Kiss the Bees

12

You will remember, nawoj, that when I'itoi divided the water and saved his people, the Tohono O'othham, from the Bad People, some of the PaDaj O'othham escaped.

Now these Bad People lived in the south, and they were very lazy. They were too lazy to plant their own fields, so they came into the Land of the Desert People and tried to steal their crops-their wheat, corn, and beans, their pumpkins and melons.

TheTohono O'othham fought these Bad People and drove them away, but after a time, the beans and corn which the Bad People had stolen were all gone. ThePaDaj O'othham were hungry again. They knew the Desert People were guarding their fields, so they decided to try a new way to steal the crops.

Near the villageGurli Put Vo — Dead Man's Pond-which we now call San Miguel, the corn in the fields was ready to harvest. One morningHawani — Crow-who was sitting in a tree, saw the Bad People coming up out of the ground and begin cutting the grain.

Crow was so astonished that he called out, "Caw, caw, caw!" This made the people who were living on the edge of the field look up. When they saw their crop disappearing into the ground, they cried out for help.

U'uwhig — the Birds-carried the call for help because the Desert People were always good to theDa'a O'othham — the Flying People-and never let them go hungry or thirsty. And very soon the Indians gathered and drove the Bad People back into the ground. But the bean fields were trampled, and the corn was badly damaged.

It was almost dark before the relief deputy showed up. Detective Leggett parked him in the middle of the road about twenty yards from the charco. "You stay right here," he said. "I don't want anyone coming up and down this road until we can get a crime scene team in here tomorrow morning. You got that?"

"Got it," the deputy said.

By the time Dan Leggett and Brian Fellows grabbed a bite of dinner and then turned up at TMC, Manuel Chavez had already been wheeled off to surgery. The clerk on the surgery wing was happy to glean that one bit of information, that John Doe now had a name. She called the information back down to Admitting.

"That John Doe who just went into surgery is from Sells," she told someone over the phone. "That means he's Indian instead of Hispanic, so you might want to update your records." The clerk covered the mouthpiece with her hand and turned a questioning look on Dan Leggett.

"Has anyone notified the family?"

Dan shook his head. "Not yet."

"Are you going to?"

"We're trying," Detective Leggett told her, then he looked at Brian. "I'm going outside to have a smoke," he said. "Since you're the guy who told me you speak Tohono O'othham, you can do the honors."

Obligingly Brian Fellows stood up and went in search of the nearest pay phone. He placed a call to the Tohono O'othham tribal police and spoke to an officer named Larry Garcia who spoke English just fine.

"Sure, we know Manny Chavez," Larry told Brian Fellows. "What's he done now?"

"Somebody beat him up pretty badly," Brian replied. "He's in surgery at TMC right now. Can you guys handle next-of-kin notification?"

"We'll try," Larry said. "He's got both a daughter and a son. We should be able to find one of them. What's your name again?"

"Brian Fellows. I'm a deputy with Pima County. I'll be here at the hospital for a while longer. Let me know if you locate someone, would you?"

"Sure thing," Larry said. "No problem. Give me your number."

Brian gave him the surgical clerk's extension, then went outside and found Detective Leggett stationed beside an overflowing breezeway ashtray, smoking one of his smelly cigars.

"What's the scoop?" he asked. "Any luck?"

"The tribal police are working on it," Brian replied. "They'll let us know."

"I've been standing out here thinking," Dan Leggett said. "When you first contacted me, we thought the guy was digging up some kind of artifact. Maybe poor Manny Chavez made the same mistake. For the time being, let's assume, instead, that the first guy was burying something, specifically that pile of bones. Why would somebody go to all the trouble of doing that?"

"Because he had something to hide," Brian offered.

"And what might that be? Maybe our grave digger had something to do with the first guy's crushed skull. Think about it. We're talking the same MO as with Manny Chavez. Whack 'em upside the head until they fall over dead."

Brian nodded. "That makes sense," he said.

"So we've for sure got assault with intent on this grave-digging guy and maybe even an unknown and consequently unsolved homicide thrown in for good measure. That being the case, I'm not going to let this thing sit until morning. I'm going to go back out to the department and raise a little hell. I asked for a crime scene investigation team for tonight, but all I got was a deputy to secure the scene and the old 'too much overtime' song and dance. I want faster action than that. If I play my cards right, I'll be able to get it. In the meantime, you hang around here and wait for the next of kin. Once they show up, get whatever information you can, but if the doc says we can talk to Manny himself, you call me on the double."

"Will do," Brian replied.

He went back into the waiting room and settled down on one of the molded-plastic chairs. While he sat there and waited for one or the other of Manny Chavez's kids to show up, Brian finished filling out his paper. As he worked his way down the various forms, Brian was once again grateful that Dan Leggett had taken the call. The deputy was glad not only for his own sake, but also for the sake of Manny Chavez's unnotified relatives, whoever they might be. There were plenty of detectives in Bill Forsythe's sheriff's department who wouldn't have given a damn about somebody going around beating up Indians-plenty who wouldn't have lifted a finger about it.

