by J. A. Jance
On this night, though, she needed to tell him something else, and in telling it she couched the tale in the old traditional language. Part of it was one of the old legends, the story of Rattlesnake Skull village and the people who haunted that bad place. That portion of the story had been handed down in legend from that time in the far distant past when I’itoi, Elder Brother, first emerged from the center of the earth. But part of it was much newer than the rest. It was Lani’s own story, and she wanted Gabe to hear that as well.
After all, if he was going to be a medicine man in the twenty-first century, Gabe would need to know both.
They say it happened long ago that some Bad People, PaDaj O’odham, people who followed the Spirit of Evil, lived in a village called Ko’oi Koshwa, Rattlesnake Skull. One day marauding Apaches, the ohb, came to Rattlesnake Skull. They killed all the people there except for one young girl who went to live with them.
Later the Tohono O’odham learned that this girl loved one of the Apache warriors. They believed that she had betrayed her people to impress him, and it was because of her that the people of Rattlesnake Skull village died.
This made the Tohono O’odham very angry, so they asked I’itoi to help them find Oks Gagdathag, Betraying Woman. I’itoi, the Spirit of Goodness, led them to the place where she was hiding. They brought her back to the land of the Tohono O’odham and shut her in one of I’itoi’s sacred caves on Ioligam, the mountain the Milgahn, the whites, call Kitt Peak. There were many ways in and out of the cave. Betraying Woman could have escaped, but she knew that she deserved to be punished, so she stayed there alone until she died.
After that no one went back to live in Rattlesnake Skull because everyone knew it was a Bad Place. One day two Milgahn, white men, were wandering in the desert. They came upon Rattlesnake Skull. While they were there, the men were infected by the spirits of the Bad People. After that, even though they were not ohb, they were s-ohbsgam, Apache-like, and they went around killing people and doing bad things. One of the people they killed was a Tohono O’odham girl named Gina.
There were two of these s-ohbsgam. The first one liked being bad. The other one, a man with a wife and a baby, knew he had done wrong, and he killed himself. The first one would have gotten away, but the wife of his dead friend talked to the judge and so the Apache-like Man went to prison.
After he got out, he started killing people again. One of the people he wanted to kill was the woman who had helped put him in prison, and he came looking for her. When he found her all alone, he thought he had won, but the woman had a friend, an old Indian woman who knew how to sing for power. She sang a powerful song, a war chant. Even though the other woman was Milgahn, the old woman’s song gave her enough courage to fight back. When the man came too close she burned his face with hot fat, and from then on the Bad Man was blind, and he is blind to this day, even though he’s dead.
That, nawoj, my friend, is the story of the Woman Who Fought the S-Ohbsgam.
Highway 86, West of Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:30 p.m.
73º Fahrenheit
The story ended. For a long time after that, Lani and Gabe were silent. She didn’t want to say anything more, but she wondered how much of all that the child understood. He understood it all.
“Is that the man I saw this morning by your mother’s swimming pool?” he asked. “The one who was sitting there talking to your mother—the one you couldn’t see.”
“Yes,” Lani said quietly. “I think so.”
“But why?” Gabe asked. “If he’s dead, why would he come back?”
“I don’t know,” Lani said. “That’s what we have to find out.”
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:00 p.m.
73º Fahrenheit
Pima County Detective Brian Fellows hung up the phone and returned to the bedroom. When he switched on the light in the closet, his wife, Kath, groaned and pulled a pillow over her face.
“What time is it?” she grumbled.
“Eleven. Go back to sleep.”
“What’s going on?”
“A quadruple homicide out on the reservation.”
“Great,” she said. “Why is it, when it comes to homicides on the reservation, you’re always William Forsythe’s favorite go-to guy?”
“You know why as well as I do,” Brian answered.
