by J. A. Jance
He wasn’t right there. The elevator took forever. “What have you got?” he asked as soon as Sally Carmichael unlocked the lab door for him to enter. “Is it the victim? Do we have a name?”
“Slow down,” Alvin said. “One thing at a time. I’ve requested detailed information on the case in question. It should arrive in the next several minutes. AFIS only sends out an abbreviated version, but from what I’ve learned so far, the matching print was a single one found on the inside of a garbage bag containing dismembered human remains. It was found three years ago near a rest area along Interstate 8 on the far side of Gila Bend, halfway to the California border.”
“Human remains?” Brian repeated. “What kind of human remains?”
“An unidentified female, thirteen to fifteen years of age.”
“The case is still open?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you saying it’s possible the victim here is actually the perpetrator in that other case?”
“I doubt that,” Miller said. “I think it’s more likely that you’ve stumbled into a serial homicide case. LaGrange may be involved, but I’m guessing so is somebody else. If I were you, I’d look for other cases with the same MO.”
So Brian did just that. He went back up to his cubicle and logged on to the VICAP system. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, the brainchild of longtime L.A. homicide detective Pierce Brooks, was created back in the seventies, when the only way of finding similar crimes and perpetrators was to pore through mountains of newspaper files. Computers changed all that.
He keyed in the few details he knew: female victim, twelve to twenty years old, dismembered body. A few moments later, as he scrolled through the results of his search, what chilled him was the number of unsolved crimes that matched those criteria-forty-one in all, stretching through more than three decades. At the very end of the list, the earliest case in the database leaped out at him-Roseanne Orozco.
That was the name Brandon Walker had mentioned that morning as they dug Fat Crack’s grave, the victim he had called the Girl in the Box. The coincidence was too much to ignore. It was highly unlikely that Erik LaGrange had already been a serial killer as a five-year-old. Still, Brian’s instincts told him there had to be a connection. To find it, he needed information.
The Yuma County Sheriff’s Department had been the investigating agency in the crime Alvin Miller had uncovered. Brian put in a request for information on that case, asking that it be faxed to him. He had already asked for Roseanne Orozco’s file, but a weekend request for a paper file on a thirty-year-old case had yet to bubble to the top. Besides, since the homicide had occurred on the reservation, it seemed likely that much of the information on that case might still be located at the Law and Order office out in Sells.
He considered calling Brandon at home to ask if he remembered anything in particular about the case, but he thought better of it. Even though Brandon’s involuntary exit from office was years in the past, Brian knew that involving the former sheriff in a current investigation was bound to have unpleasant repercussions for everyone concerned, most especially for Brian Fellows.
Brandon picked Diana up from the Ortiz place. As they drove home, she leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. “Tired?” he asked.
“I’m not used to doing that much physical labor,” she said. “If there isn’t enough food to go around at the feast tomorrow, it won’t be for lack of trying. If I ever look at another pile of masa harina or masa trigo, it’ll be too soon. How about you? You were gone a long time.”
He told her then about the situation with Emma Orozco and about how all record of Roseanne’s stay in the hospital had somehow been misplaced or deleted. “Isn’t that about when the husband of that teacher friend of yours was working on the reservation?”
“Larry Stryker?” Diana asked.
“Yeah. The guy who runs those free clinics down in Mexico.”
“You mean Larry Stryker? Medicos for Mexico.”
“Right. Maybe I should talk to him about this.”
“About Roseanne Orozco? It happened more than thirty years ago, Brandon. She went in for an appendectomy. I doubt he’ll remember the first thing about her.”
“Roseanne happened to be an appendectomy patient who was murdered four months after undergoing surgery,” Brandon replied. “The way I remember things, there weren’t that many murderers in Pima County back then, let alone out on the reservation.”
“Suit yourself,” Diana said. “Their home number may be unlisted, but it’s in my database.”
“Good,” he said. “That would be a big help.”
