J. Jance - Day of the Dead

“It’s cold out here,” he said to her. “Shouldn’t you wear something warmer than that?”

Lani rolled her eyes. “Compared to North Dakota, this feels like summer.”

“Sorry,” he said. “My blood must be thinner than yours.”

They both fell silent while he stood up to put the steaks on the grill. “We should have called you about Fat Crack,” Brandon said when he finished. “I had no idea things were as bad as they were. I don’t think anyone else knew, either.”

“I should have known,” Lani said reproaching herself.

“But Fat Crack knew,” Brandon told her. “If he had wanted you to be here with him, he could have had Wanda call you.”

“What do you mean, he knew?” Lani demanded.

“Just a minute,” Brandon said. He hurried into the house and returned a few moments later carrying Fat Crack’s fringed leather pouch. Gently he placed it in Lani’s hands.

“Looks at Nothing’s huashomi,” Lani whispered reverentially, clutching the frayed buckskin to her breast. “Why do you have it?”

“I saw Fat Crack early yesterday afternoon,” Brandon said. “When it was time for me to leave, we smoked the Peace Smoke. Then he gave me this and asked that I give it to you.”

“He knew he was dying,” Lani murmured.

Brandon nodded. “And if he had told anyone…”

“They would have taken him to the hospital,” Lani finished. Then she began to cry.

Brandon tried to kneel down beside her, but a knife of pain shot through his left knee. He settled for taking her hands and pulling her up so he could hold her in his arms. “And that would have been wrong,” he said, rocking her like a baby. “You know Fat Crack would have hated that.”

Lani leaned into her father’s chest. “All I wanted was to talk to him one more time,” she sobbed. “I wanted to ask him if there was anything else he thought I should know or…”

“Lani, Lani, Lani,” Brandon murmured soothingly. “For the people left behind there’s never a right time. We’re greedy. We always want more. We’re never ready to let go, but Fat Crack was ready.”

“He told you that?”

“No, Lani,” Brandon Walker said with a catch in his voice. “He didn’t have to.”

Your ankles sure are swollen,” Leo said to Delia as he crawled into bed beside her. “Are you okay?”

“I was on my feet a lot today,” Delia said. “But I’m fine.”

“How are things for tomorrow?”

“Everything’s as ready as we can make it. Having the funeral at four will give the kids and buses a chance to leave the high school before everybody else starts showing up.”

“Good thinking.”

“You’re not planning on going to work in the morning, are you?” Leo asked.

“I thought I’d put in half a day. Why?”

“You should take it easy,” Leo said. “I’m worried about you and the baby.”

“I’m fine,” Delia said.

With that, she rolled over on her side and fell asleep.

It took time for the after-dinner hubbub to die down. Tyler, exhausted from his busy day, turned on the waterworks in a foot-stomping red-faced temper tantrum that sent Davy and Candace scurrying home early. While Lani and Diana cleared away dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Brandon retreated into his office and dialed Ralph Ames’s number in Seattle.

“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday night,” Brandon said once Ralph came on the line. “But something’s come up. I’m working the Orozco case. When Roseanne’s homicide was first investigated, the top theory was that the father of her unborn baby would be the culprit. Since she had no known boyfriend, everybody thought it was a case of incest and that her father, Henry Orozco, was responsible.”

“For both the baby and the murder?” Ralph asked.

“Right,” Brandon replied. “But a blood test on the fetus eventually ruled Henry out as the father. The case went cold without turning up any other suspects.”

“It doesn’t sound like anyone was trying very hard,” Ralph Ames observed.

“She was an Indian,” Brandon said. “And the murder happened in 1970. Indian homicides weren’t exactly a priority in those days, but now I’m thinking the cops back then may have been right. I’ve located the fetus’s grave site. The grandmother is willing to let us exhume the remains, but before I dig them up, I want to be sure DNA testing is authorized.”

“Expensive but authorized,” Ralph assured him. “Hedda Brinker’s philosophy was to spare no expense. How far along was the fetus?”

“About four months,” Brandon said. “You think that’s too young for a DNA match?”

“Iffy but possible,” Ames said. “Where’s the grave located?”

“On the reservation. At a village called Big Fields.”

“Even with the grandmother’s permission, you’ll probably need a court order.”

Brandon thought about standing in the hot sun earlier that morning digging Fat Crack’s grave. That had been simple enough. They showed up at Ban Thak with picks and shovels and dug away, but that had been to bury someone, not to dig them up. Brandon didn’t know all the Tohono O’odham taboos concerning the handling of the dead, but he suspected there were some.

“We’ll probably need a court order and a medicine man,” Brandon replied.

“Do you know any?” Ralph Ames asked. “A medicine man, that is.”

Brandon paused before answering. “The one I did know died yesterday.”

“Surely there are others,” Ames returned.

There’s my daughter, Brandon Walker wanted to say. But something kept the words from escaping his lips. If he said that to Ralph Ames-a sophisticated urban attorney in his Brooks Brothers suit and Pink’s tie-there was a chance Ames would dismiss Brandon as some kind of superstitious nutcase. But by not saying it, Brandon argued with himself, aren’t I denying what Lani believes and everything Fat Crack believed as well?

“Well,” Ralph continued, “if you can find another one to do the job, hire him and pay the going rate. In the meantime, tomorrow morning I’ll get on the horn and find out where to send samples of the remains once you have them. After more than thirty years, we’re going to be dealing with tiny remains and badly degraded DNA. One lab may be better than another. I want to use the right place first time out.”

In a matter of seconds, Ralph Ames had switched from discussing medicine men to DNA testing-effortlessly negotiating the same treacherous philosophical chasm Lani crossed daily as she moved between the worlds of superstition and belief and the teachings of modern science.

No wonder Hedda Brinker put him in charge, Brandon thought. Here’s a guy who isn’t afraid of using every available tool.

When Brandon got up from his desk, he had to stand for a long moment leaning against the wood and resting his arthritic hip before his leg would actually hold his weight. He had only clambered down into Fat Crack’s grave a couple of times, and he hadn’t worked all that hard, but his body was telling him otherwise.

He limped over to the door and switched off the light. “Getting old is hell,” he muttered under his breath as he started back down the hall to the kitchen.

Which is the same thing, he thought, that Fat Crack told me yesterday.

By the time Brandon emerged from his office, the kitchen was clean, Diana had taken herself to bed, and Lani was sitting outside on one of the patio chairs, staring up at the sky. “Didn’t the stars used to be brighter?” she asked. “Or is that just how it seems?”

“They used to be brighter,” Brandon agreed. “As the lights in and around Tucson expand, they reflect off moisture in the sky, making it lighter. Stargazing is better on the other side of the pass.”