Fortunately for all concerned, Dan Leggett wasn't one of those. He was treating the assault on Manny Chavez as the serious crime it was-a Class 1 felony. Not only that, Brian thought with a smile, the investigation Dan was bent on doing would no doubt necessitate interviewing everyone involved. Including a good-looking Border Patrol agent named Kath Kelly.

Time passed. Brian lost track of how long. He was sitting there almost dozing when the clerk woke him up, saying there was a phone call for him.

"Deputy Fellows?" Larry Garcia asked.

"That's right."

"I just had a call from one of my officers. He's on his way to Little Tucson. There's a dance out there tonight. We're pretty sure Delia Cachora, Manny's daughter, will be there. Once they find her, it'll take an hour or more for them to get her into town. Will you still be there, at the hospital?"

Detective Leggett had given Deputy Fellows his marching orders. "Most likely," Brian told him. "Have her ask for me."

Quentin Walker was more than half lit and still in the bar at seven o'clock when Mitch Johnson finally showed up at El Gato Loco. Among the low-brow workingmen that constituted El Gato's clientele, the well-dressed stranger sporting a pair of dark sunglasses stuck out like a sore thumb.

"You're late," Quentin said accusingly, swinging around on the barstool as Mitch sidled up beside him.

"Sorry," Mitch returned. "I was unavoidably detained. I thought you said you'd be waiting out front."

"I was for a while, but it was too hot and I got too thirsty waiting outside. Want a drink?"

"Sure."

"Well, order one for me, too. I've gotta go take a leak."

The beer was there waiting on the counter when Quentin returned from the bathroom. Coming back down the bar, Quentin tried to walk straight and control his boozy stagger. He didn't want Mitch to realize how much he'd already been drinking, to say nothing of why. Quentin still couldn't quite believe he had killed that damned nosy Indian, but he had, all because he had walked up and caught Quentin red-handed with Tommy's bones right there in front of God and everybody.

Now, Quentin was looking at two potential murder charges instead of one. Jesus! How had that happened to him? How could he have screwed up that badly? The one thing he didn't want to lose sight of, though, was how much the money from those damned pots would mean to him now.

Nobody knew Quentin Walker owned a car. It would take days, weeks, maybe, for all the paperwork to make its way through official channels. With a proper vehicle and a grubstake of running money, Quentin might even be able to make it into the interior of Mexico. He could leave via that gate on the reservation, the one he had heard so much about from Davy and Brian. It was supposed to be an unofficial border crossing where Indians whose lands had been cut in half by the Gadsden Purchase could go back and forth without the formality of border guards of any kind.

When Mitch Johnson had first shown up with his offer to buy the pots, Quentin had been intrigued more than interested. Now, though, that very same offer of money was of vital importance. The last thing Quentin wanted to do was to spook Mitch into calling the whole thing off. If Mitch walked away, taking with him those five bills with Grover Cleveland's mug shot on them, then Quentin Walker could be left high and dry, without the proverbial pot to piss in. He would have no money and nowhere to run, and he'd be stuck with two possible murder raps staring him in the face. Nobody was ever going to believe that Tommy's death had been an accident.

"How about something to eat?" Quentin suggested, thinking that food might help sober him up. "The hamburgers here aren't bad."

"Sure," Mitch Johnson said easily. "I'll have one. Why the hell not? We're not in any hurry, are we?"

Shaking his head, Quentin leaned his arms against the edge of the bar to steady himself. "Not that I know of," he said. "I do have some good news, though."

"What's that?" Mitch asked.

"I used some of the money you gave me to buy myself some wheels. I picked up a honkin' big orange Bronco XLT. It's a couple years old, but it runs like a top. If you want, we could drive out to where the pots are in that. I don't know what kind of vehicle you're driving, but the terrain where we're going is pretty rough, and the Bronco is four-wheel-drive."

Mitch Johnson had to fight to keep from showing his disappointment. He had been planning all along that he'd be getting back almost a full refund of that initial five thousand bucks he had given Quentin. And he had less than no intention of giving the little creep his second installment. After all, once Quentin Walker was dead, he wouldn't have any need of money-or of a car, either, for that matter.

Instead of bitching Quentin out-instead of mocking him for his stupidity-Mitch was careful to mask his disappointment. "So, you bought yourself a car?" he asked smoothly. "What kind did you say?"

"A Bronco." To Mitch, Quentin's answer seemed unduly proud. "It's the first time I've had wheels of my own in years. It feels real good."

"I'll bet it does," Mitch Johnson agreed.

