Queen of the Night

Eight

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:30 p.m.

71º Fahrenheit

Gabe fell asleep again soon after Lani finished telling him the story. Even though she believed Gabe hadn’t lied when he told her about seeing the image of Andrew Carlisle sitting with her mother, she knew it wasn’t true, not in any real physical sense. The man was dead, after all-he had died in prison years earlier. But she also understood that something about his brooding spirit-his dangerous, ohb -like presence-was once again intruding into the lives of Diana Ladd and Brandon Walker. Lani also understood why her mother had vehemently denied seeing him. That was clear enough. Adults who were known to speak to people who weren’t there were usually thought to be crazy.

On the other hand, children who conducted conversations with imaginary friends were often considered to be bright and creative. Little Gabe Ortiz certainly qualified as bright and creative, but Lani feared there was far more to this than simply an overly active imagination on his part.

Gabe hadn’t made up the burned and puckered skin on the ghostly apparition’s face. Lani knew about the panful of hot grease her mother had flung at Andrew Carlisle when he had broken into the house in Gates Pass and attacked her. Lani had seen photos of Carlisle’s face both before and after their life-and-death encounter. The two photos sat side by side in the photo section of Lani’s mother’s prizewinning book, Shadow of Death. One featured a head shot of a handsome but arrogant young man whose smug expression had spoken volumes about his contempt for others. The second pictured the grotesque features of that same face wrecked by mounds of scar tissue and with a pair of sightless eyes staring out at nothing.

Yes, they were both photos of the same man-the same one Gabe had evidently seen as well, but for Lani the most worrisome part in all of this was something he must have told her mother that had resulted in Diana’s pointed question about Mitch Johnson and what he had done to Lani when he had kidnapped her and held her hostage years earlier.

Once Mitch Johnson was dead, Lani had gone to great lengths to keep her mother from knowing all of what had happened during that dreadful time, and especially about the welt of puckered scar tissue his red-hot tongs had seared into the flesh of her breast. Now, though, her mother’s question seemed to indicate that she had been given some hints about what had happened that night and about Lani’s carefully guarded secret.

Lani was convinced that something else was at work here, something sinister. She felt as though she’d been given a warning of some kind-a glimpse into the future that told her something dangerous was coming. She wished once again that there had been time tonight to sit down and discuss it with her father. Or with Fat Crack. The old medicine man would have known what these evil forebodings meant and how one should deal with them.

The full moon was shining high overhead, and it was close to eleven thirty when Lani and Gabe finally arrived in Sells, sixty miles from Tucson. She drove straight to the hospital housing compound and stumble-walked Gabe into her house and down the hall to her second guest bedroom. Once he was tucked into bed, Lani showered and dressed in a pair of scrubs.

By then it was only a matter of minutes before her shift was due to start at midnight. There was no sense in trying to grab a quick nap. Besides, Lani wasn’t sleepy. Her body was still accustomed to the sleep-deprived schedule she had maintained as both an intern and as a resident. Tomorrow, after she got off shift, there would be plenty of time to sleep.

She fixed a cup of instant coffee-plastic coffee, as her father called it-and then sat at her small kitchen table to drink it. She didn’t worry about leaving Gabe alone. He spent the night with her often enough. He knew that, if there was a problem-any kind of problem-all he had to do was walk across the parking lot to the hospital to find her.

Lani wished she could take Fat Crack’s deerskin pouch, his huashomi, out of her medicine basket and put it to good use, but there wasn’t enough time for one of the old medicine man’s discerning ceremonies. She needed uninterrupted time to smoke the sacred tobacco, the wiw, or to examine whatever images might be hidden in Fat Crack’s collection of crystals. Those were things that could be done only on Indian time. The hospital ran on Anglo time, with a time clock for punching in and punching out.

Lani had lived in both the Anglo and Indian worlds all her life, and she was accustomed to the accompanying dichotomy. She was also used to being more than one person at one time. That, too, had been part of her lifelong reality.

Before her adoption by Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd, Lani had been known as Clemencia Escalante from the village of Nolic. Her biological mother, a teenager more interested in partying than in raising a child, had left her baby in the care of an aging grandmother. Once the older kids in the village had gone off to school, Clemencia, still a toddler, had wandered into an ant bed and had almost died of multiple ant bites. The superstitious Escalantes had regarded Clemencia as a dangerous object and had refused to take her back. Fat Crack’s wife, Wanda, a social worker, had brought the abandoned baby to the attention of her husband’s aunt Rita Antone. It was at Rita’s instigation that Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd had adopted her.

