her back against the large stalagmite, she pushed against the smaller one with both her feet and all her might. She pushed as hard as she could, straining until stars of effort blazed inside her head. At first it seemed as though the rock would never come loose. But then she remembered who she was—Mualig Siakam—a powerful medicine woman, someone who, with the power of her singing, could determine who would live and who would die.
Had Mitch Johnson been a little baby, surely the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, Kulani O’oks, would have refused to sing.
Pushing again, Lani Walker felt the stalagmite give way slightly, rocking gently and trying to come loose from its moorings like a giant baby tooth in need of pulling. She pushed again and the rock was looser.
All things in nature go in fours. It was the fourth push that broke the huge rock free. She felt it tottering toward her and she had to push it yet again to send it tumbling in the other direction. She heard it scrape across the lip of the hole. Then, for a space of several seconds, there was no sound at all, then there was a muffled bump as the limestone boulder hit something soft and came to rest.
Holding her breath, Lani listened. In the whole of the cave, except for the steady drip of water, there was no other sound, no other being. Mitch Johnson was dead. In the emptiness of his passing, Lani realized that the spirits of Betraying Woman and Andrew Philip Carlisle had disappeared as well. The three of them had joined huhugam—those who are gone.
This time, they would not come back.
“Lani, I’m here,” Davy shouted. “Brian is with me. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she called back. “It’s safe to come in now. The evil Ohb is dead.”
17
They say it happened long ago that after the Tohono O’othham defeated the PaDaj O’othham—the Bad People—the Desert People settled in to live near Baboquivari—
I’itoi’s sacred mountain—which is the center of all things. Much later, when the first Mil-gahn, the Spaniards, came, they mistakenly called the Tohono O’othham the Bean Eaters after some of the food the Indians ate. And even later, other Mil-gahn—the Anglos—came to call them Papagos.
But the Desert People have always preferred to call themselves Tohono O’othham. They have lived forever on that same land near the base of Baboquivari. There they have raised wheat and corn, beans and pumpkins and melons. There they learned to make chu-i—flour, and hahki—a parched roasted wheat that is also called pinole. There they learned to make baskets in which to store all the food they raised.
Other people knew that the Indians who lived in the shadow of Baboquivari were a good people—that they were always kind to each other. It was that way then, and it is the same today.
Together, Davy Ladd, Brian Fellows, and Lani Walker made their way on hands and knees down the long passageway to the hidden outside entrance. Only when the two men helped the girl to her feet did they realize that other than a pair of bloodied socks, her feet were bare.
“Where are your shoes?” Brian asked. “You can’t be out here on the mountain in bare feet. I’ll go back and look for them.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t bother. I’ll be fine.”
The morning sky was blue overhead. Lani stretched out her bare arms and let Tash’s warm rays begin to thaw her chilled body. She was standing on her own when a sudden dizzying spell of weakness overtook her, causing her to sink down onto the warm ground itself.
Concerned, Davy knelt down beside her. “Are you all right?”
“A little dizzy is all.”
“How long is it since you’ve had anything to eat or drink?”
“I don’t know,” Lani said. “I don’t remember.” For her, time had stopped the moment she sat down to pose for the man she thought was Mr. Vega.
Brian stood up. “I have a Coke down in the car, and a blanket, too. Wait here while I go get them.”
“Did he hurt you?” Davy asked quietly after Brian had hurried away.
Lani looked down at her chest. There was a stain on her flowered cowboy shirt where the wound on her breast had seeped into the brightly colored material. The stain barely showed. “Not too badly,” she said.
A moment later she glanced up at Davy with a puzzled frown on her face. “What day is it?” she asked. “How did you get here so fast, and how long have I been gone?”
“It’s Sunday,” he answered. “Candace and I flew in from Chicago early this morning.”
“Sunday?” Lani repeated. “You mean I lost a whole day?”
Davy nodded. “You disappeared yesterday morning on your way to work. You never made it.”
She looked at him and frowned. “And who’s Candace?”
Davy ducked his head. “My fiancée,” he said. “We’re engaged. But tell me what happened. Did he run you off the road? What?”
“I went to pose for him,” she said. “He was going to let me have a painting to give to Mom and Dad for their anniversary. It was stupid. I see that now. He offered me orange juice and he put something in it, something that knocked me out. He did the same thing to Quentin. What about Quentin? Is he dead?”
Davy shook his head. “Not yet. He’s halfway down the mountain, and he’s hurt. It looks pretty bad to me. Brian is going for help. Dad and Brock Kendall are over at the charco. They’ll have to bring in a helicopter. We won’t be able to carry him out on a stretcher.”
“How did you and Brian know where to look for me?”
Davy looked off down the mountain. Before he answered, he found it necessary to brush something from his eye. “Candace,” he croaked. “Wanda Ortiz had called the house and left word for Dad to meet him at Rattlesnake Skull. Brian met Candace and me at the airport and brought us along out here. We were getting ready to walk over to the charco to find Dad when Candace sat down to tie her shoes and found this.”
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Davy pulled out the tiny people-hair basket and placed it in Lani’s hand. As her fingers closed over the precious kushpo ho’oma—her hair charm—tears of gratitude filled her eyes.
“But how did you know to look in the cave?” she asked a moment later.
Davy shrugged. “Brian and I saw it years ago on the same day Tommy first found it. Since the cave was right here and since we knew Quentin was involved, it was logical that’s where you might be, that maybe he’d t
ake you there.” He paused. “According to Quentin, the cave is where Tommy died. He fell into a hole.”
The same hole, Lani thought at once. It has to be the same hole. “Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“This is her cave, Davy,” Lani said softly. “That old story Nana Dahd used to tell us was true. After the Tohono O’othham captured her, they brought her back here and locked her inside the mountain along with all her pots—her unbroken pots. Quentin had found the pots and was planning to sell them, at least he thought he was going to sell them. I broke them. All of them. Or at least as many as I could find.
“Afterward, when I was there in the dark and didn’t know which way to go, kokoi—a spirit—showed me the way out. I think Betraying Woman’s spirit led me to the passageway. Do you believe that? Is that possible?”
“Yes,” Davy replied. “I believe it.”
Lani laughed. “Probably you, but nobody else,” she said. “I was in there for a long time,” she continued. “At first I was so scared I could barely think, but then somehow I remembered the words to Nana Dahd’s old war chant, the one she sang to you that day in the root cellar. Do you remember? Repeating those words over and over helped me—made me feel brave, and strong.
“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 fiancée. 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.”