Dance of the Bones

by J. A. Jance

  Amos and John were no kind of blood relations, but they were peas in a pod. Hot tempered? Check. Too fast with the fists? Check. Didn’t care to listen to reason? Check. Forty years earlier, Amos had hooked up with a girl named Hattie Smith who had been the same kind of bad news for him as Ava was for John. A barroom fight over Hattie the evening of Amos’s twenty-­first birthday had resulted in an involuntary manslaughter charge that had sent Amos to the slammer for five to ten. He recognized that there was a lot of the old pot-­and-­kettle routine going on here.

  Yes, Amos had gotten his head screwed on straight in the course of those six years in the pen. He had read his way through a tattered copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that he found in the prison library, giving himself an education that would have compared favorably to any number of college degrees. Even so, he didn’t want John to go through a similar school of hard knocks. He wanted to protect the younger man from all that because John Lassiter was the closest thing to a son Amos Warren would ever have.

  John had grown up next door to Amos’s family home. They had lived in a pair of dilapidated but matching houses on a dirt street on what was then Tucson’s far west side. Amos lived there because he had inherited the house from his mother. Once out of prison, he had neither the means nor the ambition to go looking for something better. John’s family rented the place next door because it was cheap, and cheap was the best they could do.

  To Amos’s way of thinking, John’s parents had been little more than pond scum. His father was a drunk. His mother was a whore who regularly locked the poor kid outside in the afternoons while she entertained her various gentleman callers. On one especially rainy winter’s day, Amos had been outraged to see John, a mostly toothless eight-­year-­old kid, sitting on the front porch, shivering in the cold. He’d been shoved outside in his bare feet wearing nothing but a ragged pair of pajamas.

  Amos had ventured out in the yard and stood on the far side of the low rock wall that separated them. “What’re you doing?” Amos had asked.

  “Waiting,” came the disconsolate answer. “My mom’s busy.”

  For months Amos had seen the cars coming and going in the afternoons while old man Lassiter wasn’t at home. Amos had understood all too well what was really going on. He also knew what it was like to be locked out of a house. Back when he was a kid the same thing had happened to him time and again. In his case it had been so Amos’s father could beat the crap out of Amos’s mother in relative peace and quiet. What was going on in the Lassiter household may have been a slightly different take on the matter, but it was close enough.

  Without a word, Amos had gone back inside. When he reappeared, he came back to the fence armed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  Without further prompting, the boy had scampered barefoot across the muddy yard. Grabbing the sandwich, he gobbled it down.

  “My name’s Amos. What’s yours?”

  “John,” the boy mumbled through a mouthful of peanut butter.

  “Have you ever played Chinese checkers?”

  John shook his head. “What’s Chinese checkers?”

  “Come on,” Amos said. “I’ll teach you.”

  He had hefted the kid up over the low wall built of volcanic rock, shifted him onto his hip, and carried him to his own house. That had been their beginning. Had Amos Warren been some kind of pervert, it could have been the beginning of something very bad, but it wasn’t. Throughout John’s chaotic childhood, Amos Warren had been the only fixed point in the poor kid’s life, his only constant. John Lassiter Sr. died in a drunk-­driving incident when his son was in fourth grade. By the time John was in high school, his mother, Sandra, had been through three more husbands, each one a step worse than his immediate predecessor.

  Despite his mother’s singular lack of parenting skills and due to the fact that the kid ate more meals at Amos’s house than he did at home, John grew like crazy. More than six feet tall by the time he was in seventh grade, John would have been a welcome addition to any junior high or high school athletic program, but Sandra had insisted that she didn’t believe in “team sports.” What she really didn’t believe in was going to the trouble of getting her son signed up, paying for physicals or uniforms, or going to and from games or practices. Amos suspected that she didn’t want John involved in anything that might have interfered with her barfly social life and late-­afternoon assignations, which were now conducted somewhere away from home, leaving John on his own night after night.

