Young Girl ran back to the village as fast as she could, but she was too late. Before she could sound an alarm, the Apaches were already there. The men who had been out working in the fields hurried to do battle while the women and children ran to hide.
You must know, nawoj, my friend, that Ioligam, I’itoi’s sacred mountain, is full of caves. Because I’itoi lives in these caves, the Desert People usually stay away from them. The caves are Elder Brother’s quiet place, and the People do not want to bother him. But when there is danger, that is where they go.
That day, as the Ohb descended on Rattlesnake Skull village, that’s where the women and children ran to hide—in one of the caves—and the cave they chose was the one where Young Man had been staying. When they found him there, knowing he was Ohb, they attacked him with clubs and beat him very badly even though Young Girl told them she loved him and begged them to leave him alone.
The people of Rattlesnake Skull village were very angry when the Apaches stole all their food. And when the people learned that Young Man, an Ohb, had been living in one of I’itoi’s sacred caves and that Young Girl had been feeding him, they held a council to decide what they should do.
BY THE TIME Lani, Leo, and Gabe set out walking, the sun had long since sunk past Ioligam’s summit, and that part of the mountain was already shrouded in shadow. Within a few steps, the white buildings atop the mountain that comprised Kitt Peak National Observatory disappeared from view.
As Lani had warned, it was a steep climb. They might have been covered with sweat from exertion, but a chill wind blowing out of the east dried the moisture on their perspiring bodies as soon as it formed.
Even though it had been years since she’d come this way, Lani could have led the way with her eyes closed. She walked past the path she knew would lead to the tiny entrance they had used to enter the cavern on that day so many years ago. She had awakened from a drugged stupor to find herself Mitch Johnson’s prisoner. She had traveled to the mountain with him and Quentin Walker, a man whom Lani had never regarded as a brother, although he was Brandon Walker’s son. It had taken time that awful day for Lani to realize that, rather than being Mitch’s ally, Quentin was as much Mitch’s prisoner as she was.
This time, leading Leo and Gabe, she headed straight for what had once been the main entrance to the vast cavern complex and to the part of the mountain that had long ago been brought down in order to entomb a living prisoner.
For years after that day, Lani had refused to go anywhere near Ioligam. Finally, on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday, she had gathered her courage as well as her brother, Davy, and Davy’s good friend and almost brother, Brian Fellows, and the three of them had returned to the mountain. Brian, the son of Brandon Walker’s first wife, Jane, and a subsequent husband, was Quentin’s and Tommy’s half brother. Though there had been no clearing back then, they had gone to the collapsed main entrance armed with tools—pickaxes, shovels, and rakes—for the very purpose of creating one.
Together the three of them had chopped down brush, pulled out the roots, and turned over and smoothed out the disturbed earth, leaving behind a small clearing hidden under a thicket of sheltering manzanita. In one corner of the space they had used a collection of loose rocks to form a small circle in which they had erected a small wooden cross. When the memorial was finished, they had placed a lit candle inside the circle as a remembrance in honor of Betraying Woman.
Lani’s old friend and mentor, Fat Crack, was long dead. That day, Davy and Brian became the other two people who knew the truth about what happened to Mitch Johnson. Lani had come here today hoping that perhaps she could share that story with someone else—with Fat Crack’s grandson and namesake. Now she wasn’t so sure she’d be able to tell Gabe anything at all about her battle with Mitch Johnson.
When Lani reached the clearing and set down her backpack, she was surprised and gratified to see that both the cross and the long empty glass that had once held the candle were still there and undisturbed. Lani smiled to herself when she saw them. Dan might think otherwise, but the fact that those relics remained reassured her that this part of Ioligam was still a sacred place.
Leo was the next to arrive. With a dull thump he dropped the bound bundle of firewood that he had brought from Bashas’ store in Sells and set down the plastic gallon jug of water he had hauled up the mountain. Then he wiggled free of his backpack, one loaded with foodstuffs, enamel-covered tin dishes, and utensils that Lani had prepared and packed in advance of the expedition. Gabe, carrying what should have been the lightest load, arrived last, panting and out of breath. As he slumped to the ground, Lani noticed he was munching on something.
