Dance of the Bones

“But what about Tim José?” Delia asked brokenly. “If his brothers are dead, and he’s missing, is he dead, too?”


Lani chose not to speak up about the final gunshot she’d heard, at least not then. She understood the implications better than anyone else, and she wasn’t ready to bring those out in the open.

“Tim may not be dead, but he’s certainly in danger,” Lani said.

“We need to find both Gabe and Tim,” Leo declared. “I’d better start looking.”

“But don’t tell anyone why,” Lani cautioned. “At this point there’s been no official announcement about the identity of the victims. We know about that now, but we’re not supposed to, and we shouldn’t let on that we do. As far as anyone else is concerned, Gabe was grounded and took off anyway. That’s why you’re looking for him—-to bring him home.”

“But what about the bag?” Leo asked. “Should I put it back where I found it?”

“You can if you want to,” Lani said, “but it’s really too late. Your fingerprints are on the bag and all our prints are on the note. At some point we’ll need to come forward voluntarily and turn it over to the FBI agents working the case.”

“But doesn’t the bag implicate Gabe in whatever it is the José brothers were up to?” Delia objected.

“It may,” Lani said, “but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First let’s find Gabe and see what he has to say.”

“On my way,” Leo said. “I know most of his hangouts. I’ll check those first.”

Taking his keys, he hurried out of the house, leaving Lani and Delia together in the kitchen. The two women were close now, so close that it was difficult to remember a time when they had not been friends.

“What happened?” Delia asked. “Why didn’t Gabe stay on the mountain with you?”

“Because I brought up his friendship with the Josés,” Lani said. “I told him he was going to have to make a choice between doing right and doing wrong.”

Delia’s eyes flooded with tears. “I guess it’s already too late for that, isn’t it?”

“Maybe so,” Lani agreed, “but I still want to hear what Gabe has to say.”

AFTER JOHN LASSITER’S UNANTICIPATED EXPRESSION of sympathy about Quentin’s death, it took a while for Brandon Walker to regain his interview sea legs.

“I hear you have MS,” he said finally.

Lassiter nodded. “There might be better treatments on the outside than they have in here, but as far as I’m concerned, the chair’s no worse of a prison than a cell.”

“Junior Glassman told me that you wanted to talk to me about Amos Warren—-that you want TLC to investigate his death.”

“I do,” Lassiter said with a nod.

“If so, you’ll need to tell me about Amos Warren,” Brandon said, leaning back in his chair, “from the beginning. How’d you two meet?”

For the second time in as many minutes, Big Bad John surprised Brandon as the huge man’s eyes misted over with tears. When he tried to speak, his voice broke before he managed to force the words to the surface. “Amos Warren was like a father to me. He was the only real father I’ve ever known. I was mad as hell at him at the time he disappeared, but I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t.”

It was the same story Brandon had heard years before about Warren taking Lassiter under his wing and looking after him and about the blowup over Ava Martin that had ended the two men’s partnership as well as their friendship.

“I met Ava Martin,” Brandon said. “I even interviewed her.”

“I thought she was terrific,” Lassiter continued. “But that’s who we were fighting over when Amos knocked me for a row of peanuts. The cheating bastard took me down with a set of brass knuckles that nobody else in the bar ever saw. That’s the last time I saw him. I thought he was just out in the desert doing what he always did, scavenging, but when his car got towed from a hotel out by the airport, that’s when I went looking. I checked the storage unit and realized he had cleaned it out. Took everything that was there, half of which should have been mine.”