by J. A. Jance
Diana nodded. “I see,” she said.
“Would you like to ride along?”
“Could we take the Invicta?” Diana asked. “With the top down?”
Brandon started to object. It was June, after all. It was likely to be hot as blue blazes, but this was the first time in a long time that Diana had shown much interest in anything. Besides, the last he had heard she wanted to unload her pride and joy. It would be fun to take it on one last road trip.
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll plaster ourselves with sunscreen and wear hats and long-sleeved shirts, but it sounds like fun. Are you coming to bed?”
“You go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll be there in a while.”
Tucson, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:00 a.m.
70º Fahrenheit
Diana watched as Brandon went down the hall, switching off most of the lights as he went. She liked the fact that he continued to be thrifty—had always been thrifty—even when there had been no need to be.
Once he was gone, she returned to studying the many baskets that decorated the walls of the room, baskets her beloved friend, Nana Dahd, had made with her own hands, weaving them out of bear grass and yucca and devil’s claw and yucca root with the owij, the awl, Rita Antone had inherited from her own basket-weaving grandmother, Understanding Woman.
Diana sat there for a long while, wondering if Andrew Carlisle would make another appearance. She had seen him several times in recent days, always when she was alone; usually when she was outside—by the pool or in the front yard; occasionally in the kitchen, but never here. Never in this room—the room where she and Rita Antone had sat together when Davy was little, with Nana Dahd weaving her baskets and telling her stories, steeping the whole household in Tohono O’odham culture and tradition while Diana tried to see her way clear from being a teacher on the reservation to becoming a writer.
“Nana Dahd is still here, isn’t she?” Diana Ladd said aloud to an absent Andrew Carlisle. “At least her spirit is. That’s what keeps you away.”
With that, Diana Ladd got up and followed her husband down the hall to the bedroom. She hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks, but tonight, once she crawled into bed next to Brandon, his gentle snoring lulled her to sleep.
It seemed to her that Rita Antone and Brandon Walker were still protecting her from Andrew Philip Carlisle.
Nine
Highway 86, West of Tucson
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 9:00 p.m.
74º Fahrenheit
Driving back to Tucson, Jonathan could not believe how anything could have gone so completely wrong in such a short time. He had waited around long enough to let his mother and her husband enjoy their last meal. After all, even guys on death row got to have that. Then, just after eight-thirty, he had walked up and found his mother and her husband sitting there enjoying their oddball evening tête-à-tête. He hadn’t said anything. He didn’t have to.
Startled, she had looked at him as soon as he stepped into the circle of light. There had been a gasp of recognition. Then, smiling, she had stood up and taken two steps toward him, holding out both of her hands in greeting—like she was surprised but glad to see him. Like she was actually welcoming him! How dare she!
“Why, Jonathan,” she had said. “However did you find us way out here?” Then she had turned to her husband, to Jack. “No, wait,” she said to him. “You did this, didn’t you? It’s the rest of the surprise!”
Surprise my ass! Jonathan had thought. He had answered that phony smile of hers just the way he had intended to—with a nine-millimeter slug right in the middle of her forehead. The sling on his arm had half concealed the weapon, so she had never seen it coming. She was still smiling that sappy, stupid smile of hers as she went down, knocking over the chair she had been sitting on and taking the cloth-covered table with her as she fell. He saw the glassware and dishes tumble off the table and shatter, but he didn’t hear them.
“What the hell . . . ?” Jack had roared.
Jonathan heard that even as the gunshot reverberated in his ears. Bent on fighting back, the old man had erupted out of his seat, but then Jonathan shot him, too. He liked doing it just that way—two shots and two kills, no wasted bullets.
For a time—a few seconds, anyway—he had stood there examining the scene and enjoying the moment. He had done what he had set out to do. He felt no regret, only a sense of accomplishment. He had put the witch down; both witches, as a matter of fact. Two women who had made his life hell on earth. Now they had both paid the price for every unkind word and every slight. They were gone. Done.
He smelled smoke. One of the fallen candles had set fire to the tablecloth. The last thing he needed was for a brush fire to attract attention. Quickly he stomped the fire out before it could spread. But then, to his horror, Jonathan heard the sound of voices, a man and a woman talking and laughing and coming closer.
He realized that while his ears were out of commission from the gunshots, a vehicle must have arrived without him noticing. Whose was it? Who was coming and what were they doing here? Surely no one else had been invited to Jack and Abby’s little party. The table had been set for two. There had been only the two chairs.
Jonathan moved to the middle of the luminarias’ path and stood there waiting for the new arrivals to round the curve. At last a couple, an Indian man and woman, appeared in front of him. The man was leading the way while the woman followed.
The man stopped, looked questioningly at Jonathan, and frowned. “Who are you?” he asked. “Where’s Jack?”
As far as Jonathan was concerned, the two of them had no business being there, but what was he supposed to do, let them go? Let them turn around and walk away? Like that was going to happen!
So he shot them, too, one after the other. He hit the man full-on. The woman turned and tried to run but he shot her in the back. As they went down, just like that, Jonathan was thankful for all the hours and weeks he had spent shooting at the target range. This was the payoff.
