Kiss the Bees

10

On the Fourth Day I'itoi made the Sun-Tash. And Elder Brother went with Tash to show him the way, just as Sun travels today.

For a long timeTash walked close to the earth, and it was very hot.Juhk O'othham — Rain Man-refused to follow his brother,Chewagi O'othham — Cloud Man-over the land, andHewel O'othham — Wind Man-was angry and only made things hotter and dryer.

All the desert world needed water. The Desert People were so thirsty and cross that they quarreled. Whenu'uwhig — the Birds-came too near each other, they pulled feathers.Tohbi — Cottontail Rabbit-andKo'owi — Rattlesnake, andJewho — Gopher-could no longer live together. SoJewho became very busy digging new holes.

When the animals had quarreled until only the strongest were left, a strange people came out of the old deserted gopher holes.

These were thePaDaj O'othham — Bad People-who were moved by the Spirit of Evil. They came from the big water in the far southwest, and they spread all over the land, killing the people as they came until every man felt that he lived in a black hole.

The Desert People were so sad that at last they cried out to the Great Spirit for help. And whenI'itoi saw that thePaDaj O'othham were in the land, he took some good spirits of the other world and made warriors out of them.

These good spirit warriors chased the Bad People but could neither capture nor kill them. And because his good soldiers from the spirit world could not destroy the Bad People, who were moved by the Spirit of Evil,I'itoi was ashamed.

"That must have been very interesting," Monty Lazarus was saying.

Diana snapped to attention and was embarrassed to realize that she had once again allowed her mind to wander. Talking and thinking about Andrew Carlisle still had the power to do that. She had thought that writing the book about him would have cleared the man out of her system once and for all. Her continuing discomfort during this interview seemed to suggest that wasn't the case.

She wondered if she'd said anything stupid. Whatever she had said, no doubt Mr. Lazarus would quote her verbatim.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I guess I'm getting tired. What was interesting?"

"Interviewing Andrew Carlisle's mother."

Diana didn't remember when the interview had veered into discussing Myrna Louise, but it must have. "Right," she said. "It was."

"She's still alive then?" Monty asked.

"Not now. She died within weeks of the time I saw her. It's a good thing I went to see her when I did. Other than talking to Andrew Carlisle himself, my interview with Myrna Louise was one of the most important ones I did for the book. I was nervous about seeing her after what I'd done to her son-leaving him blind and crippled. I had no idea how she'd respond to me. Just because a court had ruled I had acted in self-defense didn't mean that would carry any weight with the man's mother."

"Didn't you say in the book someplace that he tried to kill her once?"

Diana nodded. "He did, but she got away. What I found strange was that she didn't seem to hold it against him. She told me that there wasn't any point in carrying grudges and that he was her only reason for still hanging on. She said that if she was gone, he wouldn't have anyone at all."

"So when you went to interview her, how did it go?" Monty Lazarus asked.

"It was fine," Diana said. "Myrna Louise Carlisle Spaulding Rivers couldn't have been more gracious."

The first time Diana had met Myrna Louise, it was mid-morning in the somewhat grubby lunchroom of the Vista Retirement Center in Chandler, Arizona. Andrew Carlisle's mother, with a walker strategically stationed nearby, was seated on a stained bench shoved carelessly up to a chipped table in the far corner of the room. She looked up at her visitor from a game of solitaire played with a deck of sticky, dog-eared cards.

"You must be Diana Walker," Myrna Louise said as Diana walked up to the table. "I've seen your picture before. On your books."

"Thank you for agreeing to see me," Diana said.

Myrna Louise smiled. "I didn't have much choice, now, did I? I'm not going anyplace soon. I figured I could just as well."

Her hair, an improbable color of red, was thin and wispy. Her face may have been made up with a once-practiced hand, but now there were a few slips. A dribble of mascara darkened one cheek, and some of the too-red lipstick had smeared and edged its way up and down into the wrinkled creases above and below her lips. The teeth were false and clicked ominously when she spoke, as though threatening to pop out at any moment.

"Anyway," she added, "I wanted to meet you. I wanted to apologize."

"Apologize? For what?"

"For my son, of course. For Andrew. He was a good boy when he was little. Good and so cute, too. I used to have the curls from his first haircut, but I finally threw them away when I moved here. Carlton made me get rid of them."

"Carlton?"

"Carlton Rivers, my late husband. My latest late husband. Anyway, when I told him about what Andrew had done-or rather, what he had tried to do-he said I should just forget about him. He said I should forget I'd ever even had a son. He said I should leave him in prison and let him rot. Andrew tried to kill me, you see. The same day he tried to kill you, as a matter of fact. I got away, though. When he got out of the car at that storage place, I just drove myself away. You should have seen his face. He couldn't believe it-that I was driving. I almost couldn't believe it myself. I'd never done it before-driven a car, that is. Not before or since."

Diana took a deep breath. "You're not responsible for your son's actions, Mrs. Rivers. There's no need for you to apologize to me."

"A reverend comes by and conducts church services here every Sunday," Myrna Louise continued as though she hadn't heard Diana's response. "I tried to talk to him about Andrew once or twice after I found out about the AIDS business. I suppose you know about that?"

