Dance of the Bones

Ava plucked the tiny pot from its place of honor on the shelf and slipped it into the pocket of her denim jacket. With all her ducks in a row, she had no reason to leave her good luck charm behind.

She turned down the hall to the guest wing where Harold spent most of his waking hours these days. He was in his easy chair, sitting in front of a TV set watching what appeared to be one of the many Judge Whatever shows. The shows were uniformly mindless and plotless and were enough to keep Harold occupied. The nurse was standing in the doorway as Ava leaned down to give him a quick peck on the cheek. From Ava’s point of view, nothing could have been better.

“I’m going now,” she said. “I’ll see you in a -couple of days.”

Harold waved at her absently, without really looking away from the screen. “Drive carefully,” he said.

She smiled at him and nodded in the nurse’s direction. “I will,” she said. “I always do.”

LANI SHOWERED. THEN, WITH HER hair still wet, she lay on the bed and tried to sleep. Dan had taken the kids and gone off to help Leo look for Gabe. The house was quiet. She was weary beyond words, but sleep wouldn’t come. Like Gabe’s mother, Lani was appalled that Gabe could be involved in something like this and with -people who were beyond dangerous.

Gabe Ortiz and Tim José. She remembered Timmy as a little kid, coming into the hospital because he’d been playing around his grandmother’s woodpile and had been bitten by a snake. He’d been cute back then, just as Gabe had been. She heard again the sound of that single early-morning gunshot and understood its heartbreaking significance. The first rounds of gunfire had brought down Carlos and Paul. The final one must have been for Tim—-Timmy.

Lani had not yet dozed off when her phone rang. Leo’s name appeared on the screen. “Any luck?” she asked.

“Maybe a little,” Leo answered. “I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. I started out by stopping by the José place, thinking Gabe and Tim might have holed up there. Nothing, but I asked around. It turns out nobody’s seen Tim since early yesterday evening.”

Lani took a deep breath. Leo’s last words had just confirmed her worst suspicions about Tim José. “But you said you’d made some progress,” she managed.

“Yes,” Leo said, “just now when I stopped by the garage to get some gas, I talked to Martin Cruz and his father. Do you know them?”

“The old blind man with the drunken son?” Lani didn’t know the pair personally, but she had seen them often enough, always walking together on the shoulder of the road, the older man limping along with his hand resting on his son’s shoulder. Lani had been told that most of the pair’s walking trips involved going to or from their preferred bootlegger. “What about them?”

“A lot of the time Joseph and Martin come by the garage in the mornings and sit outside at the picnic table under that big palo verde tree. Martin said they were there today. He claims he saw a pickup—-a black pickup—-stop by our house. He says Gabe got in and rode off with whoever was driving.”

“Did he get into the vehicle under his own steam?” Lani asked. “Or was he forced into it against his will?”

“That’s what it sounded like, but I’m not sure how reliable Martin is. The old man is blind, and Martin smells like he’s blind drunk. He had no idea about the truck’s make and model and couldn’t identify the driver. I’m not sure what to do.”

“Have you told Delia?”

“I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Look, Leo,” Lani said. “If Gabe was forced into the vehicle, you and I both know that this is far more serious than Gabe just wandering off on his own. Are those FBI agents still in town?”

“As far as I know. The last I saw their Suburban was parked over by the café.”

“We need to report this,” Lani said, scrambling out of bed. “Has anyone reported Tim as missing?”