Law and Order

Law and Order is the name sometimes used for the Papago Tribal Police Force in the investigation of Roseanne Orozco’s murder. In the novel, the phrase is tied less to an abstract promise of justice than to a particular failure: the tribal police were called to the case, but the investigation produced no resolution while crucial witnesses and questions went unheeded.

Name and Jurisdiction

The expression refers to the Papago Tribal Police Force, not to law enforcement in general. Responsibility for reservation homicides depended in part on where a death was believed to have occurred and who was thought to be involved. Gina Antone had been murdered off the reservation by Anglos, so her case fell to the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Roseanne’s murder was treated differently: although the actual site was never found, investigators assumed she had died on the reservation and had been killed by a fellow Indian. Such cases on Native lands were the responsibility of either the Federal Bureau of Investigation or local tribal police.

The Orozco Investigation

The Papago Tribal Police Force was summoned to the scene of Roseanne’s homicide. Its subsequent investigation came to nothing. Brandon Walker recalls that the force lacked three essentials—training, equipment, and money—and that the FBI’s investigations into reservation murders were often cursory unless an Indian suspect and an Anglo victim reversed the usual pattern of institutional attention. The phrase Law and Order thus appears against a background in which formal responsibility did not guarantee a properly resourced or effective investigation.

The case also carried a damaging presumption against Roseanne’s father. Emma Orozco later tells Brandon that the tribal police thought her husband had committed the murder. Andrea Tashquinth had tried to alert investigators that Roseanne’s disappearance might be connected to the hospital, where she had been admitted for tests after an earlier appendectomy. At sixteen, Andrea felt that no one was interested in her opinion; she was not listened to. The family’s account was therefore present, but did not become an effective investigative lead.

Reopening the Questions

Years later, Brandon’s renewed inquiry depends on recovering testimony and records that the original investigation did not resolve. Andrea repeats that she had tried to tell the authorities what she suspected, while Emma insists that the hospital’s claim to have no record of Roseanne’s admission is false: Emma’s own records document her hospital stays, including Roseanne’s birth. Their accounts redirect attention toward the hospital and toward the possibility that Roseanne did not simply leave on her own.

The inquiry also exposes a conflict between urgency and procedure. Emma and her family secretly exhume Roseanne’s baby from a grave at Big Fields rather than wait for permission from the tribal council. Their action gets the remains to Brandon quickly, but compromises the chain of evidence and risks weakening any case that might be brought in court. Brandon is caught between securing answers for the family and preserving evidence that could support legal accountability. In this later investigation, tribal permission, the treatment of the dead, and courtroom standards all bear on what justice can mean.

Significance

Law and Order names a local police force, but its place in the story gathers together the distinction between having jurisdiction and carrying out an effective investigation. Roseanne’s case was not simply forgotten: her family remembered, Andrea had tried to speak, and Emma eventually insisted on knowing what happened. Yet their knowledge did not shape the original inquiry. The expression consequently marks the distance between an institution’s assigned responsibility and the attention, resources, and openness to testimony required to fulfill it.