Diana nodded.

"I asked him if he thought that was God's way of punishing Andrew. You know, an eye-for-an-eye sort of thing. Just like he lost his eyesight over what he did to you."

"God didn't throw the bacon grease," Diana said. "I did."

"But God's responsible for the result, isn't he?" Myrna Louise insisted. "If God had wanted it to work that way, he could have just burned him, but he wouldn't have been blind. Don't you see?"

"Not exactly," Diana said.

"Well, anyway, now I hear you're writing a book about him."

"Yes, although it's not just about him. It's about all the people whose lives he touched. Whose lives he changed."

"Or ended," Myrna Louise added sadly. "It serves him right that he doesn't get to write his own book. He asked you to do that, to write it?"

"Yes."

"That's hard for me to believe, but I don't suppose anything about Andrew should surprise me anymore. I would think he would have wanted to write it himself, even if he couldn't get it published. He's still angry with me about the manuscript, you know."

"What manuscript?"

"Of his book. The book he wrote when he was in prison the first time."

"And what happened to it?" Diana asked.

"I burned it," Myrna Louise said thoughtfully. "One page at a time."

"There aren't any copies left?"

"Not that I know of."

"And what did your son call this book?"

Myrna Louise shook her head. "I don't remember the name of it now. After all these years, I guess I've managed to forget what it was exactly, although I remember the title had something to do with Indians. I didn't read the whole thing, just parts of it. It was awful. I couldn't believe anyone could write such terrible stuff. The things his main character did to other characters were just awful. It made me feel filthy just having in my hands. But of course, I know now that he must not have made some of that up."

"What do you mean, he didn't make it up?" Diana asked.

"That he had actually done some of those things himself. And that there were others."

"Other what?" Diana asked.

"Other victims," Myrna Louise answered. "Ones the police knew nothing about."

For several moments after that, Diana didn't trust herself to speak. She was thinking about the ashes of the cassette tape she had swept out of the fireplace and thrown into the garbage can before Brandon and the kids came home from Payson. If there were other victims, did that also mean there were other tapes?

"You told me a little while ago that he tried to kill you the same day he attacked me."

"He didn't exactly try," Myrna Louise corrected. "He was going to. He planned to, but I drove away before he had a chance."

"Did he have a tape recorder or tapes with him that day?"

Myrna Louise pursed her lips. "It's really hard for me to talk about this," she said.

"About what?"

"About the tape recorder."

Diana felt a chill run up and down her spine. "So there was a tape recorder?"

"Yes," Myrna Louise answered. "Yes, there was."

"What happened to it?"

"That's the part I don't want to talk about. When the detectives found it under the car seat in Jake's Valiant-my second husband's Valiant-I told them it was mine and they let me keep it. If you write into your book that it was really Andrew's, I might still get in trouble over it. For concealing evidence."

"What did you do with the tape recorder, Mrs. Rivers?" Diana asked. "It could be very important."

"I pawned it," Myrna Louise answered. "Andrew asked me about it later, about what had happened to it. I told him the detectives took it. So, please, it's better if you don't say anything about it at all. It could raise all kinds of ruckus."

"When you took the recorder, were there any tapes with it?"

"Only some blanks. A whole package of blanks."

"But none that had been used?"

For a long time after that, Myrna Louise Rivers didn't answer. She had gathered up the deck of cards from the table and sat there absently shuffling them. Finally she reached for her walker and stood up.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Rivers," Diana said. "I haven't had a chance to ask you…"

"We have to go back to my room now," Myrna Louise said. "They'll be setting up for lunch in a few minutes anyhow, so we'll need to be out of the way. But I want to give you something."

Vista Retirement Center was laid out in a quadrangle. The front wing of the building was the common area with the dining hall, a recreation area, library, and lobby. One of the side wings was the convalescent wing. The two other wings were devoted to patients who were still well enough to come and go on their own. The wings were connected by shaded breezeways, but in the 110-degree heat, the shade didn't make that much difference.

By the time they reached Myrna Louise's room in the far back wing, Diana was worried the woman was going to faint with exertion. She sank down on the side of the bed, breathing hard.

"I'm not much good in all this heat," she gasped at last when she could speak. "Sit down. Let me catch my breath."

A wall-unit air conditioner grumbled under the screened window, but the air flow didn't make a dent in the hot dusty air of that small, spartan room. In addition to a bed, the room contained a single easy chair, a dresser with a small television set on it, and a kitchen table with two chairs. A door led to a tiny bathroom. The place was grim enough that it reminded Diana more of a monk's cell or prison accommodations than it did a retirement home. Diana sank into the chair and waited until a winded Myrna Louise Rivers was finally able to speak.

"There are some shoe boxes on the top shelf of the closet," the woman managed at last. "If you wouldn't mind bringing me the bottom one, I'd appreciate it."

Diana did as she was told. In the closet she found three shoe boxes stacked one on top of the other. From the weight of the first two, it seemed likely that they contained shoes. The third one seemed to hold something as well, but it felt far too light to be a pair of shoes. When Diana shook the box slightly, it gave a muffled rattle, as though whatever was inside had been packed in tissue paper.

