Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [47]
“It’s true,” Brandon agreed. “Emma Orozco came to see me yesterday. She wanted to know if I could help find her daughter’s killer, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Fat Crack nodded. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said it’s been a long time since her daughter died. More than thirty years.”
“A long time to wait for justice,” Fat Crack observed.
“Yes,” Brandon said.
“Are you going to help her?”
“I’m going to try, but why did she wait so long?”
Fat Crack shrugged and said nothing.
“She indicated her husband didn’t want her to pursue it. She waited until after he died.”
Fat Crack nodded. “Some people always thought Henry did it—that he got Roseanne pregnant and then killed her because he was afraid Emma would find out. No one ever proved he did anything wrong.”
“Nobody ever disproved it, either,” Brandon offered.
“Yes,” Fat Crack said. “That’s right.”
“What do you think?” Brandon asked.
“Henry Orozco was a good man,” Fat Crack answered finally, echoing what Diana had said. “I know that some men do bad things to their daughters, but not Henry. You could ask his other daughter, Andrea. She’s Andrea Tashquinth now. She’s the produce manager over at Basha’s.”
“Andrea Tashquinth is one of the people I planned to see today,” Brandon said. “You’re right. She works at Basha’s, and Emma said she’d be working today.”
“Good,” Fat Crack said.
“You remember when it happened, then?” Brandon asked.
“Oh, yes. I remember.”
“Were there any other suspects?”
“Not that I know of,” Fat Crack said, “although I don’t think anyone looked very hard.”
Both men were quiet for a moment, both thinking the same thing—that had Roseanne Orozco been an Anglo, more would have been made of her death and the search for her killer might well have been successful.
“Would you do me a favor?” Fat Crack asked.
“Sure,” Brandon agreed quickly. “What do you need?”
Fat Crack reached under his blanket. From the same place where he had retrieved the cordless telephone, he now produced a leather bag—a huashomi—Looks at Nothing’s fringed buckskin medicine pouch, one the scrawny old man had always worn around his thin waist. The pouch was far more threadbare now than it had been the first time Brandon Walker had seen it in the parking lot of the Pima County Sheriff’s office almost three decades earlier.
Fat Crack had brought Looks at Nothing to the department and had waited patiently until Brandon showed up hours later. And there, under a mesquite tree next to the parking lot, Brandon had watched the old medicine man deftly fill and roll a homemade cigarette using wiw—Indian tobacco—rather than the unfiltered Camels Brandon had smoked prior to quitting several months earlier. After lighting the hand-rolled cigarette with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter that must have dated from World War II, Looks at Nothing had taken a long drag. Then ceremoniously saying the word nawoj—which, Brandon later learned, in the context of the Tohono O’odham Peace Smoke, means friendly gift—he passed it along, first to Fat Crack and then to Brandon Walker.
It had been Brandon’s first encounter with the Peace Smoke. He had been startled by the sharp, bitter taste. Only with the greatest of effort had he managed to keep from coughing. But even then, with the smoke still singeing his throat and lungs, Brandon Walker understood that he’d been allowed entry into something special—something most Anglos didn’t experience in a lifetime.
He watched now as Fat Crack once again extracted that same familiar lighter from the bag. “Would you help me? Wanda doesn’t like me to do it. She’s afraid I’ll burn the place down.”
“Sure,” Brandon said. “I’ll do my best.”
Even though Fat Crack couldn’t see to critique what he was doing, Brandon Walker felt self-conscious as he clumsily rolled the tobacco into a ragged imitation of a cigarette. “Now what?” he asked when he finished.
Wordlessly, Fat Crack handed him the lighter. The brass was worn thin. The