Day of the Dead (16 page)

Erik didn’t want to say what was wrong. They’d been going through a stormy period for the last several weeks. That happened fairly regularly, but things had been better the last couple of days, and he was reluctant to rock the boat. Gayle Stryker didn’t like having her boat rocked.

What was wrong had its origin in a tiny blue envelope that had shown up in Erik’s mail earlier that week—an envelope with a birth announcement inside. Ryan and Brianna Doyle had had a baby, a seven-and-a-half-pound boy they’d named Kyle.

Erik and Ryan had met in fifth grade at Hollinger Elementary, and they’d been friends ever since. Five years earlier, Erik had been best man when Ryan and Brianna were married at St. Philip’s in the Hills. Receiving a birth announcement from a good friend shouldn’t have been an earth-shattering experience, but it was.

Ryan’s wedding had happened only weeks before Erik met up with Gayle Stryker, who promptly took over his life. Gayle
became
Erik’s life. Since then he’d barely seen Ryan and Brianna. After neglecting them for so long, he was surprised he was still on their Christmas card list, to say nothing of the one for birth announcements. But seeing the picture of the wrinkly-faced, more or less ugly, round-headed baby had brought Erik’s own life home to him in an entirely new way.
What the hell am I doing?

In the beginning, once he got over being flattered and utterly dazzled by Gayle’s beauty and attentions, he’d given himself a serious talking-to about the age difference between them. What did it matter if she was almost the same age his mother would have been, had Louise LaGrange lived, that is? Gayle was beautiful, she was rich, and she wanted him. What else counted? Erik had asked her more than once if she ever considered leaving her husband.

She’d laughed and said, “Every day and twice on Sunday,” and let it go at that. She never spoke of getting a divorce. She never spoke of making any changes. She seemed perfectly content with the way things were—as if she didn’t mind if she and Erik went on the same way indefinitely. And they had done exactly that—for more than five years.

Erik wondered sometimes about what would happen if Lawrence Stryker croaked. The man was pushing sixty-five. According to Gayle, he had lost all interest in sex, or at least all interest in sex with her. He took medication for high blood pressure, and there had been talk about his needing a pacemaker, although, as far as Erik knew, one had never been installed.

So, if Larry died, what then? Would Erik and Gayle’s affair evolve into a more normal relationship? Or was normal not what Gayle had in mind?

That was how things stood right up until the day that damnable birth announcement arrived. Thirty-something women were supposed to be the ones with biological clocks, but suddenly Erik heard his own clock ticking loud and clear. He was thirty-five; Gayle sixty-two. Having kids had never been part of their equation, but still…Did he want to spend his life with someone almost twice his age? In the little cocoons where they spent their private time together, age didn’t matter, but at work sometimes, there were things that struck him—music playing on someone’s radio, for instance, or someone else cracking a joke—that made him realize he and Gayle came from different generations.

“Where are we going?” Erik said finally.

“Going?” she asked. “Well, now that we’ve had dinner and dessert, I’m going home.”

“Not that,” Erik said. “I mean, where are we going long-term?”

“Does it matter?” Gayle returned. “Seems to me we’re doing just fine. What’s wrong?”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t
have
to get dressed and go home?” Erik asked. “If we could live together like normal people?”

“Like husband and wife, you mean?”

He nodded. “That, too.”

Gayle’s eyes blazed with immediate fury. “You’ve met someone, haven’t you!”

“No,” Erik said quickly. “Nothing like that. I swear to God.”

“You’re tired of me, then?”

“No. Of course not. You’re wonderful—the best thing that ever happened to me.”

But by then Gayle had already hopped out of bed. She pulled on clothing without taking her usual detour through the master bedroom’s spacious shower.

“What, then?” she continued. “You probably want to go find some sweet little twat to have babies with! From what I’ve heard, having babies is vastly overrated.”

Gayle’s words bristled with so much hostility that Erik couldn’t bring himself to say she was right. In the face of her fury he couldn’t admit that having a regular life—with a home and a wife and a couple of kids, and maybe even a dog—was exactly what he wanted.

As Gayle strode down the hallway, buttoning her blouse, Erik went after her. “Come on,” he said. “Why are you so upset?”