He stood for a while after that with his heart pounding. For some reason, shooting the two strangers seemed far worse than shooting his own mother. After all, she deserved it. They did not, but in realizing the enormity of what he had done, a certain level of self-preservation kicked in as well. He needed to do something that would throw the investigation off his trail long enough for him to get over the border and into the interior of Mexico. If he could make it that far and connect up with the money he had sent on ahead, he’d be fine.
He needed to do something that would make this incident look like something other than what it was. When he saw his mother’s purse, it came to him. Robbery. That should do the trick.
Jonathan had had the foresight to bring along some latex gloves. Donning a pair, he walked to the bodies one by one. Carrying his weapon in one hand in case anyone else showed up, he collected his mother’s purse and the men’s wallets. Just for good measure, he took their jewelry and cell phones as well. Jack’s simple gold wedding band wasn’t impressive, and neither was the small diamond on his mother’s finger. Ditto went for the Indian guy’s immense turquoise ring and the engagement ring, still in a jeweler’s box in his jeans. Taken together, the whole stack didn’t amount to much, but he pocketed it all.
When he reached the Indian woman, she wasn’t quite dead. “Help me,” she moaned. “Please.”
Jonathan thought about putting her out of her misery with another bullet to her head, just to end her suffering, but he decided against it. If someone had heard the shots earlier, they might still be listening and trying to decide where they were coming from. He couldn’t risk another. Besides, it was a shame to waste a bullet if he didn’t have to.
Like his mother, the Indian woman had carried her purse with her when she got out of the car—even in the middle of the desert.
Why do women do that? Jonathan had wondered as he leaned down to pick it up.
He stood in front of Jack Tennant’s Lexus and sorted through t
he purses and wallets. Then, leaving the empty husks of belongings behind, he walked away. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t need to hurry. They were dead. They weren’t going anywhere. With any kind of luck it would be hours or even days before someone found them.
Once in his own vehicle, Jonathan drove back out to the road, where he was relieved to see no oncoming traffic visible in either direction. He had been holding his breath as he approached the highway. Now he let it go. When he breathed back in, even he couldn’t ignore the rank stench in the minivan. He had practically lived it in for days, waking and sleeping. The floorboards were covered with the empty wrappers and boxes and cups of the fast food that had sustained him during this long hunting excursion. Now that it was over, however, he needed to find a room, get himself cleaned up, and then make his getaway. He rolled down the window and let in some of the chill night air.
There was still nothing from Thousand Oaks. The story he had spun about taking his family on vacation must have worked. Must still be working.
Once Jonathan managed to get across the border, he figured he’d be home free.
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:30 a.m.
67º Fahrenheit
By the time Dan saw Angie again, she had been changed into a hospital gown and settled in a bed. The bedside tray had been stocked with food—cheese and crackers, tapioca pudding, and a dish full of cubes of red Jell-O—the kind Dan had always tried to stick to the ceiling in the school cafeteria. Bozo might have been the current family clown, but he certainly wasn’t the only one.
As Dan watched Angie mow her way through the food, he realized that he had skipped his ham sandwich. As a consequence, so had Bozo.
“Is that any good?” he asked.
Angie looked at him, smiled, nodded, and popped another Jell-O cube into her mouth. “Where’s my mommy?” she asked.
Dan had lied to her before and let her believe the less hurtful fiction that her mother was still sleeping. It seemed to Dan that someone else should be the one to give Angie Enos the bad news—the definitive, once-and-for-all answer about what had happened to her mother. Dan was a complete stranger—an innocent passerby. It wasn’t fair for that difficult job to be left up to him. Where were Angie’s grandparents? Shouldn’t they be the ones to do this? Or what about some beloved aunt or uncle? Shouldn’t someone with more of a claim on Angie and her future perform this difficult task?
But right then, at that precise moment in Angie’s hospital room, Daniel Pardee was the only person available.
He didn’t answer for several moments. How can I explain something like that? he wondered. What words can I use and how much will she be able to understand?
Dan had seen the information listed on Angie’s tribal enrollment card. Her birthday was in November. That made her four and a half years old. As far as he knew, the movie version of Bambi wasn’t shown in theaters anymore, but maybe Delphina had rented the video.
Finally he decided that the best thing to do was to tell the truth. That was how Gramps had always dealt with tough things—by saying straight out whatever was going on rather than by beating around the bush or trying to fudge what needed to be said.
“Angie,” Dan said gently, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Your mommy is dead.”
Angie’s enormous eyes welled with tears. “I thought she was asleep.”
Dan shook his head. “I know,” he said. “But she wasn’t.”
For a long time, Angie sat there quietly, staring at him through her tears.
“My dog died,” she said finally. “He ran out into the road and got run over by a truck. Mommy said that dying meant he wouldn’t be back. Does that mean my mommy won’t be back?”
“That’s correct,” Dan said. “She won’t be.”
“Not ever?”
“Not ever.”
“Is she in heaven? Mommy says that when people die, they go to heaven.”
“I’m sure that’s where she is,” Dan said with a conviction he didn’t necessarily feel. For his own part, Dan Pardee had stopped believing in heaven and hell a long time ago.
