One day Big Man called Ban—Coyote—to help him. You will remember, nawoj, my friend, that Coyote is often filled with the Spirit of Mischief. Big Man gave Coyote some beads. He told Coyote to go to Beautiful Girl, slip the beads on her wrist, and tell her about Big Man.
The next morning, Coyote went to the house where the brother and sister lived. Beautiful Girl was cooking. When Coyote tried to slip the beads on her wrist, it made her burn her hand. That made the girl very cross. She scolded Ban. She told him she wanted no beads and no husband, and she wanted no more bother with a coyote.
Coyote carried the beads back to the village and told the great man what Beautiful Girl had said. Big Man was very angry because he was very powerful and used to having his own way. He told Coyote that he must go to the girl the next morning and tell her to take the beads. If she did not, Big Man would kill both her and her brother.
AFTER TOSSING AND turning for what seemed like hours, Brandon made his way into the bathroom to answer yet another call of nature. He glanced at the clock on his way by, but even though it was now after two, when he got back into bed he still couldn’t sleep. He was too caught up in remembering the investigation.
The day after his initial meeting with John Lassiter, Brandon had paid his first visit to El Barrio. The bar was one of those low-life dives where time seems to stand still. Cigarette smoke hung thick in the air, with the odor of spilled beer and dried piss adding to the unhealthy mix. The tables were worn and scarred. The vinyl upholstery on the chairs and barstools was torn and duct-taped together in spots.
The customers, mostly regulars propped on sagging stools that might just as well have had their names written on them, were a dodgy-looking bunch of characters, as was the bartender, a man with multiple tattoos and the dubious handle of Unc Flores. Unc recognized Brandon as a cop the moment he walked through the door and long before he ordered black coffee.
Much to Brandon’s surprise, there seemed to be a kind of corporate memory lingering in El Barrio’s air along with all that cigarette smoke. Once he stated his business, no fewer than four people—Unc included—claimed to have been present the night ten years earlier when Amos Warren had taken out the man they all referred to as Big Bad John Lassiter. That was the first time Brandon heard John Lassiter called that, but it wouldn’t be the last. The short-lived fight between Amos Warren and his pal John seemed to have taken on a kind of legendary status. When Brandon mentioned that he was investigating Amos’s death, quite a few folks felt compelled to jump into the fray, each willingly sharing his own take on the story.
Since Brandon was still attempting to establish a timeline for the crime, that was where the conversation started. Members of the peanut gallery in El Barrio all seemed to agree that the fight had occurred in the springtime, but no one could agree on the month or even the exact year. On details of the actual fight they were all surprisingly clear. The timing of events was hazy.
Nevertheless, they all seemed to be in complete agreement when it came to deciding who might be responsible—Big Bad John. Who else could it have been? As for what caused the fight? A woman, of course. Amos and John had gone to war over John’s exceedingly attractive girlfriend at the time, one Ava Martin.
“That little bit of a thing was cute as a button,” one of the old codgers said, shaking his head. “What a girl Ava was! She had that big old lump of a John Lassiter wrapped around her little pinkie. Led him around by the nose—that’s what she did. I thought it was funny as hell.”
“More like she led him around by the balls,” another one offered.
The next time Unc showed up to refill his cup, Brandon put the question to him. “What do you think?”
Unc feigned innocence. “About what?”
“Everybody else around here seems to be of the opinion that John Lassiter might be responsible for Amos Warren’s death. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
“I’m in the ‘John Lassiter did it’ camp. I’ve thought that all along, at least ever since we found out about Amos’s will. Once that news surfaced, that’s when I eighty-sixed Big Bad John Lassiter and told him to get lost.”
“Wait,” Brandon said. “You knew about the will?”
“Sure I did, almost as soon as it happened. At the time, my sister Edna was working down at the county courthouse in the recorder’s office. She used to come in here now and again, so she knew Amos. When the deed transfer came through, she recognized the name and told me about it. Pissed the hell out of me. Think about it. This old guy goes missing and stays missing. Eventually he’s declared legally dead, and—surprise, surprise—his ex-partner ends up being the sole beneficiary under his will. It doesn’t take a Philadelphia lawyer to put that one together.”
“Did you talk to the cops about your suspicions?” Brandon asked.
