James Lytle, the weekend supervisor in Investigations. “I’ll need a second detective out here-a detective and a warrant. Tell PeeWee I’m sorry to spoil his day off.”
While he waited for PeeWee Segura to show up, Brian called home as well. “I’m still on that case,” he told Kath when she answered. “It’s just starting to heat up. No telling when I’ll be home.”
As an experienced officer for the Border Patrol, Kath Fellows knew all about the vagaries of law enforcement. “Fair enough,” she told him. “I won’t wait up.”
J. A. Jance
Day of the Dead
Thirteen
Andrea Tashquinth climbed into Brandon’s Suburban and shut the door. “I don’t know why Mother’s doing this,” she said. “Bringing it up after all this time won’t do any good.”
“Your mother’s looking for closure,” Brandon told her.
“Closure?” Andrea repeated bitterly. “What’s the point? Roseanne died, and the cops always thought my father did it. They never arrested him. Nobody ever proved it, but it wrecked Daddy’s life. People talked about him behind his back. He knew it. We all did.” As she spoke, Andrea Tashquinth had been staring down at her lap. Now she looked up at Brandon defiantly.
“Mother told Sam-”
“Sam?” Brandon interrupted.
“My husband. He’s the one who gave Mother a ride into town yesterday.”
Brandon nodded, remembering the invisible son-in-law who had waited patiently outside their Gates Pass home for several long hours the previous day.
“Mother told him,” Andrea resumed, “that you’re doing this for free. I can’t believe that’s true. Mother doesn’t have much money, Mr. Walker. She won’t be able to pay you anything.”
“As I told her yesterday, Ms. Tashquinth, your mother doesn’t have to pay. Neither do you. TLC offers its services free to people like her. We take on old homicide cases and try to solve them. There’s no charge-no financial charge, that is-but there is a cost,” he added.
Andrea’s dark eyes narrowed. “What’s that?” she demanded.
“The cost is in pain for you, your mother, and for everyone else connected to your sister-the very real pain of bringing it up again. You may think you’ve forgotten all about it,” he added, “but once you allow yourselves to remember, it’ll be as real as if it happened yesterday.”
Suddenly, amazingly, Andrea Tashquinth began to sob. “I know,” she said. “It already is. I think about it every day because…” she added, “it’s all my fault.”
The story came out then in fits and starts. “I was almost two years older than Roseanne,” Andrea said. “When I went to first grade, there weren’t many jobs on the reservation and our parents were both migrant workers. They went away for months at a time. Whenever they were gone-to California or Washington or Oregon- Roseanne and I stayed at home with our grandmother-our father’s mother-in Ak Chin.”
“Arroyo Mouth,” Brandon Walker responded in English.
Andrea cast him a sidelong glance. She wasn’t accustomed to Mil-gahn who spoke Tohono O’odham. Once again, just as it had with Andrea’s mother the day before, Brandon’s facility with the Desert People’s native language allowed her to relax a little as she continued.
“When I went off to school on the bus that first day, Roseanne cried and cried. Our grandmother was a mean old woman, and Roseanne didn’t want to be left alone with her. When I came home, I told Roseanne there were kids her age in another class, and she begged me to take her along. The next day, I told my grandmother that Roseanne was supposed to go, too. It was a lie, of course, but Grandmother didn’t know any better. She let us go.
“When we got to school, everything was fine until Roseanne realized that she couldn’t be in the same class with me. She got scared and started to cry. She cried so hard that finally the principal came. He was a big man-a huge man. He picked Roseanne up and carried her under his arm like a sack of potatoes. She kicked and screamed the whole way down the hall. I went after him and kept telling him to put her down, put her down, but he didn’t. He carried her all the way back to his office. He threw her into a closet-a coat closet with no light inside it-and slammed the door. Then he made me go back to class. I heard her crying all the way down the hall.
“I didn’t see her again until after school-until it was time for us to get on the bus. When she did, Roseanne’s face was still wet like she had been crying the whole time. On the way home, I tried to get her to talk to me and tell me what happened. She wouldn’t answer-wouldn’t say a word. And she never talked again. Not to me, not to my parents, and especially not to anyone at school.
“She went to school because my father made her. She never answered questions in class or turned in papers. My parents took her to a bunch of doctors, here and in Phoenix, too, but they couldn’t find anything wrong. When the doctors couldn’t help her, my father even took her to a medicine man. He said she was retarded. There was nothing he could do-that’s how she was.”
Brandon Walker looked down at his own white skin and was suddenly ashamed. He felt a surge of anger toward that brutish grade school principal whose actions had so traumatized an innocent four-year-old girl that she had damned herself to a lifetime of silence.
The worthless son of a bitch! he thought. Somebody should have thrown his ass in jail.
“Two years later there was a new principal, a nice one,” Andrea continued. “When the school secretary told him what had happened, he fixed it so Roseanne and I were in the same class. She was my shadow.”
“Ehkthag,” Brandon said.
Andrea Tashquinth looked Brandon full in the face and smiled for the first time. “Yes,” she agreed. “Roseanne was my ehkthag.”
“Whatever happened to the first principal?” Brandon asked.
Andrea shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “He left. Went somewhere else. When Mil-gahn do bad things on the reservation, they leave, but nothing ever happens to them. That’s the way it is-the way it’s always been.”
After Philip staggered off, a humiliated Delia Cachora stood on the sidewalk looking at Fat Crack Ortiz, this ghost from her distant past. She had felt this same way the day her father had come to Ruth’s house in Tempe to collect Eddie and take him back to the reservation.
When they arrived in Tempe, Ellie Chavez had planned to stay with Sister Justine’s friend, Ruth Waldron, just that one night. They arrived late in the evening because it had taken so long to get the car running. Then they’d encountered a summer rainstorm that made the washes between Quijotoa and Casa Grande impassable. They’d had to wait for the water to go down.
When they finally stopped in front of the small frame house, they had passed through the worst of the storm, but a fitful rain still fell. It was late. Eddie had fallen sound asleep in the backseat. As soon as the car stopped, an outside light flashed on and a tall bony woman-the tallest Mil-gahn woman Delia had ever seen-emerged onto the porch. A cloud of mouthwatering fragrances drifted out of the house behind her, and Delia realized she was hungry.
Ellie stepped out of the Falcon. Taking Delia by the hand, they hurried up onto the porch and out of the rain. “Miss Waldron?” Ellie asked tentatively.
Ruth Waldron stretched out both hands in greeting. “You must be Ellie,” she said. “Please call me Ruth.” She turned to Delia, who wavered on the edge of the porch like a wild thing poised for flight. Ruth bent down until her face and Delia’s were on the same level. “You must be Delia,” she added with a toothy smile. “Now where’s that brother of yours? Where’s Eddie?”
Delia pointed to the car. “He’s sleeping,” she whispered.
“I’m sure you’re all worn out,” Ruth said kindly. “Sister Justine called and told me you were on your way. Go get Eddie and come in. Supper’s waiting. By the time we finish eating, maybe the rain will be over so we can bring in your suitcases.”
The next day, however, much to Delia’s surprise, her mother didn’t go apartment hunting after all. Instead, they stayed on with Ruth for the next four years-for as long as Ellie Chavez was in the undergraduate program at ASU. While Ellie was busy studying, Ruth Waldron, a phys ed teacher at two Tempe elementary schools, became Eddie and Delia’s surrogate mother. She was good to the kids. She took them to ball games, to the zoo, and to the Arizona State Fair. She helped them with homework and attended PTA meetings when Ellie couldn’t.
