Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [37]
Brian had joined the department as a deputy while Brandon was still in office. When a new administration came into power sometime later, Brian had more than half expected to be let go. Rather than fire him, Sheriff Forsythe elected to encourage Brian to quit by giving him crappy assignments and letting him work the cars far longer than he should have. Brian had fooled everybody—including himself—by sticking it out, keeping his nose clean, and doing a good job. Now a ten-year veteran, he had finally been promoted to Investigations. As new guys came on board and old guys retired, Brian Fellows’s connections to Sheriff Walker mattered less and less.
Unfortunately, neither of Brandon Walker’s biological sons had turned out to be at all like their father. Natural-born bullies, Tommy and Quentin Walker had reveled in tormenting anyone younger and weaker. On every possible occasion, they had made life miserable for their half brother, Brian, and for their father’s new stepson, Davy Ladd. Later on, as teenagers, Tommy and Quentin had run off the rails entirely and turned into full-fledged juvenile delinquents. Tommy had died at sixteen while engaged in something he’d been forbidden to do. Quentin, tortured by the part he’d played in his older brother’s death, had been in and out of trouble and/or jail ever since. Even now he was back in the slammer on a drug charge, which meant he’d be in prison for the better part of the next ten years.
But waging their joint defensive war against Tommy and Quentin had united Davy Ladd and Brian Fellows in a close childhood friendship that endured to this day. In fact, all of them—Davy Ladd, his wife, Candace, and their two-year-old son, Tyler, along with Brian and his wife, Kath—were expected at the Walkers’ place for dinner late Sunday afternoon—just like a real family.
But between then and now, Brian Fellows had work to do. Someone had been murdered and hacked to pieces in the desert. Like Brandon Walker before him, it was Brian’s job to find out who was dead—and why.
Nine
After a while, I’itoi woke up. Elder Brother laughed when he looked around and saw all the children sleeping, and he thought about what was hidden in his bag.
I’itoi called to the children. When they were all awake and watching, he opened his bag and shook it. Out fluttered the big yellow leaves and the spots of sunshine and the brown leaves and the shadows and the tiny white flowers and the small pieces of bright blue sky. They were all alive. They floated in the air for a few moments, and then they danced away into the sunlight. And the children danced after them.
I’itoi stayed in the shade of the tree and was glad that at last there was something beautiful and gay that would never change and never grow ugly as it grew old.
And this, nawoj, my friend, is the story of the birth of hohokimal—the butterflies.
Speeding east on I-10, Brian dialed home on his cell phone. When Kath didn’t answer, he left a message. “I’m on a call and headed to Vail,” he said. “It could take time. I’ll let you know when I’ll be home.”
Minutes later, he pulled off the freeway at Vail and headed for the Fast Horse Ranch development. A mile or so beyond the subdivision, he saw the clump of parked vehicles. He pulled in behind a patrol car sitting with its back door open. A woman was inside and a dog—a big German shepherd—lay on the ground nearby, panting and keeping a wary eye on the people milling about. Deputy Ruben Gomez met Brian before he was fully out of the car.
“What’s the deal?” Brian asked.
“It’s pretty bad,” the deputy replied. “Little girl, Hispanic, probably fourteen or fifteen years old. Somebody’s hacked her to pieces and stuffed her in a bunch of garbage bags. The lady in my car, Ms. Lammers—Susan Lammers—was out walking with her dog. The dog ran on ahead and came running back carrying an arm. As soon as she saw it, Ms. Lammers called