Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [84]
“It must have been 1970 or so,” Brandon answered. That wasn’t entirely true. Brandon had gone over his notes with care. He knew exactly when it was, but he wasn’t about to say so. And since this was nothing but a hunch, he wasn’t going to push it.
“There you go,” Brian said. “The suspect we’ve got in custody wouldn’t even have been in kindergarten in 1970. Unless he set out to be a serial killer very early on…”
Eighteen
They say it happened long ago that an Indian man and his woman loved their baby very, very much.
The mother took very good care of her little one. She kept the baby with her all the time. Even when the woman went to work in the fields, she took her baby with her. She never left her in the care of someone else at home.
The other babies of the village grew strong and fat and cried and pulled things. But this baby never ever cried. All day she lay in her cradle and slept or smiled but never cried.
This Indian mother carefully arranged the ropes for her baby’s nuhkuth, which, in the old days, was the soft cradle all Tohono O’odham mothers used to make to protect their precious babies. Over the ropes she put her softest blankets. She used extra ropes and extra blankets. When she took the baby to the field with her, she was so carefully wrapped that the nuhkuth looked like a big cocoon. And the mother always made sure that wherever she left her baby girl, it was nice and shady.
The grave was dug before it got hot. The five men drove into Sells, where they gratefully tucked into a breakfast of fresh tamales and paper-thin, hot-off-the-griddle tortillas. Brian and Davy stayed only long enough to eat, then they both headed back to Tucson. While mostly female visitors trooped in and out of the house to pay their respects to Wanda, Leo and Baby held court outside. They gathered visiting menfolk around Baby’s baby—his blue 1983 Ford F-100 with its chromed-out valve covers and air cleaner and its oddball, low-powered 232 V6 engine. To a man they all marveled that anyone in his right mind would ever buy such an underpowered vehicle. Baby told them that the original owner, up in Phoenix, never drove it faster than thirty-five.
Tired of talking trucks and thinking Diana might be ready to head home, Brandon ventured inside to check. To his surprise, he found her busily wrapping corn husks around hunks of uncooked masa filled with meat.
“How soon before you’ll be done?” he asked.
“Not for a while,” she said. “Are you in a hurry?”
Brandon was, actually. Yesterday he had learned something concerning the Roseanne Orozco investigation that he was eager to follow up on today. He wanted to get started, but Diana, who spent most of her time in the solitary occupation of writing, seemed to be at home in the company of this group of industrious women.
“No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ll wait outside with Leo and Baby and the others.”
For a time Brandon watched a collection of children play makeshift soccer on the cleared dirt field between the compound’s collection of houses and the mini-mart and auto-repair buildings along the highway. No doubt the kids had all been coached about the solemnity of the occasion, but childish natural exuberance could only be suppressed for so long. As they chased the ball back and forth, Brandon remembered when Lani was that age.
He had loved standing on the sidelines of her soccer matches, watching her jet-black ponytail plume out behind her as she raced up and down the field. Neither Tommy nor Quentin had been into sports. Besides, Brandon had been working too many hours when they were little. He had missed out completely on that part of their growing-up years, which probably accounted for his determination not to miss that time with Lani. He made it his business to be there for her—every game, every school program or play, every parent-teacher conference.
Brandon glanced at his watch and shook his head. If he’d known he’d be done in Ban Thak this early, he would have volunteered to collect Lani from the airport rather