After that exchange, Mitch sat for a long time and considered this changed state of affairs. His plan had called for the next part of the operation to be carried out in the Subaru. That way he would have the canvas-drying crate to use to confine either Lani and/or Quentin, should the drugs somehow prove unreliable. The idea of changing vehicles added a complication, but the whole point of being competitive-of being able to capitalize on situations where other people faltered-was being flexible enough to go with the flow. The idea was to take the unexpected and turn it from a liability into an advantage.

"Hang on here a minute," Mitch said to Quentin. "And if my food comes before I get back, you leave my hamburger alone."

"Sure thing," Quentin said.

Mitch walked out to the far corner of the parking lot where he had left the Subaru. There, he unlocked the tailgate, opened the wooden crate, and checked on Lani, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. Putting on his rubber gloves, he removed Lani's bike from the crate. Hurriedly he wheeled it over to the orange Bronco parked nearby, an orange Bronco with a temporary paper license hanging in the window next to a prominently displayed as is/no warranty notice. Predictably, the Bronco wasn't locked. Mitch hefted the mountain bike into the spacious cargo compartment and then went over to secure the Subaru.

"Sweet dreams, little one," he said to a sleeping Lani as he once again closed up the crate. "See you after your brother and I finish up at the house."

When Mitch went back inside, the food had been served. Mitch ate his lousy hamburger and watched Quentin wolf his. There was something about the man that wasn't quite right. There was a nervous tension in him that Mitch didn't remember from the night before, but he put his worries aside. Whatever was bothering Quentin Walker, that little dose of scopolamine Mitch had dropped into Quentin's first beer would soon take the edge off. In fact, Mitch's only real concern was that Quentin was far more smashed than he should have been. With Quentin drunk, Mitch worried that even a little bit of Burundianga Cocktail might prove to be too much.

The overheated afternoon had cooled into a warm summer's evening when Quentin and Mitch Johnson finally left the bar. Quentin blundered first in one direction and then in the other as he attempted to cross the parking lot. He finally came to a stop and leaned up against the Bronco to steady himself.

"Geez!" he muttered. "That last beer was a killer. Hey, Mitch," he said. "You wouldn't mind driving, would you? The food didn't do me a bit of good. I'm having a tough time here. I can give you directions, no problem, but with my record, I can't afford to be picked up DWI."

"No problem," Mitch said. "Where are the keys?"

It took time for Quentin to extract the keys from his pocket and hand them over.

"You don't mind, do you?" Quentin whined.

Mitch shook his head. "Not at all," he said. "After all, friends don't let friends drive drunk."

Detective Dan Leggett was pissed as hell. "What do you mean, you've recalled him?" he demanded.

"Just that," Reg Atkins, the night-watch commander, returned mildly. "We can't send a team of crime techs out there until Monday morning. You know as well as I do that Sheriff Forsythe won't authorize any overtime right now, at least not until the start of the new fiscal year. Overtime is to be scheduled only in cases of dire emergency. One busted Indian and a pile of bones don't qualify, at least not in my book. And in case you're wondering, the same thing goes for deputies. Brian Fellows is off the clock as of fifteen minutes ago and the guy you sent out to Coleman Road just got called to a car fire out by Ryan Field."

Less than six months from retirement, Dan Leggett was a member of the old guard. As someone who still owed a good deal of loyalty to the previous administration, he was a pain in Sheriff Bill Forsythe's neck. Anybody else in his position might have shut up and let things pass. Not Dan Leggett. He was an unrepentant smoker, a loner, and a rocker of boats.

"You called them off?"

"Damned straight. If you think we're going to have a deputy camped out by a charcoall weekend long, you're crazy as a bedbug."

"But I want those bones examined."

"Well, go get them and bring them back to the lab yourself, if you're so all-fired excited about them. There are plenty of people to work on them if you ever get them here."

Without another word, Dan Leggett stormed out of Reg Atkins's office. Ever since Brandon Walker had been voted out of office, this kind of shit had been happening-especially to older guys, the ones who had been around long enough to know the real score. He had been a rookie deputy toward the end of Sheriff DuShane's term in office. There had been lots of crap like this back then. It looked as though things had come full circle.

But if Sheriff Bill Forsythe thought he was going to run Dan Leggett off a day before his scheduled retirement day, he was full of it. And he wasn't going to be bamboozled out of properly investigating these two possibly related cases.

At the charco even though the deputy was long gone, nothing seemed to be disturbed. Since Deputy Fellows had already made plaster casts, Dan Leggett simply drove as close as he could to the pile of bones without getting stuck in the sand. After extracting a trouble light from the trunk, he examined the grisly pile by the trouble light's eerie orange glow.

There was nothing but partial skeletal remains here now, but Detective Leggett realized this had once been a living, breathing human being. A person. Somebody's loved one. As such, whoever it was deserved some respect, certainly more than being tossed haphazardly in the trunk of an unmarked patrol car.

