Kiss of the Bees (44 page)

One minute Deputy Fellows was wide awake, staring at the doors to the ICU waiting room. The next minute, Gabe Ortiz was shaking him awake.

“Brian?”

Brian’s eyes flicked open. It took a moment for the face in front of his to register. “Fat Crack!” he exclaimed. “How the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

“Delia Cachora, Manny Chavez’s daughter, works with me out on the reservation. When we heard about her father, I offered to drive her into town.”

Brian glanced around the waiting room. No one else was there. “Where is she?” he asked.

“A nurse took Delia in to see him,” Fat Crack said. “How does it look?”

Brian shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “It’s his back. Broken.”

“How did it happen?” Gabe Ortiz asked. “I heard it had something to do with Rattlesnake Skull.”

Brian nodded. “At the
charco
. It sounds as though he came across someone—an Anglo—digging up bones there by the water hole. We think Mr. Chavez thought the guy was digging up ancient artifacts and tried to stop him. The guy attacked Mr. Chavez with a shovel.”

Fat Crack was shaking his head when an Indian woman in her mid- to late thirties emerged from behind the doors to the ICU. “He’s still unconscious,” she said, addressing Gabe Ortiz. “No one knows when he’ll come out from under the anesthetic. His condition is serious enough that somebody had a priest come around and deliver last rites. The nurse said he was really bent out of shape about that. My father stopped being a Catholic a long time ago.”

Blushing, Brian stood up. “You must be Delia Cachora. I’m Deputy Fellows,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid the priest business is all my fault. When we found your father, he was saying something over and over in
Tohono O’othham
. I thought he was calling for a priest—
pahl
. It turns out he was saying
pahla
.”

“Shovel,” Fat Crack supplied.

Brian Fellows nodded. “That’s right. Shovel. I’m sorry if the priest upset him.”

Delia Chavez Cachora gave him a puzzled glance. “Where did you learn to speak
Tohono O’othham
?” she asked.

“From a friend of mine,” he answered. “Davy Ladd.”

Delia’s reaction was instantaneous. Without a word, she turned away from both men and stalked from the waiting room. Brian turned to Gabe.

“I’m really sorry about all the confusion. I guess she’s upset. The problem is, I’m supposed to try to talk to her. The detective left me the job of asking her some questions, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work. Was it the priest stuff?” Brian asked. “Or do you think it was something I said?”

Gabe Ortiz smiled and eased himself into the chair next to the one where Brian had been sitting earlier. He folded his arms across his broad chest and closed his eyes.

“No, Brian,” Gabe replied. “I believe it was something
I
said. Sit down and take a load off. Delia’s upset at the moment, but if we just sit here and wait, eventually she’ll come around.”

Quentin had told Mitch to wake him up as soon as they got to the turnoff to Coleman Road. It bothered Mitch a little that where they were going was so damned close to where the Bounder was parked. He had chosen that particular spot because there, on the edge of the reservation, was about as far from town as he could get. But it was natural that the edge of the reservation, rather than the middle of it, was where Quentin would have discovered his treasure trove of Native American pots.

Still, as long as Mitch played his cards right, it didn’t matter that much. He glanced toward Lani. Obviously he had measured out a better dosage this time. The amount of drug Mitch had used, combined with his threat to kill Quentin, was working well enough. Lani Walker was docile without being comatose. That might prove beneficial. If the terrain was as rough as Quentin claimed it would be, Mitch would probably need Lani to be able to climb on her own power rather than being carried or dragged.

Quentin himself was Mitch’s biggest concern as they drove west toward the reservation. Would he be able to rouse Quentin enough when the time came to get him to do what was needed? If not, he might have to do an on-the-fly revision of his plan and let the pots go. They had been gravy all along—an extra added attraction. What was not optional was how he left Quentin and Lani once Mitch was ready to walk away. He would arrange the bodies artfully.

Lani would be found right alongside the remains of her killer. The scenario would be plain for all to see. After murdering and mutilating his sister, the record would show that Quentin Walker had taken his own life.

How do you suppose you’ll like them apples, Mr. Brandon Walker?
Mitch Johnson grinned to himself.
It should give you something to think about for the rest of your goddamned natural life.

