by J. A. Jance
“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.
“Yes, Andy,” Mitch answered quietly. “I gave you my word, and I intend to keep it.”
“Thank you,” Andrew Carlisle said. “So will I.”
Mitch Johnson had known from the beginning that Andrew Carlisle was HIV positive, since that day in 1988 when Warden Clint Howell had called him into his office, sat him down in a chair, and offered him a cup of coffee. Inmates didn’t usually merit that kind of hospitality, but Johnson had brains enough not to question it aloud.
“We’ve got a little problem here,” Howell said, leaning back in his chair.
More than one, Mitch thought, but again he said nothing. “It’s one I think maybe you can help us with,” Howell continued.
The indiscriminate use of the words “we” and “us” reminded Mitch of his first grade teacher, Mrs. Wiggins, back home in El Paso, Texas.
“What’s that?” Mitch asked, keeping his tone interested but properly deferential.
“One of our inmates has just been diagnosed HIV positive,” Howell told him. “He wants you to be his cellmate.”
“Like hell he does!” Mitch returned. “I’m not going anywhere near him.”
“Please, Johnson,” Howell pleaded. “Hear me out. He’s specifically asked for you, but only if you’re willing.”
“Well, I’m not. Can I go now?”
“No, you can’t. We’re too overcrowded here for him to be left in a cell by himself, and if I put more than one HIV-positive prisoner in the same cell, then those damned bleeding-heart lawyers will be all over me like flies on shit. Cruel and unusual punishment and all that crap.”
“What about cruel and unusual punishment for me?” Johnson asked.
“Do me a favor,” Howell said. “Talk to him here in my office. I’ll have him brought in, and the two of you can discuss the situation. After
that, you decide. Wait right here.”
Moments later, a guard led Andrew Carlisle into the room. Johnson had never met him before, but as soon as he saw the blind man with his one bad arm in a permanent sling, he knew who it was. Andrew Carlisle was legendary in Florence for being the best jailhouse lawyer in the joint. Other people had to look up the points of law and read them to him aloud, but when it came to writing up paperwork, no one could top him.
“Hello, Mr. Johnson,” Carlisle said, as the door closed behind the departing guard.
“I won’t do it,” Mitch said. “Go fuck yourself.”
“We’re not here to discuss sexual gratification, Mr. Johnson. I asked for you specifically because I have a business proposition which I believe will be of some interest to you. I believe I can offer you something that you want.”
“What’s that?” Mitch Johnson asked.
“An education, for one thing,” Andrew Carlisle answered calmly. “And revenge, for another.”
“Revenge?”
“Against Sheriff Brandon Walker and his wife, Diana.”
A brief silence followed that statement. Mitch was taken aback. He hadn’t made a secret of his long-simmering hatred of Brandon Walker. The case against Mitch Johnson had been built by Walker while he was still an ambitious homicide detective in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Sending Mitch Johnson to prison had made Walker’s reputation in the local Hispanic community.
For twenty-some years Sheriff Jack DuShane’s political machine had called the shots. Anglos killed Mexicans and Indians with relative impunity. The way cases were investigated dictated how they were prosecuted as well. More often than not, Anglos—especially ones who could afford to pay the freight—got off or were charged with reduced offenses. Non-Anglos usually couldn’t afford the bribes.
The tide had started to turn with Andrew Carlisle’s second trial. Everybody knew by then that the former professor had gotten away with murdering the drunk Indian girl, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Except maybe use him as an example. A year later, when DuShane tried to intervene on Mitch Johnson’s behalf, Walker had blown the whistle on all of it. In the process of shipping Mitch Johnson off to prison for fifteen years to life, Walker had won himself a reputation as a crusading and even-handed lawman. When the next election came around, he won office in a landslide, collecting an astonishing eighty percent of the county’s non-Anglo vote in the process.
“Who told you about that?” Mitch asked finally.
Carlisle smiled. “I make it my business to know what goes on in this place. I’ve been keeping track of you for years, for as long as you’ve been here. From everything I’ve been able to learn about you, I’d say you’re a very smart man—smart enough to know a good deal when you see one.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“I may be a prisoner here,” Carlisle said, “but I’m also relatively well off. I inherited my father’s entire estate, you see. And since I’m not using any of the money—interest or principal—it’s accruing at an amazing rate. I can show you the figures if you want. When I die, I can either leave the whole thing to charity or I can leave it to you.”
“Why would you give any of it to me?”
“Because I think you’ll agree to my terms.”
“Which are?”
“Number one, that you agree to be my cellmate for the remainder of whatever time we both have here together.”
“And number two?”
“You become my star pupil. I’m a teacher, you see, not only by training, but also by virtue of personal preference. I have a good deal of knowledge that I would like to impart to someone before I die, a philosophical legacy in addition to the monetary one. Then, once I’ve taught you what I know, you go out into the world and use that knowledge on the two people who are responsible for sending us both here.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
Carlisle sighed. “Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Johnson. Brandon Walker and his wife, Diana. Walker cost you your wife, your son, and your standing in the community. The woman who is now Walker’s wife, Diana Ladd Walker, is responsible for the loss of both my sight and the use of one of my arms. Once I was locked up in here, I eventually contracted AIDS, so before long, she’ll be costing me my life as well. I don’t see how it could be any clearer than that. I want them to suffer, in the same way you and I are suffering.”