"Sorry about this," Dan said aloud, addressing the skull whose empty eyes seemed to stare up at him. "But this is the only way I can think of to find out who you are and what happened to you."

After that murmured apology, he put on his disposable gloves and loaded the bones into three separate cardboard evidence boxes. It was the best Dan Leggett could do.

He took the boxes back to the department and then lugged the surprisingly lightweight stack into the crime lab. "What's this?" the lab tech asked, opening the top box and peering inside.

"It's what's left of a body," he told her. "When you take them out of the box, I want every single one of them dusted for prints."

"Come on, Detective Leggett. Fingerprints?"

"I'm an old man who's about to retire," Dan Leggett told the thirty-something technician. "Humor me, just this once. And while you're at it, fax a dental photo over to that Bio-Metrics professor at the U. Who knows, we might just get a hit on his Missing Persons database."

As tribal chairman, Gabe Ortiz could easily have gone straight to the head of the line at the feast house in Little Tucson. But that wasn't Fat Crack's style. Instead, an hour or so before the Chicken Scratch Band was scheduled to play, he and Wanda were standing in line waiting to be admitted to the feast house along with their bass-guitar-playing son, Leo, and everyone else who was waiting to eat.

Gabe could remember a time, seemingly not that long ago, when all the guys in the band had been old men. Times had changed. The problem was, the members of the band had always stayed pretty much the same-middle-aged. That was still true. What was different was that Gabe Ortiz was well into his sixties and one of the band members was his unmarried, thirty-eight-year-old son.

They filed into the feast house and took seats at the tables. Moments later, Delia Cachora herself showed up carrying plates. She set two plates down in front of Gabe and Wanda and then went back for more.

Leo caught his father's eye. "When are you going to put in a good word for me with that new tribal attorney?" he asked.

"What do you want me to tell her?" Gabe asked. "That you're a good mechanic? You've never worked on a Saab in your life."

Leo laughed. "I could learn," he said.

Delia Chavez Cachora had returned to the reservation driving a shiny black Saab 9000. In the reservation world where Ford and Chevy pickups ruled supreme, Delia's car had created quite a stir-especially when word leaked out that the Saab's leather seats were actually heated. In the Arizona desert, heated seats were considered to be a laughably unnecessary option. After months of driving in gritty dust, its once shiny onyx exterior had acquired a perpetually matte-brown overlay.

"Why don't you talk to her yourself?" Wanda asked impatiently. "She won't bite."

"I knew her in first grade," Leo said. "But I don't think that counts."

Delia returned to the table with two more plates, one of which she put in front of Leo Ortiz.

"Delia," Gabe said, "this is my son, Leo. He says you were in first grade together. He wants you to know that he's a pretty good mechanic."

Leo Ortiz shrugged. "You never can tell when you might need a good mechanic," he said with a laugh. "Or a bass guitar player, either."

Delia Cachora studied Leo Ortiz's broad face as if searching for a resemblance between this graying, portly man and some child she had known in school thirty years earlier. "I'll bear that in mind," she said. Then she headed back to the serving line to collect more plates.

Wanda looked at her husband. "Are you going to talk to her?" Wanda asked.

Fat Crack nodded. "After," he said.

Wanda sighed, then she turned her attention on her son. "I don't know why you're so interested in her," she sniffed disapprovingly. "Julia Joaquin, her auntie, tells me Delia can't even make tortillas."

Leo caught his father's eye and winked. "Plenty of women can cook," Leo said, "but I'll bet Delia Cachora can do lots of other things."

Gabe Ortiz laughed at his son's gentle teasing, but it surprised him somewhat that Delia Cachora would turn out to be the kind of woman who would interest either one of his two sons, who, at thirty-eight and forty, respectively, were both thought to be aging, perpetual bachelors. If Leo did in fact find Delia attractive, by the time Gabe finished telling her about Davy Ladd's upcoming arrival, Leo's chances would be greatly reduced from what they were right then. Gabe had put the unpleasant task off for far too long already. It was time.

He waited until that group of feast-goers had finished eating. Then, on his way out, Gabe stopped by the dishwashing station where the tribal attorney stood over a steaming washtub of water with soapy dishwater all the way up to her elbows.

"Delia," Gabe said quietly. "I need to talk to you."

"Right now?"

"Whenever you have time," Gabe answered. "I'll wait outside."

Wanda walked over to the dance floor with Leo while Fat Crack lingered outside the door to the feast house. Several minutes later, Delia Cachora joined him.

"Is something wrong?" Delia asked anxiously. "You look worried."

Gabe was worried. The business with Andrew Carlisle had kept him awake for most of two successive nights now. His only regret was that his state of mind showed so clearly to outside observers.

Fat Crack shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said. "But there is something I need to talk to you about." He led her away from the feast house, through the lines of parked cars, through groups of people gathered informally around the backs of pickups, laughing and talking. When they reached the Crown Victoria, Fat Crack opened the door and motioned her inside.