  Amos knew that the good kids were the ones who were involved in constructive activities after school. The bad kids were mostly left to their own devices. It came as no surprise to Amos that John ended up socializing with the baddies. By the time the boy hit high school, he had too much time on his hands and a bunch of juvie-­bound friends.

  As a kid, Amos had earned money for Saturday afternoon matinees in downtown Tucson by scouring the roadsides and local teenager party spots for discarded pop bottles, which he had turned over to Mr. Yee, the old man who ran the tiny grocery store on the corner. When Amos happened to come across some pieces of broken Indian pottery, Mr. Yee had been happy to take those off his hands, too, along with Amos’s first-­ever arrowhead. From then on, the old Chinaman had been willing to buy whatever else Amos was able to scrounge up.

  Once Amos got out of prison, he discovered there weren’t many employment options available for paroled felons. As a result, he had returned to his onetime hobby of prowling his surroundings in search of treasure. He knew the desert flatlands like he knew the backs of his own hands, and he knew the mountains too, the rugged ranges that marched across the lower-­lying desert floor like so many towering chess pieces scattered across a vast flat board—­the Rincons and the Catalinas, the Tortolitas, the Huachucas, the Whetstones, the Dragoons, the Peloncillos, and the Chiricahuas.

  Now, though, with the benefit of his store of prison-­gained knowledge, Amos was far more educated about what he found. He was able to locate plenty of takers for those items without the need for someone like Mr. Yee to act as middleman. He earned a decent if modest living and was content with his solitary life. Then John Lassiter got into trouble and was sent to juvie. Amos, claiming to be the kid’s most recent stepfather, had bailed him out and taken him home. From then on, that’s where John had lived—­in the extra room at Amos’s house rather than next door with his mother.

  By then Amos could see that the die was cast. John wasn’t going to go to college. If he was ever going to amount to anything, Amos would have to show him how. From then on, Amos set out to teach John what he knew. Every weekend and during the long broiling summers, John went along with Amos on his desert scavenger hunts. Most of the time John made himself useful by carrying whatever Amos found. Nevertheless, he was an apt pupil. Over time he became almost as good at finding stuff as Amos was, and between them their unofficial partnership made a reasonably good living.

  Not wanting to attract attention to any of his special hunting grounds, Amos usually parked his jeep a mile at least from any intended target. This time, he had left the vehicle hidden in a grove of mesquite well outside the mouth of the canyon. Approaching the spot where he’d left the truck, Amos caught a tiny whiff of cigarette smoke floating in the air.

  John was a chain smoker—­something else the two men argued about constantly, bickering like an old married ­couple. This time, however, Amos’s spirits lifted slightly as soon as his nostrils caught wind of the smoke. This out-­of-­the-­way spot was a place he and John visited often. Maybe the kid had come to his senses after all and followed him here. Maybe it was time to apologize and let bygones be bygones, and if John wanted Ava Martin in his life, so be it.

  Once inside the grove, Amos looked around and saw no sign of John or of his vehicle, either. That was hardly surprising. Maybe he had chosen some other place to park. There was always a chance John had gone
out to do some scavenging of his own.

  Amos turned his attention to the pack, unshouldering it carefully and settling it into the bed of the truck. He reached inside the pack, and his searching fingers located the bundle of wadded-­up shirttail. Feeling through the thin fabric, he was relieved to find that the pot was still in one piece.

  A new puff of smoke wafted past him. That was when he sensed something else, something incongruous underlying the smell of burning cigarette—­a hint of perfume. He turned and was dismayed to see Ava standing a mere five feet away, holding a gun pointed at Amos’s chest.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Where’s John?”

  “Don’t move,” she warned. “I know how to use this thing.”

  “Where’s John?” Amos repeated. “How did you even know to come here?”

  “John brought me here several times. You know, for picnics and such. He told me this was where you’d be today.”

  Outrage boiled in Amos’s heart. John had brought Ava to this very special hunting ground, one Amos had shared with no one other than John?

