Queen of the Night

by J. A. Jance

  Strange as it seemed even to him, he always had the weird idea that I’itoi was somehow welcoming him home. The same feeling washed over him that Saturday afternoon. How was it possible that he seemed to belong here in this wild stretch of untamed Sonora Desert in a way he belonged nowhere else?

  Finally, however, he came to his senses. “What was I thinking?” he asked his partner, Bozo. “I must be making it up. I’itoi would never throw out the welcome mat for someone like me, not for an ohb.”

  Bozo loved the sound of Dan’s voice. He thumped his tail happily. It wasn’t a very satisfying response, but under the circumstances it was the best Dan could hope for.

  “Sounds like you’re of the same opinion,” he said, giving Bozo’s head a fond pat. “For some reason we both belong here.”

  Five

  Tucson, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 7:15 p.m.

  87º Fahrenheit

  When Brandon returned to the house in Gates Pass, he pulled into the garage and parked his CRV next to Diana’s hulking Tampico red Buick Invicta convertible. She had told him just that morning that she intended to sell it—that she wanted him to take it up to Barrett Jackson, the collector car auction place in Scottsdale, to see what he could get for it.

  The idea that she was even thinking about unloading her treasured car had come as a real shock to him. The old Buick convertible had been little more than a wreck when Diana had won it at a charity auction, and she had paid good money for Leo Ortiz to bring the vehicle back from the dead. Now it was a real collector’s item, all spit and polish and complete with custom-made red and white imitation leather seats that were unashamed copies of the factory originals.

  If she went through with that idea, Brandon doubted Diana would get as much as she expected from selling her pride and joy, but still, why do it? Even with their book-contract difficulties, it wasn’t as if they needed the money. They didn’t.

  When Brandon stepped inside the back door, Damsel greeted him ecstatically. Despite years of lobbying on Brandon’s part, Diana continued to regard pet doors as magnets for other unwanted critters. Damsel had been left inside for so long that she went racing outside without even noticing the doggie bag containing Brandon’s leftover fajitas. Once she was back inside and downing her treat, Brandon lugged Geet Farrell’s box into his study and set it on his desk.

  Once upon a time the room had been a treasure trove of mementos from Brandon’s law enforcement days. There had been photos of him meeting various dignitaries, including one of him shaking hands with President Nixon. Nixon may have left office in disgrace, but Brandon still had a soft spot in his heart for the man who had campaigned for office as a “law and order” candidate.

  And maybe part of Brandon’s fondness for Nixon came from his own understanding of disgrace, because a similar fate had befallen Sheriff Brandon Walker. Richard Nixon had been brought low by that pesky group of “plumbers.” Brandon’s downfall had come about due to his two ne’er-do-well sons, Tommy and Quentin, who had never given their father anything but heartbreak.

  And the truth was, Quentin had been more at fault than Tommy ever was. Tommy hadn’t lived long enough to grow into anything worse than an overgrown juvenile delinquent. When he disappeared, Brandon and Diana had assumed he had simply run away. Instead, he had died years earlier while on a grave-robbing expedition out on the reservation. His parents might never have learned the truth about their son’s disappearance if it hadn’t been for Mitch Johnson’s attack on Lani, which had led to the discovery of Tommy’s skeletal remains.

  Quentin, on the other hand, had lived long enough to become a genuine criminal. His involvement in a prison-based protection racket had been an important component in Brandon’s losing his bid for reelection to the office of sheriff. And later on, when Quint was paroled from prison for the second time, things had gotten worse instead of better.

  While imprisoned in Florence, Quentin had come under the spell of not one but two crazed killers, both of them sworn enemies of Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd. Diana had helped her friend, Rita Antone, see to it that a former English professor named Andrew Philip Carlisle had gone to prison for the murder of Rita’s granddaughter, Gina. Brandon had done the same thing for a remorseless killer named Mitch Johnson, who liked to go out into the desert and use illegal immigrants for target practice.

