Authors: J. A. Jance
The phrase “not bad for a girl” was an old familiar and private joke between them. And hearing those words of praise from Brandon Walker meant far more to Diana than any Pulitzer ever would.
With tears in her eyes, she put down her burden of wood and then let herself be pulled close in a sweaty but welcome embrace. Brandon’s shirt was wet and salty against her cheeks. So were her tears.
“Thank you,” she murmured, smiling up at him. “Thank you so much.”
By mid-afternoon, Mitch Johnson’s errands were run and he was back on the mountain, watching and waiting. The front yard of the Walker place was an unfenced jungle—a snarl of native plants and cactus—ocotillo, saguaro, and long-eared prickly pear—with a driveway curving through it. One part of the drive branched off to the side of the house, where it passed through a wrought-iron gate set in the tall river-rock wall that surrounded both sides and back of the house.
Late in the afternoon what appeared to be an almost new blue-and-silver Suburban drove through an electronically opened gate and into a carport on the side of the house. Mitch watched intently through a pair of binoculars as the woman he had come to know as Diana Ladd Walker stepped out of the vehicle and then stood watching while the gate swung shut behind the vehicle.
She probably believes those bars on that gate mean safety,
Mitch thought with a laugh.
Safety and security.
“False security, little lady,” he said aloud. “Those bars don’t mean a damned thing, not if somebody opens the gate and lets me in.”
Using binoculars, Mitch observed Diana Ladd Walker’s progress as she made her way into the house. She had to be somewhere around fifty, but even so, he had to admit she was a handsome woman, just as Andy had told him she would be. Her auburn hair was going gray around the temple. From the emerald-green suit she wore, he could see that she had kept her figure. She moved with the confident, self-satisfied grace that comes from doing what you’ve always wanted to do. No wonder Andrew Carlisle had hated Diana Ladd Walker’s guts. So did Mitch.
A few minutes after disappearing into the house she reemerged, dressed in work clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, and hat and bringing her husband something cold to drink.
How touching,
the watcher on the mountain thought.
How sweet! How stupid!
And then, while Brandon and Diana Walker were busy with the wood, the sweet little morsel who was destined to be dessert rode up on her mountain bike. Lani. The three unsuspecting people talked together for several minutes before the girl went inside. Not long after that, toward sunset, Brandon and Diana went inside as well.
In the last three weeks Mitch Johnson had read
Shadow of Death
from cover to cover three different times, gleaning new bits of information with each repetition. Long before he read the book, Andy had told him that the child Diana and Brandon Walker had adopted was an Indian. What Mitch hadn’t suspected until he saw Lani in the yard and sailing past him on her bicycle was how beautiful she would be.
That was all right. The more beautiful, the better. The more Brandon and Diana Walker loved their daughter, the more losing her would hurt them. After all, Mikey had been an angelic-faced cherub when Mitch went away to prison.
“What’s the worst thing about being in prison?” Andy had asked one time early on, shortly after Mitch Johnson had been moved into the same cell.
Mitch didn’t have to think before he answered. “Losing my son,” he had said at once. “Losing Mikey.”
His wife had raised so much hell that Mitch had finally been forced to sign away his parental rights, clearing the way for Mikey to be adopted by Larry Wraike, Lori Kiser Johnson’s second husband.
“So that’s what we have to do then,” Andy had said determinedly.
This was long before Mitch Johnson had taken Andrew Carlisle’s single-minded plan and made it his own. The conversation had occurred at a time when the possibility of Mitch’s being released from prison seemed so remote as to be nothing more than a fairy tale.
“What is it we have to do?” he had asked.
“Leave Brandon Walker childless,” Andy had answered. “The same way he left you. My understanding is that one of his sons is missing and presumed dead. That means he has three children left—a natural son, a stepson, and an adopted daughter. So whatever we do we’ll have to be sure to take care of all three.”
“How?” Mitch had asked.
“I’m not certain at the moment, Mr. Johnson,” Andy responded. “But we’re both quite smart, and we have plenty of time to establish a plan of attack. I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something appropriately elegant.”
