by J. A. Jance
Maybe it didn’t seem like much of a seed, but once Brandon and Diana Walker were trying to come to grips with the fact that their son Quentin had murdered his sister Lani, it would give them something more to think about.
Monty Lazarus made a show of glancing at his watch. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Look at the time. I promised Megan that I’d have you home in plenty of time for your dinner. Based on that, I booked another appointment. I’m supposed to meet some friends, and I’m about to be late. Would you mind if we finished this up and shot the pictures sometime tomorrow?”
If Diana Ladd Walker had posed for a photo right then, the camera probably would have captured exactly what she was thinking—that it would have given her the greatest of pleasure to shove the camera right back down Monty’s arrogant goddamned throat.
“That would be fine,” she said, trying not to let her relief show at finally escaping this interminable interview. Maybe by tomorrow she could find a way to be reasonably civil to this jackass.
“What time?”
“Say two o’clock.”
“All right. And where? Out at the house?”
“No. Not your place. I have some locations in mind. I’ll call you in the morning and let you know where to meet me.”
“Fine.” Diana got up and started away, but before she went too far, she remembered her manners. “Thanks for the refreshments.”
“Think nothing of it,” Monty Lazarus said with an ingratiating smile. “It was my pleasure.”
The EMTs immediately went to work attempting to stabilize their patient. Agent Kelly and Deputy Fellows suddenly found themselves with nothing to do. Sent packing from the scene of all the action, the two officers retreated to the spot where their vehicles were parked.
Agent Kelly was a short, sturdy blonde with closely-cropped hair, gray-green eyes, and an easy smile. Brian had no idea how long she had been out in the baking sun with the injured man, but her face was flushed. The shirt of her green uniform was soaked with sweat.
Opening the door to her van, she put the two empty water jugs—both his and hers—on the floorboard of the front seat, and then she pulled out another. Screwing open the cap, she held the jug over her head and poured, letting the water spill down. Once she was thoroughly soaked, she handed the gallon jug over to Brian. “Live a little,” she said.
After a momentary hesitation, Brian followed suit. “My name’s Katherine Kelly, by the way,” she told him as he gave the jug back to her. “Kath for short. We didn’t exactly have time for official introductions before.” She held out her hand.
Before, when they had been working together and dealing with a crisis, Brian had been totally at ease. Now his natural reticence reasserted itself, leaving him feeling tongue-tied and dim-witted. “Brian Fellows,” he managed awkwardly.
If Kath Kelly suffered any social difficulties, they didn’t show. “Did you call for a detective?” she asked.
Brian nodded. “I did, but they’re not sending one,” he said. “Everybody’s busy, so I’m told. They told me to write it up myself, but the way Dispatch said it, you can tell they’d as soon I dropped the whole thing. After all, the guy’s just an Indian.”
Kath Kelly’s gray-green eyes darkened to emerald. “There’s a lot of that going around in my department, too,” she said. “So are you going to drop it?”
“No, I’m going to take Dispatch at their word and investigate the hell out of this. Crime-scene investigation may not be my long suit, but I’ve done some.”
“I can help for a while, but as soon as the helicopter leaves, I’ll have to get back on patrol. Before I forget, you don’t look much like an Indian. Where’d you learn to speak Tohono O’othham?”
“From one of my friends, in Tucson,” he said.
“Really.” Kath smiled. “Pretty impressive,” she said. “I speak French fluently and Spanish some, but I couldn’t understand a word that poor guy was saying. It’s a good thing you showed up. Is that why they have you working this sector of the county, because of your language skills?”
Brian shook his head. “Hardly,” he answered with a short laugh. “Nobody at the department knows I speak a word of Papago. And don’t tell them, either. It’s a deep, dark secret.”
For the next half-hour, working in a circle from the outside in, they carefully combed the entire area, finding nothing of interest. They were almost up to the edge of the charco before they came to a spot where, although someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to try to cover it up, there was clear evidence that the soil had recently been disturbed.
“It looks to me like this is where the bad guy was doing his forbidden digging,” Brian observed.
Kath Kelly nodded. “And the Indian showed up and caught him in the act. What do you suppose was down there?”
“It could be a lot of things,” Brian said. “There used to be an Indian village right around here called Rattlesnake Skull. My guess is we’ve stumbled on your basic artifact thief.”
“Sounds like,” Kathy agreed.
Before Brian could answer, one of the EMTs came looking for them. “Could the two of you give us a hand?” he asked. “We brought a gurney along, but we can’t use it—not in this soft dirt. And this guy’s way too heavy for two of us to carry him on a stretcher.”
It took all four of them to haul the wounded man out of the mesquite grove toward the waiting helicopter. The man was mumbling incoherently as they loaded him aboard. Again, Brian wasn’t able to make it all out, but he was able to pick out one or two words, one of which sounded like pahl—priest.
“I think he’s asking for a priest,” Brian told the EMT. “He’s probably worried about last rites.”
The man shook his head urgently. “Pahla,” he said. “Pi-pahl.”
The EMT looked at Brian. “What’s the difference?”
Brian shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I know some Tohono O’othham, but obviously not enough.”
