by J. A. Jance
Mitch held the knife delicately. The vibration that came through the bone handle reminded him of a time long ago when, as a twelve-year-old, he had plucked a tiny baby bird out of a nest. He had held it in the palm of his hand for several minutes, feeling the frantic beating of its heart and wings against his skin. He didn’t remember how long he held it. What he did remember was that eventually the damned thing pecked him, bit him so hard that it drew blood. When that happened, he simply closed his fist around it, crushing out that little bit of life as if it had never existed.
That had been a very clear and simplified lesson in the ethics of crime and punishment. The bird had hurt him, so he killed it. This was the same thing.
Moving the tip of the knife away from Wraike’s throat, Mitch was gratified to see the man’s heartfelt sigh of relief. As the stark tension drained out of Larry’s body, Mitch felt a sudden stiffening in his own. He almost laughed aloud at the sensation. Some idiot psychology major had once done a series of interviews at the prison, asking some of the more violent offenders if there was any correlation for them between sex and violence.
If Mitch ever ran into that broad again, he’d have to be sure to tell her that for him the answer was a definite yes.
“You do know why I’m doing this, don’t you?” he asked.
Larry shook his head frantically.
“Would you like me to tell you?”
This time Larry’s answering nod was equally frantic. Mitch wasn’t so much interested in having this one-sided conversation as he was in stretching the moment. He could not, in his whole life, ever remember having anyone listen to him with quite such rapt attention.
“You cheated me,” Mitch said with no particular animosity. By the time they reached that point, Mitch Johnson had moved far beyond anger. He was simply delivering information, allowing Larry to understand the gravity of his mistake. Maybe, in another lifetime, he wouldn’t make the same fatal error a second time.
“The deal was all set,” Mitch continued reasonably. “All either one of us had to do was wait for old man Kiser to kick off. He was already sick, so it wouldn’t have taken long. Once he did, we both would have made out like bandits. Instead, you waited until I was locked up and then you moved in and took your share and mine as well. To top it all off, you ended up fucking my wife, too. That wasn’t a nice thing to do, Larry. It just wasn’t right.”
Around the gag and behind it, Larry’s lips and tongue tried vainly to form words. He might have been agreeing with Mitch’s assessment. He might even have been trying to say he was sorry, but as far as Mitch was concerned, it was far too late for apologies. After eighteen years, sorry didn’t exactly cut it.
In the end it was the sexual injustice of Larry Wraike’s actions that ruled the day. That, even more than the money, dictated the final result. That was why the first cut—the one that bled the most—was directly between Larry Wraike’s legs. Mitch stood back and watched for a while, watched the man writhe and squirm and bleed and try to scream. And then, when Mitch lost interest in that, just as he had with the bird, and because he was worried about the time element, he went ahead and finished him off.
Larry Wraike was dead long before Mitch took the knife and began carving up his face. Andy would have called that gratuitous. It might even have been more than Andy himself would have done. If so, it was a way for Mitch to prove to himself that he had graduated, that he had moved beyond being Andrew Carlisle’s student. He was, in fact, a talented killer in his own right, out to get a little of his own back from those who had wronged him in the past.
It took only a matter of seconds to mangle Larry Wraike’s face. Afterward, while Mitch was showering, he laughed to think of Lori being called into a coroner’s office to identify the bloody remains. Other than Lori and a few cops, not many people would see what he had done, but the thought of Lori seeing her husband that way made Mitch happy.
She was, after all, the only one who mattered.
As expected, Mitch himself was miles away from the motel when the teenaged prostitute from the other side of the border let herself into the room and discovered the body. Despite her frenzied screams and her subsequent protestations of innocence, she and her pimp would be going on trial soon, down in Santa Cruz County, for the savage murder of Larry Wraike.
Mitch Johnson had made it back to his RV on Coleman Road without any questions asked. And if any homicide cops from Nogales ever went looking for the old man who had met with the victim in a bar a few hours before his death, they never had any luck finding him.
