Kiss the Bees

3

After I'itoi found the center of the world, he began making men out of mud. Ban-Coyote-was standing there watching. I'itoi told Ban that he could help.

Coyote worked with his back toI'itoi. As he made his men, he was laughing. Because the Spirit of Mischief is always with him, Coyote laughs at everything.

After a whileI'itoi- the Spirit of Goodness-finished making his mud men and turned to see why Coyote was laughing. He found thatBan had made all his men with only one leg. But still Coyote continued to laugh.

At last, when they had made enough mud men,I'itoi told Coyote to listen to see which of all the mud men would be the first to speak.

Ban waited and listened, but nothing happened. Finally he went to I'itoi and said, "The mud men are not talking."

ButI'itoi said, "Go back and listen again. Since the Spirit of Mischief is in your men, surely they will be the first to speak."

And this was true. The first of the spirits to speak in the mud men was the Spirit of Mischief. For this reason, these men became theOhb, the Apaches-the enemy. According to the legends of the Desert People, the Ohb have always been mean and full of mischief, just the way Coyote made them.

When all the mud men were alive,I'itoi gathered them together and showed them where each tribe should live. The Apaches went to the mountains toward the east. The Hopis went north. The Yaquis went south. But theTohono O'othham- the Desert People-were told to stay in that place which is the center of things. And that is where they are today,nawoj, my friend, close to Baboquivari,I'itoi's cloud-veiled mountain.

And all this happened on the First Day.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, Gabe Ortiz climbed into his oven-hot Crown Victoria, turned on the air-conditioning, and sat there letting the hot air blow-dry the sweat on his skin. He loosened his bola tie and tossed his Stetson into the backseat, then he leaned back and closed his eyes, waiting for the car to cool.

All the back-and-forth hassling was enough to make Gabe long for the old days, before the election, when most of his contacts with the whites, the Mil-gahn, had been when he towed their disabled cars or motor homes out of the sand along Highway 86 and into Tucson or Casa Grande for repairs.

Why was it that Anglo bureaucrats seemed to have no other purpose in life than seeing that things didn't happen? Delia Chavez Cachora was a fighter when it came to battling the guys in suits, but even she, with her Washington D.C.-bureaucrat experience, had been unable to move the county road-improvement process off dead center. Unless traffic patterns to the tribal casino could be improved, further expansion of the facility, along with expansion of the casino's money-making capability, was impossible.

Delia was bright and tough-a skilled negotiator whose verbal assertiveness belied her Tohono O'othham heritage. Those traits, along with her D. C. experience, were what had drawn Gabe Ortiz to her during their first interview. He was the one who had championed her application over those of several equally qualified male applicants. But the very skills that made Delia an asset as tribal attorney and helped her forward tribal business when it came to dealing with Anglo bureaucracies seemed to be working against her when it came to dealing with her fellow Tohono O'othham.

Gabe had heard it said that Delia Chavez Cachora sounded and acted so much like a Mil-gahn at times that she wasn't really "Indian" enough. She was doing the proper things-living with her aunt out at Little Tucson was certainly a step in the right direction-but Gabe knew she would need additional help. He had developed a plan to address that particular problem. Delia just didn't know about it yet, although he'd have to tell her soon.

Davy Ladd was a young man, an Anglo who had been raised by Gabe Ortiz's Aunt Rita. A recent law school graduate, Davy was due back in Tucson sometime in the next few days. By the time he arrived, Delia would have to know that Gabe had hired Davy to spend the summer months and maybe more time beyond that working as an intern in the tribal attorney's office.

Gabe thought it would be interesting to see how Delia Chavez Cachora dealt with an Anglo who spoke her supposedly native tongue far better than she did. Not only that, Gabe was looking forward to getting to know the grown-up version of his late Aunt Rita's Little Olhoni.

Next to his ear, someone tapped on the window. Gabe opened his eyes and sat up. Delia herself was standing next to his car, a concerned frown on her face. "Are you all right?" she asked when he rolled down the window.

"Just resting my eyes," he said.

"I was afraid you were sick."

Gabe shook his head. "Tired," he said with a smile. "Tired but not sick."

"Are you going straight home?" she asked. "We could stop and get something to drink."

