'Not much longer than that. A crew cut would help.'
'I don't do crew cuts,' Diana said. 'I don't have clippers.
And that was the end of that. Davy took his sandwich, tea, and dog, and melted ghostlike into another room, leaving the two grown-ups in another moment of awkward silence.
'I can't get over how you've changed,' Brandon said, still thinking about the gun. 'Since that first time I met you, I mean.'
'Murder and suicide do that to you,' she responded.
'They make you grow up quick. You're never the same afterward. No matter how hard you try, you can never be the same.'
After watching Gary drive off and hanging up the phone, Diana stumbled blindly back to the couch and sat there for what seemed like hours, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Briefly, she thought about jumping in the car, driving into town, and looking for him, but where would she go?
Gary had mentioned lots of places where he and Andrew Carlisle hung out together, lowbrow places where Andrew said you could see slices of real life-the Tally Ho, the Green Dolphin, the Golden Nugget, the Grant Road Tavern, the Shanty. She knew the names of the bars, the joints, but she hadn't been to any of them personally and couldn't bear the humiliation of going now, of trailing after him, of being just another foolish, hapless wife asking jaded, snickering bartenders if they had seen her drunk of a husband.
Because Gary was drinking more now, she finally admitted to herself, just like her father, and she, just like Iona, continued to stand by him for no apparent reason. She could see now that she should have stayed in Eugene, should never have agreed to come to this terrible place where she would be without resources and where he would fall under the spell of that man.
That man-Andrew Carlisle. It was easy to blame all of Gary's shortcomings on Andrew Carlisle. Diana saw the professor as a sort of evil Pied Piper, as someone who had cast a terrible spell over her husband's psyche and bent it to his own purposes.
Some of Carlisle's catch phrases whirled back through her memory just as Gary Ladd had reported them to her.
'Write what you know.'
'Experience is the greatest teacher.'
'If you want to write about it, do it.'
Do it? Do what? For the first time, she allowed herself to frame the question: What was Gary writing? She had never asked to look at his manuscript, had never interfered with his work. That was an act of faith on her part, a self-imposed test of her loyalty. Of course, she had passed the exam with flying colors. She was, after all, Iona Dade Cooper's daughter. How could she do anything else? She had buried her head in the sand and refused to see anything beyond the fact that the stack of manuscript pages on his desk in the spare bedroom had grown gradually taller. That had been the only proof she'd ever required to convince herself that Gary was working, that he was doing what he was supposed to and living up to his part of the bargain.
But now, trembling with fear, Diana sprang from the couch and went looking for the manuscript. Naturally, it wasn't there. The Smith-Corona still sat on the desk in the spare bedroom, and the blank paper was there where it should have been, but the manuscript itself was gone. She had seen it earlier in the day, when she'd been straightening up the house. That could mean only one thing. Gary had taken it with him when he left.
Why? she wondered. Why would he?
Diana looked at Brandon Walker across the top of her iced tea glass.
She seemed much more composed now, as though she had made up her mind about something while she was making the sandwiches.
'So why are you here?' she asked. 'Why did you come all the way out here? Are you worried about me?'
'Yes,' he admitted.
'And you're convinced, just like I am, that he may come looking for me?'
'Yes,' he said again.
it was true, that was his concern. He could point to no concrete evidence to that effect, but all his cop instincts screamed out warnings that this woman was in danger. She laughed aloud in the face of his obvious distress.
'Me, too,' she said. 'At least we're agreed on that score.
Now tell me, if you don't want me to wear a gun, and if you don't want me to protect myself, what do you suggest I do?'
'Leave,' he said simply. 'Go away for a while. Stay with friends or relatives and give us a chance to catch him. Once Detective Farrell gets going on this case, Carlisle won't be on the loose for long. He has no way of knowing that we're already onto him, and if it weren't for the Indians, God knows we wouldn't be.'
'What Indians?' Diana asked.
'Two Papagos came to see me this morning, an old blind one and a younger one, an enormous man whose name is Gabe Ortiz.'
'Fat Crack came to see you?' Diana said incredulously.
'His name is Fat Crack? You know him? He's evidently some kind of relative of the murdered girl.'
Diana nodded. 'Her cousin. He's Rita's nephew, but I can't imagine him coming to town to talk to an Anglo cop about this.'
'Well, he did,' Brandon said defensively, 'and he brought the old blind man with him. They tipped as off early, so we're on Carlisle's trail while it's still relatively warm. When I left him, Farrell was on his way to Florence to see