Nope, as far as Larry Wraike was concerned, Mitch Johnson got away clean.
More relaxed now, Mitch stood up, stretched, and went inside, but he still didn’t feel like sleeping. Instead, he took out a sketchbook and went to work.
“What was the author’s name again?” Noreen Kennedy, the prison librarian, had asked.
“Nicolaïdes,” Mitch Johnson answered. “He’s Greek.”
“And the name of the book?”
“The Natural Way to Draw.”
Noreen was a firm believer in the importance of rehabilitation. “You’re studying art, then?” she asked.
Mitch smiled diffidently. “I’ve always been interested in art,” he said. “But there was never enough time to do anything about it. Now I’ve got nothing but time. This book is supposed to be the best there is.”
The book arrived eventually, courtesy of an inter-library loan. And it was every bit as good as Mitch had been told it would be. With a pencil and a cheap sketchbook, he went to work doing the exercises. The book contained a year-long course of study. Unfortunately, the checkout period was limited to two weeks.
“Could you order it for me again, Mrs. Kennedy?” he asked, the day he returned it to the library. “In two weeks’ time, I barely got started. What I really need is my own copy.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
It was a month before Mitch received a summons to the library. Noreen Kennedy, who was almost as wide as she was tall, smiled broadly at him. “You’ll never guess what I found,” she said, holding up a shabby volume Mitch instantly recognized as a much-used copy of the Nicolaïdes book.
“I got it from a used-book dealer in Phoenix who’s an old friend of mine,” she said. “We went to Library School together. Jack said he’s had it in inventory for years and he only charged me five bucks. Can you afford to buy it, or should I just go ahead and put it in the collection?”
“I’d really like to have my own copy, if you don’t mind,” Mitch said.
“I thought you would,” Noreen said, handing it over.
The book had been a godsend. When Mitch was sketching, the hours seemed to fly by. As the months went past, it was easy to recognize the increasing skill in the way he executed the exercises. While he sketched, Andrew Carlisle talked. It was as though he had an almost physical need to share his exploits with someone. Mitch Johnson became Andy’s chosen vessel.
Andy’s bragging about the tapes was how Mitch first heard about them. At first it made him uneasy that Andy had taken such pains to make a record of all he had done, but in the long run, Mitch realized that recordings were just that—mechanical reproductions. They didn’t allow for any artistic license. Painting did.
There was a locked storage unit under the bed in the Bounder. In it were two 18-by-24-inch canvases. Each oil painting was of Larry Wraike, one before and one after. The first was of a moderately handsome overfed businessman in a well-pressed suit, the kind of dully representative portrait that an overly proud wife might have commissioned in honor of some special occasion. An art critic seeing the second painting would have assumed, mistakenly, that this was an imaginative rendition of a soul in torment.
Only Mitch Johnson knew that that one, too, was fully representational. He thought of them as a matched pair—“Larry Wraike Before” and “Larry Wraike After.”
Half an hour after returning to the RV, when he held the unfinished dr
awing up to a mirror to examine it, the artist was pleased with the likeness. Anyone who knew Quentin Walker would have recognized him. The picture showed him sitting slump-shouldered, his elbows resting on the bar, his eyes morosely focused on the beer in the bottom of the glass in front of him. Quentin Walker Before.
Looking at the picture, though, Mitch Johnson realized something else about it—something he had never noticed before that moment—how very much the son resembled the father. That hadn’t been nearly so apparent when Quentin first showed up in Florence as it was now. He had come to prison as nothing but a punk kid. The hard years in between had matured and hardened him into what Brandon Walker had been when Mitch first knew him.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Mitch said to the picture reflected back from the mirror. “If you aren’t your daddy’s spitting image, Mr. Quentin Walker. Imagine that!”
5
They say it happened long ago that the weather grew very hot—the hottest year the Tohono O’othham had ever known. And all this happened in the hottest part of that year.