"No, thanks," he said. "You go on ahead. I have to visit with someone on the way."

"All right," she said. "See you Monday."

As she walked away from the car, Gabe noticed she was stripping off her watch and putting it in her purse. When Gabe had asked her about it, she had told him that on weekends she tried to live on Indian time; tried to do without clocks and all the other trappings of the Anglo world, including, presumably, the evils of air conditioning, he thought as she drove past him a few minutes later with all the windows of her turbo Saab wide open.

Gabe put the now reasonably cool Ford in gear and backed out of his parking place. Instead of heading for Ajo Way and the road back to Sells, he headed north to Speedway and then west toward Gates Pass and the home of his friends, Brandon and Diana Walker.

It wasn't a trip Gabe was looking forward to because he didn't know what he was going to say. However, he knew he would have to say something. It was his responsibility.

"Brandon?"

Over the noise of the chain saw, Brandon hadn't heard the car stop outside the front of the house, nor had he noticed Gabe Ortiz materialize silently behind him. Startled by the unexpected voice, Brandon almost dropped the saw when he turned around to see who had spoken.

"Fat Crack!" he exclaimed, taking off his hat and wiping his face with the damp bandanna he wore tied around his forehead. "The way you came sneaking up behind me, it's a wonder I didn't cut off my leg. How the hell are you? What are you doing here? Would you like some iced tea or a beer?"

Now that he was tribal chairman, Fat Crack was a name Gabe Ortiz didn't hear very often anymore, not outside the confines of his immediate family. The distinctive physiognomy that had given rise to his nickname was no longer quite so visible, especially not now when he often wore a sports jacket over his ample middle. The dress-up slacks, necessary attire for the office and for meetings in town, didn't shift downward in quite the same fashion as his old Levi's had. Still, he reached down and tugged self-consciously at his belt, just to be sure his pants weren't hanging at half-mast.

"Iced tea sounds good," Gabe said.

The two men walked into and through the yard and then on inside the house. With the book fresh in his mind, Gabe looked around the kitchen. It had been completely redesigned and upgraded since the night of Andrew Carlisle's brutal attack. The wall between the root cellar, where Rita Antone and Davy Ladd had been imprisoned, had been knocked out, as had the wall between the kitchen and what had once been Rita's private quarters. The greatly enlarged kitchen now included a small informal dining area. The cabinets were new and so were the appliances, but to Gabe's heightened perceptions a ghost from that other room-the room from the book-still lingered almost palpably in the air. The damaged past permeated the room with evil in the same way the odor of a fire lingers among the ruins long after the flames themselves have been extinguished.

Acutely aware of that unseen aspect of the room, Gabe looked at the other man, trying to gauge whether or not he noticed. As Brandon bustled cheerfully around the kitchen, he seemed totally oblivious. A full pitcher of sun tea sat on the counter. He filled glasses with ice cubes from the machine in the door of the fridge, added the tea, sliced off two wedges of lemon, and passed Gabe the sugar bowl and a spoon along with the tall glass of tea and a lemon wedge.

"How are you?" Gabe asked. Spooning sugar into his tea, he was thankful Wanda wasn't there to tell him not to.

Brandon shrugged. "Can't complain. Doesn't do any good if I do. Now to what do I owe this honor?" Brandon sat down across the table from his guest. "Not some hitch with Davy's internship, I hope. He should be leaving for home within the next day or two."

Gabe took a sip of tea. "No," he said. "Everything's fine with that."

"What then?" Brandon asked.

The two men had been friends for a long time. Fighting the war with Andrew Carlisle and living through the courtroom battles that followed had turned Brandon Walker and Gabe Ortiz into unlikely comrades at arms. And their political ambitions-Gabe's within the tribe and Brandon's in the county sheriff's department-had led them along similar though different paths. Gabe had stood for election to the tribal council for the first time at almost the same time Brandon Walker took his first run at Pima County sheriff. Both of them had won, first time out.

With Gabe working in the background of tribal council deliberations and Brandon running the sheriff's department, the two men had managed to create a fairly close working relationship between tribal and county law enforcement officers. Gabe's elevation to chairman had happened only recently, after Brandon Walker had been burned at the polls and let out to pasture. With Brandon Walker no longer running the show at the sheriff's department, the spirit of cooperation that had once existed between Law and Order-the Tribal Police-and the Pima County Sheriff's Department was fast disappearing.