Lani knew that people on the reservation who knew the story still sometimes referred to her as Kuadagi Ke’d Al, the Ant-Bit Child. Her adoptive parents had given her the name Lanita Dolores after Kulani O’oks, the Tohono O’odham’s greatest medicine woman, the Woman Who Had Been Kissed by the Bees. Nana Dahd, her godmother, had called her Mualig Siakam, Forever Spinning, because, like Whirlwind, Lani had loved to dance. And after she had used Bat Strength in her fatal encounter with Mitch Johnson in the cave under Ioligam-after she had been saved by the timely intervention of bat wings in the darkness of I’itoi’s cave-Lani often called herself Nanakumal Namkam, Bat Meeter.

But tonight, in the Indian Health Center at Sells, Lani couldn’t be anyone else but Lanita Dolores Walker, M.D.

Putting her dirty cup in the dishwasher, she left her housing compound apartment and headed for the ER.

Vamori, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:00 a.m.

67º Fahrenheit

Tribal chairman Delia Ortiz’s feet hurt-like crazy. She had been on them all day long. Even though it was Saturday, she had spent most of the day at work in her office at Sells. Now here she was at the dance at Vamori.

Delia’s husband, Leo, loved the dances for good reason. He and his brother, Richard, played in a chicken-scratch band, and the summer dance at Vamori was one of their favorite gigs, but they had grown up on the reservation. Delia had not.

She had spent most of her early years as an “in town” Indian, most notably in Tempe and later on the East Coast. Fat Crack Ortiz, a previous tribal chairman, had wooed her back to the Tohono O’odham reservation from Washington, D.C., by offering her the job of tribal attorney. The fact that Fat Crack later became her father-in-law in addition to being her boss was one of the unintended consequences of her acceptance of that position.

Not long after Fat Crack’s death, Delia herself had been elected tribal chairman. In terms of what was going on at the time, an “in town” Indian was exactly what had been and still was required for the job.

The U.S. government has a long ignoble history of cheating Indians and disregarding treaty arrangements. That was still happening. Tribes, including the Tohono O’odham, were still having to file suit against the BIA in order to get monies that were lawfully due them. Now, however, with casino operations changing reservation economics, there was a new wrinkle in Anglo cheating. The casinos belonged to the tribes, but the mostly Anglo operators were slick and accustomed to winning at every game. They were more than prepared to take the tribes to the cleaners the same way they did ordinary gamblers.

Whenever those kinds of issues needed to be handled, Delia Chavez Cachora Ortiz was up to the task. She brought to the job of tribal chairman qualifications that included a top-flight East Coast education as well as a prestigious cum laude Harvard law degree. Her curriculum vitae was fine when it came to dealing with intractable bureaucrats. There she found she was often able to out-Milgahn the Milgahn.

Not having grown up on the reservation, however, Delia was less prepared for the day-to-day aspects of doing the job at home-for keeping the peace between the various districts on the reservation; for making sure roads got graded and paved in a timely fashion; for settling disputes over someone picking saguaro fruit in someone else’s traditional territory.

She had also learned that everything she needed to know to do her job most likely wouldn’t show up in official visits to her office, or on the tribal meeting agenda, either. For that kind of in-depth knowledge and insight she needed to be out in public-mingling with the people, learning their concerns, and familiarizing herself with their age-old antipathies and alliances. The only way for her to do that was to go where the people went, and they went to the dances.

That meant Delia Ortiz went to the dances, too, not that she liked them much. She didn’t. For one thing there were far too many of them-usually one a week or so. Depending on whether they were summer dances or winter dances, they were either too hot or too cold, and sometimes, like this one at Vamori, the dance was both too hot and too cold in the course of the same night. They were also dusty and loud and they seemed to go on forever, generally lasting from sundown to sunup. But that’s where she had to be, picking up tidbits of gossip while standing in line at the feast house or talking to the old people who, even in the summer, gathered around the fires to keep warm.

Delia’s mandatory attendance at the all-night dance at Vamori was one of the reasons she had given Lani permission to take Gabe to Tucson for the Queen of the Night party and then, afterward, to spend the night at Lani’s place in the hospital housing compound.

