“Holy shit!” Alvin exclaimed.
“What is it?” Brandon asked.
“I haven’t run the prints yet,” he said. “I was just about done enhancing them, but I recognize one of these. Has your son been out to visit you recently?”
“My son and I are currently estranged,” Brandon Walker said carefully. “He hasn’t been anywhere near Diana’s and my house since
“But this print—the one right here on the end,” Alvin said, handing the sheet over to Brandon at last. “That’s the same print I took off the desk in your office and also off one of the pieces of broken frame.”
Brandon looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. The last print, the one in the corner, had a diagonal slice across it. Nodding, he handed the set of prints back to Alvin.
“He almost cut his thumb in half with my pocket knife when he was eight,” Brandon said quietly. “He took my pocket knife outside and was showing off with his little brother when it happened. You’ll probably find the same prints on the tape and tape case as well.”
“You think your son Quentin has something to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”
Brandon Walker sighed. In the space of a few minutes’ time, the former sheriff seemed to have aged ten years.
“With my daughter’s murder,” he corrected. “It’s all on the tape, but before you turn it over to a detective, I want it checked for prints. Diana’s and mine are on there along with whatever others there are. You understand, don’t you, Alvin?” he asked. “I need to know for sure.” He glanced in Diana’s direction. “We both need to know.”
“Right,” Alvin said.
He took the bag and carried it over to his lab area, where he carefully dusted both the tape and the case with graphite, bringing out a whole series of prints. Then, using a magnifying glass, he examined the results for several long minutes.
Finally, putting down the glass, he turned back to Brandon and Diana. “It’s here,” he said. “On the case, at least.”
Brandon Walker’s eyes blurred with tears. His legs seemed to splinter beneath him.
“I was afraid it would be,” he said. “We’d better go out front and talk to a detective. I’m sure whoever’s assigned to this case will need to hear that tape as soon as possible.”
“How come?” Alvin Miller asked. “What’s on it?”
Brandon Walker took a deep, despairing breath before he answered. “We believe . . .” he said, fighting unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady, “. . . that this is a recording of our daughter’s murder.”
Together, Diana and Brandon Walker started toward the door. “Ask to talk to Detective Leggett,” Alvin Miller called after him. “He doesn’t know it yet, but it turns out he’s already working this case.”
By the time Davy and Candace picked up their tickets at the counter and then went racing through the terminal to the gate, they were both worn out. Once aboard America West Flight 1, bound for Tucson, Candace fell sound asleep. Davy, although fidgety with a combination of nerves and exhaustion, fought hard to stay awake. They were flying in a 737, and Davy was stuck in one of the cramped middle seats, sandwiched between Candace, sleeping on his left, and a bright-eyed little old lady on the right. The woman was tiny. Her skin was tanned nut-brown. The skin of her lips and cheeks was wrinkled in that distinctive pattern that comes from years of smoking. Rattling the pages, she thumbed impatiently through the in-flight magazine.
David sat there, bolt upright and petrified, worried sick that if he did fall asleep, he would instantly be overtaken by yet another panic attack. If, as the emergency room doctor had insisted, the attacks were stress- induced, then Davy figured he was about due for another one. There was, after all, some stress in his life.
His experience with Candace in the hotel earlier meant that he was no longer quite so concerned about what she would think of him when another attack came along. What would other people think, though? The lady next to him, for instance, or the flight attendants hustling up and down the aisle, dispensing orange juice and coffee, what would they do? He could imagine it all too well. “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of them would intone into the intercom. “We have a medical emergency here. Is there a doctor on board?”
Stress. Part of that came from finishing school and going home and getting a real job without even taking whatever had happened to Lani into consideration. In the years while Davy was attending law school in Chicago, he had held himself at arm’s length from his family back home. Somehow it seemed to him that there wasn’t room enough in his heart for all of them at once—for the Arizona contingent and for the Ladd side of the family in Illinois. To say nothing of Candace.
Looking at her sleeping peacefully beside him, Davy couldn’t quite believe she was there. In his scheme of things, Candace had always been part of his Chicago life, and yet here she was on the plane with him, headed for Tucson. Not only that, she was going there with Astrid Ladd’s amazingly large diamond engagement ring firmly encircling the ring finger on her slender left hand.
Davy hadn’t exactly popped the question. Nevertheless, they were engaged. Candace was planning a quick wedding in Vegas while Davy squirmed with the knowledge that his mother and stepfather had barely heard her name. He hadn’t told them any more about her than he had told them about his other passing romantic fancies. It hadn’t seemed necessary.
Now, given the circumstances, telling was more than necessary. It was essential and tardy and not at all one- sided. Just as he hadn’t talked about Candace to his parents, the reverse was also true. There was a whole lot he hadn’t told Candace, either.
The lush lifestyle in which Candace Waverly had grown up in Oak Park, Illinois, was far different from what prevailed in the comparatively simple house in Gates Pass. And if Candace’s experience was one step removed from the Tucson house, it was forever away from Rita Antone’s one-room adobe house—little more than a shack, really —which had been Nana
Coyote Sitting, Davy thought. Just the names of the villages were bad enough.
