J Jance - Queen of the Night

“The little girl is hurt but not that bad,” Martin answered. “Mostly cuts on her feet and on her face. She was found walking barefoot in the desert.”

“By herself?”

Martin nodded grimly. “One of the Border Patrol’s Shadow Wolves found her-a guy by the name of Dan Pardee. He found the four bodies first and then located the little girl a while later. My understanding is that he’s taking her to the hospital in Sells right now so she can be checked out.”

“What about the other two victims?”

“They’re both Anglos from Tucson. Thomas Rios says he gave the man permission for them to be on his land. They came to look at the deer-horn cactus, the Queen of the Night, which was supposed to bloom tonight.”

“What happened?” Delia asked. “Did the Anglos end up having some kind of beef with Thomas Rios’s son and the fight ended up in a shoot-out?”

“No,” Martin said. “That’s not it at all. For one thing, we didn’t find any weapons at the scene. That means someone else is the shooter. It looks like cash and jewelry are missing from the victims’ wallets and purses, so it may be a simple case of robbery. It could also be some kind of drug deal gone bad, although when we talked to Mr. Rios, he said his son wasn’t involved in any of that bad stuff.”

“Maybe these poor people stumbled upon someone else’s drug deal.”

Officer Ramon nodded. “That could be. Four people who were all in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Damn, Delia thought. Something else to give the Nation a bad name and make tourists run in the other direction.

Komelik, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:10 a.m.

67º Fahrenheit

The first contingent of medical examiner vans arrived on the scene shortly after midnight. Fran Daly herself, Pima County’s most recent chief medical examiner, stepped out of the passenger side of the first-arriving vehicle.

When the previous M.E. had taken his retirement and left the premises, his longtime assistant, Fran Daly, had finally received a much-deserved promotion. A former rodeo rider, she was an odd woman and tough as nails. Even roused from sleep in the middle of the night and with her curly white hair standing on end like so many unruly cotton balls, she still managed to be all business. She was at ease with herself and others. She was also at ease with the job she had to do. Once on the ground, she looked around, shivered, and then reached back inside the van’s front seat to retrieve a windbreaker.

Detective Fellows, the only Pima County investigator on the scene, took Fran in hand and led her around the crime scene, following the same careful pathway Dan Pardee had used.

“We’ve positively identified one victim,” Brian told Fran. “Donald Rios’s father came by a little while ago.”

“Good,” Fran said. “No next-of-kin notification for one of them then. Who are the others?”

“Two of them appear to be an Anglo couple from Tucson, tentatively identified as Jack and Abigail Tennant.”

“And the Indian woman?”

“She’s believed to be Donald’s girlfriend, Delphina Enos. She was currently living in Sells, but she’s originally from a village called Nolic. A child we believe to be Delphina’s daughter was found wandering barefoot around the crime scene. She’s being transported to the hospital at Sells.”

“Life-threatening injuries?” Fran asked.

Brian shook his head. “Minor injuries,” he replied. “Traumatized by what happened, of course, but she doesn’t appear to be physically hurt. Instead of calling for an ambulance, we got the booster seat out of the Blazer and put it in the back of Dan Pardee’s Expedition. He’s the guy who’s taking her to the hospital.”

“Who’s Dan Pardee, a member of the tribal police?”

“Pardee’s Border Patrol, a member of the Shadow Wolves unit,” Brian explained. “He’s the one who initially located the crime scene. It appears that the assailant or assailants went through the victims’ purses and wallets and dumped everything they didn’t want out on the ground. Dan looked through what was there and found a couple of ID cards in case he needed some kind of identification in order to have the little girl treated at the hospital in Sells. Cash and jewelry appear to be missing, but everything else was still here.”

“You said the Indian woman was from somewhere called Nolic?” Fran asked. “Never heard of it. I’m not sure how I’ll manage her next-of-kin notice.”

“That probably won’t be necessary,” Brian said. “One of the guys from Law and Order went to get Delia Ortiz.”

“The tribal chairman?” Fran asked.

Brian nodded. “According to Mr. Rios, Delphina worked for the tribe. Ms. Ortiz should be able to give us a positive ID and some idea about her next of kin. I’m reasonably certain Law and Order will take care of notifying her relatives.”

“What about the Anglo couple?”

“As I said, I’ve got their names and a tentative address in Tucson, but that’s about all.”

“It’s a start,” Fran said.

Running the beam from a flashlight over the dead woman’s body, she shook her head. “The shooter took this woman down with a single shot,” Fran said. “If he’s that serious about killing people, how come the little kid isn’t dead?”

“Good question,” Detective Fellows said with a rueful smile. “Maybe they just aren’t making crooks the way they used to.”

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:45 a.m.

70º Fahrenheit

D an had learned that the Tohono O’odham call June Hashani Bahithag Mashath, or Saguaro-Ripening Month. That’s also the month when the Sonoran Desert routinely bakes in an unrelenting dry heat during the day that can turn to a comparatively icy chill at night. That had already happened by the time he turned into the hospital parking lot at Sells. The seventy-degree external temperature reading seemed downright chilly compared to what it had been earlier in the afternoon.

An ambulance with its lights still flashing was parked in the portico outside the emergency room. Dan steered his Expedition into an almost empty parking lot where his oversize vehicle took up most of what was striped off to be two compact spaces. Then, after rolling down the windows and ordering Bozo to stay, Dan unbelted Angie and carried the sleeping child inside the building.

She was still wearing her bloodied clothing. He set her down carefully on a bench next to the wall. He had rescued a toy-a pink-and-yellow pinwheel-from the backseat of the Blazer. After placing that near her hand, Dan stepped forward for what he expected to be a protracted battle with the emergency-room clerk. The woman glanced at Angie’s sleeping, bloodstained form and then eyed Dan speculatively, as though she was convinced that Dan was responsible for the little girl’s injuries.

“What happened to her?” the clerk wanted to know.

“She was running around out in the desert without any shoes,” Dan explained. “She has cuts on her face, feet, and legs.”

The clerk shrugged and sighed as if this didn’t seem to be something serious enough to merit an emergency-room visit. “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll need to see proof of enrollment.”

Dan slipped both Delphina’s and Angie’s ID cards out of his shirt pocket and handed them over to the clerk. She studied them carefully for some time. When she finally started typing information into her computer, Dan watched her flying fingers and thought about what else he had found there on the ground, the one item he hadn’t shared with the Pima County investigator-a wallet-size photo of Delphina Enos holding Angie.

In the picture a smiling Delphina had beamed proudly down at her baby daughter while Angie, dressed in a lacy white dress, smiled back. It was a peaceful photo, a loving photo.