Queen of the Night

by J. A. Jance

  Dan held out his hand. Brandon took it, mumbling a halfhearted “Glad to meet you” as he did so, but he wasn’t really paying attention to the handshake. He was staring after his wife.

  As she sat there, kicking her feet for all she was worth, there was an expression on her face that Brandon Walker hadn’t seen in years. The smile he had once loved so much, the one that had gone dormant years ago, was back again. The ghosts were gone. Diana was vibrantly alive.

  Between spasms of kicking, Diana beamed down at the little girl. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “My name’s Diana. What’s yours?”

  “Angelina Enos,” Angie said. “My mother calls me Angie.”

  “Good,” Diana Ladd Walker said. “That’s what I’ll call you, too.”

  Brandon looked at his wife’s shadowless face and then at his daughter’s.

  “Well,” he said finally, shaking his head. “I guess I know when I’m licked. Come on, young man,” he added, turning back to Dan. “How about if you and Lani and I go inside and rustle up some grub. You may not be starved, but I know I am.”

  Brandon led the way into the house. As he stepped inside, he handed Dan a beach towel from the stack of clean towels piled in a laundry basket parked just inside the patio door. He had no idea about who this half-naked young man was or what his relationship was to Angie or to Lani, but he was there. Lani evidently thought he was okay, so Brandon decided he could just as well follow suit.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Lani,” he added, speaking to his daughter and glancing back outside at Diana, still sitting on the edge of the pool and splashing away. “Something’s up with your mother. We need to talk.”

  Tucson, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 4:33 p.m.

  94º Fahrenheit

  As far as first impressions go, Dan Pardee and Bozo were on the same page when it came to Brandon Walker. Dan could see that the man had a point—that he wouldn’t be wild about having uninvited strangers making themselves at home on his property, but he could have been a little less confrontational about it.

  Before stepping inside, Dan turned back to Bozo and gave him the silent hand signal that released the dog from his earlier command. Without hesitating, Bozo made for the water, dived in, and swam from one end of the lap pool to the other. Bozo was entirely understandable. People? Not so much. Shaking his head and not sure what had just happened, Dan followed Dr. Walker and her father into the house.

  Lani (she had told him to call her that, but Dan still thought of her as Dr. Walker) helped herself to sodas from the fridge, keeping one for herself and passing another on to Dan while her father set about taking a selection of foodstuffs out of the pantry and refrigerator and setting them on the counter.

  “Enchiladas?” he asked.

  Lani nodded. “That sounds wonderful,” she said.

  “Now tell me about all this,” he said.

  So Lani did. While she and her father bustled around the kitchen, she explained about the four people who had been murdered near Komelik. She told Brandon about how Dan had discovered the crime scene and how he had rescued the child from there—finding Angie, bringing her to the hospital, and then staying with her while they waited for Angie’s relatives to come collect her, relatives who had no intention of doing so.

  There was a lot about this conversation that didn’t make much sense to Dan Pardee. Lani had told Dan and Angie earlier about being bitten by ants as a child, but he couldn’t understand how that had made her unacceptable to her birth family. And he found it hard to believe that Delphina Enos could have been Lani’s cousin without Lani’s having any idea about her existence. It was also interesting to see that Brandon Walker was far more understanding about having Angie Enos air-dropped into his family than he was about coming home and finding unauthorized strangers in his swimming pool. That was as contradictory as it was interesting.

  Dan also enjoyed watching what he later thought of as the enchilada dance. Lani and her father worked and talked together—chopping, dicing, grating, and stirring—without having to ask any questions and without ever stepping in each other’s way. The batch of enchiladas had just gone into the oven and they had taken seats with Dan at the kitchen table when Brandon Walker glanced in Dan’s direction and then abruptly changed the subject.

  “I need to tell you about your mother,” he said to Lani. “I know I should have talked to you and Davy about this before, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She’s been seeing people, Lani, and carrying on conversations with people who aren’t there.”

  “Like Andrew Carlisle?” Lani asked.

  Once again, Dan was listening to a conversation—a private but clearly important conversation, but one with big pieces missing. Who the hell was Andrew Carlisle?

  “How do you know about that?” Brandon asked. “Did she tell you?”

  Lani shook her head. “Gabe Ortiz did.”

  Once again Dan was left out of the loop. Who’s Gabe? he wondered, while Brandon shook his head in apparent dismay.

  “How did Gabe know?” Brandon asked.

  Lani shrugged. “He’s a spooky little kid,” she replied. “He sometimes knows things people don’t expect him to know. But who all are we talking about here besides Andrew Carlisle?”

  “Mitch Johnson, her father, her first husband,” Brandon said. “All the bad guys who made Diana’s life a living hell. She didn’t mention any of this to me or to anyone else because she’s scared to death that she’s drifting into some kind of dementia—or maybe even Alzheimer’s.”

  To Dan’s surprise, Lani greeted that dire news with what appeared to be a relieved smile. “It’s not Alzheimer’s.” She made the declaration with absolute confidence.

  “It’s not?” her father asked.