“What are you eating?”
He opened a clenched fist to reveal the remains of a half-eaten Snickers bar. Lani knew that diabetes, often called the Tohono O’odham Curse, continued to wreak havoc on the reservation. Her response had been to take a principled stance against the use of processed sugars and flour in her own family.
Gabe had always been short and stocky. Lani, along with Gabe’s parents, worried about his diet and the possibility that he, too, might be plagued by the same disease that had cost the boy’s grandfather both his legs and eventually his life. It was for that reason the tortillas she had brought along for this trip had been made with flour ground from mesquite beans. Since Lani viewed this as a ceremonial occasion, Snickers bars were definitely not on the menu.
“Where did that come from?” she demanded, snatching the rest of the half-eaten candy bar out of his hand.
A sullen Gabe shrugged. “From the store,” he said.
“And how did it get up here?”
“In my backpack,” he answered.
“What else is in your backpack?” she demanded. “Let me see.”
Within minutes, from among the approved items in his pack—some extra clothing, a canteen, and his grandfather’s blankets—Lani unearthed several pieces of contraband: a plastic-bound six-pack of Coca-Cola cans, two bags of potato chips, and three more candy bars. She handed all the confiscated loot, including the remains of the original candy bar, over to Leo.
“Please take these back to the truck,” she said to him. “They won’t be needed here.”
“You’re sure you want to do this—that you’ll be okay?” Leo asked.
“I’m sure.”
“All right then,” Leo said. “Delia and I are going to the dance at Vamori tonight, but I’ll come back for you in the morning when the dance is over.”
Gabe watched sourly as his father disappeared taking the goodies with him. “If I can’t drink Coke, what can I drink?” he wanted to know.
“You’d be surprised what a little prickly pear juice and honey can do for a cup of hot water.”
“Right,” Gabe grumbled under his breath. “I can hardly wait.”
Lani ignored his complaints. “Okay,” she told him, “it’s about time you got off your duff and helped me make camp.”
“Why should I?” Gabe objected. “Why do I even have to be here? Why can’t I just go back to town with my dad?”
“You’re here because I think you should be, and so do your parents,” Lani growled back, “and as long as you’re here, you’re also going to do what I say. Now get busy.”
“Doing what?”
In her years as a doctor, Lani Walker-Pardee had encountered her share of surly adolescents, and Gabe was currently running true to form.
“Like gathering some rocks to make a fire pit.”
He made a beeline for the first rocks he saw—the easy ones—those surrounding Betraying Woman’s cross. “Not those,” she told him. “Those stay where they are. Find some others. It’ll be dark before long, and we’ll need to have the fire going by then.”
“Right,” he muttered sourly. “Who cares about having a fire?”
“You will,” she warned him, “about ten minutes after the sun goes down.”
Gabe huffed off to do as he was bidden. Watching him go, Lani felt a hint of despair. Maybe Dan and Leo were right. Maybe Baby Fat Crack Ortiz really was a lost cause.
SITTING ALONE IN my Seattle penthouse, I was a very lonely and glum version of J. P. Beaumont that Friday evening. I sat in the family room in my new leather easy chair and gazed out the window at the setting sun and the busy boat traffic on Elliott Bay far below. From my bird’s-eye view, the ferries and lumbering container ships looked like small toys—about the size of the rubber-band-powered plastic toy boats I used to sail on Seattle’s Green Lake back when I was a kid.
Though I didn’t like to admit it, my beloved recliner’s replacement wasn’t half bad. It was made of smooth reddish-brown leather and offered the kind of comfort the broken and dying springs in the old recliner could no longer provide. Even so, I wouldn’t have gotten rid of the recliner if I hadn’t been strong-armed into relinquishing it by Jim Hunt, my once and again interior designer.