Taking the box over to the bed, she handed it to Myrna Louise. The woman's gnarled, liver-spotted hand shook as she reached out to take it. "That's the one," she said.

Holding it on her lap for a few moments, she gazed off into space as though her thoughts were far away from this grim place where she was living out her final years. She sat with one hand resting on the lid as if she were unwilling to open it.

"I send him candy, you know," she murmured thoughtfully. "Every year on his birthday, I see to it that he has a box of chocolates from me. I know he gets them although he never sends thank-you notes. Andrew never was big on thank-you notes, you see. The problem is, it's hard for me to connect the person I'm sending the candy to-the person who is my son-to this."

She gave the shoe box a desultory pat. "It doesn't seem possible that the little boy I used to make birthday cakes for is the same person. Does that make sense?"

Diana nodded and said nothing.

"He came back home the day before all that happened," Myrna Louise continued thoughtfully. "He had been gone overnight in Jake's car. I didn't ask him where he had been-I never asked him that, because he would have told me it was none of my business. But when he came home, he was wearing this."

Carefully she removed the lid. Inside the shoe box Diana saw a splash of vivid-pink material. Slowly Myrna Louise lifted the fabric from the box and unrolled it, revealing a bright pink silk pantsuit. Something hard and small was at the very center of the roll of material-something Myrna Louise deftly covered with one hand before Diana could glimpse what it was.

"That's a woman's pantsuit, isn't it?" Diana asked. "Why was your son wearing that?"

"It's beautiful, isn't it," Myrna Louise said, passing the top to Diana so she, too, could finger the delicate material.

"And expensive," Diana added. "But you still haven't told me why was he wearing it."

"At the time he said it was like kids playing dress-up, but I realized later that it was a disguise he wore when he left that hotel in Tucson after he killed that man, that guy who worked in the movies."

Johnny Rivkin's name leaped to the forefront out of the long-buried past. He had been the second victim in Andrew Carlisle's three-day reign of terror after he was released from prison in June of 1975. Rivkin, a noted Hollywood costume designer, had met Andrew Carlisle at a well-known gay watering hole, a pickup joint, in downtown Tucson. After meeting in the bar at the Reardon Hotel, Rivkin had invited Carlisle to join him for a drink in his hotel suite at the Santa Rita a few blocks away. That casual invitation had ended several hours later with Johnny Rivkin's throat slit.

"When Andrew brought this into my house," Myrna Louise was saying, "I was upset. I hated seeing him dress like that because he wasn't queer-at least I didn't used to think so. But it was made of real silk. I had real silk myself once, back when I was married to Howie-Andrew's father. But not since. And I guess I must have been a little envious, too. So when that police officer came to see me that night in Tempe…"

"Detective Farrell?" Diana asked, remembering G. T. "Geet" Farrell, the Pinal County detective who had joined forces with Brandon Walker and Fat Crack in trying to track down Gina Antone's newly released killer.

Myrna nodded. "That's right. That's the one. When he came by asking me questions, I knew they were going to take Andrew away and lock him up again. So when I went down the hall to use the bathroom, I took this out of Andrew's closet and put it in mine. I didn't think he'd mind.

"Everything happened that night. For months afterward, I just left it there in my closet without daring to touch it. Then one day I was invited to go to a senior singles dance and I decided to try it on. I thought if I had the sleeves and pants shortened, maybe it would fit. That's when I found this," she said. "It was there in one of the jacket pockets the whole time."

Myrna Louise moved her hand. There, in her lap, lay a single cassette tape.

Without having to listen to it or even touch it, Diana Ladd Walker knew exactly what it was. In that moment, though, she found herself able to be grateful for one small blessing. In 1968, when Gina died, and again in 1975, VCRs and video cameras had been invented, but they weren't available to everyone.

And most especially Diana was grateful that they weren't available to Andrew Philip Carlisle.

Mitch Johnson tried to listen carefully while Diana told him about the interview with Myrna Louise. What interested him most of all was what she left out. Again, there was no mention of Andy's tape. So he had been right about that. She had kept that part of their exchange a secret-not only in writing the book but probably also in what she told those closest to her. That was all right, she wouldn't be able to keep that secret forever. Not after tonight.

The other item of interest was what she said about Myrna Louise's death. She had said a stroke. When word of Myrna Louise's death had come to the prison, Andy had laughed at the incompetent ninnies who ruled it as death by natural causes.

"Why is that so funny?" Mitch had asked.

"Because they're wrong. Because I made arrangements to have someone slip her a little something."

As well as Mitch knew Andy by then, the whole idea was a little startling. "Your own mother?" Mitch asked.

"Why not?" Andy returned. "Once she handed Diana's little care package over to my hired-hand delivery boy, there was no sense in her hanging around. After all, that damned rest home was costing a fortune. And don't pretend to be so shocked, Mitch. After all, it's in your own best interests."

"Mine!"

"You bet. Myrna Louise's rent at that retirement home was coming directly out of my pocket-and yours, too."