  The depth of John’s betrayal was breathtaking. Amos took a step forward. “Why, you little bitch . . . ,” he began, but he never had a chance to finish his threat.

  Ava had told him the truth. She really did know how to use the weapon in her hand. The first bullet caught him clean in the heart. Amos Warren was dead before he hit the ground. The second and third bullets—­the unnecessary ones? Those she fired just for good measure, simply because she could. And those were what the prosecutor would later label as overkill and a sign of rage when it came time to try John Lassiter for first-­degree murder.

  CHAPTER 1

  MARCH 2015

  THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG ago, that Sun—­Tash—­came so close to Earth that it was very hot. The corn and wheat dried up, and so did all the other plants. Soon there was no water left. The Tohono O’odham, the Desert ­People, could make nothing grow. Soon even the food they had set aside dried up and had no taste.

  The Indians held a council and decided to send Tokithhud—­Spider—­to deal with Sun.

  Every morning when Sun travels from his home in the East to the West, he makes four jumps. Spider decided to make the same four jumps. At the end of the fourth jump, he spun a web. The web, tokithhud ­chuaggia, was so large that, the next day, when Tash made his fourth jump, the web caught him. Spider, hiding nearby, pulled his web so tightly around Sun’s legs that he fell over and hurt himself.

  Sun was very angry. No one had ever hurt him before, and he could not believe that the ­people who had always loved him and sung to him would do such a terrible thing. And so he went away to his house in the East, leaving the Earth all dull and cloudy.

  Soon it was very dark. The Desert ­People worried when Sun did not return. Their food was gone. They could not see to plant. At last the Tohono O’odham sent a message to some of the Little ­People, the ones who can see in the dark, and asked them what they should do. The Little ­People said they should divide time into four parts. In two parts they should light big fires so they could see to work in the fields. The other two parts, the ones without fires, would be for sleeping and resting.

  But even though they tried this plan and worked very hard, the fires did not give enough light for the seeds to grow.

  DR. LANI WALKER-­PARDEE, AN EMERGENCY physician at Sells Indian Hospital, believed in being prepared. The last three things she tucked into her backpack were a well-­stocked first aid kit, followed by her somewhat frayed medicine basket and the new one she had made in hopes of giving it to Gabe. After fastening the pack shut she sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled on her hiking boots, and bent to lace them.

  “I still don’t understand why you and Gabe have to do this,” her husband, Dan Pardee, grumbled. The Gabe in question was Lani’s godson, Gabe Ortiz. “It’s not safe for the two of you to be out there overnight. It’s just not.”

  “I’ll have Gabe with me,” she said.

  Dan hooted with laughter. “Gabe is thirteen. From what his dad tells me, the kid is next to useless these days. If you did get into some kind of confrontation, how much help do you think he’d be?”

  Straightening up, Lani sighed and gazed at her husband with a look that was equal parts love and exasperation. “Whether he’s a help or not, I still have to do it,” Lani said. “I’m Gabe’s godmother. Helping out at a time like this is my duty. It’s expected. It’s what godmothers do. We’ll be fine.”

  Despite her reassurances, Lani could see that Dan remained unconvinced. Theirs was a mixed but generally happy marriage. On occasion, however, things could become complicated, and this was one of those times.

  Lani was born of the Tohono O’odham, the Desert ­People, who had lived for thousands of years hunting and gathering in the desert west of where Tucson is now. Daniel was Apache through and through. The Apache didn’t plant and grow. Instead, they traveled in marauding bands, stealing from others. It was no accident that in the language of the Tohono O’odham and in the languages of many other tribes as well, the word for “Apache” and the word for “enemy” were one and the same. On the Tohono O’odham reservation, Dan Pardee, a member of the Border Patrol, was a respected law enforcement officer, but behind his back and by ­people who didn’t know him well, he was often referred to as the Ohb—­the Apache.