In terms of political correctness, Sheriff William Forsythe was only one very small step beyond the outdated notion that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” The Tohono O’odham Nation took up a large segment of Pima County’s landmass, but since whatever crime happened there often had to do with Indians or illegal aliens, Sheriff Forsythe was usually only too happy to relegate it to the low end of the priority scale. Sending Brian to work those remote cases was Forsythe’s way of continuing to punish Fellows for his long and close association with Forsythe’s immediate predecessor, Brandon Walker.
No doubt Sheriff Forsythe thought sending Brian to the reservation would tick Detective Fellows off, but like Br’er Rabbit, Brian didn’t mind being thrown into the reservation briar patch. As for Sheriff Forsythe? The guy was a jerk. Brian hoped that someday Forsythe would no longer be an issue. Either the people of Pima County would come to their senses and elect someone else, or Brian would put in his twenty years and then be gone. At this point there was no way to tell which would come first.
Kath sat up in bed and propped the pillow behind her. “Who’s going with you?” she asked.
“Just me,” he said.
“For a homicide with four victims?” she asked. “What is it, some kind of drug war?”
“Maybe,” Brian said, pulling on his shoes. “Dispatch said the victims are two Indians and two Anglos. It was called in by one of your Shadow Wolves guys. Pardee, I think the name is.”
When Kath and Brian met, he had been a lowly deputy with the sheriff’s department while she was a full-fledged Border Patrol officer. For a time after their marriage, they had both enjoyed being out in the field in their respective departments, comparing notes and chasing bad guys, but after the birth of their twins, Amy and Annie, things had changed.
With two little girls counting on them, they no longer thought it such a good idea to have both of them putting themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis. When a spot had opened up in Personnel, Kath had taken off her Kevlar vest, turned in the keys to her patrol car, and chained herself to a desk and a computer.
“With both Anglo and Indian victims, that’ll be a jurisdictional nightmare,” Kath mused.
“You’ve got that right,” Brian agreed.
“Where did it happen?”
“South of Topawa,” he said. “On the way to Vamori.”
“I guess that means you won’t be home for Sunday school and church tomorrow.”
He leaned down to kiss her good-bye. “Probably,” he said.
“All right then,” she said. “If you see Dan Pardee and his wonder dog, Bozo, tell them hello.”
“Bozo? As in the clown?”
“From what I’ve heard, Bozo is anything but funny. Dan was out on patrol and a guy tried to bean him with a rock. Bozo took exception and would have torn the guy limb from limb if Dan hadn’t stopped him. In other words, no fast moves around Bozo.”
“Right,” Brian said. “I’ll do my damnedest not to piss off the dog.”
“Take care,” Kath told him.
Nodding, Brian pocketed his wallet, his badge, and keys. On his way down the hall he popped into the girls’ room and laid a kiss on each of their foreheads. One of Brian Fellows’s rules for living decreed that you had to kiss the people you loved every time you went to work, because one of those times you might not be coming back.
Only after his daughters’ kisses had been properly bestowed did Brian Fellows head out of the house. He took off his Husband and Daddy hats and put on the ones marked Murder and Mayhem. That’s what you had to do in order to do the job—you compartmentalized.
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What was work was work. What was home was home, and never the twain should meet.
Komelik, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 10:45 p.m.
67º Fahrenheit
As Dan carried Angie back toward the Expedition, he could feel her body relaxing. Gradually his jacket warmed her, and her trembling ceased. By the time they got to his vehicle she was dead weight in his arms and sound asleep. There was no question about giving her something to eat or drink. Instead he stretched her out in the backseat. For several long minutes after putting her down, he sat next to her just listening to her breathe. He was glad she was sleeping. It was better for everyone concerned, but most especially for Angie herself, if she didn’t have to see or remember what came next.
Dan had already called for assistance before he’d gone looking for the girl. He had no idea how much time had passed since then, but so far there was no sign of backup, and there was no way to tell how much longer it would take for other units to respond. Once they did, Dan understood that the crime scene would be disrupted. Unlike Dan and his fellow Shadow Wolves, the other officers would be far more accustomed to dealing with pavement and sidewalks than they were with dirt. He doubted that any of them would be capable of Shadow Wolves–type tracking.