At events like this Delia found it difficult to juggle the dual requirements of being both a mother and an elected official. Gabe was a naturally curious child with a propensity for getting into mischief. It was impossible for Delia to keep an eye on him all the time while someone was trying to tell her about what was going on in Ali Chuk Shon, Little Tucson, or Hikiwoni Chekshani, Jagged Cut District.

Delia was standing by one of the cooking fires and talking to a woman whose husband, a diabetic, was having to undergo dialysis three times a week, when Martin Ramon came looking for her. The serious look on the tribal police officer’s face told her something was badly amiss. Delia’s first thought was that something terrible had happened to Gabe. Everyone knew Lani Walker had a lead foot and drove that little Passat of hers far too fast.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There’s been a shooting,” Officer Ramon told her. “Four people are dead.”

“Where?” she asked. “Here on the reservation?”

Martin nodded. “Over by Komelik,” he said.

Waving good-bye to the woman, Delia excused herself and followed him. “Let me tell Leo,” she told Officer Ramon. “Then, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll go there with you.”

She made her way across the dusty dance floor, dodging between couples dancing their old-fashioned two-step. When she reached the band, she waited until that song ended.

“What’s up?” Leo said, smiling as he asked the question.

“I have to go,” she said. “Something’s wrong at Komelik.”

Without a word, Leo reached for his car keys and offered them to her.

“No,” she said. “You and Richard will need the truck to bring home your instruments. When I finish at Komelik, I’ll have one of the officers take me home.”

She followed Martin Ramon to his patrol car, dreading where she was going and what she was going to see, but incredibly grateful for Leo Ortiz. His automatic reflex of unwavering kindness toward her and toward everyone else was one of the things she treasured about him. And it wasn’t an act, either. He wasn’t one person in public when he wanted to impress people and someone else at home the way her first husband, Philip Cachora, had been.

At one of his gallery openings or when he had been wooing some well-heeled art fancier, Philip had been smooth as glass, Mr. Charm himself. The rough edges had all turned up at home where he had been a lying creep of a drug user and unfaithful to Delia besides. Leo’s life was an open book to her and to everyone else as well.

“Four people?” Delia asked Martin Ramon after she strapped herself into the seat. “Indians?”

“Two are,” he answered. “We’ve got a positive ID on one of them. Thomas Rios from Komelik identified his son Donald. We think the woman is Donald’s girlfriend, Delphina Enos.”

“That new clerk from Nolic?” Delia asked. “The one with the little girl. Is she all right?”

“The little girl is hurt but not that bad,” Martin answered. “Mostly cuts on her feet and on her face. She was found walking barefoot in the desert.”

“By herself?”

Martin nodded grimly. “One of the Border Patrol’s Shadow Wolves found her-a guy by the name of Dan Pardee. He found the four bodies first and then located the little girl a while later. My understanding is that he’s taking her to the hospital in Sells right now so she can be checked out.”

“What about the other two victims?”

“They’re both Anglos from Tucson. Thomas Rios says he gave the man permission for them to be on his land. They came to look at the deer-horn cactus, the Queen of the Night, which was supposed to bloom tonight.”

“What happened?” Delia asked. “Did the Anglos end up having some kind of beef with Thomas Rios’s son and the fight ended up in a shoot-out?”

“No,” Martin said. “That’s not it at all. For one thing, we didn’t find any weapons at the scene. That means someone else is the shooter. It looks like cash and jewelry are missing from the victims’ wallets and purses, so it may be a simple case of robbery. It could also be some kind of drug deal gone bad, although when we talked to Mr. Rios, he said his son wasn’t involved in any of that bad stuff.”

“Maybe these poor people stumbled upon someone else’s drug deal.”

Officer Ramon nodded. “That could be. Four people who were all in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Damn, Delia thought. Something else to give the Nation a bad name and make tourists run in the other direction.

Komelik, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:10 a.m.

67º Fahrenheit

The first contingent of medical examiner vans arrived on the scene shortly after midnight. Fran Daly herself, Pima County’s most recent chief medical examiner, stepped out of the passenger side of the first-arriving vehicle.

When the previous M.E. had taken his retirement and left the premises, his longtime assistant, Fran Daly, had finally received a much-deserved promotion. A former rodeo rider, she was an odd woman and tough as nails. Even roused from sleep in the middle of the night and with her curly white hair standing on end like so many unruly cotton balls, she still managed to be all business. She was at ease with herself and others. She was also at ease with the job she had to do. Once on the ground, she looked around, shivered, and then reached back inside the van’s front seat to retrieve a windbreaker.

