the presence of tough-guy homicide detectives. Finally, Leggett looked up at Brian and gave him a yellow-toothed grin.
'Well, Deputy Fellows,' Leggett said, 'it looks to me like you're in the clear on this one.' He knocked a chunk of ash off the end of the cigar, but Brian noticed he was careful none of it landed in the hole or on any of the recently disturbed dirt around it.
Brian had been holding his breath. Slowly he let it out. 'Why do you say that?' he asked.
'Because, if this guy had been dead for a couple hundred years, I doubt his head would have five or six silver fillings. I doubt the Indians who lived around here back then were much into modern dentistry.'
'No,' Brian agreed. 'I suppose not. Can you tell what killed him?'
Leggett shook his head. 'Much too soon to tell,' he said. 'Looks like there was quite a blow to his head, but it doesn't mean that's what killed him.'
Stuffing the cigar back in his mouth, the detective climbed out of the hole. Brian was surprised to think the detective would give up the search so soon.
'So what do we do now?' Brian asked.
'We dig,' Leggett returned. 'Or rather, you dig and I watch. I've got a bad back. I trust you were wearing gloves when you handled those first few bones?' Brian nodded.
'Good boy. Chances are there won't be any fingerprints, but then again, you never can tell.'
As the sun went down behind the Baboquivari Mountains in the west, Detective Leggett sat to one side of the hole, smoking, while Brian Fellows dug. He pawed in the soft dirt with renewed vigor. Slowly, one bone at a time, the grisly collection beside the hole grew in size. After several minutes of finding nothing, Brian was about to give up when his gloved fingers closed around something thin and pliable.
'What's this?' he asked. 'Hey, look. A wallet.'
Leggett was at his side instantly, hand outstretched to retrieve the prize. 'This hasn't been down there long,' he said, holding it up to examine it in the fading light. Leaving the wallet to Detective Leggett, Brian returned to searching the hole for any remaining evidence.
'That's funny,' Leggett reported a few moments later.
'What's funny?'
'There's a current driver's license here,' Leggett reported. 'One that still has a year to run. I would have thought the corpse was far too old for that.'
'What's the name?' Brian asked, climbing out of the hole.
'Chavez,' Leggett answered. 'Manny Chavez. Indian, most likely. There's a Sells address but no phone number. Want to have a look?'
Leggett handed the wallet over to Brian, leaving the plastic folder opened to the driver's license page. Brian glanced at it, started to give it back, then changed his mind to take a second look.
'Wait a minute,' he said, pointing to the picture. 'That's the guy from this afternoon. I'm sure of it.'
'What guy?'
'The one we air-lifted into TMC just before I called for a detective. The one who'd had the crap beaten out of him before Kath Kelly found him.'
'You're sure it's the same guy?'
'Hell, yes, I'm sure.'
'In that case,' Leggett said, 'I guess I'd better go talk to him. You stay here and keep the crime scene secure. I'll call for a deputy with a generator and lights to come out and relieve you.'
'What are you going to do?' Brian asked.
'I already told you. Go to the hospital and talk to the guy.'
'How?'
'What are we doing, playing Twenty Questions?'
'How are you going to talk to him?' Brandon insisted.
'You're some kind of comedian, Deputy Fellows,' the detective said. 'To quote a former President, read my lips. I'm going to talk to Mr. Chavez with my mouth.'
'Do you speak Tohono O'othham? ' Brian asked.
'No, do you?'
Brian nodded. 'As a matter of fact, I do.'
'No shit?'
'No shit!'
For a moment Leggett stood looking at him. Finally he shrugged. 'In that case,' he said, 'I guess we'll get somebody else to secure the damn crime scene, because you're coming with me.'
Mitch Johnson had a large, trunk-sized box that he sometimes used to haul canvases around. Both the top and floor of the custom-made wooden box had matching grooves in them that allowed him to stack in up to twenty wet canvases without any of them touching each other. In advance of heading into town with Lani, he had emptied the box and loaded it into the back of the Subaru. Then, after blindfolding Lani with one of the cut pieces of scarf, he led her out of the Bounder.
Already the new dose of scopolamine was having the desired effect. Clumsy on her feet, she stumbled and fell against him as she stepped down out of the RV. It gratified him to hear the involuntary moan that escaped her lips when the injured breast, encased now in a still-sodden cowboy shirt, brushed up against his body.
'Smarts, does it, little girl?' he asked.
The Bounder was air-conditioned; the Subaru had been sitting in the afternoon sun. The interior of the box was stifling as he heaved her inside, sending her body sprawling along the rough, splintery bottom. There were ventilation holes in the sides-that was, after all, the point of the thing. He put canvases inside it to dry. That meant that once he turned on the air-conditioning in the car, the temperature inside the box would reduce some, too. Enough to keep her from croaking, most likely. Not enough for her to be comfortable.
Mitch had slammed the tailgate shut and was headed for the driver's seat in the Subaru when he saw a set of blue flashing lights snaking across the desert floor from Tucson. His heart went to his throat. A damned cop car! Surely they hadn't already discovered the girl was missing. How could they?
Close to panic, he almost had a heart attack when the car slowed at the turn-off to Coleman Road and then again as the pair of headlights came speeding toward him. By then he could hear the siren wailing through the still desert air.
What the hell do I do now?he wondered. Really, there wasn't any choice. He would have to gut it out. Bluff like hell and hope for the best, but in the meantime, he started the engine on the Subaru and then turned on both the radio and the air conditioner at full blast. That way, if the girl was still aware enough to make any noise, chances were the cop wouldn't hear her.
Moments later, with his heart pounding in his throat, he saw the headlights take a sharp turn to the left a mile or so north of where the Bounder was parked. He could still see the blue lights flashing, but behind them there was only the pale red glow of taillights.
'Whew!' Mitch said aloud. 'I don't know what the hell that was all about, but it was too damn close for comfort.'
Wanda and Fat Crack were getting ready to go to the dance at Little Tucson. They had always enjoyed going to summertime dances, although Wanda liked it less now than she had before her husband's elevation to tribal chairman. Before when they went to dances, they danced. Now, often as not, she was left to dance with one of her sons or grandsons while Gabe went about the never-ending business of politicking.
'Did you tell her yet?' Wanda asked, as she watched Gabe fasten the snaps on his cowboy shirt.
They hadn't been talking about Delia Cachora, but Fat Crack knew at once who and what Wanda was asking about. Wanda had disapproved of his bringing Delia back to the reservation, after thirty years away, to take on the assignment of tribal attorney.
'We need somebody who knows how to go head-to-head with all those Washington BIA bureaucrats,' Gabe had told his wife back then while the tribal council was wrangling over the decision. 'If she can handle those guys, she can take on Pima County and the State of Arizona.'
As Gabe expected, Delia Chavez Cachora did fine when it came to dealing with Mil-gahn paper-pushers. Where she fell short of the mark was in relating to the people back home, the ones who had never left the reservation. And that was part of the reason Fat Crack had hired David Ladd to serve as her intern. Schooled by