"Whatever it is, it must be serious," Delia said.

"Not that serious. I wanted to talk to you about a friend of mine. A sort of cousin, actually. My aunt's godson. His name's David Ladd."

In the world of the Tohono O'othham- where even the most direct conversational route is never a straight line-this was a straightforward way of beginning.

"What about him?" Delia asked.

"I've offered him a job."

The car was silent for a moment. "David Ladd," Delia repeated at last. "That doesn't sound like a Tohono O'othham name."

"It isn't," Fat Crack admitted. "Davy is Mil-gahn. He was my aunt Rita's godson-a foster son, more or less."

"Why are you telling me about this?" Delia asked. "Is there some legal problem?"

Gabe Ortiz took a deep breath. "I've offered him an internship," he said. "In your office. He just graduated from law school at Northwestern. He'll be home sometime next week and able to start work the week after that. I've hired him as your special assistant while he's studying for the bar exam. As an intern, we won't have to pay him all that much, and I thought that while you're preoccupied by negotiations with the county, he'll be able to help out with some of the day-to-day stuff."

Delia's reaction was every bit as bad as Gabe Ortiz had expected. "Wait just a damn minute here!" she exclaimed, turning on Gabe with both eyes blazing. "Are you saying you've hired an Anglo to come work in my office without telling me and without even asking my opinion?"

"Pretty much."

"My understanding was that the tribal attorney always hires his or her own assistants," Delia said.

"The tribal attorney works for me," Gabe reminded her impassively. The fact that he was using his tribal council voice on her infuriated Delia Chavez Cachora even more.

"But you already told me, he's Mil-gahn," she objected. "An Anglo."

Gabe Ortiz remained unimpressed. "So? Are you prejudiced against Anglos, or what?"

At thirty-eight, having fought her way through years of prejudice in Eastern Seaboard parochial schools, Delia Cachora knew about racial prejudice firsthand. From the wrong end.

"What if I am?" she asked. "I'm sure there are plenty of Indian law school graduates we could hire while they're waiting to pass the bar exam. Besides, I can't hire anyone anyway. We talked about that a couple of months ago. I'm already over budget."

"I'm hiring Davy Ladd out of a special discretionary fund," Gabe said. "One that comes straight from my office. The money to pay him won't be coming out of your budget, it'll be coming out of mine."

"In other words, he's coming, like it or lump it."

Gabe Ortiz nodded. "I suppose that's about it," he said. "But wait until you meet him. He's an unusual young man. I think you'll like him."

"I wouldn't count on it," Delia muttered. She opened the car door. "In fact, I wouldn't count on that at all."

Delia started out of the car and would have walked away, but just then a tow truck, red lights flashing, followed by a Law and Order patrol car, pulled up and stopped directly in front of the Crown Victoria. Gabe's other son, Richard, climbed down from the truck.

"Here they are," he was saying to the officer piling out of the patrol car.

As Gabe climbed out of the Crown Victoria, he immediately recognized Ira Segundo, a young patrol officer for the Tohono O'othham tribal police. "What's the matter, Ira?" Gabe asked.

"I'm looking for Mrs. Cachora," Ira said. "Baby told me she might be here with you."

"I'm Delia Cachora," she said, stepping forward. "What's wrong?"

"It's about your dad," Ira Segundo said. "There was a problem over off Coleman Road. He's been hurt."

A curtain of wariness more than concern settled over Delia's face. Since she had returned to the reservation, her father and her younger brother, Eddie, had only come to see her to ask for money. "What about him?"

"It happened at a charco over by where Rattlesnake Skull used to be-"

"By Rattlesnake Skull?" Gabe Ortiz interrupted.

Ira nodded. "We think maybe there was a fight of some kind. He must be hurt pretty bad. They air-lifted him to TMC."

"You should be telling my brother this instead of me," Delia said. "He's the one who lives with him, but he's probably off drunk somewhere. I'll go get my car."

"No, Delia," Gabe said. "Get in. I'll give you a ride." Gabe Ortiz turned to his son. "Richard, I'm leaving you to take your mother home from the dance when she's ready to go. Ira, I want you to put on your flashers and lead us into town."

"Sure thing, Mr. Ortiz," Ira said.

Still angry, Delia wanted to object, but something about the way Gabe issued the orders stopped her. She did as she was told and climbed back into the Crown Victoria. "I don't know why you're doing this," she said, once Gabe was back inside and had started the engine. "It's my father, and I'm perfectly capable of driving myself."

Already Gabe was threading his way through the army of parked cars. In the reflected glow of the dashboard lights, Delia was surprised by the grim set of his face.

"You've been away from the reservation a long time," he said, sounding suddenly tired. "Have you ever heard of Rattlesnake Skull?"

"Never," she said. "I gather from what he said that it's a deserted village."

