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?'
'Why? Because I wanted you to know what this was all about.'
'That's not true. You wanted someone to know the truth about what you did and what you got away with. You wanted to gloat and rub somebody's nose in it.'
'That, too,' he conceded. 'Maybe a little.'
'Where was it all this time?'
'The tape? That's for me to know and for you to find out,' Andrew Carlisle answered.
'Who brought it to my house? Who dropped it off? And how many more ugly surprises do you have in store for me?'
'One or two,' he answered. 'Or does that mean you're quitting?'
'No,' Diana told him. 'It doesn't mean I'm quitting. You think this is some kind of a game, don't you? You think this is a way to get back at me for what I did to you. Well, listen up, buster. I'm not a quitter. I'm going to write this damned book. By the time I finish, you're going to wish you'd never asked me to do it.'
'That sounds like a threat.'
'It is a threat.'
'In other words, you're abolishing the ground rules.'
'I'm writing this book regardless.'
'That will make the process far more interesting for me. More hands-on, if you'll pardon the expression. Especially when it's time to talk about the time we spent together.'
'Go fuck yourself, Mr. Carlisle!' She stood up, turned her back on him, and stalked over to the door. She had to wait in front of the door for several long moments before a guard opened it to let her out. While she was standing there she glanced back. Behind the Plexiglas barrier he was doubled over. And even though she couldn't actually hear him without benefit of the intercom-the sound nonetheless filled her head and echoed down the confines of the prison hallway long after the heavy metal door had slammed shut behind her.
That ghostly sound was one she would never forget. It was Andrew Philip Carlisle. Laughing.
9
While Mualig Siakam and Old Limping Man were talking, some Indians came carrying a child. The child seemed asleep or dead. The people said she had been that way for a long time. They laid the child on the ground in the outer room of Medicine Woman's house.
Mualig Siakam took a gourd which had pebbles in it that rattled. She took some small, soft white feathers, and she took a little white powder. Then she sat down at the head of the child and she began to sing.
The Indians could not understand Medicine Woman's song because she used the old, old language which is the oneI'itoi gave his people in the beginning. All the animals understand this language, but only a very few of the old men and women remember it.
As Medicine Woman sang, she rattled the gourd which had on it the marks ofshuhthagi — the water-and ofwepgih — the lightning. For a long timeMualig Siakam sang alone, but when the people who were sitting around had learned the song, they sang with her.
And then Medicine Woman took some of the white feathers and passed them softly over the child's mouth and nose. She passed the feathers back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes she passed the feathers down over the child's chest. Then again she passed them back and forth across the child's face.
And the face of the child changed. Her body moved. Medicine Woman gave a silent command to the child's mother, who brought water. The child drank, and everyone looked very pleased.
The next morningOld Limping Man went to the house ofMualig Siakam. Medicine Woman was feeding the child, who was sitting up. And that day, the child's people took her home.
Halfway to the highway, walking in scorching midday heat, Manny Chavez took a detour. The wine was gone. He was verging on heatstroke. In the end it was thirst and the hope of finding water that drove him off-track.
Under normal circumstances, no right-thinking member of the Desert People would have gone anywhere near the haunted, moldering ruins of the deserted village known as Ko'oi Koshwa — Rattlesnake Skull. An Apache war party, aided by a young Tohono O'othham woman, a traitor, had massacred almost the entire village. The only survivors, a boy and a girl, had sought refuge in a cave on the steep flanks of Ioligam several miles away.
More recently, in the late sixties, a young Indian girl named Gina Antone had been murdered there. Anthony Listo, now chief of police for the Tohono O'othham Nation, had been a lowly patrol officer during that investigation. From time to time, he had been heard to talk about the girl who had been lured from a summer dance to one of the taboo caves on Ioligam, where she had been tortured and killed. Her body had been left, floating facedown, in the charco — a muddy man-made watering hole-near the deserted village itself.
A whole new series of legends and beliefs had grown up around that murder. The killer, an Anglo named Carlisle, was said to have been Ohbsgam-Apachelike. People claimed that the killer had been invaded by the spirits of the dead Apaches who had attacked Rattlesnake Skull Village long ago.
All the caves on Ioligam were considered sacred and off-limits. They had been officially declared so in the lease negotiations when the tribe allowed the building of Kitt Peak National Observatory. In the aftermath of Gina Antone's death, however, the caves close to Ko'oi Koshwa became taboo as well. People said Ohbsgam Ho'ok — Apachelike Monster-lived there, waiting for a chance to steal away another young Tohono O'othham girl. Parents sometimes used stories about the bogeyman S-mo'o O'othham — Hairy Man-to scare little boys back in line. On girls they used Ohbsgam Ho'ok.
Manny Chavez, thirsty but no longer drunk, considered all these things as he headed for the charco near what