For many weeks the Indians and the animals had looked at the sky, hoping to find one cloud that would show them that Chewagi O’othham—Cloud Man—was still alive. There was not a cloud.
The water holes had been dry for a long time. The Desert People had gone far away to find water. The coyotes had followed the Indians. The wolves and foxes had gone into the mountains. All the birds had left. Even Kakaichu—Quail—who seldom leaves his own land, was forced to go away.
Gohhim Chuk—Lame Jackrabbit—had found a little shade. It was not much, just enough to keep him from burning. The tips of his ears and his tail were already burned black. And that, nawoj, is why that particular kind of jackrabbit—chuk chuhwi—is marked that same way, even today.
As Gohhim Chuk—Lame Jackrabbit—lay panting in his little bit of shade, he was wondering how he would manage the few days’ journey to a cooler place. Then he saw Nuhwi—Buzzard—flying over him.
Now it is the law of the desert to live and let live, that one should only kill in self-defense or to keep from starving. The animals forget this law sometimes when their stomachs are full and when there is plenty of water, but when the earth burns and when everyone is in danger, the law is always remembered. So Lame Jackrabbit did not run away when he saw Buzzard circling down over him. Buzzard knew the law of the desert as well as Lame Jackrabbit did.
Nuhwi flew in circles, lower and lower. When he was low enough, he called to Lame Jackrabbit. “I have seen something very odd back in the desert,” Nuhwi said. When he was high up over the part of the desert which was burned bare, he told Lame Jackrabbit, he saw on the ground a black place that seemed to be in motion. He had circled down hoping it was water. But it was only a great crowd of Ali-chu’uchum O’othham, the Little People.
As you know, nawoj, my friend, the Little People are the bees and flies and insects of all kinds. Buzzard said these Little People were swarming around something on the ground. He said Nuhwi and Gohhim Chuk must carry the news together because it might help someone. It is also the law of the desert that you must always help anyone in trouble.
Lame Jackrabbit agreed that what Buzzard had seen was very strange. Little People usually leave early when the water goes away. Lame Jackrabbit said he would carry the news.
But Gohhim Chuk, whose ears and tail were burned black, being lame, could not travel very well. So he found Coyote and told him what Nuhwi—Buzzard—had seen.
Ban—Coyote—was puzzled too. He said he would carry the message on to the Tohono O’othham—the Desert People.
It was still dark when Lani’s alarm buzzed in her ear. She turned it off quickly and then hurried into the bathroom to shower. Standing in front of the steamy mirror, she used a brush and hair dryer to style her shoulder-length hair. How long would it take, she wondered, for her hair to grow back out to the length it had been back in eighth grade, before she had cut it?
From first grade on, Lani Walker and Jessica Carpenter had been good friends. By the time they reached Maxwell Junior High, the two girls made a striking pair. Lani’s jet-black waist-length hair and bronze complexion were in sharp contrast to Jessie’s equally long white-blond hair and fair skin. Because they were always together, some of the other kids teasingly called them twins.
Their entry into eighth grade came at a time when Lani Walker needed a faithful ally. For one thing, Rita was gone. She had been dead for years, but Lani still missed her. When coping with the surprising changes in her own body or when faced with difficulties at home or in school, Lani still longed for the comfort of Nana Dahd’s patient guidance. And there were difficulties at home. In fact, the whole Walker household seemed to be in a state of constant upheaval. Things had started going bad when her older stepbrother, Quentin, had been sent to prison as a result of a fatality drunk-driving accident.
Lani had been too young to realize all that was happening when Tommy disappeared, but she had watched her grim-faced parents deal with the first Quentin crisis. She had been at the far end of the living room working on a basket the night after Quentin Walker was sentenced for the drunk-driving conviction. Brandon had come into the house, shambled over to the couch, slumped down on it, and buried his face in his hands.