They were out of the parking lot now, and the lights on the patrol car were flashing in front of them. "Right," Gabe said. "It is deserted, but a lot has happened there over the years. Before you go see your father and before you meet Davy Ladd, you should hear about some of it. I'm probably the only one who can tell you."

When the banquet was finally over, Brandon and Diana Walker drove west across town. The evening had been surprisingly fun, and Diana was still giggling.

"You were absolutely great," she told Brandon. "I don't know why you've ever been spooked at the idea of talking to little old ladies. You charmed the socks off every one that got within spitting distance of you."

Brandon grinned. "There's nothing like a little sex in the afternoon to give a guy's sagging ego a boost. But it turns out they were a pretty nice bunch of little old ladies…"

"And men," Diana added.

"And a few men," Brandon corrected. "The difference between the people we met tonight and most people is that the ones at the banquet all think I'm lucky to be able to be retired at age fifty-four. Everybody else thinks I'm either crazy or some kind of laggard."

"They haven't seen your woodpile," Diana said.

Their mood was still light, right up until they drove up to the house in Gates Pass. "Damn it," Brandon said. "It looks like Lani left every light in the house burning. One of these days she'll have to pay her own utility bills. It's going to come as a real shock."

Brandon hit the automatic door opener and the gate on the side of the house swung open. "She also left her bike in the middle of the damn carport. What on earth is she thinking of?"

Diana sighed, dismayed to hear Brandon's mood change from good to bad in the space of a few yards of driveway. "Stop the car," she said. "I'll get out and move the bike out of the way."

She pushed the bike up to the front of the carport, giving Brandon enough room to park his Nissan next to her Suburban. No doubt the fragile mood of the evening was irretrievably broken. One way or another, children did that to their parents with astounding regularity.

The back door was unlocked, which most likely meant that Lani was home, but that was something else that would annoy her father. When Lani was home alone, she was supposed to keep the front and back doors locked.

Shaking her head, Diana went inside and discovered that Brandon was right. Almost every light in the house was blazing, but the note for Lani that Diana had left on the counter-the Post-it containing Davy's phone number and telling Lani to call him back-was still on the counter, exactly where Diana had left it.

Through years of mothering teenagers, Diana Ladd Walker had discovered that looking in the sink and checking the most recent set of dirty dishes was usually a good way of getting a handle on who all was home, how long they'd been there, and whether or not they had dragged any visitors into the house with them.

The evidence in the sink this time left Diana puzzled. Other than the pair of champagne glasses she and Brandon had left there earlier in the afternoon, there was nothing but a pair of rubber-handled kitchen tongs. Knowing it wasn't hers, Diana picked the utensil up and examined it under the light. The gripper part was somewhat scorched. It looked as though it had been used to cook meat of some kind, but there was nothing in the kitchen-no accompanying greasy mess-that gave Diana any hint of what that might have been.

As Diana automatically moved to the phone to check for messages, she could hear Brandon walking through the rest of the house, calling for Lani and switching off lights as he went. When Diana punched in the code, she found there were a total of five messages waiting for her. That bugged her. It was Saturday night. Couldn't she and Brandon even go out to dinner without having the whole world phone in their absence?

The first message was timed in at three twenty-one. "Lani," a female voice said. "This is Mrs. Allison from the museum. If you aren't able to take your shift, you should always call in as soon as possible to let us know. I know tomorrow is scheduled to be your day off. If for some reason you aren't going to be able to make your next shift on Monday, please call in on Sunday if you can. If I'm not there, leave word on the machine."

Lani hadn't made it to work? That didn't make sense. She had left for work. How could it be that she was absent? The next message, at six-eleven, moments after Diana and Brandon had left for the banquet, was from Jessica Carpenter.

"Lani, what are you going to wear? Call me and let me know."

"That figures," Diana muttered as she erased that one.

The one after that was more worrisome. "Lani," Jessica Carpenter said. "I thought you were going to be here by now. Mom has to go someplace after she drops me off, and if we don't leave in a few minutes, she'll be late. She says I should leave your ticket at the box office. I'll put it in an envelope with your name on it."

The next message, at nine-fifteen, was another one from Davy. "Hi, Mom and Dad. I'm still trying to get hold of Lani, but I guess nobody's home. Give me a call. Bye."

The last one was from Jessica once again. "It's intermission and you're not here. Are you mad at me or sick, or what? I'll try calling again when I get home."

Brandon came back into the kitchen just as Diana was putting down the phone. "Still taking messages?" he said.

"Lani didn't go to work," Diana said. "And she didn't go to the concert, either."

"Didn't go to the concert?" Brandon echoed. "Where is she then? I've gone through the whole house looking for her."

"Hang on," Diana told him. "I'll call the Carpenters and see if she ever showed up there."

The phone rang several times and then the answering machine came on. Diana left a message for them to call her as soon as possible. "Nobody's home," she told Brandon. "Maybe they're all still at the concert."

