Kiss of the Bees

“It’s that bad?” Davy asked.

“It ain’t good,” Brian replied.

On the way down the concourse and while they waited for the luggage, Candace chattered on and on about how brown everything was and about how small the airport was compared to O’Hare. She seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, but Davy had seen the bleak look in Brian’s eyes.

Brian had gone home and traded the Blazer for his personal car, a low-slung Camaro. The mountain of luggage didn’t come close to fitting in the trunk. Candace finally clambered into a backseat already piled with two leftover suitcases.

“All right,” Davy said to Brian as soon as they were all in the car. “Tell me.”

As Brian related the story, Davy became more and more somber. Tommy and Quentin had been the banes of Davy’s childhood just as they had of Brian’s. In fact, it was the older boys’ casual meanness that had, in the beginning, united the younger two. Mean or not, though, Brandon Walker’s sons were still part of both families. To have to accept one of the two as Lani’s killer was appalling.

“You’re sure he did it?” Davy asked.

“I heard the tape,” Brian replied. “Believe me, it was pretty damned convincing.”

“How’s Mom taking it?”

“About how you’d expect,” Brian said. “Not very well.”

“And Brandon?”

“He’s better off than your mother is. At least he’s able to do something about it. The last I saw of him, he was on his way out to Rattlesnake Skull Charco with Brock Kendall, an FBI agent.”

“Rattlesnake Skull? Why there?”

“To meet Fat Crack. Wanda Ortiz called and said that according to Gabe, that’s where we’ll find Lani.”

“Is that where we’re going?” Davy asked.

“No. We’re supposed to go to the house.”

“If the charco is where the action is, that’s where I want to be,” Davy said. “Let’s go there.”

Brian cast a dubious look across the front seat toward his friend. “All right,” he said. “But first let’s drop Candace off at the house.”

“No way,” Candace Waverly said from the backseat. “Where did you say you’re going?”

“To a charco to see if there’s anything we can do to help.”

“What’s a charco?” Candace asked.

“A stock tank,” Brian answered.

“A retention pond,” Davy said at the same time.

Candace sat back in Brian’s cramped rear seat and crossed her arms. “If you’re going to the charco, I’m going too,” she announced.

Davy looked at Brian. “I guess that’s settled then,” he said.

“I guess it is,” Brian agreed.

“How can it be so empty?” Candace asked, as Brian’s fully loaded Camaro swept west along Highway 86.

“Empty,” Brian repeated. “You should have seen it years ago when Davy and I were kids. That’s when it was really empty. There are lots more people living out here now than there used to be.”

Candace looked out across the seemingly barren and endless desert and didn’t believe a word of it.

Davy, meantime, seemed preoccupied with something else. “You told me about finding bones at the charco, and about Quentin’s fingerprints showing up on some of them. What I don’t understand is why Quentin would have taken Lani there. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Nobody says it has to make sense,” Brian told him. “All I know is Fat Crack said that’s where your dad should look and that’s where he’s looking.”

“Who said that?” Candace asked.

“A friend of ours,” Davy answered quickly. “His name’s Gabe Ortiz. He’s actually the tribal chairman.”

“He’s an Indian, then?”

“Yes.”

“But it sounded like Brian called him by some other name.”

“Yes.” Davy rolled his eyes. “Gihg Tahpani,” he said. “Fat Crack.”

“So is Fat his first name and Crack’s his last?”

Candace asked the question so seriously that Brian burst out laughing while Davy was reduced to shaking his head. Obviously he had failed miserably in preparing Candace for the culture she was stepping into.

“Fat Crack is a first name,” Brian explained good-naturedly. “But it’s also sort of a friendly name—a name used between friends. So when you meet him, and until you know him better, you probably ought to call him plain Mr. Ortiz.”

They turned off onto Coleman Road. “What kind of shoes do you have on?” Brian asked, looking at Candace’s face in the mirror.

“Heels. Why?”

“I was just over this road in a Blazer yesterday. If the Camaro doesn’t high-center on the first wash, I know it will on the second.”

“On the what?”

“Wash. It’s a dry riverbed. A sandy riverbed. We’re going to have to walk from here, so the car doesn’t get stuck.”

“That’s all right,” Candace said. “I have some tennis shoes in my roll-aboard.”

Brian pulled over on the side of the road. The suitcase in question was one of the ones that had wound up in the backseat with Candace. While she dug through it to find her tennis shoes, Davy and Brian stood outside the car, waiting and looking off up the road toward the charco. Finding her shoes, Candace kicked off her heels and then moved to the front seat. She was sitting there tying her shoes when she saw something strange on the shoulder of the road a few feet away.

As soon as she had her shoes tied, she walked over and picked up a small medallion with a strange black-and-white design woven into it. “Hey, you guys,” she called to Brian and Davy, who were waiting for her on the other side of the road. “Come see what I found.”

Davy sauntered over. As soon as he saw what was in her hand, though, his jaw dropped. “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

“It was right here. Along the side of the road . . .”

“Brian, come here, quick. Fat Crack’s right. Lani’s been here. Look!”

Sprinting across the road, Brian Fellows stopped in his tracks the moment he caught sight of the basket. “You’re right,” he said. “She has to be here somewhere . . .”

The three of them were standing there in stunned silence, staring up the mountain, when they heard a cry. “Help.”

The voice was so faint that at first they all thought they had imagined it. Then it came again. “Help. Please.”

Brian Fellows was the first to start off up the mountain. Davy followed directly on his heels, with Candace bringing up the rear.

Tackling the mountain straight on, with no zigzagging to ease the ascent, made the going slow and difficult. From time to time they had to pause for breath, but each time they did, the voice was a little stronger. “I’m here. In the bushes.”

“It sounds like Quentin, doesn’t it?” Davy asked.

Nodding grimly, Brian Fellows drew his weapon. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. Neither Candace nor Davy were. “You’d better drop back and let me go on by myself.”

“Like hell,” Davy said. “Come on.”

