J Jance - Queen of the Night

“It’s Brian,” he said. “He’s been in an accident. They’ve taken him to the trauma center at TMC.”

And that’s how Dan Pardee began to learn about the extent of the close connections between Detective Brian Fellows’s family and Lani Walker’s. That was also how it came to be that his day ended as it began, with him waiting patiently in hospitals sixty miles apart, worrying about people he barely knew and watching their looming tragedies unfold around him.

Dan went to the hospital because they asked him to go there with them. He helped out because he could help out-because that was the way his grandfather had raised him.

Ohb or not, that was who he was.

Tucson, Arizona

June to November 2009

Initially Brian was aware of living in a strange half-world that wasn’t really waking and wasn’t really sleeping. Sometimes he did sleep. Many of the people who appeared in his dreams were dead-Fat Crack Ortiz; his half brothers, Tommy and Quentin; his mother, Janie.

Kath was there, of course, sometimes in his dreams and sometimes standing next to him. Whenever he saw her, the expression on her face was strained. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well for a long time. He worried that she was doing too much and was too tired. Sometimes the girls were there. His girls. Amy and Annie. They looked sad, too. When they kissed him hello and good-bye, their lips barely touched his skin-as if they were afraid he might break. As if they were shy about being around the IV tree and the tubes.

He was aware that he was in casts. At least that’s how it seemed. On his arms and both legs. The bed made funny noises and seemed to move under him, as if it were breathing or something. He wasn’t sure what that was all about. And for some reason he couldn’t ask. Couldn’t talk. Other people did all the talking. And there were lots of them, although they generally showed up only one or two at a time, and they mostly talked to each other, not to him.

Initially he was aware of seeing people from work occasionally-his old partner Hector Segura came by several times. Brian and PeeWee had worked well together, but Sheriff Forsythe had seen fit to split them up. And, speaking of the devil, William Forsythe himself appeared at Brian’s bedside a time or two. He never stayed long, but he’d be able to say he’d stopped by to check on his injured officer. That might be good for a few votes in the next election.

Oddly enough, some of Brian’s visitors were total strangers. For example, who was that old Mexican woman who was there time and again, always with a black-beaded rosary in her pocket? She would tell him hello in Spanish and then sit there for hours on end, saying her Hail Marys. Sometimes a little boy came along with her. When he was there, the kid jabbered a blue streak and there was no time for “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Other times a young woman came with her and sometimes a young man, too. Brian gradually sorted out that the old woman was the little boy’s grandmother. He couldn’t tell if the woman was her daughter or if the man was her son.

The old Indian guy who came by from time to time was Thomas Rios from Komelik, but what about the guy who sometimes showed up in a Border Patrol uniform? He seemed familiar. Brian thought he might have seen him somewhere before, but he was there a lot of the time, too, although he didn’t seem to have much to say one way or the other.

The Walkers came, Brandon and Diana. Diana seemed distracted, but she had always seemed distant to Brian. His connection had been with Brandon, who was there in the room more than anyone, including Kath. He sat there day after day, dozing or reading in a chair. Brian liked having him around. They didn’t talk; they didn’t have to. The older man’s silent, watchful presence made Brian feel safe somehow-as though whatever was happening was going to be all right. Okay. That was the way it had been when Brian was little and the way it was now.

And Davy came, his good buddy Davy. He did talk. He talked about losing his son and his wife. Candace had divorced him and had moved back home to Chicago. Davy was angry and bitter about that. Of course, anyone who knew them had seen that coming a long time ago, almost from the very beginning. They were too different. Opposites may attract, and that might be good for dating, but not for marriage. In marriage, opposites can pull you apart. Brian wished he could say something to comfort his old friend, but he couldn’t. All he could do was listen and give Davy a chance to talk-to vent. If nothing else, in his current condition Brian Fellows was an excellent listener.

Lani came by, too, sometimes accompanied by Fat Crack’s grandson, Gabe, but always with a live-wire little girl named Angie. Brian couldn’t imagine how that had happened or when. Had Lani-his little Lani, the girl he and Davy had loved to tease and torment-grown up and gotten married while he was lying here in this noisy bed? Or had he been to her wedding some time in the past and forgotten all about it? If so, whom had she married and when? It must have happened long enough ago for her to have a baby who was now this little girl. Clearly Angie resembled her mother.

Tucson, Arizona

June to November 2009

For Brandon Walker, that summer stretched into months of interchangeable days. With the exception of the one day off he took to go serve as a pallbearer at Geet Farrell’s funeral, Brandon was at the hospital every single day. He got up early; he went to the hospital; he spent the day there; he came home late.

Kath was there every day, too, but not all day long. She couldn’t. After a month or so, she’d had to go back to work. She had the girls to look after and a house to take care of, but Brandon knew enough about hospitals to know that Brian needed an advocate in the room not only to run interference with the medical people but also to let Kath know what was going on when she wasn’t there.

After months of worrying about Diana, Brandon could spend his worrying capital on someone else. Lani had been right. What had ailed Diana all along had been drug interactions rather than something far more serious. Now that her meds had been adjusted, she was back to being her old self. Not quite her old self. She had handed the book rewrite over to a ghostwriter without so much as a backward glance. She would be going on one last book tour next spring, but after that she was retired.

Her pottery studio now took precedence over her computer. Between making pots and spoiling her new granddaughter-her accidental granddaughter, as she liked to call Angie-Diana Ladd Walker was busy and happy.

As the days moved into weeks and there was no visible change in Brian’s condition, Brandon began to lose hope. He prayed about it. He meditated about it. All he knew for certain was that he didn’t want to lose this man who had come to be so dear to him-his accidental son, he thought, mimicking Diana’s term for Angie-but it was seeming more and more likely.

One day, when Lani came to visit, little Gabe Ortiz came along with her. He stood for a long time by Brian’s bed. When he walked away, he stopped by Brandon’s chair and touched him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Walker,” the boy said gravely. “He’s going to be okay.”

“How do you know that?” Brandon asked.

Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just know.”

Having heard the news from Fat Crack’s grandson, the old medicine man’s heir apparent, Brandon Walker began to believe it, too, maybe because he wanted to believe it.

Brian Fellows would be all right. I’itoi would see to it. It was just a matter of time.

Tucson, Arizona

Friday, November 27, 2009, 4:30 p.m.