instead of a damned stupid sketch pad, Brandon Walker standing out by his woodpile would have been an easy shot. Bang, bang, you're dead. But as Andy had pointed out, killing Brandon Walker wasn't the point. Destroying him was. If the United States was going to continue to survive as a nation, people who contributed to that destruction- people who helped the job-eating illegal scum-had to be destroyed themselves.
'Mr. Johnson,' Andy had asked him once, early on, 'why do you suppose the cat toys with the mouse?'
Mitch Johnson had already learned that Andrew Carlisle was sometimes an irascible teacher. Even his most oddball question required a thoughtful response. 'I suppose because it's fun,' he had answered.
'For whom?' Andy had persisted.
'Certainly not for the mouse.'
'Don't be so sure. You see, in those moments, the mouse must have some moments of clarity, when it may possibly see through its own terror and imagine surviving. Continuing. There's a real beauty in that, a sort of dance. The mouse tries to escape. The cat blocks it. The mouse tries again, and the same thing happens. As long as the mouse keeps trying, it hasn't lost hope. Once it does, the cat becomes bored and simply eats it. End of story.'
They lay on their bunks in silence for a while, Mitch Johnson in the upper bunk and Carlisle in the lower so he could get to the toilet more easily during the night.
Mitch didn't want to seem stupid, but he couldn't see where Andy was going on this one. 'So what's the point?' he finally asked.
'Did you enjoy shooting those guys in the back?' Andy asked.
A peculiar intimacy existed between the two men that Mitch Johnson was hard-pressed to understand. If somebody else had asked that question, Mitch would have decked the guy, but because it was Andy asking, Mitch simply answered. 'Yes,' he said.
'But wouldn't it have been better,' Andrew Carlisle asked, 'if they'd had the chance to ask you-to beg you-not to do it and you did it anyway? Wouldn't that have been more fun? Have you ever done it that way?'
'What do you mean?' Mitch said. 'I did it the way I did it. I shot them and that's it.'
'But it doesn't have to be,' Andrew Carlisle told him. 'You have a mind, an imagination. All you have to do is rewrite the scenario. Change your mind and change your reality. Close your eyes and see them walking again. Only this time, instead of pulling the trigger, you call out to them. You order them on their hands and knees. It was hot, wasn't it? The middle of summer?'
'Yes, almost the end of June.'
'So imagine them on their hands and knees in the sand, with the hot earth blistering their skin. They're going to beg you not to shoot them. Plead with you to let them stand up again so they'll have the protection of their shoe leather between their skin and the sand. But if you wait, if you don't let them up off their hands and knees, eventually, they'll belong to you in the same way the mouse belongs to the cat, you see. In exactly the same way.'
In the upper bunk, Mitch Johnson closed his eyes and let Andrew Carlisle's almost hypnotic voice flow over him. Mitch was right there again, standing on the bank of Brawley Wash, calling down to the wetbacks marching ahead of him.
'Stop,' he shouted at them, and they did.
'Down!' he ordered. 'Get down on your hands and knees.' And they did that, too, all three of them groveling in the burning sand before him, all of them scraping their faces in the dirt. This must be what it feels like to be a king, Mitch thought. Or maybe even a god.
'Please,' the older one said, speaking to Mitch in English rather than in Spanish. 'Please, let my grandsons be. I'll do whatever you want. Just let my daughter's boys go free. Let them go.'
'What would you do, old man?' Mitch asked him.
'Anything. Whatever you say.'
'Put the barrel in your mouth.'
For Mitch, that was such a sexually charged image that it almost broke the spell, but Andy's voice, washing over the whole scene, kept the images in play. Reaching up tentatively, the old man took the barrel of the gun and lovingly, almost reverentially, put it into his own mouth. And with the grandsons cowering there on the ground, and with the old man's eyes full on his face, Mitch Johnson pulled the trigger.
'And this time,' Andrew Carlisle finished, 'you can be sure the bastard is dead. What do you think?'
Mitch opened his eyes, unsure of what had happened but with the tracks of a wet dream still hot on his belly and between his legs.
'It beats jacking off, doesn't it?' Andrew Carlisle asked.
Yes, it does,Mitch meant to say, but, for some strange reason, he was already asleep.
Diana Ladd Walker was at work in her study. On that Friday morning she was supposed to be writing, working on the outline for her next book, Den of Iniquity. What she was doing instead was fielding phone calls. The month before her previous book, Shadow of Death, had won a Pulitzer. Even though the book had been out for nine months, the whirl of publicity surrounding the prize had pushed the book into numerous reprints. Not only that, it was back on the New York Times Best Sellers list as well, sitting at number eight, for the third week in a row.
Which is why, at a time when Diana should have been writing, she had been sucked instead back into book- promotion mode. She had left her desk and was on her way to shower when the phone rang again.
'It's me,' Megan Wright announced. Megan was a publicist working for Diana's New York publisher, Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd. She was young-not more than twenty-five-but she was businesslike on the phone and brimmed with a kind of boundless energy and enthusiasm that suited her for the job.
'I'm calling with your weekend's marching orders,' Megan continued. 'I just wanted to double-check the schedule.'
Obligingly, Diana hauled out her calendar and opened it to the proper page.
'First there's the University of Arizona Faculty Wives Tea this afternoon at two o'clock.'
'I know,' Diana observed dryly. 'As a matter of fact, I was on my way into the bathroom to shower and dress when the phone rang.'
'I'll hurry,' Megan said. 'And then there are the two appointments for tomorrow. I'm sorry about filling up your Saturday, but I didn't have any choice. Tomorrow's the only time I could schedule the Monty Lazarus interview. Don't forget, he's the West Coast stringer for several different magazines, so it's an important interview. My guess is he'll be pitching the story to all of them.'
'Where's that interview?' Diana asked. 'I wrote down his name but not where I'm supposed to meet him.'
'In the lobby of the La Paloma Hotel at noon. I don't have either an address or a map. Can you find it, or will you need a driver?'
Tucson may have been totally foreign territory to Megan, but Diana had lived in the Tucson area for more than thirty years. 'Noon, La Paloma,' Diana repeated as she jotted the words into the correct slot on the calendar under the name, 'Monty Lazarus.'
'And don't worry about a driver,' Diana continued. 'Believe me, I can find La Paloma on my own.'
'Mr. Lazarus likes to take his own pictures, so you'll need to go prepared for a photo shoot. I warned him that he'll have to finish up no later than four, though, so you'll have time enough to get back home, change, and be at the El Dorado Country Club for the Friends of the Library banquet at six. Mrs. Durgan, your hostess for that event, called just a few minutes ago to make sure your husband will be attending. She wanted to know if she should reserve a place at the head table. Brandon is going, isn't he?'
'He'll be there,' Diana said grimly. 'If he isn't, I'll know the reason why.'
'Good,' Megan said, sounding relieved. 'I told her I was pretty sure he was planning to attend.'
When the phone call finally ended, Diana headed for the shower once more. On her way through the bedroom, she found Brandon sound asleep on the bed. She tiptoed by without waking him. No doubt he needed it. He barely slept at night these days, passing the nighttime hours prowling the house or pacing out on the patio. The midday naps he took between woodcutting shifts were pretty much the only decent rest he seemed to get.
Closing the door between the bathroom and bedroom, she undressed and then stood in front of the mirror, observing her reflection. She wasn't that bad looking for being a couple of years over the half-century mark. The face and body reflected back at her bore an amazing resemblance to what her mother, Iona Dade Cooper, had looked like just before she got so sick.
In the past few years Diana had put on some weight, especially around the hips. Her softly curling auburn