“Five years,” he had groaned. “On the one hand it seems like a long time and yet it’s nothing. He killed three people, for God’s sake! How can a five-year sentence make up for that, especially when he’ll probably be out in three?”
“That’s what the law says,” Diana returned, but Brandon remained unconvinced and uncomforted.
“Judge Davis could have given him more if he had wanted to. I can’t help thinking that it’s because I’m the sheriff…”
“Brandon, you have to let go of that,” Diana said. “First you blame yourself for Quentin being a drunk, and now you’re taking responsibility for the judge’s sentence. Quentin did what he did and so did the judge. Neither one of those results has anything at all to do with you.”
Lani had put her basket aside and hurried over to the couch, where she snuggled up next to her father. “It’s not your fault, Daddy,” she said confidently, taking one of his hands in both of hers. “You didn’t do it.”
“See there?” Diana had smiled. “If Lani’s smart enough to see it at her age, what’s the matter with you?”
“Stubborn, maybe?” Brandon had returned with a weak smile of his own.
“Not stubborn maybe,” Diana answered. “Stubborn for sure.”
So the family had weathered that crisis in fairly good shape. The next one, when it came, was far worse. As near as Lani could tell, it all started about the time the letter arrived from a man named Andrew Carlisle, the same person Nana Dahd had always referred to as the evil Ohb, Within months, Diana was working on a book project with Andrew Carlisle while Brandon stalked in and out of the house in wounded silence.
Lani was hard-pressed to understand how the very mention of Carlisle’s name was able to cause a fight, but from a teenager’s point of view, that wasn’t all bad. The growing wedge between her parents allowed Lani Walker to play both ends against the middle. She was able to get away with things her older brother Davy never could have.
It was during the summer when Lani turned thirteen that the next scandal surfaced concerning Quentin Walker. Still imprisoned at Florence, he was the subject of a new investigation. He was suspected of being involved in a complex protection racket that had its origins inside the prison walls. By the time school started at the end of the summer, a sharp-eyed defense attorney had gotten Quentin off on a technicality, but all of Tucson was abuzz with speculation about Brandon Walker’s possible involvement with his son’s plot.
The whole mess was just surfacing in the media the week Lani Walker started eighth grade. At home the inflammatory newspaper headlines and television news broadcasts were easy to ignore. All Lani had to do was to skip reading the paper or turn off the TV. At school that strategy didn’t work.
�
�Your father’s a crook.” Danny Jenkins, the chief bully of Maxwell Junior High, whispered in Lani’s ear as the yellow school bus rumbled down the road. “You wait and see. Before long, he’ll end up in prison, too, just like his son.”
Lani had turned to face her tormentor. Red-haired, rednecked, and pugnacious, Danny had made Lani’s life miserable from the moment he had first shown up in Tucson two years earlier after moving there from Mobile, Alabama.
“No, he won’t!” Lani hissed furiously.
“Will, too.”
“Prove it.”
“Why should I? It says so on TV. That means it’s true, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t, s-koshwa—stupid,” she spat back at him. “It just means you’re too dumb to turn off the set.”
“Wait a minute. What did you call me?”
“Nothing,” she muttered.
She turned away, thinking that if she ignored him, that would be the end of it. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it hard enough that the back of her head bounced off the top of the seat. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Leave her alone, Danny,” Jessica Carpenter ordered. “You’re hurting her.”
“She called me a name—some shitty Indian name. I want to know what it was.”
Lani, with her head pulled tight against the back of the seat, clamped her lips shut. But just because Lani stayed quiet, didn’t mean Jessica Carpenter would.
“I’m telling,” Jessica yelled. “Driver, driver! Danny Jenkins is pulling Lani’s hair.”
The driver didn’t bother looking over her shoulder. “Knock it off, Danny,” she said. “Stop it right now or you’re walking.”
“But she called me a name,” Danny protested. “It sounded bad. Koshi something.”