"I suppose you're right," Mitch had said. "But you arranged the whole thing from here?"

"Sure," Andy said. "If you've got enough money, hiring decent help is no problem."

Mitch continued going through the motions of seeming to listen intently and of taking notes, but he was losing interest. There comes a time in every bullfight when it's time to end the capework and uncover the sword. His purpose was to leave Diana Ladd Walker with something to think about later on. Something that would, in the aftermath of what was about to happen between Lani and Quentin, leave her questioning all her smug assumptions about the kind of person she was and how she had raised her children.

He waited until she paused. "Listening to you now and remembering the way you describe Andrew Carlisle's mother in the book, you make her sound perfectly ordinary."

"She was perfectly ordinary," Diana said. "That's what I wanted to show about her. Myrna Louise Rivers was far less educated than her son and hadn't had the benefit of all the advantages that accrued to him from his father's side of the family. People like to believe that monsters beget monsters, but she wasn't a monster, not by any means. I think it's far too easy for society to believe that killers inherit their evil tendencies from their parents and then pass them along to their own children. As I said in the book, I don't believe that's true."

"Is that the case in your own situation as well?"

Diana frowned. "What do you mean?"

"In the case of your stepson, Quentin. You don't feel that his upbringing had anything to do with what happened to him or to the other son, the one who ran away?"

Mitch was delighted to see the angry flush that flooded Diana Walker's face. "No," she said firmly. "Quentin Walker and Tommy Walker were both responsible for their own actions."

"But isn't it possible that your relationship with their father closed those two boys out somehow and that's why they ended up going so haywire?"

Gleefully, Mitch saw the muscles on Diana's jawline contract. "No," she said. "I don't think that at all. By the time I met them, both those boys were headed in the wrong direction. There was nothing their father and I could do to change that course."

Maybe it didn't seem like much of a seed, but once Brandon and Diana Walker were trying to come to grips with the fact that their son Quentin had murdered his sister Lani, it would give them something more to think about.

Monty Lazarus made a show of glancing at his watch. "My God!" he exclaimed. "Look at the time. I promised Megan that I'd have you home in plenty of time for your dinner. Based on that, I booked another appointment. I'm supposed to meet some friends, and I'm about to be late. Would you mind if we finished this up and shot the pictures sometime tomorrow?"

If Diana Ladd Walker had posed for a photo right then, the camera probably would have captured exactly what she was thinking-that it would have given her the greatest of pleasure to shove the camera right back down Monty's arrogant goddamned throat.

"That would be fine," she said, trying not to let her relief show at finally escaping this interminable interview. Maybe by tomorrow she could find a way to be reasonably civil to this jackass.

"What time?"

"Say two o'clock."

"All right. And where? Out at the house?"

"No. Not your place. I have some locations in mind. I'll call you in the morning and let you know where to meet me."

"Fine." Diana got up and started away, but before she went too far, she remembered her manners. "Thanks for the refreshments."

"Think nothing of it," Monty Lazarus said with an ingratiating smile. "It was my pleasure."

The EMTs immediately went to work attempting to stabilize their patient. Agent Kelly and Deputy Fellows suddenly found themselves with nothing to do. Sent packing from the scene of all the action, the two officers retreated to the spot where their vehicles were parked.

Agent Kelly was a short, sturdy blonde with closely-cropped hair, gray-green eyes, and an easy smile. Brian had no idea how long she had been out in the baking sun with the injured man, but her face was flushed. The shirt of her green uniform was soaked with sweat.

Opening the door to her van, she put the two empty water jugs-both his and hers-on the floorboard of the front seat, and then she pulled out another. Screwing open the cap, she held the jug over her head and poured, letting the water spill down. Once she was thoroughly soaked, she handed the gallon jug over to Brian. "Live a little," she said.

After a momentary hesitation, Brian followed suit. "My name's Katherine Kelly, by the way," she told him as he gave the jug back to her. "Kath for short. We didn't exactly have time for official introductions before." She held out her hand.

Before, when they had been working together and dealing with a crisis, Brian had been totally at ease. Now his natural reticence reasserted itself, leaving him feeling tongue-tied and dim-witted. "Brian Fellows," he managed awkwardly.

If Kath Kelly suffered any social difficulties, they didn't show. "Did you call for a detective?" she asked.

Brian nodded. "I did, but they're not sending one," he said. "Everybody's busy, so I'm told. They told me to write it up myself, but the way Dispatch said it, you can tell they'd as soon I dropped the whole thing. After all, the guy's just an Indian."

Kath Kelly's gray-green eyes darkened to emerald. "There's a lot of that going around in my department, too," she said. "So are you going to drop it?"

"No, I'm going to take Dispatch at their word and investigate the hell out of this. Crime-scene investigation may not be my long suit, but I've done some."

"I can help for a while, but as soon as the helicopter leaves, I'll have to get back on patrol. Before I forget, you don't look much like an Indian. Where'd you learn to speak Tohono O'othham? "

"From one of my friends, in Tucson," he said.