  Lani attributed the fact that she and Dan—­opposites in many ways—­had met, fallen in love, and married to the behind-­the-­scenes workings of Ban—­Coyote. Ban had a reputation for being a trickster—­someone who loved practical jokes. The irony of Dan and Lani’s relationship, an American Indian take on Romeo and Juliet, was apparently one of those.

  For years now, Daniel Pardee had worked as a member of the Shadow Wolves, a unit of the Border Patrol made up entirely of Native Americans who operated exclusively on the Tohono O’odham Nation, patrolling the areas where the international border with Mexico passed through tribal lands. Even though Dan was Apache, he was regarded with a good deal of trust on the reservation not only because of the respectful and honorable manner in which he did his job, but also by virtue of his being married to Lani, who, despite her relative youth, was a well-­respected tribal elder.

  “Look,” Dan argued. “I know how serious you are about your obligations as a godmother, and I understand that the location on Kitt Peak is the same place you went to when you were a girl. I also know that you stayed out there day and night by yourself for a number of days. But the world has changed since then, Lani. Things aren’t like they used to be. The desert around the base of Kitt Peak is a dangerous place now—­a war zone.”

  Lani sighed. “But that’s the whole problem. Ioligam is where we need to go.”

  “You can call the mountain Ioligam all you like and claim it as a sacred place, but believe me, the smugglers who are out there—­terrorists who are using observation posts, combat gear, encrypted radio transmitters, and AK-­47s to protect the cartels’ drug shipments—­don’t see it that way. Too many of the bad guys out prowling the desert night after night are armed to the teeth, and they don’t give a crap about the Tohono O’odham belief system. They shoot first and ask questions later. It’s not safe, Lani. You can’t go. I won’t let you.”

  “Look,” Lani said, “with all the Anglos coming and going from Kitt Peak, it’s a lot more dangerous on the other side of Baboqui­vari and in the valley north of Ajo than it will be where we’re going. As for smugglers on foot? They’re more likely to stick to the lowlands. I doubt they’ll bother climbing partway up a mountain when they could just as easily go around it. Besides, it’s not a matter of your letting me do anything, Dan,” she reminded him gently. “That’s not how it works. Gabe’s parents asked me for help, and I have to give it to them. This is important. I simply have to go.”

  Micah, Dan and Lani’s four-­year-­old son, had been sitting on the floor, happily playi
ng with a set of giant Legos, ones his mother deemed safe to play with because they were too large to be swallowed. Now, sensing tension between his parents, he looked up from his solitary game and gave his mother a beseeching look with his striking azure eyes. “Can I go, too?” he asked.

  Brandon Micah Walker-­Pardee had been named after Lani’s Anglo adoptive father, Brandon Walker, and after Dan’s grandfather, a full-­blooded Apache named Micah Duarte. Part Anglo and part Indian, the boy resembled neither of his parents and was instead a throwback to Dan’s Anglo father. Adam Pardee had been a reasonably good-­looking Hollywood stuntman who had eventually murdered Dan’s mother in a frenzied act of domestic violence.

  Smiling, Lani reached down, scooped up her dark-­haired, blue-­eyed boy, and hugged him close. “Most certainly not,” she told him. “You have to stay here and take care of Daddy while Mommy goes with Gabe. We’ll be sleeping outside. The ground will be hard and cold. You need to stay here and sleep in your bed where it’s warm.”

  Lani understood that Gabe Ortiz was the real point of contention here. And maybe, just maybe, Dan was slightly jealous of Lani’s close relationship with the boy. Now two months short of his fourteenth birthday, Gabe seemed to have come to a critical fork in the road. The kid, one who had always been amenable to direction and biddable by his elders, had suddenly developed a rebellious streak and morphed into a preteen Tohono O’odham version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Delia and Leo Ortiz, Gabe’s frustrated and worried parents, had turned to Lani for help in steering him away from serious trouble. Since Gabe was the grandson of Lani’s own beloved mentor, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, she was determined to do whatever she could to fix the problem.