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 he 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 us 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 if he could pick up any useful information-the names of Carlisle’s relatives or friends in the area, for instance, someone he might turn to for help now that he’s out.
“I remember his mother hanging around town during the time when his case was about to come to trial. It seems like she was from north Phoenix somewhere, maybe Peoria or Glendale, but I don’t think she had the same last name. Farrell will try to get a line on her as well.”
“And meanwhile, you want me to run away and hide?”
“Right.”
“Well, I won’t,” Diana declared stubbornly. “I’m going to stay right here in my own home. If he comes looking for me, I’ll kill the son of a bitch! I’ll put a damn bullet right between his eyes.”
“That’s premeditation,” Brandon countered. “If you kill him, you’ll be in big trouble.”
“Too bad.”
“It’s a whole lot more likely, though, that you’ll choke up when the time comes and not have nerve enough to pull the trigger.”
“I’ll have nerve enough,” she replied.
She was determined, tough, and foolhardy. Brandon Walker wanted desperately to talk her out of it. He had only one other weapon at his disposal, and he didn’t hesitate to use it.
“What will that do to Davy?” he asked.
Diana paused and swallowed. “Davy? He’ll be fine,” she said. “He’ll have Rita.”
“Will he? Will that be enough? People already call him Killer’s Child.”
Her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “How do you know that? Who told you?”
“Davy did,” Brandon said, watching as shocked dismay registered on her face.
“You’d better leave now,” Diana said.
Brandon Walker unfolded his long legs from the couch and got up to go, but first he stood for a moment, staring down at her.
“Think about it,” he said gravely. “Davy’s only a boy, Diana. How much of this do you think he can take?”
He paused at the end of the driveway and berated himself for betraying the boy’s confidence, but it was the only possible means of pounding some sense into Diana’s thick skull. Meantime, he looked around him in despair for other signs of civilization. No one else lived anywhere around here, for God’s sake. She couldn’t have picked a worse place. Help would be miles away if and when she finally needed it.
Enclosed behind the forest of cactus and with a high wall surrounding the patio and backyard area, the house had a fortresslike appearance, but appearances were deceiving. Once someone breached that walled perimeter, if the dog were taken out of the picture, for instance, the people in the isolated house would be totally vulnerable. Diana talked a good game, but Walker didn’t believe for a moment that she’d actually use the gun. She would threaten, but then hesitate at the critical moment. Even veteran cops made that potentially fatal mistake at times.
But even as he worried about her, Walker was struck by the difference between Diana now-defiant and resourceful-and the way she was when he first saw her-broken and worried sick about that bastard husband of hers.
He had driven up to the mobile home in Topawa late in the afternoon of an oppressively hot June Saturday. The sky was blue overhead, but far away across the desert a red wall of moving sand topped by black thunderheads announced an approaching storm.
Diana came to the door wearing a shapeless robe. Her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying. Her face was drawn from lack of sleep and her coloring sallow and unhealthy. When he showed her his ID, she turned even paler.
“Does Garrison Ladd live here?” he asked. She nodded. “Is he home?”
“No. He’s not. He’s gone.”
“Do you have any idea when he’ll be back?”
“No.”
“Are you Mrs. Ladd?”
“Yes.”
“Could I come in and speak with you for a few minutes?”
She stepped aside and held the door for him to come in without asking what he wanted or why he was there. As soon as he saw the crumpled newspaper on the floor, he guessed that she already knew.
He took a small notebook from his pocket. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Mind if I sit down?”
“No. Go ahead.”
He sat while she remained standing, her arms wrapped tightly around her body as if she were desperately cold, although the cooler was turned off and the temperature was stifling. Outside, the wind kicked up, and the first few splatters of rain pelted against the metal siding.
“Was your husband home last Friday night?” he asked.
“He was out,” Diana answered woodenly. “He went to a dance.”
“Where?”
“One of the villages, San Pedro.”
“What time did he get home?”
“Saturday. In the morning. The dance lasted all night.”
“Did he go by himself?”
“No. His professor went with him, his creative-writing professor from the U., Andrew Carlisle.”
“And did this Andrew Carlisle come home with your husband?”
“No. Gary came home by himself.”
“How did he seem when he came home? Was he upset? Did he act as though something was wrong?”
Diana had been answering his questions as though in a fog. Now, she seemed to rouse herself “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she said evasively.
Brandon played dumb. “Why not?”
“You’re going to trap me into saying something I shouldn’t.”
“So he was upset?”
“I didn’t say that he was fine when he came home. Tired from being up all night and maybe from having had