Frozen in terror, Lani crouched against the wall. The stalagmite that had once provided shelter was now a trap. If she moved away from behind it, he would see her and shoot her. She could hear him out there, crawling ever closer to her hiding place. She could hear him breathing in the dark. Now that he had located her, he came forward without bothering to squander any more of his precious matches, trusting that she would stay exactly where he had seen her last.

And the truth was, she didn’t have any choice. She was so cold and had sat in one position for so long that her legs ached with cramps. The pressure was so great that she was tempted to come flying out of her hiding place and make straight for what had to be the passage to the outside. But she didn’t do it.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized that the darkness in I’itoi’s sacred cave was far stronger than Mitch’s matches. If he’d had plenty of them, he would have been using them by now instead of scrabbling along in the dark. And without light, the power of darkness and the power of bats was far greater than the evil Ohb’s.

Deep in the cave, Lani had met Nanakumal. By touching her, Bat had taken away Lani’s fear of the darkness and had infused her with his power. From now on Dolores Lanita Walker would still be Forever Spinning to some, but in her own heart she knew that she was changed. As soon as the bat’s wings grazed her skin she was also someone else. From that time on, Lani would call herself Nanakumal Namkam—Bat Meeter, knowing that Bat Strength and Ant Strength would both be part of her strength.

Suddenly Lani’s spirit was alive again, like one awaking from a deep sleep or else from death itself. Something Nana Dahd had told her was called e chegitog. The cold no longer mattered. She had come into her own just the way Nana Dahd had told her she would someday. No matter what Mitch Johnson did to her, he couldn’t take that away.

The song spilled into her mind without her even being aware she was thinking about it.

O little Nanakumal who lives forever in darkness,

O little Nanakumal who lives forever in I’itoi’s sacred cave

Give me your strength so I will not be frightened,

So I will stay in this safe place where the evil Ohb cannot come.

For years Betraying Woman has been here with you.

For years your strength has kept her safe

Waiting until I could come and set her free

By smashing her pottery prison against the rocky wall.

Keep me safe now too, little Nanakumal

Keep me safe from this new evil Ohb.

Teach me juhagi—to be resilient—in the coming battle,

So that this jiawul—this devil—does not win.

O little Nanakumal who lives forever in darkness,

Whose passing wings changed me into a warrior,

Be with me now as I face this danger.

Protect me in the coming battle and keep me safe.

Brian was the one who found Quentin Walker, found him trapped faceup and helpless in a bed of manzanita. Knowing at once that his half-brother was too badly hurt to pose any danger, Brian holstered his weapon.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I didn’t do it,” Quentin sobbed. “Tell Dad I didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what?” Brian asked.

“I didn’t kill Tommy. He fell. He fell in the cave. I tried to help him. I swear. But he died anyway.”

Davy, who had stopped to help Candace up a ledge, arrived just in time to hear the last sentence.

“Lani’s dead?” he demanded.

When Quentin looked up at Davy, his eyes wavered as though they wouldn’t quite focus. “Lani’s not dead,” he said. “Tommy’s the one who’s dead. He’s been dead a long, long time.”

“But where’s Lani?”

“Lani? How should I know where Lani is?”

Davy reached down and grabbed the neck of Quentin’s shirt. He would have shook him, too, if Candace hadn’t stopped him. “Leave him alone, David,” she gasped, fighting to regain her breath. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

Letting go of the shirt, Davy turned and looked up the mountain. “She has to be in the cave,” he said. “I’ll go. You two stay here with Quentin.”

“Lani! It’s Davy. Where are you?”

Davy! For a moment, Lani thought she must be dreaming. It was impossible. Davy was in Chicago. He couldn’t be here.

“Lani!” he called again. “Can you hear me? Are you in here?”

She heard him then, heard the sound of movement in the passageway. It was true. Davy was here. He had come to find her, to save her. Instead, he was crawling directly into the arms of Mitch Johnson. Somehow she had to stop him.

“Davy,” she screamed. “Go back! Don’t come in here. He’ll kill you. Go back.”

The cavern reverberated with a hundred echoes and then fell silent. There was no further sound of movement from the passageway.

“Thank God you’re alive,” Davy called back. “But it’s okay, Lani. We found Quentin down the mountain. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Once again there was movement in the passageway. “The killer’s still in here, Davy. It’s not Quentin!” Lani howled. “Go back, Davy, before he kills us both.”

“Davy!” Mitch Johnson called out. “Did you say Davy? Not little Davy Ladd. Come on in, Davy. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt anybody. You’re right. It was all Quentin.”

Now there was movement again, but not in the passageway. Now it was in the cave itself. “Keep talking, little girl,” Mitch Johnson whispered hoarsely. “Just keep talking. I’ll find you, you little bitch, if it’s the last goddamned thing I do.”

Another match flickered to life.

“Lani,” Davy demanded. “What’s going on in there? Who’s in there with you?”

For a moment Lani was quiet. Mitch Johnson was an implacable enemy—more determined to find and destroy her than he was concerned about his own capture.

Nana Dahd had told Lani more than once that the Tohono O’othham only kill to eat or to save their own lives. In relating the story of the evil Ohb, Rita had always said how proud she was that, in the moment when Diana Ladd might have killed Andrew Carlisle, she had chosen instead to spare him, trusting his punishment to the Mil-gahn system of criminal justice.

In a moment of understanding that went far beyond her years, and far beyond anything Mitch Johnson had told her, Lani understood that somehow, still alive and in prison, Andrew Carlisle had taken that piece of Tohono O’othham honor and turned it into something evil. He had used it cheawogid—to infect—someone else with the same evil that had fueled and driven him.

Nana Dahd had died too soon to know how wrong she was. But Lani knew. The telltale cheposid—the brand—Mitch Johnson had burned into her breast was proof enough that, as long as he lived, so did Andrew Carlisle.

