by J. A. Jance
Acutely aware of that unseen aspect of the room, Gabe looked at the other man, trying to gauge whether or not he noticed. As Brandon bustled cheerfully around the kitchen, he seemed totally oblivious. A full pitcher of sun tea sat on the counter. He filled glasses with ice cubes from the machine in the door of the fridge, added the tea, sliced off two wedges of lemon, and passed Gabe the sugar bowl and a spoon along with the tall glass of tea and a lemon wedge.
“How are you?” Gabe asked. Spooning sugar into his tea, he was thankful Wanda wasn’t there to tell him not to.
Brandon shrugged. “Can’t complain. Doesn’t do any good if I do. Now to what do I owe this honor?” Brandon sat down across the table from his guest. “Not some hitch with Davy’s internship, I hope. He should be leaving for home within the next day or two.”
Gabe took a sip of tea. “No,” he said. “Everything’s fine with that.”
“What then?” Brandon asked.
The two men had been friends for a long time. Fighting the war with Andrew Carlisle and living through the courtroom battles that followed had turned Brandon Walker and Gabe Ortiz into unlikely comrades at arms. And their political ambitions—Gabe’s within the tribe and Brandon’s in the county sheriff’s department—had led them along similar though different paths. Gabe had stood for election to the tribal council for the first time at almost the same time Brandon Walker took his first run at Pima County sheriff. Both of them had won, first time out.
With Gabe working in the background of tribal council deliberations and Brandon running the sheriff’s department, the two men had managed to create a fairly close working relationship between tribal and county law enforcement officers. Gabe’s elevation to chairman had happened only recently, after Brandon Walker had been burned at the polls and let out to pasture. With Brandon Walker no longer running the show at the sheriff’s department, the spirit of cooperation that had once existed between Law and Order—the Tribal Police—and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was fast disappearing.
“Is Diana here?” Gabe asked.
Frowning, Brandon looked at his watch. When he left office, they had given him a gold watch, for Chrissakes. He hated the damn thing and everything it symbolized. He wore it all the time in the vain hope that daily doses of hard physical labor would eventually help wear it out.
“She should be home in a little while. She had to go to some kind of shindig over at the university. A tea, I think. I must have been a good boy, because she let me off on good behavior, thank God,” he added with a grin.
Gabe didn’t smile back. With instincts honed sharp from years of being a cop, Brandon recognized that non-smile for what it was—trouble.
“What’s the matter, Gabe? Is something wrong?”
Gabe Ortiz took a deliberate sip of his tea before he answered. Convincing other people of the presence of an unseen menace had seemed so easy last night when he had been in tune with the ancient rituals of chants and singing. Now, though, the warning he had come to deliver didn’t seem nearly so straightforward.
“I came to talk to you about Diana’s book,” he managed finally.
“Oh,” Brandon Walker said. “Somehow I was afraid of that.”
“You were?” Gabe asked hopefully. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one with a powerful sense of foreboding.
“When she first came up with the idea for that book, I tried my best to talk her out of it,” Brandon said. “I told her from the very beginning that I didn’t think it was a good idea to rehash all that old stuff. Which shows how much I know. The damn thing went and won a Pulitzer. Now that it’s gone into multiple printings, the publisher is turning handstands. Months after it came out, the book is back on the New York Times Best Sellers list and moving up.” He stopped and gave his visitor a sardonic grin. “I guess I was a better sheriff than I am a literary critic—and I wasn’t too hot at that.”
For a moment they both sipped their tea. Brandon waited to see if Fat Crack would say what was on his mind. When nothing appeared to be forthcoming, Brandon tried priming the pump.
“So what is it about the book?” he asked. “Is there something wrong with it? Did she leave something out or put too much in? Diana’s usually very good with research, but everybody screws up now and then. What’s the scoop, Fat Crack? Tell me.”
“Andrew Carlisle’s coming back,” Gabe said slowly.
