Dance of the Bones

“You don’t think he’ll mind?”


“If he does, have him take it up with me. I’ll text you his contact card.”

Brandon’s message signal dinged thirty seconds later with Beaumont’s contact card. No work phone was listed, only a home number and a cell. Since it was the weekend, Brandon opted for the home number. The phone rang six times before the voice--mail prompt came on.

“Beau here,” a male voice said. “You know the drill. At the sound of the tone, leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you.”

Brandon did as he was told, then he fired up the Escalade and headed for Florence and for what he knew would be an unwelcome trip down memory lane.

AT THE CRIME SCENE NEAR Rattlesnake Skull village, time slowed to a crawl. There was endless backing and forthing among the various officers about jurisdictional issues and equally endless milling around the crime scene before it was finally time for the FBI interviews.

Naturally Lani and Leo were separated for that process. Leo and Agent Armstrong sat in Leo’s pickup while Lani and Angelica Howell stayed in the agents’ Suburban. Agent Howell was dismissive and overbearing. Lani had no doubt that Agent Howell saw Lani as a “Native American” woman or maybe even as an “indigenous person” who was bone tired from lack of sleep and worry, who was grimy from sleeping out overnight, and who smelled of woodsmoke. Lani recognized the symptoms. She’d been on the receiving end of that kind of dismissive Anglo arrogance all her life.

“So you were asleep and awakened to the sound of what you believe was automatic gunfire?” Agent Howell asked, with an audible sneer underlining the word “believe.”

“It was automatic gunfire,” Lani replied. “Anyone who’s watched television in the last ten years recognizes automatic gunfire when they hear it.”

“And what time was that?”

“When I looked at my watch, it said 4:16,” Lani answered, “but that was later, after the second round of gunfire and when the vehicle left the charco and headed back toward the highway.”

“Where it turned left toward Sells rather than heading into town?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly were you doing out here on the mountain?” Agent Howell wanted to know.

“I was here with my godson, Gabe Ortiz. Leo, the man in the truck, is Gabe’s father. He came out this morning to pick me up. I asked him to stop at the charco on the way back to Sells. That’s when we found the bodies.”

“You knew there would be bodies there?”

“I thought there might be.”

“You said you came here with your godson. Seems like it might be a little cold for an overnight campout at this time of year. Where exactly were you?”

Lani pointed back to Ioligam. “Up there,” she said. “I can show you if you’d like.”

“How old is your godson, and where is he?”

“He’s not quite fourteen. As for where he is right now? He’s at home. We had an argument, and he left.”

“Left how?”

“He walked off the mountain and went home.”

“In the middle of the night? In the dark?”

“It wasn’t that dark,” Lani said. “There was moonlight. There was starlight. You should try it sometime.”

Just as Lani had felt the desert go silent after the gunfire, she felt a sudden shift in Agent Howell’s focus. “What kind of an argument?”

“Do you have a godmother?” Lani asked.

“A godmother?” Agent Howell asked. “Why would you ask that?”

“Do you?” Lani persisted.

“Of course not. My parents didn’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“Well, we do here,” Lani said. “For the Tohono O’odham, godmothers play an important role. We’re part of the child’s life; if we suspect that child is straying onto the wrong path, godmothers try to offer guidance away from the bad and back to the good.”