  Incarcerated together in the Arizona State Prison at Florence, Carlisle and Johnson had hatched a complicated program of revenge against Brandon and Diana. Quentin, most likely without realizing what their real motives were, had somehow been drawn into their vortex. The last time Quentin set foot in his father’s house, he had come there with the newly paroled Mitch Johnson, who was operating as Andrew Carlisle’s proxy. Functioning in a drug-addled stupor, Quentin had vandalized his father’s office, smashing his keepsakes and a lifetime’s worth of mementos. Quentin had done all that without realizing that he and his adopted sister, Lani, were the real targets in Mitch Johnson’s scheme.

  In the pitched battle that followed, Lani had managed to save herself, and she had tried to save Quentin as well, but he had been badly injured. Over the next several years, Quentin’s physical condition had deteriorated, step by step, into a situation where he had become hooked on prescription medications and had died as a result of an accidental overdose.

  Long before that, though, when Brandon and Diana were still dealing with the immediate crisis, Diana had offered to have the broken plaques and photos repaired and reframed. But Brandon had refused. He was done with all that. Repairing the damage would have hurt more than letting all that stuff go. Instead, Diana had done a makeover, one that included new paint and a new desk and, eventually, more of Diana’s burgeoning collection of baskets.

  And that was fine with Brandon, even though collecting baskets was Diana’s passion, not his. He could look at them impassively and not be reminded of what he continued to regard as his greatest failure in life—his sons.

  That was one of the reasons the month of June bothered him so much these days—because of Father’s Day. He had done all right with his stepson, Davy, and with Lani, his adopted daughter. And then there was Brian Fellows, Tommy and Quentin’s half brother, who had worshipped Brandon from afar, sopping up the fatherly crumbs Quentin and Tommy had disdained, and who was now one of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s senior detectives in his own right.

  Taking Lani and Davy and Brian into consideration, maybe Brandon Walker wasn’t a complete failure in the fatherhood department—just where his own biological offspring were concerned.

  Even so, remembering Tommy and Quentin was something that hurt him every day—every single day of the year—Father’s Day or not.

  Finally, in order to banish the old insecurities, Brandon sat down at the desk and opened the banker’s box. Before he made any effort to contact the woman who had written to Geet, he needed to familiarize himself with as much of the case as possible.

  Plucking a pair of reading glasses out of the top desk drawer, he reached into the box, pulled out the first document he found there, and began to read.

  Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

  79º Fahrenheit

  As Dan drove along the highway south of Sells, he examined the occupants of every vehicle he met and every one he passed. Most of the southbound cars were fully occupied with Indians and were headed for the dance. Among the ones coming north, Dan saw nothing out of line. He recognized the vehicles as belonging to people from nearby villages. They were headed into Sells to shop or into Tucson for the same reason.

  South of Topawa, the Anglo name of a village called Gogs Mek, or Burnt Dog, the narrow paved road gave way to rough gravel. Here and there, the tan rocky dirt along the roadway was punctuated by ho’ithkam—ironwood trees, kukui u’us—mesquite trees, and low-lying shegoi, greasewood or creosote bushes.

  Dan practiced his self-imposed vocabulary lessons as he drove, not be
cause he thought speaking the language would win him acceptance on the reservation but because he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it.

  When Micah Duarte had brought him home to San Carlos, Dan had resisted all of his grandfather’s efforts to teach him Apache. Now Dan studied Tohono O’odham on his own. It was a means of seeking forgiveness, not from Gramps. Micah Duarte had never expected or demanded such a thing. No, Dan Pardee was seeking forgiveness for himself from himself. That was a lot more difficult to come by.

  He passed the tiny village of Komelik, which, roughly translated, means Low Flat Place. Compared to the mountains jutting up out of the desert to the left of the road, this was low and flat and mostly deserted. After that, every time a set of tire tracks veered off the road and out into the desert, Dan stopped the Expedition, got out of the vehicle and examined the story left behind in the dust and dirt. Months of patient study had allowed him to put many of the resulting tire tracks together with the people who drove individual vehicles.

