Dance of the Bones

EACH SUMMER THE WOMEN FROM the villages would go to the foothills around Baboquivari to gather the fruit from the -saguaro—-s bahithaj—-from which they make the saguaro wine—-nawait. For many years, when -people from a certain village went to gather the fruit, they were met by the Evil Giantess—-Ho’ok O’oks—-who lived nearby. You will remember, nawoj, my friend, that Ho’ok O’oks had grown out of the dust balls that once belonged to Nephew--of--the--Sun.

Ho’ok O’oks was a powerful spirit of evil who could make -people do just what she wanted. Sometimes she made them give her their best cows. Sometimes she would catch a young child and take it away with her. And although the mothers mourned for their children and pleaded with the Giantess, the children were never returned.

The Evil Giantess had such a lot of hair that when she shook her head, it was like a cloud. The children were all afraid of her. And so it became a custom for one of the women from the village to stay with the children to keep them safe. But this was not easy to do. There were horses and cattle to be watered and there was wood to be chopped to keep the fires warm to heat the ollas used to cook the cactus fruit before the syrup—-sit’ol—-could be turned into wine. All those things meant the women of the village were always busy.

WARDEN HUFFMAN WAS GOOD TO his word. Brandon Walker checked his weapons in one of the lockers provided, then carried Amanda Wasser’s box of documents through security. Once clear of that, a waiting guard led him to a nearby interview room, let him inside, and locked the door behind him. Brandon didn’t mind. The silence of the locked room was infinitely preferable to the noisy bedlam of the regular visitors’ room. His memories of that room—-of sitting there trying to converse with Quentin through a yellowed plexiglass barrier—-were painful ones Brandon didn’t wish to revisit.

The door banged open, jarring him out of his reverie and back into an equally unwelcome present. A uniformed guard ushered a grizzled old black man into the room. “You here to see John Lassiter?” he asked.

Brandon nodded. The man was in uniform. His clothing was more like hospital scrubs than guard attire. The name tag dangling on his lanyard identified him as Aubrey Bayless.

“Mind showing me some ID?”

“How come?”

Bayless shrugged. “Lassiter asked me to check, so I’m checking.”

Shaking his head with annoyance, Brandon reached into his back pocket, retrieved his wallet, and held it still long enough for the man to study it.

Finally the old man nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Right back.”

In the long silence that followed, Brandon remembered taking John Lassiter into custody. The homicide investigation was Pima County’s, but the arrest itself had been a joint operation conducted by Brandon and a Tucson PD detective named Michael Farraday. Information from a confidential informant had led them to a seedy bar called the Tally Ho on North Sixth Avenue, one that was lowbrow and scuzzy enough to be El Barrio’s clone. Once inside, they spotted Lassiter seated at the dimly lit bar, hunched over a pitcher of beer with a shot of tequila on the counter in front of him.

Naturally the place had gone quiet the moment the two detectives walked into the room. Action at the pool tables stopped cold. Lassiter was drunk enough that it took a moment for the sudden silence to penetrate his fog. He was just starting to turn on his barstool when Farraday reached out to tap him on the shoulder.