“Just in case, we’ll call for a priest all the same,” the EMT replied, heading for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Brian called after him. “You didn’t happen to find any ID on the guy, did you?”
“None,” the medic told him. “Not a stitch.”
“And where are you taking him?”
“John Doe’s on his way to TMC.” Moments later, the helicopter took off in a huge man-made whirlwind. When the dust finally settled, Agent Kelly reached in her pocket and extracted a business card.
“If they’re gone, I’d better be going, too, but here are my numbers in case you need to reach me about any of this.”
“Good thinking,” Brian said, fumbling for one of his own cards. “I probably will need to get in touch with you. For my report.”
Kath Kelly looked up into his face as she took the card. “You’re welcome to call me even if it’s not for your report,” she said with a smile.
Then, tucking his card in her breast pocket, she turned and walked away, leaving an astonished Brian Fellows staring after her.
For eleven long years, Brian Fellows had been his mother’s main caretaker. Her overwhelming physical need had attached itself to Brian’s own hyper-developed sense of responsibility. His mother’s illness had sucked him dry, robbing him of the last of his adolescence and blighting his social life in the process.
At age twenty-six, faced with clear encouragement from a woman he found immensely attractive, he was left blushing as she drove away.
“I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. “I will be damned.”
Diana fumed all the way home. How dare Monty Lazarus imply that whatever had happened with Quentin and Tommy was in any way her fault? She was no more responsible for Quentin ending up in prison than Myrna Louise was for Andrew Carlisle’s being there.
By the time she drove past the Leaving Tucson City Limits sign two blocks before the turnoff to the house in Gates Pass, she was starting to feel better. The tension in her jaw relaxed. Their home, as well as five others, sat on a sma
ll ten-acre parcel which, because of the attractive nuisance of a nearby target-shooting range, had never been annexed by the City of Tucson.
As she turned off Speedway onto the dirt drive leading up to the house, she could tell by the tire tracks left in the dust that several large, unfamiliar vehicles had come in and out that way earlier in the day. That was one thing about living at the end of a dirt road. You learned to read tracks.
She expected to find Brandon still outside, laboring over his wood. Instead, after hanging her car keys up on the pegboard just inside the kitchen doorway, she wandered on into the living room, where she found a showered, shaved, and nattily dressed Brandon Walker sitting on the couch reading a newspaper. Two champagne glasses and an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of Schramsberg sat on the coffee table in front of him.
“What’s this?” Diana asked.
“A little surprise,” he said. “Could I interest you in a drink?”
Nodding, Diana sank gratefully down on the couch beside him. “How was it?” he asked.
“Awful. It seemed like it went on forever,” she replied. “And it’s not over yet. We ran out of time to do the pictures. Those are scheduled for two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
“After spending half of today, you’re still not done? What’s this guy doing, writing an article or a biography?”
Diana laughed. Just being home and watching Brandon pour the sparkling liquid into one of the glasses made her feel better. “As a matter of fact, it may be a little of both. Monty Lazarus has an unusual approach to doing an interview. Calling it roundabout is giving it the benefit of the doubt.
“So what have you been up to all afternoon, and what’s the big occasion? I haven’t seen you this dressed up or happy in months.”
Brandon handed her a glass and then touched his to hers. “To us,” he said.
“To us,” she nodded.
Brandon took a sip. “I spent most of the afternoon loading up three livestock trucks full of wood,” he answered. “Fat Crack told me yesterday that he thought he knew someone who could use it. Today Baby Ortiz came by with a bunch of other Indians, and we loaded up three truckloads to take to the popover ladies over at San Xavier.”
As a toddler, Gabe’s older son, Richard, had wandered around with his diapers at half-mast, much the way his father always wore his low-riding Levi’s. It hadn’t taken long for people to start calling him A’ali chum Gigh Tahpani—Baby Fat Crack. Now forty years old and half again as wide as his father, most people simply called him Baby.
“Baby says he thinks the wood chips might help with the mud problem on the playfield down at Topawa.”
“And whoever’s going to use the wood will come get it?” Diana asked.
“That’s right. They’ll come load it and haul it away.” Brandon laughed. “I’ll bet you thought you were going to be stuck with that mountain of wood permanently, didn’t you?” he teased.
“It was beginning to look that way,” Diana agreed.
“It makes me feel good that someone’s going to get some benefit out of all my hard work,” Brandon added seriously. “And as for my being dressed to the nines, I thought I’d straighten up and give the Friends of the Library a real treat, show up as author consort in full-dress regalia.”
He put one arm around Diana’s shoulder and pulled her close. “It’s also an apology of sorts. I’ve been a real self-centered jerk of late, haven’t I?”
“Not as bad as all that,” she answered with a laugh.
They sat for several minutes, enjoying their champagne and the comfort of a companionable silence. “What time do we have to be at the dinner?”
Diana looked at her watch. “Megan said six, but we don’t really have to be there until seven.”
“You mean we have two whole hours all to ourselves?”
She smiled at him over her glass. “Wait a minute,” she said coyly. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
Brandon shrugged. “You saw Lani’s note. She said she was going directly to the concert . . .”