Diana sighed and lapsed into silence. “What’s wrong?” he asked several miles later. “I can smell the smoke.”
“You’re sure that’s all it is?”
“All what is?”
“Your sudden interest in Larry Stryker. It’s not because-well, you know.”
“Because he and Gayle backed Bill Forsythe’s election campaign?”
“Yes.”
“Believe me,” Brandon said, “if I thought Bill Forsythe himself could help me find Roseanne Orozco’s killer, I’d be on my way to talk to him right this minute.”
“Oh,” Diana said. She sounded relieved.
When they got home, Lani was there. So were Davy and Candace and Tyler. It ended up being a hectic homecoming. The family gathering they had planned but canceled after Fat Crack’s death ended up taking place after all. Davy and Brandon went off together to the Albertsons on Silverbell and Speedway Boulevard to pick up steaks and salad makings.
“I called to see if Kath and Brian could make it after all,” Diana told Brandon a while later as he seasoned steaks at the kitchen counter. “Brian’s still at work, so Kath took a pass.”
“Too bad,” Brandon said. “I always enjoy having everybody around.”
Just then Tyler came streaking into the kitchen, hot on Damsel’s trail. “Maybe you should take her outside while you grill the steaks,” Diana suggested. “I wouldn’t want her to hurt him.”
“It looks like it’s the other way around,” Brandon muttered under his breath. “Come on, girl,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go outside and find you a little peace and quiet.”
Taking the platter of uncooked steaks, Brandon retreated to the backyard with Damsel, where he turned on the grill. While waiting for it to heat up, Brandon sat down on one of the patio chairs. Damsel flopped down beside him.
“Tyler’s a noisy little brat, isn’t he?” Brandon asked.
Damsel replied by thumping her tail on the flagstone pavers.
“And you’re a good dog. All you were trying to do was get out of his way.”
A door opened on the far end of the patio. “Dad?” Lani said.
“Yup.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Damsel,” Brandon replied sheepishly. Being caught talking to a dog seemed to him to be right up there next to senile. “We’re out here commiserating.”
“How come Tyler’s so hyper?” Lani exclaimed.
“Tyler?” Brandon asked innocently. “ ‘Hyper’? That may be your opinion, Damsel’s opinion, and my opinion, but don’t mention a word of it to your mother. She thinks the little rascal walks on water.”
Gracefully, Lani folded her long slender legs. She sat down cross-legged next to Damsel and cradled the dog’s head in her lap. This first quiet moment with his daughter found Brandon at a loss for words. It was a cool, clear night-downright chilly, in fact. Brandon had been sitting there thinking about going back inside for a sweater. Lani, on the other hand, wore a T-shirt and shorts. Her attire gave him a chance to exercise his fatherly prerogatives.
“It’s cold out here,” he said to her. “Shouldn’t you wear something warmer than that?”
Lani rolled her eyes. “Compared to North Dakota, this feels like summer.”
“Sorry,” he said. “My blood must be thinner than yours.”
They both fell silent while he st
ood up to put the steaks on the grill. “We should have called you about Fat Crack,” Brandon said when he finished. “I had no idea things were as bad as they were. I don’t think anyone else knew, either.”
“I should have known,” Lani said reproaching herself.
“But Fat Crack knew,” Brandon told her. “If he had wanted you to be here with him, he could have had Wanda call you.”
“What do you mean, he knew?” Lani demanded.
“Just a minute,” Brandon said. He hurried into the house and returned a few moments later carrying Fat Crack’s fringed leather pouch. Gently he placed it in Lani’s hands.
“Looks at Nothing’s huashomi,” Lani whispered reverentially, clutching the frayed buckskin to her breast. “Why do you have it?”
“I saw Fat Crack early yesterday afternoon,” Brandon said. “When it was time for me to leave, we smoked the Peace Smoke. Then he gave me this and asked that I give it to you.”
“He knew he was dying,” Lani murmured.
