As the investigation closed in, Garrison Ladd had perished in what was mistakenly thought to be a suicide. As far as Brandon was concerned, Carlisle’s slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain had been a less than satisfactory conclusion to the case. It had left a bad taste in Brandon’s mouth. The bitter taste still lingered in 1970, when Roseanne Orozco’s butchered body was found on the reservation, and Brandon had been happy to dodge that particular bullet. Some other investigator-he couldn’t remember exactly who-took the call.
There were several differences between the Orozco murder and Gina Antone’s. Gina had died off the reservation and at the hands of Anglos. Consequently, the investigation into her death had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Although the actual murder site was never found in the Orozco case, it was assumed Roseanne had died somewhere on the reservation and that she had been murdered by a fellow Indian. Investigations into Indians murdering Indians on Native lands were the responsibility of either the FBI or the local tribal police.
Brandon Walker remembered that, in the early seventies, there had been a small contingent inside the FBI with the kind of corporate mind-set that preferred shooting Indians to anything else. FBI investigations into reservation murders, unless the perpetrator was Indian and the victim Anglo, were often cursory at best. People went through the motions, and that was it. “Law and Order,” as the Papago Tribal Police Force was sometimes called, was summoned to the scene of the Orozco homicide. Hampered by a lack of three essential ingredients- training, equipment, and money-their subsequent investigation had obviously come to nothing, although Brandon hadn’t known that for sure-not until right then, when Emma told him.
The Orozco homicide hadn’t been Brandon Walker’s deal. Newly divorced, he’d had his hands full in those years. Money had been short. He had struggled to keep up with alimony and child-support payments by moonlighting as a rent-a-cop on occasion and by moving in with his parents for what they had all erroneously expected would be a short time. With all that going on and with his father in deteriorating health, no wonder he hadn’t kept track of the outcome of each investigation, successful or not, that had, however briefly, crossed his desk.
“Law and Order thought my husband did it,” Emma said softly. Her quiet words jarred Brandon back to his living room half a lifetime away.
“Why did they think that?” he asked.
“Please,” Emma Orozco said, holding out her glass. “Could I have some more tea? Then I will tell you the whole story.”
Sitting in the dark at the end of the block, Gayle Stryker listened to her ringing telephone and didn’t answer. Erik was the only person who had this number, and she had nothing to say to him. Instead, she sat in the car and immersed herself in rage-in unmitigated fury. How dare he toss her aside like that? How dare he think he could throw her over in favor of some little baby-producing twit who wouldn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground?
Gayle couldn’t help wondering who it was-somebody from work, most likely. Where else would Erik have met someone? Maybe it was the new little bitch at reception. What was her name? Denise Something. Just two days ago Gayle had caught the wide-hipped little blonde eyeing Erik and giving his body a casual once-over. Well, if Denise was it, Gayle would be more than happy to send her down the road come Monday morning.
That was Gayle’s first thought. As the hours passed, that plan changed. Something better came to mind. Today-yesterday now-Erik LaGrange had been on top of the world. He’d had a good job, a company car, and a generous lover who’d taught the naive son of a bitch everything he knew. By tonight-tomorrow at the latest-his life would be hell. His lover would be gone along with his job. With any luck, he’d be in jail and maybe on his way to the state prison in Florence. Gayle wondered how Denise would react to hearing that news. As for Erik? Gayle had every confidence the guys in Florence would teach him a thing or two about screwing.
Gayle had planned to follow Erik wherever he went, but finally, as the hours drifted by, she realized Erik wasn’t going anywhere. He was in for the night. Still she waited and watched. To do what she wanted, she’d need access to his house, but after five years, she knew Erik almost as well as he knew himself, and she could predict with uncanny accuracy exactly what he’d do.
Gayle knew what it cost Erik to stand up to her. He’d told Gayle time and again about how his grandmother- his sainted grandmother-had always taken to the hills whenever things went wrong-how she’d taught Erik to do the same thing. And so, as the sun came up that morning, Gayle had reason to hope he would revert to type. She wasn’t disappointed.
Just at sunrise, she saw him come out of the house in shorts, hiking boots, and carrying a loaded knapsack. When he bypassed his parked truck and headed off on foot, Gayle couldn’t believe her luck. Using his vehicle would make her plan far easier to pull off.
Gayle waited until he disappeared up the street, but not much longer than that. Then she drove up to the house and used her door opener to slip the Lexus past the parked pickup and into the two-car garage. It took only a matter of minutes for her to gather what she needed. When she left, driving Erik’s Tacoma, none of the neighbors had yet to venture to the ends of their driveways to retrieve their morning papers.
Like Erik himself, Gayle came and went while the neighbors slept. As she drove away, Gayle could hardly wait for this new adventure to be over-so she could tell Larry all about it.
J. A. Jance
Day of the Dead
Five
Great Spirit always carries a bag with him. That way, if he wants to, he can make things.
I’itoi reached up, gathered a great handful of beautiful yellow leaves, and put them in his bag. Then he gathered some of the dark shadows from under the leaves and put the shadows in the bag. He stooped and picked up some of the sunbeams from the ground and mixed the sunbeams in with the leaves and shadows. He added some brown leaves to the bag along with some tiny white flowers. He shook the bag and looked inside, then decided he needed more yellow leaves. This time he reached so high into the trees that he caught some of the blue sky. So bits of blue sky went into the bag along with everything else.
The children saw I’itoi under the cottonwood trees and came to see what he was doing and to see if he wanted to play. But Elder Brother was tired with all his work. He threw his bag down on the ground, lay down, and put his head on it. And soon I’itoi and all the children were fast asleep in the cool shade of the cottonwoods.
As Erik labored up the mountain toward Finger Rock, he dodged other hikers by steering clear of the main trail. He struck off on his own, heading for one of the steeper but less-traveled canyons. Once, crossing a ravine, he smelled a distinctly musky odor and knew, without seeing them, that a herd of javelina must be resting in a nearby patch of mesquite and manzanita. Unless startled or threatened, the peccaries-mostly nocturnal, boarlike creatures with coarse black-and-silver fur-weren’t dangerous, but Erik was more than happy to go out of his way to avoid them. Twice he saw coyotes disappear into the underbrush, and once he narrowly avoided stepping on a rattlesnake sunning itself in an open space between rocks.
As the temperature warmed, Erik sat on a rock ledge, sipped water, mopped sweat from his brow, and watched a pair of A-10s circle lazily over the valley before settling in to land at Davis Monthan. The pilots knew just where they were going. Erik had no such delusions.
Tucson had always been home to him. His grandmother had raised him here. His mother had been a girl when Grandma Johnson brought her daughter and her disabled World War II vet husband to Tucson so he could be cared for at the VA hospital. But both of Erik’s grandparents were gone now. So was his mother. As for his father? Erik had no idea where he was or whether the man was alive or dead. Erik still had a few friends in town-grade school and high school buddies who had grown up here and had never left. But with no remaining family connections tying him to Tucson, and without his job, Erik would need to find some other place to live and work. Looking over the city-filled desert below him, he felt a clutch in his gut. He loved this place and didn’t want to leave. Would he be like Grandma when she had moved away from Lake Superior’s Isle Royale-leave and never return?
One night when Erik was five or six, after Grandma came home from her job as a checker at Safeway, Erik had asked her about that while they ate supper. Through the years he had heard her tell countless stories about her childhood on Isle Royale. To Erik it always sounded like a magic, idyllic place-one he wanted to see with his own eyes.
“Couldn’t we go back there sometime?” he asked. “Just to visit?”