  “Mom’s hallucinating,” Lani said. “For some people hallucinations come along in a much happier context—pink ponies, purple whales, whatever. Mom has lived through some pretty dark times, so it’s not surprising that her hallucinations are darker, too.”

  “If it’s not Alzheimer’s or dementia, what’s causing it?” Brandon asked.

  “My first guess would be her medications. What is she taking?”

  “I’m not sure. I know she’s had trouble sleeping at times. She takes some over-the-counter meds and vitamin supplements. Why?”

  “We need to gather up everything she takes, prescription and nonprescription, and get those bottles to a pharmacy. I’m guessing this is some kind of drug interaction.”

  “That’s all it is?” Brandon asked.

  “It could be all it is,” Lani corrected. “We need to be sure, but if I were a betting woman, I’d be willing to put money on it.”

  The relief on Brandon Walker’s face was apparent. “I’ll do that,” he said. “I’ll gather up all the bottles and take them to the pharmacy first thing tomorrow morning.”

  The timer went off, announcing it was time to take the enchiladas out of the oven. Brandon had stood up and was reaching for an oven mitt when the phone rang. A moment or two after he answered, he nodded gravely.

  “Thanks for calling, Kath. I’m so sorry to hear this. We’ll be right there.”

  He took the baking tray of enchiladas out of the oven and set them on the counter, then turned to his daughter. “We’ve gotta go,” he said.

  “Why?” Lani asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Brian,” he said. “He’s been in an accident. They’ve taken him to the trauma center at TMC.”

  And that’s how Dan Pardee began to learn about the extent of the close connections between Detective Brian Fellows’s family and Lani Walker’s. That was also how it came to be that his day ended as it began, with him waiting patiently in hospitals sixty miles apart, worrying about people he barely knew and watching their looming tragedies unfold around him.

  Dan went to the hospital because they asked him to go there with them. He helped out because he could help out—because that was the way his grandfather had raised him.

 
Ohb or not, that was who he was.

  Fifteen

  Tucson, Arizona

  June to November 2009

  Initially Brian was aware of living in a strange half-world that wasn’t really waking and wasn’t really sleeping. Sometimes he did sleep. Many of the people who appeared in his dreams were dead—Fat Crack Ortiz; his half brothers, Tommy and Quentin; his mother, Janie.

  Kath was there, of course, sometimes in his dreams and sometimes standing next to him. Whenever he saw her, the expression on her face was strained. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well for a long time. He worried that she was doing too much and was too tired. Sometimes the girls were there. His girls. Amy and Annie. They looked sad, too. When they kissed him hello and good-bye, their lips barely touched his skin—as if they were afraid he might break. As if they were shy about being around the IV tree and the tubes.

  He was aware that he was in casts. At least that’s how it seemed. On his arms and both legs. The bed made funny noises and seemed to move under him, as if it were breathing or something. He wasn’t sure what that was all about. And for some reason he couldn’t ask. Couldn’t talk. Other people did all the talking. And there were lots of them, although they generally showed up only one or two at a time, and they mostly talked to each other, not to him.

  Initially he was aware of seeing people from work occasionally—his old partner Hector Segura came by several times. Brian and PeeWee had worked well together, but Sheriff Forsythe had seen fit to split them up. And, speaking of the devil, William Forsythe himself appeared at Brian’s bedside a time or two. He never stayed long, but he’d be able to say he’d stopped by to check on his injured officer. That might be good for a few votes in the next election.

  Oddly enough, some of Brian’s visitors were total strangers. For example, who was that old Mexican woman who was there time and again, always with a black-beaded rosary in her pocket? She would tell him hello in Spanish and then sit there for hours on end, saying her Hail Marys. Sometimes a little boy came along with her. When he was there, the kid jabbered a blue streak and there was no time for “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Other times a young woman came with her and sometimes a young man, too. Brian gradually sorted out that the old woman was the little boy’s grandmother. He couldn’t tell if the woman was her daughter or if the man was her son.

  The old Indian guy who came by from time to time was Thomas Rios from Komelik, but what about the guy who sometimes showed up in a Border Patrol uniform? He seemed familiar. Brian thought he might have seen him somewhere before, but he was there a lot of the time, too, although he didn’t seem to have much to say one way or the other.

  The Walkers came, Brandon and Diana. Diana seemed distracted, but she had always seemed distant to Brian. His connection had been with Brandon, who was there in the room more than anyone, including Kath. He sat there day after day, dozing or reading in a chair. Brian liked having him around. They didn’t talk; they didn’t have to. The older man’s silent, watchful presence made Brian feel safe somehow—as though whatever was happening was going to be all right. Okay. That was the way it had been when Brian was little and the way it was now.

  And Davy came, his good buddy Davy. He did talk. He talked about losing his son and his wife. Candace had divorced him and had moved back home to Chicago. Davy was angry and bitter about that. Of course, anyone who knew them had seen that coming a long time ago, almost from the very beginning. They were too different. Opposites may attract, and that might be good for dating, but not for marriage. In marriage, opposites can pull you apart. Brian wished he could say something to comfort his old friend, but he couldn’t. All he could do was listen and give Davy a chance to talk—to vent. If nothing else, in his current condition Brian Fellows was an excellent listener.