Those thoughts streaked through Lani Walker’s mind as she sat bat-still in the cave, watching the momentary light of the match flickering in the darkness and listening as Mitch came stumbling toward her. Had she screamed again, the echoes might have thrown him off and sent him in the wrong direction, but suddenly she knew that was the wrong thing to do. Instead of hiding from the evil Ohb, Bat Meeter wanted him to find her.

“I’m here,” she said quietly, pulling herself to her feet. “I’m waiting.” A storm of needles and pins shot down her numbed legs. She had to cling to the stalagmite to keep from falling, but she held her ground.

“Lani!” Davy shouted. “Please. What’s going on?”

“He has a gun, Davy,” she said, speaking slowly in Tohono O’othham. “His name is Mitch—Mitch Johnson. The evil Ohb sent him here. He wants to kill us both.”

“Speak English, you little bitch,” Mitch Johnson swore. “You’re a goddamned American, speak English.”

He was only a matter of yards away from her now, creeping along the wall on the same path Lani had followed, as that match, too, flickered and burned itself out. Pulling herself around the rock, she stood directly in his path.

“You’ll have to come get me, Mitch,” she taunted. “I’m right here. I’m waiting.”

Grunting with effort, she tugged off one of her boots. “Here,” she said. She tossed the boot a few feet in front of her. The explosion that followed reverberated back and forth inside the cavern. Clinging to the cold stalagmite, grateful for its solid presence, Lani thought there had been a dozen shots instead of only one.

She had ducked her head and closed her eyes, so the flash of light hadn’t affected her. But her ears were roaring. From far away she could hear Davy calling to her. “Lani! Lani! Are you all right?”

“I’m still here, Mitch,” Lani said again, not raising her voice, barely speaking above a whisper. “I’m here and I’m waiting.”

Carefully judging the distance, she pulled off the second boot as well, tossing it slightly behind her and to the left. She heard him rush forward, close enough that she felt him brushing past her as she ducked back behind the stalagmite once more. There was another explosion of gunfire, another ear-shattering roar. And then nothing.

For a second or two Lani thought she really had gone deaf. She was afraid that the silence that suddenly surrounded her would always be there, that it would never lift. But then, from very far away, she heard Davy calling again, pleading this time.

“Lani, please. Answer me. Are you all right?”

There was a groan—little more than a moan, really. It came from beyond Lani’s hiding place. From beyond and below it. From the bottom of the hole into which Lani herself had almost fallen.

She heard the sound and was chilled. It meant that down there somewhere, far beneath the surface of the cave, the evil Ohb was still alive. He had taken her bait. The boot had done its work, but the fall hadn’t killed him. Even now she could hear movement as he struggled to rise from where he had fallen. Lani knew with a certainty that she had never known before that as long as Mitch Johnson lived, every member of Diana and Brandon Walker’s family would be in mortal danger.

Coming out from behind the stalagmite, Lani felt around her in the dark. She remembered being told once that limestone caves are fragile—that the formations break off easily and that they need to be protected from human destruction.

“I’m okay, Davy,” she called. “But don’t come in right now. I think he’s hurt, but he may still be able to shoot. We need help. Go get someone with guns and lights and bulletproof vests.”

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’m fine,” she answered. “Go now. Please go!”

She heard Davy shuffling back down the passageway just as Mitch Johnson groaned again. Feeling her way around the floor of the cavern, she located another stalagmite, one that was much smaller than the hulking giant behind which she had hidden. This one was about a foot in circumference and three to four feet high.

“Ants are very strong,” Nana Dahd had told her. “When they have to, they can carry more than their own weight.”

Positioning her back against the large stalagmite, she pushed against the smaller one with both her feet and all her might. She pushed as hard as she could, straining until stars of effort blazed inside her head. At first it seemed as though the rock would never come loose. But then she remembered who she was—Mualig Siakam—a powerful medicine woman, someone who, with the power of her singing, could determine who would live and who would die.

Had Mitch Johnson been a little baby, surely the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, Kulani O’oks, would have refused to sing.

Pushing again, Lani Walker felt the stalagmite give way slightly, rocking gently and trying to come loose from its moorings like a giant baby tooth in need of pulling. She pushed again and the rock was looser.

All things in nature go in fours. It was the fourth push that broke the huge rock free. She felt it tottering toward her and she had to push it yet again to send it tumbling in the other direction. She heard it scrape across the lip of the hole. Then, for a space of several seconds, there was no sound at all, then there was a muffled bump as the limestone boulder hit something soft and came to rest.

Holding her breath, Lani listened. In the whole of the cave, except for the steady drip of water, there was no other sound, no other being. Mitch Johnson was dead. In the emptiness of his passing, Lani realized that the spirits of Betraying Woman and Andrew Philip Carlisle had disappeared as well. The three of them had joined huhugam—those who are gone.

This time, they would not come back.

“Lani, I’m here,” Davy shouted. “Brian is with me. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she called back. “It’s safe to come in now. The evil Ohb is dead.”

17

They say it happened long ago that after the Tohono O’othham defeated the PaDaj O’othham—the Bad People—the Desert People settled in to live near Baboquivari—

I’itoi’s sacred mountain—which is the center of all things. Much later, when the first Mil-gahn, the Spaniards, came, they mistakenly called the Tohono O’othham the Bean Eaters after some of the food the Indians ate. And even later, other Mil-gahn—the Anglos—came to call them Papagos.

But the Desert People have always preferred to call themselves Tohono O’othham. They have lived forever on that same land near the base of Baboquivari. There they have raised wheat and corn, beans and pumpkins and melons. There they learned to make chu-i—flour, and hahki—a parched roasted wheat that is also called pinole. There they learned to make baskets in which to store all the food they raised.

Other people knew that the Indians who lived in the shadow of Baboquivari were a good people—that they were always kind to each other. It was that way then, and it is the same today.

Together, Davy Ladd, Brian Fellows, and Lani Walker made their way on hands and knees down the long passageway to the hidden outside entrance. Only when the two men helped the girl to her feet did they realize that other than a pair of bloodied socks, her feet were bare.