Walker started involuntarily but then caught himself. “The hell he is, unless you’re talking about some kind of instant replay of the Second Coming. Andrew Philip Carlisle is dead. He died a month and a half ago. In prison. Of AIDS.”
“I know,” Gabe replied. “I saw that in the paper. I’m not saying he’s coming back himself. Maybe he’s sending someone else.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. To get even?”
Brandon leaned back in his chair. Most Anglos would have simply laughed the suggestions aside. Gabe was relieved that Brandon, at least, seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration.
“Most crooks talk about getting revenge, but very few ever do,” he said finally. “Either in person or otherwise.”
“He did before,” Gabe said.
That statement brooked no argument. Brandon nodded. “So what do we do about it?”
For an answer, Gabe pulled Looks At Nothing’s deerskin pouch out of his pocket. “Remember this?” he asked, opening it and removing both a cigarette and the lighter.
A single glimpse of that worn, fringed pouch threw Brandon Walker into a sea of remembrance. He waited in silence as Gabe lit one of the hand-rolled cigarettes. And once he smelled a whiff of the acrid smoke, that, too, brought back a flood of memories.
The last time Brandon had seen the pouch was the night after Davy Ladd’s Tohono O’othham baptism. Back then the customs of the Desert People had been new and strange. The old medicine man, with help in translation from both Fat Crack and the old priest, had patiently explained some of the belief systems surrounding sickness, both Traveling Sickness—Oimmedtham Mumkithag—and Staying Sickness—Kkahchim Mumkithag.
According to the medicine man, traveling sicknesses were contagious diseases like measles, mumps, or chicken pox. They moved from person to person and from place to place, affecting everyone, Indian and Anglo alike. Traveling sicknesses could be treated by medicine men, but they also responded to the efforts of doctors, nurses, and Anglo hospitals.
Staying sicknesses, on the other hand, were believed to affect only Indians and could be cured only by medicine men. Both physical and spiritual in nature, staying sicknesses resulted from someone breaking a taboo or coming in contact with a dangerous object. By virtue of being an unbaptized baby, Davy himself had become the dangerous object that had attracted the attentions of the Ohb-infected Andrew Carlisle. As a cop investigating a case, Brandon had been little more than an amused outsider as he observed Diana Ladd complying with the requirements of Looks At Nothing’s ritual cure.
The prescription had included seeing to it that Davy Ladd was baptized according to both Indian and Anglo custom. Father John, a frail old priest from San Xavier Mission, had fulfilled the Mil-gahn part of the bargain by baptizing Davy into the Catholic Church of Diana Ladd’s Anglo upbringing. Looks At Nothing, aided by ceremonial singers, had baptized Davy according to the ritual of the Tohono O’othham. In the process the boy was given a new name. Among the Tohono O’othham Davy Ladd became Edagith Gogk Je’e—One With Two Mothers.
“But I thought you told me staying sicknesses only affect Indians,” Brandon had objected.
“Don’t you see?” Looks At Nothing returned. “Davy is not just an Anglo child. He has been raised by Rita as a child of her heart. Therefore he is Tohono O’othham as well. That’s why two baptisms are necessary, Anglo and Indian both.”
“I see,” Brandon had said back then. Now, after years living under the same roof with Rita, Davy, and Lani, Brandon understood far more about Staying Sickness than he ever would have thought possible. For instan
ce, Eagle Sickness comes from killing an eagle and can result in head lice or itchy hands. Owl Sickness comes from succumbing to a dream in which a ghost appears, and can result in fits or trances, dizziness, and “heart shaking.” Coyote Sickness comes from killing a coyote or eating a melon a coyote has bitten into. That one can cause both itching and diarrhea in babies. Whenever one of the kids had come down with a case of diarrhea, Rita was always convinced Coyote Sickness was at fault.