I glanced at my watch, sighed, and heaved myself out of the chair. The last thing I wanted to do that night—the very last thing—was go to the Behind the Badge Foundation’s Gala and Auction down at the airport Hilton. And I most especially didn’t want to go solo. My reluctance had nothing to do with the organization sponsoring the event. After all, Behind the Badge helps maintain Washington’s Fallen Officer Memorial. It also supplies much-needed scholarship assistance to the sons and daughters of fallen officers. But the truth is, I would have much preferred whipping out my checkbook and mailing a sizable donation to actually making an appearance.
This was supposed to have been a fun event—a double date of sorts, a foursome made up of my wife, Mel Soames, and me, along with my son, Scott, and his wife, Cherisse. Having aced his stint at the Police Academy, Scotty was now a full-fledged member of the Seattle Police Department. Tickets to the event had been a Christmas present to Mel and me from Scott and Cherisse, and the four of us had planned to go together.
Of course, with everything that had happened just before Christmas, the whole holiday season had turned into something of a bust. Then, at the last minute, Mel had been summoned to Washington, D.C. Homeland Security was putting on an antiterrorism dog-and-pony show for police chiefs from all over the country. Mel, the recently designated chief of police in Bellingham, had initially declined the invitation, saying she didn’t have the time or the travel budget to attend.
Then, someone in D.C. had taken a look at their RSVP list and realized that, in terms of diversity, they were on the low side when it came to female attendees. I suspected there were a couple of reasons for that, number one being that female chiefs of departments were still pretty much, as my mother would have said, “scarce as hens’ teeth.” And the top-drawer ones like Mel took their responsibilities seriously and probably figured they had better things to do with their time than to go trotting off to a meaningless conference in D.C. where they would be treated as little more than window dressing.
The upshot was, early in the week a new batch of invitations had been issued, ones that included Homeland Security coughing up all travel and hotel expenses—for the distaff chiefs. This struck me as an out-and-out case of discrimination toward the male attendees. Nonetheless, Mel had accepted the offer and flown off to D.C. on a red-eye late on Thursday. Her absence left me batching it in Seattle rather than spending a quiet weekend with her in our downtown condo.
With our plans shot to hell, I had called Scott, intending to bail on the party rather than go without Mel. Scott, however, had not only insisted that I come along, he even offered to pick me up so we’d all be able to use the express lanes. With their ETA less than half an hour away, I headed into the bedroom to get ready. Fifteen minutes later, showered, shaved, and wearing the Montblanc cologne Mel had given me for Christmas, I stepped into my walk-in closet and pulled down the garment bag that held my best suit.
After straightening my pocket square, I slipped one hand into the jacket pocket and noticed an object lurking there. As soon as I felt the contours, I recognized what it was—my Special Homicide badge. Drawing it out of the pocket and seeing the black band still wrapped around it hit me like a ton of bricks. The last time I had worn the suit had been for Ross Connors’s funeral.
Unbidden, a whole series of images from that terrible time flashed through my waking mind just as they often do in my dreams at night. First there was the supposedly carefree December evening. There had been flurries of snow as Mel and I headed for Seattle Center intent on a much-anticipated company party that never happened. Mel and I had stood together, frozen to the ground in horrified silence, as a speeding Range Rover, driven by a pair of totally clueless bank robbers, plowed into the side of Ross Connors’s town car as his driver attempted to make a left turn off Broad into the Space Needle parking lot.
Now, alone in my bedroom, I recalled the screams of sirens as first responders converged on the awful scene. I remembered heart-stopping moments as, one by one, I realized four people were dead. The two crooks, driving hell-bent for leather without seat belts, had both been thrown clear of their vehicle. They had died instantly.
The town car had been T-boned on the driver’s side. Racing to the vehicle, I checked on both Ross and his driver, Bill Spade, searching for pulses. There were none. The only sign of life inside the town car was in the front passenger seat where Harry Ignatius Ball, my immediate supervisor from the Special Homicide Investigation Team, sat howling in pain. His legs had been nearly severed by the sheet metal from the town car’s roof as it collapsed under the weight of a fallen utility pole.