"Really." Kath smiled. "Pretty impressive," she said. "I speak French fluently and Spanish some, but I couldn't understand a word that poor guy was saying. It's a good thing you showed up. Is that why they have you working this sector of the county, because of your language skills?"

Brian shook his head. "Hardly," he answered with a short laugh. "Nobody at the department knows I speak a word of Papago. And don't tell them, either. It's a deep, dark secret."

For the next half-hour, working in a circle from the outside in, they carefully combed the entire area, finding nothing of interest. They were almost up to the edge of the charco before they came to a spot where, although someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to try to cover it up, there was clear evidence that the soil had recently been disturbed.

"It looks to me like this is where the bad guy was doing his forbidden digging," Brian observed.

Kath Kelly nodded. "And the Indian showed up and caught him in the act. What do you suppose was down there?"

"It could be a lot of things," Brian said. "There used to be an Indian village right around here called Rattlesnake Skull. My guess is we've stumbled on your basic artifact thief."

"Sounds like," Kathy agreed.

Before Brian could answer, one of the EMTs came looking for them. "Could the two of you give us a hand?" he asked. "We brought a gurney along, but we can't use it-not in this soft dirt. And this guy's way too heavy for two of us to carry him on a stretcher."

It took all four of them to haul the wounded man out of the mesquite grove toward the waiting helicopter. The man was mumbling incoherently as they loaded him aboard. Again, Brian wasn't able to make it all out, but he was able to pick out one or two words, one of which sounded like pahl — priest.

"I think he's asking for a priest," Brian told the EMT. "He's probably worried about last rites."

The man shook his head urgently. "Pahla," he said. "Pi-pahl."

The EMT looked at Brian. "What's the difference?"

Brian shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "I know some Tohono O'othham, but obviously not enough."

"Just in case, we'll call for a priest all the same," the EMT replied, heading for the door.

"Wait a minute," Brian called after him. "You didn't happen to find any ID on the guy, did you?"

"None," the medic told him. "Not a stitch."

"And where are you taking him?"

"John Doe's on his way to TMC." Moments later, the helicopter took off in a huge man-made whirlwind. When the dust finally settled, Agent Kelly reached in her pocket and extracted a business card.

"If they're gone, I'd better be going, too, but here are my numbers in case you need to reach me about any of this."

"Good thinking," Brian said, fumbling for one of his own cards. "I probably will need to get in touch with you. For my report."

Kath Kelly looked up into his face as she took the card. "You're welcome to call me even if it's not for your report," she said with a smile.

Then, tucking his card in her breast pocket, she turned and walked away, leaving an astonished Brian Fellows staring after her.

For eleven long years, Brian Fellows had been his mother's main caretaker. Her overwhelming physical need had attached itself to Brian's own hyper-developed sense of responsibility. His mother's illness had sucked him dry, robbing him of the last of his adolescence and blighting his social life in the process.

At age twenty-six, faced with clear encouragement from a woman he found immensely attractive, he was left blushing as she drove away.

"I'll be damned," he said to himself. "I will be damned."

Diana fumed all the way home. How dare Monty Lazarus imply that whatever had happened with Quentin and Tommy was in any way her fault? She was no more responsible for Quentin ending up in prison than Myrna Louise was for Andrew Carlisle's being there.

By the time she drove past the Leaving Tucson City Limits sign two blocks before the turnoff to the house in Gates Pass, she was starting to feel better. The tension in her jaw relaxed. Their home, as well as five others, sat on a small ten-acre parcel which, because of the attractive nuisance of a nearby target-shooting range, had never been annexed by the City of Tucson.

As she turned off Speedway onto the dirt drive leading up to the house, she could tell by the tire tracks left in the dust that several large, unfamiliar vehicles had come in and out that way earlier in the day. That was one thing about living at the end of a dirt road. You learned to read tracks.

She expected to find Brandon still outside, laboring over his wood. Instead, after hanging her car keys up on the pegboard just inside the kitchen doorway, she wandered on into the living room, where she found a showered, shaved, and nattily dressed Brandon Walker sitting on the couch reading a newspaper. Two champagne glasses and an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of Schramsberg sat on the coffee table in front of him.

"What's this?" Diana asked.

"A little surprise," he said. "Could I interest you in a drink?"

Nodding, Diana sank gratefully down on the couch beside him. "How was it?" he asked.

"Awful. It seemed like it went on forever," she replied. "And it's not over yet. We ran out of time to do the pictures. Those are scheduled for two o'clock tomorrow afternoon."

"After spending half of today, you're still not done? What's this guy doing, writing an article or a biography?"

Diana laughed. Just being home and watching Brandon pour the sparkling liquid into one of the glasses made her feel better. "As a matter of fact, it may be a little of both. Monty Lazarus has an unusual approach to doing an interview. Calling it roundabout is giving it the benefit of the doubt.

"So what have you been up to all afternoon, and what's the big occasion? I haven't seen you this dressed up or happy in months."

Brandon handed her a glass and then touched his to hers. "To us," he said.

"To us," she nodded.

Brandon took a sip. "I spent most of the afternoon loading up three livestock trucks full of wood," he answered. "Fat Crack told me yesterday that he thought he knew someone who could use it. Today Baby Ortiz came by with a bunch of other Indians, and we loaded up three truckloads to take to the popover ladies over at San Xavier."

