J. Jance - Day of the Dead

Brandon helped himself to a plastic lawn chair and dragged it close to Fat Crack’s. The shiny white surface of the plastic had been burned away by the sun. Worried that the chair might be too sun-damaged and brittle to hold his weight, Brandon tested it gingerly before settling on it.

“How come you knew I was coming?” he asked. “More of that spooky medicine-man stuff you and Lani are always talking about?”

Fat Crack laughed and pulled a cordless telephone receiver out from under the blanket that covered his lap. “Not even,” he said. “Diana called. She wanted to know if Wanda had any tamales and tortillas you could buy and take home for dinner tomorrow. The tortillas aren’t ready yet, but they will be. Just don’t forget them when it’s time to leave. Diana will kill you.”

“How are you?” Brandon asked.

“As blind as Looks at Nothing used to be,” Fat Crack answered with a chuckle. “Maybe that’s one of the medicine-man rules that S’ab Neid Pi Has forgot to tell me-that medicine men are supposed to be blind.” He paused. The smile on his face faded. “I’m an old man, Brandon,” he added. “I’m old and I’m dying.”

There it was then-all the cards laid out on the table. “Lani’s worried about that,” Brandon admitted. “She wants to be here to help.”

“I know,” Fat Crack replied. “But there’s nothing she can do. She’ll want me to check into a hospital and have me taking shots and pills. I’m not doing that, not even for Lani.”

“No,” Brandon said. “I suppose not.”

“When will she be home?”

“Sometime in the next two weeks,” Brandon answered. “Graduation is on the tenth of May, but she’ll be home before that. She’s skipping graduation and has rescheduled her finals.”

“Then I’d better hurry,” Fat Crack said. “If I could walk, I’d do what Looks at Nothing did and go out in the desert someplace by myself.” He paused again. “I don’t like being a burden,” he added. “It’s so hard on Wanda-harder on her than on me. But let’s not talk about that anymore. It’s not why you came to see me.”

Fat Crack Ortiz had been Brandon Walker’s friend for decades. The thought of losing him hurt like hell, but now that Fat Crack had changed the subject, Brandon did the same.

“It’s true,” Brandon agreed. “Emma Orozco came to see me yesterday. She wanted to know if I could help find her daughter’s killer, but I’m sure you already know that.”

Fat Crack nodded. “What did you say?” he asked.

“I said it’s been a long time since her daughter died. More than thirty years.”

“A long time to wait for justice,” Fat Crack observed.

“Yes,” Brandon said.

“Are you going to help her?”

“I’m going to try, but why did she wait so long?”

Fat Crack shrugged and said nothing.

“She indicated her husband didn’t want her to pursue it. She waited until after he died.”

Fat Crack nodded. “Some people always thought Henry did it-that he got Roseanne pregnant and then killed her because he was afraid Emma would find out. No one ever proved he did anything wrong.”

“Nobody ever disproved it, either,” Brandon offered.

“Yes,” Fat Crack said. “That’s right.”

“What do you think?” Brandon asked.

“Henry Orozco was a good man,” Fat Crack answered finally, echoing what Diana had said. “I know that some men do bad things to their daughters, but not Henry. You could ask his other daughter, Andrea. She’s Andrea Tashquinth now. She’s the produce manager over at Basha’s.”

“Andrea Tashquinth is one of the people I planned to see today,” Brandon said. “You’re right. She works at Basha’s, and Emma said she’d be working today.”

“Good,” Fat Crack said.

“You remember when it happened, then?” Brandon asked.

“Oh, yes. I remember.”

“Were there any other suspects?”

“Not that I know of,” Fat Crack said, “although I don’t think anyone looked very hard.”

Both men were quiet for a moment, both thinking the same thing-that had Roseanne Orozco been an Anglo, more would have been made of her death and the search for her killer might well have been successful.

“Would you do me a favor?” Fat Crack asked.

“Sure,” Brandon agreed quickly. “What do you need?”

Fat Crack reached under his blanket. From the same place where he had retrieved the cordless telephone, he now produced a leather bag-a huashomi-Looks at Nothing’s fringed buckskin medicine pouch, one the scrawny old man had always worn around his thin waist. The pouch was far more threadbare now than it had been the first time Brandon Walker had seen it in the parking lot of the Pima County Sheriff’s office almost three decades earlier.

Fat Crack had brought Looks at Nothing to the department and had waited patiently until Brandon showed up hours later. And there, under a mesquite tree next to the parking lot, Brandon had watched the old medicine man deftly fill and roll a homemade cigarette using wiw-Indian tobacco-rather than the unfiltered Camels Brandon had smoked prior to quitting several months earlier. After lighting the hand-rolled cigarette with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter that must have dated from World War II, Looks at Nothing had taken a long drag. Then ceremoniously saying the word nawoj-which, Brandon later learned, in the context of the Tohono O’odham Peace Smoke, means friendly gift-he passed it along, first to Fat Crack and then to Brandon Walker.

It had been Brandon’s first encounter with the Peace Smoke. He had been startled by the sharp, bitter taste. Only with the greatest of effort had he managed to keep from coughing. But even then, with the smoke still singeing his throat and lungs, Brandon Walker understood that he’d been allowed entry into something special-something most Anglos didn’t experience in a lifetime.

He watched now as Fat Crack once again extracted that same familiar lighter from the bag. “Would you help me? Wanda doesn’t like me to do it. She’s afraid I’ll burn the place down.”

“Sure,” Brandon said. “I’ll do my best.”

Even though Fat Crack couldn’t see to critique what he was doing, Brandon Walker felt self-conscious as he clumsily rolled the tobacco into a ragged imitation of a cigarette. “Now what?” he asked when he finished.

Wordlessly, Fat Crack handed him the lighter. The brass was worn thin. The grooves on the wheel had disappeared completely. To Brandon’s surprise, it lit after only one try. He held the sagging cigarette to his lips long enough to light it, then passed it to Fat Crack. “Nawoj,” he said.

They passed the cigarette back and forth between them several times. When it was close to burning their fingers, Brandon took it and ground it out in the dirt while the silence between the two men lengthened until it seemed to stretch on forever.

“They’re all lost girls, you know,” Fat Crack said thoughtfully.

Brandon felt as though he’d lost track of the conversation. “Who are?” he asked.

“Roseanne, Delia, and Lani.”

“Delia your daughter-in-law?” Brandon asked.

Fat Crack nodded. “Delia’s mother saved her and I brought her home. You and Diana saved Lani and are giving her back to The People. And I’itoi has chosen you to speak for Roseanne.”

Brandon was taken aback by Fat Crack’s suggestion. It seemed unlikely I’itoi would exhibit the slightest interest in an aging and discarded Anglo homicide detective, but the medicine man spoke with such conviction that Brandon couldn’t help believing it was true.

“Someday they’ll be friends, you know,” Fat Crack said at last.

Again Brandon was confused. Maybe the bitter tobacco was messing with his mental faculties. “Who’ll be friends?” he asked.