"Is Diana here?" Gabe asked.

Frowning, Brandon looked at his watch. When he left office, they had given him a gold watch, for Chrissakes. He hated the damn thing and everything it symbolized. He wore it all the time in the vain hope that daily doses of hard physical labor would eventually help wear it out.

"She should be home in a little while. She had to go to some kind of shindig over at the university. A tea, I think. I must have been a good boy, because she let me off on good behavior, thank God," he added with a grin.

Gabe didn't smile back. With instincts honed sharp from years of being a cop, Brandon recognized that non-smile for what it was-trouble.

"What's the matter, Gabe? Is something wrong?"

Gabe Ortiz took a deliberate sip of his tea before he answered. Convincing other people of the presence of an unseen menace had seemed so easy last night when he had been in tune with the ancient rituals of chants and singing. Now, though, the warning he had come to deliver didn't seem nearly so straightforward.

"I came to talk to you about Diana's book," he managed finally.

"Oh," Brandon Walker said. "Somehow I was afraid of that."

"You were?" Gabe asked hopefully. Perhaps he wasn't the only one with a powerful sense of foreboding.

"When she first came up with the idea for that book, I tried my best to talk her out of it," Brandon said. "I told her from the very beginning that I didn't think it was a good idea to rehash all that old stuff. Which shows how much I know. The damn thing went and won a Pulitzer. Now that it's gone into multiple printings, the publisher is turning handstands. Months after it came out, the book is back on the New York Times Best Sellers list and moving up." He stopped and gave his visitor a sardonic grin. "I guess I was a better sheriff than I am a literary critic-and I wasn't too hot at that."

For a moment they both sipped their tea. Brandon waited to see if Fat Crack would say what was on his mind. When nothing appeared to be forthcoming, Brandon tried priming the pump.

"So what is it about the book?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with it? Did she leave something out or put too much in? Diana's usually very good with research, but everybody screws up now and then. What's the scoop, Fat Crack? Tell me."

"Andrew Carlisle's coming back," Gabe said slowly.

Walker started involuntarily but then caught himself. "The hell he is, unless you're talking about some kind of instant replay of the Second Coming. Andrew Philip Carlisle is dead. He died a month and a half ago. In prison. Of AIDS."

"I know," Gabe replied. "I saw that in the paper. I'm not saying he's coming back himself. Maybe he's sending someone else."

"What for?"

"I don't know. To get even?"

Brandon leaned back in his chair. Most Anglos would have simply laughed the suggestions aside. Gabe was relieved that Brandon, at least, seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration.

"Most crooks talk about getting revenge, but very few ever do," he said finally. "Either in person or otherwise."

"He did before," Gabe said.

That statement brooked no argument. Brandon nodded. "So what do we do about it?"

For an answer, Gabe pulled Looks At Nothing's deerskin pouch out of his pocket. "Remember this?" he asked, opening it and removing both a cigarette and the lighter.

A single glimpse of that worn, fringed pouch threw Brandon Walker into a sea of remembrance. He waited in silence as Gabe lit one of the hand-rolled cigarettes. And once he smelled a whiff of the acrid smoke, that, too, brought back a flood of memories.

The last time Brandon had seen the pouch was the night after Davy Ladd's Tohono O'othham baptism. Back then the customs of the Desert People had been new and strange. The old medicine man, with help in translation from both Fat Crack and the old priest, had patiently explained some of the belief systems surrounding sickness, both Traveling Sickness- Oimmedtham Mumkithag-and Staying Sickness- Kkahchim Mumkithag.

According to the medicine man, traveling sicknesses were contagious diseases like measles, mumps, or chicken pox. They moved from person to person and from place to place, affecting everyone, Indian and Anglo alike. Traveling sicknesses could be treated by medicine men, but they also responded to the efforts of doctors, nurses, and Anglo hospitals.