As a toddler, Gabe's older son, Richard, had wandered around with his diapers at half-mast, much the way his father always wore his low-riding Levi's. It hadn't taken long for people to start calling him A'ali chum Gigh Tahpani — Baby Fat Crack. Now forty years old and half again as wide as his father, most people simply called him Baby.

"Baby says he thinks the wood chips might help with the mud problem on the playfield down at Topawa."

"And whoever's going to use the wood will come get it?" Diana asked.

"That's right. They'll come load it and haul it away." Brandon laughed. "I'll bet you thought you were going to be stuck with that mountain of wood permanently, didn't you?" he teased.

"It was beginning to look that way," Diana agreed.

"It makes me feel good that someone's going to get some benefit out of all my hard work," Brandon added seriously. "And as for my being dressed to the nines, I thought I'd straighten up and give the Friends of the Library a real treat, show up as author consort in full-dress regalia."

He put one arm around Diana's shoulder and pulled her close. "It's also an apology of sorts. I've been a real self-centered jerk of late, haven't I?"

"Not as bad as all that," she answered with a laugh.

They sat for several minutes, enjoying their champagne and the comfort of a companionable silence. "What time do we have to be at the dinner?"

Diana looked at her watch. "Megan said six, but we don't really have to be there until seven."

"You mean we have two whole hours all to ourselves?"

She smiled at him over her glass. "Wait a minute," she said coyly. "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

Brandon shrugged. "You saw Lani's note. She said she was going directly to the concert…"

One of the first and most ongoing casualties of the loss of the election had been to their sex life. Diana had managed to put it out of her mind, but now that Brandon was actually suggesting making love, she wasn't about to turn him down.

Diana stood up and started for the bedroom. "Here goes my hairdo and makeup," she said.

"I didn't think about that," Brandon said. "If you don't want to…"

Stopping in the bedroom doorway, she turned and smiled. "Nobody said anything about not wanting to," she said. "It just means that I'll go to dinner with the natural look. It's a lot more like me than this is. Now come in and close the door," she added. "And go ahead and lock it. Lani said she wouldn't be home before the concert, but let's not take any chances."

As Mitch Johnson drove back toward the RV, he was almost wild with anticipation. He had come through the interview with flying colors, done his capework admirably, but the next segment of the adventure would contain the two parts of the plan Andy had lobbied for so adamantly. The rest of the program he had been content to leave entirely in Mitch's hands, to let the person with the ultimate responsibility for putting the plan into action noodle out the details. But for Andy, this was the sine qua non.

"If you can manage to lay hands on the girl," Andy had said, "whatever else you do to her, be sure her mother knows that it's coming from me. Understand?"

Understand?Of course, Mitch had understood. How could he have spent seven and a half years living with Andy Carlisle and listening to the man obsess about women's breasts without understanding? The trick was doing what Andy wanted without being caught.

Women's breasts and what Andy had done to them had been his undoing, at least part of it. Somebody had lost the toothmarks from Gina Antone's mutilated body, but the detectives had matched the ones on the dead woman at Picacho Peak and the ones on Diana Ladd and had used them as part of the evidence that sent Andrew Carlisle to prison for the second time. Andy had talked about that constantly, about how once a woman's breast was exposed to him, he was physically incapable of not biting it.

"So what's the problem here?" Mitch had asked one day, when he was feeling particularly brave and when he felt as though Andy had beaten the subject to death. "Didn't your mother ever nurse you?" he had asked. "How come, when you talk about tits, it's only in terms of mangling them or biting them off instead of using them the way God intended?"

"What my mother did or didn't do is none of your damned business." Andy said the words in a way that made Mitch's blood run cold. He knew at once that he had stepped over some invisible line, and he sincerely wished he hadn't.

"Sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to insult your mother. It's just that sucking on a woman whose boobs are overflowing with milk can be a beautiful thing. I thought maybe you might have tried it."

"No," Andy had responded. "I never have."

"Damn," Lori muttered.

Half-asleep, Mitch rolled over on his side to face her. "What's wrong?"

"Mikey didn't eat," she said. "He already fell back to sleep. He barely touched the one side, and I'm soaking wet on the other."

Mitch reached out and cupped Lori's swollen breast in one hand. She was right. The leaking milk had soaked her nightgown from armpit to waist.

"If you'd let me, maybe I could take some of the pressure off."

"Never mind," she said. "I'll go get the breast pump."

"No, don't," he said. "Let me do it. Please. It won't hurt anything. Mikey won't know."

Lori didn't answer right away, but she didn't move his hand, either. Finally she sighed. "All right," she said. "I guess it would be all right, just this once."

There was no need to unbutton the gown because she slept with it open. Mitch did have some trouble unfastening the nursing bra. He had seen her do it, of course, but watching it done from the inside out wasn't the same as doing it from the outside in and in the dark as well. At last, though, he ran his hand over her damp naked breast. The distended nipple lay erect and inviting beneath his grazing fingertips.