Dan may have been the one who found the victims, but he understood that solving this horrific multiple murder was none of his official business. Still, he wanted to know more—wanted to know who had done these terrible things and why. He could have just sat there and waited, listening to Angie breathe, but he didn’t. Slipping Angie’s tiny shoes out of his pocket, he put them on the car seat next to her. Then, after ordering Bozo to stay next to the Expedition, Dan walked back to the Blazer.
He skirted around the outside of it, finding in the process that all four windows were rolled down, so it seemed likely that the vehicle’s AC wasn’t working. Examining the dust just outside the rear passenger door, he saw the set of barefoot tracks Angie had left behind after she had climbed out of the vehicle to go in search of her mother and found her “sleeping.” Remembering the child’s innocent words made Dan’s heart hurt.
He canvassed the scene, trying to suss out who had been the real intended victims of the attack. The several gunshots, he concluded, had been very specific. Druggies and drug smugglers both tended to spray the area with indiscriminate bullets. The gunshots here had been for one purpose only—to kill. They hadn’t been to bluff or to scare someone away.
From the way the tracks told the story, Dan could tell that the Anglo couple had been surprised while they were seated at the table. The Indian couple had arrived later, either during or just after the initial attack. It made sense that, since the two Indians were merely collateral damage, the killer hadn’t bothered to search the Blazer thoroughly enough to spot the little girl watching him from the backseat. The Milgahn man with the gun probably believed he was getting away with this. He had no way of knowing that he had left behind an eyewitness.
The only tire tracks Dan saw in the area were from the Lexus and the Blazer. The ones from the Blazer were clearly the most recent ones. The earlier tracks, including Dan’s, had been obliterated, but the presence of just those two meant that the killer had approached the scene from some other direction.
Dan walked back out to the road. He had a choice of turning north or south. Since south seemed to be closer to the makeshift grotto with its lantern and flowers, that was the way Dan turned. Fifty yards back down the gravel road, he saw where another vehicle had pulled off and stopped. Someone had exited the vehicle there and walked off into the desert.
Dan was reasonably sure the tire tracks he saw here were much like the ones he had seen earlier in the day, ones that had subsequently been obliterated by the arriving Lexus and Blazer. Whoever had done this had followed the Lexus earlier, so he had a reasonably good idea of where to find his victims. Then, instead of driving up and alerting them to his presence, he had maintained the element of surprise by approaching on foot.
Silent, Dan thought. Just like a one-pound stone.
He marked the spot with a crime scene flag that would let the CSIs know to come back here to make tire and footprint casts, although, in Dan’s experience, crime scene investigation wasn’t likely to be a huge priority on the reservation.
He was walking back to the Expedition when two Law and Order officers showed up—Martin Ramon and Damon Mattias. Dan escorted them around the perimeter of the crime scene, telling them what he knew and what he had surmised and pointing out what he thought might be important in terms of evidence.
In the years the Shadow Wolves had been patrolling the reservation, the unit had gained a measure of respect from the locals. When it came to credibility, it helped that Officer Martin Ramon’s older brother, Kevin, was also a member of the Shadow Wolves team.
The two Law and Order patrol officers listened carefully to everything Dan had to say. Both of them jotted copious notes into notebooks. When they approached the second body, Officer Mattias nodded.
“It’s Donald Rios, all right,” he said. “His family lives around here. We should go tell his father.”
The look on Martin Ramon’s face made it clear that going to tell some poor unsuspecting man that his son was dead was the last thing he wanted to do.
“I guess we’d better,” he said. “Oi g hihm.”
It was only after they left to go in search of Thomas Rios that Dan Pardee remembered the sleeping child. Since he hadn’t mentioned her to them before, he didn’t mention her to them now. The fewer people who knew about Angie right then, the better.
