J. Jance - Day of the Dead

“What kind of tennis shoes do you wear?”

“Nikes.”

“All right,” Brian said. “That’s it for now. How do we go about getting in touch with Mrs. Stryker?”

“But I thought you said you wouldn’t drag her into this,” Erik objected.

“I said we’d be discreet,” Brian countered. “We need to talk to her to verify what you’ve told us so far. If you’re telling the truth, I’m sure she won’t mind vouching for you.”

Erik looked uncomfortable.

Brian shrugged. “You can give us her phone number now, or we can track her down on our own tomorrow. Suit yourself.”

Erik glanced uneasily at Earl Coulter, as if he was finally ready to take the attorney’s advice. Unfortunately, Coulter wasn’t listening. The Snoozer was sound asleep, his double chin resting on the awful tie.

As Erik was being led back to his cell, he tried to quell another attack of panic. Overnight he’d told himself things couldn’t be all that bad, but in the interview room he had finally glimpsed the totality of what he was up against. A girl was dead-murdered. Her blood was in his truck and most likely on his clothing as well. His machete was the presumed murder weapon. It meant that someone somewhere was trying to frame him for a murder he hadn’t committed. To make matters worse, Erik was stuck with a drunken attorney who was utterly useless.

Erik’s only hope was that once Gayle knew the kind of trouble he was in, she’d forgive him and come to his rescue. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

The guard took Erik as far as his cell and let him inside. As the bars clanged shut behind him, it sounded as though they were closing forever. He fell onto his cot. For the first time since his grandmother died, Erik LaGrange tried to pray.

J. A. Jance

Day of the Dead

Nineteen

Brandon dropped Emma at the hospital’s front entrance. By the time he had parked and come inside, Emma was seated at a desk where a young Tohono O’odham clerk sat before a keyboard.

Brandon’s first instinct was to go to Emma and offer moral support. After a moment’s thought, however, he decided against it. Emma’s request would be better received without a Mil-gahn man peering over her shoulder. Brandon stationed himself by the door and tried to look unobtrusive. Not that it worked. Every person who went in or out gave him a serious once-over.

Emma’s conversation was too soft-spoken for eavesdropping. Each time Emma spoke, the young woman would type briskly away. Then, after a frowning pause, she would shake her head. Brandon didn’t have to hear what was being said to understand that.

Brandon was reconsidering his decision to stay out of it when the clerk typed in yet another request. This time, after the pause, she smiled and nodded. Seconds later, she reached over to a printer and removed several pieces of paper. After stapling them together, she handed them to Emma, who studied them briefly and stuffed them into her purse. She rose to her feet. With a nod of thanks, Emma swung her walker around and headed for the door.

Brandon leaped to open the door as Emma approached. “You got it?” he asked.

Looking at him, she shook her head almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t answer aloud until they were outside the building.

“She’s wrong,” Emma said as she stamped along, banging her walker on the sidewalk.

“But I thought she gave you something,” Brandon began. “I saw her hand you-”

“She says there’s no record of anyone named Roseanne Orozco ever being admitted to the hospital,” Emma said fiercely. “She said it was so long ago that maybe they lost the records, but it’s not true. She found my record. It shows I was in the hospital three times-once when Andrea was born, once when Roseanne was born, and fifteen years ago for my hysterectomy.”

Brandon helped Emma up onto the Suburban’s running board. While she settled in, he stashed the walker behind the front seat. Once he was behind the wheel, he realized Emma was staring at him intently.

“Andrea’s right,” she said, nodding. “It was somebody at the hospital.”

“We don’t know that,” Brandon cautioned. “Just because the records are missing…”

But Emma Orozco wasn’t listening. “I could never understand it,” she said. “They told me Roseanne was pregnant when she died, but I could never understand how that was possible. If she’d had a boyfriend, I would have known about him, or Andrea would have. But Roseanne didn’t talk, Mr. Walker. Not to anyone. Not even to me or to her father.”

Brandon had switched on the ignition. Rather than pulling out of the parking lot, he sat with the engine idling while the air-conditioning gradually came on.

“But there were all those rumors,” Emma added after a long pause.

“What rumors?”

“People said some of the doctors at the hospital…” Emma’s voice faded away.

“Some of the doctors what?” Brandon asked.

“Did bad. You know, that they messed with their patients.”

“What do you mean, messed with?” Brandon asked. “As in molested them?”

Emma nodded. “But it was a long time after Roseanne was gone. I wondered if it could have had something to do with her, but my husband…” She stopped and shrugged.

Brandon remembered what Andrea had said about the sins white men committed on the reservation going unpunished. This was clearly another case in point, and he understood where Emma was going.

“Since everyone but you seemed to have forgotten all about Roseanne, your husband didn’t want you causing trouble and bringing it back up, right?”

Emma nodded again. “I shouldn’t have listened to Henry,” she said.

Brandon considered his next words carefully. “Mrs. Orozco…” he began.

“Emma,” she corrected.

Brandon knew that being granted first-name status was a gift, and he accepted it as such. “Emma,” he said, “I must caution you. This is all theoretical. We may be going nowhere with this. Still, it’s a place to start. Given all that, are you sure you can’t remember the name of Roseanne’s doctor?”

Emma shook her head. “No,” she said. “He was young, but all the doctors were young back then. I don’t remember any of their names. They came for a few years and then left. Something about paying off college loans.”

And keeping their butts out of Vietnam, Brandon thought. “It doesn’t matter,” he told her. “The hospital should have records of which doctors were there and for how long. Can you tell me exactly when Roseanne went into the hospital?”

“Early July, right after the rains started,” Emma replied. “Henry and I drove into Tucson to get groceries. When we came home, we got stuck on the far side of the washes over by Ryan Field. It took a couple of hours for the water to go down enough so we could cross. Roseanne was feeling sick. Andrea took her over to the hospital, but they wouldn’t do anything until we signed the papers. When we got home, it was almost too late. Her appendix burst. They told us she might die. Afterward, when she finally got home from the hospital, she was still sick.

“Did anyone at the hospital show a particular interest in your daughter?” Brandon asked. “We’ve talked about the doctors. What about someone else? An orderly, or maybe a male nurse?”

“No,” Emma said. “I don’t remember anyone like that at all.”

“Was there anybody else who expressed an interest in her?” Brandon asked. “Someone from school, for example? Maybe one of her teachers.”

“After her operation, Roseanne was still sick,” Emma said. “When school started that year, she didn’t go back.”

Putting the Suburban in reverse, Brandon backed out of the parking place and headed back to Big Fields. For a while they rode in silence. In 1970, the investigators theorized that the father of Roseanne Orozco’s baby might be responsible for her death, but when they learned their prime suspect-Roseanne’s father-wasn’t the baby’s father, they let the investigation slide. Thirty-two years later, there were other tools that hadn’t been invented or even thought of in 1970-tools that were capable of unlocking secrets that were decades old, but using them meant venturing into an emotional minefield.