CHAPTER 17

EACH SUMMER THE WOMEN FROM the villages would go to the foothills around Baboquivari to gather the fruit from the ­saguaro—­s bahithaj—­from which they make the saguaro wine—­nawait. For many years, when ­people from a certain village went to gather the fruit, they were met by the Evil Giantess—­Ho’ok O’oks—­who lived nearby. You will remember, nawoj, my friend, that Ho’ok O’oks had grown out of the dust balls that once belonged to Nephew-­of-­the-­Sun.

Ho’ok O’oks was a powerful spirit of evil who could make ­people do just what she wanted. Sometimes she made them give her their best cows. Sometimes she would catch a young child and take it away with her. And although the mothers mourned for their children and pleaded with the Giantess, the children were never returned.

The Evil Giantess had such a lot of hair that when she shook her head, it was like a cloud. The children were all afraid of her. And so it became a custom for one of the women from the village to stay with the children to keep them safe. But this was not easy to do. There were horses and cattle to be watered and there was wood to be chopped to keep the fires warm to heat the ollas used to cook the cactus fruit before the syrup—­sit’ol—­could be turned into wine. All those things meant the women of the village were always busy.

WARDEN HUFFMAN WAS GOOD TO his word. Brandon Walker checked his weapons in one of the lockers provided, then carried Amanda Wasser’s box of documents through security. Once clear of that, a waiting guard led him to a nearby interview room, let him inside, and locked the door behind him. Brandon didn’t mind. The silence of the locked room was infinitely preferable to the noisy bedlam of the regular visitors’ room. His memories of that room—­of sitting there trying to converse with Quentin through a yellowed plexiglass barrier—­were painful ones Brandon didn’t wish to revisit.

The door banged open, jarring him out of his reverie and back into an equally unwelcome present. A uniformed guard ushered a grizzled old black man into the room. “You here to see John Lassiter?” he asked.

Brandon nodded. The man was in uniform. His clothing was more like hospital scrubs than guard attire. The name tag dangling on his lanyard identified him as Aubrey Bayless.

“Mind showing me some ID?”

“How come?”

Bayless shrugged. “Lassiter asked me to check, so I’m checking.”

Shaking his head with annoyance, Brandon reached into his back pocket, retrieved his wallet, and held it still long enough for the man to study it.

Finally the old man nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Right back.”

In the long silence that followed, Brandon remembered taking John Lassiter into custody. The homicide investigation was Pima County’s, but the arrest itself had been a joint operation conducted by Brandon and a Tucson PD detective named Michael Farraday. Information from a confidential informant had led them to a seedy bar called the Tally Ho on North Sixth Avenue, one that was lowbrow and scuzzy enough to be El Barrio’s clone. Once inside, they spotted Lassiter seated at the dimly lit bar, hunched over a pitcher of beer with a shot of tequila on the counter in front of him.

Naturally the place had gone quiet the moment the two detectives walked into the room. Action at the pool tables stopped cold. Lassiter was drunk enough that it took a moment for the sudden silence to penetrate his fog. He was just starting to turn on his barstool when Farraday reached out to tap him on the shoulder.

Big Bad John Lassiter immediately roared to his full height—­all six-­foot-­six of him, without even knowing who they were or what they wanted—­and he had come out swinging. He was belligerent enough that for years afterward, whenever they had been together, Brandon had reminisced with Farraday about being lucky and quick enough to dodge Lassiter’s powerful right-­hand blow. It had taken both detectives to subdue the guy and get the cuffs on him, and all the while, a girl—­a young woman really—­had been screaming in the background, telling them to stop and begging that they not hurt him. That girl, Brandon realized now, must have been Amanda’s birth mother, and she had most likely been only a few weeks pregnant at the time.

The last time Brandon remembered seeing Big Bad John had been at the Pima County Courthouse at the close of Lassiter’s second trial. The verdict was read—­guilty—­and the judge had remanded him to custody. When it was time to leave, Lassiter had stood up—­again to his full height—­and had patiently placed his hands behind his back so the guards could cuff him and lead him back to his cell. Even in handcuffs, John Lassiter had been an imposing figure, dwarfing the guards who had swarmed around him like so many midgets. That was who Brandon was expecting to walk through the door, a giant of a man, big enough to match the song. But that wasn’t what happened.

When the interview room’s door swung open, Aubrey Bayless pushed a wheelchair into the room. John Lassiter’s clean-­shaven face was familiar, but the rest of him was not. The passing years had turned him into a massive piece of humanity that seemed root-­bound in a chair that appeared far too small to hold him. Brandon’s first impression was that someone had heated him up and simply melted his body into the chair.

MS, Brandon remembered after a moment. It was the same ailment that had placed Lassiter’s daughter on her red scooter. Obviously scooters weren’t part of the prison’s caregiving protocol.

Aubrey Bayless positioned Lassiter’s wheelchair on the far side of the table and disappeared into the background, taking a chair next to the door. For a few moments, Brandon and Lassiter studied each other across the table between them as well as across the years. Lassiter was the first to speak.

“Thank you for coming to see me, Sheriff Walker,” he said. “I appreciate it. And please accept my belated condolences about your son. Cirrhosis is a tough way to go. I don’t blame him for taking an early out.”

Brandon was taken aback. “You knew Quentin?”

Lassiter shrugged. “He and I talked sometimes when we were both in the infirmary. That’s how I knew about the work you do for that cold case group, TLC. Quentin told me. That’s why I asked for you.”

It took a moment for Brandon to swallow the lump that suddenly filled his throat. Words of condolence from Big Bad John weren’t at all what Brandon Walker had expected.

“Thank you for that,” he murmured. “Thank you very much.”

WHEN GABE’S EYES BLINKED OPEN, at first he thought he’d gone blind. He was in utter darkness. There was no light. He could move his legs, but nothing else. His arms were secured to his sides with something that was probably duct tape. A gag was in his mouth, making it impossible to speak. Gentle swaying from side to side and the sound of tires on pavement told him he was in a moving vehicle, but he had no idea how much time had passed since the stun gun attack, followed by an injection of some kind that had knocked him loopy.

He sniffed the air. It smelled rank—­as though someone had peed his pants and probably something worse. Gabe’s face went hot with embarrassment. How could he be such a coward? He couldn’t even be brave when someone had knocked him out. Then over the sound of the tires he became aware of something else—­of someone else. There was another person with him in this dark place, someone who was now sobbing brokenly.

Gabe tried to shift his position, wanting to turn his face in the direction of the sound, but he couldn’t. There was an unyielding barrier just above him. In the dark and through his clothing he couldn’t tell if the low ceiling was made of wood or metal. Whatever it was, it didn’t move, and it was low enough that it didn’t allow him to turn over on his side. He could lie flat, staring up into the darkness, and that was it.