J Jance - Queen of the Night

Detective Fellows took photos of each of the victims. All of them had been stripped of jewelry and watches. And there was no money to be found among the debris from the wallets and purses.

“So maybe it’s a straight robbery then,” Fellows suggested. “The Indian couple may be married, but I doubt it. The DMV lists Donald Rios as the sole owner of the Blazer.”

And Angie called him Donald, not Daddy, Dan thought.

That probably would have been the time for him to tell Detective Fellows about the existence of that eyewitness, but Dan kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t ready to relinquish Angie to anyone else, and he knew now that the other officer long ago probably hadn’t wanted to let loose of the child he had rescued from another horrific crime scene, either.

While Fellows photographed the last two victims, Dan walked as far as the ironwood tree. By then the last of the luminarias had burned themselves out. Even the light from the battery-powered lantern seemed to be fading. That was bad enough, but when Dan looked inside the tree, he was saddened to see that the huge white flowers, once breathtakingly beautiful, were beginning to shrivel and die as well.

Brian Fellows walked up behind him. “The night-blooming cereus,” he explained. “They bloom once a year for one night only, and then they’re gone. What about brass? Did you see any?”

Dan shook his head. “Not so far,” he replied. “We’ll probably have more luck looking for that in daylight.”

“Maybe,” Fellows said, “but if the guy knew enough to pick up his brass, we might be dealing with a pro.”

“From one of the cartels?” Dan asked.

Fellows nodded in agreement. “Could be,” he said.

That was Dan’s assessment, too. As far as he could see, the killer’s only misstep concerned the child. He had been so caught up in killing the four adults that he had somehow overlooked Angie.

When Dan and Detective Fellows completed their circuit of the crime scene and returned to Dan’s Expedition, Bozo was still lying next to it. He raised his head and gave Brian Fellows an appraising look as they passed. The detective evidently measured up, since the dog immediately returned to resting his head on his paws and with apparent unconcern closed his eyes.

“I assume that has to be Bozo, the only non-Indian Shadow Wolf?” Fellows asked.

Dan nodded. “That’s right.”

“I was warned about him. Kath said I should mind my manners around him.”

“Always a good idea,” Dan agreed.

Just then, Angie stirred inside the car and made a small whimpering sound. The noise was enough to bring both Bozo and Detective Fellows to full attention.

“Who’s that?” the detective asked. “What’s that?”

“A little girl,” Dan said. “Her name is Angie-Angie with no last name. She was in the Blazer. Somehow the killer missed her. I found her wandering around in the desert, barefoot and scared to death.”

“She’s not hurt?”

“Not seriously,” Dan said. “She’s got some cuts and scratches on her face, legs, and feet that probably need to be looked after.”

Brian glanced inside the car. “It looks more serious than that,” he said.

“You mean the blood on her clothes?” Dan asked.

Brian nodded.

“I think most of that came from another victim. Angie stayed with her mother’s body until I showed up.”

“How come she’s still alive?”

“Because when all hell broke loose, she kept quiet,” Dan replied. “That’s what her mother said she should do around bad people. She saw the man with the gun. After he left, she went looking for her mother. She thought her mother was sleeping.”

“You’re saying she saw the guy with the gun?” Brian asked.

Dan nodded. “An Anglo guy with a gun.”

“She saw the shooter but not the shooting?”

Dan nodded.

“Do you think she can identify him?”

Dan shrugged. “Beats me,” he replied. “She’s little. Four… maybe five years old.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Brian Fellows said. “If the bad guy thinks she can identify him, her life won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”

That was Dan’s assessment as well-that once the killer learned of Angie’s existence, the child might well become a target. He also worried that if CPS got involved, the situation could be even worse. “Protective” might be CPS’s middle name, but when it came to holding off killers, CPS would be about as useful for Angie as having a “no contact” order is for your run-of-the-mill domestic-violence victim.

The Law and Order patrol car returned, followed by an aging Ford F-100 pickup truck. Both vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road. An older man, slightly stooped and wearing blue jeans with frayed cuffs around a pair of down-at-the-heels cowboy boots, stepped out of the truck. His passenger, a woman of about the same age, stayed where she was.

With Officers Ramon and Mattias flanking him, the old man limped slowly past the Blazer to the spot where the young Indian man lay on his back. The old man looked down at the victim for a long moment, then nodded.

“It’s him,” he said stoically. “That’s my boy.”

Then, without another word and without a hint of a tear, the old man walked back to the pickup. He spoke to the waiting woman in Tohono O’odham. You didn’t need to speak the language to understand the anguish and to hear the quiet dignity those words expressed. Then, leaving the woman to her own grief, Thomas Rios returned to the little group of officers, where Officer Ramon made the official introductions. Dan wasn’t surprised to see that Thomas Rios was someone he already knew.

“There’s a little girl here,” Detective Fellows said to Thomas. “Can you tell us who she is?”

“That’s probably Angie, Delphina Enos’s little girl. Delphina is… was… Donald’s girlfriend. He had bought her a ring. He was going to ask her to marry him.”

“And Ms. Enos lived where?”

“In Sells,” he said. “But her family lives in Nolic. She was a nice girl.”

“To your knowledge did either of these people have any connection to the drug trade?”

Detective Fellows was the one who asked the question. The old Indian examined him with a long piercing look before he replied.

“No,” he said finally. “Not at all. Donald was a good boy-a good man. He didn’t do drugs. He didn’t drink.”

“You know that Donald and Delphina aren’t the only victims here tonight?” Fellows asked.

Thomas Rios nodded. “Yes. Martin told me. An old Milgahn man and woman, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Fellows said, pointing. “He drove that white Lexus.”

“I knew him,” Thomas said quietly. “He asked me if I would let him look around my land. He was searching for a deer-horn cactus. I told him about this one.” He waved in the direction of the faded lantern and the ironwood tree.

“He wanted to find some to show to his wife,” Rios continued. “He told me yesterday that he’d be bringing her here tonight to see the flowers. It was supposed to be a big surprise.”

It was a surprise, all right, Dan thought.

After that, they walked around to the front of the old man’s pickup. He stood with one boot resting on the bumper and answered the officers’ many questions with a soft-spoken style that was equal parts quiet dignity and unyielding endurance. Listening and watching carried Dan back to that other time, that long-ago time, and to another old Indian man.

Los Angeles, California

October 1978

The next morning Dan had awakened in a strange household, with people he didn’t know. The strangers were kind enough to him. They fed him and gave him clean clothes to wear, but they didn’t answer his many questions. Halloween came and went. Dan didn’t get to go trick-or-treating. His mother had bought him a Spider-Man costume to wear, but that hadn’t come with him the night he had been carried out of the apartment. If anyone ever went back to retrieve it, Dan never saw it.