  The track with the half-bald front tire belonged to a vehicle that had been permanently knocked out of alignment when the driver, an old man named James Juan, had struck a cow on the open-range part of the highway near Quijotoa, a bastardization of Giwho Tho’ag, or Burden Basket Mountain. Dan spotted the tracks of a pickup hauling a livestock trailer. That, no doubt, belonged to Thomas Rios, who along with his son successfully ran several head of cattle on a well-managed family plot of land near Komelik.

  The tires on the small sedan probably belonged to the Anglo man Dan had seen hanging around on several occasions lately—mostly when he was working day shift. The guy drove a white Lexus—not exactly reservation-style wheels—but he was always alone, always drove the speed limit, and never failed to pass along a friendly wave. One of the other Shadow Wolves had talked to the guy. He was evidently some kind of naturalist doing research in the desert with Thomas Rios’s full knowledge and approval.

  Today the Anglo man had driven off into the desert and then had come back out again, but so had another vehicle, one whose tracks Dan didn’t recognize. That one, too, had turned off the road and then come back. So it might be worthwhile to check into that later, but right now he wanted to head on south.

  After the Gadsden Purchase divided the Tohono O’odham’s ancestral lands, the Desert People had pretty much ignored the international border, crossing back and forth at will, especially at a place on the reservation known as The Gate. All that had changed in the aftermath of 9-11. As border security tightened in other places, immigration and smuggling activities had multiplied on the reservation, bringing with it far more official scrutiny from Homeland Security, most especially from the Border Patrol.

  Now, as Dan Pardee did every other time he was on night shift, he drove to The Gate first. Then, during the course of the night and the remainder of his shift, he would work his way back north.

  Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

  79º Fahrenheit

  Donald Rios had told Delphina that he’d come by the house in Sells at seven to pick them up and go to the dance. By six, Delphina was showered and dressed. By six-thirty, she had bathed Angie, dressed her, and carefully braided her daughter’s straight black hair. Then Delphina sat back to worry while Angie settled in to watch Dora the Explorer on the TV set in the living room.

  Maybe he won’t come, Delphina worried as she sat at the kitchen window and stared out at the empty yard. Maybe he’ll stand us up.

  That belief, of course, was a holdover from her days with Joaquin Enos, who had never been a man of his word. With Joaquin, even the smallest promise was made to be broken. He had been handsome enough to appeal to a fifteen-year-old and had thought nothing of knocking her up, but he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with her or Angie once the baby was born.

  So now all of Delphina’s old insecurities kicked in: What if Donald didn’t come after all? She had already told Angie that they were going to the dance. Would they have to go alone? Was there enough gas in the pickup to make it all the way to Vamori and back? When the clock turned over seven o’clock and Donald still wasn’t there, Delphina plunged into a fit of disappointment. He wasn’t coming. All men were just alike, and Donald Rios was as bad as the rest of them.

  Then, at a quarter to eight, almost an hour after he was supposed to be there and after Delphina had already given Donald Rios up for lost, he drove into her yard. She had the porch light on and she could see that his Chevy Blazer was shiny and freshly washed. With all the dust in the air, people on the reservation considered the act of washing a car either as an exercise in futility or as a deliberate rain dance.

  When he knocked, Angie abandoned her pal Dora and went racing to the door to let him in. Donald Rios was a large man. Standing on the shaky wooden step outside Delphina’s door, he looked more than a little silly in his dress-up boots and shirt, holding a child’s pink-and-yellow pinwheel in one hand and a wilted handful of grocery-store flowers in the other.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” he said with an apologetic smile, handing the pinwheel to Angie and the flowers to Delphina. Angie took her present and raced back to the TV set with barely a thank-you while Delphina opened the door and ushered him inside.

