Dance of the Bones

It was another two days before Redington Road was again passable. Driving a four--wheel drive SUV, Brandon led the late--arriving M.E. back to the crime scene. This time, with the aid of a metal detector, Brandon Walker searched the mesquite grove and managed to find and retrieve not one but two spent bullets. They were buried in dirt, otherwise pack rats would have carried them off long ago.

Among the bones the M.E. collected were three rib bones and a sternum that showed the victim had been shot at least three times in the chest. Because of the driver’s license they already suspected they knew the victim’s name, but it took far longer for dental records to confirm that this truly was Amos Warren, a man who had disappeared in 1970 and been declared missing in 1971. Not long after that, Brandon Walker had found himself hot on the trail of John Lassiter, arresting him and bringing him to justice.

As for Suzanne Holder? It was years before Brandon saw her again. By then he was no longer a homicide detective. He had run against Sheriff Jack DuShane and had won the race fair and square. It was sometime after that, probably during his second term in office, when his receptionist had called over the intercom to say that he had a visitor in the outer office, someone named Suzanne Holder, who wanted to see him.

At first Brandon couldn’t place the name, but as soon as she stepped into his private office, he recognized her as the woman from Amos Warren’s long--ago crime scene. She was still freckle faced, but her long wind--blown blond hair was cut in a fashionable bob. The hiking boots and jeans had been replaced by a suit and a pair of low pumps.

“My goodness,” he said as they shook hands. “It’s been years. How are you doing and what are you doing these days?”

“I’m in town for a meeting,” Suzanne said, “but I had to come by and say thank you.”

Brandon was bemused. “Thank you?” he asked. “For what?”

“For changing the course of my life,” Suzanne answered. “What you said that day out in the desert about finding the murderer and bringing him to justice really got to me. It was something that seemed far more important than studying ancient artifacts. I could see that tracking that man’s killer down gave you a sense of purpose. I wanted to have that same kind of purpose in my life, too. I ended up quitting anthropology and moving over into pre--med. I’m an M.E. now, living and working in Littleton, Colorado.”

That meant that at least one good thing had come out of Amos Warren’s homicide. Brandon was proud of Suzanne, of course, and gratified that in those few hours on the back side of the Rincons he’d been able to have such a positive influence on her life.

What seemed grossly unfair to him was that guiding a complete stranger onto a better path had been so effortless and easy when having the same impact on his own sons had turned out to be utterly impossible.

Brandon looked down at the sleeping dog. “Life isn’t fair, is it, Bozo boy?” he said aloud. “Come on. It’s late. Go get busy and then what do you say we hit the hay?”





CHAPTER 10




THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG ago that a boy and girl, a brother and sister, were left all alone when their parents died. They lived in the southern part of the Tohono O’odham’s lands. They felt very lonely living there because everything made them think about their father and mother. So they moved to a new place, the village of Uhs Kehk—-Stick Standing—-which is close to the place the Milgahn call Casa Grande.

The boy had no fields, so he went out hunting and was gone all day. The girl, after grinding her corn on her wihthakud—-her grinding stone—-would go out into the desert to find plants for cooking and drying and to find seeds as well. The girl was S’kehg Chehia, which is to say, she was very beautiful.

But because this brother and sister were alone and had no -people and seemed so sad, the -people in Stick Standing said they were bad. In this kihhim—-this village—-there was a man of great influence, Big Man—-Ge Cheoj. Big Man had power over the -people because he had large fields. He soon fell in love with this new girl who was so very beautiful and so very different from the girls in his own village.