Speaking softly, Owl told Shining Falls to wake up and follow him. When she tried, Owl could see that she was no longer all asleep, as she had been, but she was not yet fully awake, either.
Evil Giantess had used some red feathers when she put Shining Falls to sleep, and because Owl had no red feathers, he could not bring her completely awake. Owl decided that he would take Shining Falls home with him until he could find some red feathers.
Slowly the girl followed Owl until they came to a water hole surrounded by large rocks. When Shining Falls stepped on one of those rocks, it made a sound. Owl tried to call out a warning, but it was too late. Evil Giantess had heard the noise, and she was awake. Her hair spread out like an evil cloud, and Owl’s feet got tangled in her hair. While Owl struggled to get free, Shining Falls fell into the water.
IT HAD BEEN years since Ava Martin Hanover Richland had actually cleaned a house. She had people to do that detestable chore just as she had people to carry out her other orders. That afternoon she did the work herself, however, and she did a thorough job of it, too. Looking up from her vacuuming, she peeled back the top of her latex glove and studied her watch. In an hour or so, John Lassiter would be a thing of the past. An hour or so after that Henry Rojas would be gone as well.
Nodding to herself, Ava went back to work. She had always been careful to keep her life entirely separate from Jane Dobson’s, and in that regard, she was nothing if not a chip off the old block. Ava had been twelve years old when her mother discovered, quite by accident, that her husband, Ava’s father, was a bigamist with another whole family living in Eloy. A subsequent investigation revealed that there was yet a third family living in Deming, New Mexico.
Ava’s father was a long-haul trucker, and he’d been able to keep all the balls in the air for quite some time until a gallbladder attack unexpectedly landed him in the hospital and put him out of commission for a number of weeks—long enough for the other two families to come looking for him. Ava had watched the unfolding drama from the sidelines. She had never been especially fond of her mother, so she’d had scant sympathy for the woman. What had really fascinated her was how her father had managed to pull off the whole escapade. He’d created separate identities complete with checking accounts and social security numbers—one for each family, paying for it by working part-time jobs with three different trucking companies.
That was all a lot easier to do back in the day before computers and cell phones and in-car navigation systems. Ava was careful. She had never brought her cell phone here, and she’d never used her GPS to come to Jane Dobson’s house, either. There might be a trace of her travels lingering somewhere in the Mercedes’s black box, but she was confident by now her once shiny luxury vehicle had disappeared into some faraway, dusty spot or else it had been reduced to dozens or perhaps hundreds of anonymous pieces.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t traces of her lingering in the house, and once someone found Henry’s body here—however long that took—the cops would be all over the place searching for traces of Jane Dobson. By erasing Jane’s presence, Ava deleted her own as well, and that was the reason for her frenetic but very thorough job of housecleaning. She vacuumed everything. She made sure there were no traces of hair left in any of the sinks, sending a batch of hair-cleaning Liquid-Plumr down the drains.
She wiped down everything, polishing away fingerprints from every conceivable surface—light switches, cabinets, appliances, furniture, silverware, dishes, canned goods in the cabinets, and frozen food in the fridge. From the lack of fingerprints, the cops would be able to tell at once that Jane Dobson had been a crook. What they wouldn’t be able to tell was that Jane Dobson and Ava Richland were one and the same.
And once the house was clean, all Ava had to do was wait.
WHEN I LEFT the Grovers’ condo, I could hardly wait to get back down to my car. I found I had a signal on the top floor of the parking garage, and I called Brandon Walker back immediately.
“Tell me about Amos Warren. Refresh me on the timeline.”
“In the spring of 1970, he went out on one of his prospecting/scavenging jaunts in the desert. Weeks later, his vehicle turns up at Tucson International Airport. Ten years after that, his remains are found in the desert twenty miles from the airport.”
“That means that the killer must have had an accomplice,” I said. “Assuming the victim’s vehicle was at the crime scene originally, someone had to help transport it to the spot where it was found.”
“We always assumed there was an accomplice,” Brandon said, “but we could never get any traction when it came to finding out who it was.”
“I think I may know,” I told him. “The dead guy up here.”
“Ken Mangum?”
“I just talked to Kenneth’s old girlfriend, Calliope Horn. Shortly before he disappeared, he told her he was going to take a trip to Arizona and that he expected to come back with an armload of money. Then, the very day he disappeared, Ken was seen in the company of a well-dressed woman—a stranger no one up here had ever seen before. Calliope thought it might be an old girlfriend, and maybe that’s true. But what if it’s more than that? What if Ken was somehow involved in Amos Warren’s death? Or maybe the woman was the one who committed the murder, and Kenneth Mangum/Myers either knew about it or figured it out. What if that windfall he was expecting had something to do with blackmail?”