  “Indian time?” she asked, accepting the proffered flowers. She didn’t have a proper vase, so she put the flowers in a water glass and set them on the kitchen counter.

  Donald laughed sheepishly. “I had to do something for my mother,” he said. “If it had been real Indian time I would have been a lot later. Are you ready to go?”

  Delphina nodded.

  “Oi g hihm,” Donald called to Angie. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t need to say so twice. Pinwheel in hand, Angie came on the run, ready to do just that—clamber into his Blazer and go.

  Tucson, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 6:00 p.m.

  81º Fahrenheit

  Jack Tennant was relieved when Abby emerged from the bedroom wearing a turquoise-colored pantsuit and a pair of sandals. He wouldn’t have objected if she’d turned up in a dress and heels, but he knew the slacks would make for an easier wardrobe change when it came time to slip on the jumpsuit. Abby still had a fair amount of midwestern modesty about her. Stripping down and getting naked or nearly naked in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t come easily.

  That wasn’t to say it wouldn’t ever happen. With women you never could tell. Jack had the air mattress along just in case his powers of persuasion outstripped Abby’s objections. After their sweet afternoon nap interlude, what they did later on that evening to celebrate their anniversary was no longer such a pressing issue, at least not as far as Jack was concerned.

  When they got in the car, Jack insisted that Abby put on the blindfold, and she was a good sport about it. Hoping to keep their destination secret for as long as possible, he headed west on I-10 toward Marana rather than going south through town. In Marana he turned off on Sandario Road. That was as much as Abby could take.

  “I can’t stand this anymore,” she said, whipping off the blindfold. “Where in the world are you taking me?”

  The jig was up.

  “To the reservation,” he said. “Out beyond Sells.”

  “But there aren’t any restaurants—” She stopped abruptly because she got it. “You found one, didn’t you,” she said accusingly, but beaming as she spoke. “You found a night-blooming cereus out in the desert somewhere. That’s where we’re going!”

  Jack nodded, because Abby was right, up to a point. After months of using his phantom foursome to cover his activities, after asking and gaining permission to explore various people’s lands both on the reservation and off it, Jack hadn’t found just “a night-blooming cereus.” He believed he had found what might be the granddaddy of them all!

  The deer-horn cacti on display at Tohono Chul sometimes had as many as seven or eight blooms on them. This one, an old giant that had wound its way up into an ironwood tr
ee, had at least a hundred buds on it. Jack had been afraid something would go wrong. Maybe the plants growing in the wild would be on a different schedule from the ones in captivity, as it were. So he had come out and checked on the buds on his plant and then had made secret visits to Tohono Chul to make sure the buds there seemed to be progressing along the same schedule. And they had. They were.

  He was sure that tonight when the flowers bloomed in the garden, the ones in the desert would be blooming as well. There, hundreds of people would be in attendance. Here, there would be only Jack and Abby and maybe Thomas Rios’s son, Donald, who was about to become engaged himself. When Thomas had told him about that and asked if Jack would mind if Donald and Delphina stopped by for a little while to see the flowers, Jack hadn’t had the heart to object. After all, this was Thomas Rios’s land to begin with.

  “Absolutely,” he had said heartily. “The more the merrier.”

  And he had meant it, too. He had made sure there was enough food for everyone and extra dishes and silverware just in case. He worried a little about the wine. He knew you weren’t supposed to have liquor on the reservation, so he might wait to pour that until after Donald and his girlfriend left to go to a dance. There would be a full moon tonight. There would be plenty of time for him and Abby to savor the flowers, the night, and the claret.

  Abby reached over and gently lifted Jack’s hand off the steering wheel. She held the back of it to her lips, kissed it, and then returned it to the steering wheel.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You really are a remarkable man.”

  Jack smiled at her. “Words to warm a man’s heart,” he said.

  “But how did you manage to pull this off? Did someone find it for you?”