scolded them, too.
In those days, Wind Man spent much of his time in that same village.
One day, the young men of the village went to Wind Man and teased him and said that since he was strong enough and clever enough, he should catch the girl when she came out to get water and take her up in the air so they could all see her. At first Wind Man refused, saying that it would be wrong to do this and make her father angry, but the young men begged and pleaded, and at last that is what happened.
When the girl came out of her house to get water, all the young men in the village were watching. Holding her in his arms, Wind Man took her high up into the air, very gently carrying her around and around. Her long hair was loosened. It fell down and wrapped itself around her until it touched the ground. Then it caught up the nearby leaves and dust and carried them back into the air with her.
And that is the story of the very first Whirlwind there ever was on the desert.
Brandon Walker remembered the whirlwinds.
A fierce wind was kicking up a line of them and propelling them across the desert floor as he drove south toward Topawa for the second time.
The first trip had been the day before to notify the victim's grandmother that Gina Antone was dead. The second time he returned to Topawa, he was looking for Gina's killer.
Walker was called in on the case as soon as it was determined that the water hole in which the body had been found was in the county rather than on reservation land. A dead Indian wasn't high on Sheriff DuShane's list of priorities. As a result, Walker wasn't assigned in a very timely fashion.
The body was discovered by a pair of city-slicker hunters out shooting coyotes mostly for the hell of it, and only incidentally for the bounty paid for each stinking coyote carcass. The two men found the girl floating facedown in the muddy pond and had called the sheriff's office to report it only after getting back to town. Walker theorized that some of their hunting may have been on reservation land and they hadn't wanted to call attention to either the body or themselves until after the dead coyotes were well away from Papago boundaries.
A deputy was dispatched to the scene. Not realizing that the fence with the cattle guard took him onto the reservation and the second took him back off, he left the girl where he found her and reported that it was up to the Papago Tribal Police. Only after all jurisdictional dust settled was Brandon Walker assigned the case. By then, someone had already collected the body. He went to the scene accompanied by a tribal officer named Tony Listo and discovered the crime scene area so picked-over that there was nothing left to find.
Tony pointed Brandon in the direction of the charco, but he himself was reluctant to leave his pickup. 'This is a bad place,' he said.
'People don't like to come here.'
That hadn't stopped the great white hunters, Walker thought. 'You mean Indians don't like to come here?'
'Yes,' Listo nodded. 'They sure don't.'
'You're saying the girl wouldn't have come here on her own?' Brandon Walker asked.
No, I don't think so,' Listo replied.
This short exchange happened prior to the autopsy, while speculation was still rife that the young woman was nothing but a drunk who had fallen in the water and drowned. Later, after the autopsy, the rope burns on her neck and wrists among other injuries had more than borne out Listo's initial theory. Gina Antone hadn't gone to the water hole because she had wanted to but because she was forced. The other things that happened to her weren't by choice, either.
Walker left the charco. Following the Indian police officer's directions, he made his way first to Sells and then south to an Indian village called Topawa where the dead woman's grandmother lived in an adobe shack behind a small mission church. He went to the rough wooden door and knocked, but no one answered. He was about to leave when a vintage GMC creaked into the yard behind him. A wide-bodied old woman stepped out.
He waited by the door. 'Are you Rita Antone?' he asked.
She nodded. He held out his card, which she looked at but did not take.
'I'm with the Sheriff's Department,' he said. 'I came to tell you about your granddaughter.'
'I know,' the old lady said. 'My nephew already told me.
Silent now, Brandon and the boy waited until Diana returned to the living room bearing a tray laden with glasses of iced tea and a plate of freshly made tuna sandwiches.
'We have to eat to keep up our strength,' she said.
The air of false gaiety in her tone grated on Brandon's nerves. She still wore the gun. Who the hell was she trying to kid, Brandon wondered-him, her child, or, more likely, herself?
'I heard you two talking,' she said, placing the tray on the table in front of the couch. 'What about?'
Davy shot the detective a quick, meaningful look. 'I asked him if my hair would grow back,' Davy replied.
'You know, the part they shaved off. He said yes.'
Brandon Walker was impressed. The kid was a talented liar. They had indeed talked about Davy's hair growing back, but they had talked about a lot of other things besides. Walker was surprised that Davy didn't mention any of them. Something was going on between the boy and his mother, an undercurrent, a tension that had been missing when he had seen them on Friday and Saturday.
'How long will it take?' Diana asked, chewing a bite of sandwich and falling completely for Davy's lie of omission.
It took a moment for Brandon to reorient himself to the conversation.
'To grow out his hair? A few weeks,' he said.