Staying sicknesses, on the other hand, were believed to affect only Indians and could be cured only by medicine men. Both physical and spiritual in nature, staying sicknesses resulted from someone breaking a taboo or coming in contact with a dangerous object. By virtue of being an unbaptized baby, Davy himself had become the dangerous object that had attracted the attentions of the Ohb — infected Andrew Carlisle. As a cop investigating a case, Brandon had been little more than an amused outsider as he observed Diana Ladd complying with the requirements of Looks At Nothing's ritual cure.

The prescription had included seeing to it that Davy Ladd was baptized according to both Indian and Anglo custom. Father John, a frail old priest from San Xavier Mission, had fulfilled the Mil-gahn part of the bargain by baptizing Davy into the Catholic Church of Diana Ladd's Anglo upbringing. Looks At Nothing, aided by ceremonial singers, had baptized Davy according to the ritual of the Tohono O'othham. In the process the boy was given a new name. Among the Tohono O'othham Davy Ladd became Edagith Gogk Je'e — One With Two Mothers.

"But I thought you told me staying sicknesses only affect Indians," Brandon had objected.

"Don't you see?" Looks At Nothing returned. "Davy is not just an Anglo child. He has been raised by Rita as a child of her heart. Therefore he is Tohono O'othham as well. That's why two baptisms are necessary, Anglo and Indian both."

"I see," Brandon had said back then. Now, after years living under the same roof with Rita, Davy, and Lani, Brandon understood far more about Staying Sickness than he ever would have thought possible. For instance, Eagle Sickness comes from killing an eagle and can result in head lice or itchy hands. Owl Sickness comes from succumbing to a dream in which a ghost appears, and can result in fits or trances, dizziness, and "heart shaking." Coyote Sickness comes from killing a coyote or eating a melon a coyote has bitten into. That one can cause both itching and diarrhea in babies. Whenever one of the kids had come down with a case of diarrhea, Rita was always convinced Coyote Sickness was at fault.

Now, though, sitting in the kitchen of the house at Gates Pass, Brandon Walker smelled the smoke and was transported back to that long ago council around the hood of Fat Crack's bright red tow truck. It was at the feast after the ceremony, after Rita and Diana and Davy Ladd had all eaten the ritual gruel of white clay and crushed owl feathers. There had been four men in all-Looks At Nothing, Father John, Fat Crack, and Brandon Walker-who had gathered in that informal circle.

Brandon remembered how Looks At Nothing had pulled out his frayed leather pouch and how he had carefully removed one of his homemade cigarettes. Brandon had watched in fascination as the blind man once again used his Zippo lighter and unerringly ignited the roll of paper and tobacco. Before that, Brandon had been exposed only once to the Tohono O'othham custom of the Peace Smoke, one accomplished with the use of cigarettes rather than with the ceremonial pipes used by other Indian tribes. He knew, for example, that when the burning cigarette was handed to him, he was expected to take a drag, say "Nawoj" — which means friend or friendly gift-and then pass it along to the next man in the circle.

It had seemed to Brandon at the time that the cigarette was being passed in honor of Davy's successful baptism, but that wasn't true. The circle around the truck had a wholly separate purpose.

Only when the cigarette had gone all the way around the circle-from medicine man to priest, from tow truck driver to detective and back at last to Looks At Nothing-did Brandon Walker learn the rest.

"He is a good boy," Looks At Nothing had said quietly, clearly referring to Davy. "But I am worried about one thing. He has too many mothers and not enough fathers."

Not enough fathers? Brandon had thought to himself, standing there leaning on a tow truck fender. What the hell is that supposed to mean? And what does it have to do with me?

Obligingly, Looks At Nothing had told them.

"There are four of us," the shaman had continued. "All things in nature go in fours. Why could we not agree to be father to this fatherless boy, all four of us together? We each have things to teach, and we all have things to learn."

Brandon recalled the supreme confidence with which the medicine man had stated this position. Out of politeness, it was framed as a question, but it was nonetheless a pronouncement. No one gathered around the truck that warm summer's night in the still-eddying smoke from the old man's cigarette had nerve enough to say otherwise.

Twenty-one years had passed between then and now. Two of Davy Ladd's four fathers were dead-Father John for twenty years and Looks At Nothing for three years less than that. One of the two mothers, Rita Antone, was gone as well.