“Where are your shoes?” Brian asked. “You can’t be out here on the mountain in bare feet. I’ll go back and look for them.”

“No,” she said. “Don’t bother. I’ll be fine.”

The morning sky was blue overhead. Lani stretched out her bare arms and let Tash’s warm rays begin to thaw her chilled body. She was standing on her own when a sudden dizzying spell of weakness overtook her, causing her to sink down onto the warm ground itself.

Concerned, Davy knelt down beside her. “Are you all right?”

“A little dizzy is all.”

“How long is it since you’ve had anything to eat or drink?”

“I don’t know,” Lani said. “I don’t remember.” For her, time had stopped the moment she sat down to pose for the man she thought was Mr. Vega.

Brian stood up. “I have a Coke down in the car, and a blanket, too. Wait here while I go get them.”

“Did he hurt you?” Davy asked quietly after Brian had hurried away.

Lani looked down at her chest. There was a stain on her flowered cowboy shirt where the wound on her breast had seeped into the brightly colored material. The stain barely showed. “Not too badly,” she said.

A moment later she glanced up at Davy with a puzzled frown on her face. “What day is it?” she asked. “How did you get here so fast, and how long have I been gone?”

“It’s Sunday,” he answered. “Candace and I flew in from Chicago early this morning.”

“Sunday?” Lani repeated. “You mean I lost a whole day?”

Davy nodded. “You disappeared yesterday morning on your way to work. You never made it.”

She looked at him and frowned. “And who’s Candace?”

Davy ducked his head. “My fiancée,” he said. “We’re engaged. But tell me what happened. Did he run you off the road? What?”

“I went to pose for him,” she said. “He was going to let me have a painting to give to Mom and Dad for their anniversary. It was stupid. I see that now. He offered me orange juice and he put something in it, something that knocked me out. He did the same thing to Quentin. What about Quentin? Is he dead?”

Davy shook his head. “Not yet. He’s halfway down the mountain, and he’s hurt. It looks pretty bad to me. Brian is going for help. Dad and Brock Kendall are over at the charco. They’ll have to bring in a helicopter. We won’t be able to carry him out on a stretcher.”

“How did you and Brian know where to look for me?”

Davy looked off down the mountain. Before he answered, he found it necessary to brush something from his eye. “Candace,” he croaked. “Wanda Ortiz had called the house and left word for Dad to meet him at Rattlesnake Skull. Brian met Candace and me at the airport and brought us along out here. We were getting ready to walk over to the charco to find Dad when Candace sat down to tie her shoes and found this.”

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Davy pulled out the tiny people-hair basket and placed it in Lani’s hand. As her fingers closed over the precious kushpo ho’oma—her hair charm—tears of gratitude filled her eyes.

“But how did you know to look in the cave?” she asked a moment later.

Davy shrugged. “Brian and I saw it years ago on the same day Tommy first found it. Since the cave was right here and since we knew Quentin was involved, it was logical that’s where you might be, that maybe he’d take you there.” He paused. “According to Quentin, the cave is where Tommy died. He fell into a hole.”

The same hole, Lani thought at once. It has to be the same hole. “Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“This is her cave, Davy,” Lani said softly. “That old story Nana Dahd used to tell us was true. After the Tohono O’othham captured her, they brought her back here and locked her inside the mountain along with all her pots—her unbroken pots. Quentin had found the pots and was planning to sell them, at least he thought he was going to sell them. I broke them. All of them. Or at least as many as I could find.

“Afterward, when I was there in the dark and didn’t know which way to go, kokoi—a spirit—showed me the way out. I think Betraying Woman’s spirit led me to the passageway. Do you believe that? Is that possible?”

“Yes,” Davy replied. “I believe it.”

Lani laughed. “Probably you, but nobody else,” she said. “I was in there for a long time,” she continued. “At first I was so scared I could barely think, but then somehow I remembered the words to Nana Dahd’s old war chant, the one she sang to you that day in the root cellar. Do you remember? Repeating those words over and over helped me—made me feel brave, and strong.

“Later on, when the song quit working and I was scared again, a bat came to me in the dark. It touched my skin and taught me not to be afraid of the darkness. The bat showed me how the darkness could work against the evil Ohb. The next time I sang after that, the song wasn’t Nana Dahd’s anymore. It was my own song, Davy, but it worked the same way hers did. You believe that, too, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Davy Ladd said. “I do believe it.”

For a time he looked off across the wide expanse of desert. “It’s happened, hasn’t it, Kulani O’oks,” he added quietly, with a rueful smile that was, at the same time, both happy and sad. “You’ve become Medicine Woman, Lani, just like the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, just as Nana Dahd said you would. I guess it’s time I got her medicine basket out of safekeeping and gave it to you.”

“Her medicine basket?” Lani asked.

Davy nodded. “She gave it to me the day she died,” he answered. “But only to keep it until you were ready. Until it was time for you to come into your own.”

Davy watched Lani’s face. He expected her to brighten—to be his little sister again, delighted by some unexpected surprise. Instead, she frowned. He reached out to her, but she drew away from him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I have killed an enemy,” she said. “I will need to undergo e lihmhun in order to be purified. While I am here alone for sixteen days, I’ll have plenty of time to make my own medicine basket. There are only two things from Nana Dahd’s basket that I would like to have—the scalp bundle and that single broken piece of Understanding Woman’s pottery. The rest of it should go to you, Davy, to Nana Dahd’s little Olhoni.”

Davy Ladd ducked his head to hide his tears. “Thank you,” he said.

The first glimpse Brandon Walker had of his future daughter-in-law, Candace Waverly, she was on her hands and knees, huddled close to Quentin Walker’s badly injured body. With her face close to his, she was comforting him as best she could while they waited for the med-evac helicopter to show up and fly him off the mountain.