Brandon nodded. “And if he had told anyone…”
“They would have taken him to the hospital,” Lani finished. Then she began to cry.
Brandon tried to kneel down beside her, but a knife of pain shot through his left knee. He settled for taking her hands and pulling her up so he could hold her in his arms. “And that would have been wrong,” he said, rocking her like a baby. “You know Fat Crack would have hated that.”
Lani leaned into her father’s chest. “All I wanted was to talk to him one more time,” she sobbed. “I wanted to ask him if there was anything else he thought I should know or…”
“Lani, Lani, Lani,” Brandon murmured soothingly. “For the people left behind there’s never a right time. We’re greedy. We always want more. We’re never ready to let go, but Fat Crack was ready.”
“He told you that?”
“No, Lani,” Brandon Walker said with a catch in his voice. “He didn’t have to.”
Your ankles sure are swollen,” Leo said to Delia as he crawled into bed beside her. “Are you okay?”
“I was on my feet a lot today,” Delia said. “But I’m fine.”
“How are things for tomorrow?”
“Everything’s as ready as we can make it. Having the funeral at four will give the kids and buses a chance to leave the high school before everybody else starts showing up.”
“Good thinking.”
“You’re not planning on going to work in the morning, are you?” Leo asked.
“I thought I’d put in half a day. Why?”
“You should take it easy,” Leo said. “I’m worried about you and the baby.”
“I’m fine,” Delia said.
With that, she rolled over on her side and fell asleep.
It took time for the after-dinner hubbub to die down. Tyler, exhausted from his busy day, turned on the waterworks in a foot-stomping red-faced temper tantrum that sent Davy and Candace scurrying home early. While Lani and Diana cleared away dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Brandon retreated into his office and dialed Ralph Ames’s number in Seattle.
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday night,” Brandon said once Ralph came on the line. “But something’s come up. I’m working the Orozco case. When Roseanne’s homicide was first investigated, the top theory was that the father of her unborn baby would be the culprit. Since she had no known boyfriend, everybody thought it was a case of incest and that her father, Henry Orozco, was responsible.”
“For both the baby and the murder?” Ralph asked.
“Right,” Brandon replied. “But a blood test on the fetus eventually ruled Henry out as the father. The case went cold without turning up any other suspects.”
“It doesn’t sound like anyone was trying very hard,” Ralph Ames observed.
“She was an Indian,” Brandon said. “And the murder happened in 1970. Indian homicides weren’t exactly a priority in those days, but now I’m thinking the cops back then may have been right. I’ve located the fetus’s grave site. The grandmother is willing to let us exhume the remains, but before I dig them up, I want to be sure DNA testing is authorized.”
“Expensive but authorized,” Ralph assured him. “Hedda Brinker’s philosophy was to spare no expense. How far along was the fetus?”
“About four months,” Brandon said. “You think that’s too young for a DNA match?”
“Iffy but possible,” Ames said. “Where’s the grave located?”
“On the reservation. At a village called Big Fields.”
“Even with the grandmother’s permission, you’ll probably need a court order.”
Brandon thought about standing in the hot sun earlier that morning digging Fat Crack’s grave. That had been simple enough. They showed up at Ban Thak with picks and shovels and dug away, but that had been to bury someone, not to dig them up. Brandon didn’t know all the Tohono O’odham taboos concerning the handling of the dead, but he suspected there were some.
“We’ll probably need a court order and a medicine man,” Brandon replied.
“Do you know any?” Ralph Ames asked. “A medicine man, that is.”
Brandon paused before answering. “The one I did know died yesterday.”
“Surely there are others,” Ames returned.
There’s my daughter, Brandon Walker wanted to say. But something kept the words from escaping his lips. If he said that to Ralph Ames-a sophisticated urban attorney in his Brooks Brothers suit and Pink’s tie-there was a chance Ames would dismiss Brandon as some kind of superstitious nutcase. But by not saying it, Brandon argued with himself, aren’t I denying what Lani believes and everything Fat Crack believed as well?
