“We’ll go this way,” she said, “but stay to the side of the tire tracks and of the footprints, too.”
Just then a shadow passed overhead. Lani looked skyward and saw a single buzzard circling high above them. The morning sun may have been warm, but a chill passed through her body. Having Nuwiopa show up at a time like this was always a bad sign. Buzzards meant death, and the bodies weren’t hard to find.
They lay just beyond a parked blue Jeep Cherokee, one Lani suspected might belong to one of the José brothers. The two victims were clearly male. Both bodies had been shredded by bullets. Their hands were bound in front of them with tie wraps, and their heads were covered by paper grocery bags. Both were secured to the base of a nearby cottonwood tree by lengths of cable that looked like those used to lock down bicycles.
Once Lani spotted the bodies, there was no reason to go any closer. It was clear from the cloud of swarming flies that both victims were dead. She stopped in her tracks so abruptly that Leo literally plowed into her from behind. He grabbed her with both arms to keep her from pitching forward and then was startled when she turned in his arms, buried her head in his ample chest, and wept. They stood like that for several moments, with Leo awkwardly patting her shoulder and trying to comfort her.
Leo probably thought Lani was horrified at being confronted by those two bloodied and mangled bodies, but that wasn’t it at all. She was weeping in gratitude because neither of the dead victims was Gabe. He was home and safe. Right then, that was all that mattered.
At last she straightened up, wiping her nose and eyes on her shirtsleeve. “I’m okay now,” she said.
Letting go of her, Leo started toward the bodies.
“No,” she said, grasping his arm. “Leave them.”
“But shouldn’t we at least check on them?”
Lani shook her head. “This is a crime scene,” she said. “I can see from here that they’re both dead. There’s nothing we can do for them, except call the cops.”
CHAPTER 14
BIG MAN AND HIS FRIENDS came to the house. They called out to the brother, and he came out. Everybody aimed their arrows at him, but as the arrows flew, Brother jumped in the air. None of the arrows hit him. The people laughed at him and asked him where his feathers were. They told him he should have wings.
But when Brother came back to earth, the people noticed that the earth trembled under his feet. Three times the people shot their arrows at Brother, and three times, when he came down, the ground shook.
The fourth time the people shot their arrows, Brother jumped into the sky, but this time he did not come down.
And so, nawoj, my friend, when you are in the land of the Desert People and look toward the Eastern Sky early in the morning, you will see Beautiful Girl, smiling at you from the sky. The Tohono O’odham call her Mahsig Hu’u—Morning Star.
And sometimes—not often—when you feel the earth tremble, the Milgahn—the Anglos—may call it an earthquake, but you and I will know that it is only Beautiful Girl’s brother who has come back to visit.
WHEN BRANDON WALKER OPENED HIS eyes, Diana was standing in the doorway of the bedroom with a cup of coffee in hand. “Up and at ’em, lazybones,” she said. “You said you’d be driving Miss Daisy today, and if we want to get to the Second Street garage in time to find a parking place, you’d better get a move on.”
Brandon turned over and stared blearily at the clock. It said 8:30.
“What time’s your first panel?”
“Ten of the A.M., so we need to head out soon.”
Brandon scrambled out of bed, shaved, showered, and dressed. As he slipped his car keys into his jacket pocket—the same jacket he’d worn to the dinner the night before—his fingers encountered the business card Oliver Glassman had given him. Brandon pulled it out and looked at it. He had spent the better part of the night mulling over his own involvement with John Lassiter. Before he got any more deeply involved and before he brought TLC into play, he needed a whole lot more information.
Dropping the card back into his pocket, he went to the kitchen in search of a second cup of coffee.
“By the way,” Diana said, “my publicist flew in last night. She’ll be meeting us at the first venue, and she’s willing to hang with me all day. So if you feel like doing something else instead of showing up at all the panels and signings, that would be fine, as long as you’re close enough to come get me when I’m done.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Diana said with a laugh. “You go to enough of these events that you could probably do a credible job of answering all the questions I’m likely to be asked. So go do whatever you need to do. Consider it your reward for showing up for the cattle call last night.”
“Fair enough,” Brandon agreed. “Sounds good.”
Even though he was only dropping Diana off, getting to the campus was still a challenge. Traffic on Speedway was gridlocked with people trying to turn into the campus while herds of pedestrians, oblivious to the lights, blocked the way. Brandon drove into the bookstore turnaround with bare minutes to spare before Diana’s first scheduled appearance.
“I’ll pick you up right here whenever you call,” he said. With an unexpected free day ahead of him, Brandon headed for the Arizona Inn to treat himself to a leisurely breakfast. Knowing he might need to use the phone, he asked for his food to be served in the bar.
While waiting, he pulled out Ollie Junior’s card. Glassman the younger was a defense attorney. Clients who found themselves in the clink would need to be able to reach him. Brandon read through the list of phone numbers on the card and dialed the one listed as a cell. Not surprisingly, he was routed to an answering service, but at least it was a living, breathing person rather than a machine.
Brandon told the woman who he was and why he was calling. Oliver Glassman Junior called him back before Brandon finished the last bite of his whole wheat toast.
“I’m surprised you called,” Oliver Glassman Junior said. “When John Lassiter said he wanted to talk to you, I didn’t figure he had a chance in hell.”
“He may not still,” Brandon answered. “Before I go wading into any of this, Mr. Glassman, I want some information.”
“Call me Junior. What kind of information do you have in mind?”
“If you can talk to me about this without violating client confidentiality, please tell me what exactly Justice for All came up with,” Brandon requested. “They must have found something serious, or they wouldn’t have been able to negotiate a deal.”
“Don’t worry about the confidentiality issue,” Junior answered. “I have John Lassiter’s signed permission to bring you on board. As to what they found? Prosecutorial misconduct.”
“What kind?”
“It turns out the prosecutor had a prior relationship with one of the prosecution witnesses. He should have recused himself, but he didn’t.”
“Which witness?” Brandon asked. “And what kind of relationship?”
“A woman named Ava Hanover, at least that was her name at the time of John Lassiter’s first trial, but she’s Ava Richland now. Back in the day, while she was still Ava Martin and working for an escort service, she and a newbie prosecutor named Eric Tuttle had a little extramarital fling. He was married at the time. She wasn’t. Years later, when Ava’s name came up on the witness list in the case, Tuttle should have recused himself—both times—but he didn’t.”
At the time of John Lassiter’s trials, Brandon had found it puzzling that the prosecutor had gone for broke both times. Brandon was, after all, the primary investigator on the case—the lead detective for much of it by virtue of being the only detective. The evidence, such as it was, was entirely circumstantial. To his way of thinking, Lassiter should have been charged with second-degree homicide rather than murder in the first degree. Now it all made sense, because by the time John Lassiter went to trial, Eric Tuttle had been the duly elected county attorney.