For eighteen years—the whole time Mitch was in prison—he sent Mikey birthday cards. Every year the envelopes had been returned unopened.
Mitch Johnson had saved those cards, every single one of them. To his way of thinking, they were only part of the price Brandon and Diana Walker would have to pay.
4
Because everything in nature goes in fours, nawoj, there were four days in the beginning of things. But these four days were not like four days are today. It may have meant four years or perhaps four periods of time.
On the Second Day
I’itoi
went to all the different tribes to see how they were getting along. And Great Spirit taught each tribe the kind of houses they should build.
First,
I’itoi
went to the Yaquis, the Hiakim, who live in the south. It was very hot in the land of the Yaquis, so he showed them how to dig into the side of a hill and to make houses that would be cool.
When Great Spirit went south, Gopher—
Jewho
—and Coyote—
Ban
—followed him because, as you remember, everything must follow the Spirit of Goodness. And while
I’itoi
was digging into the side of the hill to show the Hiakim how to build their houses, Gopher and Coyote stood watching. And soon,
Jewho
and
Ban
began digging as well. Every minute or two, as they worked, they pulled their heads out of the holes they were digging to see how Elder Brother did it.
Presently
I’itoi
stopped to rest. When he saw what Gopher and Coyote were doing, he laughed and said, “That is a good house for you.” And that,
nawoj,
is why the gophers and coyotes have lived that same way ever since.
Moments after Lani stepped into the house, the phone rang. “Davy!” she exclaimed, her voice alive with delight as soon as she heard her brother’s greeting. “Where are you? When will you be home?”
“I’ll be leaving Evanston tomorrow morning,” he said. “I won’t be home until sometime next week.”
“In time for Mom and Dad’s anniversary?” she asked.
“What day is it again?” David asked.
“Saturday,” she told him. “A week from tomorrow.”
“I should be there by then. Why? Is there a party or something?”
“No, but wait until you see what I’m getting them. There’s a guy I met on the way to work. He’s an artist. I’m going to pose for him tomorrow morning, and he’s going to give me a picture.”
“What kind of pose?” David asked.
“He wants me to wear something Indian,” Lani said. “I’m going to wear the outfit I wore for rodeo last year.”
“Oh,” David Ladd said, sounding relieved. “That kind of pose.”
“What kind of pose did you think?” Lani asked.
“Never mind. Is Mom there?”
“She’s outside with Dad. Want me to go get her?”
“Don’t bother. Just give her the message that I’m leaving in the morning, so she won’t be able to reach me. Tell her I’ll call from here and there along the way to let her know how I’m doing.”
From the moment Lani had come to the house in Gates Pass, Davy Ladd had been the second most important person in her young life, right behind Nana
Dahd
. The bond that existed between the two went far beyond the normal connection between brother and sister. Even halfway across the continent Lani sensed something was amiss.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
David Ladd was more than a little concerned about driving cross-country alone. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have bothered him at all. In the course of his years of going to school at Northwestern, he had made the solo drive several times. Now, though, he was living with the possibility of another panic attack always hanging over his head. What would happen if one came over him while he was driving alone down a freeway? He had called home, looking for reassurance, but obviously the edginess in his tone had communicated itself to his little sister. That embarrassed him.
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “I’ve just been having some trouble sleeping is all.”
Lani laughed. “You? Mom always said you were the world-class sleeper in the family, that you could sleep through anything.”
“Not anymore,” Davy replied somberly. “I guess I must be getting old.” He paused. “So are things all right at home? With Mom and Dad, I mean?”
“Sure,” Lani said. “Mom’s getting ready to start another book, and Dad’s still cutting up wood like mad.”
“And how about you?” Davy added. “How are things going with the new job?”
“It’s great,” Lani answered. “There’s that hour in the morning, between shifts . . .” She stopped. “Hey, maybe when you’re back here, you could come over to the museum in the afternoons sometimes. I can get you in for free. The two of us could spend the afternoon there together, just like we used to, with Nana
Dahd
.”
