line road. As we got closer, I think he saw us coming and took off.”
“Which way?” Brian asked.
“He headed back toward Vail. I don’t know where he went after that. The intersection is behind the crest of the hill. I couldn’t see which way he turned.”
“What kind of vehicle?”
“A pickup of some kind. I wasn’t close enough to see a license or what model it was. Dark-colored. Dark blue or maybe purple. With a matching camper shell.”
“What were you doing?” Brian asked.
“Ranger, my dog, and I were taking a walk.”
“From where?”
“My husband and I have a place down the road. Two miles or so from here. On Fast Horse Ranch.”
Brian looked around. “Is your husband here?”
“He’s at the house. I haven’t called him,” Sue Lammers added after a pause. “We had a fight. I took Ranger out so I could cool off.”
“What time did this happen?”
“You mean what time did I find the body?”
Brian nodded.
“Over an hour ago now,” she told him. “Ranger ran on ahead of me. He does that sometimes, but he’s scared of trains. There was one coming-a big freight train-so Ranger came back. I saw he was carrying something and thought it was a stick.” Her lip trembled. “But it wasn’t a stick at all,” she continued. “It was an arm-a piece of an arm.” Again she paused, swallowing convulsively before going on. “It was still all bloody.”
She spoke with the air of one trying to forget even as she remembered. Tears welled in her eyes. Brian gave her a moment to compose herself while he mentally calculated the distance a pickup truck, traveling at legal highway speed, might have covered in the space of an hour.
Just then a van containing two members of the CSI team pulled up behind Brian’s vehicle. Deputy Gomez went to meet them. He led them forward, pointing as he went. Brian stayed with Sue Lammers.
“Did you see anything that would help us?”
“No. He was too far away.”
“He?” Brian asked. “You’re sure it was a male?”
“Not really,” Sue admitted. “I mean, it looked like a man. I saw him walk from the truck into the desert and then back again. He went back and forth a couple of times. I thought he was dumping garbage, but I worried about it all the same. I mean, I was out here by myself. The last trip he made, he must have seen me. That’s when he jumped into the truck and took off.”
“When you go walking by yourself like this, are you armed?” Brian asked.
“No,” Sue said quickly. “I have my cell phone along in case anything happens, but that’s all. I don’t believe in carrying weapons. Neither does my husband.”
Maybe you should, Brian thought. He said, “You mentioned the driver made several trips back and forth to the truck?”
“Yes.”
“Was he carrying something each time?”
“Yes.”
Brian was about to ask Sue Lammers another question when Deputy Gomez hurried up to them. “Excuse me, Detective Fellows,” he said. “I think we just found something important.”
“What’s that?”
“A bundle of bloody clothing,” Gomez said.
“You think it belongs to the girl?” Brian asked.
“It’s a pretty good guess,” Gomez replied. “This was in one of the pockets.”
He held out a glassine bag. Inside it was a business card. Brian had to squint to read the print. “Erik LaGrange,” the card said. “Development Officer, Medicos for Mexico.” Brian turned the bag over. On the back of the card was a handwritten telephone number.
Brian jotted it down. “Well,” he said, “at least this gives us a place to start.”
Tohono O’odham tribal attorney Delia Ortiz waddled into her office. Dropping heavily into her desk chair, she rolled it close enough to the desk so she could reach her computer keyboard over the hefty mound of her protruding belly. She usually didn’t come into her office on Saturdays, but with the baby due in two weeks and with her office’s budget proposal expected to appear before the tribal council the week after her due date, Delia was determined to be ahead of the game.
No one was more surprised than Delia to find herself pregnant at age forty-three. She hadn’t expected to be pregnant at age forty, either. She’d lost that one-a boy they’d named Adam-due to a late-term miscarriage during her sixth month of pregnancy. She had felt the baby’s loss keenly, but her grief had been nothing compared to her husband’s. Leo Ortiz had been utterly heartbroken. It was at his insistence and only partially because they were good Catholics that they’d done nothing about birth control. Now, here she was-three years later and three years older-pregnant again.
Wedged up against the edge of her desk, the baby-another boy-gave Delia’s tummy a solid kick. Remembering how it had felt when Adam had stopped kicking, she welcomed this minor disturbance-a reminder this new child was eager to make his grand entrance into the world.
Leo had been lobbying for them to pick out a name, but Delia had resisted. She had named Adam and then lost him. She was afraid that if she named this baby too soon, the same thing might happen.
Delia browsed through her new e-mail. Midway down she spotted Mualig Siakam, Lani Walker’s screen name, Forever Spinning, named after the young girl who had turned into Whirlwind. The subject line of Lani’s message said: “How’s he doing?”
Just as Lani Walker had done prior to sending the e-mail, Delia Cachora Ortiz stared at her screen for a long time before opening the message. She knew Lani was writing out of real concern for Gabe Ortiz’s health. Delia was concerned, too. In large measure, everything Delia treasured in life had its origin in Fat Crack Ortiz. To a certain extent, that was true of Lani and Davy Walker as well. Delia knew Wanda and Gabe Ortiz were Lani’s and Davy’s godparents. Still, a surge of resentment boiled up in Delia’s heart the moment she saw the listing.
What business was it of Lani Walker’s to ask about Fat Crack’s health and well-being? Delia herself owed her own debt of gratitude to Gabe Ortiz, but she was sick and tired of seeing Leo-her husband and one of Gabe and Wanda’s two real sons-being pushed aside by what Delia couldn’t help but regard as a pair of interlopers.
Biting back her anger, Delia opened the message:
Dear Delia,
It’s Friday night and I can’t sleep. I’m really worried about Fat Crack. Would you please drop me a line and let me know how he is? It’s almost the end of the semester. If he’s really bad and needs me to, I can come home early.
Lani
That was the last straw! If he needs me? What did that mean? Did Lani Walker expect to come traipsing out to Gabe and Wanda’s place and push Leo and Richard aside so she could keep her own death watch?
Delia had heard all the talk about Lani Walker growing up to be a medicine woman and a doctor. She had spent too many years in the Anglo world to put much store in all the medicine-woman mumbo-jumbo, but she had taken a serious interest in how Fat Crack Ortiz intended to turn Lani Walker into a physician. He had insisted that if Lani Walker was going to come home and serve as a doctor on the reservation, the Tohono O’odham needed to pony up the money.
Having a realistic idea of exactly how expensive sending a student through medical school would be, Delia had tried to derail the idea. As tribal attorney, she had argued long and hard before the tribal council about the fiscal irresponsibility of doing just that. Of course, the Tohono O’odham tribe needed to have home-grown health care professionals-doctors and nurses whose first loyalty would be to the Desert People-but Delia thought it was wrong to use tribal funds to educate someone whose parents could well afford to pay the tuition themselves.
Gabe had still been tribal chairman then. For Delia to go up against her own father-in-law and then lose in such a public fashion had caused a reservation-wide stir. It had also caused familial difficulties between Delia and
