thought she and her mother would be away from the reservation for a matter of months, not years. He had no idea that he was helping send both of them into an exile that would last almost thirty years. And he had no hint that someday he-Fat Crack Ortiz-would be the one to bring Delia back home to the reservation.
With all that had happened in between, Fat Crack was hard-pressed to know whether or not he had done the right thing. If he hadn’t fixed the Falcon that day, maybe Ellie and Delia never would have gone away in the first place. For sure, everything would have been different.
Brandon Walker took his tamales and tortillas and made his way to Basha’s. When he had first visited the reservation, there had been two trading posts-the High Store, built on a hill, and the Low Store, not on a hill. You could buy milk and sodas and staples at the trading posts, but buying decent meat or finding fresh vegetables with an actual produce manager had been out of the question. This new store in Sells looked like a regular supermarket in Tucson-smaller, but much the same.
He made his way to the produce department and looked around. The selection was different from what he might have expected in town. For instance, Brandon didn’t see any of his personal favorite-eggplant-but what was there seemed reasonably fresh. Across the aisle from the produce was a bank of shelves holding uncooked beans- navy beans, pinto beans, and the more exotic tepary beans, something that had been a staple in the Tohono O’odham food supply long before the arrival of the Spanish and their lard-laden frijoles.
A middle-aged woman emerged from a back room pushing a cart loaded with cardboard containers of bananas. The striking resemblance between her and Emma Orozco was enough to tell Brandon this was Andrea Tashquinth.
“Mrs. Tashquinth?” he asked, flashing the windowed wallet that identified Brandon Walker as a member of TLC. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”
Andrea Tashquinth eyed him suspiciously. “What about?” she asked.
“Your sister,” he said. “Gabe Ortiz suggested I talk to you. So did your mother.”
“I can’t talk to you,” she said. “I’m working.”
Brandon hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but this straight-out rejection surprised him. Before he could say anything more, however, Andrea had a sudden change of heart. “I’ll be off at three,” she said. “I’ll talk to you then.”
“Fine,” Brandon told her. “I’ll be waiting right outside.”
As Andrea turned away and began unpacking the boxes of bananas, it occurred to Brandon that Fat Crack might be right. Maybe I’itoi was helping to solve this case after all.
While a records clerk ran background checks on the name Erik LaGrange, Detective Fellows turned back to Sue Lammers. “I’ll have a deputy give you and your dog a ride home,” he said. “If we need anything more, I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “I’d appreciate it. I’m still pretty shaky.”
After flagging down a newly arrived deputy to take charge of Sue Lammers and Ranger, Brian headed for the crime scene. On the shoulder of the road, one of the crime techs was making casts of tire tracks. Ten yards off the road, someone else was taking photos. The detective approached the photographer and found a grisly jumble of bloodied body parts spilled out of several black plastic garbage bags. Stumps of a severed arm and leg showed signs of having been hacked apart at the joints. The head, detached at the neck, lay facedown beneath a clump of blooming prickly pear. And on the ribs and tiny breasts of the naked torso were scores of ugly marks that he recognized instantly as scabbed-over cigarette burns.
Brian had been in Homicide long enough to expect to be immune, but seeing not only the wanton slaughter but also signs of long-term torture caused those last few bites of burrito to rise dangerously in his throat.
“It’s pretty rough,” Ruben Gomez remarked as Brian turned away, swallowing hard.
The detective nodded. “Whoever did this wasn’t interested in concealing the body.”
“Just the opposite,” Gomez agreed. “In fact, a freight-train engineer just called in a report on it as well. Dispatch told him we’re already working the problem.”
“Well, well,” a brusque female voice commented from behind them. “Welcome to the dumping ground.”
Brian and Deputy Gomez turned as associate medical examiner Fran Daly arrived on the scene. Dr. Daly was a sturdy woman with an unruly mop of cotton-white hair. Backlit in bright sunlight, her hair resembled a halo, but her vocabulary was distinctly non-angelic. She was known for showing up at crime scenes and autopsies alike in Western shirts, jeans, and various pairs of Tony Lama cowboy boots. Today her somewhat portly middle sported a wide leather belt with a silver buckle the size of a saucer.
“How’s it going, Doc?” Brian asked.
“It was better before I got here,” she said, taking in the scatter of dismembered human flesh without blanching. “Only one body, or more?” she asked.
“Just the one, as far as we can tell,” Brian answered. “Female Hispanic, somewhere in her teens.”
Fran Daly nodded. “Any idea how long she’s been here?”
“The initial call came in a little before noon,” Ruben Gomez told her. “A witness was out walking her dog and saw what she thought was someone illegally dumping garbage.”
“It’s illegal dumping all right,” Dr. Daly agreed. “So it’s not been all that long-an hour and a half or so?”
Brian nodded. “That would be about right.”
His phone rang just then. “This is Shelley in Records,” the caller told him. “I’ve got the info you wanted on Erik LaGrange and for the two phone numbers you asked about. Medicos for Mexico is on East Broadway, just west of Tucson Boulevard. It’s closed on weekends. The second number is a private residence listed under the name of Professor Raymond Rice, who teaches architecture at the U of A. The number for Erik LaGrange has been disconnected, with calls being forwarded to Rice’s number. I also checked with the DMV. I’ve got a driver’s license for Erik LaGrange-not the same address as the one listed for Professor Rice. As far as a vehicle registered to Erik LaGrange? I came up empty there.”
“So he’s got no priors.”
“Not even a parking ticket, as far as I can find.”
“Good work, Shelley,” Brian told her. “Now give me that address again.”
Erik limped down the mountain with his injured ankle screaming at every step. As much as it hurt, Erik was forced to concede that maybe the ankle was broken. Damn! he muttered to himself. Just what I need.
It was hotter than he expected and he had already consumed the last of his water. Once he reached the trailhead, he could call someone to come pick him up. Not Gayle, though. Not after last night.
They had been lying in bed. They were always lying in bed, either at his house or hers. Given the reality of Tucson’s social milieu and Gayle’s standing in same, there weren’t many places they could go in public without attracting attention. So they stayed home-his home or hers-ate take-out food, and screwed. Much later, one or the other of them would dress and go home.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, tweaking one of the curls of reddish-blond hair on his naked chest. “You’re awfully quiet.”
Erik didn’t want to say what was wrong. They’d been going through a stormy period for the last several weeks. That happened fairly regularly, but things had been better the last couple of days, and he was reluctant to rock the boat. Gayle Stryker didn’t like having her boat rocked.
What was wrong had its origin in a tiny blue envelope that had shown up in Erik’s mail earlier that week-an envelope with a birth announcement inside. Ryan and Brianna Doyle had had a baby, a seven-and-a-half-pound boy they’d named Kyle.
Erik and Ryan had met in fifth grade at Hollinger Elementary, and they’d been friends ever since. Five years earlier, Erik had been best man when Ryan and Brianna were married at St. Philip’s in the Hills. Receiving a birth announcement from a good friend shouldn’t have been an earth-shattering experience, but it was.
Ryan’s wedding had happened only weeks before Erik met up with Gayle Stryker, who promptly took over his life. Gayle became Erik’s life. Since then he’d barely seen Ryan and Brianna. After neglecting them for so long, he was surprised he was still on their Christmas card list, to say nothing of the one for birth announcements. But seeing the picture of the wrinkly-faced, more or less ugly, round-headed baby had brought Erik’s own life home to him in an entirely new way. What the hell am I doing?
In the beginning, once he got over being flattered and utterly dazzled by Gayle’s beauty and attentions, he’d