“Well,” Ralph continued, “if you can find another one to do the job, hire him and pay the going rate. In the meantime, tomorrow morning I’ll get on the horn and find out where to send samples of the remains once you have them. After more than thirty years, we’re going to be dealing with tiny remains and badly degraded DNA. One lab may be better than another. I want to use the right place first time out.”
In a matter of seconds, Ralph Ames had switched from discussing medicine men to DNA testing-effortlessly negotiating the same treacherous philosophical chasm Lani crossed daily as she moved between the worlds of superstition and belief and the teachings of modern science.
No wonder Hedda Brinker put him in charge, Brandon thought. Here’s a guy who isn’t afraid of using every available tool.
When Brandon got up from his desk, he had to stand for a long moment leaning against the wood and resting his arthritic hip before his leg would actually hold his weight. He had only clambered down into Fat Crack’s grave a couple of times, and he hadn’t worked all that hard, but his body was telling him otherwise.
He limped over to the door and switched off the light. “Getting old is hell,” he muttered under his breath as he started back down the hall to the kitchen.
Which is the same thing, he thought, that Fat Crack told me yesterday.
By the time Brandon emerged from his office, the kitchen was clean, Diana had taken herself to bed, and Lani was sitting outside on one of the patio chairs, staring up at the sky. “Didn’t the stars used to be brighter?” she asked. “Or is that just how it seems?”
“They used to be brighter,” Brandon agreed. “As the lights in and around Tucson expand, they reflect off moisture in the sky, making it lighter. Stargazing is better on the other side of the pass.”
He sat down next to her. As his eyes adjusted to the ambient light overhead, he realized Lani was sitting with Fat Crack’s medicine pouch resting in her lap.
“I really wanted to talk to him,” she said.
“I know,” Brandon said.
“I feel like he abandoned me, and that he did it on purpose.”
“Lani, if he’d done things the way you wanted him to, if he had abandoned his beliefs and accepted the kind of medical care you wanted him to have, he wouldn’t have been true to himself.”
“I know that,” L
ani said. “I guess.”
She wished she could have told Fat Crack about the strange woman’s dissolving face and the skull that had appeared in her crystals and obliterated the medicine man’s features, but she knew better than to try talking to her father about it. This didn’t seem like something Brandon Walker could understand or accept.
They both fell silent. While they sat quietly, what must have been a dozen Harleys came roaring up the road toward Gates Pass. The sound of their noisy engines reverberated off the cliff faces on either side of the road as they hurtled past. The echoes lingered on long after the motorcycles had crossed the pass and started down the other side.
Brandon was cold, but Lani, still sitting in her T-shirt and shorts, gave no hint of being chilly. “Are you tired?” he asked finally.
“A little,” Lani admitted. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Maybe you should try,” Brandon suggested. “Between the funeral and the feast tomorrow, it’s going to be a long day.”
“What do you think about Candace?” Lani asked suddenly.
“Candace? What about her?”
“Do you think she’s happy here?”
Brandon shrugged. “I’ve never given it much thought. She seems happy to me. Why?”
Lani shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just that she’s so different from Davy. And the way she lets Tyler do whatever he wants to.”
Brandon nodded. That he had noticed. “I agree Tyler’s spoiled, but you have to remember his mother isn’t raising him the same way you and Davy were raised. I sometimes think that little boy could use a good healthy dose of Rita Antone. She’d straighten him out in ten minutes flat.”
Lani laughed at that. Nana Dahd had died on Lani’s seventh birthday. She vividly remembered the old Indian woman and her many lessons, all of them taught gently, but with the firm expectation that Lani would behave politely and respectfully.
“Maybe that’s where you come in, Lani,” Brandon said, rising and taking his aching hip and knee into the house. “You’re the closest thing we have to Nana Dahd around here. Isn’t that the way it works with the Desert People? Don’t aunts and uncles do the disciplining?”