"But Lani's bike is here. Where would she be if her bike's here?"

Brandon looked grim. "Something's wrong. I'll go back through the house and check again. Maybe I missed something. Do you have any idea what she wore when she left the house this morning?"

Diana shook her head. "I heard the gate shut, but I didn't see her leave."

This time they got as far as Brandon's study. Before, Brandon had simply reached into the room and switched off the light without bothering to look into the room itself. Barely a step inside the door, he stopped so abruptly that Diana almost collided with him. "What the hell!"

Sidestepping him, Diana was able to see into the room herself. A fine spray of shattered glass covered most of the floor. In the center of the glass lay several broken picture frames. Looking beyond that, Diana saw that the wall behind Brandon's desk-his Wall of Honor as he had called it-was empty. All his service plaques, his civic honors-including his Tucson Citizen of the Year and the Detective of the Year award-the one he'd received from Parade Magazine for cracking a dead illegal alien case years before-were all on the floor, smashed beyond recognition.

"Oh, Brandon!" Diana wailed. "What a mess. I'll go get the broom-"

"Don't touch anything and don't come into the room any farther until we get a handle on exactly what's happened here. It looks to me as though whoever it was broke into my gun case, too."

Diana's stomach sank to her knees. She had to fight off the sudden urge to vomit. "What about Lani…"

Brandon turned toward her, the muscles working across his tightened jaw. "Let's don't hit panic buttons," he advised. "The first thing we should do is call the department and have them send somebody out to investigate." Walking back to the kitchen, he picked up the phone. "Did you notice anything else out of place?" he asked as he dialed. After all those years with the department, the number of the direct line into Dispatch was still embedded in his brain as well as his dialing finger.

Diana thought for a minute. "Only that set of tongs over there in the sink. It looks as though somebody used it to cook meat or something, but I can't tell what."

Alicia Duarte was fairly new to Dispatch, but she had been around the department long enough that Brandon Walker's name still carried a good deal of weight. Her initial response was to offer to send out a deputy.

"A deputy will be fine," Brandon told her. "But I think we're going to need a detective too. There's a good chance that our daughter has disappeared as well, and the two incidents are most likely related."

"Sure thing, Sheriff Walker," Alicia said, honoring him with the title even though it was no longer his. "I'll get right on it."

Brandon put down the phone and then walked over to wrap his arms around Diana. "You heard what I said. Someone is on the way, although it'll take time for them to get here."

"What if we've lost her?" Diana asked in a small voice. "What if Lani's gone for good?"

"She isn't," Brandon returned fiercely. It wasn't so much that he believed she wasn't lost. It was just that when it came to his precious Lani, believing anything else was unthinkable.

Brandon's initial reluctance about adopting Clemencia Escalante disappeared within days of the child's noisy entry into the Walker household. He was captivated by her in every way, and the reverse was also true. It wasn't long before his daily return from work was cause for an ecstatic greeting on Clemencia's part. When he was home, she padded around at his heels, following him everywhere, always underfoot no matter where he was or what he was doing.

When it came time to work on turning their temporary appointment as foster parents into permanent adoptive ones, Brandon had forged through the reams of paperwork with cheerful determination. Later, during caseworker interviews, he was charming and enthusiastic. But when the time came to drive out to Sells to appear before the tribal court for a hearing on finalizing the adoption, he was as nervous as he had been on the day he and Diana Ladd married.

"What if they turn us down after all this?" he asked, standing in front of the mirror and reknotting his tie for a third time. "What if we have to give her back? I couldn't stand to lose her now, not after all this."

"Wanda seems to think it'll go through as long as we have Rita in our corner."

The four of them rode out to Sells together. Rita and the baby sat in the backseat-Clemencia sleeping in her car seat and Rita sitting stolidly with her arms folded across her lap. She said very little, but everything about her exuded serene confidence. They found Fat Crack waiting for them in the small gravel parking lot outside the tribal courtroom. While Brandon and Diana unloaded the baby and her gear, Rita turned to her nephew.

"Did you do it?" she asked Fat Crack, speaking to him in the language of the Tohono O'othham. "Did you look at her picture through the divining crystals?"

" Heu'u-yes," Fat Crack said.

"And what did you see?"

"I saw this child, the one you call Forever Spinning, wearing a white coat and carrying a feather, a seagull feather."

"See there?" Rita said, her face dissolving into a smile. "I told you, didn't I? She will be both."

"But-"

"No more," Rita said. "It's time to go in."

Molly Juan, the tribal judge, was a pug-faced, no-nonsense woman who spent several long minutes shuffling through the paperwork Wanda Ortiz handed her before raising her eyes to gaze at the people gathered in the courtroom.

"Both parents are willing to give up the child?" she asked at last.

Wanda Ortiz nodded. "Both have signed terminations of parental rights."

"And there are no blood relatives interested in taking her?"