Detective Fellows, the only Pima County investigator on the scene, took Fran in hand and led her around the crime scene, following the same careful pathway Dan Pardee had used.

“We’ve positively identified one victim,” Brian told Fran. “Donald Rios’s father came by a little while ago.”

“Good,” Fran said. “No next-of-kin notification for one of them then. Who are the others?”

“Two of them appear to be an Anglo couple from Tucson, tentatively identified as Jack and Abigail Tennant.”

“And the Indian woman?”

“She’s believed to be Donald’s girlfriend, Delphina Enos. She was currently living in Sells, but she’s originally from a village called Nolic. A child we believe to be Delphina’s daughter was found wandering barefoot around the crime scene. She’s being transported to the hospital at Sells.”

“Life-threatening injuries?” Fran asked.

Brian shook his head. “Minor injuries,” he replied. “Traumatized by what happened, of course, but she doesn’t appear to be physically hurt. Instead of calling for an ambulance, we got the booster seat out of the Blazer and put it in the back of Dan Pardee’s Expedition. He’s the guy who’s taking her to the hospital.”

“Who’s Dan Pardee, a member of the tribal police?”

“Pardee’s Border Patrol, a member of the Shadow Wolves unit,” Brian explained. “He’s the one who initially located the crime scene. It appears that the assailant or assailants went through the victims’ purses and wallets and dumped everything they didn’t want out on the ground. Dan looked through what was there and found a couple of ID cards in case he needed some kind of identification in order to have the little girl treated at the hospital in Sells. Cash and jewelry appear to be missing, but everything else was still here.”

“You said the Indian woman was from somewhere called Nolic?” Fran asked. “Never heard of it. I’m not sure how I’ll manage her next-of-kin notice.”

“That probably won’t be necessary,” Brian said. “One of the guys from Law and Order went to get Delia Ortiz.”

“The tribal chairman?” Fran asked.

Brian nodded. “According to Mr. Rios, Delphina worked for the tribe. Ms. Ortiz should be able to give us a positive ID and some idea about her next of kin. I’m reasonably certain Law and Order will take care of notifying her relatives.”

“What about the Anglo couple?”

“As I said, I’ve got their names and a tentative address in Tucson, but that’s about all.”

“It’s a start,” Fran said.

Running the beam from a flashlight over the dead woman’s body, she shook her head. “The shooter took this woman down with a single shot,” Fran said. “If he’s that serious about killing people, how come the little kid isn’t dead?”

“Good question,” Detective Fellows said with a rueful smile. “Maybe they just aren’t making crooks the way they used to.”

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:45 a.m.

70º Fahrenheit

D an had learned that the Tohono O’odham call June Hashani Bahithag Mashath, or Saguaro-Ripening Month. That’s also the month when the Sonoran Desert routinely bakes in an unrelenting dry heat during the day that can turn to a comparatively icy chill at night. That had already happened by the time he turned into the hospital parking lot at Sells. The seventy-degree external temperature reading seemed downright chilly compared to what it had been earlier in the afternoon.

An ambulance with its lights still flashing was parked in the portico outside the emergency room. Dan steered his Expedition into an almost empty parking lot where his oversize vehicle took up most of what was striped off to be two compact spaces. Then, after rolling down the windows and ordering Bozo to stay, Dan unbelted Angie and carried the sleeping child inside the building.

She was still wearing her bloodied clothing. He set her down carefully on a bench next to the wall. He had rescued a toy-a pink-and-yellow pinwheel-from the backseat of the Blazer. After placing that near her hand, Dan stepped forward for what he expected to be a protracted battle with the emergency-room clerk. The woman glanced at Angie’s sleeping, bloodstained form and then eyed Dan speculatively, as though she was convinced that Dan was responsible for the little girl’s injuries.

“What happened to her?” the clerk wanted to know.

“She was running around out in the desert without any shoes,” Dan explained. “She has cuts on her face, feet, and legs.”

The clerk shrugged and sighed as if this didn’t seem to be something serious enough to merit an emergency-room visit. “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll need to see proof of enrollment.”

Dan slipped both Delphina’s and Angie’s ID cards out of his shirt pocket and handed them over to the clerk. She studied them carefully for some time. When she finally started typing information into her computer, Dan watched her flying fingers and thought about what else he had found there on the ground, the one item he hadn’t shared with the Pima County investigator-a wallet-size photo of Delphina Enos holding Angie.

