Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [109]
“Sure,” the sheriff said into the phone. “Of course. I know just what you mean, and I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Forsythe put down the phone and then glowered across his desk at Brian. “Thanks for coming, Detective Fellows,” he said. “I was just looking over the paperwork from yesterday, and I came across your interview with Erik LaGrange.”
“Is there a problem?” Brian asked.
“I’ll say there’s a problem,” Forsythe growled. “Do you know who LaGrange works for?”
“Yes,” Brian answered. “Medicos for Mexico. It says so right there in the report.”
“And Medicos for Mexico is run by…?”
Brian bristled at the condescending, pop-quiz nature of Forsythe’s dressing-down, but he tried not to let it show. “Dr. Lawrence and Gayle Stryker,” he answered carefully.
“Do you have any idea how influential these people are in this community?” Forsythe demanded. “You don’t drag people like them through a homicide investigation just for the hell of it.”
“Gayle Stryker was having an affair with the guy who’s our prime suspect,” Brian interjected. “He claims she’s the only one who can give us an accounting of where he was and what he was doing the night before the murder.”
Forsythe pounced on Brian’s words. “Yes,” he said. “The night before, but not the day of the murder. I’ve looked at the preliminary ME report. Fran Daly estimates time of death as sometime Saturday morning. LaGrange told you himself that the woman left his house the previous evening. That means, Detective Fellows, that Mrs. Stryker’s being with LaGrange on Friday night has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the dirtbag has an alibi.”
“But—”
“No buts, mister,” Forsythe interrupted. “I’m giving you the word, and I’m giving you an order. Back off! If you even so much as call Gayle Stryker and ask her a single question, I’ll have your ears and your badge. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Forsythe grumbled irritably. “Now get going.”
Twenty-Three
The dead baby was so small that they could not place her kneeling as the Desert People place their dead. So they laid the little girl on her bright blankets and very carefully covered her with branches of shegoi—creosote bush and kui—mesquite. Then they picked up the big rocks.
By then the mother could not see. She was looking at the sun. She did not want to be a weak Indian, but she could not watch as they threw the rocks on the little mound of brush. She turned and started down the mountain toward the village. She walked fast and stumbled often.
When the woman reached her house, the first thing she saw was one of the cradles which she had made for her baby. The cradle was swinging from the branches of a mesquite tree. For this nuhkuth she had used a brown blanket. She snatched the cradle down. She folded the blanket and pressed it against that thing inside her which hurt so much. Then she went away from the house because she did not want to be there when the others came back.
The trail led down to the water among the cottonwoods. The woman could not see where she was going, but she did not care.
There were many trees down by the water, but most of the leaves had come off because summer was gone. And it was almost dark because Tash—the sun—had already set.
The woman was still holding the brown cradle blanket close against her breast when she seemed to hear a baby’s weak voice. She looked and just beyond the water she saw a tiny brown cradle swinging from the low branches of a tree.
Brian Fellows arrived at the ME’s office still smarting from his encounter with Sheriff Forsythe. By the time he got there, the victim’s fingerprints had already been taken and forwarded to the lab, but even with that out of the way, the rest of the autopsy seemed to take forever. Dr. Daly’s work was thorough and unhurried. One by one she noted the numerous individual wounds—evidence of