"If you're going to do it," Lori said, "don't take all night."

Whenever he'd had the chance to watch Lori nurse, he'd observed the strange mixture of anticipation and dread with which she greeted Mikey's clamping his hungry lips over her nipple. Sometimes she'd make a sound that was almost like the sigh of satisfaction Mitch's grandmother used to make after taking a sip of too hot coffee.

Raising up on his elbows, Mitch leaned over and clamped on. As his lips closed around her nipple, he felt her body tense and instantly afterward go limp as the sweet, hot milk shot into his mouth. It gushed out at him, shooting all the way to the back of his mouth, teasing his tonsils, almost triggering his gag reflex, but he fought that down and concentrated on sucking, on draining her without ever gripping her with his teeth.

There was more milk inside her than he expected, but at last that one was empty. He sat up to find that in the dark she had deftly unfastened the other side, and now, giggling, she pulled him down onto that one, too, holding him by the back of the neck, pressing him against her, groaning with pleasure as his now aching jaws relieved the pressure on that sore breast as well.

Ever since they had brought Mikey home from the hospital three weeks earlier, Mitch had been intensely curious about the process. For weeks he had begged Lori to let him taste her, but what had never crossed his mind was that the process might pleasure her as well. The fact that she was enjoying it almost as much as he did unleashed months of pent-up sexual deprivation. When he let go of her nipple, she was still laughing so hard that at first she didn't seem to notice that he was prying her legs apart. But she did notice.

"No, Mitch," she said. "It's still too soon. The doctor…"

By then Mitch Johnson wasn't interested in what the doctor had said or in what Lori wanted, either. He desperately craved the solace her body had to offer. He craved it and he took it. He had barely shoved himself home when his aching need exploded inside her like a burst of Fourth of July fireworks.

Afterward as he drifted in a mellow haze, he realized she was crying. "What's wrong now?" he asked.

"You raped me." She didn't say it loud, but he knew she meant it.

"No, I didn't," he said. "You wanted it as much as I did. You were asking for it."

"You raped me," she repeated dully. "I told you no and you did it anyway."

"I did not rape you," he declared. "How could I? You're my wife."

As far as Mitch Johnson was concerned, the subject was closed. In Tucson, Arizona, in 1975, Lori Kiser Johnson didn't try pressing charges because she knew they wouldn't stick. What she did do, however, was far more effective. From then on, she never said yes to Mitch again, not when it came to sex. Oh, he did get a piece of tail now and then, but only when he took it. And there was never any response. She lay beneath him whenever he did it, dry and unmoving, letting him inside her because she didn't seem to have any choice in the matter, but making sure neither one of them enjoyed it.

Considering that turn of events, it was hardly surprising that a few months later Mitch was out in the desert shooting hell out of a bunch of wetbacks. As frustrated as he was, who wouldn't?

As Mitch turned left on Coleman Road, he saw a huge cloud of dust come roiling up out of the desert about a half mile away. A moment later a helicopter emerged from the cloud and set off toward town. That struck him as odd-worried him a little-but clearly it had nothing to do with him. Two miles down the road, behind a locked gate, the Bounder sat in undisturbed, solitary splendor exactly as he'd left it.

When he stopped the car, he got out and stood for a moment listening. The only sound was the steady thrum of the air conditioner. He had created an extra duct that ran through the storage unit. It was hot, and it wouldn't have done to have Lani Walker baked to a crisp or suffocated before he had his chance at her.

He stood there observing the Bounder and the vast tract of empty desert around it. He was almost sorry to leave this place. It had been good to him, had allowed the creative juices to flow. But it was time. He had other places to go, other fish to fry, including the stupid-ass second lieutenant from Asheville, North Carolina, who had led his platoon into a Vietcong trap and permanently fucked up Mitch's knee.

Like it or not, it was almost time to abandon the desert. Mitch had already called his landlord to say he was moving and had notified the power company, telling them to shut off the juice as of Wednesday. His would be a planned exit. There would be no question about him deciding to leave after all the shit hit the fan.

If anyone had seen him standing there, they might have thought he was simply admiring the landscape. What he was really doing was seeing how long he could keep from opening the door. Would she be awake or not? Her reaction to the drug had been so pronounced that he worried now that she might still be groggy. That would be too bad. The moment she saw his face, he wanted her to know. Anything less than that wouldn't be enough.

It had been fun toying with Diana without her having the foggiest idea of what was really going on. But with Lani it was different. Diana had said she was a smart girl, and Mitch Johnson desperately wanted that to be so. He wanted her to be smart enough to realize what was happening. To Mitch's way of thinking, knowing in advance, foreseeing the possibilities and dreading them, were the only things that would place Lani Walker any higher on the evolutionary ladder than the dumb little bird he had crushed in his fist years earlier.

Finally, taking a deep breath, he walked up to the door and put his key in the Bounder's custom-made dead bolt. Then he opened the door and stepped inside.

"Honey, I'm home," he called as he pulled the door shut behind him.