“That would make sense,” Brandon said. “When I talked to Lassiter earlier today, his first suggestion was Ava Martin Hanover Richland. Lassiter’s daughter, Amanda, said the same thing. She tried to point the JFA folks in Ava’s direction, but they weren’t interested.”
“Would blackmail have worked on Ava?” I asked. “Would she have been a likely target?”
“Absolutely. By the time Amos Warren’s remains surfaced, Ava Martin had reinvented herself and moved up in the world. She would have had a lot to lose, especially when Lassiter’s second trial was about to get under way and even more so now.”
Excitement bubbled in Brandon Walker’s voice and in mine as well. We were a pair of old hounds who had just caught a scent. It was a very faint scent and one that might not pan out, but it was still there, and we were on it.
“Is there any way to discover if the lady in question was in the Seattle area in the early part of May of 1983?” Walker asked.
“Doesn’t seem likely,” I answered.
“Maybe I should go pay her a call. Ava and her most recent husband have a house somewhere here in Tucson. The problem is, I don’t have an address.”
“Let’s see what Todd Hatcher can do in that regard. Is it all right if I give him your number?”
“Sure,” Brandon said. “Whatever works.”
IT WAS LANI’S weekend off, but after her meeting with Lorraine José, she didn’t go back home. Instead she retreated into her office at the hospital and closed the door. Before leaving the house to go meet with the FBI agents at the café, she had opened her medicine basket and dropped her divining crystals into the pocket of her lab coat. She put the list containing the José brothers’ phone numbers face up on her desk, then she brought out the crystals. She went down the list, one at a time, studying the blurry numbers through the crystals, but that told her nothing. No wavering images appeared in her mind’s eye. She had attempted to explain to Gabe how viewing things through the crystals often helped her see things in another light. This time that didn’t happen.
Lani’s sense of hopelessness and despair deepened. Tim José was most likely lost, she realized. That meant there was a good chance Gabe was lost, too. And there was nothing—not one thing—she could do about it.
Sitting at her desk, Lani stared down at the crystals with her chin propped in her hands. That was when her lack of sleep from the night before finally caught up with her. She dozed off only to be awakened later by a light tap on the door. Jarred awake, Lani looked up to see Dan poke his head inside.
“There you are,” he said. “I saw your car on the way past.”
“On the way past,” Lani echoed. “Where are you going and where are the kids?”
“I called Mrs. Hendricks to come look after them. The FBI got a hit on Tim’s cell. The last time it pinged was somewhere out near the airport. Law and Order is calling for volunteers to come search. Hulk and I are on our way there now.”
Lani breathed a sigh of relief. The FBI had done its job after all. She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll come with you,” she said, reaching for her purse.
Dan gave her an appraising look. “Are you sure? You look beat. Shouldn’t you have a lie-down?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll come, too. Has anyone told Lorraine José what’s going on?”
“I’m not sure, but I doubt it.”
“I’ll go tell her, then I’ll come help.”
“Suit yourself.”
Lani hurried into the convalescent wing just in time to see Lorraine José answer a call on her cell phone. Lorraine listened briefly, then, as her face went pale with shock, she dropped the phone, letting it crash onto the tiled floor.
“What is it?” Lani asked, hurrying toward the distraught woman. “What’s wrong? Did they find Tim?”
Anguish flooded Lorraine’s face. “It’s Max,” she whispered. “That was Father O’Reilly calling from Florence. There was a riot in the prison a little while ago. Max is dead.”
“Dead?” Lani repeated. “How can that be?”
Lorraine shook her head hopelessly. “I don’t know. How is it possible that I’ve lost all my boys, even Tim, on the same day?”
“People are still looking for Tim,” Lani said, hoping she sounded more reassuring than she felt. “With any kind of luck, they’ll find him.”
“Would you ask I’itoi for me?” Lorraine asked. “Please?”
It wasn’t a request Lani could ignore. She had slipped her divining crystals back into the pocket of her lab coat as she left her office. Now, sitting on the chair next to Lorraine José’s bed, Lani took out the stones, gripped them tightly in her hand, and began to sing. As the song filled the room, Lani was no longer Dr. Pardee. She was Medicine Woman, filled with the spirit of Mualig Siakam, Forever Spinning. Together they were singing for power and singing for all of them—for Tim José and Gabe Ortiz, for Delia and Leo Ortiz, for Lorraine José, and for the whole community. As Lani sang, she hoped in her heart of hearts that Elder Brother was listening.