In the picture a smiling Delphina had beamed proudly down at her baby daughter while Angie, dressed in a lacy white dress, smiled back. It was a peaceful photo, a loving photo.

She’s wearing a baptism dress, Dan had thought the moment he saw the photo. After studying it briefly, he had slipped it into his pocket right along with the two ID cards.

The clerk finished typing and cleared her throat. “Who are you?” she asked. “Are you the father?”

Dan shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m just the guy who found her.”

“You’re not a relative, then?”

“No relation.”

The clerk stiffened. “If that’s the case, I’m afraid we can’t treat her,” she said, shaking her head dismissively. “This isn’t a life-or-death emergency. She isn’t even bleeding anymore. Have her mother bring her in tomorrow morning. A doctor can look at her then.”

The woman was only doing her job, but Dan felt an unreasoning rage growing inside him. He recognized his anger for what it was. Eye color wasn’t the only thing he had inherited from his biological father. He also had Adam Pardee’s hot temper. It was one of the things about his grandson that Micah Duarte had done his best to counter.

Dan’s grandfather had taught him when to fight and how to fight and when to back off and walk away. As a teenager, Dan had been astonished to learn that Gramps knew karate. Micah saw to it that his grandson was one of the few black belts on the San Carlos.

Calling on those lessons now, Dan forced himself to take several deep breaths.

“Her mother can’t come in tomorrow morning because she’s dead,” he explained to the clerk, keeping his voice low and steady but forceful. “Somebody murdered her earlier tonight out in the desert. They shot and killed the mother and left this little girl alone in the desert. As an Indian she qualifies for treatment at this facility. I want her checked out. If you can’t help me, then let me talk to someone who can.”

Dan knew what Adam Pardee would have done about then. He would have slammed both fists on the counter or knocked something off it onto the floor, preferably something breakable. Dan did what Micah Duarte had trained him to do. While the clerk was thinking about what Dan had said, he walked away from her. He went back over to where Angie lay sleeping, sat down on the bench beside her, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited. He didn’t look at the clerk, but finally he heard her sigh, get up, and walk away from her desk. She went through a swinging door and disappeared.

Sitting there, Dan could still feel the stiff paper from the photo inside his shirt pocket. He, more than anyone in the world, knew what the future most likely held in store for this unfortunate little girl. Yes, Angie had lost her mother. Since Donald Rios had been Delphina’s boyfriend, that most likely meant Angie’s father was no longer a presence in her life, either, making her an orphan twice over.

At the tender age of four she would have few conscious memories of her mother, but Dan understood that in terms of physical remembrances she would probably have even less.

By the time pieces of Delphina’s life had been taken into evidence; by the time her friends and relations had sorted through the dead woman’s belongings and skimmed off what they wanted, Dan knew that there would be precious little of her dead mother left for Angie to cling to-nothing but that one single photo that he had managed to salvage.

And how did Dan Pardee know this? Through bitter experience-because that was the way it had been for him.

Someone probably still had copies of school yearbooks that showed his mother as she had been when she was in high school. And he dimly remembered there being photos of her in their apartment before she died. Those had all been head shots she’d had taken when she was still hoping to find work in Hollywood and going out on interviews and auditions.

He didn’t remember the photos in any detail. What he did remember was that his mother had been beautiful back then-with surprisingly narrow features and a winning smile. None of those pictures, however, had survived the police investigation in the bloodied apartment living room. Or, if they had, none of them had come into her son’s possession once the investigation was over.

Dan had only two things left from his mother and from that time. One was the faded letter, written on a scrap of notebook paper, that Rebecca Pardee had written to her parents back home in Arizona, asking for their help. It was the same letter Micah Duarte had carried in his shirt pocket the day he had come to L.A. to collect his grandson.

The other was a fragment of a set of Spider-Man sheets Dan’s mother had bought for Dan’s bed and had given him for his birthday. It was the same top sheet that anonymous cop had wrapped the little boy in when he had plucked the sleeping child out of his bed. The cop had used the sheet to cover the little boy’s face so he wouldn’t see the awful carnage in the living room and his mother’s blood-spattered body.

Maybe the cop had hoped that if Dan didn’t see it, he wouldn’t have to remember it, either.

