J. Jance - Day of the Dead

“Where’s Lani?” Brandon asked.

“On her way to Sells,” Diana answered. “She wanted to spend some time with Wanda before the funeral starts, and she’s delivering our flowers in person.”

Diana’s blase answer was totally at odds with Brandon’s gutroiling concerns. It set his teeth on edge. “You let her take the Invicta?” he objected.

The perfectly reconditioned 1960 Buick Invicta, a bright Tampico Red convertible with its powerful engine, was Diana’s special baby. She’d bought it from the widow of the original owner, who’d unloaded it at a charity auction. After paying far too much for what was little more than a wrecked hulk, she’d had the sorry spiderweb-laden husk of a convertible trucked back to Arizona from San Diego and delivered to the Ortiz brothers’ garage at Sells. Leo, who had spent a lifetime keeping decrepit old cars and trucks limping along, had been overjoyed at the prospect of bringing a once-splashy classic back to pristine condition. He’d even hired an old upholsterer in Nogales, Sonora, who, for a price, had replicated the Invicta’s signature red-and-white Cordaveen imitation-leather interior.

Once Leo had delivered her reconditioned prize into Diana’s waiting hands, she seldom let anyone else drive it-Brandon included. When she went into town to run errands, she’d slap on a scarf and take off, turning heads wherever she went. Brandon was astonished that Diana had turned Lani loose with that 325-horse-power engine. And to drive it to the reservation? That defied belief.

“She tried starting the Camry,” Diana explained. “It wouldn’t turn over. She was going to jump it, but I told her not to bother. We’re taking the Suburban, right?”

“She’d better not wreck the damned thing,” Brandon grunted. It was easier for him to complain about the Buick than it was to bring up what was really bothering him-Larry Stryker.

Diana laughed his grousing aside. “Come on,” she said. “Don’t be paranoid. She’s only ever wrecked one car.”

“That may be true,” Brandon agreed, “but the girl was born with a lead foot, and that 401-cubic-inch engine was made to fly.”

In that moment they both thought back to a night several years earlier when Lani, a few days past her eighteenth birthday, had totaled her Toyota pickup. Returning from visiting a friend near Three Points, she had lost control of the vehicle on a tight curve at the top of Gates Pass. Miraculously, even though her vehicle had sailed off a cliff, it had landed upright and stayed there.

When the dust finally cleared, Lani realized she wasn’t hurt. Not wanting to suffer the indignity of being driven home by one of her father’s former deputies, she’d asked the tow-truck driver for a lift. With the smashed remains of her car chained to the bed of the tow truck, she had arrived home at almost 2 A.M. and awakened her parents out of a sound sleep.

That night, when he saw the wreckage, Brandon was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she was still alive that he said almost nothing. The next day, though, he had visited the scene of the accident on his own. When he saw the cliff and the tracks her speeding Toyota pickup had sliced through the dry grass as it plowed off the roadway, he had felt sick to his stomach. Had Lani been thrown from the car, she would have been smashed to pieces on surrounding mounds of boulders and rocks. Her seat belt and exploding air bag had saved her life. Rather than dying or ending up in a hospital trauma unit, she’d walked away from the accident with nothing but a few cuts and bruises, one of which had left a tiny scar on the side of her left cheek.

After leaving the scene, Brandon returned to the house and raised hell with Lani, railing at her-as only fathers can-about her irresponsibility and thoughtlessness. She paid her traffic fine as well as her increased car insurance premiums without a murmur of complaint. Although three years had passed without any further incidents, Brandon was petrified that Diana’s powerful Buick would prove too much of a temptation. On the other hand, he thought, if anyone tries coming after Lani when she’s driving the Invicta, they’ll have a hell of a time catching up.

“How soon do you want to go?” Diana asked, changing the subject.

Brandon glanced at his watch. “Give me half an hour,” he said.

Still thinking about Lani and the convertible, he retreated to his own office, where a mess awaited him. TLC’s research librarians had been hard at work and turned up a prodigious amount of material. They had been in the process of faxing him multiple multipaged documents when his laser printer went nuts and started shooting sheets of paper in every direction. In fact, his laser printer was still in the process of whirring out one multipaged fax after another, sending the pages into a scattered jumble in the middle of the floor.

“I know I said I wanted a haystack,” Brandon sighed, looking at the mess. “But this is ridiculous.”

As Brian Fellows read through the autopsy results on the Yuma County case, the hair on his arms stood on end. It was scarily similar: evidence of vicious, long-term sexual abuse and torture resulting in internal damage and scarring. Marks on the remains indicated they had been severed with a sharp object, possibly a butcher knife.

“I think we’re onto something,” Brian told PeeWee. “We need copies of all the other autopsies immediately, if not sooner.”

“Which cases?”

“Let’s start with El Centro, California, and Sierra Blanca, Texas,” Brian suggested. “If we can connect the dots between some of them-say, Yuma’s, ours, and one or two others-we may be able to pick up more later on. Whoever this guy is, he’s been doing his thing with impunity for a long time. I want us to be the ones who bring him in.” Stretching to ease his aching desk-bound shoulders, Brian glanced at his watch. “Damn!” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?” PeeWee asked.

“I’ve gotta go. I told Kath I’d be home by now. A friend of ours died over the weekend. We’re due at the funeral this afternoon at four.”

“Get going, then,” PeeWee told him. “I’ll handle things here.”

J. A. Jance

Day of the Dead

Twenty-Four

The Baboquivari High School gym was filled to overflowing. Not only were the bleachers packed, so were the lines of folding chairs that covered the entire floor of the gym. An open casket, surrounded by lush banks of flowers, lay on a makeshift podium as the Desert People came to pay their last respects.

Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz was someone who had left an indelible mark on his community. Years of running the car-repair/tow-truck operation with his two sons had given him a position of prominence on the reservation that had eventually vaulted him into the political arena, first as a tribal council representative from Sells and later as the tribal chairman. And the fact that he was Looks at Nothing’s hand-chosen successor had augmented his influence.

The Reverend Jeremy Moon, the Korean-born pastor of Sells First Presbyterian Church, was a relative newcomer to the United States as well as to the Tohono O’odham Nation. He had been drafted into doing the service as a favor for Wanda Ortiz. During the pastor’s remarks, he kept referring to Gabriel Ortiz, making it clear that the Reverend Moon had never met Fat Crack and knew precious little about him.

Feeling miserable, Delia Ortiz sat in the front row between Leo and Wanda. She was sure every person in the room knew the details of her very public disagreements with her late father-in-law. Still, regardless of Delia’s relationship with Fat Crack, she knew the man deserved better than this embarrassing excuse of a eulogy delivered by someone whose words didn’t come close to honoring a man the community had known and respected.