Moments after they drove away, headed toward Komelik, an aging Crown Victoria with a full light bar on top arrived at the turnoff. Motioning for the driver to pull over, Dan approached the vehicle.
“Detective Brian Fellows,” the driver said, rolling down his window and displaying his badge. “Pima County Homicide.” He parked his vehicle on the shoulder of the road and scrambled out of it. “You must be Dan Pardee,” he said, offering his hand.
Dan nodded.
“My wife said to tell you hello,” the detective added. “Kath Fellows.”
“Kath as in Personnel?” Dan asked.
Detective Fellows grinned. “One and the same. Now let’s get down to business. I just got off the phone with the M.E.’s office. They’ll be here eventually, but they’re running into trouble rounding up extra vans. Four victims at one time is more than they can handle. Now show me what we’ve got.”
They set off on Dan’s second guided tour of the crime scene. Detective Fellows was packing a small digital camera, and he used it to take photos of everything, including all visible footprints and tire tracks. Dan could tell from the detective’s reaction that the sheriff’s department wasn’t likely to be doing much in-depth crime scene investigating, either. Whatever Fellows found and whatever Dan showed him would probably be crucial.
Detective Fellows took photos of each of the victims. All of them had been stripped of jewelry and watches. And there was no money to be found among the debris from the wallets and purses.
“So maybe it’s a straight robbery then,” Fellows suggested. “The Indian couple may be married, but I doubt it. The DMV lists Donald Rios as the sole owner of the Blazer.”
And Angie called him Donald, not Daddy, Dan thought.
That probably would have been the time for him to tell Detective Fellows about the existence of that eyewitness, but Dan kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t ready to relinquish Angie to anyone else, and he knew now that the other officer long ago probably hadn’t wanted to let loose of the child he had rescued from another horrific crime scene, either.
While Fellows photographed the last two victims, Dan walked as far as the ironwood tree. By then the last of the luminarias had burned themselves out. Even the light from the battery-powered lantern seemed to be fading. That was bad enough, but when Dan looked inside the tree, he was saddened to see that the huge white flower
s, once breathtakingly beautiful, were beginning to shrivel and die as well.
Brian Fellows walked up behind him. “The night-blooming cereus,” he explained. “They bloom once a year for one night only, and then they’re gone. What about brass? Did you see any?”
Dan shook his head. “Not so far,” he replied. “We’ll probably have more luck looking for that in daylight.”
“Maybe,” Fellows said, “but if the guy knew enough to pick up his brass, we might be dealing with a pro.”
“From one of the cartels?” Dan asked.
Fellows nodded in agreement. “Could be,” he said.
That was Dan’s assessment, too. As far as he could see, the killer’s only misstep concerned the child. He had been so caught up in killing the four adults that he had somehow overlooked Angie.
When Dan and Detective Fellows completed their circuit of the crime scene and returned to Dan’s Expedition, Bozo was still lying next to it. He raised his head and gave Brian Fellows an appraising look as they passed. The detective evidently measured up, since the dog immediately returned to resting his head on his paws and with apparent unconcern closed his eyes.
“I assume that has to be Bozo, the only non-Indian Shadow Wolf?” Fellows asked.
Dan nodded. “That’s right.”
“I was warned about him. Kath said I should mind my manners around him.”
“Always a good idea,” Dan agreed.
Just then, Angie stirred inside the car and made a small whimpering sound. The noise was enough to bring both Bozo and Detective Fellows to full attention.
“Who’s that?” the detective asked. “What’s that?”
“A little girl,” Dan said. “Her name is Angie—Angie with no last name. She was in the Blazer. Somehow the killer missed her. I found her wandering around in the desert, barefoot and scared to death.”
“She’s not hurt?”
“Not seriously,” Dan said. “She’s got some cuts and scratches on her face, legs, and feet that probably need to be looked after.”