had risen to her feet as if to fend off a physical attack. Now she slumped backward into the chair while the infernal tape continued to play. Gradually the scream subsided until there was nothing left but uncontrollable, gasping sobs.
“My God,” Diana whispered aloud. “Did he tape the whole thing?”
Soon it became clear that he had. It was a ninety-minute tape, forty-five minutes per side. Halfway through the tape, the girl began passing out. It happened over and over again. Each time he revived her—brought her back to consciousness with splashes of water and with slaps to her face so he could continue the terrible process. Sick with revulsion, Diana realized he was orchestrating and prolonging her ordeal so the whole thing would be there. On tape. Every bit of it, even the horrifying finale where, after first announcing his intentions for the benefit of his unseen audience, Andrew Carlisle had bitten off Gina Antone’s nipple.
Shaken to the core, Diana listened to the whole thing. Not because she wanted to but because she was incapable of doing anything else. She sat in the chair as though mesmerized, as though stricken by some sudden paralysis that rendered her unable to make the slightest movement, unable to reach across to the tape player and switch it off. Unchecked tears streamed down her face and dripped unnoticed into the mess of splattered coffee and broken china.
And when it was finally over, when Gina Antone’s awful death was finished at last and the recorder clicked off, Diana leaned over and threw up into the mess of coffee and broken cup.
For a while after that she still couldn’t move. Carlisle had made it last that whole time. He had tortured the girl for a carefully calculated ninety minutes. And that was just the part he had taped. From the sound of it there must have been some preliminaries that had occurred even before that. And for inflicting that kind of appalling torture, for premeditating, planning, and savoring every ugly moment of that appalling inhumanity, what had happened to Andrew Carlisle?
A superior court judge had allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of second-degree manslaughter. The torture death of Gina Antone hadn’t even merited a charge of murder in the first degree. The State of Arizona had extracted a price of six short years from Andrew Carlisle in exchange for Gina Antone’s suffering. Six years. After that, he had been allowed to go free. Free to kill again.
Stunned, Diana sat for another half-hour, trying to decide what to do. There was no sense in turning the tape over to the authorities. What would they do with it? What
So should she keep the tape? Comments made by Andrew Carlisle during the tape seemed to make it clear that Diana’s former husband, Garrison Ladd, had been present at the crime scene but drunk and passed out during most of that terrible drama. Twenty-two years after the fact, Diana Cooper Ladd Walker finally had some understanding of her former husband’s involvement in Gina Antone’s death. It would seem that Garrison hadn’t been actively involved in what was done to Gina, but that didn’t mean he was blameless. Mr. Ladd. Gina had called him by name. No doubt he was the one she knew. That meant Garrison was probably the one who had lured her into the truck in the first place.
When he did that, when he had offered her a ride, had he known what was coming or not? There was no way of unraveling that now, and listening to the tape again or a hundred times, or having someone else listen to it wouldn’t have provided an adequate answer to that haunting question.
Getting out of the chair at last, Diana set about cleaning up the mess of vomit, spilled coffee, and broken pottery. Down on her hands and knees, for the first time ever she was grateful that Rita was dead. Had Gina’s grandmother still been alive, Diana would have had to face the moral dilemma of whether or not to play the tape for the old woman. With Rita dead, that wasn’t an issue.
But what about Davy? What would happen if he heard it? That thought hit her like a lightning bolt. Diana’s son—Garrison Ladd’s son—was still alive. If he ever came to know what was on that tape, it would tell him far more about his father than he ever needed to know.
Finally, there was Brandon to consider. He had headed the investigation into Gina Antone’s death and he had eventually arrested Andrew Carlisle. The plea bargain that had followed the arrest had been negotiated behind Brandon Walker’s back. If he had to endure listening to the grim recorded reality of Gina Antone’s death, Diana knew Brandon would be devastated. He would blame himself for the unwitting part he had played in allowing Andrew Carlisle to slip off the hook and escape what should have been a charge of aggravated first-degree murder.
Thinking about what exposure to the tape would do to both Brandon and Davy was what finally galvanized Diana Ladd Walker to action. Brandon was already carrying around a big enough load of guilt. His son Quentin was in prison due to a fatality drunk-driving charge. As another source of free-flowing guilt in Brandon Walker’s life, that tape was the last thing he needed.
With a fierce jab of her finger, Diana ejected the offending tape. She popped it out of the player and then carried it out to the living room. It was the first weekend in July. At eight o’clock in the morning, the air conditioner was already humming along at full speed when Diana knelt in front of the fireplace and opened the flue. Carefully, she laid a small fire with kindling at the bottom, topped by a layer of several wrist-thick branches of dried ironwood.
Once the kindling was lit, she sat on the raised hearth and waited until the ironwood was fully engulfed before she tossed the tape into the crackling flames. As the heat attacked it, the clear plastic container began to curl and melt. Like a snake shedding its skin, the magnetic tape slithered off its spindle and escaped the confines of the dwindling case. The tape writhed free, wriggled like a tortured creature, burst into flames, and then withered into a glowing chain of ash.
Only when there was nothing left of the tape and container but a charred, amorphous blob of melted plastic did Diana turn her back on the fireplace. Hurrying into the bathroom, she showered and dressed. Then, after raking the remainder of the fire apart, she left the house and drove straight to Florence. That day, Diana Walker Ladd was the first person inside the Visitation Room when the guard opened the door at ten o’clock in the morning.
Andrew Carlisle was led to his side of the Plexiglas divider a few minutes later. “Why, Mrs. Walker,” he said, sitting down across from her. “To what do I owe this unexpected honor? I don’t remember our setting an appointment for today.”
“We didn’t, you son of a bitch,” she said.
He brightened. The puckered skin around his mouth stretched into a pained imitation of a smile. “I see,” he said. “You must have received my little care package.”
“Why did you send it to me?”
