Mitch Johnson waited on the hill, watching and sketching, until Brandon Walker went inside around ten-thirty. By then he had several interesting thumbnail drawings—color studies—that he’d be able to produce if anyone ever questioned his reason for being there.
“You see, Mitch,” Andy had told him years ago, “you always have to have some logical and defensible reason for being where you are and for doing whatever it is that you’re supposedly doing. It’s a kind of protective coloration, and it works the same way that the patterns on a rattlesnake’s back allow it to blend into the rocks and shadows of the land it inhabits.
“The mask that allowed me to do that was writing. Writing takes research, you see. Calling something research gave me a ticket into places most people never have an opportunity to go. Drawing can do the same for you. You’re lucky in that you have some innate ability, although, if I were you, I’d use some of the excess time we both seem to have at the moment to improve on those skills. You’ll be surprised how doing so will stand you in good stead.”
That was advice Mitch Johnson had been happy to follow, and he had carried it far beyond the scope of Andy’s somewhat limited vision. Claiming to be an artist had made it possible to park his RV—a cumbersome and nearly new Bounder—on a patch of desert just off Coleman Road within miles of where Andrew Carlisle had estimated it would most likely be needed. The rancher he had made arrangements with had been more than happy to have six months’ rent in advance and in cash, with the only stipulation being that Mitch keep the gate closed and locked.
“No problem,” Mitch had told the guy. “I’m looking for privacy. Keeping the gate locked will be as much of a favor to me as it is for you.”
And so, Mitch Johnson—after sorting through his catalog of fake IDs—took up residence on an electricity- equipped corner of the Lazy 4 Ranch under the name of M. Vega, artist. He was there, he told his landlord, to paint the same scenes over and over, in all their tiny variations through the changing seasons of the year.
The Bounder had been parked on the ranch for two months now. Long enough for locals to accept that he was there. He worried sometimes that he might possibly run into someone who had known him before, in that old life, so he mostly stayed away from the trading post and did all his shopping—including buying periodic canisters of butane—at stores on the far northeast side of town.
And that’s where he headed that particular morning—to Tucson. If he was going to have company for a day or two, he needed to have plenty of supplies laid in—extra food and water both.
“It’s a good plan, Mitch,” Andy had told him. “My part is to make sure you have everything you need to pull it off and to get away afterward. Yours is to follow that plan and make it work.”
When Andy’s voice came to him out of the blue like that, so clearly and purposefully, it was hard to remember the man was dead. It took Mitch back to countless nighttime conversations when their quiet voices had flowed back and forth in the noisy privacy of their prison cell. That was when and where they had first crafted the plan and where they had refined it.
And now, putting that long-awaited plan into action, Mitch Johnson felt honor-bound to do it right. The emotional turmoil about to be visited upon Brandon and Diana Walker’s complacent lives would make a fitting memorial for Andy Carlisle, the only real friend Mitch had ever had. It would mean far more than any marble slab Mitch might have had erected in a cemetery.
Sitting up on the mountain, watching Brandon Walker labor over his wood, Mitch wished it would be possible to burn it up, to turn all that carefully stacked wood into a spectacularly blazing inferno. But even as the thought passed through his mind, Mitch dismissed it. Doing that would be too much like firing a warning shot across a ship’s bow.
Brandon Walker deserved no such advance notice from Mitch Johnson, and Diana Ladd wouldn’t be getting one from Andy, either. One day their lives would be going along swimmingly, and the next day everything would turn to shit. That was one of the basic realities of life—something that happened to everyone sooner or later.
The last time Mitch saw Andrew Carlisle had been some eight months earlier. The man was too weak to walk by then, so the guard had brought him back to the cell in a wheelchair.
“Here’s some company for you, Johnson,” the guard said, opening the barred door and shoving the chair into the cell. “We’ve got so many cases of flu in the infirmary right now, the doc thought he might be better off here than there. Can you handle it?”
“It’s not exactly news,” Mitch told the guard. “Of course I can handle it.”
The guard had left the wheelchair just inside the door. Mitch had pushed it over next to the bunk and lifted Carlisle out of the chair and onto the narrow bed. Illness had ravaged his body so there was very little left of him. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds.
“I hear you’re getting out,” Carlisle croaked. “Congratulations.”
Mitch shook his head. It was difficult for him to speak. He hadn’t expected that he and Andy would become friends, but over the years they had. Now he felt a sudden sense of grief at the prospect of losing that friend not just to Mitch’s own release, but also to death. Andrew Carlisle was clearly a dying man.
“When do you leave?” Andy asked.
“Tomorrow,” Mitch said. “I’m sorry,” he added. “Sorry to leave you alone after all this time.”
“Oh, no,” Andy told him. “Don’t be sorry about leaving. I’ll be out, too, before very long. They gave me two consecutive life sentences, but I’m going to fool the bastards. I’m only going to serve one.”
Mitch laughed at that. One of the things he had always enjoyed was Andy’s black humor.
“As for leaving me alone,” Andy added cheerfully, “I spend so much time in the infirmary anymore that it hardly matters. Besides, the sooner I go, the sooner you’ll be able to get our little job done and get on with your own life.”
They were both quiet for a long time after that. Mitch was thinking about Andy’s veiled reference to his trust fund monies. Maybe Andy was, too. Andrew Carlisle was the one who broke the silence.
“You will keep your end of the bargain, won’t you, Mitch?” The voice was soft and pleading. The two men had lived side by side, sharing the same cell, for seven and a half years. In all that time, through years of terrible illness and unremitting pain, Mitch Johnson had never heard the man beg.