Brandon Walker and Brock Kendall had left the charco and were heading for Gates Pass when the call came telling them that Lani had been found. The Pima County dispatcher reported that Lani was all right but that Brandon’s son, Quentin, had been severely injured.

When it came time to climb Ioligam, the months of woodcutting served Brandon Walker well. He might have been fifty-five years old and considered over the hill by some, but he scampered up the steep mountainside without breaking a sweat, leaving Brock Kendall in the dust.

“Who are you?” Brandon demanded, looking down at the young woman crouched beside Quentin. He immediately assumed that she was somehow connected to the injured man. “And what the hell has this son of a bitch done to his sister?”

“You must be Mr. Walker,” Candace said.

Brandon nodded.

“I’m Candace Waverly,” she said. “Your son David’s fiancée. Quentin wanted me to give you a message. He said to tell you that he didn’t kill Tommy. He said it was an accident, that Tommy fell in a hole in the cave. By the time Quentin was finally able to get him out, Tommy was dead. Quentin didn’t tell anyone what really happened because he was sure people would think it was all his fault.”

“Tommy?” a winded Brock Kendall gasped as he finally reached the limestone outcropping. “I thought we were here about Lani. What’s this about Tommy?”

All the way out from Tucson, Brandon Walker had agonized over how he would treat his son, over what he would say. As a father, how could he forgive Quentin for hurting Lani? And now there was responsibility for Tommy as well?

Brandon’s legs folded under him. He dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands. This was too much—way too much. More than he could stand.

“Dear God in heaven, Quentin,” Brandon Walker sobbed. “How could you do it? How could you?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Walker,” Brian Fellows murmured, appearing out of nowhere and placing a comforting hand on Brandon’s heaving shoulder. “Quentin didn’t do it. He didn’t take Lani, and he didn’t hurt her.”

Brandon quieted almost instantly. “He didn’t? Who did then? Who’s responsible for all this?”

“The man’s name is Mitch Johnson,” Brian answered.

“Mitch Johnson!” Brandon exclaimed. It took only seconds for the name to register. “The guy I put away years ago for shooting up those illegals?”

“That’s the one.”

“Where is the son of a bitch? I’ll kill him myself.”

“You don’t have to,” Brian said softly. “I think Lani already did it for you.”

Pima County Detective Dan Leggett was used to calling the shots when it came to conducting interviews. He would have preferred talking to Lani Walker in the air-conditioned splendor of the visiting FBI agent’s Lincoln Town Car, but the medicine man—the one Brandon Walker called Fat Crack—refused to let the girl come down off the mountain. Ioligam was well inside reservation boundaries. The road where the Town Car was parked was not. Short of escorting Lani down to the car at gunpoint, Leggett wasn’t going to get her to leave.

And so the detective took himself up the mountain to her. He found Lani and Fat Crack sitting together off to one side of the entrance to the cave. Lani was still wrapped in a blanket, as though the increasing heat of the day still hadn’t penetrated to the chilled marrow of her bones. She sat watching in somber silence while several deputies trudged down the mountainside lugging the stretcher holding the crushed earthly remains of one Mitch Johnson.

Detective Leggett was still mildly irritated with Mr. Tribal Chairman, Gabe Ortiz. After all, it was the medicine man’s message, sent via his wife, that had pulled Brandon Walker, Brock Kendall, and a number of other operatives off on an early-morning wild-goose chase to Rattlesnake Skull Charco. As a police officer, Leggett didn’t put much stock in medicine men even if Ortiz’s prediction of where they would eventually find Lani Walker had been off target by a mere mile or two.

“If you’d excuse us for a little while,” Detective Leggett said to Gabe Ortiz, “I’ll need to ask Miss Walker a few questions now.”

Lani motioned for Gabe to stay where he was. “I’d like Mr. Ortiz to stay,” she said.

“If Mr. Ortiz were your attorney, of course, he’d be welcome to stay, but I’m afraid regulations don’t make any provisions for medicine men . . .”

“I’m not an attorney, but I am the tribal chairman and this is tribal land,” Gabe Ortiz said with quiet but unmistakable authority. “I am here as Lani’s elder and as her spiritual adviser. Since this is my jurisdiction, if she wants me to stay, I stay.”

Leggett may not have been much of an advocate of ethnic diversity when it came to medicine men, but the words “tribal chairman” struck a responsive chord.

“Of course,” he said agreeably, turning back to Lani. “Since Miss Walker wants you here, you’re more than welcome to stay.”

The interview, conducted in the full glare of what was now midday sun, took an hour and a half. When it was over, Dan Leggett’s shirt and trousers were soaked through with sweat, and he was so parched he could barely talk. Lani still sat swathed in her blanket.

Despite her ordeal, Lani answered his questions with a poise that was surprising to see in someone so young. She responded to simple and complex questions alike with calm clarity. Her harrowing version of Mitch Johnson’s physical assault with the kitchen tongs was enough to make Leggett feel half sick, but Lani recounted her ordeal without seeming to be affected by what she was saying. Her steadiness made Leggett wonder if she was really as fine as she claimed or if, perhaps, she might still be suffering from shock.

“That’s about it,” he said, closing his notebook after the last of his questions. “I think we probably should get you into town and have you checked out by a doctor.”

“No,” Gabe Ortiz said firmly. “Lani has killed an enemy. She can’t go to town. She has to stay out here by herself, away from her village and family, until she finishes undergoing the purification ceremony.”

“How long will that take?” Leggett asked, imagining as he did so an evening’s worth of cedar drumming.

“Sixteen days,” Gabe Ortiz answered.

“Sixteen days? Even though it’s most likely self-defense, there’ll have to be an inquest or maybe even a preliminary hearing.”

“They will have to wait for the sixteen days,” Gabe Ortiz told him.

Leggett looked around at the empty desert. “She’s going to stay here? In the middle of nowhere?”

Ortiz nodded. “I’ve already sent my son off to pick up a tent and whatever other supplies she may need. I myself will bring her food and water. Her wounds will be treated in the traditional way.”