The turnoff was coming up. “Okay now,” Mitch said to Lani. “Nap time’s over. Wake him up so he can give me directions.”

Lani turned to Quentin. “Wake up,” she said. He didn’t stir.

“Come on, girl,” Mitch said, once again grasping her lower thigh. “I know you can do better than that!” He didn’t bother to tighten his grip. He didn’t have to. Obviously, Lani Walker had learned how to take orders.

“Come on, Quentin,” she said, shaking her brother’s shoulder. “You have to wake up now.”

Quentin tried to dodge the commanding voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He was enjoying his sleep. There was no reason for him not to. And who the hell was this woman who was so damned determined to wake him up?

He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the face hovering in front of his. When the world spun on its axis, Quentin shut his eyes immediately. He tried to shut his ears as well.

“Quentin!” Another voice this time. A male voice. “Wake the hell up and get busy!”

Mitch. Mitch Johnson, and he sounded pissed. Quentin struggled to open his eyes. “Where are we, Mitch?” Quentin mumbled, not quite able to make his tongue and mouth work in any kind of harmony. “Whazza problem?”

“The problem is we’re almost to Coleman Road, and I don’t know what the hell to do next.”

“Doan worry ‘bout a thing,” Quentin murmured, closing his eyes once more. “Just lemme sleep a little longer.”

“Wake him up!” Mitch demanded. “Slap him around if you have to, but get his eyes open.”

Quentin felt a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He opened his eyes once more.

A woman’s face—a girl’s, really—hovered anxiously over him. It took a matter of seconds for the dark hair and eyes to arrange themselves into a recognizable creature. As soon as that happened, Quentin could barely believe it. Lani! The shock of recognition stunned him and brought him out of his stupor, although as soon as he tried to sit up, a fierce attack of vertigo once again sent the interior of the Bronco whirling around him.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Quentin demanded. “I said I’d take you to the cave. Bringing someone else along wasn’t part of the bargain, especially not her.”

Quentin didn’t like being around his sister. Lani was almost as weird as that old Indian hag named Rita who used to take care of her when she was little. Lani had funny ways about her, ways of knowing things that she maybe shouldn’t have, just like Rita. If Quentin had been able to, he would have climbed in the backseat right then, just to put some distance between them.

“She’s your sister, isn’t she?” Mitch returned mildly. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought her along for the ride.”

“Mitch,” Quentin said, speaking slowly, trying to make his lips and brain work in conjunction, trying to make it sound as though his objection were more general and less personal. “Don’t you understand anything? She may be my stepsister, but she’s also an Indian. Once the tribe hears about my pots, they’ll raise all kinds of hell.”

“Lani’s not going to say anything to anybody, are you, Lani?”

Once again, Vega’s warning fingers caressed the top of her leg. Dreading his viselike grip, Lani flinched under the pressure of his hand and shook her head.

“No,” she said at once. “I won’t tell anybody. I promise.”

The turnoff to Coleman Road was coming up fast. Mitch Johnson switched on his signal. “Now what?”

“Go about half a mile up. There’s a road off to the left. A few yards beyond that, there’s a wash off to the right. Turn there.”

“Up the wash?”

“Right,” Quentin said, grateful that his tongue and lips seemed to be working better now, although he felt like hell. This was one of the worst hangovers he’d ever encountered.

“Before we turn off, though,” he continued, “you’ll need to stop and let me drive. The trail isn’t marked. You won’t know where to go.”

Mitch glanced dubiously across the seat. “You’re sure you can drive?”

“What do you think I am, drunk or something?” Quentin asked irritably.

“Definitely or something,” Mitch Johnson whispered under his breath.

Lani sat quietly between the two men—between her brother and the man Quentin had just called Mitch. At least she now knew what the
M
stood for in Vega’s signature. Mitch.

As the Bronco’s heavy-duty tires whined down the pavement, Lani looked up at the shadow of mountain looming above them.
Ioligam’
s stately dark flanks were silhouetted against a starry sky.

