J. Jance: Day of the Dead

Diana shrugged. “Beats me. Something about her daughter.”

Once out of the water, Brandon found the morning air far chillier than expected. He hurried to the sliding door and let himself into the bedroom. After dressing he made his way into the spacious living room, where a wizened Indian woman, her face a road map of wrinkles, sat primly erect on the leather sofa, one gnarled hand resting on the crossbar of her walker.

“Ms. Orozco?” Brandon asked tentatively, taking a seat opposite the old woman. “I’m Brandon Walker.”

She turned to look at him and nodded. “Your baskets are very nice,” she said.

Brandon glanced around the living room. Diana’s collection of Native American baskets, many of them finely crafted museum-quality pieces, were arrayed around the room with wild extravagance. They had been part of the household furnishings for so long that Brandon Walker no longer noticed them.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Some of them were made by Rita Antone, a Tohono O’odham woman who was once my wife’s housekeeper and baby-sitter.”

Emma Orozco nodded again. “I knew Hejel Wi i’thag,” she said. “Her nephew is the one who sent me to talk to you.”

Despite years of living around the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, Brandon was still struck by the lingering influence of old ways and old things. Rita Antone had been dead for fifteen years, yet on the reservation she was still Hejel Wi i’thag-Left Alone. As a little orphaned girl named Dancing Quail, Rita had been given the name Left Alone in the early part of the twentieth century, long before Emma Orozco had been born. No doubt stories about Hejel Wi i’thag and her odd loyalty to an Anglo woman named Diana Ladd were now an enduring part of reservation lore.

Rita Antone’s nephew, retired Tribal Chairman Gabe Ortiz, and his wife, Wanda, were longtime family friends. In the Walker/Ladd household, Gabe was usually referred to by his familiar name of Fat Crack-Gihg Tahpani. Not wanting to betray what might seem like undue intimacy, Brandon made no reference to that name now.

“How’s Mr. Ortiz doing?” Brandon asked.

“Not so good,” Emma Orozco replied.

This was not news. A few months earlier, Fat Crack had been diagnosed with diabetes. A student of Christian Science, Fat Crack had, in middle age and with some reluctance, answered a summons to become a Tohono O’odham medicine man. Once aware of his diagnosis, Fat Crack had refused to accept the services of the Indian Health Service physicians and “get poked full of holes.” Instead, he was dealing with his ailment-one so prevalent on the reservation that it was known as the Papago Plague-with diet and exercise, along with an unlikely regimen of treatments that was as much Mary Baker Eddy as it was Native American.

“I don’t know why he has to be so damned stubborn,” Brandon’s daughter Lani had railed. Home for Christmas vacation from her pre-med studies in North Dakota, she had heard about the diagnosis while visiting Wanda and Fat Crack in their home at Sells. “He should be under a doctor’s care,” Lani had declared. “But he won’t even consider it.”

Dolores Lanita Walker was a Tohono O’odham child who, as a toddler, had been adopted by Diana Ladd and Brandon Walker. She had been reared by them and, for the first several years, by Rita Antone as well. Fat Crack and Wanda Ortiz were Lani’s godparents, and Fat Crack and Lani had always been especially close.

“You can’t take this personally,” Brandon had counseled his daughter. “Fat Crack has to deal with his illness in his own way, not your way.”

“But he’s going to die,” a suddenly tearful Lani had objected. “He’s going to die and leave us, and he doesn’t have to.”

“You’re wrong there, sweetie,” Brandon had told her. “We all have to die.”

Brandon refocused his attention on the present and on Emma Orozco, sitting stolid and still on the living room couch. At first Brandon thought she was still staring at the baskets, but then he realized she wasn’t. She was looking beyond them-through them-in a way that took him back to his days in ’Nam and to the thousand-yard stare.

“But Mr. Ortiz suggested you should see me,” Brandon suggested gently. “My wife said it was something concerning your daughter.”

Emma sighed and nodded. “She’s dead.”

Brandon gave himself points. He had recognized the look on her face, and the hurt, too. “I’m sorry,” Brandon said.

“It’s all right,” Emma returned. “Roseanne’s been dead for a long time.” She paused then, searching for words.

Years in law enforcement had taught Brandon Walker the difficult art of silence. There were times when it was appropriate to ask questions and probe for answers. But there were other times, like this one, when keeping silent was the only thing to do. Emptying a room of sound left behind a vacuum that could only be filled by a torrent of words. Or, as in this case, by a trickle.

“She was murdered,” Emma Orozco whispered hoarsely. “In 1970.”

Suddenly Brandon Walker knew exactly why Emma Orozco was sitting there and why Fat Crack had sent her. “Let me guess,” he offered quietly. “Her killer was never caught.”

Emma nodded again. Brandon could see that, more than thirty years after her daughter’s death, Emma Orozco still found the subject painful to discuss. As the old woman struggled to keep from shedding shameful tears in front of a relative stranger-something firmly frowned upon by her people-Brandon opted to give her privacy.

“I’ll get some iced tea,” he said, rising from the couch. “We’ll drink first, then we’ll talk.”

“Thank you,” Emma whispered. “Thank you very much.”

J. A. Jance

Day of the Dead

Three

While bustling around in the kitchen, gathering glasses and ice, pouring tea, Brandon Walker remembered every word of the unexpected phone call six months earlier that had rescued him from wallowing in a sea of despair and drowning in a pot of self-imposed pity. He had been cranky and bored, tired of being seen by the world as nothing but Mr. Diana Ladd, and disgusted with himself for not being grateful now that Diana’s burgeoning success had made their financial lives more secure than either one of them had ever dreamed possible.

Diana had been somewhere on the East Coast, off on another book tour. Alone with Damsel, Brandon was finishing his second cup of coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal in the shade of the patio when the call came in just after 8 A.M. The caller ID readout said “Private Call,” which probably meant it was some telephone solicitor, but on the off chance that it was Diana calling from a new hotel and a new room, Brandon answered it anyway.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Walker?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

“Yes,” Brandon growled, adopting his most off-putting, crotchety voice. The last thing he wanted to do was have to convince some slimy salesman that, as owner of a house constructed primarily of river rock, he had no need of vinyl siding.

“My name is Ralph Ames,” the man said. “I hope it’s not too early to call.”

“That depends on what you’re selling,” Brandon grunted in return. He had no intention of making this easy.

“I’m not selling anything,” Ames returned.

Oh, yeah, Brandon thought. That’s what they all say.

“Does the name Geet Farrell ring a bell?” Ralph continued.

Detective G. T. Farrell had been a homicide detective for neighboring Pinal County at the same time Brandon Walker had been in a similar position for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Geet Farrell was part of the cavalry who had ridden to the rescue when Andrew Philip Carlisle, newly released from prison, had staged his brazen and nearly successful attempt to silence Diana Ladd permanently. Brandon and Geet had stayed in touch occasionally since then, although they weren’t necessarily close.