Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [96]
“He knew he was dying,” Lani murmured.
Brandon nodded. “And if he had told anyone…”
“They would have taken him to the hospital,” Lani finished. Then she began to cry.
Brandon tried to kneel down beside her, but a knife of pain shot through his left knee. He settled for taking her hands and pulling her up so he could hold her in his arms. “And that would have been wrong,” he said, rocking her like a baby. “You know Fat Crack would have hated that.”
Lani leaned into her father’s chest. “All I wanted was to talk to him one more time,” she sobbed. “I wanted to ask him if there was anything else he thought I should know or…”
“Lani, Lani, Lani,” Brandon murmured soothingly. “For the people left behind there’s never a right time. We’re greedy. We always want more. We’re never ready to let go, but Fat Crack was ready.”
“He told you that?”
“No, Lani,” Brandon Walker said with a catch in his voice. “He didn’t have to.”
Your ankles sure are swollen,” Leo said to Delia as he crawled into bed beside her. “Are you okay?”
“I was on my feet a lot today,” Delia said. “But I’m fine.”
“How are things for tomorrow?”
“Everything’s as ready as we can make it. Having the funeral at four will give the kids and buses a chance to leave the high school before everybody else starts showing up.”
“Good thinking.”
“You’re not planning on going to work in the morning, are you?” Leo asked.
“I thought I’d put in half a day. Why?”
“You should take it easy,” Leo said. “I’m worried about you and the baby.”
“I’m fine,” Delia said.
With that, she rolled over on her side and fell asleep.
It took time for the after-dinner hubbub to die down. Tyler, exhausted from his busy day, turned on the waterworks in a foot-stomping red-faced temper tantrum that sent Davy and Candace scurrying home early. While Lani and Diana cleared away dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Brandon retreated into his office and dialed Ralph Ames’s number in Seattle.
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday night,” Brandon said once Ralph came on the line. “But something’s come up. I’m working the Orozco case. When Roseanne’s homicide was first investigated, the top theory was that the father of her unborn baby would be the culprit. Since she had no known boyfriend, everybody thought it was a case of incest and that her father, Henry Orozco, was responsible.”
“For both the baby and the murder?” Ralph asked.
“Right,” Brandon replied. “But a blood test on the fetus eventually ruled Henry out as the father. The case went cold without turning up any other suspects.”
“It doesn’t sound like anyone was trying very hard,” Ralph Ames observed.
“She was an Indian,” Brandon said. “And the murder happened in 1970. Indian homicides weren’t exactly a priority in those days, but now I’m thinking the cops back then may have been right. I’ve located the fetus’s grave site. The grandmother is willing to let us exhume the remains, but before I dig them up, I want to be sure DNA testing is authorized.”
“Expensive but authorized,” Ralph assured him. “Hedda Brinker’s philosophy was to spare no expense. How far along was the fetus?”
“About four months,” Brandon said. “You think that’s too young for a DNA match?”
“Iffy but possible,” Ames said. “Where’s the grave located?”
“On the reservation. At a village called Big Fields.”
“Even with the grandmother’s permission, you’ll probably need a court order.”
Brandon thought about standing in the hot sun earlier that morning digging Fat Crack’s grave. That had been simple enough. They showed up at Ban Thak with picks and shovels and dug away, but that had been to bury someone, not to dig them up. Brandon didn’t know all the Tohono O’odham taboos concerning the handling of the dead, but he suspected there were some.
“We’ll probably need a court order and a medicine man,” Brandon replied.
“Do you know any?” Ralph Ames asked. “A medicine man, that is.”
Brandon paused before answering. “The one I did know died yesterday.”
“Surely there are others,” Ames returned.
There’s my daughter, Brandon Walker wanted to say. But something