They were going after pots. If they had been found here on the reservation, they were actually
Tohono O’othham
pots that might have been hidden inside the mountain for hundreds of years. Perhaps they had remained hidden from view in one of the sacred caves on
I’itoi’
s second favorite mountain.

She remembered once listening to Davy and Brian Fellows talking about the day Tommy and Quentin Walker had found a big limestone cave out on the reservation.

“They didn’t go inside, did they?” Lani had asked.

Davy shrugged. “Of course they did.”

“But that’s against the rules,” Lani had objected indignantly. “Nobody’s supposed to go inside those caves. They’re sacred. You should have stopped them.”

Davy and Brian had both laughed at her. “What’s so funny?” she had demanded. “Why are you two laughing?”

“Fortunately, you’re much too young to remember growing up with Quentin and Tommy. When we were all kids, those two were a pair of holy terrors. As far as they were concerned, rules were made to be broken.”

“So what happened?”

“As far as I know, they went there just that once,” Brian said. “It wasn’t long after that when Tommy ran away. If Quentin went back out to the reservation to go exploring the cave by himself, he never mentioned it.”

“If they went inside the cave, maybe that’s what happened to Tommy.”

“What?” Brian asked.

“Maybe
I’itoi
got him,” Lani said.

Brian shook his head. When he spoke, the laughter had gone out of his voice. “Don’t ever say anything about this to your dad,” he said seriously, “but from the rumors I heard, I’d say drug-dealing is what got Tommy. What I’ve never been able to understand is why it didn’t get Quentin, too.”

As they turned up Coleman Road, Lani felt a growing certainty that the place where they were going was the same cave Brian and Davy had talked about. Off to the left was the dirt track that led off to Rattlesnake Skull
charco,
the place they used to go every year to redecorate the shrine dedicated to Nana
Dahd’
s murdered granddaughter.

“We shouldn’t go there,” Lani said softly, unable to keep herself from issuing the warning. Even someone as cruel as Mitch Vega deserved to be warned away from danger.

“See there?” Quentin yelped angrily, glaring at her. “I knew you shouldn’t have brought her.”

“Shut up, Lani,” Mitch said.

Lani closed her eyes and tried to hear Rita’s words.
Listen to me and do exactly as I say.

Alvin Miller was a talented guy who was able to do his work in a seemingly focused fashion, all the while carrying on a reasonably intelligent conversation with whoever happened to be within earshot.

In this case, as he carried his gear into Brandon and Diana Walker’s house in Gates Pass, Brandon was giving Alvin an earful. He had responded to former Sheriff Walker’s call for help without asking for any specific details on the situation. Now, though, Brandon was venting his frustration over the way Detective Ford Myers was—or rather
was not
—handling the disappearance of Brandon’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Lani.

Other than having been one once, Alvin wasn’t especially wise to the ways of teenagers. Nonetheless, he did see some merit to Detective Ford’s inclination to go slow and not push panic buttons. Although Alvin sympathized with his former boss, he could see that the whole thing might very well turn out to be nothing but a headstrong teenager pulling a stunt on her too-trusting parents. After all, armed or not, most missing kids did turn up back home eventually.

So Alvin listened and nodded. Betweentimes, he went to work. “What all would you like me to check for prints?” he asked.

“Lani’s bicycle,” Brandon answered. “That’s outside in the carport. There’s a pair of rubber-handled tongs in the kitchen sink. And back in my study, somebody went to the trouble of breaking up a couple thousand bucks’ worth of custom-framing.”

For comparison purposes, Alvin took prints from both Brandon and Diana Walker as well as prints from places in the daughter’s room that would most likely prove to belong to Lani herself. He packed up the tongs, the bicycle, and the better part of the picture-frame display. Alvin knew he’d be better off dusting those in the privacy of his lab. What he couldn’t take back to the department with him was the house itself and furniture that was too big to move.

“Where did you say you kept the key to the gun cabinet?”

“In the desk.” Brandon had been following Alvin from room to room, watching the process with intent interest. As Alvin settled down to dust the desktop, Brandon left the room. The print—one with a distinctive diagonal slash across the face of it—leaped out at Alvin the moment he delicately brushed the graphite across the smooth oak surface.