J. Jance - Day of the Dead

Sometime later, a ringing telephone startled her from a sound sleep. As she reached for the phone, she glanced at the clock. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

“Lani?”

“Wanda?” Lani asked, struggling to recognize the woman’s voice. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Wanda Ortiz said. “I went outside to check on him, Lani. Fat Crack’s gone.”

“Gone?” Lani took a deep breath and closed her eyes. There was no need to ask what “gone” meant. “I’m coming home,” she said. “I’ll call Mom and Dad first, then I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

It took several hours to contact her various professors and make arrangements for her finals as well as for having her belongings packed and shipped home. Once that was accomplished, she called for airline reservations. The only flight available meant she wouldn’t arrive in Phoenix until early afternoon the next day. Only after purchasing her ticket did Lani try calling her parents.

She knew from experience that when dealing with offspring, her dad was a far softer touch and more understanding than her mother. Diana was the tough one-the disciplinarian. Brandon was a pushover. From the time Lani was tiny, she had been smart enough to play both those ends against the middle.

She tried her dad’s cell phone first, but he didn’t answer. She hung up, but before she could dial again, her own phone rang.

“Lani,” Diana said uncertainly. “Honey, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. I just heard from Wanda Ortiz and-”

“It’s all right, Mom,” Lani interrupted. “I already heard. Wanda called me, too. I’m on my way. I’ll be on the Northwest flight from Minneapolis that gets into Phoenix at one tomorrow afternoon. I’ll catch the shuttle from there home.”

Lani expected her mother to say she shouldn’t come rushing home, but Diana surprised her. “Don’t even think about the shuttle,” she said. “Someone will be there to meet you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Lani managed. They both heard the catch in her throat. “See you tomorrow.”

J. A. Jance

Day of the Dead

Fourteen

They say it happened long ago that the Tohono O’odham first came to the northern lands looking for new hunting grounds. Because it was very hot and dry, the first thing the hunters needed to find was water. In some mountains with very steep slopes they came upon a hollow shaded by mesquite trees, and in this hollow was a pool of water. There was a rock in the middle of the pool and on it sat a coyote.

When Coyote looked up and saw the hunters, at first he was very frightened because he didn’t know what the hunters would do to him. Then he looked back into the pool and said in a very loud voice, “Stay down there. Don’t come out and hurt these people.”

This, nawoj, my friend, was back at a time when the Indians and the animals all still spoke the same language. When the hunters heard this, they were very puzzled because coyotes usually run away and hide somewhere.

The hunters stopped at the edge of the water and looked around, but they could see nothing. Finally, one very old man stepped nearer and asked Coyote why he was talking.

“Can’t you see?” Coyote asked. “I’m talking to my people who live in this pond. I do not want them to come out and kill you.”

The hunters were surprised and told Coyote that they did not know his people lived in the water. Poor Coyote was trembling with fright but he answered bravely. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Up here many coyotes live in the water except when they hunt.” And then, looking back down into the water he said, “Do be quiet and let these people have some water.”

And so, one by one, with Coyote watching, the hunters came to the pond and drank. After that, whenever Coyote saw the hunters coming, he would hurry to the pond. And there he would be, sitting on his rock, where the hunters first saw him.

And that, nawoj, is where the village of Ban Thak-Coyote Sitting-is to this day, near the rock where Coyote sat to guard his pond.

Please tell me about your sister,” Brandon said to Andrea.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Was Roseanne smart?”

Andrea Tashquinth stared off into the middle distance. “I think she was smart,” Andrea said finally. “When someone told a joke, she’d laugh along with everyone else. She never did any homework, but she could read. She loved reading books, especially the Bible. One of the nuns at Topawa told my parents there was a convent where she could go, a contemplative convent-where no one was allowed to speak. When our mother told Roseanne about it, she smiled and nodded. It was something she would have been good at and someplace where she would have fit in.”

“Did she have boyfriends?”

Andrea shook her head adamantly. “No. Never. We didn’t hang around with boys the way some girls do. Our parents wouldn’t let us. They wanted us to be good girls. They didn’t want people to think we were too easy.”

“But Roseanne was pregnant when she died,” Brandon pointed out. “How do you think that happened?”

Andrea Tashquinth shrugged and didn’t answer.

“You say Roseanne didn’t have a boyfriend, and both you and your mother seem to think your father had nothing to do with it. Besides your father, then, were there any other men or boys who were around your house regularly? A visiting cousin or younger brother, perhaps?”

“No,” Andrea answered. “Not that I remember.”

“What do you remember, Ms. Tashquinth?” Brandon asked.

It was warm sitting in the Suburban with the hot afternoon sun beating down on the roof. Through the windshield, Brandon saw families with laughing children pile out of pickups, vans, and SUVs. They trailed in and out of the store, returning with carts piled high with groceries. Silence lingered for several long moments. Brandon Walker was content to keep quiet forever. Andrea was the one who blinked.

“It had to be at the hospital,” she whispered finally. “I tried to tell Law and Order that at the time, but nobody was interested in what I had to say. Nobody listened.”

“What hospital?”

“That one,” Andrea said, gesturing with her head in the direction of the Indian Health Services Hospital just up the road. “That summer Roseanne got sick and had to have her appendix taken out. After she got out of the hospital, she was supposed to be better, but she wasn’t. When school started that year, she was too sick to go. Finally, my mother took her to the doctor. He put her in the hospital for tests. When they let her out, Dad was supposed to go pick Roseanne up after work to bring her home. When he got there, she was already gone. Everyone assumed that she had just walked out of the hospital on her own. We never saw her again. The next week somebody found her body in an ice chest out along the road.”

“You believe something happened to her while she was in the hospital the first time, for the surgery?” Brandon asked.

Andrea Tashquinth turned so she was looking Brandon square in the face. “I know something happened to her,” she said fiercely. “I think my sister was raped.”

“By whom?”

Andrea’s diffidence returned. “I don’t know. Someone who worked there, maybe? An orderly or a nurse. They had a few male nurses back then. Or maybe it was someone who was at the hospital visiting someone else.”

“You told this to people at the time?”

“Tried to,” Andrea said. “But I was sixteen. No one was interested in my opinions.”

“Especially since they were all convinced that your father was the culprit.”

“Yes,” Andrea agreed.

“Did your parents or anyone else ever ask to see Roseanne’s medical records?”

“I doubt it,” Andrea said. “When I told them that I thought something had happened to Roseanne at the hospital, my parents didn’t listen, either.”