steamy reflection. “I could,” she said finally. “Do you want me to?”
Brandon’s older son had been locked up in the state penitentiary at Florence for months now. On occasion, Brandon and Diana had talked about driving up there to see him, but each time, Brandon had changed his mind and backed out at the last minute.
“I guess,” he said hollowly. “I do want to know how Quent’s doing. I just can’t bring myself to go there to see him. Still, no matter what he’s done, he’s also my son. Nothing’s going to change that. Since we’ve already lost Tommy, we can’t very well just abandon Quentin, can we?”
Brandon looked away, but not before Diana glimpsed the anguished expression on his face. She tried to read that look, tried to fathom what was behind it. Betrayal? Despair? Pain? Anger?
“No,” Diana agreed at last. “I don’t suppose we can. I can’t promise I’ll see Quentin today. It depends on whether or not there’s enough time left in visiting hours after the interview with Carlisle is over. If they’ll let me, though, I will.”
“Thanks, Di,” Brandon said gruffly. “I appreciate it.”
And it turned out that there had been enough time for Diana Ladd Walker to see both prisoners that day. She had been waiting in the Visitation Room, amidst a group of other women who, armed with whatever difficulties were besetting them on the outside, had come either to rail at or to share their woes with their husbands or boyfriends or sons. Diana had brought only a yellow pad and a pencil, along with a pervasive sense of dread.
As one door after another had clanged shut behind her, Diana felt a sudden resurgence of that long-ago fear. In her ignorance, she had thought of the house in Gates Pass as a safe haven, yet Carlisle had found a way inside the house and had attacked her there, despite her careful precautions and numerous locked doors. Maybe, here in the prison, despite the reassuring presence of guards and iron bars, her presumed safety might once again prove illusory.
Andrew Carlisle was here, and so was Diana Walker. She was already locked inside the same complex. Soon the two of them would be within the same four walls. Would she be able to stand it? For the first time, Diana’s courage wavered. At that moment it would have taken only the smallest nudge from Brandon to convince her to walk away and forget the whole project.
Quaking, fighting an almost overpowering urge to bolt and run, Diana followed the escorting guards into the grimly functional prison Visitation Room. It was lit by sallow, artificial light that gave everyone in the place a jaundiced, sickly look. The walls were posted with rules and regulations, many of them made illegible by layers of graffiti. The chairs in the room were all bolted to the floor. It was a hard, desperate place where people with no hope waited to see loved ones who had even less.
The guard leading Diana took her directly to the far side of the room, where the wall was made of thick Plexiglas so yellowed and scratched that looking through it seemed more like peering through a veil of smutty L.A. smog than anything else. Directed to a chair, Diana sat and waited.
The last time she had seen Andrew Carlisle had been years earlier at his double murder trial. One of his arms—the one Bone had snapped in two at the wrist—had been encased in a heavy plaster cast, and his face had still been swathed in bandages. The prison warden had told Diana in advance of that first visit that the injured arm had been permanently damaged, leaving him with only limited use of his fingers.
The mangled arm was one thing—more Bone’s doing than Diana’s. What she dreaded seeing was his unbandaged face, the one into which she had flung a frying pan full of searing-hot bacon grease. That grease had been Diana’s last desperate line of defense against Andrew Carlisle’s brute force and sharp knife. The grease had worked far better than she could have hoped. He had fallen on the slick floor, clawing at his scorched face and howling in agony.
This day, though, when Carlisle was led into the room, there was no such mummylike mask to lessen the horrible impact of what she had done to him. The guard brought him into the room, seated him on a chair across from Diana, and then placed the intercom receiver, one used to communicate through the Plexiglas barrier, in his good hand. All the while, Diana could only sit and stare. The third-degree burns had molded his once chiseled features into a grotesquely twisted, lumpy grimace. They had also ruined his eyes. Andrew Carlisle was blind.
No amount of anticipation could have prepared Diana for the way he looked. It stunned her to think that she had intentionally inflicted that kind of injury on another human being. Still, faced with the same set of circumstances, she knew she would have made the same decision and fought him again with the same ferocity.
“I’m told I’m quite ugly these days,” Andrew Carlisle said into the intercom mouthpiece as Diana picked up hers to listen. “They’re supposedly doing remarkable things with skin transplants and plastic surgery these days, but not for convicted killers with AIDS. Nobody exactly jumped to the plate and offered to get me the best possible care back then, or now, either, for that matter. Come to think of it, I wonder? Doesn’t denying someone proper medical care constitute cruel and unusual punishment? What do you think? Maybe I could take the Pima County Sheriff’s Department to court and sue them for damages.”
“I have no idea,” Diana said. “That’s up to you.”
He laughed then. “You sound quite sure of yourself, Ms. Walker. Have you changed much then since I saw you last?”
“Changed how?”
“Anything,” he replied. “You haven’t turned into one of those born-again Christians, by any chance, have you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He sounded relieved. “After you agreed to come see me, I started worrying that maybe you had transformed yourself into one of those religious zealots. They are all eager to come pray over me to save my immortal soul. Some of them even want to grant me forgiveness.”
Diana took a deep breath and managed to find her conversational sea legs. “No,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that, Mr. Carlisle. I’ve never forgiven you, and I never will.”
“Good,” Andrew Carlisle replied. “Very good. I’m delighted to hear it. Now, tell me about the way you look.”
“What about the way I look?”
“Are you very different from the way you were that night we were together? You’re the last person I ever saw