Hilda, his foster mother, had washed the sheet, folded it, and put it in Dan’s paper bag the morning Micah had come to fetch him. That and the letter were the only two things Dan still possessed that he knew for sure his mother had once touched. He had treasured the sheet and slept with it in his bed night after night until it was little more than a frayed rag. Before he went to Iraq, he had cut a small piece of it out of the hem-the only part that still held together. He had placed that faded scrap of material inside the envelope along with his mother’s letter to her parents. Dan then placed the envelope inside his wallet. That treasured envelope had gone with him to war in the Middle East and it had come home from the war. It was here with him now.

Taking the photo from his pocket, he opened his own wallet. He thumbed through the contents until, tucked in among his credit cards, he found the envelope with its now-illegible address. He slipped the photo of Delphina and Angie Enos into the fragile envelope next to the faded letter and that precious scrap of material. Then he returned the envelope to his wallet, closed it, and put it away. He would keep the photo safe. Someday he would give it to Angie. It would be the one meaningful gift Dan Pardee could give the little girl-a photo of her mother smiling down at her.

Sitting there in the waiting room, Dan couldn’t help wishing that someone had done the same for him.

Just then the clerk reappeared behind her desk. “Dr. Walker will see you now,” she said, gesturing them toward a swinging door. “Right this way.”

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:00 a.m.

71º Fahrenheit

Lani’s first patient that night had been a snakebite victim. Jose Thomas of Big Fields had been out cutting wood two days earlier. He had picked up a dead mesquite branch only to be bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake lurking in the cooler earth underneath the branch.

“Only a little rattlesnake,” he mumbled over and over. “ Ali Ko’oi.”

The snake may have been little, but the damage wasn’t.

Snakebites were commonplace on the reservation. As a result, the hospital at Sells maintained a constant stock of antivenom. Most of the time, people who had been bitten came to the hospital as soon as possible after the incident. As long as they received antivenom treatment immediately, few of them suffered long-term ill effects.

While still in high school, Lani had worked at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum both after school and during summer and winter breaks. She knew, for example, that Arizona is home to seventeen different kinds of rattlers, five of which are found in and around the Tucson area. Their venom came with varying strengths of toxicity, the most poisonous of which was the Mojave. When treating patients, medical professionals needed to know which kind of snake venom they were dealing with. That wasn’t always possible, especially when the victims were young children. Then the doctors involved just had to make an educated guess.

The problem with Jose Thomas was that he was an old man who lived alone.

Make that a stubborn old man, Lani thought grimly.

And he hadn’t come in to be treated right away. In fact, if it had been left up to him, he wouldn’t have come to the hospital at all. He had treated himself by lancing the wound, pouring some tequila on it, and then pouring more of the tequila down his own throat. By the time Jose’s grandson had stopped by to see him, Jose was in bed, delirious and barely conscious. He was running a dangerously high fever. The damaged flesh surrounding the bite was beginning to rot and fall away.

Once he was in the ER, Lani’s first goal was to bring down the fever by bathing him in ice. Then she ordered him plugged full of liquids and antibiotics. At this point, he had developed secondary infections-including pneumonia-that were more serious than the bite. She treated the bite itself as best she could, but her initial examination told her that it was more than likely that Jose would probably lose the hand. That wouldn’t happen until after he was stabilized. Until then, surgery of any kind was out of the question.

As Mr. Thomas was wheeled into the ICU, the ER’s admitting clerk, Dena Rojo, came into the cubicle. “We’ve got a problem out there,” she said, nodding toward the door.

“What kind of a problem?”

“A Border Patrol officer with a little girl. She’s got some cuts on her face, feet, and legs. I don’t think it’s serious enough for you to bother, but…”

“An illegal?” Lani asked.

Indian Health Services was generally exactly that-for Indians only. Exceptions were made in emergencies, when other patients could be given access to immediate care regardless of race or nationality. Border Patrol officers often found injured and dying immigrants on the reservation. During the summer, dehydration was a killer. So far this year there had already been fifteen immigrant deaths among illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border, and that was with the summer months just now heating up.

That was the basis of Lani’s inquiry. Dena shook her head.

“Indian,” she said. “Her name is Angelina Enos. We’ve treated her before. She has a chart.”

“What’s the problem then?” Lani asked.

“The guy who brought her in is no relation of hers,” Dena said. “He just found her out in the desert somewhere and brought her here.”

“Where are her parents?” Lani asked.

“Her father’s been gone for a long time,” Dena replied. “Now someone has murdered her mother.”

“Who’ll be responsible for her long-term?” Lani asked.

Dena shrugged. “Probably the grandparents. I think they live out at Nolic, but they don’t have a phone.”