One of the first and most ongoing casualties of the loss of the election had been to their sex life. Diana had managed to put it out of her mind, but now that Brandon was actually suggesting making love, she wasn’t about to turn him down.
Diana stood up and started for the bedroom. “Here goes my hairdo and makeup,” she said.
“I didn’t think about that,” Brandon said. “If you don’t want to . . .”
Stopping in the bedroom doorway, she turned and smiled. “Nobody said anything about not wanting to,” she said. “It just means that I’ll go to dinner with the natural look. It’s a lot more like me than this is. Now come in and close the door,” she added. “And go ahead and lock it. Lani said she wouldn’t be home before the concert, but let’s not take any chances.”
As Mitch Johnson drove back toward the RV, he was almost wild with anticipation. He had come through the interview with flying colors, done his capework admirably, but the next segment of the adventure would contain the two parts of the plan Andy had lobbied for so adamantly. The rest of the program he had been content to leave entirely in Mitch’s hands, to let the person with the ultimate responsibility for putting the plan into action noodle out the details. But for Andy, this was the sine qua non.
“If you can manage to lay hands on the girl,” Andy had said, “whatever else you do to her, be sure her mother knows that it’s coming from me. Understand?”
Understand? Of course, Mitch had understood. How could he have spent seven and a half years living with Andy Carlisle and listening to the man obsess about women’s breasts without understanding? The trick was doing what Andy wanted without being caught.
Women’s breasts and what Andy had done to them had been his undoing, at least part of it. Somebody had lost the toothmarks from Gina Antone’s mutilated body, but the detectives had matched the ones on the dead woman at Picacho Peak and the ones on Diana Ladd and had used them as part of the evidence that sent Andrew Carlisle to prison for the second time. Andy had talked about that constantly, about how once a woman’s breast was exposed to him, he was physically incapable of not biting it.
“So what’s the problem here?” Mitch had asked one day, when he was feeling particularly brave and when he felt as though Andy had beaten the subject to death. “Didn’t your mother ever nurse you?” he had asked. “How come, when you talk about tits, it’s only in terms of mangling them or biting them off instead of using them the way God intended?”
“What my mother did or didn’t do is none of your damned business.” Andy said the words in a way that made Mitch’s blood run cold. He knew at once that he had stepped over some invisible line, and he sincerely wished he hadn’t.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to insult your mother. It’s just that sucking on a woman whose boobs are overflowing with milk can be a beautiful thing. I thought maybe you might have tried it.”
“No,” Andy had responded. “I never have.”
“Damn,” Lori muttered.
Half-asleep, Mitch rolled over on his side to face her. “What’s wrong?”
“Mikey didn’t eat,” she said. “He already fell back to sleep. He barely touched the one side, and I’m soaking wet on the other.”
Mitch reached out and cupped Lori’s swollen breast in one hand. She was right. The leaking milk had soaked her nightgown from armpit to waist.
“If you’d let me, maybe I could take some of the pressure off.”
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll go get the breast pump.”
“No, don’t,” he said. “Let me do it. Please. It won’t hurt anything. Mikey won’t know.”
Lori didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t move his hand, either. Finally she sighed. “All right,” she said. “I guess it would be all right, just this once.”
There was no need to unbutton the gown because she slept with it open. Mitch did have some trouble unfastening the nursing bra. He had s
een her do it, of course, but watching it done from the inside out wasn’t the same as doing it from the outside in and in the dark as well. At last, though, he ran his hand over her damp naked breast. The distended nipple lay erect and inviting beneath his grazing fingertips.
“If you’re going to do it,” Lori said, “don’t take all night.”
Whenever he’d had the chance to watch Lori nurse, he’d observed the strange mixture of anticipation and dread with which she greeted Mikey’s clamping his hungry lips over her nipple. Sometimes she’d make a sound that was almost like the sigh of satisfaction Mitch’s grandmother used to make after taking a sip of too hot coffee.
Raising up on his elbows, Mitch leaned over and clamped on. As his lips closed around her nipple, he felt her body tense and instantly afterward go limp as the sweet, hot milk shot into his mouth. It gushed out at him, shooting all the way to the back of his mouth, teasing his tonsils, almost triggering his gag reflex, but he fought that down and concentrated on sucking, on draining her without ever gripping her with his teeth.
There was more milk inside her than he expected, but at last that one was empty. He sat up to find that in the dark she had deftly unfastened the other side, and now, giggling, she pulled him down onto that one, too, holding him by the back of the neck, pressing him against her, groaning with pleasure as his now aching jaws relieved the pressure on that sore breast as well.
Ever since they had brought Mikey home from the hospital three weeks earlier, Mitch had been intensely curious about the process. For weeks he had begged Lori to let him taste her, but what had never crossed his mind was that the process might pleasure her as well. The fact that she was enjoying it almost as much as he did unleashed months of pent-up sexual deprivation. When he let go of her nipple, she was still laughing so hard that at first she didn’t seem to notice that he was prying her legs apart. But she did notice.
“No, Mitch,” she said. “It’s still too soon. The doctor . . .”