She rounded on him so suddenly that he almost smashed into her.
“Why?”
she demanded. “If you’re not smart enough to figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

He caught up with her when she stopped in the kitchen long enough to slip on the high heels she had shucked off when she came in through the garage earlier in the afternoon.

“Please, Gayle,” Erik pleaded, touching her shoulder. “Don’t do this. It’s all a misunderstanding.”

She shrugged out from under his hand. “Misunderstanding?” she asked, glaring up at him. “I don’t think so. I read you loud and clear!”

When they were in the bedroom—hers or his—she was always careful to keep the blinds closed and the lights properly dimmed. But out here in the kitchen with its bright fluorescent lighting and with anger distorting her features, the lines a team of skilled plastic surgeons usually kept at bay were clearly visible. Seeing them Erik realized suddenly that Gayle Stryker was old—old and shrill and very, very angry.

Once she sped out of the garage, Erik’s first reaction was relief. This wasn’t how he would have chosen to end their relationship, but ending it was probably a good idea—if he ever was going to have a chance at a “normal” life. But then, after the first shock wore off, Erik realized how much else would be ending as well—his love life, his job, his company car. Those were all irretrievably intermingled. His involvement with Gayle affected every aspect of his life. Walking away from her meant walking away from everything else.

When that realization hit him, he tried calling her cell phone—the one on a family-plan program that he and Gayle shared and where the bill never showed up at the offices of Medicos for Mexico. Erik called several times. She never answered, and he didn’t leave a message.

Erik had spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how he would manage in a Gayle Stryker–free world. The future had looked pretty bleak and dismal to him in those black predawn hours. Now, reduced to almost crawling back down the mountain on his hands and knees, it looked even worse.

Twelve

Brandon sat in the Suburban outside the supermarket, watching people come and go, as he waited for Andrea Tashquinth to get off work. The more he thought about losing Fat Crack, the sadder he became. There had been many losses in Brandon Walker’s life, and no matter how many times it happened, dealing with the loss never became any easier.

In giving Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch to Lani, Gabe Ortiz was passing a torch that possibly had been handed down from one medicine man to another stretching all the way back to that ancient medicine woman,
Kulani O’oks
.

Brandon was a born and bred
Mil-gahn
. Try as he might, he could never quite reconcile in his mind how Fat Crack Ortiz could be both a devout Christian Scientist and a powerful medicine man. Was the same thing true for Lani? How could she possibly return to the Tohono O’odham Nation as a full-fledged physician and also as a medicine woman? Yet neither Fat Crack nor Lani seemed to have any doubt that these two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas would someday become reality.

Brandon understood why Fat Crack had entrusted the medicine pouch to his old friend. He was saying good-bye. It meant Fat Crack knew he was dying.
And what exactly am I supposed to do about it?
Brandon wondered.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Much to his surprise, he had a full signal. He could call Lani right then if he wanted to, but should he? If that’s what Fat Crack had wanted—if he expected Lani to hurry home to be with him—wouldn’t he have said so?

In the end, Brandon put the phone back in his pocket and continued to mull over what had transpired. Why, for instance, was Fat Crack so troubled that Delia and Lani weren’t friends?

Brandon had never given much thought to Delia. He knew she was the tribal attorney. He knew, too, that she had married Fat Crack’s younger son, Leo. Wanda had told Diana something about a family squabble that had resulted in Leo and Delia’s moving out of the Ortiz Compound and into what had once been Delia’s aunt Julia’s place in Little Tucson. Wanda had been heartbroken about it, especially considering that Delia was even then pregnant with this boy child who would be the first grandson to carry on the Ortiz name.

Thinking back on the pained expression on Fat Crack’s face when he had mentioned Delia and Lani, Brandon wondered if perhaps the breach within the Ortiz family had something to do with the Walkers. Maybe that was the reason Fat Crack had wanted to be certain Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch went to Lani.

I’ll be sure she gets it,
Brandon vowed as he opened the glove box and placed the medicine pouch inside.