Lani winced at that. She knew the village of Nolic, The Bend. That was where she had come from a long time ago, before she became Lani Walker. The fact that Lani’s blood relatives had rejected her was what had given her this other life-and a chance to be here at Sells in her scrubs, ready to help some other unfortunate child.

“Have him bring her in,” Lani said.

“You’re sure?” Dena asked.

“I’m sure.”

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:00 a.m.

68º Fahrenheit

Angie woke up as Dan carried her into the ER and set her down on the examining table.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Where’s my mommy?”

“We’re at the hospital here in Sells so someone can look at the cuts on your legs and feet,” Dan explained. “Your mommy’s not here right now.”

Angie studied his face for a long time. Finally she nodded.

Hoping the clerk had clued the ER staff in on what had happened out by Komelik, he looked to the doctor for help. He did not expect Dr. Walker-Dr. Lanita Dolores Walker, as her name tag said-to be a woman or an Indian. And he certainly didn’t expect her to be beautiful. It turned out she was all three.

She stepped forward and gave Angie a reassuring smile. “This nice man brought you here so we could look at your feet and your legs,” she said. “You have quite a few scratches. What happened?”

“I went for a walk in the desert,” Angie said in a whisper. “I left my shoes in the car.”

Dr. Walker touched Angie’s knee. It was scraped and scabby. It was also hot.

“I’ll bet you were out in the desert for a long time,” she said. “Have you had anything to drink? Are you thirsty?”

“I was going to give her something to drink and something to eat, too,” Dan said quickly. “But she fell asleep as soon as I got her back to the car. The way things were going, I didn’t want to wake her up.”

Nodding, Dr. Walker called for a nurse to bring a bottle of Gatorade. Then she turned back to Angie. “What were you doing out in the desert?”

“I was there with my mommy and Donald.”

While Angie sipped her drink, Dr. Walker examined the cuts and scrapes on the little girl’s feet and legs, cleaning them and dosing them with antiseptic as she went. When Angie whimpered in pain, Dan stepped forward and took her hand.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It may hurt a little, but this will make it better.”

“I’ve heard about Mr. Pardee here,” Dr. Walker said to Angie. “I understand he usually has a big dog with him.”

Angie nodded. “His name is Bozo,” she said. “I got to pet him.”

“He didn’t bite you?” Dr. Walker asked.

Angie shook her head. “I thought he would, but he’s really nice.”

Dan was taken aback again. He supposed that, in terms of gossip, the reservation was like any other small town. Dr. Walker had probably heard tales about the terrible ohb who worked with the Shadow Wolves and who went on patrol in the company of an immense and supposedly incredibly fierce German shepherd.

“Can I use the bathroom?” Angie asked.

“Sure,” Dr. Walker said. “I’ll have the nurse take you.”

The same nurse who had brought the Gatorade lifted Angie down from the examining table, took her hand, and led her away toward a restroom. Watching her walk away from him, Dan felt like his heart was going to break. But, of course, that was what was going to happen here. The door to the examining room wasn’t the only one that would swing shut. From now on, strangers would be taking charge of Angie’s life and handing her off to whoever was destined to care for her. As Dan had explained to the admitting clerk, he was only the guy who had found her, nothing more.

“That’s a good sign,” Dr. Walker was saying.

“What?” Dan asked.

“That she needs to use the bathroom. She probably isn’t that seriously dehydrated. We won’t need to give her IV fluids.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m glad of that.” He didn’t want to see Angie poked with a needle-any kind of needle.

“What kind of a name is Pardee?” Dr. Walker asked. “It doesn’t sound Apache to me.”

“It’s not,” Dan answered. “It’s a made-up name-my father’s made-up name. He was a stuntman in Hollywood. An Anglo-Irish, I believe. A Milgahn,” he added.

Dan might have pointed out that Lanita Dolores Walker didn’t sound like a Tohono O’odham name, either, but he didn’t. Realizing that he had said the word Milgahn aloud, he was embarrassed. When Dr. Walker replied with one of her glorious smiles he decided she was either laughing at him or else she liked it. Dan couldn’t tell which.

“How did you learn that word?” she asked.

“I bought a dictionary,” he said. “I’ve been studying.”

The doctor’s smile disappeared, but she nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “Now, getting back to Angie. Has the mother’s family been notified?”

Dan shook his head. “The M.E. was just arriving as I left the scene, but I talked to Detective Fellows. He said that officers from Law and Order most likely will handle the next-of-kin notification.”