Of the six people charged by the medicine man with Davy Ladd's care and keeping, only three remained-Diana Ladd Walker, Fat Crack Ortiz, and Brandon Walker.

"That's the pouch that belonged to the old blind medicine man, isn't it?" Brandon asked.

Fat Crack, nodding, passed the cigarette to Brandon. "Nawoj," Fat Crack said.

At Diana's insistence, Brandon Walker had quit smoking completely years ago. When he took that first drag on the ceremonial tobacco, the sharp smoke of the desert tobacco burned his throat and chest. He winced but managed to suppress a cough.

"Nawoj,"he returned, passing the cigarette back to Gabe.

For a time after that, the two men smoked in utter silence. Only when Brandon with typical Anglo impatience was convinced that Fat Crack had forgotten how to speak, did Gabe Ortiz open his mouth.

"I finished reading Diana's book last night," he said at last. "It gave me a bad feeling. Finally I took the book outside and sang a kuadk over it."

"A what?" Brandon asked.

" Kuadk. One of the sacred chants of discernment that Looks At Nothing taught me. That's how I learned the evil Ohb is coming back."

Brandon frowned. "Even though he's dead."

Fat Crack nodded. "I can't see the danger, I just know it's coming."

Brandon shook his head. There was no point in arguing. "What are we supposed to do about it?" he asked.

"That's what you and I must decide."

Brandon Walker sighed. Abruptly he stood up and walked back to the counter to fetch the pitcher of tea. In the process, he seemed to shake off the effects of the smoke and all it implied.

"What do you suggest?" he asked irritably. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the sheriff anymore. I'm not even a deputy. There's nothing I can do. Nothing I'm supposed to do."

Realizing that Brandon Walker was no longer in touch with the spiritual danger, Gabe attempted to respond to the physical concerns. "Maybe you could ask the sheriff to send more patrols out this way," he suggested.

"Why? To protect us from a dead man?" Brandon Walker demanded. "Are you kidding? If I weren't a laughingstock already, I sure as hell would be once word about that leaked out. I appreciate your concern, Gabe. And I thank you for going to all the trouble of stopping by to warn us, but believe me, you're wrong. Andrew Carlisle is dead. He can't hurt anybody anymore."

"I'd better be going, then," Gabe Ortiz said.

"Don't you want to stay and see Diana? She should be home before long."

Fat Crack shook his head. If Brandon wouldn't listen to him, that meant that the evil here in the kitchen would grow stronger still. He didn't want to sit there and feel it gaining strength around him.

"I'll be late for dinner," he said. "It'll make Wanda mad."

When he stood up, his legs groaned beneath him. His joints felt stiff and old as his whole body protested the hours he had spent the night before seated in that uncomfortable molded plastic chair. Wanda had picked up a whole set of those chairs on sale from Walgreen's at the end of the previous summer. Now Gabe understood why they had been so cheap.

"Do me a favor, nawoj, my friend," Gabe Ortiz said, limping toward the door. "Do something for an old man."

"You're not so old," Brandon Walker objected. "But what favor?"

"Think about what I said," Gabe told him, slipping the deerskin pouch back into his pocket.. "And even if you don't believe what I said, act as though you do."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Be careful," Gabe answered. "You and Diana both."

Brandon nodded. "Sure," he said, not knowing if he meant it or not.

Outside, Gabe Ortiz paused with his hand touching the door handle on the Crown Victoria. "What are you going to do with all that wood out there?" he asked.

"Oh, that." Brandon shrugged. "Right now I'm just cutting it, I guess," he said. "I haven't given much thought to what we'll do with it. Burn some of it over the winter, I suppose. Why, do you know someone who needs wood?"

"The ladies up at San Xavier sure could use it," Gabe answered. "The ones who cook the popovers and chili. Most of the wood is gone from right around there. They have to haul it in. And the chips would help on the playfield down at Topawa Elementary. When it rains, that whole place down there turns to mud."

"If somebody can use it, they're welcome to it," Brandon said. "All they have to do is come pick it up."

"I'll have the tribe send out some trucks along with guys to load it."

"Sure thing," Brandon said. "They can come most anytime. I'm usually here."

