Day of the Dead (22 page)

“Damn!” Brian muttered. “What a shame! Fat Crack was a hell of a nice guy. He always treated Davy and me like we were special.”

“Maybe you were,” Kath said. “Davy called earlier to say you and he are invited to come to
Ban Thak
early tomorrow morning to help dig the grave. Six A.M. I told him that you were working a case, and I wasn’t sure you could make it.”

“I’ll be there,” Brian said at once. “It’s an honor to be asked, and it would be bad form not to show up.”

The microwave sounded in the kitchen, and the mouthwatering aroma of chili drifted into the room. Kath disappeared and returned moments later carrying a tray laden with a bowl of chili, silverware, and a glass of cold milk.

“The milk’s to soothe the burn,” she told him. “I went overboard on the chili. Now tell me about your case,” she added, resuming her spot on the couch. “You’ve already got a suspect in custody. What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s just too easy,” Brian replied. “The victim is a little Hispanic girl—maybe fourteen or fifteen—who was hacked to pieces and dumped out near Vail. No identification of any kind, but we’re guessing from clothing left at the scene—clothing she wasn’t wearing when she was murdered—that she’s probably a UDA. Instead of an ID we found a guy’s business card—tucked in among the victim’s effects. The name on the card was Erik LaGrange and a phone number that turned out to be his home number was scribbled on the back.

“We located his house and went there to see if LaGrange could help us ID her. Instead, I found what looked like blood on the bumper of his truck and more blood on the front-door jamb.”

“Enough for a warrant?” Kath asked.

Brian nodded. “Once we gained access to his vehicle, we found lots of blood in his truck, and in the house we found bloody shoe prints in the hallway. There were shoes with blood on them in the bedroom closet and bloody clothes in a clothes hamper with the washing machine sitting right there next to it.”

“Why didn’t he stick them in the washer?” Kath asked.

“My thought exactly,” Brian responded. “I sure as hell would have had it been me. But back to the scene, I put in a call to the department. About an hour or so later, while I was waiting for PeeWee Segura to show up with the warrant, a guy in his mid-thirties showed up who turns out to be Mr. LaGrange. He was bloody and looked like he’d been in a bar fight. He claimed he’d been off on a hike in the mountains all morning long and all by his little lonesome. Of course, nobody saw him hiking, so he’s got no alibi, but still…”

Brian fell silent for a moment and savored the first bite of the piping-hot chili. Temperature wasn’t the only thing that made his mouth sizzle.

“Does the name Medicos for Mexico ring a bell?” he asked after chasing the chili with a swallow of cold milk.

“Sure,” Kath replied. “It’s a charity that uses volunteers to provide free medical care for impoverished patients across the line in Mexico. The people who run it, Gayle and Larry Stryker, are big shots around town. He’s a doctor, and she’s practically the first lady of Tucson. Their pictures and names are in the paper all the time, mostly in the society pages. Why? What about them?”

“Erik LaGrange works for Medicos for Mexico. He’s their development officer and reports to Mrs. Stryker.”

“What happens now?”

“LaGrange won’t talk to us without a lawyer. I’m hoping I can pull some strings and get one appointed tomorrow so we can interview him. The county attorney called a meeting tomorrow afternoon to speed up the process. With any luck the grave will be dug before that.”

“He called a meeting on Sunday?” Kath objected. “That’s our one day off together.”

“I’m sorry,” Brian told her. “When the county attorney says jump, grunts like PeeWee and me don’t have much choice but to do it.”

“I love it when elected officials remind us that we’re public servants and need to be treated as such,” Kath grumbled.

Brian Fellows took another drink of milk and then smiled at his wife. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Kath. When I come home from work with tales of woe, I know I’m talking to someone who understands.”

“Right,” she told him. “Now finish your chili. If you’re going to be at Coyote Sitting digging a grave at six tomorrow morning, you need some sleep.”

Kath had the right idea. They went to bed soon after that, but Brian had a hard time falling asleep. When he did, he woke up time and again. He kept having the same dream over and over, one filled with black plastic garbage bags overflowing with bloodied body parts.

