She drew away from him, grabbed up the paper, crumpled it into a wad, and shook it in his face.
'Is it this?' she demanded, not caring that her voice had risen to a shriek. 'Is this what the hell's the matter?'
And he gave her the only answer she ever got from him, an agonized three-word reply that offered no comfort even while she pinned her every hope for both the past and present on it.
'I don't remember.'
Not, 'Of course not!' Not, 'How could you say such a thing?' Not, 'That's crazy!' But, 'I don't remember-a murderous kings X, as though he'd kept his fingers crossed while Gina Antone died.
The room reeled around her. Overwhelmed by nausea, she dashed for the bathroom and vomited, while her chicken-noodle soup cooked to blackened charcoal splinters on the kitchen stove.
When Diana came back out to the living room, Gary was gone. She ran to the door in time to see his pickup turning out of the Teachers' Compound onto the highway, headed for Sells. She could have driven like a demon and caught up with him on the highway, but what would she have done then, forced him off the road?
Behind her, an unearthly howl from the telephone receiver told her that the phone hadn't been hung up properly. At first, staring after the receding pickup, Diana was unable to respond. Soon a disembodied voice echoed through the house telling her to please hang up and try again.
Shaken and too spent to do anything else, she put the phone back on the hook.
Gary left the house, and she never saw him again, not alive anyway, and that last phone call, placed to Andrew Carlisle's home just before Garrison Ladd fled the house to go to his death, was one of the key pieces of evidence that linked the two men together.
Yes, Diana thought almost seven years later, going into the house in Gates Pass, closing and locking the door behind her, Andrew Carlisle was the invader here, the enemy. He had not yet set foot inside her home, but when he did, he would meet with implacable resistance, to-the-death resistance.
Rita Antone had said so, and so had Diana Ladd.
Detective Geet Farrell of the Pinal County Sheriff's Department was a cop's cop, someone who had been in the business a long time, someone who knew his way around people. Everyone in the Arizona law-enforcement community was familiar with the problems in the Pima County Sheriff's Department. At first Farrell was worried that Brandon Walker might be one of Sheriff DuShane's bad guys.
'You dragged me all the way down here with some cockamamy story, so tell me, who is this character?' Farrell asked, leaning back in the booth, eyeing Brandon Walker speculatively.
'His name is Andrew Carlisle,' Walker answered.
'Formerly Professor Andrew Carlisle of the University of Arizona.'
Years earlier, the professor's case had been notorious, statewide.
Farrell remembered it well. 'If it's the same case I'm thinking about, he got himself a pretty slick plea- bargain.'
'That's the one,' Walker nodded. 'The other guy, his student and co-conspirator, committed suicide rather than go to jail.'
'Tell me about the bite.'
'Like I said on the phone. One nipple was completely severed, and the key piece of evidence that could have been matched to a bite impression, the thing that would have determined once and for all who was responsible, disappeared off the face of the earth.'
Farrell nodded. 'You boys have a man-sized hole in your evidence room down there. Somebody ought to plug that son of a bitch.' Both men knew Farrell was referring to DuShane himself and not some mythical hole.
'They ought to,' Walker agreed, 'but that's easier said than done.'
'What makes you think Carlisle's my man?' Farrell asked.
'He was released from Florence at noon on Friday, put on the bus for Tucson. My guess is that he never made it that far.'
'How'd you know about Margie Danielson's nipple?'
Farrell asked. The Pinal County detective didn't play games. He had already made a favorable judgment call about the quality of his Pima County colleague.
'From two Indians,' Walker answered, 'an old one, a medicine man, and a younger one, too. At least I think the younger one is a medicine man.
They'd heard you'd arrested an Indian.'
'Arrested but not charged,' Farrell agreed, 'but how'd they know about that?'
'They didn't say, and I didn't ask. They were also the ones who came up with a possible connection between this case and the old one. They came to town this morning and asked me to find out whether or not Andrew Carlisle was out of prison.'
'And he was,' Farrell finished.
Walker nodded. 'At exactly the right time. Florence released him Friday at noon.'
Farrell blinked at that, as though he hadn't made the connection the first time. Noon Friday. From Florence to Picacho Peak a few hours later was indeed the right time and place. 'So where is he now?'
'That I don't know. I talked to a guy named Ron Mallory who's assistant superintendent at Florence. He played real coy, acted like he had no idea where Carlisle might have gone, but the person in Records let something slip when I was talking to her. She mentioned that most of the time Carlisle was locked up, he worked as Mallory's