“You want me to kill them?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Johnson. Not at all. I firmly believe that between the two of us, we’ll be able to devise something much better than that, something far more imaginative.”
“What’s number three?”
“There is no number three, Mr. Johnson. Only numbers one and two. What do you think, or would you like to see some of the accounting figures before you make your decision? I can show you what’s involved right now, although there’s no way to tell how much money there will be in the long run. Obviously we have no idea how long this will take, do we?”
Again there was a long silence. “This is on the level?” Mitch asked finally.
“Absolutely,” Carlisle answered. “I could hardly be more serious.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Then, Mr. Carlisle,” Mitch Johnson said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
What had started out way back then as a straight business deal had become for Mitch both a point of honor and pride. By the time he completed the project it would seem to all the world that Andrew Carlisle had somehow returned from the grave to wreak his revenge on the people who had destroyed him. It would give Andy the kind of immortality he had always craved in life.
In the meantime, Mitch Johnson would be left alone, free to walk off into the sunset and disappear. That kind of heroic image appealed to Mitch. It was one of the time-honored icons of the Old West.
He had no difficulty casting himself in the mold of one of those old-fashioned hired guns. None of them would ever have turned their backs on a friend in need, regardless of whether that needy friend happened to be dead or alive.
Neither would Mitch Johnson. After all, a promise is a promise unless, as in this case, it turned into a mission.
Gabe Ortiz, tribal chairman of the Tohono O’othham Nation, left Sells early in the morning for an all-day meeting with the Pima County Board of Supervisors. At issue was the county’s most recent set of requirements designed to delay the next scheduled expansion of the tribe’s booming casino. Gabe’s appearance would be more ceremonial than anything, since most of the actual arguing would be handled by Delia Chavez Cachora, the recently appointed tribal attorney.
Gabe’s main responsibility would be to sit there looking attentive and interested, which might prove difficult in view of the fact that he’d had so little sleep the night before. It was times like this when the countervailing pressures of being both tribal chairman and medicine man proved to be almost more than he could handle.
Before the blind medicine man, S-ab Neid Pi Has— Looks At Nothing—had died, years earlier, the canny old shaman had taught Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz a number of important things, including the meaning of those particular words, medicine man—mahkai. Looks At Nothing had explained the obligations involved as well.
As a confirmed Christian Scientist, Gabe initially had been prepared to pass off most of what the old man said as superstitious nonsense. As the months went by, however, Looks At Nothing had taught Fat Crack to listen to the voice inside himself, to pay attention, and then to act on the resulting knowledge.
It was through using what Looks At Nothing taught him that Gabe’s business and political ambitions had prospered. Most of the time the guidance that came to him was in the form of a gentle nudge, but in the case of Diana Ladd’s book, it had been more like the blow of a hammer.
Wanda had bought him a copy of Shadow of Death at a book-signing in town. Diana had autographed it, wishing Gabe a happy birthday in her personalized inscription. And then Wanda had taken the gift-wr
apped book home and kept it put away until Gabe’s sixty-fifth birthday.
She had given it to him at a small family birthday party at their daughter’s home in Tucson. As soon as Gabe held the book in his hand, even before he unwrapped it, he knew something was wrong. Something evil seemed to pulsate from inside the gaily wrapped package. Breaking the ribbon and tearing off the paper, a sense of dread seemed to fill the whole room, blurring the smiling faces of his children and grandchildren, obscuring Wanda’s loving, watchful eyes.
“Diana signed it for you,” Wanda said.
Gabe fumbled the book open to the title page and read the words that were written there in vivid red ink. “Gabe,” the inscription said. “Happy Birthday. Here’s a piece of our mutual history. I hope you enjoy it. Diana Ladd Walker.”
“Do you like it?” Wanda asked.
“Yes.” Gabe managed a weak smile, but as soon as possible, he put the book down. When the party was over and as he and Wanda were getting ready to leave, the grandkids had gathered up the presents and what was left of the birthday cake for Wanda and Gabe to take back home to Sells with them. Five-year-old Rita, the baby, had come racing to the door carrying the book. Afraid that whatever evil lurked in the book might somehow infect her, Gabe had reached down and snatched it from her hand.
Tears welled in her eyes. “I only wanted to carry it,” she pouted. “I wouldn’t drop it or anything. I like books.”
“I know, baby,” he said, bending over and giving the child a hug. “But this one is very special. Let me carry it, okay?”
“Okay,” she sniffed. “Can I carry your hat then?”
For an answer, Gabe had put his huge black Stetson on her head. It had engulfed the child, falling down over her eyes, covering everything down to her lips, which suddenly burst into a wide grin.
“I can’t see anything,” she said.
“That’s all right,” Gabe had said, reaching out and taking her hand. “I’ll lead you to the car.”