Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [90]
They were almost back to Big Fields before Brandon Walker broached the subject. “Where is Roseanne buried?” he asked.
“Over there,” Emma said, nodding in the direction of a small barbed-wire-enclosed cemetery near the far boundary of the village. “Her father’s there, too. Why?”
“Do you mind showing me?”
“No.”
Brandon parked the vehicle as close as possible to the battered iron gate that marked the cemetery’s entrance. As he retrieved Emma’s walker and helped her down to the ground, a collection of curious children gathered around. While Brandon opened the gate, Emma entered, holding her head high. She threaded unerringly through a collection of sagging crosses and simple headstones. Inside a small separately fenced plot were three headstones—two large ones on either side of a tiny white cross. Henry Orozco’s name was carved into one of the large headstones. Roseanne’s name was carved on the other. The cross between them had no name at all.
After examining the middle cross, Brandon looked questioningly at Emma. “Roseanne’s baby?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Roseanne couldn’t name her, so we didn’t either. They took the baby for the autopsy and kept it even after we buried Roseanne. When they finally released the baby’s body, we put her here so she could be with her mother.”
“The baby was a girl,” Brandon said, thinking about what Fat Crack had said about the Tohono O’odham’s lost girls. Roseanne Orozco and her daughter were two of them, right along with Lani and Delia. But that made sense. After all, hadn’t Rita Antone and Fat Crack both taught him that among the Desert People all things in nature go in fours?
“Yes,” Emma agreed.
The fact that the baby’s remains had been separated from her mother’s was more than Brandon Walker could have hoped for, but that didn’t make asking the critical questions any easier. He wanted to be diplomatic and kind. Emma Orozco had been hurt enough.
“Was the baby embalmed?” he asked.
“I don’t know. No one ever told us.”
She spoke softly, carefully, but Brandon knew what both the questions and answers cost her. “Do you know about DNA?”
“You mean like at O.J.’s trial?” Emma returned. “Sure, I know about that.”
“Yes,” Brandon said. “Like with O.J., but DNA identification techniques have improved greatly since then.”
“You want to dig up the baby?”
Emma’s direct approach caught Brandon off-guard. “Yes,” he said. “I’m thinking Law and Order may have been right back then. If we learn who the baby’s father was…”
“Do what you need to do, Mr. Walker,” Emma Orozco said. “If you need me to sign papers to make it happen, just let me know.”
Diana had told Lani that Davy wouldn’t be able to pick her up at Sky Harbor. Candace and Tyler would be coming in Davy’s stead, but all through the long plane trip, Lani had hoped that either her brother or her dad would be there to pick her up.
It wasn’t that Lani disliked Candace. It was just that, with Candace’s upscale Midwest background, the two young women had virtually nothing in common—other than their mutual love for Lani’s brother. On that single subject they were in total agreement.
When she saw Candace and Tyler waving at her from the far side of the security checkpoint, Lani’s heart fell. She had tried without success to sleep on the plane. Now, bone-weary and still mourning, she was faced with riding home with someone who had once thought that Crack was somehow Fat Crack’s last name. Davy and Lani knew the emptiness Fat Crack’s absence would leave in both their lives. Candace had no clue.
Tyler, waving and grinning, gave every evidence of being delighted to see his auntie—right up until she was close enough to touch. At that point, he buried his head in his mother’s shoulder and screamed bloody murder.
“How was your flight?” Candace asked, bouncing the child and trying to quiet him.
“All right,