“I would have, I suppose,” Unc allowed, “if anybody had ever bothered to come around asking the questions, but nobody did—not until you turned up today. In my business, it’s never a good idea to go looking for trouble unless it lands smack on your doorstep, especially when you’re running a joint like this. But the next time Big Bad John stopped by, I showed him the door and told him he wasn’t welcome. He had the unmitigated gall to ask me how come. I told him he already knew how come, and that was that. And you know what? If he walked through that door today, I’d take a baseball bat to the SOB myself.”
Brandon left El Barrio that day with a spring in his step and feeling as though he might possibly be making progress. He went back to the office to look for Ava Martin, and she wasn’t hard to find. John Lassiter had said that she’d moved up in the world. Based on public records, Brandon could see that was certainly true. At midmorning the next day, Brandon showed up at the spread Ava shared with her new husband. It turned out to be a five-acre horse property just off Houghton Road on the far side of Pantano Wash. County records indicated that Ava was married to a man named Clarence Hanover. Brandon just happened to know for a fact that Hanover was one of Tucson’s top-drawer attorneys.
Rather than call ahead, Brandon simply showed up. He parked in the drive of a low-lying stuccoed, fully landscaped ranch house. Stepping up onto the front porch, he rang the bell. There was a long pause before the door cracked open, and a woman peered out.
“We don’t want any,” she announced immediately, as soon as she caught a glimpse of Brandon’s face. She would have slammed the door shut, but Brandon managed to insert the toe of his boot between the door and the jamb.
“I’m not selling anything,” he asserted. “My name is Detective Brandon Walker with the Pima County Sheriff’s Office. I’m here investigating a homicide.”
Ava sighed and opened the door a bit wider. Her blond hair was impeccably styled into a smoothly flowing pageboy. Her makeup was flawless. She wore a tight-fitting cowboy shirt, equally tight jeans, a pair of boots, and enough turquoise and silver jewelry to choke a horse.
“A homicide?” she echoed. “Who’s dead?”
“A friend of yours, I believe, or at least an acquaintance—a man by the name of Amos Warren. His skeletal remains were found out in the desert some time ago. After an autopsy, the M.E. concluded that Mr. Warren died of homicidal violence.”
Ava sighed again, letting Brandon know that she regarded his arrival on her doorstep as a grave inconvenience. “Okay, then,” she said, opening the door. “I guess you’d better come in.”
Ava led Brandon into a spacious living room and motioned for him to have a seat on a large cowhide-covered couch, while she sat down on a wooden-armed Eames chair with similarly covered cushions. Between them stood a coffee table constructed of thick glass covering what looked like the splintering remains of an antique wagon wheel. With friends living in real poverty out on the reservation, Brandon found the Hanovers’ pricey faux-rustic decor more than a little annoying.
“I’m surprised to hear Amos is dead,” Ava said. “What did he die of?”
“This is an ongoing investigation,” Brandon answered. “I’m not at liberty to release that information at this time.”
“Where did it happen?”
“On the far side of the Rincons. Actually, not that far from here, as the crow flies,” he added, pointing, “but it’s a long way if you’re driving.” After a slight pause, he added, “So I take it you did know Mr. Warren?”
Ava nodded. “But not well,” she said. “Amos was good friends with the guy I was dating back then, a fellow named John Lassiter. Johnny looked up to Amos, worshipped him practically. Johnny’s father died when he was a kid, and Amos acted like a father to him. When Amos left town—at least that’s what we thought at the time—it broke John’s heart. He went completely off the rails. That’s why I broke up with him—he was drinking too much, fighting, and generally getting into trouble.”
“You said, ‘when Amos left town.’ That makes it sound as though you believed the same thing John did—that Amos left of his own free will?”
“Wait,” Ava said. “You’ve talked to Johnny? How is he?”
“Mr. Lassiter is fine, as far as I can tell, but getting back to Amos . . .”
“Oh, yes, that’s what Johnny thought and it’s what I thought, too—that Amos finally had it up to here with Johnny and just took off. Johnny mentioned there had been some kind of quarrel between them just before Amos went away.”
“Do you have any idea what the quarrel was about?”
Ava shook her head. “It was probably about their joint business venture. They collected stuff together, things they found out in the desert and sold to people who deal in those kinds of things—gems and minerals, Indian artifacts, what have you.”
