by J. A. Jance
And when it was finally over, when Gina Antone’s awful death was finished at last and the recorder clicked off, Diana leaned over and threw up into the mess of coffee and broken cup.
For a while after that she still couldn’t move. Carlisle had made it last that whole time. He had tortured the girl for a carefully calculated ninety minutes. And that was just the part he had taped. From the sound of it there must have been some preliminaries that had occurred even before that. And for inflicting that kind of appalling torture, for premeditating, planning, and savoring every ugly moment of that appalling inhumanity, what had happened to Andrew Carlisle?
A superior court judge had allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of second-degree manslaughter. The torture death of Gina Antone hadn’t even merited a charge of murder in the first degree. The State of Arizona had extracted a price of six short years from Andrew Carlisle in exchange for Gina Antone’s suffering. Six years. After that, he had been allowed to go free. Free to kill again.
Stunned, Diana sat for another half-hour, trying to decide what to do. There was no sense in turning the tape over to the authorities. What would they do with it? What could they do? Preposterously light or not, Andrew Carlisle had already served a prison term in connection with Gina Antone’s death. Double jeopardy would preclude him from being tried again for that same crime.
So should she keep the tape? Comments made by Andrew Carlisle during the tape seemed to make it clear that Diana’s former husband, Garrison Ladd, had been present at the crime scene but drunk and passed out during most of that terrible drama. Twenty-two years after the fact, Diana Cooper Ladd Walker finally had some understanding of her former husband’s involvement in Gina Antone’s death. It would seem that Garrison hadn’t been actively involved in what was done to Gina, but that didn’t mean he was blameless. Mr. Ladd. Gina had called him by name. No doubt he was the one she knew. That meant Garrison was probably the one who had lured her into the truck in the first place.
When he did that, when he had offered her a ride, had he known what was coming or not? There was no way of unraveling that now, and listening to the tape again or a hundred times, or having someone else listen to it wouldn’t have provided an adequate answer to that haunting question.
Getting out of the chair at last, Diana set about cleaning up the mess of vomit, spilled coffee, and broken pottery. Down on her hands and knees, for the first time ever she was grateful that Rita was dead. Had Gina’s grandmother still been alive, Diana would have had to face the moral dilemma of whether or not to play the tape for the old woman. With Rita dead, that wasn’t an issue.
But what about Davy? What would happen if he heard it? That thought hit her like a lightning bolt. Diana’s son—Garrison Ladd’s son—was still alive. If he ever came to know what was on that tape, it would tell him far more about his father than he ever needed to know.
Finally, there was Brandon to consider. He had headed the investigation into Gina Antone’s death and he had eventually arrested Andrew Carlisle. The plea bargain that had followed the arrest had been negotiated behind Brandon Walker’s back. If he had to endure listening to the grim recorded reality of Gina Antone’s death, Diana knew Brandon would be devastated. He would blame himself for the unwitting part he had played in allowing Andrew Carlisle to slip off the hook and escape what should have been a charge of aggravated first-degree murder.
Thinking about what exposure to the tape would do to both Brandon and Davy was what finally galvanized Diana Ladd Walker to action. Brandon was already carrying around a big enough load of guilt. His son Quentin was in prison due to a fatality drunk-driving charge. As another source of free-flowing guilt in Brandon Walker’s life, that tape was the last thing he needed.
With a fierce jab of her finger, Diana ejected the offending tape. She popped it out of the player and then carried it out to the living room. It was the first weekend in July. At eight o’clock in the morning, the air conditioner was already humming along at full speed when Diana knelt in front of the fireplace and opened the flue. Carefully, she laid a small fire with kindling at the bottom, topped by a layer of several wrist-thick branches of dried ironwood.
Once the kindling was lit, she sat on the raised hearth and waited until the ironwood was fully engulfed before she tossed the tape into the crackling flames. As the heat attacked it, the clear plastic container began to curl and melt. Like a snake shedding its skin, the magnetic tape slithered off its spindle and escaped the confines of the dwindling case. The tape writhed free, wriggled like a tortured creature, burst into flames, and then withered into a glowing chain of ash.
Only when there was nothing left of the tape and container but a charred, amorphous blob of melted plastic did Diana turn her back on the fireplace. Hurrying into the bathroom, she showered and dressed. Then, after raking the remainder of the fire apart, she left the house and drove straight to Florence. That day, Diana Walker Ladd was the first person inside the Visitation Room when the guard opened the door at ten o’clock in the morning.
Andrew Carlisle was led to his side of the Plexiglas divider a few minutes later. “Why, Mrs. Walker,” he said, sitting down across from her. “To what do I owe this unexpected honor? I don’t remember our setting an appointment for today.”
“We didn’t, you son of a bitch,” she said.
He brightened. The puckered skin around his mouth stretched into a pained imitation of a smile. “I see,” he said. “You must have received my little care package.”
“Why did you send it to me?”
“Why? Because I wanted you to know what this was all about.”
“That’s not true. You wanted someone to know the truth about what you did and what you got away with. You wanted to gloat and rub somebody’s nose in it.”
“That, too,” he conceded. “Maybe a little.”
