For some time after Alvin Miller left, Brandon and Diana simply sat in the living room together, sharing many of the same thoughts, but for minutes at a time, neither of them spoke.
'Should we call Fat Crack?' Diana asked at last.
'I don't see what good that would do,' Brandon said.
'But what if…'
'If what?'
Diana paused for a moment before she answered. 'What if he's right and this is what he meant yesterday when he was talking about the evil coming from my book?'
'How could it be?' Brandon returned. 'I don't see how Lani's disappearance now can have anything to do with Andrew Carlisle showing up here twenty-one years ago.'
'I don't either,' Diana said. 'Forget I even mentioned it.'
Again they were quiet. 'What if we've lost her forever, Brandon? What if we never see her again?'
Swallowing hard, Brandon Walker leaned back and rested his head on the chair. He had already lived through this agony once when they lost Tommy. It had never occurred to him that he might lose a second child.
'Don't say that,' he said. 'We'll find her. I know we'll find her.'
But even as he said the words, Brandon's own heart was drowning in despair. He had heard those same platitudes spoken by other grieving parents about other missing children, some of whom had never been heard from again.
'At six o'clock sharp, I'm going to be on the phone to the department, raising hell. Ford Myers may not be the one who comes out here to take the Missing Persons report, but someone sure as hell will be, or I'll know the reason why!'
Diana glanced at her watch. It was ten of one. 'Maybe we should go to bed. Even if we can't sleep, it would probably do our bodies some good if we lay down for a while.'
Brandon looked at Diana. Other than having kicked off her shoes, she was still wearing the dress she had worn to the banquet, but she looked bedraggled. Her hair had come adrift. Brandon was startled by the dark shadows under her eyes and by the bone-weary strain showing around the corners of her mouth.
'You're right,' he said quickly, standing up and helping her to rise as well. 'If there's a phone call, we can take it in the bedroom just as easily as we can take it here.'
They walked into the bedroom together. Brandon stripped to his shorts while Diana undressed and hung up her dress. The bed was still in disarray as a result of their afternoon lovemaking. As Brandon set about straightening the covers, a plastic cassette tape slid out from under Diana's pillow.
'What's this?' he asked, picking it up. Other than the manufacturer's label, there was no marking on it of any kind. 'Did you leave this tape here, Di?' he asked.
Diana, dressed in a nightgown, came out of her walk-in closet. 'What tape?' she asked.
'This one,' Brandon said, holding it up so she could see it. 'I found it under your pillow.'
Diana Ladd Walker swayed on her feet and groped for the door-jamb to keep from falling. Her face turned deathly pale. 'Where did that come from?' she whispered.
'I told you. I found it under your pillow. Maybe it's a message from Lani.'
'No,' Diana said. Shivering, she looked at the tape and shook her head. 'No, it isn't.'
But Brandon's mind was made up. 'She probably decided to leave us a tape instead of a note,' he said.
Tape in hand, Brandon was already on his way to the living room, headed for the stereo deck with the built-in cassette player. Diana came after him. 'It's not from Lani, Brandon. Don't play it.'
The brittle note of warning in her voice was enough to cause him to turn and look at her in alarm. 'Why not?' he asked.
'Don't play it,' she said again. 'Please don't.'
Brandon looked at his wife impatiently. 'What's gotten into you?' he asked.
'The tape isn't from Lani,' Diana said. 'It's from Andrew Carlisle. I know it is.'
Disgusted and impatient, Brandon turned to the stereo. As he inserted the tape into the player, he glanced back at his wife. 'You and Fat Crack,' he said. 'Dead men don't do tapes. How could he?'
Hunching her shoulders and doubling over as if in pain, Diana Walker sank down on the couch. 'Brandon, listen to me. It is from Carlisle. You don't want to play it.'
'Diana, if there's a chance this is going to help us locate Lani, of course we're going to play it,' he said.
As the sound filled the room, they both recognized Lani's voice almost at once, but it was muffled and difficult to understand, as if it had been recorded from a great distance. Pressing the remote volume control, Brandon turned it up several notches.
'What was that?' he said, frowning with concentration. 'Didn't it sound as though she said something about Quentin?'
Still bent over and staring at the floor, Diana shook her head and said nothing. Brandon hit the 'stop' button, rewound the tape a few rotations, and then hit 'play' once more.
And he was right. It was Lani's voice, louder now, but still fuzzy and indistinct, saying her brother's name over and over. 'Quentin,' she was saying. 'Quentin, Quentin, Quentin.'
'What the hell does Quentin have to do with all this?' Brandon asked.
Almost like a sleepwalker, Diana got up off the couch and walked over to where Brandon was kneeling in front of the stereo. 'Shut it off,' she begged, leaning against him, putting both hands on his shoulders. 'Please, Brandon. Don't listen to any more of it. You don't understand. I can't stand to listen to any more.'
'Diana,' Brandon said curtly. 'This is bound to help us find Lani. We've got to listen to all of it-every single word. Be quiet now for a minute so I can hear what they're saying.'
Trying to decipher the tape over Diana's continuing objections, Brandon punched the volume control one more time. And that was where it was when the unearthly scream came tearing through the speakers.
The sound ripped into Diana's whole being, robbing her legs of the strength needed to stand upright. Her beseeching hands went limp on Brandon's shoulders and slid down his back. While Brandon stared uncomprehendingly at the now silent speaker, Diana dropped to her knees, leaning against him.
'Oh, my God,' she sobbed. 'He's killed her. I know Andrew Carlisle's killed her.'
Slowly, an ashen Brandon Walker turned around to face her. Grasping his wife by the shoulders, he shook her. 'You knew what was coming, didn't you? That's why you didn't want me to play the tape. How did you know?'
It was a question, but the way he said the words turned it into an accusation. At first Diana didn't answer. 'How?' he demanded again.
'We've got to call Fat Crack,' she murmured. 'He's the only one who can help us now.'
She reached out then as if to cling to him, but he moved away from her. The sudden fury rising in Brandon Walker's soul was so overwhelming that he no longer dared allow himself to touch her.
'It's got nothing to do with Andrew Carlisle!' he snarled back at her. 'You heard what she said. Quentin was the one who was with her. Whatever happened just then, Quentin is the one who did it, the little son of a bitch. And once I lay hands on him…'
The rest of the uncompleted threat hung in the air as Brandon got to his feet and headed for the kitchen. Diana was still sitting there when he returned. Without another word, he ejected the tape from the player and then put both it and the carrying case into a paper bag.
When he headed for the kitchen once again, Diana got up and followed him. 'Where are you going?' she asked, when he took his car keys down from the Peg-Board.
'I'm going to take these to the department so Alvin Miller can check them for prints. Then I'm going to ask him to run Quentin's prints as a comparison.'
'Lani's dead, isn't she?' Diana said.
Brandon Walker bit his lip and nodded. The agony in that scream left him little else to hope for.
'Yes,' he said at last. 'I suppose so.'
For a moment husband and wife stood looking at each other. The fury Brandon had felt earlier was gone. 'You knew what was coming, didn't you?' Diana nodded wordlessly. 'How?'
'There were others.'
'Others?'
Diana looked away then, refusing to meet his eyes. 'Other tapes,' she answered.
'Of other murders?'