Sixteen

Leo Ortiz snored the night away while Delia Ortiz tossed and turned. Years of living in the Anglo world left her ill suited to deal with death in the same undemonstrative way people handled it on the reservation. Leo and Baby Fat Crack had both loved their father and respected him, but they accepted his death with quiet fortitude and dealt with the logistics—getting a casket, making arrangements with a mortuary, and digging the grave—in the same unruffled fashion. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Leo slept so peacefully. He hadn’t been at war with his father. Delia had been. Guilt over the unresolved issues between her and Fat Crack kept Delia wide awake into the wee hours—that and the unrelenting kicking of the restless infant inside her womb.

Wanda Ortiz’s reaction to her husband’s death was much like that of her two sons. It had happened, and now she had things to do. Once the funeral and burial were over, all the attendees would show up at
Ban Thak
for the customary feast. Considering Fat Crack’s standing in the community, not only as a former tribal chairman but also as the acknowledged
siwani
—chief medicine man—both events would be widely attended. That required lots of food—and a good deal of organization. There were hundreds of tamales and tortillas to be made; vats of chili and beans to be cooked. To that end, Wanda Ortiz had summoned her daughter from Tucson, her two daughters-in-law, and any other able-bodied female relatives to appear at the family compound the next morning ready for a day’s worth of non-stop cooking.

Before Delia had returned to the reservation seven years earlier, she had never made a single tamale or tortilla. Aunt Julia had tactfully suggested that it might be a good idea for her to learn; Delia had resisted. It reminded her of the fading poster that still hung in the hallway of Ruth’s house outside Cambridge. It showed a photo of Israel’s first and so far only female premier, Golda Meir. The caption under the photo said “But can she type?” That had been Delia’s position as well. As tribal attorney, it didn’t seem necessary for her to know how to make tortillas and tamales. In D.C., the lack of those skills had never been a problem.

***

She had been annoyed
when tribal chairman Gabe Ortiz, at Aunt Julia’s instigation, had shown up on her doorstep to offer unsolicited advice about her personal life. She’d been astonished when he offered her the job of tribal attorney, but she suspected that was only a thinly disguised smoke screen for her interfering auntie’s private agenda—that Delia should dump Philip Cachora and come home to the reservation. Delia had turned the job down cold.

She had fallen hopelessly in love with Philip Cachora, and she was determined to keep him. She had met Philip at the grand opening of a show at the National Gallery, an exhibit of works by what they termed “Emerging Native American Artists.” After growing up as an urban Indian, Delia was increasingly uncomfortable with the phrase
Native American.
Educated in the best private schools Ruth Waldron’s Boston pedigree had wangled, Delia saw life through essentially Anglo eyes. For her, the words
Native American
conjured up pictures of loincloth-wearing savages.

She went to the gallery opening with her friend and roommate, Marcia Lomax, who worked for the Department of Justice. They went on a pair of free tickets given her by Delia’s boss. They expected to show up, have a few drinks, nosh on the free food, and then go to a movie.

Delia and Marcia were standing and chatting in front of a massive full-length oil portrait of a handsome Indian man with much of his face obscured by a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He wore a tattered straw cowboy hat—a Resistol—and an equally tattered American flag wrapped around him like a toga. The piece was called
Promises
.

“Well, ladies,” a pleasantly deep male voice said. “Have you figured out what it means?”

Delia turned from the portrait to the voice and did a double take. The painting seemed to have come to life, reflective sunglasses and all, although the straw hat had been replaced by a huge black felt Stetson and the flag by a designer tuxedo. As far as Delia was concerned, the affectation of wearing Ray•Bans inside meant two things—trouble and phony.

“I take it we’re looking at a portrait of the artist as a young man?” Delia asked.

He pretended to wince. “Not that much younger, I hope. But yes, I’m him, or vice versa. The name’s Philip Cachora. Where are you two from?”

“Justice,” Marcia replied.

“BIA,” Delia chimed in.

“I mean, where are you
from
?” Philip insisted. “Or is Justice the name of a little town somewhere in the middle of Tennessee or Missouri?”

“I work at the Department of Justice,” Marcia answered. “I’m
from
Milwaukee.”