As soon as Gabe Ortiz's Crown Victoria headed down the road, Brandon Walker returned to his woodpile. A reincarnated Andrew Carlisle? That was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. Still, there was one point upon which Brandon Walker fully agreed with Fat Crack Ortiz-writing Shadow of Death had been a dangerous undertaking.

Four years earlier, on the day the letter arrived from Andrew Carlisle, Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd had already been together for seventeen years. They had come through the trials and tribulations of raising children and stepchildren. Together they had survived the long-term agonies of writing and publishing books and dealt with the complexities and hard work of running for public office. There had been difficulties, of course, but always there had been room for compromise-right up to the arrival of that damned letter. And from that time since, it seemed to him they had been locked in a downward spiral.

That was Brandon's perception, that things had been hunky-dory before the letter and had gone to hell in a handbasket afterward, although in actual fact everything wasn't absolutely perfect beforehand. They had already lost Tommy by then, and Quentin had already been sent to prison on the drunk-driving charge. But still…

The letter, ticking like a time bomb, had come to the house as part of a packet of publisher-forwarded fan mail. Diana had opened the envelope and read the oddly printed, handwritten letter herself before handing it to her husband.

MY DEAR MS. WALKER,

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS IT MAY SURPRISE YOU TO HEAR FROM ME AGAIN. FURTHER, IT MAY COME AS NEWS TO YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAVE RECENTLY BEEN DIAGNOSED AS SUFFERING FROM AN INEVITABLY FATAL DISEASE (AIDS). I AM WRITING TO YOU AT THIS TIME TO SEE IF YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME ON A BOOK PROJECT THAT WOULD CHRONICLE THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT BROUGHT ME TO THIS UNFORTUNATE PASS.

I HAVE ALREADY ASSEMBLED A GOOD DEAL OF INVALUABLE MATERIAL FOR SUCH A PROJECT, BUT I AM OFFENDED BY THE RULES CURRENTLY IN EFFECT THAT MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR CONVICTED CRIMINALS TO REAP ANY KIND OF FINANCIAL REWARDS FROM RECOUNTING THEIR NEFARIOUS DEEDS, INCLUDING WRITING BOOKS ABOUT SAME. BECAUSE SOMEONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE AN HONEST BUCK OUT OF SUCH AN UNDERTAKING, I AM WILLING TO TURN THE ENTIRE IDEA, ALONG WITH MY ACCUMULATED MATERIAL, OVER TO A CAPABLE WRITER-WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED-TO DO WITH AS HE OR SHE MAY CHOOSE.

YOU ARE UNIQUELY QUALIFIED TO WRITE SUCH A BOOK, AND I BELIEVE THAT OUR TWO DIVERGING POINTS OF VIEW ON THE SAME STORY WOULD MAKE FOR COMPELLING READING, EVEN IF WE BOTH KNOW, GOING INTO THE PROJECT, EXACTLY HOW IT WILL ALL TURN OUT.

DURING MY YEARS OF INCARCERATION HERE IN FLORENCE, I HAVE FOLLOWED YOUR FLOURISHING (PARDON THE UNINTENTIONAL ALLITERATION) CAREER WITH MORE THAN CASUAL INTEREST. THIS HAS BEEN DIFFICULT AT TIMES SINCE IT TAKES TIME FOR NONFICTION WORK TO BE TRANSLATED INTO EITHER "TALKING BOOKS" OR BRAILLE. (AS A RELATIVE "LATECOMER" TO THE WORLD OF BLINDNESS, BRAILLE CONTINUES TO BE SLOW-GOING AND CUMBERSOME FOR ME.)

THE MATERIAL I NOW HAVE IN MY POSSESSION IS IN THE FORM OF TYPED NOTES AND TAPES. I THINK, THOUGH, SHOULD YOU DECIDE TO TAKE ON THIS PROJECT, THAT A SERIES OF FACE-TO-FACE INTERVIEWS WOULD BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF KICKING THINGS OFF.

WHATEVER YOUR DECISION, PLEASE LET ME KNOW AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT WITH THIS DISEASE TIME MAY BE FAR MORE LIMITED THAN EITHER ONE OF US NOW SUSPECTS.