Now, though, sitting in the kitchen of the house at Gates Pass, Brandon Walker smelled the smoke and was transported back to that long ago council around the hood of Fat Crack’s bright red tow truck. It was at the feast after the ceremony, after Rita and Diana and Davy Ladd had all eaten the ritual gruel of white clay and crushed owl feathers. There had been four men in all—Looks At Nothing, Father John, Fat Crack, and Brandon Walker—who had gathered in that informal circle.
Brandon remembered how Looks At Nothing had pulled out his frayed leather pouch and how he had carefully removed one of his homemade cigarettes. Brandon had watched in fascination as the blind man once again used his Zippo lighter and unerringly ignited the roll of paper and tobacco. Before that, Brandon had been exposed only once to the Tohono O’othham custom of the Peace Smoke, one accomplished with the use of cigarettes rather than with the ceremonial pipes used by other Indian tribes. He knew, for example, that when the burning cigarette was handed to him, he was expected to take a drag, say “Nawoj”—which means friend or friendly gift—and then pass it along to the next man in the circle.
It had seemed to Brandon at the time that the cigarette was being passed in honor of Davy’s successful baptism, but that wasn’t true. The circle around the truck had a wholly separate purpose.
Only when the cigarette had gone all the way around the circle—from medicine man to priest, from tow truck driver to detective and back at last to Looks At Nothing—did Brandon Walker learn the rest.
“He is a good boy,” Looks At Nothing had said quietly, clearly referring to Davy. “But I am worried about one thing. He has too many mothers and not enough fathers.”
Not enough fathers? Brandon had thought to himself, standing there leaning on a tow truck fender. What the hell is that supposed to mean? And what does it have to do with me?
Obligingly, Looks At Nothing had told them.
“There are four of us,” the shaman had continued. “All things in nature go in fours. Why could we not agree to be father to this fatherless boy, all four of us together? We each have things to teach, and we all have things to learn.”
Brandon recalled the supreme confidence with which the medicine man had stated this position. Out of politeness, it was framed as a question, but it was nonetheless a pronouncement. No one gathered around the truck that warm summer’s night in the still-eddying smoke from the old man’s cigarette had nerve enough to say otherwise.
Twenty-one years had passed between then and now. Two of Davy Ladd’s four fathers were dead—Father John for twenty years and Looks At Nothing for three years less than that. One of the two mothers, Rita Antone, was gone as well.
Of the six people charged by the medicine man with Davy Ladd’s care and keeping, only three remained—Diana Ladd Walker, Fat Crack Ortiz, and Brandon Walker.
“That’s the pouch that belonged to the old blind medicine man, isn’t it?” Brandon asked.
Fat Crack, nodding, passed the cigarette to Brandon. “Nawoj,” Fat Crack said.
At Diana’s insistence, Brandon Walker had quit smoking completely years ago. When he took that first drag on the ceremonial tobacco, the sharp smoke of the desert tobacco burned his throat and chest. He winced but managed to suppress a cough.
“Nawoj,” he returned, passing the cigarette back to Gabe.
For a time after that, the two men smoked in utter silence. Only when Brandon with typical Anglo impatience was convinced that Fat Crack had forgotten how to speak, did Gabe Ortiz open his mouth.
“I finished reading Diana’s book last night,” he said at last. “It gave me a bad feeling. Finally I took the book outside and sang a kuadk over it.”
“A what?” Brandon asked.
“Kuadk. One of the sacred chants of discernment that Looks At Nothing taught me. That’s how I learned the evil Ohb is coming back.”
Brandon frowned. “Even though he’s dead.”
Fat Crack nodded. “I can’t see the danger, I just know it’s coming.”
Brandon shook his head. There was no point in arguing. “What are we supposed to do about it?” he asked.
“That’s what you and I must decide.”
Brandon Walker sighed. Abruptly he stood up and walked back to the counter to fetch the pitcher of tea. In the process, he seemed to shake off the effects of the smoke and all it implied.