Delia shook her head. “Forget it,” she said. “Nobody’s ever heard of where I’m from.”

“Try me.”

“Sells, Arizona,” she said.

Philip Cachora’s jaw dropped. “No shit!” he exclaimed. He tipped his hat. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”

“How about you?” Delia asked.

“Vamori,” he said.

Delia and Marcia exchanged glances. “Okay,” Delia said. “We give up. Where’s that?”

“About twenty miles southwest of Sells, actually,” he replied with a grin. “Obviously you’re not up on Tohono O’odham geography. What’s a nice Indian girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Delia answered. “For the BIA.”

“Where’s your family from?” he asked, moving in on Delia in a way that effectively edged Marcia out of the conversation. She shrugged and then obligingly strolled on through the exhibit, leaving Philip and Delia alone. “I mean, from what villages on the reservation?”

“My father came from Big Fields originally,” Delia said. “My mother’s family came from Little Tucson. That’s all I know. I left the reservation when I was seven and haven’t been back.”

“That’s a long time,” he observed.

“Twenty years,” she agreed. “What about you?”

“I wanted to be an artist. Halfway through high school I opted for a boarding school in Santa Fe. I’ve been there ever since—in Santa Fe, not in boarding school. Twenty years more or less, too, but who’s counting? I make a good living. I paint Indians wearing flags and sell them to guilt-ridden limousine liberals. One guy who paid ten thousand bucks for a painting very much like this one asked if I’d ever been on the warpath. I told him I’d never been off it.”

They both laughed at that. “And then,” he added, warming to the topic, “there are always a few rich babes who figure if they buy one of my paintings they also qualify for a roll in the hay. The trick is to pry them loose from their money without getting dragged into beddy-bye.”

“You look more than capable of fending them off,” Delia observed. She glanced down the gallery and caught sight of Marcia standing near the doorway entrance into another room, chatting with someone she knew.

“Do you have plans for dinner?” Philip asked.

“Yes,” Delia said quickly. “My friend and I are booked.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“I think I’m busy then, too.”

“Come on,” he said. “I’m just a country bumpkin in town for a day or two. Couldn’t you find it in your heart to show me a few sights? I mean, we’re practically neighbors.”

It was a blatant pickup line, and Delia couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll bet you use that one a lot,” she said.

He grinned, an engaging, white-toothed grin. “It usually works, too,” he said.

“Not this time,” she told him. “Sorry.” She ducked away and caught up with Marcia.

“You escaped,” Marcia said.

“Just barely,” Delia returned. “It was a near thing.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. By three o’clock the next afternoon, a bouquet of red roses landed on Delia’s desk at the BIA. She was both pleased and annoyed—flattered that Philip Cachora had gone to the trouble of tracking her down and dismayed because the nation’s capital offered so little anonymity. An hour later her phone rang.

“What’s your Indian name?” Philip asked as soon as she answered.

“I don’t have one,” she replied.

“How can you be Indian and not have an Indian name? I’m going to give you one,” he added after a moment. “I think I’ll call you
Moikchu
.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he told her with a laugh.

Delia’s mother was the one who translated the word.
Moikchu
meant Soft One. When Delia first learned what it meant, she accepted the name as a compliment. It was only later, after everything had sorted itself out, that she wondered if the word couldn’t also be used to mean soft in the head. Because when it came to Philip Cachora, she was certainly that.

“Now tell me,” he continued, “are you really booked for dinner tonight, or were you just trying to get rid of me?”

“What time and where?” she asked, giving in. After all, for a twenty-seven-year-old struggling young professional, flowers and the offer of a free meal held some appeal.

She took a cab from her office in Interior to Philip Cachora’s hotel, the Dupont Plaza. From there they walked the few blocks to the Iron Gate Restaurant on N Street NW. It was April and particularly balmy. With the air perfumed by hanging wisteria, they had an elegant romantic dinner at an outside table. When Delia fretted about the prices, Philip reassured her.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m here on a grant. I’m on display as one of an endangered species—you know, Indian-artist-under-glass. This is all on somebody else’s nickel. Have a ball. Order whatever you want.”