“I’d like that,
Mualig Siakam,
” David Ladd said softly, drifting back into the world of their childhood names and squeezing the words out over an unexpected lump that suddenly rose in his throat. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Mr. Walker?”
Quentin Walker, slouched in front of a beer on his customary stool, was drinking his way toward the end of Happy Hour at El Gato Loco, a dive of a workingman’s bar just east of the freeway on West Grant Road in Tucson. At the sound of his own name, one Quentin didn’t necessarily bandy about among the tough customers of El Gato, Quentin swung around on his stool and studied the newcomer over the rim of his draft beer.
“Yeah,” he said without enthusiasm. “That’s me.”
“Long time no see.”
Quentin was more than moderately drunk. He had been sitting at the smoke-filled bar since five, working his way through his usual TGIF routine—shots of bourbon with beer chasers. He squinted up at the newcomer, a tall, spare man who, even in the shadowy gloom of the nighttime bar, still wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. Only when the man finally reached up and removed the sunglasses did recognition finally dawn.
“Why, Mitch Johnson!” Quentin exclaimed. “How the hell are you?”
“I’m out, same as you,” Mitch answered with a grin as he settled on the next stool. “Which means I’m fine. You?”
Quentin shrugged. “Okay, I guess. What’ll you have to drink?”
“A beer,” Mitch said. “Bud’s okay.”
Quentin signaled the bartender, who brought two beers and another shot as well. When Mitch paid for all three drinks, Quentin nodded his thanks. He hadn’t really planned on another. By the time Happy Hour finished at seven, he was usually juiced enough that he could stagger the three blocks up the street to his grubby apartment. There, if he was lucky and drunk enough both, he’d fall into bed and sleep through the night. Maybe it was just the geography of it, of being back so near to where it had all happened. Whatever the cause, in the months since he’d left prison and returned to Tucson, sleep without the benefit of booze was a virtual impossibility. He went to bed more or less drunk every night. That was the only thing that held his particular set of demons at bay.
“I heard about Andy,” Quentin said. “Read about it in the paper, that he died, I mean. It’s too bad . . .”
“I’m sure he was more than ready to go,” Mitch replied. “He’d been sick for a long time. He was in a lot of pain. I think he had suffered enough.”
Quentin cast a bleary, questioning stare at the man seated next to him. Mitch had seen that look before and understood it. He had seen it on the faces of countless guards and fellow prisoners. They were all searching his face for signs of the awful lesions that had made Andrew Carlisle’s grotesque face that much worse toward the end. Everyone was waiting to see when the same visible marks of AIDS—symptoms of his impending death—would show up on Mitch’s body as well. For all of them—guards and prisoners alike—it was a foregone conclusion that the telltale marks of Kaposi’s sarcoma would inevitably appear.
Mitch alone knew that those conclusions were wrong. He and Andy Carlisle had been cell mates and friends for seven and a half celibate years. Although the rest of the prison population may have thought otherwise, their relationship had been intellectual rather than sexual. Originally there had been some of the trappings of teacher and student, but eventually that had evolved into one of fully equal co-conspirators—with the two of them aligned against the universe.
Their long-term interdependence and mutual interests had merged into a closeness that, outside prison, might well have been mistaken for a kind of love. And in a way, it was. It had been a private joke between them that the universal presumption of physical intimacy between them had given Mitch Johnson a certain kind of protection from attack that he had very much appreciated. Originally that physical security had meant far more to Mitch than Andrew Carlisle’s promised monetary legacy. Once the former professor was in the picture, no one ever again attempted to mess with Mitch Johnson, no one at all.
“Believe it or not, still no symptoms, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Mitch said, answering Quentin’s unasked question.
Embarrassed, Quentin’s eyes dodged away from Mitch’s unflinching gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Mitch said.
For a time the two men were silent while Quentin stared moodily into his beer. “I didn’t mean to insult you . . .”
“Forget it,” Mitch said. “It’s nothing. I’m used to it by now.”