When they hauled Harry away from the scene that night, rolling him first into the KOMO building at Fisher Plaza and then flying him by helicopter to Harborview, I was sure the man was a goner. But the docs at Harborview turned out to be miracle workers. He lost both his legs above the knee, but he lived.
In the aftermath of those events, with Ross barely cold in his grave, the newly appointed attorney general had laid waste to what had been Ross’s pet project, the Special Homicide Investigation Team. With little advance notice and less fanfare, S.H.I.T. became a thing of the past, and those of us who had worked there were out of a job.
While the rest of us were being kicked out onto the street, Harry was shut up in a hospital, first fighting for his life and later, in rehab, dealing with the grim realities of his new life as a double amputee. With nothing else to keep me occupied, I had assumed the task of fixing Harry’s Eastlake condo and turning it into a place he could use both while he was still mostly confined to a wheelchair and later—how much later I still didn’t know—when he would be fitted with a pair of new hi-tech legs.
The rehab job had been a complicated endeavor. While Harry bitched about his medically necessitated incarceration, I had been in charge of the Harry I. Ball Project, as we called it. Lots of people were ready and willing to make donations, but someone had to be in charge of handling those funds and properly thanking whoever had contributed. My mother would have been proud of all my handwritten thank-you notes.
For the design work, I had enlisted the help of Jim Hunt. There had been permits to obtain, contractors to juggle, materials to be purchased, to say nothing of endless days of design decisions. I didn’t care if I ever set foot in a lighting or plumbing fixture store again. Then, once work started, I was in charge of overseeing construction.
The hurry-up remodeling project had come in on time but slightly over budget. Weeks earlier, Harry had finally been released from rehab. He had gone home under the supervision of a capable but nightmare-inducing retired RN named Marge Herndon, whom many regard as a clone of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She had been my grim-faced, overly bossy drill instructor/taskmaster during my stint of rehab following bilateral knee replacement, but she’d gotten the job done. I had suggested that Harry look into hiring her to help him once he was sent home. I never anticipated what happened once those two tough-minded individuals were thrown together. I had expected they’d initially lock horns and only gradually come to some kind of understanding. Instead, they’d gotten along like gangbusters from the outset, their shared addiction to tobacco having helped seal the deal. And if Harry thought, as I had, that Marge was bossy as all hell, he had so far failed to mention it.
Lost in thought, I had no conscious recollection of sinking down on the side of the bed, but that’s where I was when the phone rang.
“Hey,” Cherisse announced. “We’re here.”
There was still a lump in my throat, one I had to swallow before I could reply. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
On the ride down in the elevator, I attempted to compose myself. I realized that Scott and Cherisse were right to insist that I go to the gala. After all, there have been far too many fallen officers in my life for me to take a pass on Behind the Badge, and that’s what the evening would be about—remembering those folks and honoring them.
As the elevator descended, I enumerated them one by one, starting, of course, with the most recent—Delilah Ainsworth. Before Delilah came Sue Danielson; before Sue came the big guy, Benjamin Harrison “Gentle Ben” Weston; and before Gentle Ben there was my very first partner in Homicide, Milton “Pickles” Gurkey. Pickles had been on duty when he suffered a fatal heart attack during a shoot-out in the parking lot outside the Doghouse restaurant.
By the time I reached the lobby, I finally had my head screwed on straight. I stepped outside and climbed into the backseat of Scott’s Acura. Fortunately for me, Cherisse is a little bit of a thing. Once she moved her seat forward, I had plenty of leg room.
“How’s it going?” Scott asked from the driver’s seat.
“Fine,” I answered. “Just fine.”
It was a Mel Soames “fine”—a two-raised-eyebrows “fine.” What I meant but didn’t say was that I may have been fine now, but I sure as hell hadn’t been fine a few minutes ago.
“I’m so glad you decided to come along after all,” Cherisse said. “It’ll be great fun.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said.
I doubted it would be any kind of fun, but since I was going anyway, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and decided to enjoy it.