“Where was it all this time?”
“The tape? That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Andrew Carlisle answered.
“Who brought it to my house? Who dropped it off? And how many more ugly surprises do you have in store for me?”
“One or two,” he answered. “Or does that mean you’re quitting?”
“No,” Diana told him. “It doesn’t mean I’m quitting. You think this is some kind of a game, don’t you? You think this is a way to get back at me for what I did to you. Well, listen up, buster. I’m not a quitter. I’m going to write this damned book. By the time I finish, you’re going to wish you’d never asked me to do it.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is a threat.”
“In other words, you’re abolishing the ground rules.”
“I’m writing this book regardless.”
“That will make the process far more interesting for me. More hands-on, if you’ll pardon the expression. Especially when it’s time to talk about the time we spent together.”
“Go fuck yourself, Mr. Carlisle!” She stood up, turned her back on him, and stalked over to the door. She had to wait in front of the door for several long moments before a guard opened it to let her out. While she was standing there she glanced back. Behind the Plexiglas barrier he was doubled over. And even though she couldn’t actually hear him without benefit of the intercom—the sound nonetheless filled her head and echoed down the confines of the prison hallway long after the heavy metal door had slammed shut behind her.
That ghostly sound was one she would never forget. It was Andrew Philip Carlisle. Laughing.
9
While Mualig Siakam and Old Limping Man were talking, some Indians came carrying a child. The child seemed asleep or dead. The people said she had been that way for a long time. They laid the child on the ground in the outer room of Medicine Woman’s house.
Mualig Siakam took a gourd which had pebbles in it that rattled. She took some small, soft white feathers, and she took a little white powder. Then she sat down at the head of the child and she began to sing.
The Indians could not
understand Medicine Woman’s song because she used the old, old language which is the one I’itoi gave his people in the beginning. All the animals understand this language, but only a very few of the old men and women remember it.
As Medicine Woman sang, she rattled the gourd which had on it the marks of shuhthagi—the water—and of wepgih—the lightning. For a long time Mualig Siakam sang alone, but when the people who were sitting around had learned the song, they sang with her.
And then Medicine Woman took some of the white feathers and passed them softly over the child’s mouth and nose. She passed the feathers back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes she passed the feathers down over the child’s chest. Then again she passed them back and forth across the child’s face.
And the face of the child changed. Her body moved. Medicine Woman gave a silent command to the child’s mother, who brought water. The child drank, and everyone looked very pleased.
The next morning Old Limping Man went to the house of Mualig Siakam. Medicine Woman was feeding the child, who was sitting up. And that day, the child’s people took her home.
Halfway to the highway, walking in scorching midday heat, Manny Chavez took a detour. The wine was gone. He was verging on heatstroke. In the end it was thirst and the hope of finding water that drove him off-track.
Under normal circumstances, no right-thinking member of the Desert People would have gone anywhere near the haunted, moldering ruins of the deserted village known as Ko’oi Koshwa—Rattlesnake Skull. An Apache war party, aided by a young Tohono O’othham woman, a traitor, had massacred almost the entire village. The only survivors, a boy and a girl, had sought refuge in a cave on the steep flanks of Ioligam several miles away.
More recently, in the late sixties, a young Indian girl named Gina Antone had been murdered there. Anthony Listo, now chief of police for the Tohono O’othham Nation, had been a lowly patrol officer during that investigation. From time to time, he had been heard to talk about the girl who had been lured from a summer dance to one of the taboo caves on Ioligam, where she had been tortured and killed. Her body had been left, floating facedown, in the charco—a muddy man-made watering hole—near the deserted village itself.
A whole new series of legends and beliefs had grown up around that murder. The killer, an Anglo named Carlisle, was said to have been Ohbsgam—Apachelike. People claimed that the killer had been invaded by the spirits of the dead Apaches who had attacked Rattlesnake Skull Village long ago.
All the caves on Ioligam were considered sacred and off-limits. They had been officially declared so in the lease negotiations when the tribe allowed the building of Kitt Peak National Observatory. In the aftermath of Gina Antone’s death, however, the caves close to Ko’oi Koshwa became taboo as well. People said Ohbsgam Ho’ok—Apachelike Monster—lived there, waiting for a chance to steal away another young Tohono O’othham girl. Parents sometimes used stories about the bogeyman S-mo’o O’othham—Hairy Man—to scare little boys back in line. On girls they used Ohbsgam Ho’ok.
Manny Chavez, thirsty but no longer drunk, considered all these things as he headed for the charco near what had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village. It was late in the season. Most of the other charcos on the reservation were already dry and would remain so until after the first summer rains came in late June or July. But no one ran any cattle near Ko’oi Koshwa. Without livestock to reduce the volume of water, Manny reasoned that he might still find water there—at least enough to get him the rest of the way to the highway.
Earlier, as Manny walked, he had heard and seen a four-wheel-drive vehicle making its way both up and down part of the mountain. Suspecting the people inside of being Anglo rock-climbers, Manny had given the tangerine-colored older-model Bronco a wide berth. He’d be better off on the highway, trying to hitch a ride in the back of an Indian-owned livestock truck, than messing around with a carful of Mil-gahn.