“That’s true,” Dr. Walker said. “Although Brian Fellows could probably do it, too. He’s a good guy. People would accept it from him.”

“You know Detective Fellows?” Dan asked.

Dr. Walker nodded. “We go way back. But no matter who does the notification, it’s going to take some time. I’d rather Angie weren’t there while all of that is going on. Too traumatic.”

Me, too, Dan Pardee thought.

“So I’m going to admit her for right now,” Dr. Walker continued. “I’m sure her family will show up to collect her first thing in the morning, but if you’d like to sit with her for a while, until she gets settled into her room, I’m sure that would be fine.”

“Thank you,” Dan said. “I’ll be glad to.”

Thank you more than you know.

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:00 p.m.

72º Fahrenheit

Once Diana showed up, Brandon let Damsel out for her last walk. When they came back in from that, Diana was sitting in the living room studying the baskets.

“How was it?” he asked.

“How was what?”

“The party?”

“Abby wasn’t there,” Diana said.

“Abby?”

“Abigail Tennant. She’s been doing the night-blooming cereus party for years. She was the one who originally invited Lani to do the storytelling honors tonight. It’s not good manners to issue that kind of invitation and then be a no-show yourself.”

Brandon shrugged. “Maybe she came down with something,” he said.

“It’s still rude,” Diana insisted. “How was your day?”

Diana had been so distant of late that Brandon was a little surprised by her question. “Geet Farrell’s wife called and wanted me to stop by, so I did.”

“I remember Geet. How is he?”

“Not so good,” Brandon answered. “I’m afraid it won’t be long now.”

“I knew he had cancer. Are you saying he’s dying?”

Brandon nodded. “They’re doing hospice care at home,” he said.

“Why did he want to see you?”

“He handed over a case file to me-an unsolved homicide from 1959.”

“That’s a while ago,” Diana said, smiling.

“It is,” Brandon agreed. “I’ve spent the afternoon going over what he had, including a lead that came in just before they slapped Geet in the hospital this last time. I called the woman tonight after I got home. She lives down by Sonoita, and she invited me to come see her. I’m driving down there tomorrow morning. Want to come along?”

“Tomorrow?” Diana asked. “If the case is already that old, why the big rush now?”

“Because, as I said, Geet is dying,” Brandon said. “This case is one that has deviled him for years. If it turns out to be solvable, I’d like to do that for him before it’s too late.”

Diana nodded. “I see,” she said.

“Would you like to ride along?”

“Could we take the Invicta?” Diana asked. “With the top down?”

Brandon started to object. It was June, after all. It was likely to be hot as blue blazes, but this was the first time in a long time that Diana had shown much interest in anything. Besides, the last he had heard she wanted to unload her pride and joy. It would be fun to take it on one last road trip.

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll plaster ourselves with sunscreen and wear hats and long-sleeved shirts, but it sounds like fun. Are you coming to bed?”

“You go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll be there in a while.”

Tucson, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:00 a.m.

70º Fahrenheit

Diana watched as Brandon went down the hall, switching off most of the lights as he went. She liked the fact that he continued to be thrifty-had always been thrifty-even when there had been no need to be.

Once he was gone, she returned to studying the many baskets that decorated the walls of the room, baskets her beloved friend, Nana Dahd, had made with her own hands, weaving them out of bear grass and yucca and devil’s claw and yucca root with the owij, the awl, Rita Antone had inherited from her own basket-weaving grandmother, Understanding Woman.

Diana sat there for a long while, wondering if Andrew Carlisle would make another appearance. She had seen him several times in recent days, always when she was alone; usually when she was outside-by the pool or in the front yard; occasionally in the kitchen, but never here. Never in this room-the room where she and Rita Antone had sat together when Davy was little, with Nana Dahd weaving her baskets and telling her stories, steeping the whole household in Tohono O’odham culture and tradition while Diana tried to see her way clear from being a teacher on the reservation to becoming a writer.

“Nana Dahd is still here, isn’t she?” Diana Ladd said aloud to an absent Andrew Carlisle. “At least her spirit is. That’s what keeps you away.”

With that, Diana Ladd got up and followed her husband down the hall to the bedroom. She hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks, but tonight, once she crawled into bed next to Brandon, his gentle snoring lulled her to sleep.

It seemed to her that Rita Antone and Brandon Walker were still protecting her from Andrew Philip Carlisle.