When she voiced some of those concerns to Delia, the tribal chairman nodded. “When we go before the judge, we’ll ask if he’s able to permit you to go into Delphina’s house to retrieve some of Angie’s clothing and belongings.”
Ultimately, that’s just what the paperwork said. In addition to granting Lani temporary custody, Judge Lawrence issued an order stating that she, accompanied by an officer from Law and Order, was authorized to enter Delphina Enos’s residence for the sole purpose of retrieving Angie’s personal items.
That may have been what the judge ordered, but it wasn’t what happened.
After leaving the judge’s office, Lani and Delia went straight to Law and Order. Accompanied by a uniformed patrol officer, the two women caravanned to Delphina Enos’s mobile home. They arrived there just as Carmen and Louis Escalante were preparing to drive away in a pickup truck that had been loaded down with their dead daughter’s furniture and possessions.
Furious, Delia Ortiz signaled for them to stop. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“We came to get Delphina’s things,” Louis said with a shrug. “Everything she owned is stuff her mother and I gave her. It’s only fair that we should get it all back.”
Inside the mobile home, Lani and Delia were dismayed to discover that the place had been stripped of everything of value-clothing, furniture, dishes, pots and pans. If Angie had any special toys or remembrances, they were gone now, too, except for one-a single cheap stuffed toy, a bedraggled lion that had probably come from the stuffed-toy vending machine just inside the front door at Basha’s. Clearly the lion had been there in the dirt and debris under a couch for some time. Lani picked it up and gave it several hard whacks. The blows raised a cloud of dust.
“How could they do this to their own grandchild?” Lani wondered.
“Did you ever see the movie Zorba the Greek?” Delia asked in return.
Lani shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said.
“My mother and Ruth loved that movie, mostly because of Anthony Quinn,” Delia said. “In it, some poor old woman dies. The townsfolk descend on her house like a pack of jackals and strip it of everything.”
“Just like this?” Lani asked.
Delia nodded. “Just like,” she said.
As Delia spoke, she opened her purse. Reaching inside, she pulled out two hundred-dollar bills. “This isn’t much, but it’s a start,” she said, passing the money to Lani. “Take Angie into town and use this to get replacements.”
“How can I take her anywhere?” Lani asked. “Legally I can’t even drive her home from the hospital. I don’t have a booster seat.”
“Is that Border Patrol guy still anywhere around?”
“Dan Pardee?” Lani asked. “Yes. I believe he’s still over at the hospital. Why?”
“He’s the one who brought Angie into town from the crime scene last night,” Delia said. “The officers there let him remove the booster seat from Donald Rios’s Blazer in order to do that. I’m sure he still has it.”
“I’m sure he does,” Lani said.
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:45 p.m.
91? Fahrenheit
By early afternoon, Dan Pardee was mad enough to chew nails. He had waited around all morning and well into the afternoon, but there was still no sign of Angie’s missing relatives, and no sign of Dr. Walker, either. Angie was asleep again, and Dan was pacing up and down the hallway when he saw Dr. Walker’s midnight-blue VW Passat pull into a parking space reserved for doctors. When Lani stepped out of the driver’s seat, Dan strode out to meet her.
“Dr. Walker, where the hell have you been all this time?” he demanded. “Angie and I are still waiting. No one has come for her, not one person. Where are those people? What the hell’s wrong with them?”
She handed him a piece of paper, an official-looking document. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at Lani rather than the court order.
“It’s what’s taken me so long,” she answered. “Nobody has come for Angie because no one is going to come for her. Her family doesn’t want her.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You and I both know that Angie’s alive because the killer didn’t know she was there. Her superstitious relatives have decided that since Angie wasn’t slaughtered along with her mother, she is now regarded as a dangerous object-a Ghost Child. They won’t come anywhere near her.”
“And this?” he asked, nodding toward the document.
“It’s a court order from the tribal judge declaring me to be Angie Enos’s legal guardian.”
“Why you?” he asked. “Did the judge just pull your name out of his hat?”
“Not exactly,” Lani said. “It turns out Angie Enos is my second cousin.” She collected the document, turned away, and started toward the hospital’s main entrance.
“You and Angie are related?” Dan asked, falling in behind her. “Couldn’t you at least have mentioned that to me earlier?”
Lani spun around and faced him. She seemed angry, and he didn’t understand why. “I would have mentioned it earlier if I had known it earlier. It turns out I didn’t find out about it until after I left the hospital.”
“Wait a minute,” Dan said. “How could you not know you were related?”
“I’m adopted,” Lani said. “There’s a lot about my birth family that I don’t know. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
For the first time he noticed the bedraggled stuffed toy Lani held clutched in her other hand.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Lani took a deep breath. “It’s the only thing Angie Enos has left in this world,” she said. “Some time this morning while you were here at the hospital, Delphina Enos’s parents went to her house and emptied the place. They stripped it of everything-and I do mean everything. This worthless stuffed toy is the only thing they left behind. Angie Enos has nothing left,” she added bitterly. “Nothing but this poor damned lion and me.”
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:45 p.m.
91? Fahrenheit
Lani’s eyes filled with hot tears. The injustice of it was more than she could bear. It was bad enough that the Escalantes had turned away from their grandchild, but to take everything she owned and leave her with nothing…
Dan Pardee’s hand went to his pocket. Initially Lani thought he was reaching for a hanky to offer her. Instead, he pulled out a wallet. Opening it, he shuffled through what he carried there. Then, unfolding a frayed envelope, he removed a single photo, which he handed over to Lani.
“Not quite nothing,” he said. “She still has this. I found it at the crime scene last night. I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but I did.”
“Who is this?” Lani asked. “Angie and her mother?”
Dan Pardee nodded. “So you see there? Angie does have something after all-a lion, a photo, a pink-and-yellow pinwheel, a surprise cousin, a dog named Bozo, and me, the ohb. What else could a poor little kid like that possibly need?”
Lani looked up at him in amazement. Ever since hearing about Andrew Carlisle’s appearance, Lani had been filled with dread that something bad was about to happen, that something Apache-like was about to enter her life. What she hadn’t expected was to find herself faced with the real thing. She had also expected this Apache-like entity to be something evil.
“You really are Apache?” she asked.
Dan Pardee nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said.
Still holding the photo, Lani found herself smiling up at him through her tears. “You may be ohb, ” she said, “but