Now, though, as Manny approached the charco, he was surprised to see that same vehicle parked nearby. A man—an Anglo armed with a shovel—was digging industriously in the dirt. Manny may have been nawmki—a drunkard—but he was also Tohono O’othham, from the top of his sand-encrusted hair to the toes of his worn-out boots. The thought of this Mil-gahn blithely digging for artifacts on the reservation offended Manuel Chavez.
“Hey,” he shouted. “What are you doing?”
The man with the shovel stopped digging and looked up. “You can’t dig here,” Manny said. “This is a sacred place.”
For a moment the two men stared at each other, then the Anglo, who was much younger than Manny, climbed out of the hole he was digging in the soft sand. He came at Manny with the shovel raised over his shoulder, wielding it like a baseball bat.
There was no question of Manny standing his ground. He looked around for a possible weapon. Off to his right was a small circle of river rock surrounding a faded wooden cross, but the rocks were too far away and too small to do him any good. Turning away from the Mil-gahn’s unreasoning fury, Manuel Chavez tried to run. He tripped and fell facedown in the sand.
The first blow, the only one he felt, caught him squarely on the back of the head.
David Ladd lay in the darkened hotel room waiting to fall asleep and grappling with the overwhelming fear that another panic attack would come over him and catch him unawares. The plague of attacks and dreams had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He knew now that another attack was inevitable. The only question was, when would it come? What if it happened while he was with Candace? What would she think of him then? He was young, strong, and supposedly healthy. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like him, but it was happening.
At last, emotionally worn and physically exhausted, David Ladd fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Sometime later, he was jarred awake by the sound of a key in the lock and then by the opening door banging hard against the inside security chain.
“David,” Candace called through the crack in the door. “Are you in there?”
Groggily, he staggered over to the door and unlatched the chain. “It’s you,” he mumbled.
Dropping several shopping bags to the floor, Candace stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. “Who else did you think it would be?”
“I was just taking a nap,” he said. “I’m still half asleep. I’ll go take a shower and see if it wakes me up.”
“Sure,” Candace said. “Go ahead.”
He had finished his shower, shut off the water, and was just starting to towel himself dry when Candace knocked softly on the door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
Candace burst into the room wearing little more than a glowingly radiant smile on her face.
“Oh, Davy,” she said, throwing both arms around his neck and crushing the soft flesh of her warm breasts against his damp chest. “I love it. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And it fits perfectly. How did you know what size?”
For a moment or two, David Ladd didn’t understand what was going on or grasp what she was talking about. Then, catching a glimpse of Astrid Ladd’s ring on Candace Waverly’s finger, he realized she had found it just where he had left it—on the nightstand table with his watch.
Crying and kissing him at the same time, Candace seemed totally oblivious to the droplets of water on his still-wet body. “And the answer is yes,” she whispered, with her lips grazing his ear. “Yes, yes, yes! Of course, I’ll marry you, even if it means living in your one-horse hometown.”
Marry! At the sound of the word, David Garrison Ladd’s legs almost buckled under him. For the length of several long kisses he was too stunned to reply. And by the time Candace’s impassioned kisses subsided, it was pretty much too late. By then she was leading him back across the artificially darkened room to the bed.
Sinking down on the mattress, she pulled David down on top of her naked body, drawing him into her while her eager hips rose up to meet him. That wasn’t the time to tell her that this was all a t
errible mistake—that he had never planned to give her Astrid Ladd’s ring in the first place. He did the only thing that made sense under the circumstances—he kissed her back.
Other than that, he kept his mouth shut. And after their lovemaking, while he was drifting on a pink haze, she snuggled close and kissed his chest. “What a wonderfully romantic surprise,” she murmured. “But I have a surprise for you, too.”
“What’s that?”
Candace reached over on the nightstand and picked up a piece of paper. A check. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Look at it,” she said. “It’s made out to both of us.”
When he looked at it more closely, David Ladd’s eyes bulged. It was a personal check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, made out to David Ladd and Candace Waverly Ladd and drawn on a joint account belonging to Richard and Elizabeth Waverly.
“What’s this?” David asked.
“A bribe,” Candace answered with a grin. “For eloping. Daddy says it’ll only work as long as Mother knows nothing about our engagement and hasn’t had time to plan anything until it’s too late. Once she gets wind of it and starts arranging things, the deal is off. He’s already married off two daughters, and he doesn’t want to do another one. And I don’t blame him.”
“Eloping,” David Ladd echoed. “What are you talking about? Us? When?”
“Today, dummy,” she said, snuggling under his chin and nuzzling his neck. “Right now. I thought you’d catch on as soon as you saw all the suitcases. I have it all figured out. We can drive through Vegas on our way to Tucson and get married there. It’s not that far out of the way. I already have a dress and everything.”
“What about your job?” David Ladd mounted one small but clearly futile objection.
“With Dad’s firm? What about it? I got laid off,” Candace beamed. “Yesterday afternoon. So not only do I get the time off, I can collect unemployment benefits, too. Isn’t that a great deal?”