When he looked up again, Andrea Tashquinth was standing outside the supermarket’s sliding door and surveying the parking lot. Brandon slammed the glove box shut and locked it. Then he opened the door to the Suburban, motioned Andrea inside, and went to work.

***

Larry Stryker woke up
from his unintended nap and was surprised to see how much time had passed. The beer in the bottom of the bottle was too warm to drink. Looking at his watch, he sighed. Larry was tired. The morning heat had taken it out of him. Tomorrow he’d tell Al that he was through with golf for the summer. It was too damned hot to play.

For two cents he would have retreated to his room right then, undressed, and gone to bed. Still, tired as he was, he really did need to go downstairs and feed her. Whatever else Larry had in mind, he had no intention of starving the girl.

Had Gayle dropped by, he might have risen to the occasion and done something more creative, as he usually did on Saturday afternoons, but Gayle continued to be so besotted with Erik LaGrange that her showing up wasn’t likely. To Gayle’s credit, she didn’t flaunt her boy toys around Larry, and he was grateful for that. He was also grateful for what few crumbs of attention she deigned to give him now and then.

He went into the kitchen and dropped a hamburger patty into a dirty frying pan. Tired as he was, he found himself looking forward to the feeding. What was this one’s name again? He liked to call them by name occasionally, but in order to remember, he’d have to check in his most recent notebook. He kept a record of each girl’s name there, along with a set of her photos.

Down in the basement, this one would smell the meat frying. She’d be expecting the food and dreading it at the same time, but today she had nothing to fear. Physically Larry wasn’t up for anything more than watching her eat. He’d often let the girls go hungry for a while—twenty-four hours was just about right. When they were that famished, watching them eat was a real turn-on. He particularly liked the greedy way this one tore into her food. Even though he knew she didn’t want it and would have preferred to starve herself to death, but when she was hungry enough, she couldn’t help herself, either.

It intrigued him that all the girls seemed to have one thing in common: they were terribly self-conscious about eating in front of him. It was almost as though having him observe them eat made them forget how to perform the simple mechanical functions of chewing and swallowing. He wondered sometimes if their shyness was due to the fact that he was watching, or if it was because they were always naked when they ate—they were naked and he wasn’t.

Once, before he began relying on the premade hamburger patties, one of them had choked on a chunk of gristle in the piece of meat he had given her. She had choked and gagged and finally spit it out, but he had forced her to eat it anyway. She had chewed and chewed and chewed for what seemed forever before she was finally able to choke it down. That was the ultimate power over someone—to know you could, if you wanted, force them to eat their own vomit.

That was actually what Larry liked most—having them fear him. The more his girls tried not to submit, the better he liked it. When he was with Gayle, she was the one who called the shots, but that was about her needs, not his. In the basement, he was the one in control, but even there Gayle held the ultimate veto power. She would arbitrarily change girls on him. Just when he had one trained the way he wanted, Gayle would take her away. Then he’d have to do without until she came up with a replacement. Fortunately there was always a new girl available. Gayle would make a few inquiries, and within days or weeks, a new one would appear, drawn from the plentiful stock to be found at one of the many detention centers served by Medicos for Mexico.

Larry wondered sometimes about that first girl in Mazatlán—the one Gayle had served to him with her limbs bound by Gayle’s own brightly colored scarves. After her “session,” the girl had been given money and food and sent on her way, but all that had happened while Larry was in the shower. Gayle told him she had helped the girl dress and had taken her home, but now, given what had happened to the ones who had followed in her footsteps, Larry doubted that was true. The way Daniella was starting out—Larry had no difficulty remembering her name—she most likely would have turned into a two-bit whore. Gayle had probably done the little slut an enormous favor by putting her out of her misery before she had a chance to grow up. As for the girls since then? For them, too, growing up had never been in the cards.

Carrying the plate of food—the hamburger patty, a spoonful of cold refried beans, and a chunk of stale tortilla—Larry went to the basement door and unlocked it with the key he always carried on his belt. As soon as the door opened, he knew something was different. The emptiness of the place blew up around him—along with a coppery telltale odor he recognized at once. Even before he started down the stairs, he knew what to expect. Still, he was astonished by the carnage Gayle had left in her wake.