For the first time in the whole process, Lani Walker’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she said.

Diana met Brandon at the door when he came home from the hospital late that evening. “Is Quentin going to make it?”

Brandon paused long enough to hang his keys up on the Peg-Board. “Probably,” he said.

“And the bones?”

Brandon sank down beside the table and Diana brought him a glass of iced tea. “I called Dr. Sam,” he said. “He ran the dental profile through his computer. The bones they found at Rattlesnake Skull belong to Tommy, all right.”

Dr. Sam was short for Swaminathan Narayanamurty, a professor of biometrics at the University of Arizona. Together Dr. Sam and Brandon Walker had come up with the idea of amassing a database of dental records on reported Missing Persons from all over the country. Brandon Walker’s effective lobbying before a national meeting of the Law Enforcement and Security Administrators had enabled Dr. Sam to gain some key seed money funding years earlier. That initial grant had grown into a demonstration project.

During the election campaign, Bill Forsythe had brought that project up, implying that Brandon’s interest in the project had been based on personal necessity because of his own son’s unexplained disappearance rather than on sound law enforcement practices. Personal or not, the connection had been strong enough that on this warm summer Sunday, Dr. Sam had been only too happy to interrupt a week-long stay in a cabin on Mount Lemmon to run the profile of the skull Dan Leggett had retrieved from Rattlesnake Skull Charco.

“Detective Leggett says he thinks Quentin was in the process of moving the bones out of the cave for fear Johnson would see them, when Manny Chavez stumbled into the area. Quentin must have panicked and attacked the man.”

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “About Quentin and Tommy.”

“Don’t be sorry about Tommy,” Brandon told her. “At least we know now that it was over quickly for him, that he didn’t suffer. It’s closure, Di. It’s something I’ve lain awake nights worrying about for years.”

The doorbell rang. “Oh, for God’s sake,” Brandon grumbled irritably. “Who can that be now?”

A moment later, a sunburned Candace Waverly appeared in the kitchen doorway. “It’s Detective Leggett,” she said. “He was wondering if he could see you two for a few minutes.”

Wearily, Brandon rubbed his whisker-stubbled chin. “Sure,” he said. “Send him on in.”

“Sorry to bother you,” the detective said, placing a worn Hartmann briefcase on the kitchen table. “I know you’ve both had a terrible two days of it, but I wanted to stop by and show you some of this before I turn it over to the property folks.”

Opening the case, he pulled out a pair of latex gloves. While he was putting them on, Diana glanced at the loose piece of paper—a faxed copy of a mug shot—that lay fully exposed in the open briefcase. A sharp intake of breath caused both men to look at her with some concern as all color drained from her face.

“Diana, what’s the matter?” Brandon demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Diana’s hand trembled as she reached out and picked up the paper. “It’s him,” she moaned. “Dear God in heaven, it is him!”

The paper fluttered out of Diana’s hand. Brandon caught it in midair and studied it himself. “That’s Mitch Johnson, all right,” he said.

“It may be Mitch Johnson, but it’s Monty Lazarus, too,” Diana whispered. “He looked older and he wore a red wig, but I’d recognize him anywhere.”

“Monty Lazarus!” Brandon repeated. “The reporter who interviewed you?”

“Yes.”

Confused, Detective Leggett looked from husband to wife. “Who the hell is Monty Lazarus?” he asked.

Brandon put both hands protectively on Diana’s shoulders before he answered. “The publicity department at Diana’s New York publisher set her up to do an in-depth interview yesterday with someone named Monty Lazarus who was supposedly a stringer with several important magazines. Except it turns out he isn’t a stringer at all. He isn’t even a writer. He’s Mitch Johnson, ex-con, somebody who vowed that he’d get me one day for sending him up.”

Leggett shook his head. “It’s actually worse than that,” he said. “These are documents I’ve just now removed from Mitch Johnson’s motor home out on Coleman Road.”

Saying that, he handed Diana Walker a pair of gloves and a pair of manuscript boxes. One was packed to overflowing while the other was less than half-full.

“You might want to take a look at these, Mrs. Walker, but put on gloves before you do it. Fingerprints and all. Meantime, Brandon, there’s something I need to show you out in the car.”

Brandon Walker followed Leggett out to the driveway where the detective popped the trunk on his Ford Taurus. There, illuminated in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, lay Mitch Johnson’s awful charcoal nude of Dolores Lanita Walker.

“Where did this god-awful thing come from?” Brandon choked.

“From Mitch Johnson’s motor home,” Kendall answered. “I smuggled it out. Along with this one, too.” He took out a second sketch, one of Quentin Walker. “Neither one of these is on any of the evidence lists. I brought them here so you’d have a chance to get rid of them.”

“Thank you, Dan,” Brandon Walker said gratefully. “I’ll take care of them right away.”

With Brandon carrying Lani’s picture by the corners, holding it as though it were the rancid carcass of some long-dead thing, and with Dan Leggett lugging the sketch of Quentin, the two men walked into the backyard. There Brandon grabbed an armload of chopped firewood from his never-ending stack and threw several branches into the barbecue grill. Minutes later, the two offending pictures had been reduced to a pile of paper-thin ashes.

“That’s that,” Brandon said, dusting soot from his hands and onto his pant legs.

“There are two other pictures,” Dan Leggett said quietly.

“Of Lani and Quentin?”

“No,” Leggett said somberly. “If there are others of them, we haven’t found them yet. The two pictures I’m talking about are of someone else. They’re titled ‘Before’ and ‘After.’ ”

“They’re both of the same man,” Leggett replied. “Before and after a murder. Unless I’m sadly mistaken, the victim will turn out to be Mitch Johnson’s ex-wife’s second husband. That big-time developer who got carved up down in Nogales a few months back.”

“Larry Wraike?” Brandon Walker croaked in surprise. “But I thought a prostitute did that.”

“So did everybody else,” Leggett replied. “Me included.”

