Incarcerated together in the Arizona State Prison at Florence, Carlisle and Johnson had hatched a complicated program of revenge against Brandon and Diana. Quentin, most likely without realizing what their real motives were, had somehow been drawn into their vortex. The last time Quentin set foot in his father’s house, he had come there with the newly paroled Mitch Johnson, who was operating as Andrew Carlisle’s proxy. Functioning in a drug-addled stupor, Quentin had vandalized his father’s office, smashing his keepsakes and a lifetime’s worth of mementos. Quentin had done all that without realizing that he and his adopted sister, Lani, were the real targets in Mitch Johnson’s scheme.
In the pitched battle that followed, Lani had managed to save herself, and she had tried to save Quentin as well, but he had been badly injured. Over the next several years, Quentin’s physical condition had deteriorated, step by step, into a situation where he had become hooked on prescription medications and had died as a result of an accidental overdose.
Long before that, though, when Brandon and Diana were still dealing with the immediate crisis, Diana had offered to have the broken plaques and photos repaired and reframed. But Brandon had refused. He was done with all that. Repairing the damage would have hurt more than letting all that stuff go. Instead, Diana had done a makeover, one that included new paint and a new desk and, eventually, more of Diana’s burgeoning collection of baskets.
And that was fine with Brandon, even though collecting baskets was Diana’s passion, not his. He could look at them impassively and not be reminded of what he continued to regard as his greatest failure in life-his sons.
That was one of the reasons the month of June bothered him so much these days-because of Father’s Day. He had done all right with his stepson, Davy, and with Lani, his adopted daughter. And then there was Brian Fellows, Tommy and Quentin’s half brother, who had worshipped Brandon from afar, sopping up the fatherly crumbs Quentin and Tommy had disdained, and who was now one of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s senior detectives in his own right.
Taking Lani and Davy and Brian into consideration, maybe Brandon Walker wasn’t a complete failure in the fatherhood department-just where his own biological offspring were concerned.
Even so, remembering Tommy and Quentin was something that hurt him every day-every single day of the year-Father’s Day or not.
Finally, in order to banish the old insecurities, Brandon sat down at the desk and opened the banker’s box. Before he made any effort to contact the woman who had written to Geet, he needed to familiarize himself with as much of the case as possible.
Plucking a pair of reading glasses out of the top desk drawer, he reached into the box, pulled out the first document he found there, and began to read.
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 8:00 p.m.
79º Fahrenheit
As Dan drove along the highway south of Sells, he examined the occupants of every vehicle he met and every one he passed. Most of the southbound cars were fully occupied with Indians and were headed for the dance. Among the ones coming north, Dan saw nothing out of line. He recognized the vehicles as belonging to people from nearby villages. They were headed into Sells to shop or into Tucson for the same reason.
South of Topawa, the Anglo name of a village called Gogs Mek, or Burnt Dog, the narrow paved road gave way to rough gravel. Here and there, the tan rocky dirt along the roadway was punctuated by ho’ithkam- ironwood trees, kukui u’us- mesquite trees, and low-lying shegoi, greasewood or creosote bushes.
Dan practiced his self-imposed vocabulary lessons as he drove, not because he thought speaking the language would win him acceptance on the reservation but because he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it.
When Micah Duarte had brought him home to San Carlos, Dan had resisted all of his grandfather’s efforts to teach him Apache. Now Dan studied Tohono O’odham on his own. It was a means of seeking forgiveness, not from Gramps. Micah Duarte had never expected or demanded such a thing. No, Dan Pardee was seeking forgiveness for himself from himself. That was a lot more difficult to come by.
He passed the tiny village of Komelik, which, roughly translated, means Low Flat Place. Compared to the mountains jutting up out of the desert to the left of the road, this was low and flat and mostly deserted. After that, every time a set of tire tracks veered off the road and out into the desert, Dan stopped the Expedition, got out of the vehicle and examined the story left behind in the dust and dirt. Months of patient study had allowed him to put many of the resulting tire tracks together with the people who drove individual vehicles.
The track with the half-bald front tire belonged to a vehicle that had been permanently knocked out of alignment when the driver, an old man named James Juan, had struck a cow on the open-range part of the highway near Quijotoa, a bastardization of Giwho Tho’ag, or Burden Basket Mountain. Dan spotted the tracks of a pickup hauling a livestock trailer. That, no doubt, belonged to Thomas Rios, who along with his son successfully ran several head of cattle on a well-managed family plot of land near Komelik.
The tires on the small sedan probably belonged to the Anglo man Dan had seen hanging around on several occasions lately-mostly when he was working day shift. The guy drove a white Lexus-not exactly reservation-style wheels-but he was always alone, always drove the speed limit, and never failed to pass along a friendly wave. One of the other Shadow Wolves had talked to the guy. He was evidently some kind of naturalist doing research in the desert with Thomas Rios’s full knowledge and approval.
Today the Anglo man had driven off into the desert and then had come back out again, but so had another vehicle, one whose tracks Dan didn’t recognize. That one, too, had turned off the road and then come back. So it might be worthwhile to check into that later, but right now he wanted to head on south.
After the Gadsden Purchase divided the Tohono O’odham’s ancestral lands, the Desert People had pretty much ignored the international border, crossing back and forth at will, especially at a place on the reservation known as The Gate. All that had changed in the aftermath of 9-11. As border security tightened in other places, immigration and smuggling activities had multiplied on the reservation, bringing with it far more official scrutiny from Homeland Security, most especially from the Border Patrol.
Now, as Dan Pardee did every other time he was on night shift, he drove to The Gate first. Then, during the course of the night and the remainder of his shift, he would work his way back north.
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
79º Fahrenheit
Donald Rios had told Delphina that he’d come by the house in Sells at seven to pick them up and go to the dance. By six, Delphina was showered and dressed. By six-thirty, she had bathed Angie, dressed her, and carefully braided her daughter’s straight black hair. Then Delphina sat back to worry while Angie settled in to watch Dora the Explorer on the TV set in the living room.
Maybe he won’t come, Delphina worried as she sat at the kitchen window and stared out at the empty yard. Maybe he’ll stand us up.
That belief, of course, was a holdover from her days with Joaquin Enos, who had never been a man of his word. With Joaquin, even the smallest promise was made to be broken. He had been handsome enough to appeal to a fifteen-year-old and had thought nothing of knocking her up, but he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with her or Angie once the baby was born.