  Lani came by, too, sometimes accompanied by Fat Crack’s grandson, Gabe, but always with a live-wire little girl named Angie. Brian couldn’t imagine how that had happened or when. Had Lani—his little Lani, the girl he and Davy had loved to tease and torment—grown up and gotten married while he was lying here in this noisy bed? Or had he been to her wedding some time in the past and forgotten all about it? If so, whom had she married and when? It must have happened long enough ago for her to have a baby who was now this little girl. Clearly Angie resembled her mother.

  Tucson, Arizona

  June to November 2009

  For Brandon Walker, that summer stretched into months of interchangeable days. With the exception of the one day off he took to go serve as a pallbearer at Geet Farrell’s funeral, Brandon was at the hospital every single day. He got up early; he went to the hospital; he spent the day there; he came home late.

  Kath was there every day, too, but not all day long. She couldn’t. After a month or so, she’d had to go back to work. She had the girls to look after and a house to take care of, but Brandon knew enough about hospitals to know that Brian needed an advocate in the room not only to run interference with the medical people but also to let Kath know what was going on when she wasn’t there.

  After months of worrying about Diana, Brandon could spend his worrying capital on someone else. Lani had been right. What had ailed Diana all along had been drug interactions rather than something far more serious. Now that her meds had been adjusted, she was back to being her old self. Not quite her old self. She had handed the book rewrite over to a ghostwriter without so much as a backward glance. She would be going on one last book tour next spring, but after that she was retired.

  Her pottery studio now took precedence over her computer. Between making pots and spoiling her new granddaughter—her accidental granddaughter, as she liked to call Angie—Diana Ladd Walker was busy and happy.

  As the days moved into weeks and there was no visible change in Brian’s condition, Brandon began to lose hope. He prayed about it. He meditated about it. All he knew for certain was that he didn’t want to lose this man who had come to be so dear to him—his accidental son, he thought, mimicking Diana’s term for Angie—but it was seeming more and more likely.

  One day, when Lani came to visit, little Gabe Ortiz came along with her. He stood for a long time by Brian’s bed. When he walked away, he stopped by Brandon’s chair and touched him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Walker,” the boy said gravely. “He’s going to be okay.”

  “How do you know that?” Brandon asked.

  Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just know.”

  Having heard the news from Fat Crack’s grandson, the old medicine man’s heir apparent, Brandon Walker began to believe it, too, maybe because he wanted to believe it.

  Brian Fellows would be all right. I’itoi would see to it. It was just a matter of time.

  Tucson, Arizona

  Friday, November 27, 2009, 4:30 p.m.

  82º Fahrenheit

  Gradually the haze began to lift a little. There was less distance between Brian and what was going on around him. He was aware that he had been moved from what had been a hospital room to some other facility—to a rehab kind of place. He still had the same cast of regular visitors, but the focus here was different. There was a lot more emphasis on physical therapy.

  And one day, late one afternoon, he simply woke up—as if from a long winter’s nap. Why those words came to mind, Brian couldn’t imagine.

  From the way the sun was slanting in the window, he could tell it was late afternoon. Kath wasn’t there. Brandon Walker was.

  “Hey,” Brian said. “How’s it going?”

  Brandon started so abruptly that he almost fell out of the chair. “Hello,” he said as a slow grin crossed his face. “Another station heard from.”

  “Where’s Kath?” Brian asked. Just saying that much made his throat hurt. His voice sounded odd—as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time.

  “She’s at work,” Brandon said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call her and let her know.”

  “So it must be Tuesday then
,” Brian said. “She usually has Mondays off.”

  “It’s not Tuesday, Brian,” Brandon said.

  “What day is it then?” Brian asked. “How long have I been out of it?”

  “Since the first week in June,” Brandon Walker told him. “It’s almost the end of November. Friday. The day after Thanksgiving.”

  “Thanksgiving? How can that be? How come it isn’t June? What happened?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  Brian shook his head. “I don’t remember anything. It’s a blank.”

  “You were chasing a bad guy who took off on foot on I-10.”

  “Did I catch him?”

  “Oncoming traffic is what caught him,” Brandon said. “It turns out it caught you, too. There was a young woman there with her little boy. She had been taken hostage and you helped her escape. She had managed to get the kid out of the car, but a truck was coming. They both would have been killed if you hadn’t shoved them out of the way. You saved them both.”

  While Brian tried to get his head around that difficult concept, Brandon was already punching numbers into his cell phone. “You’re not going to believe it, Kath,” he said. “You’ve got to get down here right away. Brian’s awake! He’s awake and talking.”

  On the table next to his bed sat a small vase, a reddish-brown clay vase with a high-gloss glaze finish. In it was a single apricot-colored rose. Brian pointed at it and asked, “Where did that come from?”

  “The rose came from our backyard, but Diana made the vase,” Brandon said. “She wanted you to have it.”

  Brian shook his head in wonder. “I didn’t know she made pots.”

  “Neither did I,” Brandon agreed. “I don’t think anyone knew that about her, but she does now. And if you ask me, she’s pretty damned good at it.”