REGARDS,

ANDREW PHILIP CARLISLE

Just holding the wretched letter in his hand had made Brandon Walker feel somehow contaminated. And angry.

"Send this thing back by return mail and tell him to shove it up his ass," he had growled, handing the letter back to Diana. "Where does that son of a bitch get off and how come he has your address?"

"Andrew Carlisle always had my address," Diana reminded her husband. "Our address," she corrected. "We haven't moved, you know, not since it happened."

"Did he send it here directly?"

"No, it came in a packet from my publisher in New York."

"If you want me to, I'll call the warden and tell him not to let Carlisle send you any more letters, whether they go to New York first or not."

"I'll take care of it," Diana had said.

"You'll tell him not to write again?" Brandon asked.

"I said I'd handle it."

Looking at his wife's determined expression, Brandon suddenly understood her intention. "You're not going to write back, are you?"

Diana stood there for a moment gazing down at the letter and not answering.

"Well?" Brandon insisted impatiently. "Are you?"

"I might," she said.

"Why, for God's sake?"

"Because he's right, you know. It could be one hell of a good book. Usually it takes at least two books to tell both sides of any given story. This would have both in one. Not only that, my agent and my editor both told me years ago that anytime I was ready to write a book about what happened, Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd would jump at the chance to publish it."

"No," Brandon said.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Just what I said. N-O. Absolutely not. I don't want you anywhere near that crackpot. I don't want you writing to him. I don't want you interviewing him. I don't want you writing about him. Forget it."

"Wait a minute," Diana objected. "You can't tell me what I can and what I can't write."

"But it could be dangerous for you," Brandon said.

"Being sheriff can be dangerous, too," she told him. "What happens when it's time for the next election and you have to decide whether or not to run for office again?"

"What about it?"

"What if I told you to forget it? What if I told you that you couldn't run for office because I said your being sheriff worried me too much? What if you couldn't run because I refused to give my permission? What then?"

"Diana," Brandon said, realizing too late that he had stepped off a cliff into forbidden territory. "It's not the same thing."

"It isn't? What's so different about it?"

"That's politics…"

"And I don't know anything about politics, right?"

"Diana, I-"

"Listen, Brandon Walker. I know as much or more about politics as you do about writing and publishing. And if I have the good sense to stay out of your business, I'll thank you to have the good sense to stay out of mine."

"But you'll be putting yourself at risk," Brandon ventured. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because there are questions I still don't have answers for," Diana had replied. "I'm the only one who can ask those questions, and Andrew Carlisle is the only one who can provide the answers."

"But why stir it all up again?"

"Because I paid a hell of a price," Diana responded. "Because more than anyone else in the whole world, I've earned the right to have those damn answers. All of them."

She had left then, stalked off to her office. Within weeks-lightning speed in the world of publishing contract negotiations-the contract had come through for Shadow of Death, although the book hadn't had that name then. The original working title had been A Private War.

And it had been, in more ways than one. From then on, things had never been quite the same between Brandon and Diana.

Diana heard the whine of the chain saw as soon as she pulled into the carport alongside the house and switched off the Suburban's engine. Hearing the sound, she gripped the steering wheel and closed her eyes.

"Damn," she muttered. "He's at it again."

Shaking her head, Diana hurried into the house, determined to change both her clothes and her attitude. The literary tea was over, thank God. It had been murder-just the kind of stultifying ordeal Brandon had predicted it would be. Listening to the saw, Diana realized that it would have been nice if she herself had been given a choice of working on the woodpile or dealing with Edith Gailbraith, the sharp-tongued wife of the former head of the university's English Department. Compared to Edith, the tangled pile of mesquite and creosote held a certain straightforward appeal.

Edith, social daggers at the ready, had been the first one to inquire after Brandon. "How's your poor husband faring these days now that he lost the election?" she had asked.

Diana had smiled brightly. At least she hoped it was a bright smile. "He's doing fine," she said, shying away from adding the qualifying words "for a hermit." As she had learned in the past few months, being married to a hermit-in-training wasn't much fun.

"Has he found another job yet?" Edith continued.

"He isn't looking," Diana answered with a firm smile. "He doesn't really need another job. That's given him some time to look at his options."