AMANDA WASSER LISTENED in subdued silence when Brandon Walker delivered his news about the prison riot.
“This is all my fault,” she said when he finished.
“Your fault,” Brandon echoed. “How so?”
“You went to see my father at my instigation. A few hours later someone comes after him, killing two people and wounding another? This can’t be a coincidence.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Brandon agreed. “There’s bound to be a connection. That can only mean that reopening your father’s case constitutes a threat to someone.”
“Who?”
“Who indeed? There’s no statute of limitations on homicide, Amanda. If John Lassiter didn’t kill Amos Warren, someone else did, and that killer has gotten away with murder all this time. Whoever did it may be worried that their luck is about to run out.”
“You believe my father, then?” Amanda asked. “You believe he didn’t do it?”
Brandon nodded. “I do,” he said.
“So who’s the killer?” Amanda asked.
“You told me earlier that you thought Ava Martin needed looking into. When I asked John Lassiter straight out, ‘If you didn’t kill Amos, who did?’ that was his answer, too—‘Ava Martin.’”
“I tried to get JFA to take a look at her,” Amanda said. “They were so focused on the prosecutorial misconduct issue that they saw no need to go any further.”
“We do,” Brandon told her. “In fact, we already are.”
“Good,” she said. “In the meantime, I need to pack up and get going.”
“Going where?”
“To Mesa, where else?” she said. “Since I’m the one who put my father in that hospital, I’m going to go there to see him whether he likes it or not.”
“You do know why John Lassiter refuses to see you, don’t you?” Brandon asked.
Amanda had turned her scooter and was on her way to the bedroom. She paused and turned back to Brandon. “Why?”
“Because he wants to clear his name first.”
Amanda’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you understand? As far as I’m concerned, his name was cleared a long time ago.”
BRANDON WAS JUST leaving Amanda Wasser’s driveway when J. P. Beaumont’s friend Todd called to give him Ava Richland’s address. It was somewhere in the far reaches of Tucson’s Ventana Canyon, and Brandon was making his way there when his phone rang again.
“Warden Huffman,” the caller said when Brandon answered. “This is not an official call, by the way, but I’m hoping you might be able to help us get ahead of this thing.”
“In what way?”
“I’m sitting here studying the surveillance tapes,” Huffman said. “Over the years I’ve been around plenty of prison riots. This one simply doesn’t add up. I can tell that the action in the center of the room was clearly designed to pull attention away from what was happening in the far corner, which turned out to be a well-organized hit on two individuals.”
“John Lassiter and who else?”
“The other victim was a young guy from Sells, Max José. A priest showed up in the middle of all the mess, asking to see Max and saying that he had come, at Max’s mother’s request, to let him know that his two younger brothers had been murdered near Sells earlier today and that his youngest brother is missing.”
“Max is dead now, too?” Brandon demanded. “Are you kidding?”
“Unfortunately not, so here’s my question. Can you tell me if there’s any connection between the José family out in Sells and John Lassiter?”
“Not right off, Warden Huffman,” Brandon answered. “But if I come up with one, I’ll let you know.”
The GPS led Brandon to a house perched on the mountainside high above the rest of the city. The spectacular window-lined structure seemed to wrap itself around the contours of the mountain. A wrought-iron gate at the end of the driveway was open. He was about to turn in when an aid car, lights ablaze, came tearing down the drive. Brandon pulled aside to let it pass.
When he arrived at the front of the house, a fire truck was just departing. A woman in what appeared to be hospital scrubs stood on the front verandah, wringing her hands. Brandon got out of the Escalade and walked toward her. She turned on him. “Who are you?”
“My name is Brandon Walker,” he said. “I’m a friend of the family. I was hoping to speak to Mrs. Richland.”
“Mrs. Richland isn’t here. That was her husband in the ambulance. He had another stroke. They’re taking him to TMC. I’ve been trying to reach Mrs. Richland to let her know what’s going on, but she isn’t answering her phone. She’s probably out in the middle of the desert somewhere where there’s no signal.”
“Do you know where she was headed?”
“Their condo in San Carlos, down in Mexico,” the nurse answered. “I tried calling there, too. That was strange. When I spoke to the housekeeper, she had no idea Mrs. Richland was coming there today.”
“What kind of car does she drive?” Brandon asked.
“A black Mercedes S550.”
“Did you notify the authorities in Mexico and ask them to look for her?”
“Not yet. Do you think I should?”
“How bad off is her husband?”
The nurse bit her lip. “Pretty bad,” she answered.
“In that case,” Brandon said, “if I were you, I’d make that call.”