J Jance - Queen of the Night

About the time Andrew Carlisle had gotten out of prison and come looking for Diana, Brandon’s father had taken off in Brandon’s Pima County patrol car. They’d found him much later, wandering in the desert near Benson. Ultimately he had died of exposure, turning a seemingly harmless joyride into tragedy.

Exposure. That’s what the death certificate had said, but that was back in the seventies. People didn’t talk about Alzheimer’s then the way they did now. That was what had really gotten Toby Walker, and Diana understood it was likely to get her, too. Driving the Invicta off a cliff was tempting-a siren call urging Diana onto the rocks when she knew it would take more courage to stay and face whatever was coming.

In Diana Ladd Walker’s heart of hearts, she knew that leaving Brandon too early would hurt him more than staying and facing down the enemy together.

Grateful for Brandon’s reassuring presence, she reached over and rested her hand on his thigh. His frown lifted. He turned and smiled at her. Then he squeezed her hand and lifted it to his lips.

And that’s why, she thought, deliberately shaking off the evil spell Max’s unwanted presence had cast over them. Because he loves me more right now than Max Cooper ever loved anybody.

Max Cooper had married a girl who was pregnant with another man’s child. In small-town Joseph, Oregon, he had grudgingly given her illegitimate daughter, Diana, the benefit of his own slender claim on small-town respectability, but that was all he had given her-his name and that was it. As a child, she had faced his constant torment-the beatings and the verbal abuse-with implacable resistance and without even once rewarding him with what he wanted-with tears or whimpers.

She had fought him then and she would fight him now. If Max Cooper was in favor of Diana’s committing suicide, then she would be against it-to her very last dying breath.

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 8:00 a.m.

69º Fahrenheit

There was silence for a time after Dr. Walker left Angie’s room. Dan could easily imagine someone being hospitalized for a snakebite. That was entirely understandable, but he had a difficult time getting his head around the idea of nearly dying of ant bites. That was far more difficult to fathom. But from the number of blemishes left on the doctor’s skin, not just the visible ones but the ones that had to be hidden under her clothing as well, there must have been hundreds of bites. No wonder she had almost died from the poison.

“I got bit by an ant once,” Angie told him conversationally. “Will I have a spot, too?”

“Do you have a spot now?” Dan asked.

Angie shook her head.

“Then you probably won’t,” Dan assured her. “Dr. Walker probably had so many bites that they got infected. That’s what caused the scarring.”

“I’m scared of ants,” Angie said. “Are you?”

“I wasn’t before,” he said, “but maybe I am now.”

Angie pushed away the table with her empty breakfast tray on it. “When can I go home?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Dan said. “I’m sure someone will tell us.”

“But I won’t be going home with my mommy.”

“No,” Dan said. “Not your mommy.”

It hurt him to know that the reality of her situation was finally penetrating. The place she had lived with her murdered mother was most likely now a designated crime scene. It was reasonable to assume that Angie wouldn’t ever be going back there, and wherever she did go, her mother would never be there.

Turning her face away from Dan, Angie lay back down on the bed and cried herself to sleep. Once she drifted off, Dan took Bozo and hurried out of the room. He drove to Basha’s, where he bought food for Bozo, another set of nearly out-of-date sandwiches for himself, and three children’s books for Angie. As far as books were concerned, the pickings were thin. He came away with one about a talking dump truck, one about a princess, and a coloring book about someone named SpongeBob SquarePants, whoever that was. He also bought a big box of crayons.

Angie was awake when he returned. “Where were you?” she demanded.

“I had to get some food for Bozo and for me,” he told her.

“Why didn’t you eat some of mine?”

“Hospitals don’t work that way,” he said with a smile. “That food is all for you, but I did find these.” He handed her his peace offering.

Time passed slowly. There were stickers on the last several pages of the coloring book, and those were a far bigger hit than the crayons were. Watching Angie apply them with studied concentration, Dan found himself wondering how this little girl’s life would turn out. Would there be some loving grandparent to take up the slack, as Micah Duarte had done for him?

“He was a bad man,” Angie said eventually.

She was obviously thinking about the Milghan man with the gun. “Yes,” Dan agreed. “He was.”

Dan’s lifestyle had given him very little contact with young children. He had no idea how much she understood of what had happened or how soon she would be able to process it.

“I’m sorry Donald is dead, too,” Angie added matter-of-factly. “He was a nice man. I liked him. He gave me this.” She held up the pink-and-yellow pinwheel that she had kept hold of waking and sleeping.

Dan nodded. “I’m sorry about Donald, too,” he said.

There was another long period of quiet. Other people might have been tempted to fill it with conversation-to try to steer Angie away from dwelling on what had happened to her and to her family. Instinctively Dan knew better than to try to talk her out of it. After all, the life she had known had been destroyed. Now she was trying to make sense of what was left. He knew that she’d be doing that for the rest of her life-just as he was.

“His arm was broken,” Angie added eventually.

“Excuse me?”

“The bad man,” she said. “His arm.”

“What do you mean, it was broken? Was it in a cast?” Dan asked.

Angie shook her head. “I don’t know about a cast. It was in one of those things around his neck.”

“You mean it was in a sling?”

She nodded.

“And if you saw him again, would you know his face?”

She nodded again. “I would know him,” she said.

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Anglo,” she said. “He didn’t have much hair, and he was carrying a gun.”

Daniel knew at once that he had just gained access to three important pieces of the puzzle, maybe three essential pieces. Solving the shooting wasn’t part of Daniel Pardee’s job description, but regardless of jurisdictional issues, Dan was now in possession of vital information that he intended to pass along to Detective Fellows. Immediately.

“I need to go make a phone call,” he said. “Do you mind waiting here with Bozo?”

“Will you be back?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“Okay then,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

Sonoita, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 9:30 a.m.

73º Fahrenheit

Leaving Diana and Damsel parked in the shade of a towering cottonwood, Brandon stepped up onto the front porch of June Holmes’s Sonoita home and rang the bell. The silver-haired woman who opened the door was dressed in a church-worthy suit with a slim skirt and jacket, along with low heels and hose.

“Mr. Walker?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, fumbling for his identification, but she waved that aside.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary. Please come in.”

Brandon stepped into a darkened living room. The blinds were closed and the curtains drawn. A single lamp burned next to an easy chair. Just inside the door sat a small old-fashioned suitcase, one without rollers. Next to it was a cardboard cat container complete with a vocal and very unhappy cat who was yowling its heart out.