The two men went back inside. In the kitchen they found Diana sifting through a stack of papers. Her haunted eyes met Brandon’s the moment he stepped into the room.

“Fat Crack was right,” she said. “The danger did come from my book.”

“What do you mean?” Brandon asked.

“Some of this is Andrew Carlisle’s personal diary, Brandon,” she told him, holding back the single detail that some of the passages had been addressed directly to her, that even back in 1988, Carlisle had intended that someday Diana Ladd Walker would read what he had written.

“Carlisle and Mitch Johnson were cellmates for years up in Florence,” Diana continued. “It’s all here in black and white. It started the first day when I went to Florence to interview Carlisle for the book. That’s when Carlisle found out Quentin was up there, too. They targeted him that very day, Brandon. They set him up, and that’s what this whole thing is about—revenge. Andrew Carlisle was still after me and Mitch Johnson was after you. Lani was the perfect way to get to us both. And that’s not all.”

“Not all?” Brandon echoed. “How could there be more?”

“This,” Diana said. She held up what seemed to be the title page of a manuscript.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

“Do you remember when Garrison died I told you the manuscript he was working on disappeared?”

Brandon nodded.

“This is it,” Diana said. “I recognized the typeface from his old Smith-Corona the moment I saw it. It’s called A Death Before Dying. It’s supposedly a work of fiction about a college instructor—a handsome man—presumably happily married to a lovely wife. Gary didn’t have sense enough to change things very much. The husband taught freshman English; the wife was an elementary school teacher.”

“So?” Brandon asked a little impatiently. “I’ve heard you say yourself that first novels are always autobiographical.”

Diana nodded. “They are, and there was an ugly secret running just below the surface of this one. All the while the teacher thinks she’s happily married, the husband is carrying on with another professor—a male professor. Believe me, it’s a very special relationship to which the young wife proves to be an unyielding obstacle.”

“You’re saying Garrison and Carlisle had something going, something sexual?”

Diana nodded. “I think so,” she said.

“That would make sense then,” Brandon said. “It would certainly explain some of the hold Carlisle wielded over the man.”

“Some of it,” Diana agreed. “The kicker is here, though, on the very last page. The last written page because the manuscript is clearly incomplete. The last scene is mostly a dialogue between the two men. They’re sitting in a bar, talking. Planning exactly how they’re going to unload the inconvenient presence of that meddlesome wife.”

“You?” Brandon asked.

Diana nodded. Her voice sounded far more self-possessed than she felt. “If I had gone to the dance with them that night,” she said, “my guess is I would have been the one who died at Rattlesnake Skull Charco, not Gina Antone.”

For sixteen days and nights Lani Walker stayed in the tent Baby and Fat Crack Ortiz had erected for her near the base of Ioligam. She spent her days weaving a rectangular medicine basket. When it was finished, the lid fit perfectly. Lani held it up to the light and studied the final product with no small satisfaction. It was not as well done as one of Nana Dahd’s own baskets, but it would do.

Each evening, about sunset, Gabe Ortiz would arrive by himself, bringing with him an evening meal and the next day’s salt-free food. The traditional dictates of the enemy purification process—e lihmhun—specify a period of fasting and of avoiding salted food.

On the final day of her purification exile, with the medicine basket complete, Lani took a flashlight and ventured into Betraying Woman’s cave one last time. There, shoved up against the stalagmite behind which she had hidden for hours, Lani found one of her two missing boots. She picked it up and took it with her when she continued on into Oks Gagda’s burial chamber.

This time when Lani entered the earthen-floored chamber, there was a feeling of utter emptiness about it. The spirits—kokoi—that had once inhabited the place were no longer there. Careful not to touch or disturb the decaying bones, Lani placed the shoe beside Betraying Woman’s bones as a kind of memorial, then she stepped over to the wall where all the broken pieces of blasted pottery lay in a dusty heap. Kneeling down, Lani picked up one shard of clay after another, examining each in turn, looking for one that would speak to her, the one that was worthy of inclusion in Lani Walker’s newly woven medicine basket.

The fragment she finally settled on was all black, inside and out. She chose it because the fine black texture reminded her of the touch of the bat’s wings against her skin. Pocketing her treasure, Lani was about to stand up and leave when she caught sight of something else reflected in the glow of the flashlight, something that would have remained completely hidden had she not moved several pieces of the pottery.

When Lani saw the tiny bones, she thought at first that she had discovered the skeleton of a tiny baby. It wasn’t, though. When she picked it up and the bones fell apart, she realized that what she had found was the moldering skeleton of a bat’s wing.

Awareness made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. I’itoi had given her a sign. Dolores Lanita Walker was Mualig Siakam—Forever Spinning, and Kulani O’oks—Medicine Woman as well. But she was also Nanakumal Namkam—Bat Meeter. Elder Brother had led her to this place and had shown her it was true.

Why not four names? Lani thought with a laugh. After all, all things in nature go in fours.

On that last night, Fat Crack brought along Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch. After Lani and he had eaten, the medicine man drew a circle on the ground, a line that encircled both man and girl. The two of them settled down on the ground inside the circle.

“It’s time for your first Peace Smoke,” he told her. “Davy and Candace flew out of Tucson for Vegas this afternoon. They’re supposed to get married tomorrow, but before he left, Davy brought me these. He said they belong to you.”

Opening the medicine pouch, he pulled out two items and handed them to her. She recognized them at once as the treasures from Nana Dahd’s old medicine basket—the piece of pottery with the distinctive turtle design etched into the clay and the precious scalp bundle.

“Thank you,” Lani said. Opening her basket, she put the two additions inside and closed the lid.

“What else do you have in there?” Fat Crack asked.

“Nothing much,” Lani said. “My people-hair charm. A finger from a bat’s wing. And a piece of Betraying Woman’s pottery.”

“Bring it,” Fat Crack said. “The piece of pottery, I mean. After we have the Peace Smoke, you and I will study the pottery together.”

