Day of the Dead by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

living in the city,” Grandma Johnson had told him countless times. “With all the traffic and noise, I can’t hear myself think. That’s when I wish I was back on the island, where it was just me and the woods and the water. Then, all I could think or dream about was how boring it was and how much I wanted to get away. Now I wish I could go back.”
    Isle Royale was a long damned way from Tucson, Arizona, but remembering Grandma’s voice made Erik know what he needed to do—hear himself think. Hurrying into the house, he grabbed up his knapsack. He loaded it up with sunscreen, several bottles of water, and some food—a couple of sandwiches, some cheese, and a package of dried apricots. Then he donned thick socks and hiking boots and headed out the door.
    Outside, Erik paused beside his pickup and considered whether or not he should drive the Tacoma to the trailhead. Even though he had truck keys in his pocket, he finally decided against it. These days, leaving a vehicle—a company vehicle, at that—parked at a trailhead was pretty much an open invitation to have it broken into and/or stolen. Besides, the trailhead to Finger Rock was only a mile or so from the Catalina foothills home he was house-sitting for Professor Raymond Rice and his wife, Frieda, who were off on a year-long sabbatical in France.
    After all, Erik thought, driving somewhere to go on a hike seems pretty dumb. Since the point is walking, why not start from here?
    And so he did. Erik trudged off alone in the early-morning sunshine with the sky clean and blue above him. A few rock doves, a flock of quail, and a single watchful roadrunner noticed his solitary departure. So did a neighborhood dog or two, who barked briefly as he passed. In that upscale neighborhood people valued their privacy. Individual homes were set at least an acre apart and screened by carefully planted collections of native shrubbery and looming saguaros. As a consequence, none of Erik’s neighbors saw him go.
    Since Erik’s pickup came and went from the driveway several times during the course of the day, those same privacy-loving neighbors assumed that the young man who was staying at the Rices’ place was spending a quiet Saturday going in and out and running errands just like everyone else. None of them saw or noticed anything at all out of the ordinary that day. For Erik LaGrange, that would make all the difference.
    ***
    Fifteen miles across town, on the edge of the Tucson Mountains, Brandon Walker, too, had spent a sleepless night. But his lack of sleep was due to an entirely different reason. For the first time in years, former sheriff Brandon Walker was excited—too excited to sleep. He had spent the entire night going over the previous day’s conversation with Emma Orozco and wondering what the hell he was going to do about it.
    He had come back into the living room carrying a tray of iced tea to find Emma staring up at one of Rita Antone’s best baskets—a two-foot-wide medallion featuring the Tohono O’odham’s sacred symbol, the Man in the Maze. Usually the design was woven onto the white yucca background in a tough black fiber harvested from devil’s-claw pods. For this particular basket, however, Rita had crafted the maze by using yucca root, which, without benefit of any dye, resulted in a rusty red hue that resembled dried blood. That, of course, was what made this particular basket so valuable and so special, as Rita had once explained.
    “For this basket,” Nana Dahd had told Brandon Walker, “the yucca had to die.”
    Emma Orozco stared up at the basket as if hoping that somewhere in the sacred curves of bloodred pattern she could find her own answers as well.
    Brandon offered the tray of drinks. Emma murmured her thanks and daintily accepted an icy glass of tea while declining both lemon and sugar. Brandon helped himself to generous doses of both and then settled back into his favorite armchair.
    He had lived with and among the Desert People for a