"I'd watch out for him, if I were you," Edith continued. "Don't leave him out to pasture too long. American men take it so hard when they stop working. The number who die within months of retirement is just phenomenal. For too many of them, their jobs are their lives. That was certainly the case with my Harry. He mourned for months afterward. I was afraid we were going to end up in divorce court, but he died first. He never did get over it."

Nothing like a little sweetness and light over tea and cakes, Diana thought, seeing Brandon's frenetic work on the woodpile through Edith Gailbraith's prying eyes. And lips. With unerring accuracy, Edith had zeroed in on one of Diana Ladd Walker's most vulnerable areas of concern. What exactly was going on with Brandon? And would he ever get over it?

Driving up to the house late that afternoon, she still didn't have any acceptable answers to that question. The only thing she did know for sure was that somehow cutting up the wood was helping him deal with the demons that were eating him alive. Having left Edith behind, it was easy for Diana to go back home to Gates Pass prepared to forgive and forget.

"Go change your clothes and stack some wood, Diana," she told herself. "It'll do you a world of good."

In the master bedroom of their house Diana slipped out of the smart little emerald green silk suit she had worn to the tea. She changed into jeans, boots, and a loose-fitting T-shirt. When she stopped in to pick up a pair of glasses of iced tea, she noticed the two glasses already sitting in the kitchen sink and wondered who had stopped by.

She took two newly filled glasses outside. Brandon, stacking wood now with sweat soaking through his clothing, smiled at her gratefully when she handed him his tea. "I'm from Washington," she joked. "I'm here to help."

As a victim of many hit-and-run federal bureaucrats, the quip made Brandon laugh aloud. "Good," he said. "I'll take whatever help I can get."

Without saying anything further, he handed her a piece of chopped log, which she obligingly carried to the stack. They worked together in silence for some time before Brandon somewhat warily broached the subject of the university tea. "How was it?" he asked.

Diana shrugged. "About what you'd expect," she said. "By holding it at the Arizona Historical Society instead of someplace on campus or at the president's residence, they managed to make it clear that as far as they're concerned, I'm still not quite okay."

"You can't really blame them for that," Brandon said. "Andrew Carlisle isn't exactly one of the U. of A.'s more stellar ex-professors. You can hardly expect them to be good sports about what they all have to regard as adverse publicity."

In writing Shadow of Death, Diana hadn't glossed over the fact that Andrew Carlisle had used his position as head of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Arizona to lure Diana's first husband, Garrison Ladd, into playing a part in a brutal torture killing. Members of the local literary community-especially ones in the university's English Department who had known Andrew Carlisle personally and who still held sway over the university's creative writing program-were shocked and appalled by his portrayal in the book. They were disgusted that a book one Arizona Daily Sun reviewer had dismissed as nothing more than "a poor-taste exercise in true crime" had gone on to be hailed by national critics and booksellers alike as a masterwork.

"You were absolutely right not to go," Diana added, bending over and straightening a pile of branches into a manageable armload. "The vultures were out in spades. Several of the women took great pains to tell me that although they never deign to read that kind of thing themselves, they were sure this must be quite good."

"That's big of them," Brandon said. "But it is quite good."

Diana stopped what she was doing and turned a questioning look on her husband's tanned, handsome face. "You mean you've actually read it?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"While you were off in New York. I didn't want to be the only person on the block who hadn't read the damn thing."

When she had been writing other books, Brandon had read the chapters as they came out of the computer printer. With the manuscript for Shadow of Death he had shown less than no interest. When the galleys came back from New York for correction, she had offered to let him read the book then, but he had said no thanks. He had made his position clear from the beginning, and nothing-not even Diana's considerable six-figure advance payment-had changed his mind.

Hurt but resigned, Diana had decided he probably never would read it. She hadn't brought up the subject again.

Now, though, standing there in the searing afternoon heat, cradling a load of branches in her arms, Diana felt some of the months of unresolved anger melt away. "You read it and you liked it?" she asked.

"I didn't say I liked it," Brandon answered, moving toward her and looking down into her eyes. "In fact, I hated it-every damned word, but that doesn't mean it wasn't good, because it is. Or should I say, not bad for a girl?" he added with a tentative smile.

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.