that, and I’ll call you back. Does this number work for you?”
“Yes.”
Detective Mumford was all business. “I’ll see about getting a court order to go after Southard’s cell phone records. We may be able to get a line on him that way. I’ll get back to you.”
“Good,” Brian said.
When she hung up, Brian didn’t bother closing his phone. Instead, he called Kath. “I won’t be at church,” he said. “The victim count just went up, three in California and four here.”
“That’s the problem with the cartels,” Kath said. “They’re mobile.”
“This is worse than a cartel,” Brian said. “It’s personal. It’s some asshole who’s decided to target his whole family. He’s taken out his wife, kids, and mother so far, plus his stepfather and two innocent bystanders. We think he may be on his way to Ohio to take out his father as well unless we can get a line on him first.”
Brian heard his wife’s sharp intake of breath. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s far worse than cartels. Where are you now?”
“On my way in to the office.”
“Be safe then,” Kath said. “See you whenever you get here.”
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 9:00 a.m.
71? Fahrenheit
For a long time after Delia left, Lani sat there thinking, wondering what was the best thing to do about Angie, the right thing to do.
She knew that even offering to foster the child could well mean long-term heartbreak for both of them. Yes, Delia had said that both sets of grandparents had already indicated that they weren’t interested in caring for Angie and that the father was a nonstarter in that regard. But what would happen to Lani and to Angie if they formed a bond only to have some other person, a closer relation than a mere second cousin, come forward to claim the child? What then?
And what if that other person could offer Angie a home where she would have the benefit of both a mother and a father? Lani understood full well that she would be taking on child rearing as a single parent, one who came with odd working hours and a very demanding job. Or what if the father threw a wrench in the works by refusing to sign over his parental rights? Lani knew from dealings with child welfare folks in Denver that they were always predisposed to return children to their natural parents, even when said parents had very little going for them.
But not being able to offer Angie a home with both a mother and a father was no excuse for Lani to refuse to take her in. As far as she could see, even when Delphina was alive, Angie hadn’t had the benefit of a father figure in her life. Donald Rios might have been able to offer her that, but Donald Rios was dead.
Lani was tempted to pick up the phone and call her brother or her parents to ask for their opinions and advice, but she didn’t. Davy was dealing with his own difficult family issues right now. It wasn’t fair to involve him. As for asking her parents? Lani glanced at her watch. She had no doubt that her father would be up by now, probably making his Sunday-morning breakfast special of blueberry muffins and a spinach frittata. She knew where his feelings would lie. Lani understood better than anyone that Brandon Walker’s supposedly gruff demeanor did little to conceal his notoriously soft heart.
Take Damsel, for example. Lani had been away at school that Thanksgiving morning when someone had abandoned a bedraggled, starving puppy on her parents’ doorstep. Diana had found the dog and would have called Animal Control to come get it. Brandon was the one who had lobbied to keep the poor animal. He was also the one who had come up with the name, Damsel. And much as he might grumble about “that damn dog,” Lani knew how much he cared about her and how often he slipped her supposedly forbidden treats.
Lani smiled now, thinking about how Brandon had done the same for her, both when she was little and later on as well. When she was going to school and later during her residency, a note from her dad, usually one sent for no particular occasion, could always be counted on to have a stray hundred-dollar bill tucked inside it, along with a written admonition not to spend it all in one place.
Lani knew without asking that her parents would accept Angie as their own. If Lani brought the child into the family, Angie would instantly have two loving grandparents, which was apparently two more than she had at the moment. But the real question to be answered was whether saying yes to Delia’s proposition was the right thing to do.
This was a momentous decision and one that shouldn’t be hastily made. On the other hand, if there was any delay, Angie would be released from the hospital into the care and keeping of Child Protective Services. Lani knew that once children were caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare of “the system,” they seldom emerged unscathed.
In a contest between what Lani had to offer Angie Enos and what the child welfare system could offer, there was really no question. On that score, Lani was the hands-down winner. As things stood now, she and she alone had a chance to save Angie Enos from that fate, but was that what she was supposed to do?
Looking for an answer and almost without thinking, Lani stood up and walked into her bedroom, where she opened the top drawer of her dresser and removed her medicine basket, the one she had woven during her sixteen-day exile on Ioligam. In the tightly woven basket she kept the treasures Understanding Woman had given her granddaughter, Rita Antone, as well as the ones Rita and Fat Crack had passed along to Lani. From the bottom of the basket Lani retrieved two leather pouches. The soft one held Fat Crack’s crystals. The other one, cracked and ancient, had once belonged to Fat Crack’s blind mentor Looks at Nothing. Now, as then, it held a properly gathered supply of wiw, Indian tobacco.
Taking both pouches with her, Lani returned to the living room. She set the tobacco pouch aside for the moment and opened the other one, letting the four sacred crystals fall into the palm of her hand. She had learned over the years that the crystals, when properly used, could be a tool of discernment.
Fat Crack had taught her that it was always best to look at an image of the object in question rather than at the object itself. In this case the object in question was Angelina Enos. Lani had no photo of the child, nothing that she could use. But since the question had to do with whether Lani should take Angie into her life, maybe a photo of Lani would do.
The lanyard with Lani’s hospital ID, complete with a photograph, was right there on the coffee table. She picked it up. One crystal at a time, she viewed the photo through the intervening lens. The distortion from one crystal made it look as though she was laughing while another made her look sad even though the photo itself remained unchanged.
But the very process of focusing on the image with absolute concentration worked its particular magic. Suddenly she could see what Delia had been trying to tell her. Yes, she and Angie were blood kin, but their real connection was far greater than that.
What had happened long ago to the Ant-Bit Child was happening again to this Ghost Child. Rather than being accepted by their blood relations, they were both being shunned by them. And it turned out, they were the same blood relations-the Escalante clan from Nolic. It was almost as though I’itoi himself had laid out the pattern. It was as though the two of them were two sides of the same coin.
“Yes,” Lani said aloud to herself. “I can see why Angie and I were meant to be together.”
She was still holding the crystals in her hand. She had been awake for the better part of twenty-four hours. When she stopped concentrating all her focus and energy on the photo, it wasn’t surprising that she fell asleep, dozing off for a time while still sitting upright on her worn secondhand couch.
Tucson, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 7:00 a.m.
72? Fahrenheit
Always an early riser, Brandon Walker was up by five. By seven he was totally engrossed in his Sunday-morning culinary tradition. The blueberry muffins were just coming out of one oven and his spinach frittata was on its way into the other when Diana came down the hall. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. An Arizona Cardinals baseball cap was perched on her head.