“What do you suggest?” he asked irritably. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the sheriff anymore. I’m not even a deputy. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing I’m supposed to do.”
Realizing that Brandon Walker was no longer in touch with the spiritual danger, Gabe attempted to respond to the physical concerns. “Maybe you could ask the sheriff to send more patrols out this way,” he suggested.
“Why? To protect us from a dead man?” Brandon Walker demanded. “Are you kidding? If I weren’t a laughingstock already, I sure as hell would be once word about that leaked out. I appreciate your concern, Gabe. And I thank you for going to all the trouble of stopping by to warn us, but believe me, you’re wrong. Andrew Carlisle is dead. He can’t hurt anybody anymore.”
“I’d better be going, then,” Gabe Ortiz said.
“Don’t you want to stay and see Diana? She should be home before long.”
Fat Crack shook his head. If Brandon wouldn’t listen to him, that meant that the evil here in the kitchen would grow stronger still. He didn’t want to sit there and feel it gaining strength around him.
“I’ll be late for dinner,” he said. “It’ll make Wanda mad.”
When he stood up, his legs groaned beneath him. His joints felt stiff and old as his whole body protested the hours he had spent the night before seated in that uncomfortable molded plastic chair. Wanda had picked up a whole set of those chairs on sale from Walgreen’s at the end of the previous summer. Now Gabe understood why they had been so cheap.
“Do me a favor, nawoj, my friend,” Gabe Ortiz said, limping toward the door. “Do something for an old man.”
“You’re not so old,” Brandon Walker objected. “But what favor?”
“Think about what I said,” Gabe told him, slipping the deerskin pouch back into his pocket.. “And even if you don’t believe what I said, act as though you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Be careful,” Gabe answered. “You and Diana both.”
Brandon nodded. “Sure,” he said, not knowing if he meant it or not.
Outside, Gabe Ortiz paused with his hand touching the door handle on the Crown Victoria. “What are you going to do with all that wood out there?” he asked.
“Oh, that.” Brandon shrugged. “Right now I’m just cutting it, I guess,” he said. “I haven’t given much thought to what we’ll do with it. Burn some of it over the winter, I suppose. Why, do you know someone who needs wood?”
“The ladies up at San Xavier sure could use it,” Gabe answered. “The ones who cook the popovers and chili. Most of the wood is gone from right around there. They have to haul it in. And the chips would help on the playfield down at Topawa Elementary. When it rains, that whole place down there turns to mud.”
“If somebody can use it, they’re welcome to it,” Brandon said. “All they have to do is come pick it up.”
“I’ll have the tribe send out some trucks along with guys to load it.”
“Sure thing,” Brandon said. “They can come most anytime. I’m usually here.”
As soon as Gabe Ortiz’s Crown Victoria headed down the road, Brandon Walker returned to his woodpile. A reincarnated Andrew Ca
rlisle? That was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Still, there was one point upon which Brandon Walker fully agreed with Fat Crack Ortiz—writing Shadow of Death had been a dangerous undertaking.
Four years earlier, on the day the letter arrived from Andrew Carlisle, Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd had already been together for seventeen years. They had come through the trials and tribulations of raising children and stepchildren. Together they had survived the long-term agonies of writing and publishing books and dealt with the complexities and hard work of running for public office. There had been difficulties, of course, but always there had been room for compromise—right up to the arrival of that damned letter. And from that time since, it seemed to him they had been locked in a downward spiral.
That was Brandon’s perception, that things had been hunky-dory before the letter and had gone to hell in a handbasket afterward, although in actual fact everything wasn’t absolutely perfect beforehand. They had already lost Tommy by then, and Quentin had already been sent to prison on the drunk-driving charge. But still . . .
The letter, ticking like a time bomb, had come to the house as part of a packet of publisher-forwarded fan mail. Diana had opened the envelope and read the oddly printed, handwritten letter herself before handing it to her husband.