While Candace was in the bathroom getting ready to go to dinner, Davy paced the room. It wasn't just the ring. It was everything. There was a hole in the pit of his stomach. His palms were wet. Sweat was already soaking through his clean shirt. And the only thing he could think of was that something was wrong-terribly wrong-at home.

Finally, feeling numb, he picked up the phone and dialed. His mother answered, sounding annoyed or sleepy, he couldn't tell which.

"Is Lani there?" he asked.

"She's not home from work yet," Diana said. "And she's supposed to go straight from work to a concert with Jessica Carpenter. Why, is something wrong?"

"No," Davy mumbled. "I just wanted to talk to her."

"What about?" Diana asked. "You sound worried."

David Ladd's mind raced, trying to find a plausible reason for calling that had nothing to do with what he was feeling. "It's a secret," he said, as inspiration struck. "It's about your anniversary present. But that's all right. I can talk to her tomorrow."

"Give me your number," Diana said. "I'll leave her a note in case she does come home before the concert."

Blushing to the roots of his light-blond hair, David Garrison Ladd looked down at the phone on the nightstand and read his mother the number of the Ritz Carlton in Chicago, Illinois. He put down the phone praying fervently that Lani wouldn't stop by the house before the concert.

"Who was that?" Candace asked when she came out of the bathroom. "I thought I heard you talking to someone on the phone."

"I just called home to give the folks a progress report," he lied. "My mother worries about me, and I wanted her to know that everything is fine."

Deputy Fellows was used to working on his own. After Kath Kelly left, it took some time for him to get his mind back on the job, but eventually he did. He made plaster casts of what footprints he found. He combed the area again, looking for clues. And three separate times he retraced the path of the dirt track from the place where the attack had taken place to the spot where Kath Kelly had found the injured man lying in the dirt.

It was a long way. Almost a hundred yards. The question was why the killer would drag his victim anywhere at all? Eventually the answer became clear. The attack had been a reaction to being discovered rather than a premeditated crime. As such, the attacker didn't view himself as a killer. Rather than finish his victim off, he had simply dragged the injured man away, and hopefully out of view, expecting nature to take its course.

That meant that the real crime and also the key to the attacker's real intentions and identity had something to do with the digging back on the edge of the charco. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Brian went back to his truck, took a long drink from the last of his water, and collected his shovel. At four-ten, he started to dig.

Digging is a solitary occupation done with an implement that has changed little from ancient times to modern. The act of shoving a sharp spade into the dirt and then extracting a heaping shovel leaves plenty of time for reflection.

With the scattered remains of Gina Antone's shrine mere feet away from him, pieces of Brian Fellows's own life intruded into his thoughts about the case he was working on. Most people would have said that Brian came from a "troubled background." He had found respite from his half-brothers' constant taunting only at school and during those precious hours when he had managed to escape Janie's chaotic household to spend time at the Walker place in Gates Pass.

As Davy Ladd's faithful shadow, Brian had been welcome in places where he never would have been able to venture otherwise. He had walked, wide-eyed, into the dimly lit adobe hut where a blind medicine man named Looks At Nothing had lain confined to a narrow cot. The blind man had been sick, dying of a lingering cough, but he had nonetheless continued to smoke his strange-smelling cigarettes, lighting them one after another, with a cigarette lighter that somehow never once burned his fingers.

Those Tohono O'othham people-Rita, Looks At Nothing, Fat Crack, all of them-had been unfailingly kind to little Brian Fellows in a way his own family-mother, stepbrothers, and successive "daddies"-never had.

And now, as he worked in the hot sun with his shovel, he felt as though he was protected somehow from the restless spirits that Davy Ladd had once told him inhabited this place. He had barely come to that conclusion when his shovel bit into something hard. Not wanting to break it, he tossed his shovel aside and then got down on his knees to dig in the sand by hand.

Almost immediately, his hand closed around something long and smooth and straight. When he pulled whatever it was free of the dirt, he saw at once that it was a bone. A leg bone of some kind, he thought. Maybe from a weakened cow that had once become trapped in the muddy charco and drowned. He dug some more and was rewarded with another long bone and what looked like a rib of some kind. Up until he found the rib, he kept thinking the bones belonged to an animal. The rib, however, had a very human look to it. Then his hands closed around something round and smooth and hard. The hair rose on the back of his neck. Letting go of the skull, he didn't even bother to finish pulling it free of its earthen prison.

Instead, he climbed out of the hole, walked back to his Blazer, and called in. Fortunately, the dispatcher on duty earlier had gone home for the day. "Where've you been, Fellows? I was about to send someone out looking for you."

"Great," Brian said. "If you're sending somebody, how about a homicide detective? Have him come equipped with shovels and some water-especially the water. I'm about to die of thirst."

"A homicide detective. Why? What have you got? The last I heard you were working on an assault. Did the guy die?"

"Not as far as I know," Brian Fellows said. "That guy was still alive when they loaded him into the helicopter. But somebody else out here is dead as a doornail."

"Dead?" the dispatcher returned. "Who is it?"

"How should I know?" Brian answered. "That's why I need a homicide detective."

"I'll get right on it," the dispatcher said. This time Deputy Fellows was relatively sure the man meant what he said.

It was about time.