"Not at this time. If the Walkers' petition to adopt her is denied, my office has made arrangements to place Clemencia in a facility in Phoenix."

"Who is this then?" Molly Juan asked, nodding toward Rita.

"This is Mrs. Antone-Rita Antone-a widow and my husband's aunt," Wanda replied.

"And she has some interest in this matter?"

Ponderously, Rita Antone wheeled her chair until she sat facing the judge. "That is true," Rita said. "I am Hejel Wi i'thag — Left Alone. My grandmother, my father's mother, was Oks Amichuda, Understanding Woman. She was not a medicine woman, although she could have been. But she told me once, years ago, that I would find one, and that when I did, I should give her my medicine basket.

"Do you know the story of Mualig Siakam?"

Molly Juan nodded. "Of course, the woman who was saved by the Little People during the great famine."

Brandon Walker leaned over to his wife. "What the hell does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?"

"Shhhh," Diana returned.

"Clemencia has been kissed by the ants in the same way the first Mualig Siakam was kissed by the bees," Rita continued. "Clemencia was starving and might have died if the ants had not bitten her and brought her to my attention. Some of her relatives are afraid to take her because they fear Ant Sickness. The Walkers are Mil-gahn, so Ant Sickness cannot hurt them. And I am old. I will die long before Ant Sickness can find me.

"The Walkers are asking for her because everyone knows that I am too old to care for her by myself, just as her own great-grandmother was. But I know that this is the child Oks Amichuda told me about-the very one."

"And you think, that by keeping her with you, you can help her become a medicine woman?" Molly Juan asked.

Rita looked at Fat Crack. "She already is one," Rita said. "She may not be old enough to understand that yet, and I will not tell her. It's something she must learn for herself. But in the time I have left, I can teach her things that will be useful when the time comes for her to decide."

Rita started to move away, but Judge Juan stopped her. "Supposing you die?" she asked pointedly. "What happens then? If Clemencia is living with a Mil-gahn family, who will be there to teach her?"

"The Walkers have a son," Rita answered quietly. "His Mil-gahn name is David Ladd. His Indian name-the one Looks At Nothing gave him when he was baptized-is Edagith Gogk Je'e — One With Two Mothers."

Molly Juan pushed her wire-framed glasses back up on her nose and peered closely at Rita. "I remember now. This is the Anglo boy who was baptized by an old medicine man years ago."

Rita nodded. "Looks At Nothing and I both taught Davy Ladd things he would need to know, things he can teach Clemencia as she gets older even though the medicine man and I are gone."

"How old is this boy now?"

"Twelve."

"And he speaks Tohono O'othham?"

"Yes."

"But what makes you think he would be willing to serve as a teacher and guide to this little girl?"

"I have lived with David Ladd since before he was born," Rita said. "He is a child of my heart if not of my flesh. When he was baptized, his mother-Mrs. Walker here-and I ate the ceremonial gruel together. He is a good boy. If I ask him to do something, he will do it."

That was when Judge Molly Juan finally turned to Diana and Brandon Walker. During the course of the proceedings, in an effort to keep the restless Clemencia quiet, Diana had handed the child over to Brandon. By the time the judge looked at them, Clemencia had grasped the tail of Brandon's new silk tie in one tiny fist and was happily chewing on it and choking him with it at the same time.

"Sheriff Walker," Molly Juan said, "it sounds as though your family is somewhat unusual. What do you think of all this?"

Still holding the child, Brandon got to his feet to address the judge. "Clemencia is just a baby, and she needs a home," he said. "I hate to think about her being sent to an orphanage."

"But what about the rest of it, Sheriff Walker? I know from the paperwork that your wife taught out here on the reservation for a number of years. She probably knows something about the Tohono O'othham and their culture and beliefs. What about you?"

Brandon looked down at the baby, who lay in his arms smiling up at him. For a moment he didn't speak at all. Finally he looked back at the judge.

"On the night of my stepson's second baptism," he said slowly, "I stood outside the feast house and smoked the Peace Smoke with Looks At Nothing. That night he asked three of us-Father John from San Xavier Mission; Gabe Ortiz, Mrs. Antone's nephew; and myself-along with him to serve as Davy's four fathers. It seems to me this is much the same thing.

"If you let us have her, my wife and I will do everything in our power to see that she has the best of both worlds."

Judge Juan nodded. "All right then, supposing I were to grant this petition on a temporary basis, pending final adoption proceedings, have you given any thought as to what you would call her?"

"Dolores Lanita-Lani for short," Brandon answered at once. "Those would be her Anglo names. And her Indian name would be Mualig Siakam — Forever Spinning."

"And her home village?" Judge Juan asked.

" Ban Thak-Coyote Sitting," he answered. "That is Rita's home village. It would be hers as well."

"Be it so ordered," Judge Juan said, whacking her desk with the gavel. "Next case."