Using Looks At Nothing’s old Zippo lighter, Fat Crack carefully lit the wiw. And then, one puff at a time, they smoked the bitter-tasting wild tobacco, passing the lit cigarette back and forth, saying “Nawoj” each time it changed hands.

“How is Quentin?” Lani asked.

“Out of the hospital,” Fat Crack replied. “But he checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehab program.”

“Will he be better?” Lani asked.

Fat Crack shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “He has let go of the secret of his brother’s death. Secrets like that can be very bad. They eat at you. Perhaps now, he’ll be able to get better.”

“Perhaps,” Lani agreed.

They were quiet again. Far off to the east, flickers of lightning touched the horizon. The summer rains were coming. They would be here soon—by the end of the week at the latest. In a way, Lani was sorry that when the deluges began she would be living back inside the house in Gates Pass with a regular roof over her head rather than a canvas tent.

Lani Walker wasn’t a smoker—not even of regular cigarettes. By the time the last of the wild tobacco smoke had eddied away into the nighttime air, she felt light-headed.

“Have you ever heard of divining crystals?” Fat Crack asked. His voice seemed to come to her from very far away.

“I’ve heard of them,” she said. “But I’ve never seen any.”

Fat Crack reached into the medicine pouch and pulled out the chamois bag. Untying it, he held open Lani’s hand and poured the four crystals into it.

“Looks At Nothing said I should keep them until I found a successor worthy of them,” he said. “It was through using these that I knew to look for you near Rattlesnake Skull that morning. Now I want you to try it.”

“Me?” Lani asked. “But I don’t know what to do.”

“Take your piece of pottery,” Fat Crack directed. “Look at it for a time through each of the different crystals and tell me what you see.”

One at a time, holding them up to the firelight, Lani examined the pottery through each of the first three crystals. “I’m not seeing anything,” she said, when she put down the third. “It’s not going to work.”

“Try the last one,” Fat Crack urged.

This time, instead of putting the crystal down, Lani continued staring at it for a long time. First a minute passed, and then another. Finally she looked up at him.

“The Apache warrior—Ohb-s-chu cheggiadkam—came back here looking for his lover, didn’t he? He came looking for Betraying Woman. Somehow his spirit found its way into Andrew Carlisle.”

Fat Crack nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “And into Mitch Johnson as well.”

“And now they’re free?”

“Yes,” Gabe Ortiz answered. “When you broke Betraying Woman’s pots after all this time, you set all of them free.”

Gabe reached out. One at a time he picked up each of the four divining crystals and returned them to the bag. When the bag was tied shut, he placed the crystals—chamois bag and all—inside Lani’s medicine basket.

“They belong to you now, Bat Meeter,” he said with a smile. “They are a gift from Looks At Nothing to you, from one wise old siwani to a young one. Use them well.”

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the work of Dean and Lucille Saxton and their invaluable book, Papago/Pima-English Dictionary, and Harold Bell Wright for his wonderfully vivid retelling of Tohono O’othham legends in Long Ago Told. She also expresses her thanks to Special Collections at the University of Arizona Library for making available materials that otherwise would have been impossible to obtain. Without these crucial contributions, this book would not exist.

Appendix

A Statement by J.A. Jance

When Kiss of the Bees starts, twenty years have passed since the end of Hour of the Hunter. Diana Ladd—who desperately wanted to be a writer back then—has just been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Her son, Davy, has grown up and has just graduated from law school. Her husband, a struggling detective in Hour of the Hunter, has spent years as the sheriff of Pima County, but he has recently lost a bid for reelection. And the crazed killer from back then is dead and out of the picture, right? Wrong!

When it came time to write the sequel to Hour of the Hunter I knew only one piece of the puzzle. Twenty-five years earlier, when I was a school librarian on the reservation, a young girl, a toddler who had been abandoned by her birth parents, almost died after being stung by ants. Her elderly caretaker was deaf as a post and didn’t hear the child screaming. This harrowing tale, one that stuck in my heart and wouldn’t go away, was the only story I was determined to use in the upcoming book, one that still didn’t have a name the night before I was set to start writing it.

I went to the bedroom, worrying about whether or not I’d be able to summon the same kind of magic that had sustained me while I was writing Hour of the Hunter. I went to the bookshelf and took down a copy of Harold Bell Wright’s Long Ago Told, where I had found the legends that had been woven into the background of my first thriller.

Getting into bed, I allowed the book to fall open. I found myself reading a legend about a woman who, in a time of terrible drought, was saved from death by the beating of the wings of a huge swarm of bees. When the drought was over and the woman was still alive, she went on to become the Tohono O’Odham’s greatest medicine woman. As soon as I read that story, I leaped out of bed and went to tell my husband, “The magic’s back. Now I can write this book.”

Not only was the magic back, it had given me my title, Kiss of the Bees.

About the Author

J. A. Jance is the American Mystery Award-winning author of the J.P. Beaumont series as well as eight enormously popular novels featuring small-town Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady. She has also written two critically acclaimed thrillers, Kiss of the Bees and Hour of the Hunter. Jance was born in South Dakota, brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, and now lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.

Also by J.A. Jance

HOUR OF THE HUNTER

Joanna Brady Mysteries

DESERT HEAT

TOMBSTONE COURAGE

SHOOT/DON’T SHOOT

DEAD TO RIGHTS

SKELETON CANYON

RATTLESNAKE CROSSING

OUTLAW MOUNTAIN

DEVIL’S CLAW

J.P. Beaumont Mysteries

UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

INJUSTICE FOR ALL

TRIAL BY FURY

TAKING THE FIFTH

IMPROBABLE CAUSE

A MORE PERFECT UNION

DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE

MINOR IN POSSESSION

PAYMENT IN KIND

WITHOUT DUE PROCESS

FAILURE TO APPEAR

LYING IN WAIT

NAME WITHHELD

BREACH OF DUTY

And in Hardcover

BIRDS OF PREY