“My guess is they even found some turquoise from time to time,” Brandon suggested.
Ava looked down self-consciously at the silver and turquoise bracelets dangling on her wrists and at the turquoise-studded belt buckle that would have put more than a few professional rodeo riders’ buckles to shame. “That, too,” she said. “They always seemed to have plenty of turquoise.”
“This so-called stuff,” Brandon continued, attempting to put the conversation back on track. “Do you have any idea where they kept it?”
“In a private storage unit inside a warehouse off Aviation Highway. At first Johnny didn’t bother checking on the storage unit because he assumed Amos was off in the desert on what they used to call ‘scavenging expeditions.’ Then, a few days later, Johnny went to the post office to pick up the mail.”
“Post office?”
Ava nodded. “Amos kept a post office box to use for business correspondence. He had a key to the box, and so did Johnny. Johnny picked up the mail and there was a letter from a towing company. It turns out Amos had abandoned his truck in the parking lot of a hotel near the airport, and the hotel had it towed. As soon as Johnny knew about the airport connection, he figured Amos had done a runner. That’s when Johnny and a friend went to the warehouse. It was empty, totally cleaned out.”
“A friend went with him?” Brandon asked. “What friend?”
“His name was Kenneth,” Ava answered. “Ken Mangum. He and Johnny hung out together. They played a lot of pool.”
“Any idea where Kenneth is now?”
She shrugged. “We lost touch a long time ago. Kenneth and Johnny were sort of roughneck guys. I stopped messing around with them when I decided to straighten up and fly right.”
“Let’s go back to the storage unit for a moment. Did you ever go there?”
“A couple of times—before it was empty, not after.”
“You said it was locked. Do you remember what kind of lock?”
“A padlock.”
“One that took a key or was it a combination lock?”
Ava had to think for a moment, frowning before she answered. “I’m pretty sure there was a key.”
Brandon made a note of that. He knew for sure that no keys of any kind—car, post office, or padlock—had been found in the vicinity of Amos’s bones. But then, they hadn’t found a vehicle there, either. Chances were that the padlock key had ended up in the same place as the missing car keys.
Brandon examined his notes for a moment.
“Okay, I know Amos and John duked it out. I’ve talked to a number of people—especially folks who were in the bar the night Amos and Johnny had their fight. Several of them seem to be of the opinion that John Lassiter is the guy responsible for Amos’s death. What do you think about that?”
Ava shrugged. “I don’t know, but after Amos disappeared, Johnny was a wreck and totally out of control. Scary, even.”
“What do you mean scary?”
She hesitated a moment before she answered. “He threatened me once,” she said quietly. “That’s why I broke up with him.”
“Threatened you how?”
“With a gun.”
“He had a gun?”
“Lots of people have guns,” Ava countered. “I have a gun. It’s no big deal.”
“What kind of gun?”
“I don’t know. Not a big one. A .22 maybe? A pistol, not a revolver.”
Brandon made an effort to contain his reaction. He had made no mention that Amos Warren had been shot, much less shot by someone wielding a small-caliber weapon. John Lassiter, Amos Warren’s disgruntled former partner, had always been Brandon’s best possible suspect. Now Brandon knew, via a third party, that Lassiter had been in possession of a handgun at the time of the crime. This had to be a key bit of information. Brandon felt it was also important that when Ava had volunteered the information, it had been in regard to something else entirely, at a time when she’d had no hint from Brandon that Amos Warren had been shot to death.
“You’re saying you know the difference between a pistol and a revolver?” Brandon asked.
Ava shot him a withering look. “Of course I know the difference. Just because I’m a blonde doesn’t make me stupid.”
Touché, Brandon thought. Well played.
Ava glanced at her watch. “Look,” she said impatiently. “I have a luncheon engagement, and I’m about to be late. If you have more questions, could we please finish this some other time?”
Brandon took the hint. “Of course,” he said, rising to his feet. “You’ve been a big help. If I could just have a phone number . . .”
She gave him the number and showed him to the door. Brandon walked away feeling downright jubilant. He was getting somewhere. Sheriff Jack DuShane be damned, he was going to solve this case. Not then, Brandon told himself, but maybe now.
With that last thought about the years-ago investigation and hours after Brandon Walker landed in his bed, he finally fell asleep.