Angie put down her spoon and pushed the food tray away. “I’m not hungry,” she said.
Dan carried the tray across the room and put it on a dresser. “Of course you’re not.”
“Who’ll take care of me, then?” Angie asked. “Donald?”
Which meant Dan had to deliver the next blow as well. “Angie, Donald’s dead, too. Just like your mommy.”
“Who, then?” Angie asked.
Dan shrugged. “Do you have a grandpa and grandma? Maybe they’ll look after you.”
“Grandpa’s sick,” Angie said.
“What about your father?” Dan asked. The name Joaquin Enos was also listed on Angie’s enrollment card. “You have a father, don’t you?”
Angie simply looked at him and didn’t reply. That in itself was answer enough. The father had never been a factor in the Angelina Enos equation, and he wouldn’t be one now.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dan said. “I know how hard it is not to worry, but someone will look after you, Angie. Right now, you should probably lie down and try to get some sleep. We’ll sort all this out tomorrow morning.”
She reached out and grabbed hold of Dan’s hand. “Will you stay here with me?”
“I will,” he said. “But first I need to go out and feed Bozo and give him some water.” Dan also needed to call in and let Dispatch know that no one was out on patrol in his sector right now. Given the obvious police presence at Komelik, it didn’t seem likely that a major number of illegal entrants would be attempting to use that route tonight. As far as Dan was concerned, his presence at Angie Enos’s bedside was far more pressing.
“You’ll come right back?” Angie asked. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
Telling the lady at the desk that he was just stepping outside for a moment, he hurried over to his Expedition. There he let Bozo out of the SUV long enough for the dog to relieve himself. Then Dan poured a couple of bottles of water into the metal bowl he kept in the back of the luggage compartment. While Bozo lapped up the water, Dan unwrapped the two sandwiches and gave them to the dog. All he reserved for himself were the bags of chips. Then he called Dispatch.
All that took time. When Dan finally made it back to Angie’s room, he expected her to be sleeping. She wasn’t, primarily because by then a night nurse was in the room, taking her vitals.
“I knew you’d come back,” Angie said.
Dan nodded. “I told my boss that you needed Bozo and me to stay here for right now.”
“Bozo is his dog,” Angie explained to the nurse.
Unimpressed by this tidbit of information, the nurse rolled her eyes.
When she left the room, Dan eased his long frame into a chair that didn’t necessarily fit his body, or any human body for that matter. It looked like a chair, but it was the least comfortable specimen of chairness Dan Pardee had ever had the misfortune of encountering. As soon as he settled into it, however, Angie reached out again, took his hand, and fell fast asleep.
Dan sat in almost that same position for the next three hours. He stirred only when his feet went numb or his hand did. And while he sat there, a file drawer he usually kept closed and safely locked away from conscious thought popped open—the file drawer marked “Adam Pardee.”
Safford, Arizona
1979
Even from prison Adam Pardee had refused to sign over his parental rights. As a consequence, Micah and Maxine Duarte had been forced to go to court to gain custody of their grandson. Fortunately Micah’s boss, a prosperous Safford area dairy farmer, was able to help them find an Anglo attorney who made it possible for the Indian couple to navigate the Anglo legal jungle.
When it was time to enroll Dan in kindergarten, the guardianship issue had been settled to the satisfaction of the courts, perhaps. In the court of public opinion, and more important at Fort Thomas Element
ary School, Dan Pardee’s status was still very much in doubt.
Although Micah Duarte soon morphed into Dan’s beloved Gramps, his wife, Maxine, was another matter. She was always kind to Dan—kind but distant. Up until her death five years ago, she had always been Grandmother, never the less formal Grandma. Maxine had looked after Dan and cared for him, but she had seemed incapable of allowing herself to unbend in the presence of her dead daughter’s child. To Dan’s knowledge, his grandparents never discussed Rebecca, or if they did, it certainly wasn’t in Dan’s presence. Maybe part of Maxine’s reticence had to do with the fact that Dan looked so much like his father, although no one had mentioned it at the time. Dan found that out for himself much later while doing Internet searches into his own history.
Even as a child, Dan Pardee had had his father’s eyes. As he grew, he developed his father’s height and long legs, as well as his rangy good looks. All of that meant that Dan didn’t fit in well with the other kids on the San Carlos. He was neither fish nor fowl. He wasn’t Apache enough for some or Anglo enough for others.
And his troubled family history often caused difficulties as well. For one thing, school and Sunday school programs often focused on holidays with traditional “family values.”
Art projects to make greeting cards to celebrate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day didn’t take into account the feelings of a kid whose father had murdered his mother. There weren’t any cards that covered that contingency. When it came time to do a “family history” project for eighth-grade social studies, Dan flunked it fair and square. He wouldn’t answer the questions and didn’t turn in the paper. His teacher was baffled. Gramps was not.
As an eighth grader, Dan hadn’t wanted to know any of that ugly stuff, but while he was sitting in Iraq with time on his hands and computer access, he had made it his business to track down everything the Internet had to offer on Adam and Rebecca Pardee. Surprisingly enough, there was plenty of material available with the click of the mouse.